Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India: From Calcutta to Bombay, 1824-1825, (with Notes Upon Ceylon,) an Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826, and Letters Written in India/Volume III/Correspondence/Letter 33
My dear Wilmot,
I have now, since the middle of last June, pretty nearly seen the eastern, northern, and western extremities of British India, having been to Dacca and Almorah, and having now arrived within a few days’ march of Ahmedabad, visiting by the way several of the most important, independant, or tributary principalities.
Of the way of performing this long journey, I was myself very imperfectly informed before I began it, and even then it was long before I could believe how vast and cumbersome an apparatus of attendance and supplies of every kind was necessary to travel in any degree of comfort or security. On the river, indeed, so long as that lasted, one’s progress is easy and pleasant, (bating a little heat and a few storms,) carried on by a strong south-eastern breeze, in a very roomy and comfortable boat, against the stream of a majestic body of water; but it is after leaving the Ganges for the land-journey that, if not “the tug,” yet no small part of the apparatus, proventus et commeatus, of “war” commences.
It has been my wish, on many accounts, to travel without unnecessary display; my tents, equipments, and number of servants, are all on the smallest scale which comfort or propriety would admit of; they all fall short of what are usually taken by the collectors of districts, and in comparison with what the Commander in Chief had the year before last, I have found people disposed to cry out at them as quite insufficient. Nor have I asked for a single soldier or trooper beyond what the commanding officers of districts have themselves offered as necessary and suitable; yet for myself and Dr. Smith, the united numbers amount to three elephants, above twenty camels, five horses, besides poneys for our principal servants, twenty-six servants, twenty-six bearers of burthens, fifteen clashees to pitch and remove tents, elephant and camel drivers, I believe, thirteen, and since we have left the Company’s territories and entered Rajpootana, a guard of eighteen irregular horse and forty-five Sepoys on foot. Nor is this all; for there is a number of petty tradesmen and other poor people whose road is the same as ours, and who have asked permission to encamp near us, and travel under our protection; so that yesterday, when I found it expedient, on account of the scarcity which prevails in these provinces, to order an allowance of flour, by way of Sunday dinner, to every person in the camp, the number of heads returned was 165. With all these formidable numbers, you must not, however, suppose that any exorbitant luxury reigns in my tent; our fare is, in fact, as homely as any two farmers in England sit down to; and if it be sometimes exuberant, the fault must be laid on a country where we must take a whole sheep or kid, if we would have animal food at all, and where neither sheep nor kid will, when killed, remain eatable more than a day or two. The truth is, that where people carry every thing with them, bed, tent, furniture, wine, beer, and crockery, for six months together, no small quantity of beasts of burden may well be supposed necessary; and in countries such as those which I have now been traversing, where every man is armed, where every third or fourth man, a few years since, was a thief by profession, and where, in spite of English influence and supremacy, the forests, mountains, and multitudes of petty sovereignties, afford all possible scope for the practical application of Wordsworth’s “good old rule,” you may believe me that it is neither pomp nor cowardice which has thus fenced your friend in with spears, shields, and bayonets. After all, though this way of life has much that is monotonous and wearisome, though it grievously dissipates time and thought, and though it is almost incompatible with the pursuits in which I have been accustomed to find most pleasure, it is by no means the worst part of an Indian existence. It is a great point in this climate to be actually compelled to rise, day after day, before the dawn, and to ride from twelve to eighteen miles before breakfast. It is a still greater to have been saved a residence in Calcutta during the sultry months, and to have actually seen and felt frost, ice, and snow, on the summits of Kemaoon, and under the shadow of the Himalaya. And though the greater part of the Company’s own provinces, except Kemaoon, are by no means abundant in objects of natural beauty or curiosity, the prospect offering little else than an uniform plain of slovenly cultivation, yet in the character and manners of the people there is much which may be studied with interest and amusement, and in the yet remaining specimen of Oriental pomp at Lucknow, in the decayed, but most striking and romantic, magnificence of Delhi, and in the Taje-Mahal of Agra, (doubtless one of the most beautiful buildings in the world) there is almost enough, even of themselves, to make it worth a man’s while to cross the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Since then I have been in countries of a wilder character, comparatively seldom trodden by Europeans, exempt during the greater part of their history from the Mussulman yoke, and retaining, accordingly, a great deal of the simplicity of early Hindoo manners, without much of that solenm and pompous uniformity which the conquests of the house of Timur seem to have impressed on all classes of their subjects. Yet here there is much which is interesting and curious. The people, who are admirably described (though I think in too favourable colours) by Malcolm in his Central India, are certainly a lively, animated and warlike race of men, though, chiefly from their wretched government, and partly from their still more wretched religion, there is hardly any vice either of slaves or robbers to which they do not seem addicted. Yet such a state of society is, at least, curious, and resembles more the picture of Abyssinia, as given by Bruce, than that of any other country which I have seen or read of; while here, too, there are many wild and woody scenes, which, though they want the glorious glaciers and peaks of the Himalaya, do not fall short in natural beauty of some of the loveliest glens which we went through, ten years ago, in North Wales; and some very remarkable ruins, which though greatly inferior as works of art to the Mussulman remains in Hindostan proper, are yet more curious than them, as being more different from any thing which an European is accustomed to see or read of.
One fact, indeed, during this journey has been impressed on my mind very forcibly, that the character and situation of the natives of these great countries are exceedingly little known, and in many instances, grossly misrepresented, not only by the English public in general, but by a great proportion of those also, who, though they have been in India, have taken their views of its population, manners, and productions from Calcutta, or at most from Bengal. I had always heard, and fully believed till I came to India, that it was a grievous crime, in the opinion of the Brahmins, to eat the flesh or shed the blood of any living creature whatever. I have now myself seen Brahmins of the highest caste cut off the heads of goats as a sacrifice to Doorga; and I know from the testimony of Brahmins, as well as from other sources, that not only hecatombs of animals are often offered in this manner as a most meritorious act (a Raja about twenty-five years back, offered sixty thousand in one fortnight,) but that any person, Brahmins not excepted, eats readily of the flesh of whatever has been offered up to one of their divinities, while among almost all the other castes, mutton, pork, venison, fish, any thing but beef and fowls, are consumed as readily as in Europe. Again, I had heard all my life of the gentle and timid Hindoos, patient under injuries, servile to their superiors, &c. Now, this is doubtless, to a certain extent, true of the Bengalees, (who, by the way, are never reckoned among the nations of Hindostan, by those who speak the language of that country,) and there are a great many people in Calcutta who maintain that all the natives of India are alike. But even in Bengal, gentle as the exterior manners of the people are, there are large districts close to Calcutta, where the work of carding, burning, ravishing, murder, and robbery, goes on as systematically, and in nearly the same manner, as in the worst part of Ireland, and on entering Hindostan, properly so called, which in the estimation of the natives reaches from the Rajmahal hills to Agra, and from the mountains of Kemaoon to Bundelcund, I was struck and surprised to find a people equal in stature and strength to the average of European nations, despising rice and rice-eaters, feeding on wheat and barley bread, exhibiting in their appearance, conversation, and habits of life, a grave, proud, and, decidedly, a martial character, accustomed universally to the use of arms and athletic exercises from their cradles, and preferring, very greatly, military service to any other means of livelihoods. This part of their character, but in a ruder and wilder form and debased by much alloy of treachery and violence, is conspicuous in the smaller and less good-looking inhabitants of Rajpootana and Malwah; while the mountains and woods, wherever they occur, shew specimens of a race entirely different from all these, and in a state of society scarcely elevated above the savages of New Holland, or New Zealand; and the inhabitants, I am assured, of the Deckan, and of the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, are as different from those which I have seen, and from each other, as the French and Portuguese from the Greeks, Germans, or Poles; so idle is it to ascribe uniformity of character to the inhabitants of a country so extensive, and subdivided by so many almost impassable tracts of mountain and jungle; and so little do the majority of those whom I have seen deserve the gentle and imbecile character often assigned to them. Another instance of this want of information, which at the time of my arrival excited much talk in Bengal, was the assertion made in Parliament, I forget by whom, that “there was little or no sugar cultivated in India, and that the sugar mostly used there came from Sumatra and Java.” Now this even the cockneys of Calcutta must have known to be wrong, and I can answer for myself, that in the whole range of Calcutta, from Dacca to Delhi, and thence through the greater part of Rajpootana and Malwah, the raising of sugar is as usual a part of husbandry, as turnips or potatoes in England; and that they prepare it in every form, except the loaf, which is usually met with in Europe. This, however, is not the most material point in which the state of arts and society in India has been underrated. I met not long since with a speech by a leading member of the Scotch General Assembly, declaring his “conviction that the truths of Christianity could not be received by men in so rude a state as the East Indians; and that it was necessary to give them first a relish for the habits and comforts of civilized life before they could embrace the truths of the Gospel.” The same slang (for it is nothing more) I have seen repeated in divers pamphlets, and even heard it in conversations at Calcutta. Yet, though it is certainly true that the lower classes of Indians are miserably poor, and that there are many extensive districts where, both among low and high, the laws are very little obeyed, and there is a great deal of robbery, oppression, and even ferocity, I know no part of the population, except the mountain tribes already mentioned, who can, with any propriety of language, be called uncivilized.
Of the unpropitious circumstances which I have mentioned, the former arises from a population continually pressing on the utmost limits of subsistence, and which is thus kept up, not by any dislike or indifference to a better diet, or more ample clothing, or more numerous ornaments than now usually fall to the peasant’s share (for, on the contrary, if he has the means he is fonder of external shew and a respectable appearance, than those of his rank in many nations of Europe,) but by the foolish superstition, which Christianity only is likely to remove, which makes a parent regard it as unpropitious to allow his son to remain unmarried, and which couples together children of twelve or fourteen years of age. The second has its origin in the long-continued misfortunes and intestine wars of India, which are as yet too recent (even when their causes have ceased to exist) for the agitation which they occasioned to have entirely sunk into a calm. But to say that the Hindoos or Mussulmans are deficient in any essential feature of a civilised people, is an assertion which I can scarcely suppose to be made by any who have lived with them. Their manners are, at least, as pleasing and courteous as those in the corresponding stations of life among ourselves; their houses are larger, and, according to their wants and climate, to the full as convenient as ours; their architecture is at least as elegant, and though the worthy Scotch divines may doubtless wish their labourers to be clad in “hodden grey” and their gentry and merchants to wear powder and mottled stockings, like worthy Mr. ——————— and the other elders of his kirk-session, I really do not think that they would gain either in cleanliness, elegance, or comfort, by exchanging a white cotton robe for the completest suits of dittos. Nor is it true that in the mechanic arts they are inferior to the general run of European nations. Where they fall short of us (which is chiefly in agricultural implements and the mechanics of common life,) they are not, so far as I have understood of Italy and the south of France, surpassed in any great degree by the people of those countries. Their goldsmiths and weavers produce as beautiful fabrics as our own, and it is so far from true that they are obstinately wedded to their old patterns, that they shew an anxiety to imitate our models, and do imitate them very successfully. The ships built by native artists at Bombay are notoriously as good as any which sail from London or Liverpool. The carriages and gigs which they supply at Calcutta are as handsome, though not as durable, as those of Long Acre. In the little town of Monghyr, 300 miles from Calcutta, I had pistols, double-barrelled guns, and different pieces of cabinet-work brought down to my boat for sale, which in outward form (for I know no further) nobody but perhaps Mr. ——————— could detect to be of Hindoo origin; and at Delhi, in the shop of a wealthy native jeweller, I found broaches, ear-rings, snuff-boxes, &c. of the latest models (so far as I am a judge), and ornamented with French devices and mottos.
The fact is, that there is a degree of intercourse maintained between this country and Europe, and a degree of information existing among the people as to what passes there, which, considering how many of them neither speak nor read English, implies other channels of communication besides those which we supply, and respecting which I have been able as yet to obtain very little information. Among the presents sent last year to the Supreme Government by the little state of Ladak in Chinese Tartary, some large sheets of gilt leather, stamped with the Russian eagle, were the most conspicuous. A traveller, who calls himself a Transylvanian, but who is shrewdly suspected of being a Russian spy, was, when I was in Kemaoon, arrested by the commandant of our fortresses among the Himalaya mountains, and after all our pains to exclude foreigners from the service of the native princes, two chevaliers of the legion of honour were found, about twelve months ago, and are still employed in casting cannon and drilling soldiers for the Seik Raja, Runjeet Singh. This you will say is no more than we should be prepared to expect, but you probably would not suppose (what I believe is little, if at all, known in Russia itself,) that there is an ancient and still frequented place of Hindoo pilgrimage not many miles from Moscow, or that the secretary of the Calcutta Bible Society received, ten months ago, an application (by whom translated I do not know, but in very tolerable English,) from some priests on the shore of the Caspian sea, requesting a grant of Armenian Bibles. After this you will be the less surprised to learn that the leading events of the late wars in Europe (particularly Buonaparte’s victories) were often known, or at least rumoured, among the native merchants in Calcutta before Government received any accounts from England, or that the suicide of an English minister (with the mistake, indeed, of its being Lord Liverpool instead of the Marquis of Londonderry,) had become a topic of conversation in the “burrah bazar,” (the native exchange) for a fortnight before the arrival of any intelligence by the usual channels. "With subjects thus inquisitive, and with opportunities of information, it is apparent how little sense there is in the doctrine that we must keep the natives of Hindostan in ignorance, if we would continue to govern them. The fact is, that they know enough already to do us a great deal of mischief if they should find it their interest to make the trial. They are in a fair way, by degrees, to acquire still more knowledge for themselves; and the question is, whether it is not the part of wisdom, as well as duty, to superintend and promote their education while it is yet in our power, and to supply them with such knowledge as will be at once most harmless to ourselves and most useful to them.
In this work the most important part is to give them a better religion. Knowing how strongly I feel on this subject, you will not be surprised at my placing it foremost. But even if Christianity were out of the question, and if when I had wheeled away the rubbish of the old pagodas, I had nothing better than simple Deism to erect in their stead, I should still feel some of the anxiety which now urges me. It is necessary to see idolatry, to be fully sensible of its mischievous effects on the human mind. But of all idolatries which I have ever read or heard of, the religion of the Hindoos, in which I have taken some pains to inform myself, really appears to me the worst, both in the degrading notions which it gives of the Deity; in the endless round of its burdensome ceremonies, which occupy the time and distract the thoughts, without either instructing or interesting its votaries; in the filthy acts of uncleanness and cruelty, not only permitted, but enjoined, and inseparably interwoven with those ceremonies; in the system of castes, a system which tends, more than any thing else the Devil has yet invented, to destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and to make nine-tenths of mankind the hopeless slaves of the remainder; and in the total absence of any popular system of morals, or any single lesson which the people at large ever hear, to live virtuously and do good to each other. I do not say, indeed, that there are not some scattered lessons of this kind to be found in their ancient books; but those books are neither accessible to the people at large, nor are these last permitted to read them; and in general all the sins that a Sudra is taught to fear are, killing a cow, offending a Brahmin, or neglecting one of the many frivolous rites by which their deities are supposed to be conciliated. Accordingly, though the general sobriety of the Hindoos (a virtue which they possess in common with most inhabitants of warm climates,) affords a very great facility to the maintenance of public order and decorum, I really never have met with a race of men whose standard of morality is so low, who feel so little apparent shame on being detected in a falsehood, or so little interest in the sufferings of a neighbour, not being of their own caste or family; whose ordinary and familiar conversation is so licentious; or, in the wilder and more lawless districts, who shed blood with so little repugnance. The good qualities which there are among them (and thank God there there is a great deal of good among them still) are, in no instance that I am aware of, connected with, or arising out of, their religion, since it is in no instance to good deeds or virtuous habits of life that the future rewards in which they believe are promised. Their bravery, their fidelity to their employers, their temperance, and (wherever they are found) their humanity, and gentleness of disposition, appear to arise exclusively from a natural happy temperament, from an honourable pride in their own renown, and the renown of their ancestors; and from the goodness of God, who seems unwilling that his image should be entirely defaced even in the midst of the grossest error. The Mussulmans have a far better creed, and though they seldom either like the English, or are liked by them, I am inclined to think are, on the whole, a better people. Yet even with them, the forms of their worship have a natural tendency to make men hypocrites, and the overweening contempt with which they are inspired for all the world beside, the degradation of their women by the system of polygamy, and the detestable crimes, which, owing to this degradation, are almost universal, are such as, even if I had no ulterior hope, would make me anxious to attract them to a better or more harmless system.
In this work, thank God, in those parts of India which I have visited, a beginning has been made, and a degree of success obtained, at least commensurate to the few years during which our Missionaries have laboured; and it is still going on in the best and safest way, as the work of private persons alone, and although not forbidden, in no degree encouraged by Government. In the meantime, and as an useful auxiliary to the Missionaries, the establishment of elementary schools for the lower classes and for females, is going on to a very great extent, and might be carried to any conceiveable extent to which our pecuniary means would carry us. Nor is there any measure from which I anticipate more speedy benefit than the elevation of the rising generation of females to their natural rank in society, and giving them, (which is all that, in any of our schools, we as yet venture to give,) the lessons of general morality extracted from the Gospel, without any direct religious instruction. These schools, such of them at least as I have any concern with, are carried on without any help from Government. Government has, however, been very liberal in its grants, both to a Society for National Education, and in the institution and support of two Colleges of Hindoo students of riper age, the one at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not think any of these institutions, in the way after which they are at present conducted, likely to do much good. In the elementary schools supported by the former, through a very causeless and ridiculous fear of giving offence to the natives, they have forbidden the use of the Scriptures or any extracts from them, though the moral lessons of the Gospel are read by all Hindoos who can get hold of them, without scruple, and with much attention; and though their exclusion is tantamount to excluding all moral instruction from their schools, the Hindu sacred writings having nothing of the kind, and, if they had, being shut up from the majority of the people by the double fence of a dead language, and an actual prohibition to read them, as too holy for common eyes or ears. The defects of the latter will appear when I have told you that the actual state of Hindu and Mussulman literature, mutatis mutandis, very nearly resembles what the literature of Europe was before the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and Bacon. The Mussulmans take their logic from Aristotle, filtered through many successive translations and commentaries, and their metaphysical system is professedly derived from Plato, (“Filatoun”). The Hindus have systems not very dissimilar from these, though, I am told, of greater length and more intricacy; but the studies in which they spend most of their time are the acquisition of the Sanskrit, and the endless refinements of its grammar, prosody, and poetry. Both have the same natural philosophy, which is also that of Aristotle in zoology and botany, and Ptolemy in astronomy, for which the Hindus have forsaken their more ancient notions of the seven seas, the six earths, and the flat base of Padalon, supported on the back of a tortoise. By the science which they now possess they are some of them able to foretell an eclipse, or compose an almanac; and many of them derive some little pecuniary advantage from pretensions to judicial astrology. In medicine and chemistry they are just sufficiently advanced to talk of substances being moist, dry, hot, &c. in the third or fourth degree; to dissuade from letting blood or physicking on a Tuesday, or under a particular aspect of the heavens, and to be eager in their pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of immortality.
The task of enlightening the studious youth of such a nation would seem to be a tolerably straightforward one. But though, for the college in Calcutta, (not Bishop’s College, remember, but the Sanskrit, or Hindu College,) an expensive set of instruments has been sent out, and it seems intended that the natural sciences should be studied there, the managers of the present institution take care that their boys should have as little time as possible for such pursuits, by requiring from them all, without exception, a laborious study of Sanskrit, and all the useless, and worse than useless, literature of their ancestors. A good deal of this has been charged (and in some little degree charged with justice) against the exclusive attention paid to Greek and logic, till lately, in Oxford. But in Oxford we have never been guilty (since a better system was known in the world at large) of teaching the physics of Aristotle, however we may have paid an excessive attention to his metaphysics and dialectics.
In Benares, however, I found in the institution supported by Government a professor lecturing on astronomy after the system of Ptolemy and Albunazar, while one of the most forward boys was at the pains of casting my horoscope; and the majority of the school were toiling at Sanskrit grammar. And yet the day before, in the same holy city, I had visited another college, founded lately by a wealthy Hindu banker, and entrusted by him to the management of the Church Missionary Society, in which, besides a grammatical knowledge of the Hindusthanee language, as well as Persian and Arabic, the senior boys could pass a good examination in English grammar, in Hume’s History of England, Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues, the use of the globes, and the principal facts and moral precepts of the Gospel, most of them writing beautifully in the Persian and very tolerably in the English character, and excelling most boys I have met with in the accuracy and readiness of their arithmetic. The English officer who is now in charge of the Benares Vidalaya is a clever and candid young man, and under him I look forward to much improvement. . . . . . Ram Mohan Roy, a learned native, who has sometimes been called, though I fear without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against this system last year in a paper which he sent me to be put into Lord Amherst’s hands, and which, for its good English, good sense, and forcible arguments, is a real curiosity, as coming from an Asiatic. I have not since been in Calcutta, and know not whether any improvement has occurred in consequence; but from the unbounded attachment to Sanskrit literature displayed by some of those who chiefly manage those affairs, I have no great expectation of the kind. Of the value of the acquirements which so much is sacrificed to retain I can only judge from translations, and they certainly do not seem to me worth picking out of the rubbish under which they were sinking. Some of the poetry of the Mahabarat I am told is good, and I think a good deal of the Ramayuna pretty. But no work has yet been produced which even pretends to be authentic history. No useful discoveries in science are, I believe, so much as expected; and I have no great sympathy with those students who value a worthless tract merely because it calls itself old, or a language which teaches nothing, for the sake of its copiousness and intricacy. If I were to run wild after oriental learning I should certainly follow that of the Mussulmans, whose histories seem really very much like those of Europe, and whose poetry, so far as I am yet able to judge, has hardly had justice done to it in the ultra flowery translations which have appeared in the West. But after all, I will own that my main quarrel with the institutions which I have noticed, is their needless and systematic exclusion of the Gospels, since they not only do less good than they might have done, but are actually, in my opinion, productive of serious harm, by awakening the dormant jealousy of the native against the schools which pursue a different system.
During my long journey through the northern half of this vast country, I have paid all the attention I could spare to a topic on which Schlegel bitterly reproves the English for their inattention to, the architectural antiquities of Hindostan. I had myself heard much of these before I set out, and had met with many persons both in Europe, and at Calcutta (where nothing of the kind exists) who spoke of the present natives of India as a degenerate race, whose inability to rear such splendid piles was a proof that these last belong to a remote antiquity. I have seen, however, enough to convince me, both that the Indian masons and architects of the present day only want patrons sufficiently wealthy, or sufficiently zealous, to do all which their ancestors have done; and that there are very few structures here which can, on any satisfactory grounds, be referred to a date so early as the greater part of our own cathedrals. Often in Upper Hindostan, and still more frequently in Rajpootana and Malwah, I have met with new and unfinished shrines, cisterns, and ghats, as beautifully carved, and as well proportioned as the best of those of an earlier date. And though there are many buildings and ruins which exhibit a most venerable appearance, there are several causes in this country which produce this appearance prematurely. In the first instance, we ourselves have a complex impression made on us by the sight of edifices so distant from our own country, and so unlike whatever we have seen there. We multiply, as it were, the geographical and moral distance into the chronological, and can hardly persuade ourselves that we are contemporaries with an object so far removed in every other respect. Besides this, however, the finest masonry in these climates is sorely tried by the alternate influence of a pulverizing sun, and a continued three months’ rain. The wild fig-tree (peepul, or ficus religiosa,) which no Hindoo can root out, or even lop without a deadly sin, soon sows its seeds, and fixes its roots in the joints of the arching, and being of rapid growth at the same time, in a very few years increases its picturesque and antique appearance, and secures its eventual destruction; lastly, no man in this country repairs or completes what his father has begun, preferring to begin something else, by which his own name may be remembered. Accordingly, in Dacca are many fine ruins, which at first impressed me with a great idea of their age. Yet Dacca is a modern city, founded, or at least raised from insignificance under Shah Jehanguire in A.D. 1608; and the tradition of the place is, that these fine buildings were erected by European architects in the service of the then governor. At Benares, the principal temple has an appearance so venerable that one might suppose it to have stood unaltered ever since the Greta Yug, and that Menu and Capila had performed austerities within its precincts. Yet it is historically certain that all the Hindoo temples of consequence in Benares were pulled down by Aurungzebe, the contemporary of Charles the Second, and that the present structure must have been raised since that time. The observatories of Benares, Delhi, and Jyepoor, I heard spoken of in the carelessness of conversation, not only as extremely curious in themselves, (which they certainly are,) but as monuments of the ancient science of the Hindoos. All three, however, are known to be the work of the Raja Jye Singh, who died in 1742.A remote antiquity is, with better reason, claimed for some idols of black-stone, and elegant columns of the same material, which have been collected in different parts of the districts of Rhotas, Bulnem, &c. These belong to the religion of a sect (the Buddhists) of which no remains are now found in those provinces. But I have myself seen images exactly similar in the newly-erected temples of the Jains, a sect of the Buddhists, still wealthy and numerous in Guzerât, Rajpootana, and Malwah: and in a country where there is literally no history, it is impossible to say how long since or how lately they may have lost their ground in the more eastern parts of Gundwana. In the wilds which I have lately been traversing, at Chittore Ghur more particularly, there are some very beautiful buildings, of which the date was obviously assigned at random, and which might be 500 or 1000, or 150 years old, for all their present guardians know about the matter. But it must always be borne in mind, that 1000 years are as easily said as ten, and that in the mouth of a Cicerone they are sometimes thought to sound rather better. The oldest things which I have seen, of which the date could be at all ascertained, are some detached blocks of marble, with inscriptions, but of no appalling remoteness; and two remarkable pillars of black mixed metal, in a Patan fort near Delhi, and at Cuttab-Minar, in the same neighbourhood; both covered with inscriptions, which nobody can now read, but both mentioned in Mussulman history as in their present situation, at the time when the “believers” conquered Delhi, about A.D. 1000. But what is this to the date of the Parthenon? or how little can these trifling relics bear comparison with the works of Greece and Egypt! Ellora and Elephanta I have not yet seen; I can believe all which is said of their size and magnificence; but they are without date or inscription; they are, I understand, not mentioned, even incidentally, in any Sanscrit manuscript. Their images, &c. are the same with those now worshipped in every part of India, and there have been many Rajas and wealthy individuals in every age of Indian history, who have possessed the means of carving a huge stone quarry into a cathedral. To our cathedrals, after all, they are, I understand, very inferior in size. All which can be known is, that Elephanta must probably have been begun (whether it was ever finished seems very doubtful) before the arrival of the Portuguese at Bombay; and that Ellora may reasonably be concluded to have been erected in a time of peace under a Hindoo prince, and therefore either before the first Afghan conquest, or subsequently during the recovered independence of that part of Candeish and the Deckan. This is no great matter certainly, and it may be older; but all I say is, that we have no reason to conclude it is so, and the impression on my mind decidedly accords with Mill, that the Hindoos after all, though they have doubtlessly existed from very great antiquity, as an industrious and civilized people, had made no great progress in the arts, and took all their notions of magnificence from the models furnished by their Mahommedan conquerors.
We are now engaged, as you are aware, in a very expensive and tedious war, in countries whither the Mahommedans were never able to penetrate. This tediousness, together with the partial reverses which the armies have sustained, has given rise to all manner of evil reports among the people of Hindostan, and to a great deal of grumbling and discontent among the English. After all, I cannot myself perceive that there is any body to blame. Every body cried out for war in the first instance, as necessary to the honour of the Government, and murmured greatly against Lord Amherst, for not being more ready than he was to commence it. Of the country which we were to invade no intelligence could be obtained; and in fact our armies have had little to contend with, except a most impracticable and unknown country. It is unfortunate, however, that after a year and a half of war we should, except in point of dear-bought experience, be no further advanced than at the beginning, and there are very serious grounds for apprehending, that if any great calamity occurred in the East, a storm would follow on our north-western and western frontier, which, with our present means, it would be by no means easy to allay. Something, however, has been gained; if we can do little harm to the Birmans, it is evident, from their conduct in the field, that, beyond their own jungles, they can do still less harm to us. And the inhabitants of Calcutta, who, about this time last year, were asking leave to send their property into the citadel, and packing off their wives and children across the river, will hardly again look forward to seeing their war-boats on the salt-water lake, or the golden umbrellas of their chiefs erected on the top of St. John’s Cathedral. I was then thought little better than a madman for venturing to Dacca. Now the members of government are called all manner of names, because their troops have found unexpected difficulty in marching to Ummerapoora.
For me there are very many ingredients of happiness; much to be seen, much to be learned, and much, I almost fear too much, to be done or attempted. I have been hitherto so fortunate as to be on the best possible terms with the Government, and on very friendly terms with nine out of ten of my few clergy; and in my present journey I have, I hope, been the means of doing some good, both to them and their congregations. Indeed my journey has been perfectly professional; and, though I certainly did not shut my eyes or ears by the way, I have been at no place which was not either a scene of duty, or in the direct and natural way to one. And every where I am bound to say I have met with great kindness and attention from the local magistrates, down to the European soldiers, and from the Rajas and Kings down to the poor native Christians.