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their families after their death. Until 1853 all appointments to the covenanted service were made by nomination, but in that year they were thrown open to public competition of all British subjects without distinction of race, including natives of India as well as of England. The conditions are so exacting that few native Hindus are willing to accept them, and of the 1,067 men whose names were on the active and retired lists on the 31st of December, 1902, only forty were natives of India.

Lord Macaulay framed the rules of the competition and the scheme of examination, and his idea was to attract the best and ablest young men in the empire. Candidates who are successful are required to remain one year on probation, with an allowance of $500, for the purpose of preparing themselves for a second examination which is much more severe than the first. Having passed the second examination, they become permanent members of the civil service. They cannot be removed without cause, and are promoted according to length of service and advanced on their merits in a manner very similar to that which prevails in our army and navy. None but members of the covenanted service can become heads of departments, commissioners of revenue, magistrates and collectors, and there is a long list of offices which belong to them exclusively. Their service and assignment to duty is largely governed by their special qualifications and experience. They are encouraged to improve themselves and qualify themselves for special posts. A covenanted official who can speak the native languages, who distinguishes himself in literature or in oratory, who devises plans for public works, or distinguishes himself in other intellectual or official lines of activity is sure to be recognized and receive rapid advancement, while those who prefer to perform only the arduous duties that are required of them will naturally remain in the background. There is, and there always will be, more or less favoritism and partiality as long as human affections and personal regard influence official conduct, and I do not believe we would have it otherwise. We can admire the stern sense of justice which sends a son to the scaffold or denies a brother a favor that he asks, but we do not like to have such men in our families. There is undoubtedly more or less personal and political influence exercised in the Indian service, but I doubt if any other country is more free from those common and natural faults.

In addition to the covenanted service are the imperial service and the provincial service, which are recruited chiefly from the natives, although both are open to any subject of King Edward VII. All these positions are secured by competitive examinations, and, as I have already intimated, the universities of India have arranged their courses of study to prepare native candidates for them. This has been criticised as a false and injurious educational policy. The universities are called nurseries for the unnatural propagation of candidates for the civil service, and almost every young man who enters them expects, or at least aspires, to a government position. There is no complaint of the efficiency of the material they furnish for the public offices. The examinations are usually sufficient to disclose the mental qualifications of the candidates and are conducted with great care and scrupulousness, but they fail to discover the most essential qualifications for official responsibility, and the greater number of native appointees are contented to settle down at a government desk and do as little work as possible.

VIII

THE RAILWAYS OF INDIA

The railways of India are many and long and useful, but still very primitive in their appointments, having been built for utility and convenience, and not for comfort. The day will come, I suppose, when modern improvements will be introduced, and the long journeys which are necessary to reach any part of the vast empire will be made as pleasant and luxurious as transcontinental trips in the United States. Just now, however, the equipment is on a military basis of simplicity and severity. Passengers are furnished with what they need, and no more. They are hauled from one place to another at reasonable rates of speed; they are given shelter from the sun and the storms en route; a place to sit in the daytime and to lie down during the night; and at proper intervals the trains stop for refreshments–not very good nor very bad, but “fair to middling,” as the Yankees say, in quality and quantity. If a traveler wants anything more he must provide it himself. People who live in India and are accustomed to these things are perfectly satisfied with them, although the tourist who has just arrived is apt to criticise and condemn for the first few days.

Every European resident of India who is accustomed to traveling by train has an outfit always ready similar to the kit of a soldier or a naval officer. It is as necessary as a trunk or a bag, an overcoat or umbrella, and consists of a roll of bedding, with sheets, blankets and pillows, protected by a canvas cover securely strapped and arranged so that when he wants to retire he need only unbuckle the straps and unroll the blankets on the bunk in the railway carriage. He also has a “tiffin basket,” with a tea pot, an alcohol lamp, a tea caddy, plates and cups of granite ware, spoons, knives and forks, a box of sugar, a tin of jam, a tin of biscuits or crackers, and other concomitants for his interior department in case of an emergency; and, never having had anything better, he thinks the present arrangement good enough and wonders why Americans are dissatisfied. Persons of ordinary common sense and patience can get used to almost anything, and after a day or two travelers trained to the luxury of Pullman sleepers and dining cars adjust themselves to the primitive facilities of India without loss of sleep or temper, excepting always one condition: You are never sure “where you are at,” so to speak. You never know what sort of accommodations you are going to have. There is always an exasperating uncertainty as to what will be left for you when the train reaches your place of embarkation.

Sleeping berths, such as they are, go free with first and second class tickets and every traveler is entitled to one bunk, but passengers at intermediate points cannot make definite arrangements until the train rolls in, no matter whether it is noonday or 2 o’clock in the morning. You can go down and appeal to the station master a day or two in advance and advise him of your wants and wishes, and he will put your name down on a list. If you are so fortunate as to be at the starting place of the train he will assign you a bunk and slip a card with your name written upon it into a little slot made for the purpose; the other bunks in the compartment will be allotted to Tom, Dick and Harry in the same manner. There are apartments reserved for ladies, too, but if you and your wife or family want one to yourselves you must be a major general, or a lieutenant governor, or a rajah, or a lord high commissioner of something or other to attain that desire. If they insist upon being exclusive, ordinary people are compelled to show as many tickets as there are bunks in a compartment, and the first that come have the pick, as is perfectly natural. The fellow who enters the train later in the day must be satisfied with Mr. Hobson’s choice, and take what is left, even if it doesn’t fit him. It the train is full, if every bunk is occupied, another car is hitched on, and he gets a lower, but this will not be done as long as a single upper is vacant. And the passengers are packed away as closely as possible because the trains are heavy and the engines are light, and the schedules must be kept in the running. A growler will tell you that he never gets a lower berth, that he is always crowded into a compartment that is already three-fourths occupied with passengers who are trying to sleep, but he forgets that they have more than he to complain of, and if he is a malicious man he can find deep consolation in the thought and make as great a nuisance of himself as possible. I do not know how the gentler sex behave under such circumstances, but I have heard stories that I am too polite to repeat.

There is no means of ventilation in the ceiling, but there is a frieze of blinds under it, along both sides of the car, with slats that can be turned to let the air in directly upon the body of the occupant of the upper berth, who is at liberty to elect whether he dies of pneumonia or suffocation. The gentleman in the lower berth has a row of windows along his back, which never fit closely but rattle like a snare drum, and have wide gaps that admit a forced draught of air if the night is damp or chilly. If it is hot the windows swell and stick so that you cannot open them, and during the daytime they rattle so loud that conversation is impossible unless the passengers have throats of brass like the statues of Siva. In India, during the winter season, there is a wide variation in the temperature, sometimes as much as thirty or forty degrees. At night you will need a couple of thick blankets; at noonday it is necessary to wear a pith helmet or carry an umbrella to protect the head from the sun, and as people do their traveling in the dry season chiefly, the dust is dreadful. Everything in the car wears a soft gray coating before the train has been in motion half an hour.

The bunks are too narrow for beds and too wide for seats. The act of rolling over in the night is attended with some danger and more anxiety, especially by the occupants of the upper berths. In the daytime you can sit on the edge like an embarrassed boy, with nothing to support your spine, or you can curl up like a Buddha on his lotus flower, with your legs under you; but that is not dignified, nor is it a comfortable posture for a fat man. Slender girls can do it all right; but it is impracticable for ladies who have passed the thirty-third degree, or have acquired embonpoint with their other graces. Or you can shove back against the windows and let your feet stick out straight toward the infinite. It isn’t the fault of a railway corporation or the master mechanic of a car factory if they don’t reach the floor. It is a defect for which nature is responsible. President Lincoln once said every man’s legs ought to be long enough to reach the ground.

The cars are divided into two, three, or four compartments for first-class passengers, with a narrow little pen for their servants at the end which is absolutely necessary, because nobody in India travels without an attendant to wait upon him. His comfort as well as his social position requires it, and few have the moral courage to disregard the rule. To make it a little clearer I will give you a diagram sketched by your special artist on the spot.

[Illustration]

This is an excellent representation of a first-class railway carriage in India without meretricious embellishments.

The second-class compartments, for which two-thirds of the first-class rates are charged, have six narrow bunks instead of four, the two extras being in the middle supported by iron rods fastened to the floor and the ceiling. The woodwork of all cars, first, second, and third class, is plain matched lumber, like our flooring, painted or stained and varnished. The floor is bare, without carpet or matting, and around on the wall, wherever there is room for them, enormous hooks are screwed on. Over the doors are racks of netting. The bunks are plain wooden benches, covered with leather cushions stuffed with straw and packed as hard as tombstones by the weight of previous passengers. The ceiling is of boards pierced with a hole for a glass globe, which prevents the oil dripping upon your bald spot from a feeble and dejected lamp. It is too dim to read by and scarcely bright enough to enable you to distinguish the expression upon the lineaments of your fellow passengers. A scoop net of green cloth on a wire springs back over the light to cover it when you want to sleep: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The toilet room is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back. You furnish your own towel and the most untidy stranger in the compartment usually wants to borrow it, having forgotten to bring one himself. You acquire merit in heaven, as the Buddhists say, by loaning it to him, but it is a better plan to carry two towels, in order to be prepared for such an emergency.

As we were about starting upon a tour that required several thousand miles of railway travel and several weeks of time, the brilliant idea of avoiding an risks and anxiety by securing a private car was suggested, and negotiations were opened to that purpose, but were not concluded because of numerous considerations and contingencies which arose at every interview with the railway officials. They are not accustomed to such innovations and could not decide upon their own terms or ascertain, during the period before departure, what the connecting lines would charge us. There are private cars fitted up luxuriously for railway managers and high officials of the government, but they couldn’t spare one of them for so long a time as we would need it. Finally somebody suggested a car that was fitted out for the Duke and Duchess of Connaught when they came over to the Durbar at Delhi. It had two compartments, with a bathroom, a kitchen and servants’ quarters, but only three bunks. They kindly offered to let us use it provided we purchased six first-class tickets, and were too obtuse to comprehend why we objected to paying six fares for a car that could not possibly admit more than three people. But that was only the first of several issues. At the next interview they decided to charge us demurrage at the rate of 16 cents an hour for all the time the car was not in motion, and, finally, at the third interview, the traffic manager said it would be necessary for us to buy six first-class tickets in order to get the empty car back to Bombay, its starting point, at the end of our journey. This brought the charges up to a total as large as would be necessary to transport a circus or an opera company, and we decided to take our chances in the regular way.

We bought some sheets and pillow cases, pillows and old-fashioned comfortables and blankets, and bespoke a compartment on the train leaving Bombay that night. Two hours before the time for starting we sent Thagorayas, our “bearer”, down to make up the beds, which, being accustomed to that sort of business, he did in an artistic manner, and by allowing him to take command of the expedition we succeeded in making the journey comfortably and with full satisfaction. The ladies of our party were assigned to one compartment and the gentlemen to another, where the latter had the company of an engineer engaged upon the Bombay harbor improvements, and a very intelligent and polite Englishman who acts as “adviser” to a native prince in the administration of an interior province.

On the same train and next to our compartment was the private coach of the Gaikwar of Baroda, who was attended by a dozen or more servants, and came to the train escorted by a multitude of friends, who hung garlands of marigold about his neck until his eyes and the bridge of his nose were the only features visible. The first-class passengers came down with car loads of trunks and bags and bundles, which, to avoid the charge for extra luggage, they endeavored to stowaway in their compartments. The third-class carriages were packed like sardines with natives, and up to the limit allowed by law, for, painted in big white letters, where every passenger and every observer can read it, is a notice giving the number of people that can be jammed into that particular compartment in the summer and in the winter. We found similar inscriptions on nearly all freight cars which are used to transport natives during the fairs and festivals that occur frequently–allowing fifteen in summer and twenty-three in winter in some of the cars, and in the larger ones thirty-four in winter and twenty-six in summer, to avoid homicide by suffocation.

The Gaikwar of Baroda in his luxurious chariot did not sleep any better than the innocent and humble mortals that occupied our beds. We woke up in the morning at Ahmedabad, got a good breakfast at the station, and went out to see the wonderful temples and palaces and bazaars that are described in the next chapter.

There are now nearly 28,000 miles of railway lines in India. On Jan. 1, 1903, the exact mileage under operation was 26,563, with 1,190 miles under construction. The latter was more than half completed during the year, and before the close of 1905, unless something occurs to prevent, the total will pass the thirty thousand mark. The increase has been quite rapid during the last five years, owing to the experience of the last famine, when it was demonstrated that facilities for rapid transportation of food supplies from one part of the country to another were an absolute necessity. It is usually the case that when the inhabitants of one province are dying of starvation those of another are blessed with abundant crops, and the most effective remedy for famine is the means of distributing the food supply where it is needed. Before the great mutiny of 1857 there were few railroads in India, and the lesson taught by that experience was of incalculable value. If re-enforcements could have been sent by rail to the beleaguered garrisons, instead of making the long marches, the massacres might have been prevented and thousands of precious lives might have been saved. In 1880 the system amounted to less than 10,000 miles. In 1896 it had been doubled; in 1901 it had passed the 25,000 mile mark, and now the existing lines are being extended, and branches and feeders are being built for military as well as famine emergencies. All the principal districts and cities are connected by rail. All of the important strategical points and military cantonments can be reached promptly, as necessity requires, and in case of a rebellion troops could be poured into any particular point from the farthermost limits of India within three or four days.

As I have already reminded you several times, India is a very big country, and it requires many miles of rails to furnish even necessary transportation facilities. The time between Bombay and Calcutta is forty-five hours by ordinary trains and thirty-eight hours by a fast train, with limited passenger accommodation, which starts from the docks of Bombay immediately after the arrival of steamers with the European mails. From Madras, the most important city of southern India, to Delhi, the most important in the north, sixty-six hours of travel are required. From Peshawur, the extreme frontier post in the north, which commands the Kyber Pass, leading into, Afganistan, to Tuticorin, the southern terminus of the system, it is 3,400 miles by the regular railway route, via Calcutta, and seven days and night will be necessary to make the journey under ordinary circumstances. Troops could be hurried through more rapidly.

Nearly all the railways of India have either been built by the government or have been assisted with guarantees of the payment of from 3 to 5 per cent dividends. The government itself owns 19,126 miles and has guaranteed 3,866 miles, while 3,242 miles have been constructed by the native states. Of the government lines 13,441 miles have been leased to private companies for operation; 5,125 miles are operated by the government itself. Nearly three-fourths of the lines owned by native states have been leased for operation.

The total capital invested in railway property, to the end of 1902, amounted to $1,025,000,000, and during that year the average net earnings of the entire mileage amounted to 5.10 per cent of that amount. The surplus earnings, after the payment of all fixed charges and guarantees and interest upon bonds amounted to $4,233,080.

The number of passengers carried in 1,902 was 197,749,567, an increase of 6,614,211 over the previous year. The aggregate freight hauled was 44,142,672 tons, an increase of 2,104,425 tons over previous year, which shows a healthy condition. During the last ten years the gross earnings of all the railways in India increased at the rate of 41 per cent.

Of the gross earnings 59 per cent. were derived from freight and the balance from passengers.

There is now no town of importance in India without a telegraph station. The telephone is not much used, but the telegraph lines, which belong to the government, more than pay expenses. There has been an enormous increase in the number of messages sent in the last few years by natives, which indicates that they are learning the value of modern improvements.

The government telegraph lines are run in connection with the mails and in the smaller towns the postmasters are telegraph operators also. In the large cities the telegraph offices are situated in the branch postoffices and served by the same men, so that it is difficult to divide the cost of maintenance. According to the present system the telegraph department maintains the lines, supplies all the telegraphic requirements of the offices and pays one-half of the salaries of operators, who also attend to duties connected with the postoffice. There were 68,084 miles of wire and 15,686 offices on January 1, 1904. The rate of charges for ordinary telegrams is 33 cents for eight words, and 4 cents for each additional word. Telegrams marked “urgent” are given the right of way over all other business and are charged double the ordinary rates. Telegrams marked “deferred” are sent at the convenience of the operator, generally during the night, at half of the ordinary rates. As a matter of convenience telegrams may be paid for by sticking postage stamps upon the blanks.

There are 38,479 postoffices in India and in 1902 545,364,313 letters were handled, which was an increase of 24,000,000 over the previous year and of 100,000,000 since 1896. The total revenues of the postoffice department were $6,785,880, while the expenditures were $6,111,070.

IX

THE CITY OF AHMEDABAD

Ahmedabad, capital of the province of Jujarat, once the greatest city of India, and formerly “as large as London,” is the first stopping place on the conventional tour from Bombay through the northern part of the empire, because it contains the most perfect and pure specimens of Saracenic architecture; and our experience taught us that it is a place no traveler should miss. It certainly ranks next to Agra and Delhi for the beauty and extent of its architectural glories, and for other reasons it is worth visiting. In the eleventh century it was the center of the Eden of India, broad, fertile plains, magnificent forests of sweet-scented trees, abounding in population and prosperity. It has passed through two long periods of greatness, two of decay and one of revival. Under the rule of Sidh Rajah, “the Magnificent,” one of the noblest and greatest of the Moguls, it reached the height of its wealth and power at the beginning of the fifteenth century. He erected schools, palaces and temples, and surrounded them with glorious gardens. He called to his side learned pundits and scholarly priests, who taught philosophy and morals under his generous patronage. He encouraged the arts and industries. His wealth was unlimited, and, according to local tradition, he lived in a style of magnificence that has never been surpassed by any of the native princes since. His jewels were the wonder of the world, and one of the legends says that he inherited them from the gods. But, unfortunately, his successors were weak and worthless men, and the glory of his kingdom passed gradually away until, a century later, his debilitated and indolent subjects were overcome and passed under the power of a Moslem who, in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, restored the importance of the province.

Ahmed Shah was his name.

He built a citadel of impregnable strength and imposing architecture and surrounded it by a city with broad streets and splendid buildings and called it after himself; for Ahmedabad means the City of Ahmed. Where his predecessor attracted priests and scholars he brought artists, clever craftsmen, skilled mechanics and artisans in gold, silver, brass and clay; weavers of costly fabrics with genius to design and skill to execute. Architects and engineers were sent for from all parts of the world, and merchants came from every country to buy wares. Thus Ahmedabad became a center of trade and manufacture, with a population of a million inhabitants, and was the richest and busiest city in the Mogul Empire. Merchants who had come to buy in its markets spread its reputation over the world and attracted valuable additions to its trades and professions. Travelers, scholars and philosophers came to study the causes of its prosperity, and marvelous stories are told by them in letters and books they wrote concerning its palaces, temples and markets. An envoy from the Duke of Holstein gives us a vivid account of the grandeur of the city and the splendor of the court, and tells of a wedding, at which the daughter of Ahmed Shah married the second son of the grand mogul. She carried to Delhi as her dower twenty elephants, a thousand horses and six thousand wagons loaded with the richest stuffs of whatever was rare in the country. The household of the rajah, he says, consisted of five hundred persons, and cost him five thousand pounds a month to maintain, “not comprehending the account of his stables, where he kept five hundred horses and fifty elephants.” When this traveler visited the rajah he was sitting in a pavilion in his garden, clad in a white vestment, according to the Indian code, over which he had a cloak of gold “brocade,” the ground color being carnation lined with white satin, and above it was a collar of sable, whereof the skins were sewed together so that the tails hung over down his back.

Among the manufacturers and business men of Ahmedabad in those days, as now, were many Jains–the Quakers of India–who belong to the rich middle class. They believe in peace, and are so tender-hearted that they will not even kill a mosquito or a flea. They are great business men, however, notwithstanding their soft hearts, and the most rapid money-makers in the empire. They built many of the most beautiful temples in India, in which they worship a kind and gentle god whose attributes are amiability, benevolence and compassion. The Jains of Ahmedabad still maintain a large “pinjrapol,” or asylum for diseased and aged animals, with about 800 inmates, decrepit beasts of all species, by which they acquire merit with their god. And about the streets, and in the outskirts of the city, sitting on the tops of what look like telegraph poles, are pigeon houses; some of them ornamented with carving, other painted in gay colors and all of them very picturesque. These are rest houses for birds, which the Jains have built, and every day basins of food are placed in them for the benefit of the hungry. In the groves outside of the city are thousands of monkeys, and they are much cleaner and more respectable in appearance than any you ever saw in a circus or a zoo. They are as large as Italian greyhounds, and of similar color, with long hair and uncommonly long tails, and so tame they will come up to strangers who know enough to utter a call that they understand. Our coachman bought a penny’s worth of sweet bread in one of the groceries that we passed, and when we reached the first grove he uttered a cry similar to that which New England dairymen use in calling their cattle. In an instant monkeys began to drop from the limbs of trees that overhang the roadway, and came scampering from the corners, where they had probably been indulging in noonday naps. In two minutes he was surrounded by thirty-eight monkeys, which leaped and capered around like so many dogs as he held the sugar cake up in the air before them. It was a novel sight. These monkeys are fed regularly at the expense of the Jains, and none of God’s creatures is too insignificant or irritating to escape their comprehensive benevolence.

One of the temples of the Jains, the Swamee Narayan, as they call it, on the outskirts of the city, is considered the noblest modern sacred building in all India. It is a mass of elaborate carving, tessellated marble floors and richly colored decorations, 150 feet long by 100 feet wide, with an overhanging roof supported by eighty columns, and no two of them are alike. They are masses of carving-figures of men and gods, saints and demons, animals, insects, fishes, trees and flowers, such as are only seen in the delirium of fever, are portrayed with the most exquisite taste and delicacy upon all of the surface exposed. The courtyard is inclosed by a colonnade of beautifully carved columns, upon which open fifty shrines with pagoda domes about twelve feet high, and in each of them are figures of Tirthankars, or saints of the calendar of the Jains. The temple is dedicated to Dharmamath, a sort of Jain John the Baptist, whose image, crowned with diamonds and other jewels, sits behind a beautiful gilded screen.

Ahmedabad now has a population of about 130,000. The ancient walls which inclose it are in excellent preservation and surround an area of about two square miles. There are twelve arched gateways with heavy teakwood doors studded with long brass spikes as a defense against elephants, which in olden times were taught to batter down such obstructions with their heads. The commerce of the city has declined of late years, but the people are still famous for objects of taste and ornament, and, according to the experts, their “chopped” gold is “the finest archaic jewelry in India,” almost identical in shape and design with the ornaments represented upon sculptured images in Assyria. The goldsmiths make all kinds of personal adornments; necklaces, bracelets, anklets, toe, finger, nose and ear rings, girdles and arm-bands of gold, silver, copper and brass, and this jewelry is worn by the women of India as the best of investments. They turn their money into it instead of patronizing banks. As Mr. Micawber would have expressed it, they convert their assets into portable property.

The manufacture of gold and silver thread occupies the attention of thousands of people, and hundreds more are engaged in weaving this thread with silk into brocades called “kincobs,” worn by rich Hindus and sold by weight instead of by measure. They are practically metallic cloth. The warp, or the threads running one way, is all either gold or silver, while the woof, or those running the other, are of different colored silks, and the patterns are fashioned with great taste and delicacy. These brocades wear forever, but are very expensive. A coat such as a rajah or a rich Hindu must wear upon an occasion of ceremony is worth several thousand dollars. Indeed, rajahs have had robes made at Ahmedabad for which the cloth alone cost $5,000 a yard. The skill of the wire drawers is amazing. So great is their delicacy of touch that they can make a thousand yards of silver thread out of a silver dollar; and if you will give one of them a sovereign, in a few moments he will reel off a spool of gold wire as fine as No. 80 cotton, and he does it with the simplest, most primitive of tools.

Nearly all the gold, silver and tin foil used in India is made at Ahmedabad, also in a primitive way, for the metal is spread between sheets of paper and beaten with a heavy hammer. The town is famous for its pottery also, and for many other manufactured goods.

The artisans are organized into guilds, like those of Europe in ancient times, with rules and regulations as strict as those of modern trades unions. The nagar-seth, or Lord Mayor, of Ahmedabad, is the titular head of all the guilds, and presides over a central council which has jurisdiction of matters of common interest. But each of the trades has its own organization and officers. Membership is hereditary; for in India, as in all oriental countries, it is customary for children to follow the trade or profession of their father. If an outsider desires to join one of the guilds he is compelled to comply with very rigid regulations and pay a heavy fee. Some of the guilds are rich, their property having been acquired by fines, fees and legacies, and they loan money to their own members. A serious crisis confronts the guilds of Ahmedabad in the form of organized capital and labor-saving machinery. Until a few years ago all of the manufacturing was done in the households by hand work. Within recent years five cotton factories, representing a capital of more than $2,500,000, have been established, and furnish labor for 3,000 men, women and children. This innovation was not opposed by the guilds because its products would come into direct competition only with the cotton goods of England, and would give employment to many idle people; but now that silk looms and other machinery are proposed the guilds are becoming alarmed and are asking where the intrusions are likely to stop.

The tombs of Ahmed, and Ganj Bhash, his chaplain, or spiritual adviser, a saintly mortal who admonished him of his sins and kept his feet in the path that leads to paradise, are both delightful, if such an adjective can apply, and are covered with exquisite marble embroidery, almost incredible in its perfection of detail. It is such as modern sculptors have neither the audacity or the imagination to design nor the skill or patience to execute. But they are not well kept. The rozah, or courtyard, in which the great king lies sleeping, surrounded by his wives, his children and other members of his family and his favorite ministers, is not cared for. It is dirty and dilapidated.

[Illustration: HUTHI SINGH’S TOMB–AHMEDABAD]

This vision of frozen music, as some one has described it, is a square building with a dome and walls of perforated fretwork in marble as delicate as Jack Frost ever traced upon a window pane. It is inclosed by a crumbling wall of mud, and can be reached only through a narrow and dirty lane obstructed by piles of rubbish, and the enjoyment of the visitor is sometimes destroyed and always seriously interfered with by the importunities of priests, peddlers and beggars who pursue him for backsheesh.

The lane from the mausoleum leads into the courtyard of the Jumma Musjid, a mosque erected by Ahmed Shah at the height of his power and glory. It is considered one of the most stately and satisfactory examples of Saracenic architecture.

The most beautiful piece of carving, however, in this great collection is a window in a deserted mosque called Sidi Sayid. Perhaps you are familiar with it. It has been photographed over and over again, and has been copied in alabaster, marble, plaster and wax; it has been engraved, photographed and painted, and is used in textbooks on architecture as an illustration of the perfection reached by the sculptors of India. The design is so complicated that I cannot describe it, but the central features are trees, with intertwining boughs, and the Hindu who made it could use his chisel with as free and delicate a hand as Raphael used his brush. Fergusson, who is recognized as the highest authority on architecture, says that it is “more like a work of nature than any other architectural detail that has yet been designed, even by the best masters of Greece or the middle ages.” Yet the mosque which this precious gem made famous is abandoned and deserted, and the courtyard is now a cow pasture.

X

JEYPORE AND ITS MAHARAJA

A board of geographic names, similar to that we have in Washington, is badly needed in India to straighten out discrepancies in the nomenclature on the maps. I was told that only three towns in all the vast empire have a single spelling; all the rest have several; some have many; and the name of one town–I have forgotten which–is given in sixty-five different ways. Jeypore, for example, is given in fifteen. The sign over the entrance to the railway station reads “Jeypure;” on the lamps that light the platform it is painted “Jeypoor”; on the railway ticket it was “Jaypur”; on the bill of fare in the refreshment-room of the station it was “Jaipor”; on a telegram delivered by the operator at the station it was spelled “Jaiphur.” If the employes about a single establishment in the town can get up that number of spells, what are we to expect from the rest of the inhabitants of a city of 150,000 people, and Jeypore is one of the simplest and easiest names in the gazetteer. The neighboring city of Jodpore, capital of the adjoining native state of Marwar, offers an even greater variety of orthoepy, for it appears in a different spelling on each of the three maps I carried around–a railway map, a government map, and the map in Murray’s Guide Book. This is a fair illustration of the dissensions over nomenclature, which are bewildering to a stranger, who never knows when he gets the right spelling, and sometimes cannot even find the towns he is looking for.

Jodpore is famous for its forts, which present an imposing appearance from a wide spreading plain, as they are perched at the top of a rocky hill three hundred feet high, with almost perpendicular sides. The only way to reach it is by a zigzag road chiseled out of the cliff, which leads to a massive gateway. The walls are twenty-eight feet high, twenty-eight feet thick, and are crowned with picturesque towers. During ascent you are shown the impressions of the hands of the fifteen wives of one of the rajahs who were all burned in one grand holocaust upon his funeral pyre. I don’t know why they did it, but the marks are there. Within the walls are some very interesting old palaces, built in the fifteenth century, of pure Hindu architecture, and the carvings and perforated marble work are of the most delicate and beautiful designs. The treasury, which contains the family jewels and plate, is the chief object of tourist curiosity, and they are a collection worth going far to see. The pearls and emeralds are especially fine, and are worth millions. The saddles, bridles, harness and other stable equipments are loaded with gold and silver ornaments set with precious stones, and the trappings for elephants are covered with the most gorgeous gold and silver embroidery.

About half a mile outside the city walls is a temple called the Maha Mandir, whose roof is supported by a hundred richly decorated columns. On each side of it are palaces intended exclusively for the use of spirits of former rulers of the country. Their beds are laid out with embroidery coverings and lace, sheltered by golden canopies and curtains of brocade, but are never slept in by living people, being reserved for the spirits of the dead. This is the only exhibition of the kind to be seen in India, and why the dead and gone rulers of Marwar should need lodgings when those of the other Indian states do not, is an unsolved mystery.

In the royal cemetery, three miles to the north, rows of beautiful but neglected cenotaphs mark the spots where the remains of each of some 300 rajahs were consumed with their widows. Some of them had more and some less, according to their taste and opportunities, and sutti, or widow burning, was enforced in Jodpore more strictly than anywhere else in India. You can imagine the thoughts this extraordinary place suggests. Within its walls, in obedience to an awful and relentless custom, not less than nine hundred or a thousand innocent, helpless women were burned alive, for these oriental potentates certainly must have allowed themselves at least three wives each. That would be a very moderate estimate. I have no doubt that some of them had forty, and perhaps four hundred, and we know that one had fifteen. But no matter how many times a rajah went to the matrimonial altar, every wife that outlived him was burned upon his funeral pyre in order that he might enjoy her society in the other world. Since widow burning was stopped by the British government in the sixties, the spirits of the rajahs of Jodpore have since been compelled to go to paradise without company. But they do not take any chances of offending the deities by neglect, for on a hill that overlooks their cemetery they have erected a sort of sweepstakes temple to Three Hundred Million Gods.

At the palace of the rajah of Ulwar, in a city of the same name, sometimes spelled Alwar and in forty other different ways, which lies about thirty miles north of Jodpore, is another collection of jewels, ranked among the finest in India. The treasure-house contains several great chests of teakwood, handsomely carved and gilded, bound with gold and silver bands, and filled with valuable plate, arms, equipment, vessels and ornaments that have accumulated in the family during several centuries, and no matter how severe the plague or how many people are dying of famine, these precious heirlooms have never been disturbed. Perhaps the most valuable piece of the collection is a drinking cup, cut from a single emerald, as large as those used for after dinner coffee. There is a ruby said to be one of the largest in existence and worth $750,000; a yellow diamond valued at $100,000; several strings of almost priceless pearls and other jewels of similar value. There are caskets of gold and ivory in which hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels are imbedded, perfumery bottles of solid gold with the surfaces entirely incrusted with pearls and diamonds, and hung upon the walls around the apartment are shawls that are worth a thousand times their weight in gold. The saddles, harness and elephant trappings are much more beautiful and costly than those at Jodpore, and in the adjoining armory is a remarkable collection of swords and other weapons with hilts of gold, jade, enamel and jewels. A coat of mail worn by Bani Singh, grandfather of the present rajah, is made of solid gold, weighing sixteen and a half pounds, and is lavishly decorated with diamonds. The library is rich in rare oriental books and manuscripts wonderfully illuminated in colors and gold. It has a large collection of editions of the Koran in fifty or more different languages, and one manuscript book called “The Gulistan” is claimed to be the most valuable volume in India. The librarian insisted that it is worth 500,000 rupees, which is equivalent to about $170,000, and declared that the actual cost of the gold used in illuminating it was more than $50,000. It is a modern manuscript copy of a religious poem, made in 1848 by a German scribe at the order of the Maharaja Bani Singh. The miniatures and other pictures were painted by a native artist at Delhi, and the ornamental scroll work upon the margins of the pages and the initial letters were done by a resident of Ulwar.

Nearly all of the capitals of the provinces of Rajputana have similar treasures, the accumulations of centuries, and it seems like criminal negligence to keep such enormous sums of money tied up in jewels and useless ornaments when they might be expended or invested to the great advantage of the people in public works and manufactories. Some of the towns need such industries very badly because, off the farms, there is nothing in the way of employment for either men or women, and every branch of agriculture is overcrowded. One may moralize about these conditions as long as he likes; however, changes occur very slowly in India, and as Kipling so pertinently puts it in one of his poems, it’s only a fool “Who tries to hustle the East.”

Jeypore is the best, the largest and most prosperous of the twenty Rajput capitals, and is beyond comparison the finest modern city in India. It is also the busiest. Everybody seems to have plenty to do, and plenty to spend. The streets are as crowded and as busy as those of London or New York, with a bustling and stalwart race of men and women, happy and contented, and showing more energy than you often see in an oriental country. The climate is cool, dry and healthful. The city stands upon a sandy and arid plain, 1,600 feet above the sea, surrounded by stony hills and wide wastes of desert, but, even these natural disadvantages have contributed to its wealth and industries, for the barren hills are filled with deposits of fine clays, rare ores and cheap jewels like garnets, carbuncles and agates, which have furnished the people one of their most profitable trades. Out of this material they make an enamel which is famous everywhere, and has been the source of great gain and fame. It is shipped in large quantities to Europe, but the greater part is sold in the markets of India.

[Illustration: STREET CORNER–JEYPORE, INDIA]

Jeypore is surrounded by a wall twenty feet high and nine feet thick, built within the last century, and hence almost in perfect condition. Indeed the town, unlike most of the Indian cities, is entirely without ruins, and you have to ride five miles on the back of an elephant in order to see one. The streets are wide and well paved, and laid out at exact angles. Four great thoroughfares 111 feet wide run at equal intervals at right angles with each other. All the other streets are fifty-five feet wide and the alleys are twenty-eight feet. Parks and public squares are laid out with the same regularity, and the houses are of uniform heights and generally after the same pattern. The facades are almost fantastic, being covered profusely with stucco and “ginger-bread work,” so much that it is almost bewildering. The roofs are guarded by highly ornamental balustrades that look like perforated marble, but are only molded plaster; the windows are filled with similar material; the doorways are usually arched and protected with overhanging canopies, and the doors are painted with pictures in brilliant colors. The entire city has been “whitewashed” a bright rose color, every house having almost the same tint, which gives a peculiar appearance. There is nothing else like it in all the world. The outer walls of many of the house are painted with pictures of animals and birds, trees, pagodas and other fantastic designs, and scenes like those on the drop curtains of theatres, which appear to have been done by unskilled amateurs, and the whole effect–the colors, the gingerbread work and the tints–reminds you of the frosted cakes and other table decorations you sometimes see in confectioners’ windows at Christmas time. You wonder that the entire city does not melt and run together under the heat of the burning sun. The people wear colors even more brilliant than those of their houses, and in whichever direction you look you see continual streams passing up and down each broad highway like animated rainbows, broken here and there by trains of loaded camels, huge elephants with fanciful canopies on their backs and half-naked Hindus astride their heads, guiding them. Jeypore was the first place we found elephants used for business purposes, and they seemed to be quite numerous–more numerous than horses–and some of them were covered with elaborate trappings and saddles, and had their heads painted in gay tints and designs. That was a new idea also, which I had never seen before, and I was told that it is peculiar to Jeypore. The bullock carts, which furnish the only other means of transportation, are also gayly painted. The designs are sometimes rude and the execution bears evidence of having been done with more zeal than skill. The artist got the giddiest colors he could find, and laid them on without regard to time or expense. The wheels, bodies and tongues of the carts; and the canopies that cover those in which women are carried, are nightmares of yellows, greens, blues, reds and purples, like cheap wooden toys. Everything artificial at Jeypore is as bright and gay as dyes and paint can make it.

A great deal of cloth is manufactured there, both cotton and silk; most of it in little shops opening on the sidewalk, and it is woven and dyed by hand where everybody can see that the work is honestly done. As you walk along the business part of town you will see women and children holding long strips of red, green, orange, purple or blue cloth–sometimes cotton and sometimes silk, fresh from the vats of dye, out of the dust, in the sunshine, until the colors are securely fastened in the fibers. Even the men paint their whiskers in fantastic colors. It is rather startling to come up against an old gentleman with a long beard the color of an orange or a spitzenberg apple. You imagine they are lunatics, but they are only pious Mohammedans anxious to imitate the Prophet, who, according to tradition, had red whiskers.

About half of the space of the four wide streets is given up to sidewalk trading, and rows of booths, two or three miles in length, occupy the curbstones, with all kinds of goods; everything that anybody could possibly want, fruits, vegetables, groceries, provisions, boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, hats and caps, cotton goods and every article of wearing apparel you can think of, household articles, furniture, drugs and medicines, jewelry, stationery, toys–everything is sold by these sidewalk merchants, who squat upon a piece of matting with their stock neatly piled around them.

One feature of the street life in Jeypore, however, is likely to make nervous people apprehensive. The maharaja and other rich men keep panthers, leopards, wildcats and other savage beasts trained for tiger hunting and other sporting purposes, and allow their grooms to lead them around through the crowded thoroughfares just as though they were poodle dogs. It is true that the brutes wear muzzles, but you do not like the casual way they creep up behind you and sniff at the calves of your legs.

Siwai Madhao Singh, Maharaja of Jeypore, is one of the most interesting persons in India, and he represents the one hundred and twenty-third of his family, descendants of the hero of a great Sanskrit epic called the Ramayana, while the emperor of Japan represents only the one hundred and twenty-third of his family, which is reckoned the oldest of royal blood. The poem consists of 24,000 stanzas, arranged in seven books, and describes the adventures and sets forth the philosophy of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, one of the two greatest of the gods.

[Illustration: MAHARAJA OF JEYPORE AND HIS PRIME MINISTER]

Siwai Madhao Singh is proud of his ancestry, proud of his ancient faith, proud of the traditions of his race, and adheres with scrupulous conservatism to the customs and the manners of his forefathers. At the same time he is very progressive, and Jeypore, his capital, has the best modern museum, the best hospital, the best college, the best industrial and art school, and the largest school for girls among all the native states of India, and is more progressive than any other Indian city except Calcutta and Bombay. The maharaja was selected to represent the native princes at the coronation of King Edward, and at first declined to go because he could not leave India for a foreign country without losing caste. When the reasons for his selection had been explained to him, and he was informed that his refusal must be construed as an act of disrespect to his sovereign, he decided that it was his duty to waive his religious scruples and other objections and show his esteem and loyalty for the Emperor of India. But he could not go without great preparation. He undertook to protect himself as much as possible from foreign influences and temptations, and adhered as strictly as circumstances would allow to the requirements of his caste and religion. He chartered a ship to carry him from Bombay to London and back; loaded it with native food supplies sufficient to last him and his party for six months, and a six months’ supply of water from the sacred Ganges for cooking and drinking purposes. His preparations were as extensive and complete as if he were going to establish a colony on some desert island. He was attended by about 150 persons, including priests, who carried their gods, altars, incense, gongs, records, theological works, and all the appurtenances required to set up a Hindu temple in London. He had his own stewards, cooks and butchers–servants of every kind–and, of course, a good supply of wives and dancing girls. A temporary temple was set up on the dock in Bombay before sailing, and Rama, his divine ancestor, was worshiped continuously for two weeks by the maharaja’s priests in order to secure his beneficent favor on the voyage. When London was reached the entire outfit was transferred to a palace allotted to his use, and such an establishment as he maintained there was never seen in the world’s metropolis before.

Siwai Madhao Singh was received with distinguished honors by the king, the court, the ministry, the statesmen and the commercial and industrial interests of England. He was one of the most conspicuous persons at the coronation, and if he had been trained from childhood for the part he could not have conducted himself with greater grace and dignity. Everybody was delighted with him, and he was delighted with his reception. He returned to Jeypore filled with new ideas and inspired with new ambitions to promote the welfare of his people, and although he had previously shown remarkable capacity for government he feels that his experience and the knowledge he acquired during his journey were of inestimable value to him. One of the results is a determination to send his sons to England to be educated, because he feels that it would be an injustice to them and to the people over whom they must some time rule, to deprive them of the advantages offered by English institutions and by association with the people that he desires them to meet. Caste is no longer an objection. The maharaja has broken caste without suffering any disadvantage, and has discovered that other considerations are more important. He has learned by actual personal experience that the prejudices of his race and religion against travel and association with foreigners has done an immeasurable amount of injustice. He has seen with his own eyes how the great men of England live and prosper without caste, and is willing to do like them. They do not believe in it. They regard it as a narrow, unjust and inconvenient restriction, and he is partially convinced that they are right. The most distinctive feature of Hindu civilization thus received a blow from which it can never recover, because Siwai Madhao Singh is recognized as one of the ablest, wisest and most sincere of all the Hindu princes, and his influence in this and as in other things is almost unlimited. He expects to go to England again. He desires to visit other countries also, because he realizes that he can learn much that is of value to him and to his people by studying the methods and the affairs of foreign nations.

[Illustration: HALL OF THE WINDS–JEYPORE]

In November, 1902, when Lord Curzon visited Jeypore, a banquet was given in his honor, at which the maharaja made a remarkable speech, alluding to his experience in England and the benefit he derived from that visit. In reply Lord Curzon said: “When I persuaded Your Highness to go to England as the chosen representative of Rajputana at the coronation of the king, you felt some hesitation as to the sharp separation from your home and from the duties and the practices of your previous life. But you have returned fortified with the conviction that dignity and simplicity of character, and uprightness and magnanimity of conduct are esteemed by the nobility and the people of England not less than they are here. I hope that Your Highness’ example may be followed by those who come after you, and that it may leave an enduring mark in Indian history.”

The palace and gardens of the maharaja cover one-seventh of the entire area of the city of Jeypore, and are inclosed within a mighty wall, which is entered through several stately gates. The only portion of the palace visible from the street is called the Hawal Mahal, or “Hall of the Winds,” which Sir Edwin Arnold’s glowing pen describes as “a vision of daring and dainty loveliness, nine stories of rosy masonry, delicate overhanging balconies and latticed windows, soaring tier after tier of fanciful architecture, a very mountain of airy and audacious beauty, through a thousand pierced screens and gilded arches. Aladdin’s magician could have called into existence no more marvelous an abode, nor was the pearl and silver palace of the Peri more delicately charming.”

Those who have had the opportunity to compare Sir Edwin Arnold’s descriptions with the actual objects in Japan, India and elsewhere are apt to give a liberal allowance to his statements. He may be an accomplished poet, but he cannot see straight. He looks at everything through rose-colored magnifying glasses. The Hall of the Winds is a picturesque and unique piece of Hindu architecture. It looks like the frosting on a confectioners’ cake. But it is six instead of nine stories in height, is made of the cheapest sort of stucco, and covered with deep pink calcimine. It is the residence of the ladies of the harem, or zenana, as that mysterious part of a household is called in India.

The palace of the maharaja is a noble building, but very ornate, and is furnished with the most tawdry and inappropriate French hangings and furniture. It is a pity that His Highness did not allow his own taste to prevail, and use nothing but native furniture and fabrics. His garden is lovely, being laid out in the highest style of Hindu landscape art. At the foot of the grounds is a great marble building, open on all sides, with a picturesque roof sustained by a multitude of columns, which is the public or audience hall, where His Highness receives his subjects and conducts affairs of ceremony. Behind it is a relic of some of his semi-barbarous ancestors in the form of a tank, in which a lot of loathsome crocodiles are kept for the amusement of people who like that sort of thing. They are looked after by a venerable, half-naked old Hindu, who calls them up to the terrace by uttering a peculiar cry, and, when they poke their ugly noses out of the water and crawl up the steps, teases them with dainty morsels he has obtained at the nearest slaughter-house. It is not a soul-lifting spectacle.

The stables are more interesting. The maharaja maintains the elephant stud of his ancestors, and has altogether about eighty monsters, which are used for heavy work about the palace grounds and for traveling in the country. In the stud are two enormous savage beasts, which fight duels for the entertainment of the maharaja and his guests. These duels take place in a paddock where horses are exercised. His Highness has erected a little kiosk, in which he can sit sheltered from the sun while the sport goes on. He also has a lot of leopards, panthers and cheetahs (Hindu wildcats), trained like dogs for hunting purposes, and are said to be as useful and intelligent as Gordon setters. He frequently takes a party of friends into the jungle for tiger shooting, and uses these tame beasts to scare up the game.

He is fond of horses and has 300 breeding mares and stallions kept in long stables opening upon the paddock in which they are trained. Each horse has a coolie to look after it, for no coolie could possibly attend to more than one. The man has nothing else to do. He sleeps on the straw in the stall of the animal, and seldom leaves it for a moment from the time he is assigned to the duty until his services are no longer required. The maharaja has spent a great deal of money and taken a great deal of pains to improve the stock of his subjects, both horses and cattle. He has an experimental farm for encouraging agriculture and teaching the people, and a horticultural garden of seventy acres, with a menagerie, in which are a lot of beautiful tigers captured by his own men upon his own estates within twelve miles of town. They catch a good many tigers alive, and one of his amiable habits is to present them to his friends and people whom he desires to honor.

In the center of the horticultural garden stands one of the noblest modern buildings in India, a museum which the maharaja established several years ago for the permanent exhibition of the arts and industries of his people, who are very highly skilled in metal and loom work of all kinds, in sculpture, enameling, in making jewelry of gold and silver, and varieties of glass work. At great expense he has assembled samples of similar work from other countries in order that his subjects may have the benefit of comparing it with their own, and in connection with the museum has established a school of art and industry. This at present has between five and six hundred students receiving instruction in the arts and industries in which the people of Jeypore have always excelled. The museum is called Albert Hall, in honor of the King of England, and the park is christened in memory of the late Earl of Mayo, who, while Viceroy of India, became an intimate friend and revered adviser of the father of the maharaja. An up-to-date hospital with a hundred beds is named Mayo Hospital.

The Maharaja’s College is another institution which has been established by this public-spirited and progressive Hindu, who has done more for the education of his people than any other native prince. There are now about 1,000 students, with a faculty of eighty-two professors, including fifteen Englishmen and twelve Persians. The college is affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and has the best reputation of any institution of learning among the native states. But even higher testimony to the liberality and progressive spirit of this prince is a school for the education of women. It is only of recent years that the women in India were considered worth educating, and even now only about half a million in this vast country, with a female population of 150,000,000, can read and write. But the upper classes are gradually beginning to realize the advantage of educating their girls, and the Maharaja of Jeypore was one of the first to establish a school for that purpose, which now has between 700 and 800 girls under the instruction of English and native teachers.

We had great fun at Jeypore, and saw many curious and interesting things, for it is the liveliest and most attractive place we found in India, with the greatest number of novelties and distinctive local color. We went about day after day like a lot of lunatics, kodaks in hand, taking snap-shots at all the odd looking characters–and their name is legion–that we saw in the streets, and it was an unusual experience. Everybody hasn’t an opportunity to photograph a group of elephants in full regalia carrying their owners’ wives or daughters on shopping excursions or to visit friends–of course we didn’t know which. And that is only one of the many unusual spectacles that visitors to Jeypore may see in every direction they choose to look. The gay raiment worn by the women and the men, the fantastic designs painted upon the walls of the houses and the bullock carts, are a never-ending delight, for they are absolutely unique, and the latter ought to be placed on pedestals in museums instead of being driven about for ordinary transportation purposes. The yokes of the oxen are carved with fanciful designs; everything is yellow or orange or red. Even the camels are draped with long nettings and fringes and tassels that reach from their humps to their heels. The decorative idea seems to prevail over everything in Jeypore. Nothing is without an ornament, no matter how humble its purpose or how cheap its material or mechanism, its owner embellishes as much as money and imagination will allow. Everything pays tribute to the esthetic sense of the people.

The bullocks are lean animals of cream color, with long legs, and trot over the road like horses, making four or five miles an hour. Instead of carrying a bit in their mouths, the reins are attached to a little piece of iron that passes through a hole in the cartilage of the nose, and the traces which draw the load spring from a collar that resembles a yoke. Most of the hauling is done by these animals. They are used for every purpose that we use horses and mules. Cows are never yoked. They are sacred. The religion of the Hindu prohibits him from subjecting them to labor. They are used for milking and breeding, and are allowed to run at large. Nobody dare injure a cow or even treat it unkindly. It would be as great a sin as kicking a congressman. A learned pundit told me the other day how it happened that cows became so highly esteemed in India. Of course he did not pretend to have been on the spot, but had formed a theory from reading, study and reflection, and by that same method all valuable theories are produced. He said that once upon a time cattle became scarce because of an epidemic which carried many of them off, and in order to recover their numbers and protect them from slaughter by the people some raja persuaded the Brahmins to declare them sacred. Everything that a Brahmin says goes in India, and the taboo placed upon those cows was passed along until it extended over the entire empire and has never been removed. I suppose we might apply the same theory to the sacred bulls of Egypt.

We took our first elephant ride one morning to visit Amber, the ancient but now deserted capital of the province of Jeypore, where tens of millions of dollars were wasted in the construction of splendid palaces and mansions that are now abandoned, and standing open and empty, most of them in good condition, to the enjoyment of tourists only and an occasional party of pilgrims attracted hither by sacred associations. The reason alleged for abandoning the place was the lack of pure water.

[Illustration: ELEPHANT BELONGING TO THE MAHARAJAH OF JEYPORE]

The maharaja usually furnishes elephants for visitors to his capital to ride around on. We are told that he delights to do it because of his good heart and the number of idle monsters in his stable who have to be exercised daily, and might as well be toting tourists about the country as wandering around with nobody on their backs. But a certain amount of ceremony and delay is involved in the transaction of borrowing an elephant from an Indian prince, hence we preferred to hire one from Mr. Zoroaster, who keeps a big shop full of beautiful brass and enamel work, makes Indian rugs and all sorts of things and exerts a hypnotic influence over American millionaires. One American millionaire, who was over there a few days ahead of us, evidently came very near buying out Mr. Zoroaster, who shows his order book with great pride, and a certain estimable American lady, who owns a university on the Pacific slope, recently bought enough samples of Indian art work from him to fill the museum connected with that institution. Mr. Zoroaster will show you the inventory of her purchases and the prices she paid, and will tell you in fervent tones what a good woman she is, and what remarkable taste she has, and what rare judgment she shows in the selection of articles from his stock to illustrate the industrial arts of India. He charged us fifteen rupees, which is equivalent to five dollars in American money, more or less, according to the fluctuations of exchange, for an elephant to carry us out to Amber, six miles and a half. We have since been told that we should have paid but ten rupees, and some persons assert that eight was plenty, and various other insinuations have been made concerning the way in which Mr. Zoroaster imposed upon innocent American globe trotters, and there was plenty of people who kept reminding us that we might have obtained an elephant for nothing. But Zoroaster is all right; his elephants are all right; the mahouts who steer them are all right, and it is worth fifteen rupees to ride to Amber on the back of a great, big clumsy beast, although you don’t realize it at the time.

Beginners usually do not like the sensation of elephant riding. Young girls giggle, mature ladies squeal, middle-aged men grab hold of something firm and say nothing, while impenitent sinners often express themselves in terms that cannot properly be published. The acute trouble takes place just after mounting the beast and just before leaving the lofty perch occupied by passengers on his back. A saddle is placed upon his upper deck, a sort of saw-horse, and the lower legs stretch at an angle sufficiently obtuse to encompass his breadth of beam. This saw-horse is lashed to the hull with numerous straps and ropes and on top of it are placed rugs and cushions. Each saddle is built for four passengers, sitting dos-a-dos, back to back, two on a side, and a little shelf hangs down to support their feet. In order to diminish the climb the elephant kneels down in the road. A naked heathen brings a ladder, rests it against the side of the beast and the passengers climb up and take their seats in the saddle. Another naked heathen, who sits straddle the animal’s neck, looks around at the load, inquires if everybody is ready, jabs the elephant under the ear with a sharpened iron prong and then the trouble begins. It is a good deal like an earthquake.

An elephant gets up one leg at a time, and during the process the passengers on the upper deck are describing parabolas, isosceles triangles and parallelepipedons in the circumambient atmosphere. There isn’t much to hold on to and that makes it the more exciting. Then, when the animal finally gets under way, its movements are similar to those of an earthquake or a vessel without ballast in a first-class Hatteras gale. The irregularity and uncertainty of the motion excites apprehension, and as the minutes pass by you become more and more firmly convinced that something is wrong with the animal or the saddle or the road, and the way the beast wiggles his ears is very alarming. There is nobody around to answer questions or to issue accident-insurance policies and the naked heathen attendants talk no language that you know. But after a while you get used to it, your body unconsciously adjusts itself to the changes of position, and on the return trip, you have a pretty good time. You become so accustomed to the awkward and the irregular movements that you really enjoy the novelty and are perfectly willing to try it again.

But the most wonderful part of all is how the mahout steers the elephant. It is one of the mysteries that foreigners can never understand. He carries a goad in each hand–a rod of iron, about as big as a poker, with an ornamental handle generally embossed with silver or covered with enamel. One of the points curves around like half a crescent; the other is straight and both are sharpened to a keen point. When the mahout or driver wants the elephant to do something, he jabs one of the goads into his hide–sometimes one and sometimes the other, and at different places on the neck, under the ears, and on top of the head, and somehow or another the elephant understands what a jab in a particular place means and obeys cheerfully like the great, good-natured beast that he is. I have never been able to understand the system. Elephant driving is an occult science.

The road to Amber passes through an interesting part of the city of Jeypore and beyond the walls the broad highway is crowded with carts loaded with vegetables and other country produce coming into town and quite as many loaded with merchandise going the other way. Some of them are drawn by bullocks and some by camels; there are long caravans of camels with packs and paniers upon their backs. As you meet hundreds of pedestrians you will notice that the women all have baskets or packages upon their heads. The men never carry anything. On either side of the broad highway are cultivated gardens and gloomy looking houses and acres covered with ruins and crumbling tombs. The city of Amber, which, as I have already told you, was once the capital of the province and the scene of great splendor, as well as frequent strife, is now quite deserted. It once had 50,000 inhabitants, but now every house is vacant. Few of them even have caretakers. The beautiful palace with its marble coverings, mosaics and luxuriant gardens is occupied only by a number of priests and fakirs, who are supposed to spend their time in meditation upon heavenly things, and in obedience to an ancient custom they sacrifice a sheep or a goat in one of the temples every morning. Formerly human beings were slain daily upon this altar–children, young girls, women and peasants, who either offered themselves for the sake of securing advancement in reincarnation or were seized by the savage priests in the absence of volunteers. This was stopped by the British a century ago, and since then the blood of rams and goats has atoned for the sins of Jeypore.

XI

ABOUT SNAKES AND TIGERS

A gentleman in Bombay told me that 50,000 people are killed in India every year by snakes and tigers, and his extraordinary statement was confirmed by several officials and others to whom I applied for information. They declared that only about one-half of the deaths from such causes were ever reported; that the government was endeavoring to secure more complete and exact returns, and was offering rewards for the destruction of reptiles and wild animals. Under instructions from Lord Curzon the authorities of the central government at Calcutta gave me the returns for British India for the ten years from 1892 to 1902, showing a total of 26,461 human beings and 88,019 cattle killed by snakes and wild animals during the fiscal year 1901-2. This does not include the mortality from these causes in the eighty-two native states which have one-third of the area and one fourth of the population of the empire. Nor does it include thousands of cases in the more remote portions of the country, which are never reported to the authorities. In these remote sections, vast areas of mountains, jungles and swamps, the danger from such causes is much greater and deaths are more frequent than in the thickly settled portions; so that my friend’s estimate was not far out of the way.

The official statistics for British India only (the native states not included) for the ten years named are as follows:

KILLED BY WILD ANIMALS AND SNAKES.

Persons Cattle
1892 21,988 81,688
1893 24,016 90,253
1894 24,449 96,796
1895 25,190 100,107
1896 24,322 88,702
1897 25,242 84,187
1898 25,166 91,750
1899 27,585 98,687
1900 25,833 91,430
1901 26,461 88,019
——- ——-
Total ten years 250,252 907,619

Taking 1901 as a sample, I find that 1,171 persons were killed by tigers and 29,333 cattle; 635 persons and 37,473 cattle were killed by leopards; 403 human beings and 5,048 cattle were killed by wolves; 1,442 human beings and 9,123 cattle were killed by other wild animals, and 22,810 human beings and 5,002 cattle by snakes. This is about the average record for the ten years, although the number of persons killed by tigers in 1901-2 was considerably less than usual.

The largest sacrifice of life was in the Province of Bengal, of which Calcutta is the capital, and where the imperial authorities have immediate control of such affairs. The government offers a bounty of $1 for every snake skin, $5 for every tiger skin, and a corresponding amount for other animals. During 1901-2, 14,301 wild animals were reported killed and 96,953 persons received rewards. The number of snakes reported destroyed was 69,668 and 2,858 persons were rewarded. The total amount of rewards paid was $33,270, which is much below the average and the smallest amount reported for many years. During the last ten years the amount of rewards paid has averaged about $36,000 annually. The falling off in 1901-2 is due to the discovery that certain enterprising persons had gone into the business of breeding snakes for the reward, and had been collecting considerable sums from the government by that sort of fraud. Hereafter no one will be able to collect claims without showing satisfactory evidence that the snakes were actually wild when killed or captured. It is hardly necessary to say that no one has thus far been accused of breeding tigers for the bounty, although large numbers of natives are engaged in the business of capturing them for menageries and zoological gardens.

In the maharaja’s park at Jeypore we saw a dozen or more splendid man-eating tigers, which, the keeper told us, had been captured recently only twelve miles from that city. His Highness keeps a staff of tiger hunters and catchers for amusement. He delights in shooting big game, and several times a year goes into the jungles with his native hunters and parties of friends and seldom returns without several fine skins to add to his collection. His tiger catchers remain in the woods all the time, and he has a pleasant way of presenting the animals they catch to friends in India, England and elsewhere. While we were in Jeypore I read in a newspaper that the Negus of Abyssinia had given Robert Skinner two fine lions to take home to President Roosevelt, and I am sure the maharaja of Jeypore would be very glad to add a couple of man-eating tigers if he were aware of Colonel Roosevelt’s love for the animal kingdom. I intended to make a suggestion in that line to him, but there were so many other things to talk about that it slipped my mind.

The maharaja catches tigers in the orthodox way. He has cages of iron and the toughest kind of wood set upon wheels so that they can be hauled into the jungle by oxen. When they reach a suitable place the oxen are unhitched, the hunters conceal the wheels and other parts of the wagon with boughs and palm leaves. A sheep or a goat or some other animal is sacrificed and placed in the cage for bait and the door is rigged so that it will remain open in an inviting manner until the tiger enters and lifts the carcass from the lever. The instant he disturbs the bait heavy iron bars drop over the hole through which he entered and he is a prisoner at the mercy of his captors. Sometimes the scheme fails and the hunters lose their time and trouble and bait, but being men of experience in such affairs they generally know the proper place and the proper season to look for game. When the watchers notify them that the trap is occupied they come with oxen and haul it to town, where it is backed up against a permanent cage in the menagerie, the iron door is lifted, and the tiger is punched with iron bars until he accepts the quarters that have been provided for him, and becomes a prisoner for life.

It is a terrible thing when a hungry and ugly man-eater comes into a village, for the inhabitants are generally defenseless. They have no guns, because the government does not allow the natives to carry arms, and their only weapons are the implements of the farm. If they would clear out and scatter the number of victims would not be so large, but they usually keep together for mutual defense, and, as a consequence, the animal has them at his mercy. A man-eater that has once tasted human flesh is never satiated, and attacks one victim after another until he has made away with an entire village.

The danger from snakes and other poisonous reptiles is much greater than from tigers and other wild beasts, chiefly because snakes in India are sacred to the gods, and the government finds it an exceedingly delicate matter to handle the situation as the circumstances require. When a Hindu is bitten by a snake it is considered the act of a god, and the victim is honored rather than pitied. While his death is deplored, no doubt, he has been removed from an humble earthly sphere to a much more happy and honorable condition in the other world. Therefore, while it is scarcely true that the Hindus like to be killed by snake poison, they will do very little to protect themselves or cure the bites. Nor do they like to have the reptiles killed for fear of provoking the gods that look after them. The snake gods are numbered by hundreds of thousands, and shrines have been erected to them in every village and on every highway. If a pious Hindu peasant sees a snake he will seldom run from it, but will remain quiet and offer a prayer, and if it bites him and he dies, his heirs and relatives will erect a shrine to his memory. The honor of having a shrine erected to one’s memory is highly appreciated. Hence death from snake poison is by no means the worst fate a Hindu can suffer. These facts indicate the difficulties the government officials meet in their endeavors to exterminate reptiles.

Snake charmers are found in every village. They are usually priests, monks or sorcerers, and may generally be seen in the neighborhood of Hindu temples and tombs. They carry from two to twenty hideous reptiles of all sizes in the folds of their robes, generally next to their naked bosoms, and when they see a chance of making a few coppers from a stranger they draw them out casually and play with them as if they were pets. Usually the fangs have been carefully extracted so that the snakes are really harmless. At the same time they are not agreeable companions. Sometimes snake charmers will allow their pets to bite them, and, when the blood appears upon the surface of the skin, they place lozenges of some black absorbent upon the wounds to suck up the blood and afterward sell them at high prices for charms and amulets.

When Mr. Henry Phipps of New York was in India he became very much interested in this subject. His sympathies were particularly excited by the number of poor people who died from snake bites and from the bites of wild animals, without medical attention. There is only one small Pasteur institute in India, and it is geographically situated so that it cannot be reached without several days’ travel from those parts of the empire where snakes are most numerous and the mortality from animals is largest. With his usual modesty, without saying anything to anybody, Mr. Phipps placed $100,000 in the hands of Lord Curzon with a request that a hospital and Pasteur institute be established in southern India at the most accessible location that can be found for the treatment of such cases, and a laboratory established for original research to discover antidotes and remedies for animal poisons. After thorough investigation it was decided to locate the institute in the Province of Madras. The local government provided a site and takes charge of its maintenance, while the general government will pay an annual subsidy corresponding to the value of the services rendered to soldiers sent there for treatment.

While we were waiting at a railway station one morning a solemn-looking old man, who, from appearances, might have been a contemporary of Mahomet, or the nineteenth incarnation of a mighty god, squatted down on the floor and gazed upon us with a broad and benevolent smile. He touched his forehead respectfully and bowed several times, and then, having attracted attention and complied with the etiquette of his caste, drew from his breast a spry little sparrow that had been nestling between his cotton robe and his bare flesh. Stroking the bird affectionately and talking to it in some mysterious language, the old man looked up at us for approval and placed it upon the pavement. It greeted us cordially with several little chirps and hopped around over the stone to get the kinks out of its legs, while the old fakir drew from his breast a little package which he unfolded carefully and laid on the ground. It contained an assortment of very fine beads of different colors and made of glass. Taking a spool of thread from the folds of his robe, the old man broke off a piece about two feet long and, calling to the bird, began to whistle softly as his pet hopped over toward him. There was evidently a perfect understanding between them. The bird knew what was expected and proceeded immediately to business. It grasped the lower end of the thread in its little claws as its trainer held it suspended in the air with the other end wound around his forefinger, and swung back and forth, chirruping cheerfully. After swinging a little while it reached the top, and then stood proudly for a moment on the fakir’s finger and acknowledged our applause. Then it climbed down again like a sailor or a monkey and dropped to the ground. I had never seen an exhibition so simple and yet unusual, but something even better was yet to come, for, in obedience to instruction, the little chap picked up the tiny beads one after another with his bill and strung them upon the thread, which it held with its tiny toes.

XII

THE RAJPUTS AND THEIR COUNTRY

In India, as everywhere else, the climate and physical features of the country have exercised a sharp and lasting influence upon the race that lives therein. The noblest characters, the brave, the strong, the enduring and the progressive come from the north, where the air is keen and encourages activity, while those who dwell in the south have hereditary physical and moral lassitude. The geographical names are typical of the people. They all mean something and have a poetical and oftentimes a political significance. “The Mountains of Strength” encompass a plateau called “The Abode of Princes,” and beyond and behind them stretches a desert called the “Region of Death.” This country is called the Rajputana–pronounced Raashpootana–and is composed of the most interesting of all the native states of India, twenty in number, with an area of 150,000 square miles and a population of more than 12,000,000. They are the only part of the empire where ancient political institutions and dynasties survive, and their preservation is due to the protection of the British authorities. Each prince is the hereditary chief of a military clan, the members of which are all descended from a common ancestor, and for centuries have been the lords of the soil. Many of the families are Mohammedans, and they are famous for their chivalry, their loyalty, their independence and love of the truth. These characteristics, I contend, are largely due to the climate and the topography of the territory in which they live.

Mount Abu, the sacred Olympus of western India, a huge heap of granite rising 5,650 feet above the sea, is in the center of Rajputana. It is called the “Pinnacle of the Saints,” and upon its summit may be found the highest ideals of Indian ecclesiastical architecture in a group of five marble temples erected by peace-loving and life-protecting Jains, the Quakers of the East. These temples were built about a thousand years ago by three brothers, pious merchant princes, Vimala Sah, Tejpala and Vastupala. The material was carried more than 300 miles over mountains and across plains–an undertaking worthy of the ancient Egyptians. The columns and pillars, the cornices, the beams that support the roofs, the arches of the gateways, windows and doors, the sills and lintels, the friezes and wainscoting, all of the purest and daintiest marble, were chiseled by artists of a race whose creed pronounces patience to be the highest virtue, whose progenitor lived 8,000,000 years, and to whom a century is but a day. The purpose of the prayers of these people is to secure divine assistance in the suppression of all worldly desires, to subdue selfishness, to lift the soul above sordid thoughts and temptations. Therefore they built their temples amid the most beautiful scenery they could find. They made them cool and dark because of the heat and glare of this climate, with wide porticoes, overhanging eaves that shut out the sunshine and make the interior one great refreshing shadow, tempting the warm and weary to enter the cool twilight, for all the light they have is filtered through screens made of great sheets of fine-grained marble, perforated with tracery and foliage designs as delicate as Brussels lace.

In the center of this wonderful museum of sculpture, surrounded by a forest of carved columns, which in the minuteness and beauty of detail stand almost unrivaled even in this land of lavish labor and inexhaustible patience, sits the image of Parswanatha, the god of Peace and Plenty, a divinity that encourages love and gentleness and truth, to whom these temples were dedicated. He is seated upon an exquisite platform of alabaster, with legs crossed and arms folded, silent and immovable, engaged in the contemplation of the good and beautiful, and his lips are wreathed in a smile that comprehends all human beings and will last throughout eternity. Around this temple, as usual with the Jains, is a cloister–a wide colonnade supported by a double row of pillars. There are fifty-five cells opening upon it, but instead of being occupied by monks or priests, in each of them, upon a throne of lotus leaves, sits an exact miniature duplicate of the image of the same god, in the same posture, with the same expression of serene and holy calm. A number of young priests were moving about placing fresh flowers before these idols, and in the temple was a group of dusty, tired, hungry, half-naked and sore-footed pilgrims, who had come a long way with packs on their backs bearing their food and seeking no shelter but the shade of temples or trees. Here at last they found rest and relief and consolation, and it seems a beautiful religion that requires nothing more from its devotees.

The forty-eight columns which sustain the dome of this temple have been pronounced the most exquisite examples of carved marble in existence, and the highest authority on Indian architecture declares that the dome “in richness of ornament and delicacy of detail is probably unsurpassed in the world.”

Facing the entrance to the temple is a square building, or portico, containing nine large white elephants, each carved from a monolith of marble. Originally they all had riders, intended to represent Vimala Sah, the Jain merchant, and his family going in procession to worship, but several of the figures have been broken entirely away and others have been badly damaged. These five temples, with their courtyards and cloisters, are said to have cost $90,000,000 and to have occupied fourteen years in building, from 1032 to 1046 A. D.

Mount Abu is the headquarters of the Rajputana administration, the hot weather station for the British troops, and the favorite summer resort of the European colonies of western India. The mountain is encircled with well-made roads, winding among the forests, and picturesque bridle paths. There are many handsome villas belonging to officials and private citizens, barracks, schools, asylums, clubs and other modern structures.

In several of the larger cities of the province can be found temples similar to those I have described; some of them of Saracenic architecture, equal to that of the Alhambra or the Persian palaces. The pure Hindu designs differ from the Saracenic as widely as the Gothic from the Romanesque, but often you find a mixture embracing the strongest features of both. The rich and the strong gave expression to their own sense of beauty and taste when by the erection of these temples they sought to honor and glorify the gods to whom they pray.

Ajmere, the winter capital of the governor general of Rajputana, is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities of western India, having been founded only a hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era, and occupying a picturesque position in an amphitheater made by the mountains, 3,000 feet above the sea. It is protected by a stone wall, with five gateways; many of the residences and most of the buildings are of stone, with ornamental facades, and some of them are of great antiquity. In the olden days it was the fashion to build houses to last forever. Ajmere has a population of about 70,000. It is surrounded by a fertile country, occupied by an industrious, wealthy, and prosperous people. The city is commanded by a fortress that crowns a noble hill called “The Home of the Stars,” possesses a mosque that is one of the most successful combinations of Hindu and Saracenic architecture of which I have spoken, the conception of some unknown genius, combining the Mohammedan ideas of grandeur with Hindu delicacy of taste and prodigality of detail. In its decorations may be found some of the most superb marble embroidery that the imagination can conceive of. One of the highest authorities dates its erection as far back as the second century before Christ, but it is certainly of a much later date. Some architects contend that it belongs to the fourteenth century; it is however, considered the finest specimen of early Mohammedan architecture in existence. The mosque can be compared to a grand salon, open to the air at one side, the ceiling, fifty feet high, supported by four rows of columns, eighteen in each row, which are unique in design, and no two of them are alike. The designs are complex and entirely novel, and each is the work of a different artist, who was allowed entire liberty of design and execution, and endeavored to surpass his rivals.

There are several other mosques and temples of great beauty in Ajmere, and some of them are sacred places that attract multitudes of pilgrims, who are fed daily by the benevolence of rich contributors. Enormous rice puddings are cooked in eight enormous earthen caldrons, holding several bushels each, which are ready at noon every day. The composition contains rice, butter, sugar, almonds, raisins and spices, and to fill all of the eight pots costs about $70. The moment the pudding is cooked a bell is rung, and the pilgrims are allowed to help themselves in a grab-game which was never surpassed. Greedy creatures scald themselves in the pudding so badly that they sometimes carry the marks for life. It is counted a miracle caused by the intercession of the saints that no lives have ever been lost in these scrambles, although nearly every day some pilgrim is so badly burned that he has to be taken to a hospital. The custom is ancient, although I was not able to ascertain its origin or the reason why the priests do not allow the pudding to cool below the danger point before serving it.

Ajmere is the headquarters of one of the greatest railways in India, with extensive shops, employing several thousand natives and Europeans. The chief machinists, master mechanics and engineers are almost exclusively Scotchmen.

In this province may be found an excellent illustration of the effect of the policy of the British government toward the native princes. It had good material to work with, because the twenty independent Rajput princes are a fine set of men, all of whom trace their descent to the sun or the moon or to one of the planets, and whose ancestors have ruled for ages. Each family has a genealogical tree, with roots firmly implanted in mythology, and from the day when the ears of their infants begin to distinguish the difference in sounds, and their tongues begin to frame thoughts in words, every Rajput prince is taught the tables of his descent, which read like those in the Old Testament, and the names of his illustrious ancestors. Attached to each noble household is a chronicler or bard, whose business is to keep the family record straight, and to chant the epics that relate the achievements of the clan. As I have said, all the Rajput families are related and belong to the same caste, which has prevented them from diluting their blood by marriage with inferior families. It is his blood, and not the amount of his wealth or the extent of his lands, that ennobles a Rajput. Many of the noblest families are very poor, but the poorest retains the knowledge and the pride of his ancestors, which are often his only inheritance.

These characteristics and other social and religious customs make Rajputana one of the most romantic and fascinating spots in India, and perhaps there is no more interesting place to study the social, political and economical development of a people who once held that only two professions could be followed by a gentleman–war and government. But their ancient traditions have been thoroughly revised and modified to meet modern ideas. They have advanced in prosperity and civilization more rapidly than any other of the native states. Infanticide of girl babies was formerly considered lawful and generally practiced among them, and widows were always burned alive upon the funeral pyres of their husbands, but now the Rajput princes are building hospitals and asylums for women instead, bringing women doctors from Europe to look after the wives and daughters in their harems, and are founding schools for the education of girls.

[Illustration: TOMB OF ETMAH-DOWLAH–AGRA]

About three miles from the center of Ajmere is Mayo College, for the exclusive education of Rajput princes, and erected by them. The center building, of white marble, is surrounded by villas and cottages erected for the accommodation of the members of the princely families who are sent there. The villas are all of pure Hindu architecture, and there has been considerable rivalry among the different families to see which should house its cadets in the most elegant and convenient style. Hence, nowhere else in India can be found so many fine examples of modern native residence architecture. The young princes live in great style, each having a little court around him and a number of servants to gratify his wants. It is quite the usual arrangement for a college student to live in a palatial villa, with secretaries, aides-de-camp, equerries and bodyguards, for Indian princes are very particular in such matters, and from the hour of birth their sons are surrounded with as much ceremony as the King of Spain. They would not be permitted to attend the college if they could not continue to live in regal state. Some of them, only 10 or 12 years old, have establishments as large and grand as those of half the kings of Europe, and the Princes Imperial of England or of Germany live the life of a peasant in comparison.

XIII

THE ANCIENT MOGUL EMPIRE

The ancient Mogul Empire embraced almost as much of India as is controlled by the British today, and extended westward into Europe as far as Moscow and Constantinople. It was founded by a young warrior known as Timour the Tartar, or Tamerlane, as he is more frequently called in historical works. He was a native of Kesh, a small town fifty miles south of Samarkand, the capital of Bokhara, which was known as Tartary in those days. This young man conquered more nations, ruled over a wider territory and a larger number of people submitted to his authority than to any other man who ever lived, before or since. His expansion policy was more successful than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Charles V. or Napoleon, and he may properly be estimated as one of the greatest if not the very greatest and most successful soldier in all history. Yet he was not born to a throne. He was a self-made man. His father was a modest merchant, without wealth or fame. His grandfather was a scholar of repute and conspicuous as the first convert to Mohammedanism in the country in which he lived. Timour went into the army when he was a mere boy. There were great doings in those days, and he took an active part in them. From the start he seems to have been cast for a prominent role in the military dramas and tragedies being enacted upon the world’s wide stage. He inherited a love of learning from his grandfather and a love of war as well as military genius from some savage ancestor. He rose rapidly. Other men acknowledged his superiority, and before he was 30 years old he found himself upon a throne and acknowledged to be the greatest soldier of his time. He came into India in 1398 and set up one of his sons on a throne at Delhi, where his descendants ruled until the great Indian mutiny of 1857–460 years. He died of fever and ague in 1405, and was buried at Samarkand, where a splendid shrine erected over his tomb is visited annually by tens of thousands of pilgrims, who worship him as divine.

Babar, sixth in descent from Timour, consolidated the states of India under a central government. His memoirs make one of the most fascinating books ever written. He lived a stirring and a strenuous life, and the world bowed down before him. His death was strangely pathetic, and illustrates the faith and the superstition of men mighty in material affairs but impotent before gods of their own creation. His son and the heir to his throne, Humayon, being mortally ill of fever, was given up to die by the doctors, whereupon the affectionate father went to the nearest temple and offered what he called his own worthless soul as a substitute for his son. The gods accepted the sacrifice. The dying prince began to recover and the old man sank slowly into his grave.

The empire increased in wealth, glory and power, and among the Mogul dynasty were several of the most extraordinary men that have ever influenced the destinies of nations. Yet it seems strange that from the beginning each successive emperor should be allowed to obtain the throne by treachery, by the wholesale slaughter of his kindred and almost always by those most shameful of sins–parricide and ingratitude to the authors of their being. Rebellious children have always been the curse of oriental countries, and when we read the histories of the Mogul dynasty and the Ottoman Empire and of the tragedies that have occurred under the shadows of the thrones of China, India and other eastern countries, we cannot but sympathize with the feelings of King Thebaw of Burma, who immediately after his coronation ordered the assassination of every relative he had in the world and succeeded in “removing” seventy-eight causes of anxiety.

Babar, the “Lion,” as they called him, was buried at Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and was succeeded by Humayon, the son for whom he gave his life. The latter, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 1517, the day that Martin Luther delivered his great speech against the pope and caused the new word “Protestant”–one who protests–to be coined, drove Sikandar, the last of the Afghan dynasty, from India. When they found the body of that strenuous person upon the battle field, the historians say, “five or six thousand of the enemy were lying dead in heaps within a small space around him;” as if he had killed them all. The wives and slaves of Sikandar were captured. Humayon behaved generously to them, considering the fashion of those times, but took the liberty to detain their luggage, which included their jewels and other negotiable assets. In one of their jewel boxes was found a diamond which Sikandar had acquired from the sultan Alaeddin, one of his ancestors, and local historians, writing of it at the time, declared that “it is so valuable that a judge of diamonds valued it at half the daily expenses of the entire world.” This was the first public appearance in good society of the famous Kohinoor, which, as everybody knows, is now the chief ornament in the crown of Edward VII., King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India. It is valued at L880,000, or $4,400,000 in our money. Queen Victoria never wore it. She had it taken from the crown and replaced by a paste substitute. This jewel thus became one of the heirlooms of the Moguls, who lived in such splendor as has never been seen since or elsewhere and could not be duplicated in modern times.

In the winter of 1555 Humayon was descending a stairway when his foot slipped and he fell headlong to the bottom. He was carried into his palace and died a few days later, being succeeded by his son, a boy of 13, who in many respects was the noblest of the Moguls, and is called in history Akbar the Great. He came to the throne in 1556, and his reign, which lasted until 1605, was almost contemporaneous with that of Queen Elizabeth. In reading his history one is impressed by the striking resemblance between him and the present Emperor of Germany. Beiram, who had been his father’s prime minister, and whose clear intellect, iron will and masterful ability had elevated the house of Tamerlane to the glory and power it then enjoyed, remained with the young king as his adviser, and, owing to the circumstances, did not treat him with as much deference and respect as Akbar’s lofty notions considered proper. The boy endured the slights for four years, and when he reached the age of 17 there occurred at the court of the Moguls an incident which was repeated several centuries later at Berlin, but it turned out differently.

Beiram, like Bismarck, submitted to the will of his young master, surrendered all insignia of authority, and started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, but before he left India his chagrin and indignation got the better of his judgment and he inspired an insurrection against the throne. He was arrested and brought back to Delhi, where, to his surprise, he was received with the greatest ceremony and honor. According to the custom of the time, nobles of the highest rank clothed him with garments from the king’s wardrobe, and when he entered the royal presence Akbar arose, took him by the hand and led the astonished old man to a seat beside the imperial throne. Beiram, realizing the magnanimity of his boyish master, fell upon his knees, kissed the feet of the king, and between sobs begged for pardon. The king conferred the greatest possible honors upon him, but gave him no responsibility, and Beiram’s proud and sensitive soul found relief in resuming his pilgrimage to Mecca. But he never reached that holy place. He died on the way by the hand of an Afghan noble, whose father, years before, he had killed in battle.

You must remember Akbar, because so many of the glories of Indian architecture, which culminate at Agra and Delhi, are due to his refined taste and appreciation for the beautiful, and I shall have a good deal to say about him, because he was one of the best men that ever wore a crown. He was great in every respect; he was great as a soldier, great as a jurist, great as an executive, broad-minded, generous, benevolent, tolerant and wise, an almost perfect type of a ruler, if we are to believe what the historians of his time tell us about him. He was the handsomest man in his empire; he excelled all his subjects in athletic exercises, in endurance and in physical strength and skill. He was the best swordsman and the best horseman and his power over animals was as complete as over men. And as an architect he stands unrivaled except by his grandson, who inherited his taste.

Although a pagan and without the light of the gospel, Akbar recognized the merits of Christianity and exemplified the ideals of civil and religious liberty which it teaches, and which are now considered the highest attribute of a well-ordered state. While Queen Elizabeth was sending her Catholic subjects to the scaffold and the rack, while Philip II. was endeavoring to ransom the souls of heretics from perdition by burning their bodies alive in the public plazas of his cities, and while the awful incident of St. Bartholomew indicated the religious condition of France, the great Mogul of Delhi called around his throne ministers of peace from all religions, proclaimed tolerance of thought and speech, freedom of worship and theological controversy throughout his dominions; he abolished certain Hindu practices, such as trials by ordeal, child marriage, the burning of widows and other customs which have since been revived, because he considered them contrary to justice, good morals and the welfare of his people, and displayed a cosmopolitan spirit by marrying wives from the Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan and Christian faiths. He invited the Roman Catholic missionaries, who were enjoying great success at Goa, the Portuguese colony 200 miles south from Bombay, to come to Agra and expound their doctrines, and gave them land and money to build a church. His grandson and successor married a Catholic queen–a Portuguese princess.

But notwithstanding the just, generous and noble life of Akbar, he was overthrown by his own son, Selim, who took the high-sounding title Jehanghir, “Conqueror of the World,” and he had been reigning but a short time when his own son, Kushru, endeavored to treat him in the same manner. The revolt was promptly quelled. Seven hundred of the supporters of the young prince were impaled in a row, and that reckless youth was conducted slowly along the line so that he could hear the dying reproaches of the victims of his misguided ambition. Other of his sons also organized rebellions afterward and “the conqueror of the world” had considerable difficulty in retaining his seat upon the throne, but he proved to be a very good king. He was just and tolerant, sober and dignified and scrupulous in observing the requirements of his position, and was entirely subject to the influence of a beautiful and brilliant wife.

His successor was Shah Jehan, one of the most interesting and romantic figures in Indian history, who began his reign by murdering his brothers. That precaution firmly established him upon the throne. He, too, was considered a good king, but his fame rests chiefly upon the splendor of his court and the magnificent structures he erected. He rebuilt the ancient City of Delhi upon a new site, adorned it with public buildings of unparalleled cost and beauty, and received his subjects seated upon the celebrated peacock throne, a massive bench of solid gold covered with mosaic figures of diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones. It cost L6,500,000, which is $32,500,000 of our money, even in those times, when jewels were cheap compared with the prices of today. In 1729 Nadir Shah, the King of Persia, swooped down upon India and carried this wonder of the world to his own capital, together with about $200,000,000 in other portable property.

There are many good traits in the character of Shah Jehan. Aside from his extravagance, his administration was to be highly commended. Under his rule India reached the summit of its wealth and prosperity, and the people enjoyed liberty and peace, but retribution came at last, and his sons did unto him as he had done unto his father, and much more also. They could not wait until he was ready to relinquish power or until death took the scepter from his hand, but four of them rebelled against him, drove him from the throne and kept him a prisoner for the last eight years of his life. But scarcely had they overthrown him when they began to quarrel among themselves, and Aurangzeb, the fourth son, being the strongest among them, simplified the situation by slaughtering his three brothers, and was thus able to reign unmolested for more than half a century, until he died in 1707, 89 years old. His last days were embittered by a not unnatural fear that he would suffer the fate of his own father.

From the time that the Emperor Aurangzeb climbed to the throne of the Moguls upon the dead bodies of his father and three elder brothers, the glory and power of that empire began to decay. He reigned forty-nine years. His court was magnificent. At the beginning his administration was wise and just, and he was without question an able, brave and cultured king. But, whether as an atonement for his crimes or for some other reason, he became a religious fanatic, and after a few years the broad-minded policy of religious liberty and toleration, which was the chief feature of the reign of his father and his grandfather, was reversed, and he endeavored to force all of his subjects into the Mohammedan faith. He imposed a heavy head tax upon all who did not profess that faith; he excluded all but Moslems from the public service; he deprived “infidels,” as they were generally termed, of valuable civil rights and privileges; he desecrated the shrines and destroyed the sacred images of the Hindus, and prohibited the religious festivals and other features of their worship. The motive of this policy was no doubt conscientious, but the effect was the same as that which has followed similar sectarian zeal in other countries. The history of the world demonstrates that religious intolerance and persecution always destroy prosperity. No nation ever prospered that prohibited freedom of worship. You will find a striking demonstration of that truth in Spain, in the Balkan states and in the Ottoman Empire, in modern times without going back to the Jews and other ancient races. The career of Aurangzeb is strikingly like that of Philip II. of Spain, and his character was similar to that of Louis XIV. of France, who was his contemporary. Both were unscrupulous, arrogant, egotistical and cruel kings; both were religious devotees and endeavored to compensate for a lack of morals by excessive zeal in persecuting heretics, and in promoting what they considered the interests of their church; and both created disaffection and provoked rebellion among their subjects, and undermined the power and authority of the dynasties to which they belonged.

It is needless to review the slow but gradual decay of the Great Mogul Empire. With the adoption of Aurangzeb’s policy of intolerance it began to crumble, and none of his successors proved able to restore it. He died in 1707, and the throne of the Moguls was never again occupied by a man of force or notable ability. The history of the empire during the eighteenth century is merely a record of successive failures, of disintegration, of successful rebellions and of invasions by foreign foes, which stripped the Moguls of their wealth and destroyed their resources. First came the Persians; then the Afghans, who plundered the imperial capital, desecrated tombs and temples, destroyed the fortresses and palaces and left little but distress and devastation when they departed. One by one the provinces separated themselves from the empire and set up their own independence; until in 1804 the English took possession of the remnant and have maintained their authority ever since.