m iiiiiiiiaiiiii11 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM THE COLLECTION MADE BY CHARLES SHELDON B.A. 1890 OF BOOKS ON NATURAL HISTORY EXPLORATION 'HUNTING & FISHING GIFT OF FRANCIS P. GARVAN B.A. 1 897 THROUGH INDIA WITH THE PRINCE Mausoleum of Haidar Ali and Tippu Sultan. THROUGH INDIA WITH THE PRINCE BY G. F. ABBOTT KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE HELLENIC ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR AUTHOR OF 'SONGS OF MODERN GREECE,' 'THE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA,' ETC- LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W. 1906 {All rights reserved) PUBLISHER'S NOTE The author has accompanied Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales on their Indian tour as special correspondent of the Calcutta Statesman. He is still in India, so that the proof-sheets of the book have not had the advantage of his revision, and the reader's indulgence is craved for any errors that may have escaped notice. ERRATA Page 109, line 4, for ' months' read ' moments.' Page 183, line 7 from bottom, for 'three millions' read 'thirteen millions. ' Page 187, line 17, for ' Ough ' read ' Oudh.' CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. BOMBAY - - I II. INDORE - - 25 III. A WEEK-END IN UDAIPUR - 43 IV. JAIPUR - 52 V. IN THE DESERT 63 VI. THE PUNJAB AND ITS PEOPLE 74 VII. LAHORE 84 VIII. ON THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER 94 IX. IN LORD KITCHENER'S CAMPS III X. AT THE HIMALAYAS Il6 XI. A DAY IN AMRITSAR I30 XII. DELHI I38 XIII. AGRA - 151 XIV. CHRISTMAS IN GWALIOR - 167 XV. OUDH AND ITS CAPITAL 180 XVI. CALCUTTA 188 XVII. RANGOON 210 XVIII. ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY 220 XIX. MANDALAY _ 227 XX. MADRAS 233 XXI. MYSORE - 243 XXII. THE ELEPHANT-HUNT - 253 XXIII. HYDERABAD - - 260 XXIV. BENARES 274 XXV. A DAY IN THE DOAB, AND SOME REFLECTIONS 2g8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MAUSOLEUM OF HAIDAR ALI AND TIPPU SULTAN, Mysore - Frontispiece PRESENTATION OF MUNICIPAL ADDRESS, BOMBAY To face p. 20 NATIVE CHIEFS AWAITING ROYAL TRAIN, INDORE ,, 26 PALACE AND LAKE, UDAIPUR - „ 46 THE PRINCE AND THE MAHARANA DRIVING TO A SHOOTING-CAMP, UDAIPUR - 1, 5° SARDARS AND RETAINERS MEETING THE PRINCE AT JAIPUR - „ 52 MAIN STREET OF JAIPUR - „ 54 IRREGULAR TROOPS MEETING THE PRINCE AT JAIPUR - „ 5§ CAMEL CORPS, BIKANEER ,, 66 PROCESSION ON ARRIVAL AT BIKANEER „ 68 VIEW NEAR THE CITY OF LAHORE „ 78 RANJIT SINGH'S TOMB, LAHORE - - „ 86 THE MAHARAJA OF BAHAWALPUR'S CAMEL CORPS, LAHORE „ 92 STREET IN PESHAWAR - j, 9§ FORT JAMRUD - >> I08 TRIBESMEN OF THE KHYBER PASS „ HO FEEDING THE POOR AT JAMMU - - „ I26 THE GOLDEN TEMPLE, AMRITSAR „ *32 SILVER STREET, DELHI it H2 THE JAMA MASJID, DELHI : CELEBRATING ' ID ' „ 148 THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA - - .> J56 THE CITY, COUNTRY, AND PRINCE'S CAMP, AGRA „ 1 62 PROCESSION FROM THE STATION TO THE PALACE, GWALIOR - »> I7° ix X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE RESIDENCY, LUCKNOW - - To face p. 1 86 GOVERNMENT HOUSE, CALCUTTA - ,, 194 THE SHWE DAGON PAGODA, RANGOON „ 2I4 ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY * ,, 220 BURMESE MAIDENS CARRYING WATER, MANDALAY ,, 228 ON THE BEACH AT MADRAS - - „ 242 PALACE IN THE FORT, MYSORE - „ 244 ON THE BRIDGE AT HYDERABAD - ,, 268 BURNING THE DEAD, BENARES ,, 286 MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE ROYAL TOUR Mahomeiun I ^ JT /***''!$&>_> \, ^P»»*- * CtfPESHAWAly -" qQuma 3 fi^ft-lttjJA B /.-¦ Tibehn& Chinese Influence ZWWp bvr >?/& KMAHOMtDAN I BIKANEER \\WW***"""«* .NEPAL,'f»te/ffll»^ |l t,#"v "•^\^. f, "'pARJEEUNG' \5>f-"- /Shaij,^ •C.T .JJCKNOW, // ! . . • JAIPUR V. a**" 'ftpWAUOR \'' V^t-V Vpu^n ajmer^-^0 .,4/ •'--- •*>«;•;" J^fe&Cp- =\\ \V^> JrJ«f#n flJMERi- .^KARACHI - \ JZ ,\'n.,n,.^" \\ r-i • i. 7w; ^ — 'VV-w !. Raiputs n^-_ WS^~~\ M"' '""¦ \mmi W" j ^Provinces % ^ w MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE ROYAL TOUR. THROUGH INDIA WITH THE PRINCE CHAPTER I BOMBAY A tiny peninsula, almost an island, of bright-coloured quaintness, rising out of the Arabian waters, its hem fringed with rugged palm-clad islets, bold promontories, and busy docks, amid which the white wings of countless sailing vessels glide, flashing in the sunlight. Behind them bristle the masts of bigger craft, and columns of black smoke are belched forth from grimy funnels. This is Bombay, 'The Eye of India,' viewed from the sea — a picture of many brilliant colours and many promises, embedded in green foliage and framed by the distant blue range of the Western Ghats. And as the eye dwells upon this entrancing picture, the mind wanders back to the Queen of the Adriatic and her departed greatness. You are tempted to describe Bombay the Beautiful as the Venice of the East — a Venice robbed of her canals and her campanile and the songs of ever-enamoured gondoliers, but rich in a charm of a subtler and stranger sort. Such is the first impression of the capital of the western Presidency of British India — a vast tract of territory once partitioned among many independent realms of unrest, now comprising twenty-four quiet British districts and a score of native States, whose rulers enjoy a safe, if limited, freedom under the British aegis. It stretches on the north to Baluchistan and the Punjab ; on the east to the Mahratta 2 THROUGH INDIA State of Indore, the Central Provinces, and the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad ; on the south to the Presi dency of Madras and the State of Mysore— all of them lands which we will visit at our leisure, if the gods permit. Meanwhile this city, in its history and present popula tion, is a shorthand summary of the whole province, and, indeed, of a great deal more. At the time when it came to King Charles II., as part of the dowry of a Portuguese bride, Bom Bahia, or the Beautiful Bay, was an insignifi cantly picturesque cluster of islets, with a sparse population living on dried fish, cocoanuts, and golden sunsets. To day, second to Calcutta in size, it surpasses all cities, not only of the Indian Empire, but of the world, in wealth and in variety of human types. Within its twenty-five square miles of brick and stone and painted wood are packed three-quarters of a million of Oriental souls — packed more densely than are the thousands which languish in the slums of London — house pressed against house, and each house in itself a colony of families. There is no creed, no caste, no colour, no costume, on earth which does not contribute its note to this motley , symphony. As you look out of your window you see the streets below swarming with all the shades of complexion that the skin of man is capable of: from the blackest coffee of the tropics, through the intermediate gradations of chocolate-brown, to the pale amber of Central Asia. For, though the soul of Hindustan may be uniformly dark, her children are of all colours. As you elbow your way through the busy, crowded bazaars, you collide with absent-minded Jains, still firmly attached to the Buddhist chimeras which formed the established religion throughout the Indian peninsula two thousand years ago — a small remnant of a host once mighty ; with self- admiring Brahmans, the solemn exponents of an even more hoary orthodoxy ; with despised and in many ways despicable Sudras ; with the more cordially despised, and in a greater variety of ways despicable, pariahs — pessimistic-looking, sullen wretches, yet the only people who in this land of BOMBAY 3 self-inflicted bondage could call their souls their own, had they any ; with followers of the Prophet of Mecca — hawk-eyed Arabs, soft Persians, dignified Turks, aquiline Afghans, vivacious Malays — in their green, gold-broidered turbans, red fezes, or brown coils wound round white headkerchiefs, in their black beards, and imperturbable self-respect ; with haughty Mahrattas, in towering red and white head-dresses ; with vulpine banias, or traders, in conical crimson turbans ; with keen-nosed, cash-absorbed and absorbing Jews; with shrewd Armenians, undis tinguished Christian converts, ebony-faced negroes, poor and cheerful; with Chinese, pig-tailed, prosperous, and mournful ; with trousered and topee'd supercilious Euro peans ; and those unfortunate mistakes who in their name, as well as in their complexion, dress, and character, con stitute a curious coalition between Europe and Asia — the hapless, casteless Eurasians, children of both continents and recognised by neither. I wonder what it means to be the disinherited of two worlds. But, beyond question, the most notable unit in this congeries of nations is the colony of Parsis — some 50,000 sleek disciples of Zoroaster in upright mitres of glossy black cardboard and black frock-coats, who, expelled from Iran in the days of yore by the two-edged sword of Ali, drifted to these shores, whither they have carried, along with their headgear, their faith, their aloofness, and their aptitude for financial enterprise — all these qualities inten sified by the loss of political independence. To this colony Bombay owes the largest measure of her prosperity. The Parsis are the Jews of the East — conspicuous out of all proportion to their numbers, clever, mutually helpful, jealous of their tribal distinctions, abhorring proselytes, rigidly tenacious of essentials, yielding in matters of detail, supple, versatile, munificent, and patriotic in a parochial sense. They are strangers in the land of their fathers, and, after twelve centuries' sojourn, still aliens in that of their adoption. Everywhere and nowhere at home, every where and nowhere powerful, these worshippers of Ormuzd 4 THROUGH INDIA and his rival live in profound social isolation, tempered by the commercial exploitation of their neighbours. Thus they live in their elegant suburban villas on the sea-girt slopes of Malabar Hill, comfortably ; and, when they die, they are neither burnt like the Hindus nor buried like the Mahomedans and Christians, but they are exposed on those grim Towers of Silence which stand — low, sullen blocks of gray stone — on the gray rocks overlooking the western ocean. Green trees grow in strange abundance out of these gray rocks, shrouding the slopes and sur rounding the gloomy sepulchres. But these trees, like the rocks and the towers, suggest, not life, but the grave. The sun had just sunk in the Arabian Sea as, having passed through the rows of elegant villas, I reached the mournful summit of the hill. The silence was deafening. Suddenly a flight of black carrion-crows arose out of the trees and hovered for a while over one of the towers, cawing hoarsely. Then it was all silence again, and on the top of a palm, silhouetted against the burning gold of the sky, I discerned a pair of vultures. They stood still, as though carved out of the dark rocks, waiting for their supper, or already torpid with excess of human meat. As I drove downhill again between the elegant suburban villas, I could not help reflecting that their inmates would one of these days be laid out on yon sullen square blocks of gray stone — ladies and gentlemen — a nice, well-nourished feast for the fowls of heaven, thus emphasizing the amiable doctrine that even in death there can be no union or inter communion between the Zoroastrian shades and those of ordinary mortals. What will become of this exclusive tribe when India is thoroughly roused to national con sciousness the remote future will show. Meanwhile their spiritual arrogance prevents not the Parsis of India, any more than it prevents the Jews of Europe, from enjoying the favour of the powers that be by their ostentatious loyalty and the tolerance of their fellow- citizens by their elasticity. Two things, however, I admire about the Parsis — their BOMBAY 5 women and their manners. The former, alone among Eastern ladies, have the moral courage to expose their faces to God's free air and light, and, though not thril- lingly beautiful, those faces have no reason to be ashamed of themselves. They are very delicate, these ladies of Persian blood, and very graceful. Graceful and delicate also are their gossamer veils — light blue, pink, sea-green, lilac, or primrose — flowing in front and behind in soft rivulets of silky sheen and shade. The politeness of both men and women is remarkable even in this politest part of the earth. The desire to please is inborn in the Oriental. A high-caste Hindu servant addresses the outcast sweeper, whose mere contact defiles, as ' Jemindar,' and the cook as ' Sardar,' both titles of military rank. These amenities form part of that general urbanity which the suspicious North European is apt to mistake for dishonesty or servility, and to enjoy cynically or to resent violently, according to his temperament and breed ing, but to understand never. In a lesser degree it is the same with the races of Southern Europe — those sunny races with their exuberant cordiality and love for the superlative, of whom the Parsis often remind one. It seems as though these ancient nations, while losing some of the robust virtues of their civilized forefathers, have retained this inalienable heritage of civilization — courtesy, a treasure which we have not yet acquired, or which, if some of us have acquired it as an accomplishment, has not yet become an instinct. Do we not labour under the barbarously conscientious delusion that a poetical exaggeration is a lie ? Do we not very often, in our terrible anxiety to speak not more than the truth, succeed in speaking less ? We call this self- restraint. It is a good name ; it may even, for aught I know, represent a good thing. But it does not help to make us more lovable or loved. The difference is, of course, most unpleasantly forced upon one when he meets the Insolents abroad, and nowhere more than here in Bombay, where I have had the opportunity of seeing the 6 THROUGH INDIA British tourist amazing and amusing the native mind, which he strives to impress, with his unutterable knicker bockers and his ' no d d nonsense about me ' air. Such are the constituent members of this humming, bewildering bee-hive called Bombay. The only things they seem to have in common are earnestness in the pursuit of lucre and a strong conviction frankly enter tained by each sect that all the others are unclean. ' Touch me not ' is the motto inscribed in letters invisible and indelible on the pediment of this strange edifice of many tints and many orders. And yet, as a matter of fact, the peace is rarely broken. It is only on holy and festive occasions that the police have some difficulty in pre serving good humour and order among the worshippers of a thousand incongruous and antagonistic gods, inebriated with religious fervour and other fountains of enthusiasm. On such occasions outbursts of violence come to mar the normally harmonious discord, and then, the gentle arts of persuasion proving inadequate, there is much shaking of turbans and wagging of tongues at the law, as personified by those creatures in flat yellow coifs, whose dark blue jackets and breeches, tucked up at the knees, bare brown legs, and sandalled feet, are visible everywhere, suggesting sailors ready to swab the earth clean of petty sin. On closer acquaintance with the town your superficial recollections of the West grow even more vivid. The European residents and their indigenous imitators appear to have fallen in with the eclectic genius of the place, their Renaissance houses, their cafes, their spired churches, reminding one of Marseilles or Alexandria rather than of India, and even the Government has made a courageous effort to bring itself into some harmony with its environ ment by building its monster Secretariat in a kind of architecture, half Venetian, half Gothic, which successfully combines the characteristic puerilities of both orders. The University also rears its Gothic clock-tower to the sky of Asia unashamedly, and some of the hotels strive BOMBAY 7 to reconcile Gothic gables with Saracenic domes and arches. But the benevolent sun of the East shines tranquilly upon the congruous and the ridiculous alike, glorifying all, smiling politely upon all. He is as well bred as any other native of Bombay, and as unlike as possible the Anglo-Indian official of a rank sufficiently middling to encourage the belief that it is a substitute for breeding. I am in the native bazaar. Both sides of the street are lined with shops, standing as close to one another as the books in a well-ordered library, and presenting as great a variety in dress and contents. Many-coloured stuffs are measured out here by fat merchants to fat customers. The dry fragrance of Eastern spices emanates from the boxes and bottles next door. Here are sweets weighed out, and there jewels of gold and silver sparkle through the dusk. And the place is alive with the bustle and the buzz of bargaining and the whirl of wheels* Fashionable landaus clatter past, carrying rich Parsi ladies and gentlemen, gold-turbaned mollahs, Zoroastrian high-priests, all white, or pink-turbaned princes. The tramway also rattles down the middle of the road, cutting — the gods and the drivers only know how — its way safely through the crowd. But more picturesque than carriage or tramcar is the gilt Noah's ark kind of vehicle drawn by a pair of obese bullocks, their yard-long horns covered with gold-leaf, their humps wobbling majestically, their necks jingling with bells and amulets. Under the awning of the ark I see two solemn boys sitting stiff in brocade of gold, and two or three little girls equally stiff, yet gay. From amidst the shops on right and left rise houses climbing on elaborately-carved pillars to the height of four or five handsome stories — dwellings of merchant princes worth many lakhs of rupees — fanned and shaded by the green richness of the peepul and the plantain, or beautified by the jejune elegance of the palm. And 8 THROUGH INDIA behind this fringe of magnificence spreads the broad mantle of misery, noisy, noisome, nauseating. Did not even Venice in the day of her glory have her Ghetto? But what is any slum of Europe beside these Eastern abodes of ancient filth and multiform wretchedness ? Impelled by a morbid craving to see the other side of things — the side of reality, which mere Princes are not privileged to see — I leave the main street and plunge into the narrow lanes, seething with a hookah-smoking, betel- chewing humanity, buying and selling or only bargaining, whining and worshipping in a medley of unfathomable squalor. The lower parts of the houses are open cup boards, in which petty tradesmen and artisans squat on their haunches, all but naked, puffing, sleeping, perspiring in malodorous idleness. On the grimy balconies over head lounge women in all degrees of dusky undress, and to the rickety rails cling little boys and girls who have not yet exchanged their innocence for a loin-cloth. And between these rows of dwellings flows on the turbid, maddening stream of tumult which in the East passes for business. Suddenly the clangour of a bell breaks upon the clamour of the people. I am before a temple. An attempt to penetrate into the holy interior is met by a chorus of devotees gesticulating with unambiguous unanimity that I am a being polluted and polluting. ... I did not endeavour to undeceive them. Instead, I looked round from the gateway and beheld enough to cure me of any desire to behold more. On one side of the peepul-shaded quad rangle stand the sacred bulls, immeasurable monsters of no shape, whose sole aim in life appears to be its pro longation and its propagation. On the opposite side spreads a low-browed, many-arched cloister, a number of cells opening on to it. Each dim cell enshrines a glitter ing god or goddess, many-armed, many-legged, animal- headed, hideous. In the passage bronze monsters lie couchant, while the worshippers, ministers, and idlers of BOMBAY 9 the temple keep up an incessant concert of delirious discord. In the middle of this enclosure saunter several saints with long black hair, black beard, and a coat of gray ashes for their main attire. A long string of big wooden beads hangs from the neck, and a staff is brandished in one hand. They glare at the infidel in no friendly manner, these holy maniacs or humbugs. They are apparently men who, in embracing the ascetic life, have renounced all luxuries except religious rancour. I walk away quite satisfied with this glimpse of another world. Perhaps an admittance into the inner depths might have spoiled the sense of mystery and robbed me of the fascinating pastime of surmise concerning the unseen. I continue my erratic perambulation, and finally pause before a kind of hostelry, bearing the inscription ' Panj- rapole.' I enter into the courtyard, to find that it is in reality an asylum for superannuated beasts and birds. Here are cages containing sacred apes, munching the plantains which the faithful provide in such abundance for them ; there are venerable goats, feasting on clover ; further down stands a large coop, in which elderly hens and feebly-canting cocks are revelling in heaps of grain, which they share amicably with the interloping sparrows. But by far the greater part of the yard is devoted to the ancient horses and bulls, and cows and buffaloes, and other attenuated quadrupeds, whose skins display the unseemly marks of a cruel taskmaster. I am informed, however, that many of these seemingly obsolete bundles of bones, after a few months' strenuous eating, recover sufficiently to perpetuate their respective species. Evidence of the truth of this information is supplied by yon sheds full of lowing young calves and buffaloes. Some of the inmates of the asylum are even resold into slavery ; for the pious Hindu who will not slay a brute for all the gold on earth has no scruple about selling it for a little silver, even when it is fully entitled to the rest of the sanatorium, or, better still, of the grave. io THROUGH INDIA I emerge from these precincts of a preposterous piety, and so back again into the din and the odours of more narrow lanes. The impression wrought upon me by all these scenes is that I am the victim of a bad dream. So I seek, and finally find, the realms of pure air and com parative sanity, the richer by a little wisdom purchased at the cost of a great disillusion. Was it worth it ? Let me try to extract at least some coherent moral out of my disillusion. The parts of an Oriental city which are brought under Occidental influence fast outgrow medieval conditions of life ; the streets become straight, broad, and airy, and light penetrates into the alleys and courts which the overhanging upper stories once doomed to sempiternal gloom. But the quarters of the poor know none of these blessings. Year after year they grow more populous, and, as the space remains the same, more squalid. Squalor begets degradation, indecent and in describable, and the fatal gift of fecundity, cultivated in many cases as a religious duty, fosters it. To the curse of over-population is added the annual flood of the rains, which transforms the tortuous lanes into marshy lakes, fills the lower stories with malarious mud, and turns the whole quarter into an abode of prematurely aged men, of stunted, elderly children, and of repulsive wrecks of womanhood — a region where Poverty and Vice dance hand in hand, and where man is engaged in a perpetual struggle with Death. Nay, more often he does not even attempt to struggle, but succumbs with a prayer on his lips and in his heart despair, or the pathetic hope of a better world. Year after year the plague comes, following what mathematicians call a harmonic curve, her path rising and sinking and rising again in normal accordance with the seasons. And day after day the victims are carted off to their dissolution in the earth, air, or the stomach of the vultures, after each sect's special hallucination. A standing heading in every Indian newspaper is ' Plague BOMBAY n Statistics.' Here is a recent specimen : ' Plague mortality in India is again going up. Last week 4,080 deaths were reported, 2,732 being in the Bombay Presidency, 580 in the Central Provinces and Berar, 145 in Hyderabad, 131 in Mysore, 30 in the Punjab, 60 in the United Provinces, and 187 in the Madras Presidency.' With the cold weather the scourge waxes more virulent and the victims more numerous. Whole villages and towns are evacuated by the terrified survivors, the schools are closed, the bazaars are deserted, and the hand of Death lies heavy upon all. Then every man has an infallible remedy which he recommends to his friends, until his own turn comes, and his remedy fails with him. Some native doctors recommend a fire in one's bedroom during any epidemic. There may in this advice be embodied the lessons of long experience. Unfortunately, in proof of its efficacy, one of them tells the following story : ' Once upon a time there came a hermit to a certain village in Kashmir. At the time cholera was playing havoc in the village, and hundreds were daily carried off by the disease. The hermit took pity on the people in their terrible distress, and advised a religious sacrifice. Logs of wood were collected and cast into the sacrificial pit, and a huge fire was kept blazing for three days and three nights. And behold ! within three days of the sacrifice the epidemic abated and gradually departed.' The narrator had nothing but scorn for ' men read in Western sciences,' who, foolish ones, ascribed the effect to the purifying influence of the fire on the soil and air of the village, and not to the three days' sacrifice. Others believe in the poison of the cobra, the sacred serpent of Hindustan. One of these dangerous phy sicians declares that he has found it prescribed in the Ayurveda writings of three thousand years ago, and that he has tried it repeatedly, but apparently not on his own person. None of his patients ever died — so he says. Cobra poison, according to this amusing quack, does not only cure plague, but also promotes piety. ' The success 12 THROUGH INDIA which attended this humble discovery of mine was simply unbounded. People, panic-stricken and confounded before this, took heart and an optimistic view of God's providence.' The British authorities are equally energetic, equally ingenious, and equally successful. Although the epidemic has now been in India for ten years, we are still quite in the dark as to its cause, its prevention, and its cure. The authorities, however, with a brave optimism as remarkable as their failure, are persevering in experiments which are by the more sanguine described, guardedly, as being ' on the right lines.' Among these essays in hygiene the most interesting, from a spectacular point of view, is the rat-hunt. The theory is that the disease is communicated from one person to another by the bites of fleas which have deserted the rats that have died of plague. It is claimed that, when measures were adopted for the systematic destruction of rats, careful inquiries showed that new cases of plague occurred with almost mathematical pre cision in inverse ratio to the number of rats destroyed. It is further stated that, when a recrudescence occurred, the only district that suffered severely was one where the proprietor objected to the destruction of his household rats on religious grounds. The result of the discovery was a proclamation of a general and truceless crusade against this new enemy of mankind. The operations began a twelvemonth ago. Stations for the reception of rats, dead or alive, were established in many parts of the country. At each of these stations were placed one keeper, one sweeper, and two cages — one for the corpses and the other for the captives. Rat-traps were supplied at municipal expense to the poor, and a price was offered of one pice (farthing) per head, dead or alive. At three o'clock in the afternoon all the cages were collected to a central station, where a tank was dug, and its water mixed with a solution of carbolic acid. There, in the presence of the special plague doctor, the prisoners BOMBAY 13 were thoroughly drowned, then taken out, and all the corpses were counted carefully and cremated solemnly. The people, conscientious scruples notwithstanding, have taken kindly to the game. On a single day, which happened to be a holy festival, the pious Mahomedans of a village, being forbidden to work, collected as many as 411 rats, and earned as many farthings. Lest the mere proclamation of the tempting blood-money should fail to reach every heart, the people are usually called to arms once a week by the beat of the tom-tom — an official instrument of distress as popular in modern India as the town-crier's bell and the night-watchman's rattle were in old England. Yet, after a whole year's ruthless anthropomyomachia, we are no safer than in time of peace, and all sensible people and Lieutenant-Governors have to fall back upon the trite recommendations of cleanliness, disinfection, segregation, fresh air, regular habits, and like wise plati tudes. At the same time the persecution of the wretched rats is going furiously on, and, in any case, it can injure no one, except the rats ; for there has not yet come into being any society for the prevention of cruelty to vermin, although it is true the Indian Humanitarian Committee has issued a manifesto denouncing the Pasteur Institute at Kasauli for the ' inhuman barbarities perpetrated on the lower animals,' with no other purpose than that of alleviating human misery. Nor are European humanitarians the only opponents of scientific research. The native press from time to time, when tired of attacking Lord Curzon, has been seeking relaxation in attacks on inoculation. These attacks, as I read them, arise partly from genuine cussedness and partly from a scepticism which, seeing the results which science has so splendidly succeeded in not attaining, is neither incomprehensible nor unpardonable. Less intelli gible to me is the faith of Lord Lamington, the Governor of this presidency, who the other day, in the course of a speech at the Bombay Government Plague Research 14 THROUGH INDIA Laboratory, extolled the part which the Government is playing in the campaign against the disease, and appealed to all who had influence over the people to do their utmost to convert them to the worship of science. Lord Laming ton has no philosophic doubts. The foundations of his belief are official statistics. But the Indians prefer the evidence of their own unenlightened eyes. And this evidence shows that, after ten years' scientific research, the disease is thriving. But perhaps the deepest and most general source of distrust of scientific methods is what may be crudely described as superstition. The fact is that the people of this country, even the educated among them, still live in the theological age. The immortals still walk in the plains of Hindustan, fighting against each other and finding favour in the eyes of the daughters of man. Sky and heaven still are synonymous terms here, and the air is peopled with spirits. The miraculous is an everyday occurrence, and the only thing that is incredible is the natural. Whatever of good or evil befalls man does so through the direct agency of the gods. The mythological interpretation of things is the only interpretation intelli gible to the Indian mind, and the only method for averting calamity is prayer, magic, and multifarious incantations and propitiations of the powers of evil. How can we expect these people to look upon our labo ratories as other than things presumptuous and ridiculous ? Let us be thankful that they do not regard our scientific experiments as a wanton provocation of the evil ones. After all, it is not so very long since we quitted the mythological cradle ourselves — or have we altogether quitted it yet ? Do we not still pray to be delivered from disease ? The Indian's fault is that, like our own medieval ancestors, he is consistent in his animistic theory of the universe, while we are no longer. Therein lies the sole difference. It is, I think, a question of time. Let us be patient with those who are to-day what we were yesterday. But, at the worst, plague is only a modern upstart, and BOMBAY 15 has not yet been definitely deified by the priests of Hin dustan. If she is feared as a goddess, the fear is reason able and the godship vague. This is not, however, the case with her great rival. Small-pox is an ancient deity of assured position, worshipped in dread earnest and with terrible results. Not long ago thirty patients were found in the very temple from which I was so ignominiously expelled. They had been taken there for a cure by means of the customary rites of propitiation. The temples, there fore, despite the Health Department, are no mere places of devotion, but also active and popular centres for the dissemination of disease. To make success doubly sure, the stricken congregation drives to the temple in the public conveyances, each of which is thus automatically converted into a vehicle of death. These public conveyances, like everything else in Bombay, are of two kinds and of two continents : smart, smoothly-rolling victorias with indiarubber tyres and the merry bullock-carts already described. Both are num bered as hackney carriages, and the facilities for infection offered by the one are equal to those offered by the other. These are some of the perils which the adventurous explorer of the bazaars of Bombay has a good chance of encountering. A drive through those gay bazaars may be confidently recommended to all those who suffer from Vennui de la vie. It can cure them either of life or, at least, of the ennui. For though in Bombay you may be driven to death or to madness, you cannot be bored. You cannot be bored even at the best of times, least of all at a moment when the city is wildly fermenting with the anticipation of a visit from the heir to all the thrones of Hindustan. The Government, the municipality, and the ultra-loyal Parsi aristocracy, have all conspired to render Bombay temporarily uninhabitable. Triumphal arches, florid with ungrammatical inscriptions and mixed metaphors, in which the sacred fire in the heart of the British Empire is bidden to burn and flourish for ever, stands, platforms, water-carts, and rollers propelled by 16 THROUGH INDIA steam or pulled by a chorus of rhythmically groaning coolies, have for weeks been the disorder of the day, and the city of Bombay has for weeks been a city encased in aerial bamboo scaffoldings of many knots, with thousands of coffee-coloured, lithe coolies climbing up and down, trowel or paint-pot in hand, brush between the toes, and little girls and boys carrying the needful on their heads and filling the air with their monotonous chanting. The gaping drains and the heaps of rubbish, the turmoil and the dust and the din, have turned the Eye of India into a great eyesore. And to think that identical transforma tions and torments are simultaneously going on in every one of the dozens of cities which the Prince and Princess of Wales will honour with a casual glance ! Why do people try to be clean only when they hope to be seen ? But this is not the time or the place for philosophical conundrums. Let me only mention, as part of the universal upheaval, that zoologists have been furnishing their museums with fresh specimens of beetles and lizards and bugs for the Prince's edification, while gifted journa lists, I understand, have been laboriously laying up a fresh stock of old adjectives, called, I think, descriptive. I turn for relief to the local newspapers, and my eye is met with paragraphs which aggravate my distress. In one I read : ' Every citizen, no matter where his house is, is requested to do something in the way of decorating his house or business premises in honour of the royal visit, in order that the whole city may have a gay and festive appearance.' O East, Far or Near, even thy gaiety is made by order ! I throw the paper down and pick up another, in which I read : ' His Highness Sir Sultan Shah Aga Khan, G.C.I.E., has issued orders to his estate manager, Mr. Jaffer Cassum Moosa, to decorate and illuminate. . . .' I can read no more. A Mahom- edan Prince and a Jewish estate manager — this, at all events, is instructive, if not amusing. Yes, Bombay is grimly determined to do her duty and be gay. The population has received an appreciable addition in BOMBAY 17 the persons of the native chiefs of Western India come to greet the Prince. They may be seen at every turn, turbaned in multitudinous rainbows, some driving in state- coaches and four, followed by half a dozen prancing lancers ; others, similarly arrayed and escorted, are driving their own dog-carts. A few of these exalted and super latively bejewelled personages, obviously in platonic love with the novelty of simplicity, are rattling unostenta tiously in their motor-cars. There are amongst them rajas and maharajas, nawabs, raos and ranas, thakor sahibs and sar desais, raj sahibs, pant sachivs, naik nimbalkas and sardars without number, each with a retinue proportionate to his degree. One of them evoked my profoundest admiration, not so much by the pink amplitude of his turban and the number of his followers as by the sight of the servant on the box, who sat bolt upright, carrying on his finger the prince's favourite falcon. Many of these sons of the East, despite their most un-European turbans, majesty of mien, and general bulk, speak English fluently, and the other evening I had the curious pleasure of seeing one of the heaviest of these Highnesses vivaciously beating time to ' The Soldiers in the Park ' and other masterpieces from the English stage which the band perpetrated on the veranda of my hotel. It was after dinner. The banquet had been hilarious. I retired to bed dimly wondering what demon it is that prompts us to strive so ardently to turn Asia into a colossal caricature of Europe. This, then, is the state of things in Bombay and the other great cities of India. But what of the country at large ? It is related by the English press in India, and faith fully echoed by the English press in England, that when the present King made his tour through this peninsula the whole country was roused to a display of emotion until then considered utterly incompatible with Oriental placidity and sense of decorum. We read that the 18 THROUGH INDIA Oriental reveres his Sovereign as a god, and that there are no limits to his power of self-mystification. I do not know how it was in those days, for in those days I was in the nursery. At this moment, and in India, I am unable to confirm these descriptions of native sentiment without serious qualification. During the Hindu Durga festivals a few weeks ago I saw, among the grotesque statuettes of gods and goddesses exposed by the thousand for sale on the counters in the bazaars, many obese little busts which were unmistakable, though unconscious, parodies of the late Malikah-ee-Muazzameh — the Gracious Queen — already enthroned in the hospitable halls of the labyrinthic Hindu pantheon as a minor deity, or rather as the latest incar nation of some mighty and multiform goddess of old standing. These busts were improved copies of the artistic atrocities so common in England during the two Jubilees, the veil being replaced by a blatant Union Jack. I have also seen a corpulent Parsi lady in her brougham with her veil attached to her head in feeble imitation of Queen Victoria's portraits, and across her capacious bosom the border of her cloak doing duty for the ribbon of the Star of India. But in both cases these tributes of admiration met my eyes in the immediate neighbour hood of Government House. In the regions beyond the direct influence of the British rule such things are more impossible than miracles. The same observations apply to the royal visit. The millions of this country, platitudes to the contrary not withstanding, are simply unaware of the existence of the British Emperor or of his son. To them all earthly government is personified in the visible magistrate or native chief immediately over them. This is their god a very poor dog of a god, but at all events tangible. But the mute millions, of course, do not count. As to the important and articulate few, whatever they were thirty years ago, at the present hour they are inclined rather to criticise their old gods than to create new ones. BOMBAY 19 For all that, I felt no desire to quarrel with my platitudinarian friend when, in tones of extraordinary, almost tearful, solemnity, he said : ' Their Royal High nesses' presence will provide a fitting climax to the emotions that were aroused by the Delhi Durbar.' ' I know nothing about emotions,' I answered sweetly, ' but I fully agree with you as to the climax.' We stood on the landing-pier, known by the charac teristically hybrid name Apollo Bunder, watching the Renown as she steamed slowly into harbour. At that moment, as though in confirmation of my friend's words, the warships in the harbour began booming forth a royal salute. A few hours later we once more stood on the pier watching the landing of the Prince and Princess of Wales. All my magnificent maharajas were here under the pavilion prepared for the reception, and they were even more magnificent than anything I had ever seen before. Words fail to adequately describe them, as we journalists say. Each one of them was a breathing, gleaming, perspiring monument of silk and gold and stones which, I suppose for their rarity, men call precious. I recognised among the number my immense friend who beat time to the ' Soldiers in the Park ' the other evening. But, O ye shades of Darius and Xerxes, how transformed ! His head was encircled in a tower of silk and pearls, round his herculean neck hung three rows of big green stones, the torso was encased in brocade of gold, and an apron of glittering stuff covered the rest of the body in many rigid creases. Another maharaja stood close to me. He was a small man, attired in a great turban, from the crown of which rose a plume of red and blue and gold, quivering and twinkling in the sun and giving him the appearance of a brilliant bird of paradise. In front of this head-dress gleamed an enamelled miniature of Queen Victoria set in pearls. A tight sea-green tunic embraced his body and 20 THROUGH INDIA a gold-broidered sash hung its golden fringe from the waist. From beneath this stretched two thin patent- leather top-boots armed with spurs of gold. The reader must imagine a dozen similar princes, attired each after his traditional fashion and personal taste in splendour, and each recklessly eager to outshine all the others. It must be to the appearance of her princes that the East owes her fame for wealth. They are as magnificent as their subjects are miserable. But what of that ? Are not the many created for the few — whether frankly, as in the East, or essentially, as in the West ? When the Prince had finished shaking by the hand each wigged and gowned judge, frock-coated official and be jewelled maharaja, he stood with the Princess and Lord and Lady Curzon and Lord Lamington on a dais facing the crowd. ' Oh, isn't she a howling beauty ?' whispered an American lady, pointing with her fan to Lady Curzon. I was gazing at the Prince and Princess, admiring their wonderful faculty for looking interested, as the President of the Corporation of Bombay — of course, a black-mitred Parsi — addressed to them with rhetorical emphasis many words of welcome. Then the Prince retaliated at similar length, and I, being nobody, enjoyed such relief as is in a score of little yawns, covert yet cordial. For a whole week there was nothing but the clattering of hoofs, the rattling of wheels, the thunder of salutes, the glitter of state-coaches, the sheen of maharajas, and the infliction of platitudinous oratory. In the days there were drives through the bazaars, under strings of flags and streamers and Chinese lanterns and greetings stretched densely across ; visits and counter-visits ; laying of founda tion-stones and opening of new thoroughfares. In the evenings there were banquets and levees. At all these functions I had the privilege to be bored. But their poor Royal Highnesses endured it all with truly princely patience, and the visit, to Bombay was, asT my American lady friend would have said, ' a howling success.' c BOMBAY 21 The one ceremony that did not bore me was one at which I was not present. But partly from the description given me by the Government, and partly from that sup plied by a lady friend, I have gathered the knowledge which I proceed to bestow on the reader. It was a strictly purdah affair — that is, a function by ladies and for ladies. It took place in the Town Hall. After the usual presentations, the Princess mounted the steps to the first landing. There a group of Parsi ladies performed the ceremony known as ' Vadhavilevani.' An egg and a cocoanut were passed seven times round the head of Her Royal Highness and then broken, the seven times symbolizing the seven circles of the world, and the breaking being an emblematic prayer that so may be broken any calamities that the evil spirits which move in those circles may be concocting for the person performed upon, Furthermore, the Parsi ladies explained that, as the break ing of the egg and the cocoanut is productive of whole some nourishment, so may every broken evil turn to good for the Princess. Likewise a dish full of water was passed seven times round the head and then poured away, the significance of this being that no drought but rainy abundance may be the Princess's lot through life. A small handful of rice was also thrown over the head, indicating the wish that Her Royal Highness may not only have enough food, but in such plenty as to be able even to scatter it round her. Lastly, the lady, learned in mystic lore, who acted as the high-priestess in these rites, pressed her knuckles fast against her own temples, making them crack in token that even so may all mis fortunes and evil influences be cracked off the Princess. On the top of the stairs a group of Hindu ladies were waiting for their own turn. Their ceremony, called 'Arti,' consisted in a number of burning wicks, ranged in a tray round a quantity of red powder, wherewith it was their kind intention to anoint the Princess's brow. But Her Royal Highness evaded the intention with the same smiling tact which had already enabled her to escape 22 THROUGH INDIA many a weighty garland of flowers without offence. This ceremony indicates that, as red is the brightest of the seven colours, even so may the brightest of lights shine upon the recipient for ever. At the entrance to the hall the Mahomedan ladies acted, after their own fashion, the harmless rite called ' Ameen.' There was neither fire nor water here. The Princess, who had most successfully passed through those two trials of good temper, was simply garlanded and be- showered with gold and silver almonds and other nuts, reminiscent of the nuces which the Romans used to scatter over the bride and the Greeks over newly-bought slaves. But these ladies knew none of these things, luckily, and the explanation they gave was that the nuts were simply symbols of peace, because they yield oil. Even so, then, may the oil of peace smooth the course of the Princess's life. I fear they were the victims of their own metaphors ; but this is irrelevant. They then handed the Princess a cocoanut, minutely emblematic of the following wishes : As its kernel gives food and contains water, as its leaves provide roofing, as its coir makes some articles of furni ture, and as its shells make cups, so may the Princess never lack food, water, shelter, and furniture. ' We shall be very much surprised if, after all these rites, Her Royal Highness ever goes to the workhouse,' said my lady informant, with a smile. I could only share her sentiment and return her smile. ' It is a thousand pities that those responsible for the arrangements of the tour have not seen their way to organize a lion-hunt.' ' A lion-hunt in Bombay !' 'Not in the town, of course,' said my literal friend, ' but somewhere in the interior of the Presidency.' I thought the suggestion romantic, but upon inquiry I found that it was not so wild as I had thought. To the north of Bombay lies the peninsula of Kathiawar, a political agency subordinate to the Government of BOMBAY 23 Bombay, having under its control, direct or indirect, no fewer than 187 distinct States, great and small, a few of which are quite independent, and of the others some tributary to the British Government, some to the Gaekwar of Baroda, and some to the Nawab of Junagarh. Further more, the peninsula contains the great Gir forest, and it is there that my friend's lions live. No census of them has ever been taken, but they appear to be a great sylvan colony, subsisting chiefly on Indian peasants. On the borders of the forest stretches the land of Amreli, which belongs to the Gaekwar of Baroda, and it is said that the authorities of this privileged district wrote not long ago to the representatives of their neigh bour, the Nawab of Junagarh, requesting them officially : ' Please stop your lions from carrying off our coolies.' The Times of India in a recent issue gave many interest ing particulars concerning the customs and manners of these lions. I extract the following morsel : ' But perhaps the most recent and notable instance of the daring of the lions occurred only last Wednesday night, shortly after the Governor had arrived at the camp at Sasan. A man was riding three miles from the camp after dark, when he was attacked by a lion. He incon tinently fell off his pony, dropped his gun and sword, and bolted. The lion seized the pony and carried it off. To anyone acquainted with the ways of jungle folk, their demeanour in the jungle after dark is significant enough. They will not move without lights, and they beg those who happen to be with them to keep close to the flares, as otherwise they may be attacked. The villagers mani festly live in a dread of the lions which is certainly genuine enough, though it was not fully credited until now, as hardly any Europeans had visited the interior of the Gir for some time. There are, it need scarcely be added, innumerable cases of depredations among live stock.' I think I begin to understand India : elegant suburban villas and lions; Veneto-Gothic Secretariat offices and 24 THROUGH INDIA virgin forests ; a few tiny drops of modern civilization floating on an ocean of what I may, for politeness' sake, call primitive culture. My platitudinarian friend calls it picturesque culture. And again I am not inclined to quarrel with him, for a few days ago a telegram from Bhavnagar, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Gir forest, announced that an attendant in the service of the Prince of Jasdan had been arrested on a charge of having mixed poison in the food served at the Prince's table. It appears that while the Prince and four guests were dining they were suddenly taken ill. The food was imme diately sent to the doctor for analysis, and he declared that it contained arsenic. Virgin forest — lions— native prince — banquet — poison. Could the most romantic of young lady romancers invent a plot more replete with the things called picturesque ? Verily, the commonplaces of Indian life are stranger than the wildest dreams of European fever. When I grow weary of sober reality I will pitch my tent in India. CHAPTER n INDORE We left Bombay in the evening of November 14. Our visit to this little native State was due to the special favour of Famine — that long-armed, grim-visaged goddess who is responsible for so many things in this part of the world. But for her intervention, we should have gone to Ajmer instead. But poor Ajmer is in no holiday mood just now. It has just been officially declared a famishing district. Telegrams from other parts of the country also published during the last few days announce a rapid rise in the prices of food-grains throughout Upper India, especially in the Punjab and Rajputana. The numbers of persons in receipt of relief doles are growing daily. From the Punjab also to-day comes the news that Plague is carrying off her thousands, and the authorities are energetically poisoning rats. But do not let us dwell on things mournful. We are supposed to be enjoying ourselves. And, in truth, once your heart was hermetically closed to the other side of things, 'twas sweet, as the poet says, to spurn the thirsty plains that lie and wait upon the skies, to leave the matutinal drains of dry municipalities, the clamour of the streets, the flies, the leaden hotel hours that scarce can crawl, and to climb up through the breezy night to the heights of Indore. The first part of the journey took us across a thick jungle with patches of arable land cleared here and there, ill-tilled and only less unkempt than the jungle itself. At rare intervals blue smoke, curling up from amid the trees, 25 26 THROUGH INDIA proclaimed the presence of human beings. Gradually these signs of life became more frequent. A corn-rick here, a rickety watchman's loft there, a shed lower down, or a mud hovel, its thatch covered with dung-cakes, came to give a meaning to the landscape. But as we proceeded the green forest made more and more room for the golden cornfield, while in the parched pastures broused herds of cattle, and the wilderness of brown stubble and yellow corn-stalk or black, newly-ploughed earth was now and again interrupted by rivers which, though mere pariah streams at this time of year, when swollen by the rains turn the adjacent fields into lakes, and, departing, leave behind them large malarious marshes. Down upon all this glared the noontide sun out of a sky white with the heat of an India November day, abruptly succeeding to the chills of the night. We reached Indore at four o'clock, and the first sight that met my eye was a steam-mill on one side of the station, and on the other a great bull carrying a couple of water-skins athwart his hump. The station itself was gay with red carpets, many-coloured bunting, two score and fifteen chiefs of Central India, and a number of British officers, awaiting the Prince. Among the former sat con spicuous His Highness the Maharaja Holkar of Indore — a delicate youth of some nineteen years of age, in gorgeous robes of scarlet and gold — and Her Highness the Begum of Bhopal — a little bundle of lilac silk crowned with diamonds. In front two holes, veiled with gauze, inti mated the position of Her Highness's eyes. Each of the other chiefs was apparelled in special grandeur, and one of them wore on his head a golden diadem obviously modelled after that of the Tsar. The Prince and Princess, when they alighted, shook hands with the Maharaja and the principal chiefs, Her Royal Highness singling the invisible little Begum out for a conversation carried on under extraordinary difficulties. In the evening every one of the few great public build ings, the many small houses, and most of the open shops INDORE 27 in the bazaar, were illuminated after a fashion at once beautiful and fantastic. But the most beautiful and fantastic sight of all was the river Kahn, with its winding banks outlined in tremulous oil lamps and rows of Chinese lanterns hung on the trees and bamboos. It zigzagged from the darkness and into the darkness — a serpent of duplicate streaks of many-tinted light, quivering against a duplicate background of sombre foliage. Beneath the ample awnings near the river sat the chiefs of Bundel- khand on quaint thrones of gold and silver, with one leg tucked up, after the manner of ganders at rest, their arms languid on lions or tigers of carved and gilt wood. There they sat in their gorgeous state robes, while around them stood their attendants, some bearing enormous fly-flaps of horse-hair or of peacock feathers, others holding aloft the banners of their masters. They were ' At Home ' to a crowd of guests, mostly European officers, residents, visitors, and ladies, who swarmed over the lawns, while from the distance came the strains of Caledonian bag pipes and Indian drums, floating on the night air. Upon all shone the calm silver moon out of a sky serene and limpid as the waters of the Kahn. It was a scene of dreamy charm which I shall not soon forget. But the native bazaars drew me away from the dreamy river banks. There was a piece of the pure East awaiting me. Amid the twinkling lights and shades of the balconies above glided the silhouettes of veiled women, while the streets below rumbled with state-coaches of an inde scribable variety of epoch, colour, style, and splendour, creaked with innumerable springless vehicles drawn by miserable little ponies or bullocks, and hummed with the drowsy murmur of thousands of Oriental sightseers. And out of this chorus arose the loud chanting of the fakir, as, staff in one hand and rosary in the other, he wandered round, invoking the blessing of Allah upon the charitable men of Indore and all true believers. Yet, now that the noises have been hushed and the moon shines silently upon the last flickering lanterns, it 28 THROUGH INDIA is good to be in this camp — upon the tranquil banks of the Kahn, breathing the clear night air of some 1,800 feet above sea-level and speculating hazily upon the future of things. While enjoying this brief spell of quiet, it may be interesting to recapitulate the little knowledge you have gleaned about the people who live in this large, struggling capital of this little Mahratta State in Malwa. For, I take it, the life of the country is not entirely made up of Chinese lanterns and state-coaches. To-morrow we shall have a grand Durbar and garden-parties and banquets and receptions, at which His Royal Highness will deliver the insignia of a G.C.I.E. to Her Highness the Begum of Bhopal, and of a K.C.I.E. to the Raja of Sailona, one of the principal Central Indian chiefs. These and many other functions, solemn or festive, will occur to-morrow and the day after. But to-night let us be prosaic and, if possible, instructive. The whole State of Indore includes a population fully equal to two or three London suburbs — a million of brown -skinned, greatly - turbaned creatures, Mahrattas, Hindus, Mahomedans, and aborigines, fameless, faith less, and nameless, scattered over some 9,000 square miles. Over them rules a nominal autocrat, who dwells in this town, together with one-tenth of his subjects, governing them with powers of life and death, exercised discreetly, according to the advice of the inevitable British Political Agent. It is an arrangement satisfactory to both sides. The British Raj undertakes to defend the Maharaja against the aggressive ambition of his more powerful neighbours, and to mediate in case of quarrels with them; likewise, if he is a minor, to educate him in the way he should go. The Maharaja, on his part, pledges himself to abstain from direct communication, or even subtle diplomatic intrigue, with the other States ; to limit his military force within the bounds dictated by mere love of peace ; not to avail himself of the wisdom of European or American adventurers without permission ; INDORE 29 and to help in the purchase and transport of supplies for the troops kept by the British Government for his protection. So long as he behaves properly, His Highness may call himself an independent sovereign, a Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India, and a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire ; he is allowed to enjoy a permanent thunder of nineteen guns when he visits the British possessions, and a salute of twenty-one guns in his own dominions — or even, if he is very good, the same number in British territory — and, in one word, to be as happy as human maharaja can be. For is not £120,000 out of the £700,000 of the annual revenue of the State devoted to the maintenance of his own palace ? This colossal edifice, with its towering gateway of many stories scowling upon the city, and that other summer palace which smiles placidly amid the beautiful trees of the Lai Bagh, are things eminently worth having. The latter estate also contains a market-place, a reading-room, a cotton-mill, a dispensary, a school and a menagerie of wild beasts which mingle their sweet voices agreeably with the rumble of English wheels and the recitations of English classics, and a moribund mint. What more is there in the power of Heaven to bestow, or in that of man to receive ? The mint, however, reminds me of unpleasant things. The Spokesman of Native Discontent, to whom I always listen with interest tempered by critical caution, a little time ago spoke as follows : ' There is nothing which the native Princes prize so much as the right of coinage ; and well they may, for it is the emblem of sovereignty. From several Native States the right of coinage has been withdrawn, and they have been persuaded or pressed by negotiations which, carried on by the Resident or the Governor-General's Agent, are veiled commands to give up their own coinage and the right of coining money, and accept the British coinage. Alwar, Jhalwar, Bikaneer, Bhopal, and last, but not least, Indore, are among the States which have been persuaded 30 THROUGH INDIA to forego this sovereign power and accept British coinage. The story of the conversion of Indore Hali coins into British coins is an interesting one, and is fairly illustrative of the growth of Imperialistic ideas which threaten slowly but steadily to encroach upon the treaty rights of Native Princes. The change in Indore was carried out in 1902, when the Maharaja had been deprived of his powers, and the government was conducted by a Council, nominally under the control of the Maharaja, but really dominated by the all-powerful personality of the British Resident representing the Paramount Power. Such a Council could not dare go against the mandate of the Resident or the wishes of the Governor-General's Agent. The conversion, which involved the withdrawal of this emblem of sovereign power, was thus the act of the Paramount Power rather than that of the State ; and was it right or seemly on the part of the British Government to have deprived the State of this right at a time when it was acting as the trustee of the State, charged with the maintenance of its dignity and its interests ?' Alas, my indignant friend, what is the use of pro pounding your abstruse conundrums to me ? I inquired of the moderate and learned Advocate of India what he thought about it, and he answered as follows : ' The Indian States, including those in Burma, number 688, and have a population aggregating upwards of 70,000,000, very nearly one-third of that of British India. One hundred and seventy of the larger and more im portant of these States are under the immediate control of the Viceroy, who, through the Foreign Department, directs all matters concerning administrative questions and successions, and formulates the policy which guides the relations between them and the paramount Power. Of course, authorities differ as to the precise degree of subordination or dependency of the more powerful States, some of which contracted treaties of alliance and friend ship with the old East India Company prior to the INDORE 31 transfer of India to the Crown, and Viceroys regulate the degree and extent of their interference with the personal and administrative affairs of the Princes accord ing to their own judgment. The policy of the Indian Government towards its feudatories is largely based upon precedents, which, having been once accepted without demur, become inflexible laws to which no resistance can be conveniently or usefully offered. The complexities thus created are incomprehensible except to those initiated in the traditions of the Foreign Department and the Residents and Political Agents who have to expound and apply them at the native Courts to which they are accredited. And, as may be readily imagined, their inter pretations of a somewhat nebulous procedure are not always happily conceived, as they are liable to be tinged by the personal idiosyncrasies of the exponents. When such instances occur — and, despite all the precautions of the Foreign Department, they do occasionally occur — friction and unfriendliness usurp the ideal relations con templated and desired by the paramount Power between its representatives and the Princes.' Thus spoke the learned Advocate. Not content with these views, I approached a third oracle. It responded : ' The policy of the British Government in this respect is not quite the same as it was in the beginning of British rule more than a century ago. From 1757, when Clive, after the victory of Plassey, laid the foundations of the British Empire in India, up to the close of Lord Minto's administration in 1813, the pressure of Parliament and the prudence of the East India Company operated in the direction of a policy of non-intervention. During this period the Native States led an almost independent life. But the confusion, disorder, and general unsatisfactory condition of affairs in them proved greatly detrimental, not only to the internal administration of British India, but also to other Imperial interests of a serious nature. For instance, in the British districts touching the borders 32 THROUGH INDIA of native administration, the police felt the difficulty of arresting criminals and preventing their escape into foreign jurisdictions ; the revenue officers experienced similar diffi culties in excluding untaxed opium or illicit spirits from British territory; and sanitary measures could not suc cessfully be effected in time of epidemics. Common defence and other requirements of the daily growing Empire urged upon the Government the necessity of in troducing railways and roads, telegraphs and post-offices, into the dominions of some of the Chiefs. In the interests of the Empire, therefore, the Native States had to be brought to a state of " subordinate isolation." Their inter national status was destroyed, and the Guardian Power assumed exclusive control over their foreign relations. The Chiefs were made to unite for the common cause, and an understanding on certain points necessary for the welfare of the Empire was arrived at. They were, how ever, left to arrange their internal affairs after their own way, in pursuance of a desire to preserve native rule. But the doctrine of non-intervention, it is a pity, was pushed to absurd limits, and the interests of the suffering millions were entirely ignored, until such scrupulous avoidance of interference sadly resulted, in some instances, in the adop tion of annexation as a necessary corrective. For when a native sovereign could by no means be persuaded to look upon a proposed reform as anything but an insult to his dignity, there could be no remedy other than the entire suppression of his sovereignty.' Thus far the pleaders of India and of the Indian Govern ment. Now hearken again unto the ultra-discontented Native Spokesman : ' The Queen's Proclamation is the Magna Charta of our rights. It is even a greater Charter for the Princes of India. " We shall respect the rights, dignity, and honour of Native Princes as our own," are the solemn words of the Proclamation. We fear this gracious promise has not been redeemed. The Imperialistic views of Lord Curzon have dealt a serious blow at the dignity of the Native Princes. INDORE 33 In 1858, when the Proclamation was announced, they were the allies of the Sovereign, the honoured Feudatories of the Empire. To-day they are the vassals of the Viceroy.' The most moderate Advocate concludes his exposition with commendable inconclusiveness, as follows : ' Lord Dalhousie's sweeping annexations, which Sir Mortimer Durand, no mean authority, considered as largely responsible for the Mutiny, had been followed by reassurances given to the Princes by Lord Canning and a period of comparative quiescence under his immediate successors. To Lord Northbrook must be ascribed the resuscitation of the policy of intervention in the affairs of Native States, which, twenty years previously, had fre quently resulted in annexation on the ground of misgovern- ment. The doctrine of protection, which he inaugurated, has been expanded and amplified by his successors to a degree which makes it absolutely impossible for any pub licist to give an intelligible description of the complex relations which now form the basis of the policy main tained by the Government of India towards its Feudatories. The latter are so circumscribed and bound in fetters of red-tape, assiduously spun by successive Viceroys and Political Agents, that the term " Independent," except in a modified degree within the boundaries of their State, has no longer any application to their Governments. Whether the reiterated assurances, official and other, of the pro found belief in their loyalty and devotion to Imperial interests is accepted by the Princes as a sufficient solatium for the loss of their independence is a problem we are unable to solve.' With my characteristic modesty I refrain from com ment, beyond the Aristophanic warning, irplv av d/j,