m 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 079 572 032 
 
 
 DATE 
 
 DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (cBBP^ 
 
 mf 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN USA 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924079572032 
 
In compliance with current 
 
 copyriglit law, Cornell University 
 
 Library produced this 
 
 replacement volume on paper 
 
 that meets the ANSI Standard 
 
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 irreparably deteriorated original. 
 
 1997 
 
3>S 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 The Carnegie Corporation 
 
THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES 
 OF INDIA 
 
THE 
 
 NORTH-WESTERN 
 PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 THEIR HISTORY, ETHNOLOGY, AND 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CROOKE 
 
 BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE (RETIRED) 
 
 WITH 
 SIXTEBX FOLL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 
 
 METHUEN & CO. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 1897 
 
PREFACE 
 
 nPHIS book is an attempt to tell the story of one of the 
 greatest of our Indian Provinces from the social point 
 of view. If some space has been given to the geography of 
 the country, it has been intended to explain the environment 
 of the people. The sketch of the history up to the establish- 
 ment of our rule has been written with the same object. I 
 have then endeavoured to discuss briefly some of the chief 
 social problems which the Government has attempted to 
 solve — the repression of crime, the crusade against filth and 
 disease, the relief of famine, of the depressed classes, the 
 development of agriculture and trade. 
 
 This is followed by an account of the people themselves, 
 largely based on information collected in the course of the 
 Ethnographical Survey of the Province, which has been 
 recently completed under my superintendence. I have tried 
 to describe briefly the more interesting tribes, and to show 
 what are the religious beliefs of the peasantry. This is a 
 subject which I have dealt with more fully from the stand- 
 point of Folklore in another book. Lastly, I have described 
 how the revenue is " settled " and collected, how the peasant 
 is protected from extortion, how he farms the land and makes 
 his living. 
 
 I have used throughout information stored in a mass of 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Blue Books — Census, Settlement, and Administrative Re- 
 ports, a body of literature practically beyond the ken of 
 English readers ; and I have largely used information derived 
 from Sir W. W. Hunter's Imperial Gazetteer, and those of 
 the North-Western Provinces and Oudh prepared under the 
 orders of the Local Government. For access to many of 
 these, I have to thank the authorities of the India Office 
 Library. 
 
 For the illustrations I am indebted to Mr J. O'Neal and 
 Sergeant Wallace, R.E., of the Rurki College. 
 
 Since this book has been in type the true site of Kapila- 
 vastu, the birth-place of the Buddha (p. 66\ has been dis- 
 covered by Dr Fuhrer, in the Nepal Tarai. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The name of the Province now unsuitable — the scene of important historical 
 events — its extent — the river basins — the botmdaries — ^readjustment of its 
 frontiers— <:ompared with Egypt — its great divisions — the climate of tropical 
 intensity — the Himalayan tract — its productions, people, and scenery — the 
 Siwalik range — the Dehra D(in valley — the Tarai and BhSbar — the Vin- 
 dhyan and Kaimfir ranges — the character and scenery of the southern 
 hills — ^the great Plain, its character and scenery — the great rivers — the 
 Khadir and the BUngar — ^the ravine country — the Du4b, its appearance 
 and scenery — the seasons — the teeming village life — the sterile tracts — the 
 Usar plains — reserves for fuel and fodder — destruction of trees — the forests 
 — the sugar-cane crop — the rice — the groves — the tanks — the lakes — the 
 flora — the fauna — large game : the tiger, the leopard, the wolf — snakes — 
 the black buck, other deer — the soils — the climate — fever — storms . . 1-57 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROVINCE UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 The Aryan colonisation — the Dasyus — the origin of the Hindu polity and of 
 
 caste the triumph of Brahmanism — the conversion of the Dravidian races 
 
 the reformed Brahmanism— the two great epics — the rise of Buddhism 
 
 — Asoka— Megasthenes— the influence of Greece — the Indo-Skythian in- 
 vasions the Gupta dynasty — the downfall of Buddhism — the Chinese 
 
 pilgrims — the beginnings of Jainism— the uprising of the servile races — 
 condition of things in the seventh century — first inroads of the Musalmslns 
 the kingdoms of Delhi, Kanauj, and Mahoba — Shihab-ud-dln — the archi- 
 tecture of the Hindus — MahmM of Ghazni — Marco Polo — the movement ^' 
 of the Rajputs to the east— the Slave dynasty— the house of Khilji— the 
 raid of Timflr— Sikandar Lodi— the Mughals— B4bar— the kingdom of 
 Jaunpur — the Mughal conquest — Shir { Shah — Humayun — the reign of 
 Akbar and the condition of the country in his time — the revenue system — 
 his attitude towards Hindus — the failure of the Mughal government — the 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER n— continued 
 
 FAGB 
 
 ministry, the aristocracy, the Church — the rdgn of Jahinglr, of ShSh- 
 jah4n, of Avuangzeb — the downfall of the Empire — the kingdom of Ondh 
 — the Rohillas — ^the Marhattas — the jats — Mubammadan architecture — the 
 European adventurers — the Begam Samru — ^the Skinner and Gardner 
 estates — the conquest by the British and the formation of the Province S^'''*4 
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 THE PROVINCE UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 The law of IslSm — mode of trial — corruption of the courts — official morality — 
 canals under the Mughals — state of the roads — the camps of the Emperors 
 — anarchy on the break up of the Empire — Sikh raids — desolation of Rohil- 
 khand — the beginnings of the British rule — the freebooting Pinddris — 
 control of the police — causes of failure in police administration — Thagi 
 — road poisoning — secret poisoning — infanticide — infanticide a cause of 
 violent crime — dacoity — ^the criminal gipsy tribes — the repression of 
 the Sansiyas — canal irrigation — the Upper Ganges Canal — the Lower 
 Ganges Canal — the Eastern Jumna Canal — the Agra Canal — the 
 Betwa Canal — the SSxda Canal — the canal officers — protection from 
 famine by means of artificial irrigation — the fever mortality — ^waste 
 of canal water — Bardwin fever — education — the extent of illiteracy 
 — the Babu — the nativepre ss— want of a popular literature — the illiter- 
 acy of the masses — female education — medical and surgical relief — 
 ophthalmic surgery — distribution of quinine — sanitation — the city popula- 
 tion — the crusade against filth — village sanitation — extension of communi- 
 cations — the roads — the increase of travelling — the revolution in trade — 
 the old trading houses — famine — famines in the period preceding our nile 
 — famines after cm: conquest — the principles of famine relief — the con- 
 gested districts — the District and Municipal Boards — the pohcy of de- 
 centralisation — the Mutiny — its causes — the heroes of the revolt — the 
 incapacity of the rebel leaders — religious riots — the crusade against cow- 
 killing — general result of British administration — employment of natives — 
 the post office — the feeling of the people .... 125-194 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 The earlier colonists — the Nigas — the Dasytis — the affinities of the Dravidians 
 — the Negritic element — the submerged continent — the Skythian immi- 
 grants — the age of stone — the essential unity of the present race — the 
 
 evidence of anthropometry — the Brahmans and Rajputs a mixed race 
 
 — the theory of caste — caste based on function— the example given by the 
 
 viii 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER VJ— continued 
 
 PACE 
 
 Br&bmans — ^the people classified according to their traditional occupations 
 — the village menials — the decay of handicrafts — the creation of new groups 
 — the vagrant tribes — the Baheliya — ^the Nat — the criminal gipsies — the 
 BengMi — the Kanjar — the Dom — the Thiru — the pure Dravidian fringe — 
 the Korwas — Northern India as a field for the ethnologist — depreciation of 
 labour— the Sfldra — village and city life — the size of the village— house- 
 room — urban and rural mortality — the conditions of marriage — infant 
 marriage — widow marriage — fecundity of the people — the occupations of 
 women and children — industrial aspect of rural life . . . 195-233 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 The two great religions — Brihmanism and Isl&m — Buddhism-rjainism — 
 Sikhism — the Parsis — the Jews — the Aryas — Christianity — the external 
 characteristics of the main religions — the definition of a Hindu — 
 BrShmanism defined — Animism defined — the faiths of the people 
 classified — the beliefs of the peasant — the low level of social morality — 
 his theory of disease and death — his pilgrimages — Saivisra — the Vaishna\'a 
 cultus — S^tism — the growth of sects — the spread of BrShmanism among 
 the forest tribes — the worship of saints and martyrs — tribal godlings — 
 the Fakirs — ^the reformed sects — the Rimanandi — the Nanaksbahi — the 
 RS6d4si — Hinduism in its general aspect — its power "of self-defence — 
 Islam in India — causes of the increase of Muhammadanism — distribution 
 of Musalmans — the sects of IsUlm — the Shiah — the Suimi — the social life 
 of the people — the Zamlndar — the house — the hut — furniture — fashion in 
 dress— ^sence of privacy in village life — stagnation of life — amusement — 
 the food of the peasant — ^his clothing — the depressed classes — rise in the 
 condition of the peasant class . ... 234-279 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 The village community — local sub-divisions— survivals of the primitive con- 
 stitution — the Mauza — waste land— the village mark — the size of the village 
 — the Raja and the TalukdSr of Oudh— the Oudh settlement — Mathura 
 a land of peasant proprietors — the recuperative power of the people — the 
 evils of the village system— the village council— the headman — payment of 
 revenue through the post oflSce — the power of procuring partition — the 
 joint responsibility for the revenue demand — the Mahal — State ownership 
 of the soil— Shir Shah and his settlement — Todar Mali — the settlement 
 
 b ' ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER VI— continued 
 
 PACK 
 
 under Akbar — forms of tenure— the Zamlndari tenure — the Pattidari tenure 
 — the village records — the new system of revision of settlement — the Per- 
 manent Settlement — attempts to apply it to the Province — share of the 
 produce taken as revenue— pressure of the early assessments — the sale of 
 landed property — the Court of Wards — assessment on rates of produce — 
 decentralisation of the district ..... 280-319 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 The population dependent on agriculture — the pressure of the population on 
 
 the soil — the area of the holding — the margin available for cultivation — 
 
 double cropping — immigration of the rural population into the towns — 
 
 / conditions of city life — the growth of cities — new industries — emigration — 
 
 •" religious migration — migration of women — foreign migration — efficiency 
 of native agriculture — the lack of enterprise of the farmer — adoption of 
 new machinery — the native plough — the use of manure — the exhaustion of 
 
 ^ the soil — the average produce — planting of waste lands — canal and well 
 irrigation — advances for agricultural improvements — agricultural banks — 
 provision of seed grain — rise in the value of food grains — the rise in rents 
 — rural indebtedness — the methods of the usurer — alleged extravagance of 
 the peasant — litigiousness — the protection of the peasant — the rent law of 
 the North- Western Provinces — of Oudh — classes of tenants — ejectment — 
 enhancement of rents — the fixation of rents — serfage — the budget of the 
 peasant — want of utilisation of by-products — the building of wells — the 
 petite culture . . ..... 320-355 
 
 INDEX ... . . . 357.361 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Pillar of the State, a Jat Cultivator . . Frontispiece 
 
 Bhotiya Buddhists 
 
 II 
 
 An Agariya Metal Smelter 
 
 i8 
 
 A KORWA . 
 
 59 
 
 AJat . 
 
 117 
 
 Group of Mallah Boatmen 
 
 167 
 
 Group of Kols . 
 
 • . • • 197 
 
 Baheliya Shikaris 
 
 212 
 
 DOMS 
 
 21S 
 
 Group of Korwas 
 
 218 
 
 A VaISHNAVA FAKtR 
 
 247 
 
 FakIr's Hermitage 
 
 253 
 
 A Ramanandi FakIr . 
 
 • 255 
 
 Dravidian Cultivators 
 
 280 
 
 Brahmans, with Registers of 
 
 Clients .... 327 
 
 A Banya Grain Merchant 
 
 343 
 
THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES 
 OF INDIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 A WIDE open Plain, the alluvial valley of the Ganges, 
 Jumna and their tributaries, with a slight uniform slope 
 to the east and south in the direction of the course of the great 
 river seaward towards the Bay of Bengal ; a tract to the 
 north including some of the highest mountains in the world, 
 and separated by a series of valleys from a lower range 
 which bounds the alluvial Plain ; to the south of the Jumna 
 a poorer country, rising from the river bank to the edge of 
 the Vindhyan plateau, part of the backbone of Central India 
 — such is the country known by the clumsy and inappropriate 
 name of the North- Western Provinces and Oudh. 
 
 This is a name which comes down from the time when 
 our arms had not yet crossed the Jumna and the centre 
 of gravity of our power in northern India lay in Bengal 
 and Calcutta. Times have changed since then, and now 
 the official title of the Province is more unsuitable than ever. 
 
 We have been, in truth, unfortunate in our provincial 
 nomenclature, in so far that it has little historical continuity. 
 It is only natural that the name of Assam, for instance, a 
 newly occupied country, should be little more than three 
 centuries old. But Panjab, though it represents the old 
 Sanskrit Panchanada, "the land of the five rivers," is a 
 Persian word. Bengal, the land of the Vanga tribe, is not 
 found in common use before the eleventh century; Bombay, 
 the shrine of the goddess Mamba Devi, is at least as old 
 as the middle of the fifteenth, and Madras, the original 
 
 A I 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 meaning of which is obscure, dates from the middle of the 
 seventeenth century. While Wessex, Sussex and many 
 other English localities hand down the names of early colo- 
 nists, there is here no trace of the kingdom of Panchaia in 
 the centre or of Kosala to the east. It was the Muhamma- 
 dans who for religious motives were most anxious to discard 
 the old Hindu names. In some cases, as when they re- 
 christened the old Prayaga as Allahabad, they succeeded in 
 obliterating the ancient title save in the lips of priests and 
 pilgrims ; but few would now recognise Agra in Akbarabid, 
 Delhi as Shahjahanabad, or Gorakhpur as Muazzamabad. 
 With us the loss of the old names has been more the result 
 of lack of historical instinct than from any desire to widen 
 the gulf between the past and the present 
 
 Yet it would be hard to find a really suitable name for this 
 rather heterogeneous slice of the Empire. It occupies pretty 
 much the same area as that which the Musalmans called 
 Hindustan, the seat of the early Hindus, who knew the land 
 between the two rivers as Madhyadesa, " the middle land," 
 or Mesopotamia. The western part and the adjoining por- 
 tion of the Panjab they called Punyabhftmi, " the holy land " : 
 Aryavarta or Brahmavarta, " the land of the Aryans and 
 their gods." The term Hindustan has now been extended 
 by the geographers to denote the whole north of the penin- 
 sula, as contrasted with the Deccan (Dakkhin), the southern 
 country, or even to all that we now include in India, exclusive 
 of Burma. In the early days of our occupation we called it 
 the government of Agra after the Mughal capital; and if we 
 were now to rename it it would be difficult to suggest a better 
 title. The more ancient Hindu names are too indefinite and 
 have passed too completely from the memories of the people 
 ever to be again revived. 
 
 Of all the provinces of the Empire none is of greater 
 interest than this. It is the veritable garden of India, with 
 a soil of unrivalled fertility, for the most part protected from 
 the dangers of famine by a magnificent series of irrigation 
 works : occupied by some of the finest and most industrious 
 of the native races : possessing in its roads and railways an 
 
 2 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 unusually perfect system of internal communications. Within 
 its borders or close to its western frontier was the earliest 
 settlement of the Hindu race, and here its religion, laws and 
 social polity were organised. Beneath the ruins of Hasti- 
 napura and Ajudhya lie the remains of the two ancient 
 capitals commemorated in the two famous national epics. 
 Here Buddhism supplanted Brahmanism, only in its turn 
 to succumb to the older faith, and to sink into such utter 
 insignificance in the land of its birth that it has hardly 
 retained a single adherent, while it has given a religion to 
 half the human race. Here are nearly all the shrines of the 
 discredited creed, the scenes of the birth, the preaching, the 
 death of the Teacher. But since they were visited by the 
 old Chinese pilgrims they have fallen into utter neglect, and 
 it is only within the last generation that the sites of most of 
 them have been identified. The interest which some of the 
 modern Buddhists have recently shown in the temple at 
 Gaya may perhaps by and by extend to places like Kusi- 
 nagara, Sravasti, Samath or Sankisa. 
 
 In later times the country was the prize of one conqueror 
 after another — Ghaznivide, Pathan, Mughal and Sikh, Mar- 
 hatta and Englishmen. Agra yielded to none of the other 
 Mughal capitals in magnificence ; at Jaunpur and Lucknow 
 two subordinate Musalmin dynasties reigned, which pro- 
 foundly influenced its history. This was the ground on 
 which the final struggle for Empire took place, in which the 
 British came out victorious. Here was the chief scene of the 
 Sepoy Mutiny which resulted in the final downfall of the 
 royal family of Delhi, in the course of which Englishmen and 
 Englishwomen shared a common fate at the hands of a faith- 
 less soldiery, and the heroism of the imperial race, suddenly 
 driven to bay, was most nobly displayed. Yet curiously 
 enough, except where Jay Chand of Kanauj fell at the hands 
 of the invading MusalmSn, Shihabuddin, the battle near Agra 
 where Dara Shikoh was defeated by Aurangzeb and the 
 fights of the Mutiny, there is no important battle-field within 
 its boundaries. The rout of Humayun by the Afghan Shir 
 Shah occurred just beyond its eastern limits; the historic 
 
 3 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 field ot Panipat, where the fate of India was thrice decided, 
 lies a short distance beyond its border to the Avest. 
 
 Mere figures and small scale maps do little to help us to 
 realise the importance of the charge which the conditions of 
 our Indian Empire impose upon a small body of English 
 officers. It conveys little practical information to be told 
 that the area of the province is 107,503 square miles, and the 
 population 47^ millions. To put this in another way — the 
 total population is about the same as that of the whole 
 German Empire in an area rather smaller than that of Italy. 
 Its area is slightly less than that of the Transvaal, but be- 
 tween black men and white men President Kruger governs 
 only 800,000 souls, which would be smaller than the average 
 charge of an Indian Collector. The North- West Provinces 
 alone have a population little less than that of the United 
 Kingdom ; Oudh includes twice as many souls as Belgium, 
 which, again, has less people than one division, that of 
 Gorakhpur. The Lucknow division alone contains more 
 people than Ireland or Scotland, Sweden, Portugal or Hol- 
 land, Canada or Ceylon. One district, Basti, exceeds in 
 population New South Wales and New Zealand put together. 
 
 Geographically speaking, the Province may be said to 
 include the upper basins of three great rivers — the Ganges, 
 Jumna and GhSgra, and their tributaries. The two former 
 rising in the Native State of Garhwal at the extreme north- 
 west corner from the snows of the inner Himalaya, debouch 
 at once into the open plain through which they pass till 
 they join at Allahabad. Just beyond the eastern frontier, in 
 the province of Bihir, the united stream, henceforward known 
 as the Ganges, is met by three other great rivers. Of these 
 two, the Ghagra and the Gandak are also snow-fed, and after 
 passing through Nepal, pour their waters into the lower Plain, 
 the Ghagra with its tributary the Rapti draining Oudh and 
 Gorakhpur, while the Gandak only just touches the Province 
 to the east and then trends away through Bihar. The third 
 important river, the Son, is not like the others fed by the 
 snows. It drains part of the Vindhyan plateau, and after 
 passing through a part of the Mirzapur district to the south- 
 
 4 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 east, sweeps round to meet the Ganges further on in its 
 course. 
 
 The boundaries of the Province nowhere exactly agree 
 with the physical conditions by which it is dominated ; its 
 limits, in fact, everywhere indicate that it was formed not on 
 ethnical or geographical considerations, but was the result of 
 historical influences. It does not follow to the north the 
 natural frontier of the lower Himalaya, because to the north- 
 west it includes a portion of the inner and higher range with 
 the intervening valleys, and on the extreme east it has sur- 
 rendered a part of the Tarii or malarious jungle at the foot 
 of the hills to Nepil. To the west and south its natural 
 limits would have been the Jumna ; but opposite Mathura 
 and Agra it includes patches of territory, which from a geo- 
 graphical point of view should form part of Rajputana, and 
 further south the Bundelkhand country, which on physical 
 and ethnical grounds would naturally be included among the 
 States of Central India. Its proper frontier to the east 
 would be either the river Ghagra or the Gandak. With the 
 former as its border it would lose a valuable part of Oudh 
 and Gorakhpur: with the latter it would gain from Bengal 
 a rich piece of Bihar. 
 
 Before long some readjustment of the Provincial adminis- 
 trations of northern India is inevitable, if only to relieve 
 Lower Bengal, which has an area equal to that of the United 
 Kingdom with the addition of a second Scotland, and a 
 population as great as that of the United States and Mexico 
 combined — a charge quite beyond the powers of any single 
 governor. Bengal will probably be relieved for the present 
 by combining the division of Chittagong to the east with 
 Assam. But sooner or later a more radical redistribution of 
 territory must be effected, and this will probably result in the 
 addition of the eastern districts of the North-West provinces 
 to the new Province of Bihar, which would then be as large 
 as a quarter of the German Empire with a population as 
 great as that of England and Wales. This tract will then be 
 physically and ethnically homogeneous and administered 
 under the same revenue system, that of the Permanent 
 
 5 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Settlement We shall lose, by the severance of Benares and 
 the neighbouring districts, some of the most fertile parts of 
 the Province; but the relief to the already overburdened 
 Local Government will be welcome. 
 
 The present frontier, again, is neither ethnical nor linguistic. 
 To include all the Hindi-speaking peoples it would be neces- 
 sary to absorb the eastern Panjab and Bihir with a still 
 larger area annexed from RajputSna and Central India ; and 
 men of the same race are found both east and west of the 
 Jumna and Gandak and north and south of the Ganges. But 
 it is only in newly settled countries like Canada and western 
 America that administrative divisions can be marked oiif by 
 straight lines on a map, and the limits of a Province formed 
 on the ruins of ancient empires must conform to historical 
 or political considerations and to none other. 
 
 Looking at the country merely from the physical point of 
 view, it may perhaps be best compared with Egypt — the 
 river system of the Jumna and Ganges representing the Nile, 
 the Arabian and Lybian hills, the mountain barrier to the 
 north and the Vindyan and Kaimur ranges to the south. 
 But the Nile valley with an area of ii,000 square miles is 
 only about the size of the division of Rohilkhand and its 
 population is about equal to that of the Faizib^d division. 
 In other respects the contrast is no less striking. The Indian 
 province is ours whether for good or ill by right of conquest ; 
 no foreign power can or does claim rights of co-dominion with 
 us. We have no frontier to guard against a Khalifa and his 
 Dervishes ; there are no jealous neighbours and we are quite 
 beyond the dangers arising from European statecraft. But 
 in the antiquity of the relics of an ancient civilisation there 
 is no comparison. The monumental history of Egypt begins 
 some forty centuries before the beginning of our era; the 
 oldest building in northern India cannot be fixed with cer- 
 tainty before the time of Asoka, who lived about the era of 
 the first Punic war. We have nothing which can be com- 
 pared with the Pyramids, the temples like those of Karnak 
 or the rock sepulchres with their wall paintings and sculptures 
 which so vividly represent the life of those early times. 
 
 6 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 The Province, as a whole, includes perhaps greater diversi- 
 ties of physical aspect, scenery and climate than any other 
 country of the same area on the face of the earth. The only 
 country with which a comparison is possible is Peru, with its 
 Sierra or lofty mountain tract and the Montana, or region of 
 tropical forests in the valley of the Amazon. To the north 
 are stupendous mountains covered with eternal snow; be- 
 neath them a lower range with a more equable climate, 
 clothed with dense jungle and abundant vegetation ; below 
 these, again, a line of malarious woodland and vast savannahs 
 of grass and reeds. Passing these we reach the alluvial Plain, 
 populated almost up to the limits of subsistence by a most 
 industrious population, subject to a tropical climate, swept 
 by winds at one time of the year whose breath is as the 
 breath of a furnace, at another gasping under the damp heat 
 of the rainy season, at a third chilled by the sharp touch of 
 frost ; and beyond these, again, clusters of low hills covered 
 with scrub jungle and exposed in summer to the fiercest heat 
 of the sun. 
 
 The Province may then naturally be divided into three 
 tracts — the northern mountain r^ion : the central Plain : 
 the southern hill country. The following table illustrates 
 their varied conditions : — 
 
 Tract. 
 
 Districts. 
 
 Area in Square 
 JIUes. 
 
 Density of 
 
 Population per 
 
 square mile. 
 
 Rainfall in 
 inches. 
 
 Himalayan 
 
 Plains — 
 
 (a) Submontane, . . 
 (6) Upper Duib, . . 
 (c) Central Duib, 
 Id) North Central, . 
 (e) South Central, 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 5 
 6 
 
 7 
 IS 
 
 13,973 
 
 l8,202 
 
 10,133 
 10,139 
 14,166 
 25,300 
 
 81 
 
 486 
 509 
 470 
 
 499 
 652 
 
 62". 13 
 
 46".43 
 3i:.2S 
 28".38 
 38^.29 
 38".42 
 
 Plains, Total, 
 Southern, 
 
 40 
 6 
 
 77,890 
 15,639 
 
 221 
 
 37-.5. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 These figures bring out the enormous predominance in 
 area and population of the Plains as compared with the rest 
 of the Province. Some of the southern districts, such as 
 Mirzapur and part of Bundelkhand, include a hilly tract on 
 the skirts of the central Plain ; but this fact does not to any 
 considerable degree affect the figures, which show that the 
 Plain tract includes about 72 per cent, of the area and 89 per 
 cent, of the total population. 
 
 This enables us to dispose of a misapprehension which 
 very generally prevails among English people, and is mainly 
 based on the inexpressive title of the province. It is very 
 commonly supposed that when an officer is lucky enough to 
 escape the Bengal delta, or the less favoured Presidencies of 
 Madras or Bombay, he necessarily spends most of his time 
 in the Hills. The globe-trotter sees him here in the cold 
 weather enjoying an excellent climate and pleasant surround- 
 ings, and wonders what is the justification for the higher 
 rates of pay which the Anglo-Indian enjoys as compared 
 with officials of a similar grade in Europe. But as a matter 
 of fact, the average official has little concern with the Hills. 
 The mountainous tract to the south contains no health 
 stations, and the heat of Bundelkhand is even more trying 
 than that of the Plains north of the Jumna. In the Hima- 
 layan tract there are two leading health resorts, Mussoorie 
 and Naini TSl, the latter the headquarters of the Provincial 
 Government during the more unhealthy season. Besides a 
 small number of Secretaries and the normal civil staff of 
 these Hill districts, there is a considerable influx of visitors, 
 ladies and children, and those officers who can be spared 
 from regimental duty, or civil officials who are unable to 
 utilise short leave for a visit to England. But the number 
 of officials who are able to retire to the Hills periodically, or 
 are permanently posted there, is very small. 
 
 The ordinary servant of the Crown, military or civil, 
 spends most of his time in the Plains or in the southern 
 hill country. Most of the European and native troops are 
 posted in the Plains, at great cantonments like Meerut, 
 Lucknow, Bareilly, or Allahabad. The High Court sits 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 permanently in the Plains, and there the chief offices of the 
 Provincial Government are established. Only a very small 
 proportion of the executive staff, magistrates, police officers, 
 engineers, school inspectors. Custom officers, and so on, serve 
 anywhere but in the Plains. It is, in short, the great tropical 
 Plain which dominates everything ; those parts of the terri- 
 tory ruled by the Lieutenant-Governor which lie beyond it 
 are in all but mere area inconsiderable ; from the political 
 and executive point of view they are distinctly a negligeable 
 quantity. Any candidate for the public service who selects 
 this Province in the expectation that he will spend most 
 of his service in an excellent climate will be sorely dis- 
 appointed. 
 
 Taking up these three physical divisions of the Province, 
 we have first the Himalayan tract, which includes three dis- 
 tricts — GarhwS.1, Almora and Naini TSl, all under the charge 
 of the Commissioner of Kumaun. Of these, two districts, 
 GarhwSl and Kumaun, are well within the higher mountain 
 zone ; while Naini TSl includes the tract of malarious swamp 
 and jungle at the foot of the lower hills, and between them 
 and the Plains, which is known as the TarSi and Bhibar, and 
 must be separately described. Of the purely mountainous 
 districts, a mass of tangled peaks and valleys, it is difficult to 
 give a general sketch. It includes some of the most lofty 
 mountains in the world, clothed with eternal snow. Nanda 
 Devi, consecrated in the Hindu faith as the guardian goddess 
 of the range, soars to a height of 25,661 feet ; Kamet and 
 Badarinith are respectively 25,413 and 22,901 feet above sea 
 level. These are a little lower than Mount Everest, the 
 giant of the eastern part of the range. But they are slightly 
 higher than the South American Andes, and we have to go 
 to the Pamir or Karakorum range to find a worthy rival to 
 these magnificent peaks. 
 
 This region roughly falls into three divisions. First, we 
 have the outer Himalaya, with a height of from 5000 to 8500 
 feet, which rise abruptly from the lower Plain, and then sink 
 sharply to the north into deep and narrow valleys. Here 
 the clouds rising from the ocean first strike the mountain 
 
 9 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 barrier and produce an excessive rainfall, the general average 
 being from 80 to 90 inches, about the same as that of the 
 Scotch Highlands, but all concentrated within little more 
 than a quarter of the year. There is little arable soil, and 
 the climate, except on the breezy summits of the hills, is 
 malarious and unhealthy ; population is scanty, and the 
 country is mostly covered with dense forest. Behind these 
 heights are lower hills and wider valleys, receiving a rainfall 
 little more than half that of the outer barrier. Here cultiva- 
 tion is more dense and cultivation more extensive. Behind 
 these, again, are the giant peaks and higher valleys, which 
 during the winter are impassable from snow, and in the 
 summer are inhabited by a scanty nomadic population of 
 cowherds, wood-cutters, and Tibetan traders, who barter wool 
 and borax, and take back in exchange salt, cloth, and metals, 
 which are hauled up with infinite labour to these higher 
 levels from the marts in the lower country. 
 
 The mineral resources of this inaccessible land are prob- 
 ably great, but have been as yet imperfectly explored. In 
 Kumaun iron and copper abound, but the competition for 
 labour on tea-gardens and agriculture has nearly doubled the 
 price of grain ; hence the local iron is no longer able to com- 
 pete with imported supplies. The same is the case with the 
 copper mines, from which much was at one time expected. 
 The rude indigenous system of finding and refining the ore 
 has given way before the cheaper article from Europe. The 
 mines are too much isolated, too far from profitable markets, 
 worked by too inefficient methods, to make the industry 
 remunerative. It will need a more advanced plan of working 
 cheaper and more abundant labour, improved communica- 
 tions, before mining in Kumaun or Garhwal can be carried 
 on with success. 
 
 Gold in small quantities is found in the sands of the Alak- 
 nanda and other tributaries of the Ganges ; but as yet the 
 matrix has not been reached, and the process of collection is 
 extremely primitive and laborious. There is a small quantity 
 of gold imported by Bhotiya traders from the Tibetan hills, 
 a fact which was probably the origin of the fable of the gold- 
 
 10 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 bearing ants told by Herodotus and other early writers. 
 The trade is checked by the prevailing superstition that no 
 large nugget should be removed because it belongs to the 
 genii of the place — an idea which crops up everywhere 
 throughout the whole range of folk-lore. 
 
 The European tea-planter has. gradually forced his way 
 some distance up the lower slopes ; but, as regards climate, 
 this region is distinctly inferior to Assam : and it is highly 
 improbable that in the tea industry it will ever secure a 
 leading position. 
 
 The inhabitants are few; but they thrive because their 
 wants are simple, and they derive some income from employ- 
 ment as wood-cutters, and bearers of litters for the European 
 visitors to the health resorts, and from the adventurous 
 Hindu pilgrims who throng to the famous shrines along the 
 upper course of the Ganges and its tributaries. A simple- 
 minded, hardy, cheery fellow, the hillman is in decided 
 contrast to the menial village serf of the Plains, debilitated 
 by fever and the rigour of his environment. But he has 
 little of the courage and martial spirit which makes the 
 Gurkha of Nepal one of the best of our native mercenaries. 
 We meet occasionally, at the foot of the hills, the quaint 
 figures of Bhotiya wanderers from Tibet, with their Mongo- 
 loid faces, squat figures and grotesque dress. These are 
 about the only adherents of the Buddhist faith likely to be 
 met with within the boundaries of the Province. 
 
 The scenery is everywhere beautiful in the extreme. No 
 one who has ever seen them will forget the view of the snows 
 at sunrise and sunset, as they glow with all the tints of opal 
 and of pearl against the northern sky. Bishop Heber writes 
 of the view from Bareilly: "The nearer hills are blue, and 
 in outline and tints resemble pretty closely, at this distance, 
 those which close in the valley of Clwyd. Above tliem rose 
 what might, in the present unfavourable atmosphere, have 
 been taken for clouds, had ' not their seat been so stationary, 
 and their outline so harsh and pyramidical, the patriarchs of 
 the continent, perhaps the' surviving ruins of a former world, 
 white and glistening as alabaster and even at this distance, 
 
 II 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 probably 150 miles, towering above the nearer and secondary 
 range, as much as these last (though said to be 7600 feet high) 
 are above the Plain on which we are standing. I felt intense 
 awe and delight in looking on them ; but the clouds closed 
 in again, as on the fairy castle of St John, and left us but 
 the former grey cold horizon, girding in the green plain of 
 Rohilkhand, and broken only by scattered tufts of pipal and 
 mango trees." ^ 
 
 Reaching the heights themselves, the view is not less 
 beautiful. From the top of China, which rises over the lake 
 and station of Naini TSl, we look over the lovely wooded 
 mountains of the Gagar range, clothed thick with oak and 
 pine, mingled with the gorgeous flowers of the rhododendron, 
 and thence to the forest of the Bhabar, which lies almost at 
 our feet ; beyond it the swamps of the Tarai, and then in tlae 
 dim distance the green plain of Rohilkhand. Turning to the 
 north we have a scene which only a poet or painter could 
 depict — a chaotic mass of mountains, thickly wooded hill 
 sides seamed with deep ravines, dark blue ranges piled one 
 beyond another ; and, as a background to the landscape, the 
 immense snowy peaks, never trodden by the foot of man ; 
 the evening falls and they fade slowly into the darkening 
 sky, peopled by innumerable stars. 
 
 So from Mussoorie, as the mists dissolve from the lowlands, 
 we have an unrivalled panorama of wood and silver streams 
 encircled by rocky or forest-covered hills, now glowing with 
 the aiiiber tints that accompany the fall of the leaf, now at 
 night lit by the fierce glare of a jungle fire, and here and 
 there in the distance the emerald green of rice or wheatfields. 
 Grander still is the first burst of the monsoon, when the 
 water-laden clouds from the ocean impinge on the mountain 
 barrier and pour a deluge over the lower hills, setting every 
 rivulet in flood, and sometimes bearing down the wooded hill 
 sides in a chaos of ruin. By and by the damp billows of 
 fog roll up from the valley and shroud the landscape in an 
 impenetrable pall of vapour. 
 
 All this, to the Hindu of the Plain, is the land of myth 
 
 ' Journal, L 248. 
 12 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 and mystery, associated with the most ancient and sacred 
 traditions of his race. Here live his deities, each in a 
 paradise of his own, on the summits of the trackless peaks. 
 Here the P^ndavas sought a way to heaven amidst the 
 eternal snows, and in dark caves and secluded hermitages 
 the sages of the old world puzzled out the secrets of life and 
 time. In sequestered valleys, deep amid the bosom of the 
 hills, were shrines, like Kedimath and Badarinath, which 
 were far beyond the range of the Pathan and Mughal who 
 raided and ravished in the Plain below ; here for many ages 
 the indigenous Hindu civilisation was permitted to develop, 
 safe from foreign influence. Every rock and spring and 
 stream is the home of some legend told by the forefathers of 
 the people. Beyond the eternal hills lay Uttara Kuru, the 
 paradise of the faithful — " the island valley of Avilion " — 
 
 " Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
 Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns.' 
 
 Flanking this mountainous region is the lower range, 
 known as the Siwiliks, the home of Siva or Mahadeva, 
 behind which lies embosomed the fertile valley of Dehra 
 Dun. It is only quite within recent years that this fair 
 territory has been opened up. Here a connecting ridge 
 forms the watershed of the Ganges and the Jumna. It was 
 here, at the siege of Kalanga during the Nepal war, that we 
 gained our first real experience of Gurkha gallantry. After 
 our occupation the experiment of colonisation through the 
 agency of European grantees was tried, with little practical 
 result But, as the jungle is gradually cleared, with diminish- 
 ing malaria and extension of irrigation, it is sure to become 
 the seat of a thriving agricultural peasantry ; and once the 
 railway is pushed on to the base of the hills, Dehra 
 and Mussoorie will certainly become important European 
 colonies. 
 
 While the higher ranges behind consist to a great extent 
 of crystalline, metamorphic rocks, the sub-Himalaya is built 
 up of soft sandstone, but all so broken and disturbed by the 
 
 13 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 action of cosmic forces that there is little continuity of 
 structure, and the stone which it supplies is of small value 
 for building purposes. It is broken into sharp, rugged peaks, 
 with precipitous ravines, and clothed so densely with jungle 
 that it affords a safe asylum for the larger fauna, the wild 
 elephant, the tiger and the simbhar stag. This forms the 
 most valuable part of the forest tract protected by the State. 
 Here, during the hot season when the scrub and under- 
 growth are as dry as tinder, a spark let fall by some careless 
 cowherd or traveller may result in a serious conflagration, 
 and the forest officer must ever be on the alert to hasten to 
 the scene of danger and isolate or extinguish the flames. 
 
 Beneath these lower hills and separating them from the 
 plain lie the tracts known as the Tarai or lowland and the 
 Bhabar. This is the ethnical frontier between the low 
 and the upper country. The Bhabar is a tract of waterless 
 jungle, where the underlying clay stratum extending to the 
 foot of the hills has been overlaid by a mass of gravel and 
 boulders, the detritus of the overhanging hills, washed down 
 by the streams which drain them. In the rainy season the 
 numerous torrents cut into the upper soil, and in the ravines 
 thus formed the characteristic features of the region become 
 apparent. The splendid trees of the forest derive their 
 support from only a scanty layer of earth above the under- 
 lying mass of shingle. It is from the vapour-laden air that 
 they receive the moisture which promotes their growth, but 
 even here there is not that lavish luxuriance of growth which 
 is found in the damper tropical life of the South American 
 forests. Through the shingly subsoil the drainage rapidly 
 percolates, leaving the upper surface arid and waterless, only 
 to appear again lower down the slope, and after passing 
 through the marshes of the Tarai, to feed the rivers which 
 traverse the Plains, and end in the system of the Ganges and 
 its tributaries. This tract is colonised in an intermittent way 
 by emigrants from the hills, who retire periodically to the 
 higher levels when malaria is most prevalent. 
 
 The Tarai thus becomes a region of marsh and fen, a land 
 of sluggish streams and water-choked morasses, the soil a 
 
 14 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 moist alluvial formation which encourages the growth of 
 coarse grasses and thickets of reeds, in which in the hot 
 weather the tiger, wild ..buffalo, and swamp deer find a 
 congenial home. This tract is called in popular parlance 
 the Mar, which the people interpret to mean " the land of 
 death," but which may be better explained as "the wilderness." 
 Here the water is so near the surface that wherever a buffalo 
 rolls in the mud or a stick is pushed into the clammy soil a 
 spring gushes out. At nightfall the mists raised from the 
 saturated ground by the fierce heat of the sun collect like a 
 pall over the landscape, and bring the justly dreaded jungle 
 fever in their train. In some places the patient labours of 
 the marsh-dwellers, the , Thirus and cognate tribes, have 
 pushed the sheet of cultivation right up to the foot of the 
 hills, and the land is covered with a rich harvest of rice. 
 But they do this at the sacrifice of health and strength, their 
 stunted frames, swollen spleens, yellow skins and diminished 
 families tell the tale of their struggle with the unhealthiness 
 of the climate. It is one of the current fictions which swarm 
 in the records of Indian sociology that the Thiru is proof 
 against malaria. As a matter of fact, it has been shown in 
 Bengal, where he lives under pretty much the same conditions 
 as in this Province, that he stands much lower, as might 
 have been anticipated, in the scale of fecundity and average 
 duration of life than other castes who enjoy healthier climatic 
 conditions. 
 
 It is remarkable that this tract, which is now exposed to 
 malaria in a most dangerous form, was once the seat of an 
 opulent and advanced civilisation. The Tarai is full of 
 ancient ruins, fine old mango groves, sculptures and wells, 
 the remains of thriving cities. We know from the evidence 
 of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims that the Gorakhpur jungles 
 contained flourishing towns before the fourth, while showing 
 signs of deterioration in the seventh, century. The failure of 
 the Muhammadans to extend their conquests to the hills 
 shows that in their days the country was quite as unhealthy 
 and impenetrable as it is at present. Hence perhaps from 
 sheer necessity it was chosen as the site of cities of refuge, 
 
 IS 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 where the persecuted Buddhist or the Rajput chieftain, dis- 
 possessed by the Musalman invader may have sought shelter. 
 When we see in recent years the effect of a sudden outbreak 
 of fever in some of the flourishing districts of the Ganges- 
 Jumna Duab, we can understand that a calamity of the same 
 kind may have wrecked the civilisation of the TarSi. Perhaps 
 the cosmic forces of elevation and depression, which have not 
 as yet exhausted their energy, may have altered the condition 
 of things. 
 
 We come next to consider the lower hills south of the 
 rivers Jumna and Ganges. Here the conditions are very 
 different from those of the northern region. The hills here 
 are known as the Vindhyan and Kaimur ranges and are part 
 of the mountain system stretching right across the centre of 
 the peninsula, the home of scattered Dravidian tribes such 
 as Santais and Gonds, Bhils, Kharwars, and their kinsfolk. 
 The word Vindhya means " the divider," and this range was 
 for many ages the political as well as the ethnic frontier 
 between Hindustan, or the land of the earlj'- Hindus, and the 
 Deccan (Dakkhin) or south country. It was across this 
 range that adventurous Hindu missionaries in ancient times 
 forced their way and brought the knowledge of the faith into 
 the southern parts of the peninsula. But after that it was 
 permitted to work out its social development undisturbed by 
 the lords of the Ganges valley until its conquest was under- 
 taken in earnest by the Musalmans. 
 
 In direct contrast to the northern tract, we have here hills 
 of only moderate height, rising to the elevation of about 5000 
 feet — little more than that of Ben Nevis. The jungle is 
 much scantier and less luxuriant, the water supply almost 
 everywhere limited, in some places so insufficient that the 
 village women have to go miles to find a spring, or draw their 
 supplies from fetid water holes which they share with the 
 cattle and the beasts of the forest, and a traveller must care- 
 fully select his halting-place in some favoured spot amidst 
 the arid wilderness. On these low, bare, stony hills the heat 
 of the summer sun beats with terrific force. Parts of the 
 country in drought and desolation vie with the rainless peaks 
 
 16 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 which surround the Gulf of Suez or line the Arabian 
 desert. 
 
 This deficiency of the water supply is the main cause of 
 the curious scarcity of animal life. It is only in the recesses 
 of the heavier jungle that the tiger, the sambhar stag and the 
 spotted deer find a home. A few ravine deer occupy the 
 broken sides of the lower hills, and here will be sometimes 
 seen a sounder of pig of a leaner, gaunter type than the 
 heavy beast of the Plains which battens in swamp and cane 
 brake. The graceful black buck is occasionally seen, but his 
 horns never reach the length of those of his brethren in the 
 neighbourhood of Mathura or Bhartpur. Even the hill tiger 
 is a different animal from that of the Tarai. He is a shorter, 
 fiercer, and more active brute, trained to greater endurance, 
 his muscles toughened by the long range of country he must 
 cover nightly in search of prey. The leopard, too, from his 
 environment, is distinguishable from the Bengal species. In 
 the damp Himalayan forests he is darker and redder in colour, 
 and has larger spots than in the Central Indian hills. Some 
 naturalists have gone so far as to separate the' two varieties ; 
 but the best authorities are disposed to consider them 
 identical in species — the difference being due to the fact that 
 one is the denizen of thick, marshy swamps or damp jungle, 
 the other inhabiting the rock caves or the bamboo clumps 
 and stunted thickets of the waterless hills. , 
 
 Were the water supply more abundant this country would 
 be the sportsman's paradise. In some favoured spots the 
 tiger and leopard abound, and find plentiful supplies of food 
 in the droves of half-starved cattle which are driven up from 
 the Plains to eke out a precarious subsistence on the scanty 
 herbage, which, poor as it is, is more abundant here than in 
 the home pastures, burnt brown by the fierce heat of summer. 
 When the hot west wind blows strongly the herdsmen set 
 fire to the crisp undergrowth, and with the first shower of the 
 rains, the hills are again green with fairly abundant grasses. 
 In this land of drought the absence of bird life is specially 
 noticeable. While in the Plains they nestle in every grove, 
 and the morning air rings with the notes of innumerable 
 B 17 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 birds, here they follow man, and are found only in the neigh- 
 bourhood of water, round the scattered patches of cultivation 
 or in a few of the moister ravines or valleys. Here the oak, 
 pine and deodar of the north are replaced by a scanty jungle 
 of gnarled and stunted trees, the bastard Sai, the catechu 
 acacia and the cotton tree. The bamboo abounds, but 
 seldom attains much luxuriance of growth ; it is only in 
 favoured spots that the more valuable Sal and teak are to 
 be found. 
 
 But it is where water combines with woodland, hill and 
 ravine that the scenery really becomes lovely. Such is the 
 valley of the Son, which drains the central plateau into the 
 Ganges. Towards the Ganges the Vindhyan range slopes 
 down to the valley in successive terraces or gradual de- 
 clivities. We are led up to the first complete view of the 
 rich Plain below by occasional glimpses of the greenery of 
 grove and field scattered here and there along the descent, 
 with the grey sands and silvery waters of the great river on 
 the northern horizon. But where the plateau meets the Son 
 the more stable sandstones form a sheer precipice a couple 
 of hundred feet high, an almost perpendicular wall of rock, 
 from which, as from the battlement of a great fortress, you 
 look down on sheets of virgin forest, and beyond this on the 
 yellow sands which fringe the river. Hence the old Sanskrit 
 poets gave it the name of Hiranya-viha, " the gold bearer," 
 and the modern Hindu calls it Sona, " the golden." In 
 earlier times considerable quantities of gold seem to have 
 been found in Chota NSgpur, and recent discoveries make it 
 possible that gold mining may be largely revived in this 
 part of the country. As it is at present, the only mining 
 industry is a little iron manufacture carried on by the 
 Agariyas, a tribe of Dravidian smelters who carry on their 
 occupation in a most primitive way. This and a little 
 agriculture, the collection of silk cocoons, lac, catechu, gums 
 and other jungle products are the only industries of the 
 dwellers in the forest. 
 
 In the way of forest scenery it would be hard to find in 
 India anything finer than the valley of the Son ; but it can 
 
 i8 
 
f**^-'^'^. 
 
 
 AW AGAKIVA MKTAL SMELTt.R Wl I H ll.\ 
 
 ANU FOOT-D1-LLO\VS 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 be reached only by a long and tedious march from the 
 Gangetic Plain, and is as yet quite unknown to the tourist. 
 While along the Ganges you meet wide stretches of grey 
 sand and beyond it a sheet of cultivation, here the jungle 
 extends right down to the rocky bank and clothes the rolling 
 hills to the south, supremely lovely in its vivid greenery at 
 the close of the rains, and in its tints of crimsonor amber at 
 the approach of early summer. Dominating over the whole 
 landscape is the sombre, buttress-like peak of Mangesar, the 
 mountain godling of the jungle people. Here and there, as 
 at Agori and Bijaygarh, are seen the ruins of the rude strong- 
 holds, built by the early, R3.jput settlers to overawe the 
 aborigines, now a placid, timid race, in whom it is hard to 
 recognise the successors of the wild, independent savages, 
 who, if the local legends are to be trusted, were once can- 
 nibals, eaters of raw flesh, and carried on a fierce guerilla 
 warfare with the invaders throughout this rude borderland. 
 
 But, on the whole, these southern jungles will disappoint 
 the visitor who expects to meet a world of tropical vegeta- 
 tion, immense trees crowded together in a damp fertile soil, 
 the festoons of creepers, the choking undergrowth, the abun- 
 dant animal and vegetable life. The jungle is in most places 
 hardly more than patches of scrub, the trees of small size, 
 their trunks gnarled and twisted, their leaves green only 
 when moisture prevails in the rainy season, and parched to a 
 dull, dusty brown, as the sky clears and they are baked by 
 the sun. Some of the trees add to the dreariness of the 
 landscape — the cotton tree with its gaunt, grey trunk, the 
 Salai rising with its ashy, leafless branches, above the under- 
 growth, give the forest a bleak and wintry appearance. The 
 Kulu, to quote Captain Forsyth, "looks as if the megatherium 
 might have climbed its uncouth and ghastly branches at the 
 birth of the world." 
 
 So far we have spoken chiefly of Mirzapur. Further west 
 in Bundelkhand, from an eminence you see nothing but the 
 rugged crests of innumerable hillocks, from which all cultur- 
 able soil has been washed into the ravines, and which roll 
 towards the horizon like the waves of a troubled sea. In 
 
 19 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 some places immense masses of rock are piled together in 
 the wildest confusion. Up to their very base extend patches 
 of the richest black cotton soil. This soil is, as will be 
 shown later on, probably composed of disentegrated laterite, 
 poured out in ancient times from the crater of some vast 
 Central Indian volcano, of which no trace can now be found. 
 Many of the Vindhyan hills are tipped with a reddish fer- 
 ruginous substance, the detritus or scoriae which resulted 
 from igneous action. In some instances this is replaced by 
 veins of quartz, which traverse the gneiss or tip the low 
 sandstone hills, as in Mirzapur. These Vindhyan sandstones 
 are of immense geological antiquity, perhaps pre-Silurian. 
 But as they are devoid of fossils, their precise age cannot 
 be determined with certainty. They produce an admirable 
 building stone, which formed the material of all the ancient 
 stone buildings in the Gangetic valley, and quarries near 
 Agra, Allahabad, and Chunar are still extensively worked. 
 The marble of the TS.j, and the palaces of Agra and Delhi, 
 was procured at an excessive cost of labour from MakrSna 
 in the Jodhpur Sate, far to the west in RSjputana. 
 
 From these two areas, which may be termed the Himalayan 
 and the Vindhyan fringes, we pass to the great Plain itself. 
 This is only the upper portion of the alluvial valley of the 
 Ganges, which extends from Hardwar to the Delta, where 
 the river finally joins the ocean. As a river it ranks high 
 among the rivers of the world. In historic interest and in 
 its services to agriculture it may be compared with the Nile. 
 There is, however, this important difference — from the Atbara 
 to the Mediterranean, a distance of 1200 miles, the Nile does 
 not receive a single brook : the Ganges all through its course 
 is constantly reinforced by tributary streams. The length 
 of the Nile, again, which is estimated at 3400 miles from 
 Lake Victoria Nyanza, is about double that of the Ganges, 
 1557 miles; but the maximum discharge of the Ganges at 
 Rajmahai is five times that of the Nile at Cairo. 
 
 As to the origin of this vast Plain there has been much 
 speculation ; but the problem cannot be completely solved 
 until much deeper borings are made. According to one 
 
 20 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 theory an Eocene sea once extended like a great estuary 
 through the middle of' the Peninsula, its waters lapping the 
 rocky barrier to the north and south ; subsequently the silt- 
 bearing waters of the rivers, laden with the detritus of the 
 Himalaya, gradually filled up the depression. According 
 to another account its depression was contemporaneous 
 with the disturbance and contortion of the Himalaya. 
 Messrs Medlicott and Blanford, the best and most recent 
 authorities, incline to the latter view, and suggest tha!t "the 
 crust movements, to which the elevation of the Himalayas 
 and of the Panjab, Sindh and Burmese ranges are due, may 
 have also produced the depression of the Indo-Gangetic 
 Plain, and that the two movements may have gone on pari 
 passu" both being to some extent still in progress. Borings, 
 so far as they have been made into the deeper strata in the 
 course of the erection of bridges and other buildings, show 
 only successive deposits of sand and clay; and the only 
 thing in the nature of a rock which the soil contains is 
 patches of what is called Kankar, a nodular carbonate of 
 lime, most valuable for building purposes, and admirable as 
 road metal. This is, of course, quite a recent formation, 
 and its deposition continues at the present time. 
 
 Through this unstable alluvium the rivers have cut their 
 present courses. Their task is one of constant demolition 
 and reconstruction. At one spot, as the current impinges 
 on the friable bank, it gradually undermines it, and by and 
 by immense masses of the upper surface soil come toppling 
 down into the current, only to be dissolved at once in the 
 water and carried along and deposited on some new site 
 further down the course of the stream. In such seasons at 
 night camping near the river bank, you will hear the sound 
 as of distant artillery, when tons of stuff at a time plunge 
 into the river. Occasionally the damage done is really serious, 
 when ancient mango groves, temples and homesteads are 
 swept away. A year or two ago, from danger of this kind, 
 it became necessary to abandon Ballia, the headquarters of 
 the most eastern district, and it was considered hopeless to 
 attempt to save even the public buildings and the residences 
 
 21 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the officials. If you desire a really exciting life, you have 
 only to purchase one of these riverine properties. If the 
 current sets against your lands you may be made a b^gar 
 in a single night; or, perchance, the stream in a more 
 genial mood may pile rich banks of silt along your border, 
 which may continue stable for years and grow magnificent 
 harvests ; or the fickle current may sweep it all away again 
 with some of your own best land in the bargain. In any 
 case whatever land you gain you will have to hold through 
 vexatious civil, criminal and revenue suits, and by the time 
 the final decree is issued the whole face of the neighbour- 
 hood may have changed. No more arduous task falls upon 
 the district officials than the investigation of cases such as 
 these. A claimant will sometimes appear and assert rights 
 dormant for a generation over a patch of sandbank which 
 now occupies the assumed site of a village long since de- 
 molished. Possession is here more than the proverbial nine 
 points of the law. The rude bludgeon-men of the riverine 
 villages need little provocation to turn out and resist rival 
 claimants ; serious riots and loss of life have often occurred 
 in quarrels of this kind. 
 
 Another difficulty which meets the investigating officer is 
 that of comparing ancient maps. Where the whole surface 
 of the neighbourhood is completely changed from year 
 to year, it is extremely difficult to find any certain point 
 from which to commence measurements. Often he has to 
 abandon the river bank altogether, and go some distance 
 inland to find an ancient temple, or some tree or boundary 
 pillar, from whence he can with some degree of confidence 
 start the survey. 
 
 One thing is certain — this periodical movement of the 
 great rivers, which seems to be in some degree influenced 
 by the revolution of the earth, will not be checked by the 
 feeble hand of man. However cunningly he designs an 
 embankment, however deep he plants his piles and ranges 
 his fascines, the subtle genius of the stream will find a 
 means to evade or undermine them : or it gaily works its 
 way through the friable alluvium behind them and leaves 
 
 22 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 them high and dry as a proof of its contempt for humanity 
 and all its works. So is it ever with him who essays to 
 draw out Leviathan with a hook or push back the ocean 
 with a mop. 
 
 These variations of the river's course may arise from the 
 most trivial causes. A snag gets safely anchored in the mud, 
 becomes the nucleus of a shoal and diverts the current ; a 
 sunken boat, a deposit of Kankar, a bed of stiff clay will 
 produce the same effect. But some rivers are more sedate than 
 others. The Jumna, for instance, maintains a fairly definite 
 course. Writing of Farrukhibad, Sir C. Elliott tells us that 
 " the Ganges, as becomes its great age, keeps sedately within 
 its bed, and only rolls wearily from one side to the other. But 
 the R&mganga is a gambolling vagabond, and wanders at its 
 own sweet will over many miles of country, carving out beds 
 capriciously for itself, and leaving them as illogically ; so that 
 it becomes quite exciting to watch it in its frolics and to mark 
 off on the map, as one inspects villages day by day, the- 
 different past courses of the river." 
 
 Hence in many places we find that the river has completely 
 abandoned its ancient course and carved out a new channel 
 for itself many miles away. Such is what is known as the 
 Bflrh Ganga — "old lady Ganges" — which can be traced in a 
 line of swamps from the Aligarh district down to Farrukhibid. 
 That this was the ancient course of the stream is shown by 
 the shrines and hermitages which stud its banks for close on 
 a hundred miles. From the MusalmSn chronicles it would 
 seem that this change in the river's course occurred in the time 
 of the Emperor Akbar, in the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 More than twenty years ago the Gh^gra performed a similar 
 feat in the Gorakhpur district, severing during one rainy 
 season some forty square miles of country from one of its 
 baronies. 
 
 A fickle stream like this is the worst enemy of the peasant. 
 He never knows when it may sweep across his fields in 
 destructive floods ; as Virgil says — Pluvia ingenti sata laeta 
 boumque labores diluit. Or it may carry off all the arable soil 
 and leave only sterile sand, or it may deposit valuable silt. 
 
 23 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Under such conditions agriculture is a simple lottery and this 
 in a great measure accounts for the recklessness and improvi- 
 dence of the riverine proprietors. 
 
 Connected with this kind of fluvial action is the well 
 recognised distinction between what are known as the Kh^dir 
 and the Bingar, — the former the lands close to the river bed 
 which are liable to annual flooding with the resultant alluvion 
 or diluvion; the latter the stable uplands, which though 
 themselves the gift of the river in ancient times, are now no 
 longer exposed to its influence. 
 
 The Khidir of the larger rivers has something of the same 
 character as that of the Lincolnshire Fens. In the rainy- 
 season much of it is for a time submerged. Sometimes the 
 retreating floods leave behind them a deposit of rich silt; 
 sometimes arid sand. Trees are few and lose their vigour as 
 they force their roots deep into the sloppy subsoil. Here and 
 there patches of tamarisk give shelter to sounders of wild pig, 
 which boldly ravage at night the crops on the adjacent 
 highlands, and with the first flush of dawn cautiously retreat 
 into the thick covers on the edge of the river. Their incur- 
 sions impose a heavy burden of field-watching upon the 
 peasant, and check the production of the more valuable crops, 
 such as the sugar-cane, which these animals specially love. 
 Here British officers of the Tent Club make their annual 
 outing and enjoy the most manly and exciting sport which 
 the country affords. Their visits are, it is needless to say, 
 welcome to the people, who will gladly turn out to beat the 
 covers and assist in the hunt. The clean-feeding jungle boar 
 is in quite a different category fro^ the foul domesticated pig 
 which swarms in the hamlets set aside for the village menial 
 races, and deserves the abhorrence which is felt towards it all 
 through the oriental world. But for the wild boar the peasant 
 has a healthy respect. He has little confidence in his old 
 musket and rusty sword as weapons of off"ence against him. 
 If no Sahib cares to spear him he will employ a gang of 
 Kanjar gypsies or wild-eyed, savage Banjara nomads to thin 
 their numbers. But if there is a chance of sport he will not 
 take active measures against them for the same consideration 
 
 24 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 that makes the English farmer's wife tolerant of an occasional 
 raid by Reynard into her poultry yard. 
 
 From the verge of the uplands the Khadir in the cold 
 weather presents the appearance of a flat desolate expanse. 
 The grass has by this time lost its autumn greenness and 
 assumes the brown tint which characterises the landscape. 
 In places there are sluggish streams and reedy marshes where 
 wildfowl of all kinds abound — snipe and teal and ducks of 
 many varieties, kingfishers and waders, contemplative paddy 
 birds immersed in the stalk of the wary frog ; a line of grey 
 geese appears through the mist as with the approach of day 
 they leave the gram field and seek shelter on some open 
 sandbank amidst the stream. A jackal gorged with carrion 
 creeps into the shade of the sedge ; a stealthy wolf, his jaws 
 red with the blood of kid or fawn, sneaks through some 
 thicket. Villages are few save where some eminence affords 
 a site raised high above flood level and gives a chance of 
 saving the cattle when the floods are out. Usually there is 
 only a hamlet of makeshift huts which can be easily abandoned 
 in time of danger. Cultivation is scanty : but the soil, if not 
 so deep and strong as that of the uplands, has at least the 
 vigour of freshness ; the population is so sparse and rents so 
 low that new land can be selected yearly and the crops which 
 can be saved from pigs and wild geese are often highly 
 remunerative. 
 
 The Khadir, again, supplies excellent grazing for large 
 herds of cattle, for buffaloes in particular, and the Ahtr and 
 GOjar speculate extensively in the production of ghi, the only 
 nitrogenous food which the orthodox Hindu can use. They 
 seal it up in the empty kerosine oil tins which have become 
 such an essential in rural life, and export it to the larger 
 cities. This, except some secluded valleys in the Himalayas, 
 is the last part of the Province where the absence of the men 
 of these tribes for months at a time in charge of their cattle 
 permits the domestic institution of polyandry. Damp and 
 malaria work here as in the Tar4i, and the herdsman of the 
 Khadir is a poor, anemic, fever-stricken creature, a shy semi- 
 savage, whose hand is against everyone ; ready, if chance 
 
 25 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 allows, to drive off the cattle of his wealthier neighbours and 
 pass them on from one receiver's stall to another till all trace 
 of them is lost There are special local industries, the cutting 
 of firewood, the collection of thatching grass, fibres for rope, 
 reeds for matting ; and here the Kanjar digs out the fragrant 
 roots of the Khaskhas of which he constructs the fragrant 
 screens with which the European cools his house when the 
 hot west wind blows. 
 
 In some places, again, and in particular along the Jumna, 
 the Khadir is replaced by a tangle of wild ravines which 
 slope from the uplands to the river's bank. Such is the 
 rough country along the Chambal, which drains the Native 
 States of Gwalior and Dholpur and finally joins the Jumna 
 below EtSwah. Here from an eminence you see as far as 
 the eye can reach a labyrinth of rugged ravines and green 
 valleys covered with acacia jungle, every prominent bluff 
 showing the ruins of some robber stronghold of the olden 
 time. This was for centuries a No Man's Land, an Alsatia 
 occupied by wild Rijput tribes, robbers and raiders by pro- 
 fession, who settled on the flank of the Imperial highway 
 through the Duib, and were a thorn in the side of the Musal- 
 m^n administration. Many a tale is told of raid and rapine 
 committed by these sturdy caterans. Armies often retired 
 baffled before the difficulties of their fastnesses, and native 
 rule could never maintain that steady pressure upon them 
 which the condition of the country and its people necessitated. 
 This was left to British law to effect, and now the land has 
 peace. The descendants of these freebooters draw a scanty 
 livelihood from terracing their sterile ravines. They are 
 always ready to negotiate a loan with a moneylender, but 
 it is hard to serve a writ on a defaulter, still harder without 
 risk of life or limb for an outsider to eject them from their 
 paternal acres and hold it in defiance of the opinion of the 
 country side. The experience of the Mutiny showed that 
 they are as ready as ever to give trouble if they dared. 
 
 Above the ravine country and the riverine Kh4dir is the 
 Bangar or old settled alluvium which long ages of patient 
 tillage have raised to a state of extreme fertility. Here 
 
 26 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 again we must distinguish the tracts into which this region 
 naturally divides itself. 
 
 We have, first, the DuSb, the Mesopotamia, or land between 
 the Jumna and the Ganges, which without the territory south 
 of the Ganges and Jumna included in its districts, has an 
 area of about 22,500 square miles, two-thirds of Ireland ; 
 secondly, the northern tract, including Oudh, Rohilkhand 
 and the Gorakhpur and Benares Divisions — about 50,000 
 square miles, a quarter of France. 
 
 The Duib is the fertile, thickly-populated tract extending 
 between the rivers Ganges and Jumna from Sahiranpur to 
 their junction at Allahabad. In the western part it is widely 
 irrigated by the Upper and Lower Ganges Canal. Through 
 it the East Indian and North-western Railways provide the 
 main line of communication between the Bengal Delta and 
 the Panjab. Junctions at AUahibad, Cawnpur, Tundla, 
 Hathras and Aligarh link it with Oudh, Bombay and Central 
 India. Its chief cities and commercial marts are Sahiranpur, 
 which commands the Dehra Dfln valley: Meerut, a large 
 military cantonment : Aligarh, the seat of a flourishing Anglo- 
 Muhammadan College : Hithras, an entrepot for cotton and 
 other country produce: Etiwah, one of the Central Indian 
 frontier posts : Cawnpur, an important trading mart and the 
 seat of prosperous manufacturing industries ; Allahibid, the 
 Provincial capital, the headquarters of the High Court 
 and the chief public offices. Only the stream of the Jumna 
 separates it from Delhi, now included in the Panjib, from 
 Agra, the Mughal capital, now a large and flourishing com- 
 mercial city, and from Mathura, one of the holiest places of 
 Hinduism. The railway has now quite displaced the rivers 
 as a highway of commerce. This is shown by the decadence 
 of two once flourishing centres of trade — Farrukhabad in the 
 Central Duib and Mirzapur, formerly a great trade centre, 
 to which large ga;ngs of Banjara merchants in the old days 
 conveyed the products of Central India and received in return 
 iron and brass ware, cloth and salt. This region has now been 
 tapped by direct railway communication with Calcutta and 
 Bombay, and the once famous bizSr of Mirzapur is deserted. 
 
 27 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The richest portion of the Duib is that to the west, where, 
 aided by an abundant water supply, the J&ts of Sah&ranpur, 
 Muzaffarnagar and Meerut are about the finest yeomen in 
 India. Here will be seen the results of the labour of a most 
 industrious, sturdy peasantry, vast sheets of wheat and barley, 
 sugar-cane, cotton, millets and maize. Here the plough 
 cattle are of the finest breed, and most thriving yeomen own 
 a brood mare or two, the produce of which find a ready sale 
 at the agricultural fairs as remounts for our cavalry or for 
 private use It is only towards the lower apex of the Duib 
 that the opium poppy is largely grown ; all along it and 
 more particularly towards the east indigo is an important 
 staple. More especially at Cawnpur and Agra, just beyond 
 the Jumna, there is an extensive factory industry, supplied 
 with the best modem machinery and largely interested in the 
 manufacture of cotton and woollen goods, and articles of 
 leather. Everywhere we find indications of an active in- 
 dustrial, commercial and agricultural life. 
 
 The aspect of the country is that of an unbroken flat, 
 " spread like a green sea the waveless plain of Lombardy " 
 which Shelley saw from a nook in the Euganean hills. It is 
 drained by the Hindan, Kill and innumerable minor streams 
 which find their way sooner or later into the Ganges or the 
 Jumna. The scenery is monotonous in the extreme, but has 
 a quiet rural beauty of its own at certain seasons. In the 
 early cold weather you can march for weeks through an 
 almost unbroken stretch of the richest cultivation, wheat, 
 barley or other cereals, the Arhar fields yellow with blossom 
 like an English gorse brake, thick masses of sugar-cane, tall 
 fields of tufted millet, the cotton with its white bolls, and an 
 infinity of garden crops, poppy, pepper, mint, anise and 
 cummin, the cucumber trailing over the brown house thatch, 
 the castor with its purple bluish leaves and stalk. Culti- 
 vation is too close to allow much woodland or culturable 
 waste to exist At every mile or so you meet a village nest- 
 ling in the shade of its mango groves or pipal trees : its tank 
 and rustic shrine glittering through the rich foliage ; the huts 
 covered with brown thatch or reddish tiles. When the crops 
 
 28 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 are cut in the early spring the scene changes as if by magic. 
 The country now looks dusty, baked and cheerless to a 
 degree. This is specially the case in the rice-bearing tracts. 
 The hot wind blows like the blast of a furnace ; the sky 
 resembles a great copper bowl ; the horizon is narrowed by 
 a thick haze of dust ; the cattle cower for shelter in the 
 scanty shade, and all nature gasps with thirst. Then after a 
 time the wind lulls, the heavy clouds gather on the horizon, 
 and the monsoon bursts witii a roar of heaven's artillery. 
 The herbage revives at once, the trees are green again when 
 the grime is washed from their leaves ; the ploughing and 
 sowing of the rice and millets, the patient tillage which the 
 coming spring crop needs call the peasant from the torpor of 
 the hot weather. Then succeed weeks of drenching rain with 
 intervals of damp relaxing heat The rivers are all in flood, 
 the country presents the appearance of a marsh ; fever and 
 cholera, the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the destruc- 
 tion that wasteth at noonday, claim their victims. At last 
 the rains are checked, a cold chill rises with the dawn, the 
 soft mist collects in the lowlands. Then the peasant cuts 
 his autumn rice and millet and begins to collect the swelling 
 cotton bolls. His oxen, refreshed by the enforced rest of 
 the rains, and strengthened by the fresh store of herbage, are 
 ready for the hard work of the early winter, the continuous 
 series of ploughings for the wheat and barley, the severe 
 exertion of hauling the laden water buckets from the depths 
 of the well. The jaded Englishman looks up his rifle and 
 cartridges and soon the white tents are pitched near his house, 
 and all is made ready for a start into camp. In a day or two, 
 as he rides on his first march from headquarters he will find 
 his tents pitched in some shady mango grove, the horses 
 tethered a short way off, the servants cooking in the shade, 
 the village magnate awaiting an audience, a crowd of suitors 
 ready for the opening of the court, a bare-legged runner 
 hastening up with a bag of papers which will keep the 
 Collector busy till the afternoon is well spent Then tea 
 and chat, a stroll with gun and dogs, or a visit to the school 
 or police station. After dinner all but the sleeping tents are 
 
 29 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 struck, laden on a string of camels and carried ten miles 
 forwards, where their owner meets them ready again next 
 morning. And as he starts to join the fresh encampment 
 nothing is left on the site of the place where he has halted 
 for the day but the mouldering fires, the piles of straw 
 and rubbish to tell of the busy crowd which occupied it only 
 yesterday. 
 
 But no map or figures or description can give any real 
 idea of the teeming village life through which the official 
 thus makes his annual progress ; the sheet of growing corn 
 crops, the peasant laboriously turning up the rich brown soil, 
 the oxen labouring at the well to the creak of the pulley and 
 the driver's song, the children leading the cows and goats to 
 pasture, the Brahman ringing his little bell to call his god to 
 attend the service, the women cooking, gossiping, squabbling, 
 all in the open air ; the old crone grumbling as she works 
 the spinning-wheel ; the brown faces, black eyes, bright 
 dresses, and tinkling bangles of the girls as they laugh and 
 chatter at the well ; the grey-beards settling village politics 
 under the pipal tree. Life may be hard and sordid, but 
 these careless souls somehow manage to enjoy it to the 
 full, and no murmur of discontent at their meagre lot 
 rises to the gates of heaven from the lips of these toiling 
 millions. 
 
 The difficulty is in this continuous Plain to get anything 
 like a bird's-eye view of the general aspect of the country. 
 There is no really lofty eminence from which the glance can 
 sweep and take in its salient features. The oldest village 
 mound, an accumulation of the debris of countless genera- 
 tions, is only a petty hillock, and the view from it is every- 
 where bounded by the green masses of the mango groves 
 which surround it. Here and there is an open vista which 
 stretches out to the horizon in an unbroken expanse of rice 
 cultivation or barren, salty plains. In the rains the rice tract 
 is a sheet of greenerj' ; in the summer it resembles a grey, 
 brown chessboard, broken up for convenience of irrigation 
 into a maze of minute plots ; the salt waste has few trees, 
 except an'occasional acacia or a patch of scrubby thicket 
 
 30 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 It IS from some of the higher buildings in the cities alone 
 that in the clear air of the cold weather, beneath a sky of 
 cloudless blue, an extensive survey can be made. Thus, in 
 all the Plain there is perhaps no pleasanter view than from 
 the battlements of the Fatehgarh fort, whence are seen the 
 pleasure house of the NawcLb, the minarets of the Karbala 
 mosque, the rich greenery of the hunting preserve, and far in 
 the distance the faint silver line of the Ganges. So, from 
 the summit of the graceful clock-tower at Mirzapur you look 
 down on the ceaseless movement of the gaily-dressed crowds, 
 and the whole city resembles a forest, the white houses with 
 their red-tiled roofs showing at intervals through the trees 
 which shade every bazar and courtyard. Or from one of the 
 minarets of Aurangzeb's mosque at Benares you can watch 
 the troops of pilgrims, the bathers at the Ghits, the glittering 
 spires of a myriad temples, the sacred bulls moving ponder- 
 ously along the crowded alleys, the monkeys playing on the 
 roofs. A colder and sterner landscape unfolds itself from 
 the ramparts of a fort like that of Awa in the Central Duib. 
 Here we see the narrow border of wheat and tobacco fields 
 encircling the grey mud bastions of the Rijput stronghold, 
 and beyond a wide dreary expanse of salty barren waste, 
 over which the torrid wind of June blows with pitiless, 
 scorching vigour. 
 
 But hitherto we have spoken of life in the more favoured 
 villages and cities. In the Central part of the Duib, where a 
 series of years of excessive rainfall, insufficient drainage, and 
 wasteful use of canal water have raised the subsoil level, 
 malaria is endemic, and wide tracts of new waste, the pallid 
 frames of the people, all speak eloquently of the losses caused 
 by fever. But this will be discussed more fully later on. 
 
 There are, again, many places where the soil is little better 
 than sterile sand, growing nothing but poor autumn millets, 
 and unfit to produce sugar, cotton or wheat. The more 
 industrious peasant classes avoid lands like these, and cling 
 to the rich loams and fertile clays. The sandy tract is the 
 heritage of the more restless and lazy Rajput, the Ahir or 
 Gujar cattle breeders, where inefficient tillage and squalid 
 
 31 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 homesteads are in direct contrast to the thriving agricultural 
 settlements of the J at or the Kurmi. 
 
 Far worse than these unfertile lands are what are known 
 as the tJsar plains, of which there are between four and five 
 thousand square miles in the Province, at present absolutely 
 sterile. If this area could be brought under the plough, and 
 support five hundred souls to the square mile, not under 
 present conditions an excessive average, it would feed a 
 couple of million mouths, about as much as the total increase 
 of the population in the period 1881-91. The reclamation of 
 CTsar is thus an economical question of the greatest import- 
 ance, and a small literature has been devoted to it. 
 
 Reh, or the saline deposit which is brought up to the sur- 
 face by the combined action of water and the sun's heat, is 
 not of uniform character. " Most generally carbonate of 
 soda is the prevailing ingredient ; at other times sulphate of 
 soda ; but both occur together, and associated with them in 
 more or less quantity are common salt and salts of magnesia 
 and lime. Of the origin of these salts there is no positive 
 certainty, but they are most probably the salts which are 
 dissolved out on the gradual decomposition of igneous rocks, 
 and are subsequently deposited when the water that holds 
 them in solution evaporates." ^ So long as the surface 
 remains covered with trees or vegetation these salts do little 
 harm ; but with any rise in the subsoil water level, caused, 
 for instance, by excessive canal irrigation or natural satura- 
 tion, there would be a tendency for these salts to rise to the 
 surface by the action of the sun's heat, aided by the capillarity 
 of the clay subsoil. 
 
 The appearance of Reh is unmistakeable. It shows itself 
 either as a snowHke deposit on the surface, or as a puffy 
 crust of brownish efflorescence which crackles into dust as 
 you walk over it. No better or safer riding ground can be 
 found than a plain like this, as there are few depressions and 
 no holes concealed beneath the surface. Most tjs3.r will 
 produce in the rains some kind of herbage, generally of a 
 very coarse and innutritions description; but in the dry 
 ' Voelcker, Report, p. 51. 
 32 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 season it is almost completely bare. The worst point about 
 it is, that in moist tracts, notably those in which saturation 
 is due to excessive use of canal water, it shows a decided 
 tendency to spread and infest land hitherto free from its 
 influence. 
 
 The result of a long series of experiments has been to 
 show that CTsar may be reclaimed. If fenced in, and for a 
 time protected from grazing, the coarser grasses gradually 
 gather strength, and spread more and more over the surface ; 
 the dust blown by the wind from neighbouring fields collects 
 round their roots, and their periodical decay produces a thin 
 layer of richer mould. With the increase of herbage the 
 power of the sun in drawing up the salts from the subsoil 
 becomes weaker, and in time the inferior vegetation is, to 
 some extent, replaced by more nutritive grasses. This, the 
 natural, is also the cheapest mode of reclamation. A similar 
 result, at a larger expenditure of capital, is produced by a 
 deposit of silt or rich manure, or by flooding and embanking 
 the surface water. But such methods, except under specially 
 favourable circumstances, can hardly be remunerative. It is 
 enough that the experiments hitherto made show that the 
 reclamation of tJsar is possible ; that no great financial 
 results have been attained is only what might have been 
 expected. But it should be different in the case of peasants 
 devoting their surplus labour to the improvement of small 
 patches in the neighbourhood of their own fields, and even if 
 the land thus recovered from the waste never reaches a high 
 point of fertility, it would at any rate grow wood and fodder, 
 which they sorely lack. But the Indian cultivator is so con- 
 servative, so wedded to traditional methods of farming, that 
 it is difficult to induce him to undertake a task which cannot 
 be immediately remunerative. It is something to have shown 
 that the attempt is not quite so hopeless as has hitherto been 
 believed. As matters stand, all that the tfsar plains produce 
 is a little coarse grazing, and some of the salts and silica is 
 worked up into the common glass bangles which the village 
 girl so dearly loves. 
 
 This leads to another question on which much discussion 
 C 33 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 has taken place — the provision of fuel and fodder reserves. 
 It is needless to say that under the native administration the 
 forests were utterly neglected. Much land fitted only to 
 grow trees was allowed to pass into private hands, and the 
 existing forests were ruthlessly destroyed. The jungleman, 
 as he wanders about, axe in hand, is an unmerciful wrecker 
 of the forest, which he makes his home. He hacks and hews 
 without the slightest discrimination, and, from sheer reckless- 
 ness and want of thought, will destroy a promising sapling 
 which, when cut, is quite useless to him. In the earlier 
 period of our rule we were equally apathetic about forest 
 conservation, and it was not till increasing pressure on the 
 waste, and the new demand for wood, which arose with the 
 development of the railway system, attracted attention, that 
 the Government was roused to a sense of the danger. Since 
 that time forest conservation became an important business 
 of the State. Between reserves and State forests the Indian 
 Government now owns 108,000 square miles, and this will be 
 extended as soon as Burma and Madras are fully dealt with. 
 In forests alone it holds nearly the area of Italy — a property 
 of enormous and yearly increasing value. The increased 
 demand for fuel on the railways has again been met by the 
 opening out of extensive collieries in various parts of the 
 country. But these sources of wood and fuel do little to 
 help the peasant of the Plains to find a rafter for his thatch, 
 or the wherewithal to cook his cakes and boil his rice. 
 
 In the earlier days of railway enterprise many splendid 
 groves, particularly in Oudh and Rohilkhand, were cut down. 
 This destruction of the woodland drew attention to other 
 dangers. It became apparent that the loss of trees was 
 likely to affect the annual rainfall; and where the railway 
 passes close to the Siwilik hills the denudation of the slopes 
 rendered them unable to absorb and retain the rainfall which, 
 pouring all at once into the lower level, produced dangerous 
 floods. In this Province the pressure of a dense population 
 soon reduced the woodland area. Had the State interfered 
 at an earlier period, the condition of things would be very 
 different from what it is at present The hilly tracts of 
 ... _- 34 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 Mirzapur, for instance, might have been saved from absolute 
 denudation of the more valuable trees, and would have, for 
 ages to come, provided an ample supply of timber and fuel 
 for large cities like Allahabad and Benares, and for the 
 dense population of the adjacent valley. In spite of this 
 period of neglect, it is no small matter that the Provincial 
 Government has now about 4,000,000 acres of reserved 
 forest, somewhat less than the area of Connaught, under 
 conservancy. 
 
 But the management of these forests has been an uphill 
 task. It was only in the more secluded places that much 
 valuable timber remained uncut ; the existing trees needed 
 careful nursing, and much replanting was inevitable. Now 
 the department is beginning to pay; in 1893-94, tlie surplus 
 revenue was about R.x. 70,000.^ The chief danger to the 
 timber is from forest fires. When all the undergrowth is 
 parched in the fierce heat of an Indian summer, a spark from 
 a herdsman's pipe, or even the very friction of the branches 
 against each other by the wind, is sufficient, on the autho- 
 rity of Thucydides, if it were not corroborated by Indian 
 evidence, to start a destructive conflagration. No more 
 awful sight than a mountain side, on the Vindhyan or 
 Siwalik range, in the grasp of the fire demon can well be 
 imagined. In 1893-94 attempts were made to protect 
 2807 square miles, of which 186 were burned. It has been 
 'more than suspected that some of these fires were caused 
 maliciously by villagers in the neighbourhood, smarting 
 under a sense of wrong at the restrictions imposed upon 
 them ; but, as a rule, there is not much tension between the 
 Forest officer and the villagers on his border. 
 
 The form of conservation now in force provides for the 
 survey of each block of forest, and the preparation of a 
 working plan for future action. Open paths are cleared so 
 as to isolate the blocks and reduce the area of fires ; com- 
 munications are opened up for the utilisation of produce, 
 such as building materials, bamboos, fibres, and the like. 
 
 ' Here and elsewhere I use the convenient formula— i R.x. = Rs. lo. The 
 real exchange value of the rupee in English money is now only about is. 3d. 
 
 35 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Lopping and felling are carried on as required, and nurseries 
 are established for the propagation of the more valuable 
 trees. That these reserved forests will in time become a 
 most valuable State property is certain. 
 
 But the preservation of these forests does not much relieve 
 the lack of fuel and fodder in the villages at a distance from 
 them. That part of the reserved area in which grazing is 
 allowed supplies grass to about three-quarters of a million of 
 cattle, merely a drop in the ocean as compared with existing 
 stocks. As regards fuel, again, the peasant of the Plains 
 depends on the twigs which his children collect in the small 
 village waste, on the dry stems of some of the crops which 
 he raises, and, in particular, on the dung of his cattle. 
 Hitherto the comfortable theory has been widely accepted, 
 that this had little influence on the manure supply, because 
 most of the nitrogen passed away into the air and was 
 washed down again into the soil by the periodical rains, 
 while a large proportion of the other valuable constituents 
 survived in the ashes. Dr Voelcker has clearly shown the 
 fallacy of this belief; as a matter of fact, by the burning of 
 manure 97 per cent, of the nitrogen is absolutely lost, besides 
 the physical and mechanical effects which the manure, in its 
 natural state, produces on the soil. 
 
 Except where casual grazing is supplemented by the 
 growth of fodder crops and stall feeding, the scantiness and 
 lack of nutritive qualities in the food, which the ordinary 
 Duib bullock can pick up, are shown by its emaciated 
 condition. The margin of waste available is diminishing 
 yearly with the extension of cultivation, and much of the 
 waste shown by statistics is really salt-infested plains, or 
 other lands which produce little fodder. The suggestion has 
 been made that the State should compulsorily acquire 
 patches of land and conserve them as fuel and fodder 
 reserves. But the difficulties attending such a measure are 
 immense, and the advantages doubtful. It would involve 
 the wholesale ejectment of people whom it would be im- 
 possible, without a system of emigration which the peasantry 
 show no inclination to adopt, to settle elsewhere; the pre- 
 
 36 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 vention of trespass would be a very serious task, and lead to 
 much irritation ; and, lastly, there seems reason to believe 
 that the present stock of cattle is excessive. A people 
 who revere the cow as a godling will not send useless beasts 
 to the shambles, and thus their numbers tend to overpass 
 the fodder resources. On the other hand, a first-class 
 agriculturist, like the Jit, finds no difficulty in growing an 
 ample stock of artificial fodder and in stall-feeding his cattle. 
 A smaller area, treated in this way, will supply a larger 
 amount of food than a grazing ground, which all may use. 
 It is obviously to the reduction of useless animal mouths, 
 and to the extension of stall feeding, that we must look for 
 an improvement in the existing state of things. 
 
 We have thus dealt with some economical problems which 
 specially affect the Du&b before attempting to describe the 
 special character of the remainder of the Plains. 
 
 The chief distinction between Oudh, Rohilkhand, and Gor- 
 akhpur, as compared with the Du^b depends upon the fact 
 that they are, on the whole, cooler, damper and better wooded, 
 and that the saline area is less extensive. The population is 
 more distinctively Hindu than in the Upper Duab, which also 
 suffers much less from congestion. These districts grow less 
 fine wheat, more rice and sugar. This part of the country 
 does not possess and does not so urgently require those 
 immense canals which with so much advantage irrigate the 
 Ducib. Here the risk of a failure of the annual rains is much 
 more rarely felt ; with water much nearer the surface wells 
 are more efficient and easily worked, and irrigation from 
 tanks is more common. Rohilkhand, eastern Oudh, and the 
 adjoining districts are the main seat of the very profitable 
 and rapidly-increasing sugar industry, and the climate and the 
 habits of the people render the important State monopoly, 
 the opium poppy, workable. No peasant can surpass the 
 western J at as a grower of wheat and cotton, and this mode 
 of agriculture suits his broader style of farming. Poppy, on 
 the other hand, is more of a garden crop, requiring a vast 
 amount of careful, minute industry which the Jfit does not 
 care to bestow upon it, and much female and child labour 
 
 37 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 which only the Kurmi or Kachhi, who is more of the market 
 gardener type, can supply. Poppy, too, is extremely sensitive 
 to cold, and cannot be grown with success in the harsher 
 western climate. Besides this, it thrives better on well irriga- 
 tion than on the water of the canal. 
 
 It is in the extension of the cultivation of sugar that the 
 best chance of an improvement in the agriculture of Northern 
 India probably lies. In 1 891-92 this crop occupied 1,363,000 
 acres, or about 6 per cent, of the area under autumn crops. 
 The average outturn of irrigated cane calculated in Gur, or 
 coarse sugar, in preparing which the juice is simply boiled 
 down and inspissated without removing the treacle, may be 
 taken as varying from 2400 to 1600 lbs. per acre. After 
 supplying local wants of a people among whom sweets of 
 various kinds are an essential article of food, the exports 
 from the Province amounted to 180,000 tons, of which over 
 two-thirds went to the Panjib and RS-jputana. That the 
 demand is enormous may be concluded from the fact that in 
 1889-90 sugar to the value of R.x. 1,900,000 was imported into 
 India from Mauritius. Enquiries in Calcutta show that the 
 average consumption of sugar is about 60 lbs. per head per 
 annum. It is the main support of the pilgrim on his 
 travels, and in places like Allahabad and Hardwar, at the 
 periodical bathing fairs, the sales of sweetmeats are immense. 
 
 Sugar production must have been a very ancient Indian 
 industry. This is proved by the names for its preparations, 
 and by the references in the Institutes of Manu, which 
 exempt the weary traveller from punishment if he plucked a 
 cane or two from a roadside field, a picture of rural life which 
 in its reality and vividness recalls the prevailing custom in 
 modem times. But it is probable that much of the sugar in 
 ancient times was obtained from the juice of the palm. It is 
 as difficult to imagine how the Indian peasant could ever 
 have existed without sweets as to conceive what with him 
 could have taken the place of tobacco. 
 
 But it is not only from an economical point of view that 
 the sugar industry is of prime importance. It demands the 
 highest skill of the farmer, and its culture is itself a lesson in 
 
 38 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 the higher art of cultivation. If the crop is to succeed the 
 soil must be repeatedly ploughed and heavily manured ; the 
 weeding, hoeing and protecting it from its numerous enemies 
 involve constant toil. Manure follows the cane, and where 
 the crop is grown it is more evenly distributed over the 
 village area. The crushing and boiling require care and 
 some empiric chemical knowledge. 
 
 In former days the cane was always crushed in a rude 
 wooden or stone mortar, in which the pestle was slowly 
 revolved by the patient labour of the oxen. This inefiScient 
 and wasteful machine has been largely replaced by the more 
 economical iron roller mill, which enables the crop to be 
 crushed as it ripens, reduces the amount of wastage, and 
 supplies the juice in a cleaner state. This is the only modern 
 farming implement which the peasant has up to the present 
 readily adopted. But much still remains to be done to 
 improve the system of manufacture. A great improvement 
 would at once result from the establishment of co-operative 
 factories on the model of an English or Danish creamery, but 
 the suspicious nature of the people and lack of capital at 
 present render this impossible. With better appliances, more 
 technical knowledge of improved methods of manufacture, 
 and greater regard for cleanliness, it is probable that before 
 long Northern India will not only fully supply local wants, 
 but leave a large margin for foreign exportation. As it is, 
 cultivation is largely increasing, and the area under the crop 
 has more than doubled in half a century. 
 
 Rice, again, to the east takes the place of wheat to the 
 west, and here alone is it largely used for food. The people 
 to the east eat rice and pulse ; those to the west wheat, 
 barley and millets. Rice thrives best under the heavier 
 rainfall of the northern submontane districts. Hence in this 
 part of the Province the Kharif or rain crop is all important 
 The farmer to the west pays his rent out of his wheat and 
 cotton, and grows a patch of maize or millets as food for his 
 family and fodder for his cattle ; to the east he lives mainly 
 on the earlier crop of broadcast rice, and grows a finer 
 transplanted variety for sale. 
 
 39 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 To continue the distinction between these two parts of the 
 Province, there is a striking contrast in the village life. The 
 tradition of raid and rapine, when the land was harried by 
 Sikh and Marhatta not a century ago, survives to the west in 
 the form of the homestead. Here the houses are heavy- 
 walled, flat-roofed, crowded within a limited area, generally 
 planted on a mound rising over the surrounding lowlands, 
 and the village from the outside looks like a miniature fort, 
 the entrance narrow and winding, the outer wall circuit 
 obviously arranged with a view to defence against sudden 
 attack. To the east the village site is more open, and the 
 houses less huddled together within a narrow space ; the 
 population freely disperses itself in unprotected hamlets 
 spread in convenient positions over the whole village area. 
 This growth of hamlets is a predominant factor in the village 
 economy. Not only is it the direct result of a long period of 
 uninterrupted peace, but it has the special advantage of 
 ensuring the more even distribution of manure over the 
 whole village area, brings labour nearer to its scene of work, 
 and allows the menial castes, — the currier, sweeper, and their 
 kindred, who are an abomination to the orthodox_Hindu, — 
 to establish their little independent communities in which 
 they can practise their special industries without offending 
 the feelings of others, and freed from the irksome restraints 
 imposed by their more orthodox neighbours. 
 
 The predominant feature, however, distinguishing the east 
 from the west is that in the latter the pressure of population 
 on the resources of the soil is much less. This will be 
 discussed more in detail in another connection. Here it is 
 sufficient to note that while Ballia has 805 souls to the square 
 mile, Saharanapur at the other end of the Province has but 
 446. To the west, then, the pressure on the land is much 
 less severe ; rents are lower, and the landless village labourer 
 is much less a half-starved serf. 
 
 We have noticed in passing the village groves which, 
 though finer and more abundant in the country north and 
 east of the Ganges, are a striking feature in the landscape all 
 over the Province. The planting of a grove is regarded as 
 
 40 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 one of the means of religious advancement, and the destruc- 
 tion of them among orthodox Hindus is opposed by a 
 stringent sanction. This conception of the holiness of the 
 grove is further shown by the rule which prohibits the use of 
 the fruit until one of the trees is married to the adjacent well 
 by a parody of the regular ceremony. Some of these groves 
 are of enormous extent There are in many places groves 
 known as the Likh Pera, because they are supposed to 
 contain 100,000 trees. Others are of great antiquity, the 
 trees as they decay being carefully replaced. That at Man- 
 dawar in the Bijnor district is perhaps the most ancient 
 grove in India, being now situated on the very spot where 
 the Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang rested in the seventh 
 century of our era. 
 
 The grove holds a prominent part in the social life of the 
 village community. Beneath its shade nestles the common 
 shrine; here the cattle find shelter in the fierce heats of 
 summer ; it is the playground of the children, the halting 
 place of strangers, from the Collector with his camp in the 
 cold weather to the wandering trader and the long-haired, 
 ash-smeared Jogi or Sanny&si on his rounds to visit his clients. 
 The fruit is very generally regarded as common property, 
 and when the country mango with its tart, turpentine flavour 
 is ripe, it supports a large number of the poorer village 
 menials until the early autumn crops are fit for food. 
 
 Nothing is more picturesque in a quiet way than one of 
 these villc^e groves in the camping season. The pleasant 
 contrasts of light and shade, the brown, gnarled trunks of 
 the trees, the dark green foliage of the mango, the lighter 
 coloured leaf of the plpal, the feathery branches of the 
 bamboo, the delicate tamarind, always a favourite with the 
 early Muhammadan settlers, reflected in the still water of 
 the neighbouring tank, the graceful spire of the Saiva shrine, 
 by which sits a contemplative Brihman or ascetic smeared 
 with ashes, his thoughts far from the concerns of this world 
 of sense, make up a charming picture, especially in the 
 morning when a tender haze softens every outline, or at 
 evening when the cattle wander slowly to their sheds from 
 
 41 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the pasture. Hence the Sanskrit writers, with a keen sense 
 of natural beauty, called the eventide Godhfili, the time 
 when the dust rises as the kine come home. 
 
 The ravages of war have often played havoc with these 
 village groves. General Sleeman, writing in 1835,^ says 
 that there was not a grove or avenue, only a few solitary 
 trees to be seen between Delhi and Meerut, where now the 
 country is covered with splendid plantations. This was the 
 work of Sikh raiders. In the time of Bishop Heber,^ 1825, 
 the beautiful avenue of trees on the road between Agra and 
 Fatehpur Sikri seems not to have been in existence; at 
 least an observant traveller like him could hardly have 
 failed to mention it. Arboriculture is a matter on which 
 our Government has ever laid much stress. The banks of 
 the Canals and their distributaries have been largely utilised 
 in this way. There are now nearly forty thousand acres of 
 Canal plantations, and in modern years all the more im- 
 portant roads have been provided with the shade which is 
 so welcome to the wearied traveller. 
 
 In close connection with the village grove is the village 
 tank. These are most numerous to the east of the Province, 
 where they are largely used for irrigation. In one of these 
 districts, Azamgarh, there are no less than 1500 artificial 
 tanks, and few villages in the country do not possess a foul 
 depression where bricks are made and clay excavated for 
 building purposes. These become brim-full of water in the 
 rains ; but as the season advances it is spent on the iields 
 or drunk by the cattle till it becomes almost dry in the cold 
 weather. Some of the larger artificial reservoirs date from 
 prehistoric times, and to the east are attributed to the Suiris 
 or Rajbhars, Dravidian races who probably became lords of 
 the country during the temporary eclipse of Aryan civilisa- 
 tion, after the fall of the Gupta dynasty. Some of these 
 ancient tanks are of much larger area than those of the 
 present day, which are seldom more than an acre in extent. 
 The old tanks are distinguished by a difference of form 
 
 ' Rambles and Recollections, ii. 231. 
 ^ Journal, ii. 13. 
 
 42 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 obviously based on religious considerations. The new tanks 
 have their greatest length from east to west in connection 
 with sun worship ; those of older date from north to south. 
 Bathing in some of these tanks is a deed of piety, and acts 
 as a cure of disease; others are holy because they adjoin 
 some sacred shrine. At some of these tanks it is part of 
 the pilgrim's ritual to assist in deepening it by removing 
 a basketful of mud from the bed. But a rich man who 
 proposes to excavate a tank always selects a new site, 
 either because he wishes it to be altogether identified with 
 his nariie or dreads sharing the ill luck of the old excavator. 
 Hence many tanks are wofully silted up and hold little 
 water. The tank, with its lofty earthen banks covered with 
 fine trees, looks like an ancient fort, and is a conspicuous 
 feature in the landscape of the Plains. But as the water is 
 drunk by men and cattle, used for purposes of ablution, and 
 by the washerman, specialists in sanitation look upon it 
 with well-grounded suspicion, and it is doubtless an agent 
 in the diffusion of epidemic disease. 
 
 Of large lakes the Plains are singularly destitute. Marshes 
 there are in plenty, and a day's journey will seldom be 
 passed without meeting with one of these depressions, often 
 the ancient channel of some river, a mass of coarse grass and 
 rushes abounding in all kinds of water-fowl. Such is the 
 Noh Jhil in Mathura, six miles long, about half the length 
 of Windermere, which is supposed to be an old channel of 
 the Jumna. The Bakhira or Moti Jhil, the pearl lake, on 
 the border of Gorakhpur and Basti, is rather smaller than 
 this ; the Suraha Jhil in Ballia is about the same size, and 
 practically a back water of the Ganges. More interesting 
 than these are the splendid artificial lakes which Bundel- 
 khand owes to the enlightened Chandel dynasty. These 
 are formed by enormous masonry dams built across the 
 mouth of the valleys. One of them at Mahoba in Hamir- 
 pur has a circumference of five miles. Some enclose 
 craggy islets or peninsulas crowned by the ruins of ex- 
 quisitely ornamented granite temples. 
 
 At Gorakhpur the flooding of the lowlands in the neigh- 
 
 43 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 bourhood of the Station covers the country with water over 
 a stretch of many miles in the rainy season. This is about 
 the only place where anything in the shape of good yachting 
 can be enjoyed in the Plains. 
 
 The Himalayan lake is of a different type. It has often 
 been formed by a landslip, which blocks the outlet of a 
 valley and forms a more or less permanent embankment. 
 Such was the Gohna lake, which was suddenly formed about 
 three years ago by the subsidence of the hill-side on one 
 of the upper tributaries of the Ganges. Behind this the 
 water gradually accumulated till it overtopped and washed 
 away the barrier. This fortunately was slowly scoured 
 away by the torrent ; if it had suddenly collapsed a terrible 
 inundation would certainly have devastated the valley below. 
 One of the Kumaun lakes, Naini Tal, seems to have been 
 formed in the same way, but here the embankment has 
 continued permanent ; others, according to the theory of some 
 observers, are the result of glacial agency. These lakes are 
 not of any considerable size. Naini Tal has a circumference 
 of rather more than two miles ; Bhim Tal is slightly larger, 
 Naukuchiya, as its name implies — "the lake of the nine 
 corners" — is distinguished by its varied outline. These 
 lakes, all in the immediate neighbourhood of the sanatorium 
 occupied by the heads of the Local Government, in the hot 
 and rainy seasons provide the visitors with ample amuse- 
 ment in the way of fishing and boating. 
 
 Many of the lakes in the Plains support a large and in- 
 dustrious community of fishermen and bird-catchers, growers 
 of the Singhara or water-nut, diggers of edible roots, planters 
 of the Boro rice on the slushy banks, as the water recedes. 
 These plantations, patches of the brightest emerald green, 
 are a welcome break in the otherwise dreary landscape of 
 the hot season. 
 
 Something has been already said of the hill flora, which is 
 remarkable for its variety and beauty. Among trees we find 
 many which approximate to the Chinese type, such as the 
 Magnolia and the Tea tree ; the Abies, Juniper, Yew, Deodar 
 cedar, and Holm oak, with orchids, ferns, and numerous 
 
 44 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 other varieties. That of the southern hills is more scanty 
 and uninteresting. Poorest of all is the flora of the Plains, 
 where the plants are not only few in kind but singularly 
 unattractive. "Everything in India smells except the 
 flowers," is one of the tvvo feeble epigrams, which, on the 
 authority of Sir Ali Baba, form the only permanent in- 
 tellectual enjoyment of jaded visitors at Simla. The ex- 
 planation of the poorness of the flora of the Plains lies in 
 the uniformity of the soil and the rigour of the climate — 
 parching heat and steamy dampness succeeded by sharp 
 cold destroy all but the hardiest plants. Most of the land 
 is under cultivation, and the peasant persistently destroys 
 everything which can be called a weed. Any green stufit 
 which grows in secluded corners is devoured by cattle or 
 goats, or grubbed up as fodder for horses or stall-fed 
 animals. For. the abundant vegetation, the bright flowers 
 and luxuriant plant life usually associated with a tropical 
 country, we must look elsewhere than in northern India. It 
 is only in the Tar&i that the coarser grasses and reeds 
 attain a considerable vigour of growth, and it is only in 
 Gorakhpur, to the extreme east, where the plants character- 
 istic of the Gangetic Delta begin to appear, that any variety 
 in the flora can be found. 
 
 The fauna, on the contrary, is large and varied and more 
 interesting to the ordinary European resident, where every 
 one is more or less devoted to sport. Practically there is no 
 preservation of game except in the jungles owned by some of 
 the native nobility, who maintain the game for their own 
 amusement or for an occasional battue on the visit of some 
 official magnate, or in the Jat villages to the west, where the 
 peacock is regarded as a sacred bird and the people are quite 
 ready to turn out with their bludgeons and attack Mr Thomas 
 Atkins if he venture to shoot one. In tracts again owned by 
 landholders of the banker class, who have the Jaina prejudice 
 against the destruction of animal life, the sportsman will meet 
 little encouragement, if he do not encounter actual resistance. 
 But ordinary sport is well within the means of the young 
 officer who during his home service cannot afford to rent a 
 
 45 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 grouse moor or deer forest in Scotland. This is one of the 
 chief alleviations of Indian service, and it is devotion to 
 shooting, polo and pig sticking that produces in the subaltern 
 that activity, coolness and self-reliance which have made him 
 such an admirable leader of men on active service. In most 
 places pig sticking, coursing, snipe, partridge, ducks, quail, an 
 occasional antelope, spotted or ravine deer can be found 
 without much trouble and within fairly easy distance of 
 headquarters. 
 
 But within the present generation the larger game have 
 been much reduced by the clearance of jungle and the ex- 
 tension of cultivation. The Muhammadan Emperors hunted 
 large game in places where they no longer exist. Thus, 
 Firoz Shah hunted the rhinoceros in Saharanpur in 1379 ; 
 they are now met with only in Assam and the Nepil Tarii, 
 but semi-fossilised remains of the beast have been found in 
 Banda. There are still a few wild elephants in the Siwollik 
 range ; formerly they were much more common. According 
 to Dr Buchanan Hamilton they were numerous and destruc- 
 tive in Gorakhpur in the early years of this century. Akbar 
 used to hunt them at Narwar near Jhansi, in Bundelkhand, 
 and at Kantit, close to Mirzapur. In quite recent times the 
 Rajas of Balrimpur captured herds of them in the Gonda 
 forests of Northern Oudh.^ 
 
 The same is the case with the tiger, which was formerly 
 much more widely spread than is the case at present. Thus, 
 Dr Buchanan Hamilton describes how in 1769, in a year of 
 famine, so many cattle perished that the tigers, deprived of 
 their ordinary food, attacked the town of Bhawapar in 
 Gorakhpur and killed about four hundred people. The 
 inhabitants fled, and the place remained for some years 
 deserted.^ In 1803 they were shot on the Ganges below 
 Kanauj. These animals are very unwilling to venture into 
 the open Plain unless there be a continuous belt of jungle, 
 which enables them to reach the hills or the jungles of the 
 
 'Buchanan Hamilton, Eastern India, ii. 502; Blochmann, Atn-i-akbari, i. 
 122: ii. 158; Blinfoxd, Mammalia 0/ India, 464. 
 ''■Ibid., ii. 500. 
 
 46 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 Tarii. Hence, though they were very numerous in Gorakhpur 
 after the Mutiny, their numbers have largely decreased in 
 recent years, and the same process is at work in South 
 Mirzapur, where they abounded in quite recent years. The 
 last haunt of the tiger is now along the sub-Himalayan 
 districts and in the Vindhyan and Kaimflr ranges in Binda, 
 Allahabad and Mirzapur. There seems no immediate danger 
 of their becoming extinct in these parts of the country for the 
 present, but every year they become more wary. There is 
 at least one officer of the Provincial Civil Service still doing 
 duty who has killed with his own rifle more than a hundred 
 tigers ; such a feat is not likely to be repeated. 
 
 The methods of tiger shooting vary. In the sub-Himalayan 
 districts the usual course adopted is to beat the animal out of 
 the swamps and covers in which he conceals himself and 
 surround him with a line of elephants. This is undoubtedly 
 the finest form of the sport A considerable number of 
 sportsmen can combine in the hunt, and in the final struggle 
 every one has a chance of a shot. This method is impossible 
 along the Vindhyan hills. The valleys are too precipitous 
 and the jungles too thick and abounding in thorny trees to 
 admit the free passage of the elephant with the howdah. 
 Here, when the presence of a tiger in a particular jungle is 
 proved by his killing the young buffalo tied up as a bait, the 
 hills lining the valley in which he has his lair are guarded by 
 a number of men posted in trees, who act as " stops," in case 
 the animal attempt to slink away, and he is then driven in 
 the directions of the machSns or posts where the sportsmen 
 take their stand. The hunt by means of elephants is certainly 
 the finer form of the sport ; but in the other the odds against 
 the tiger are not so great as is commonly supposed. If he is 
 an experienced beast, who has gone through the ordeal of a 
 drive on some former occasion, the chances are that he will 
 either creep past the " stops " who are posted on the crest of 
 the ravine, or he will conceal himself in a clump of grass and 
 break back with a series of growls through the line of beaters ; 
 or when he does face the rifles he often charges with a roar, 
 or bounds through the thick underwood or the rocks which 
 
 47 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 cover the bed of the ravine. Under such circumstances it 
 needs a cool hand and steady eye to kill or mortally wound 
 him. If he once escape into the thick jungle behind the 
 machins the case is almost hopeless. 
 
 What makes tiger shooting such a fascinating sport is its 
 infinite variety and unexpectedness. The beast is extraordin- 
 arily wary, of enormous activity and resource. No two tigers 
 will behave in the same way. One from the outset assumes 
 the offensive, charges the beaters, springs at the " stops," and 
 if he is in the end forced to face the rifles, does so with 
 magnificent courage and ferocity. Another will slink in the 
 undergrowth, creep through the grass and bamboos, to the 
 colours of which his own stripes are so admirably adapted, 
 and meet as he deserves the fate of a coward. The interest 
 of the business is really intense when the animal is known to 
 be afoot. Any moment he may burst the jungle screen which 
 conceals him from the sportsman, and his footfall is so light, 
 his wariness so extreme, that there is no time for preparation 
 to meet him. One rustle in the grass, one streak of yellow 
 and black flashing through an opening in the jungle, and if 
 the bullet does not strike him truly he is lost for ever. 
 
 The lion has entirely disappeared from the Province. The 
 last specimen killed was at Sheorijpur near AllahS.b9.d in 
 1864. Now-a-days it is only in K&thiiwar, on the western 
 coast, or in the wilder parts of RajputSna, that a stray survivor 
 of an almost extinct race is encountered. 
 
 In some places, particularly in the rocky hills of Mirzapur, 
 Binda or Jhansi, the leopard is often found. He can seldom 
 be shot in a drive, as his cunning is extreme, and he will lie in 
 the grass and break back or slink along a crevice in the rocks 
 as the beaters advance. When cornered he is perhaps more 
 pluckj' and dangerous than even the tiger. A squealing goat 
 tied up near his haunts in the dusk is often an irresistible 
 bait for this exceedingly cautious beast. 
 
 The wolf is seldom shot, though numerous in some parts. 
 In the very early dawn he may sometimes be met with 
 galloping home to the shelter of some patch of dense scrub 
 after his nightly prowl near the pens of the shepherd. 
 
 48 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 Sometimes he takes to killing children, and will charge in the 
 dusk along a village lane and snap up one of the babies as 
 they play. The Kanjar gipsy tracks him to his den and 
 smokes him out for the sake of the Government reward. But 
 he often passes off jackal cubs as those of the wolf, and it is 
 not easy to detect the fraud. In all probability the number 
 of wolves killed is much smaller than would appear from the 
 statistics. In the three years ending in 1 892 the number of 
 persons killed by wild animals was 702. In 1891, 34 persons 
 were killed by tigers ; leopards, wolves and hyenas accounted 
 for the rest. In 1895 the ferocity of wolves, more particularly 
 in the Rohilkhand and Meerut Divisions, was remarkable. 
 They killed no less than 246 persons, mostly young children, 
 and it has been found necessary to offer enhanced rewards 
 for the destruction of these brutes. In the same year a man- 
 eating tiger in Kumaun caused 27 deaths before he was shot. 
 The l(jss of life by snake-bite among the native population 
 is more serious. The statistics show within the same period 
 17,565 deaths from this cause, and the accidents reported are 
 probably much less than the actual number. In the year 
 1895 in these provinces 4536 persons , died of snake-bite. 
 At one time the destruction of snakes was actively en- 
 couraged by granting rewards to the professional snake- 
 killing tribes ; but it was found that speculators took to 
 rearing snakes. This led to the discontinuance of the reward 
 system, and the Government was obliged to be contented 
 with an academic warning to the people to clear away jungle 
 from the neighbourhood of their houses, and to avoid poking 
 into corners and walking about in the dark. Many old 
 ladies still believe that the risk of being bitten by a snake is 
 one of the chief dangers of Indian life. As a matter of fact, 
 many Europeans spend years in the country and never see a 
 venomous snake. The bungalow is a place where snakes do 
 not usually visit, and if they do venture there their presence 
 is easily detected. It is hardly too much to say that the 
 number of authenticated deaths from snake-bite among the 
 European population, for the last generation, might be almost 
 counted on the fingers. 
 
 D 49 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The graceful black buck is an animal Avhich has much 
 decreased since the extension of railways and the intro- 
 duction of long-range rifles. Dr Buchanan Hamilton, speak- 
 ing of the eastern part of the Province, says that in 1813 a 
 sportsman might see a thousand of them in a day, and he 
 notices a quaint belief current at the time, that " formerly the 
 whole country being covered with long coarse grass swarm- 
 ing with muskitoes, the antelope bred only once in two 
 years ; but since much has been cleared, and the number of 
 muskitoes decreased, it is alleged that they breed every 
 year." 1 
 
 With the clearance of jungle, the finest Indian deer, the 
 Simbhar and Chital, have also much decreased in numbers. 
 They still abound in the preserves of the MahSraja of 
 Benares in the Mirzapur district, when he beats his best 
 jungles for the amusement of some favoured visitor. No one 
 who has seen the stream of animals beaten out on such 
 occasions will ever forget the sight. 
 
 Passing from the flora and fauna, we may close this chapter 
 with some account of the soils and climate. 
 
 The proper classification of Indian soils is based on two 
 distinct factors — the chemical or physical constitution of 
 the soil and its relation in position to the village site. For 
 practical purposes, and in particular for the fixation of rent, 
 the latter is the more important From this point of view 
 the lands of a village are usually divided into three con- 
 centric belts — that close to the homestead, which receives 
 most of the manure, more frequent irrigation and more 
 careful tillage, adapting it to the production of the most 
 valuable crops — the finer cereals, sugar-cane, and cotton, 
 garden vegetables and opium; the middle belt, inferior in 
 quality and less carefully manured, irrigated and tilled ; and 
 lastly, the belt on the outskirts, which receives little or no 
 manure, and grows the coarser and poorer crops, which are 
 in some places exposed to damage from pigs, deer, monkeys, 
 and other forms of animal life. To illustrate the respective 
 values of these classes of soil, we may take the case of parts 
 
 ' Eastern India, II. 503. 
 
 SO 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 of the Aligarh district, where, for the best irrigated land in 
 the belt close to the homestead, the rent is Rs. 12 per acre ; 
 in the intermediate belt, Rs. 8-12-0; in the most distant 
 Rs. 4-12-0. 
 
 Viewed, again, from the physical aspect, soils may be 
 roughly divided into loam and those in which clay or sand 
 preponderates. This is the case generally all over the 
 Plains, where, in the geological character of its soils, India 
 exhibits far less variation than England. The loam is 
 probably in a great measure an artificial soil, the result of 
 the application of manure, irrigation, and the careful tillage 
 of centuries to various grades of clayey or sandy soils. The 
 two really distinct types are the clay and the sand. The 
 localisation of clay is due to the fact that the alumina of 
 the neighbouring slopes, being soluble, is conveyed by the 
 agency of water from the higher ground and deposited in the 
 depressions. Hence the slopes, being denuded of their clay, 
 are usually lighter than the higher uplands, and often ex- 
 ceedingly unfertile. 
 
 The characteristics of a clay soil are the extreme minute- 
 ness and adhesiveness of its particles, which render it com- 
 pact and tenacious. It is capable of absorbing a large 
 amount of moisture which it assimilates slowly and retains 
 with obstinacy. In seasons of drought it cakes and gives 
 little sustenance to plant life. It has a strong power of 
 retarding the decomposition of animal and vegetable matter. 
 It is difficult to plough except under the most favourable 
 conditions. If the season is too wet it clogs the share, and 
 it is impossible to turn it up ; in a dry year it resists the 
 plough like a brick. Owing to its density and obstinacy, 
 those plants thrive best which have the smallest and most 
 fibrous roots, such as rice, wheat, gram, and peas ; those with 
 bulbous roots will not thrive in it. There are various grades 
 of clay — some containing hardly any organic matter, others 
 more ; others, again, whitish or yellowish grey in colour, and 
 sometimes impregnated with noxious salts or some com- 
 pounds of iron. 
 
 In direct contrast to these are the sandy soils. This is 
 
 51 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the detritus of rocks in the water-shed of the chief rivers, 
 worn down and triturated by friction until the particles have 
 become minute in the extreme. We see it at its worst in the 
 sandy deserts of R5.jputana. Much of it has been blown by 
 steady winds from the river beds, and deposited over the 
 adjoining slopes, where the action of the periodical rains 
 soon robs it of any admixture of clay. One has only to ex- 
 perience an Indian dust or sand storm to realise the effect 
 produced by the wind in dispersing it In the depth of the 
 hot season, a sudden increase in the torrid heat, and a lull 
 in the wind, presage a storm. Presently a dense black cloud 
 rises in the horizon ; darkness rapidly spreads over the sky ; 
 all nature is hushed in anticipation, and the birds hasten to 
 the nearest thicket for shelter. Often with a burst of thunder 
 the storm breaks ; masses of sand and dust are driven across 
 the plain. It penetrates through the most closely-fitted 
 doors and windows, and everything is soon covered with a 
 coating of almost impalpable dust. Then perhaps with a 
 few drops of rain a welcome coolness revives exhausted man 
 and beast, only to be succeeded by a more intense heat a 
 day or two later on. 
 
 Hence we often find the sand taking the shape of low, 
 billow-like mounds, as the snowdrifts after a winter storm 
 on the Yorkshire moors. These sand dunes may be traced 
 in the Upper Duib almost from the banks of the Ganges to 
 those of the Jumna. As is the case on parts of the French 
 coast, these dunes tend to encroach on the more fertile lands ; 
 but usually before long they become compacted by the roots 
 of plants, and are in time culturable, growing a niggard crop 
 of starveling millet. 
 
 The main distinction between the clay and the sand lies in 
 their power of retaining moisture. The alluvial soil of the 
 Plains is composed of alternating strata of these two classes 
 of soil, and the fertility of any given tract depends on the 
 degree to which they are intermixed. Where clay prevails 
 to excess the soil is dense and intractible ; where sand pre- 
 dominates cultivation is straggling and unprofitable. Even 
 where the stimulus of canal irrigation is applied, unless the 
 
 S2 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 thirsty sand is dosed with plentiful manure, the sudden 
 luxuriant growth is only temporary, and after a few seasons 
 of fatness the land ceases to respond to the industry of the 
 peasant. And each class of soil feeds its own race of men. 
 The jat and Kachhi, the former the type of the general 
 farmer, the latter of the market gardener, cling to the rich 
 loams ; the Kurmi and Lodha, growers of rice, prefer the 
 deep clays ; the Gfijar and Rajput, whose profession is the 
 tending of cattle, who detest fatigue and the monotonous toil 
 of husbandry, draw a precarious livelihood from the meagre 
 sandy tracts. 
 
 In the southern hilly region, besides the barren gravels 
 which Virgil tells us "scarce serve the bees with humble 
 cassia flowers and rosemary " — 
 
 " Nam ieiuna quidem cli-uosi glarea ruris 
 Vix humilis apibus casias roremque iiiinisirat" — 
 
 we find the Regar, or so-called " black cotton " soil, charac- 
 teristic of Bundelkhand. In some places it is supposed to 
 be derived from basalt by surface decomposition ; in others 
 from the impregnation of argillaceous earth with organic 
 matter, often with a considerable amount of carbonate of 
 lime. But the various processes by which it has been 
 created are still imperfectly understood, and some peculiari- 
 ties in its distribution require further explanation. In some 
 parts this soil prevails to a depth of from 20 to 60 feet ; it 
 swells under the moisture of the rains like an Irish bog, and 
 is then quite impassable ; in the winter and hot weather it 
 cracks into immense clods, which make riding over it most 
 <iangerous. It is commonly believed to need no manure ; 
 but Dr Voelcker^ is inclined to doubt if it be so rich in 
 organic matter and nitrogenous ingredients as to be incap- 
 able of exhaustion. It yields with little trouble to the 
 peasant excellent wheat and the finest varieties of Indian 
 cotton. 
 
 The climate varies extremely with the diversities of geo- 
 graphical feature. To take, first, the Himalayan tract, which 
 
 1 Reprt, p. 47. 
 
 S3 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 contains the chief health resorts, for half the year the climate 
 is that of the sub-tropical rather than the temperate region. 
 From October to April the weather is admirable ; the rain- 
 fall on the outer range, which first meets the force of the 
 monsoon, is 8o inches, decreasing to 40 in the inner ranges. 
 The heat, except in the more confined valleys, is never 
 excessive, and every year the winter brings snow on the 
 higher levels, and in some seasons it falls over the whole 
 mountainous tract; while frosts, especially in the valleys, 
 are often severe. A change to the hills acts as a welcome 
 stimulus to constitutions debilitated by the heat and damp 
 of the Plains ; but many of the severer forms of fever and 
 hepatic affections yield only to the air of Europe. With a 
 better and more rapid steamer service to England, the attrac- 
 tions of the hill stations have decidedly decreased. The 
 journey home and back can now be performed in little more 
 than a month, and an officer on three months' leave can enjoy 
 two of them at home at little more cost than a trip to the 
 hills. 
 
 Beneath the hill tract comes the Tarai, where the prevalent 
 malaria renders permanent residence impossible ; and though 
 much has been done to improve the sanitary conditions, it 
 still remains as dangerous to human life as the jungles of 
 Ashanti or the Campania. 
 
 In the central Plain during the summer months the heat is 
 of tropical fierceness. In June the thermometer in the shade 
 has on occasions risen to 115° in Agra, and Ii9"8° at Allaha- 
 bad. In the latter station the average annual thermometer 
 reading is about ']']°. But between the eastern and western 
 districts there is this important difference, that the latter is 
 less exposed to the hot west wind of summer, which blows 
 with much less force as we move east. To those in vigorous 
 health the hot season, though trying, is seldom dangerous. 
 With suitable clothing and a carefully regulated diet the 
 most extreme heat of the sun may be faced with comparative 
 impunity. By the use of screens of dampened grass, a well 
 built house, with every door and window closed in the early 
 morning, may be kept moderately cool. East of AllahibSd 
 
 54 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 the west wind blows only intermittently, and ceases alto- 
 gether in the neighbourhood of Benares, for about a month 
 before the beginning of the monsoon. It is then replaced 
 by a flow of heated vapour from the direction of the Bengal 
 Delta, presaging the approach of the monsoon. This dull, 
 damp heat is most relaxing and debilitating. With the 
 arrival of the rains the temperature is considerably reduced ; 
 but instead of dry heat, the air is impregnated with vapour, 
 and the malaria rises from the saturated soil. If there is a 
 break in the rain the heat immediately increases. September 
 is, perhaps, the most trying month ; when this is over the 
 cold weather rapidly advances, and the European is able to 
 enjoy the camping, shooting, and exercise which this, about 
 for a time the finest climate in the world, renders possible. 
 
 But here the conditions of the east and west greatly vary. 
 In the former the cold weather sets in later and ends sooner. 
 In Ghfizipur or Mirzapur it is too hot to march comfortably 
 in tents till November is well advanced, and by the close of 
 February it becomes unpleasantly warm. In Saharanpur, as 
 compared with GhSzipur, you gain a fortnight or more at 
 the beginning, and at least a month at the close of camping 
 season. On the other hand, for those liable to attacks of 
 fever or rheumatism, the dry heat of the eastern districts is 
 less trying than the damp of Meerut, where canal irrigation 
 is widely extended. For most people, perhaps the healthiest 
 part of the Province is about the centre, in the neighbourhood 
 of Agra or Mathura. In the summer the heat here is exces- 
 sive, but the dry west wind, for those in good health, is not 
 injurious, and there is less risk of attacks of malarious fever. 
 
 For the new-comer, in the earlier years of residence, the 
 most deadly disease is typhoid or enteric fever. Within the 
 last few years the outbreaks of this malady have been most 
 fatal and mysterious. It has appeared time after time in 
 stations hitherto regarded as about the healthiest in India — 
 Meerut, Allahabad, Lucknow. In 1896, at AUahabid, in 
 spite of the new supply of filtered water, it caused great 
 mortality. It is said that the pipe water supplied was itself 
 pure, but that the microbe lurked in the vessels in which it 
 
 55 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 was stored in the barrack-rooms. In some cases it has been 
 attributed to milk, in others to soda-water procured by 
 soldiers in the bazSr. So far it has baffled the resources 
 of the science of sanitation, and is much more fatal than 
 cholera. Its nidus is probably the filthy native slums which 
 surround our cantonments. 
 
 We shall elsewhere refer to the epidemic of malarious 
 fever which was so fatal in the central Dufib. This disease 
 is largely affected by the amount of the annual rainfall. 
 The average for the year at Allahabad is 41 inches; at 
 Agra, 26 ; at Bareilly, 40 ; at Saharanpur, 34 ; at Mussoorie, 
 92 inches. Over a large part of the Scotch Highlands it is 
 more than 80 inches. But it must be remembered that the 
 fall in India is concentrated within about four months, and 
 the rest of the year is practically rainless, except for a 
 shower or two about Christmas time. On occasions the 
 rainfall has been excessive. In August 1885, in some of the 
 western districts, as much as 20 inches fell within twenty- 
 four hours ; in Basti, in 1888, over 30 inches fell in the same 
 time ; a fall of 34 inches in one day is recorded at Bijnor. 
 With sudden and excessive downpours like this, serious 
 floods are far from uncommon. In recent years the most 
 remarkable floods were that in the Kalinadi in 1885, which 
 demolished the aqueduct at Nadrai which carries the Lower 
 Ganges Canal across the valley, and that at Jaunpur in 
 1 87 1, when the waters of the Giimti wrecked 4CXX) houses in 
 the city and 9000 in villages along the banks of the river. 
 The more famous Gohna flood in 1894 was due to a landslip 
 forming a dam in one of the upper tributaries of the Ganges. 
 No one who witnessed the rush of the water at Hardwar, and 
 the floating relics of towns and villages swept down by it, 
 will ever forget the sight. Were it not for special arrange- 
 ments made to warn the people, there must have been 
 enormous loss of life. 
 
 We have, again, records of storms of great violence. In 
 1888, in a storm on the Bareilly-Pilibhit railway, eighteen 
 miles of telegraph were demolished, and several waggons 
 were blown off the line and capsized. Not long since, the 
 
 56 
 
THE LAND IN ITS PHYSICAL ASPECT 
 
 residences of the officials in the civil station of Moridabad 
 were almost completely wrecked by a hurricane. 
 
 Hailstorms are distressingly frequent, just as " the hounds 
 of spring are on winter's traces," and the wheat and barley 
 are nearly ready for the sickle. There was a famous hail- 
 storm in Azamgarh in 1818, which almost caused a general 
 famine. In 1888, 230 people are said to have lost their 
 lives in a hailstorm in the Moradabad district But, as 
 a rule, these storms are local in their character. The hail 
 will sweep along a tract of country three or four miles long 
 and a mile or two in breadth, demolishing all the standing 
 crops in its course, smashing ear and stalk into chaff, so 
 that it is hardly worth gleaning. Woe to children or cattle 
 who chance to be caught by it unsheltered in the open 
 country. 
 
 57 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROVINCE UNDER HINDU AND MUSALmAN RULE 
 
 THE earliest history of the Middle Land can only be 
 tentatively pieced together out of a mass of myth and 
 legend. According to the most recent authorities, the 
 original home of the Aryas was somewhere in Central 
 Europe, and, from a comparison of the legendary history of 
 the Assyrian kingdom and the campaigns of Semiramis on 
 the Indus, it has been supposed that the Aryas may have 
 been settled in the neighbourhood of that river in the 
 fifteenth century before Christ It was there, and perhaps 
 soon after their arrival, that the great collection of lyric 
 poetry, known as the Vedic hymns, may have been com- 
 posed. At that time it would seem that the new-comers 
 knew little of the Ganges, because in the Rig Veda that 
 river is mentioned only twice, and then without any special 
 note of reverence. Their last settlement west of the Jumna 
 was probably between the two sacred rivers, the Saraswati 
 and Drishadvati, near the modern Thanesar, in what is now 
 the Ambila district of the Panjib. Thence they gradually 
 forced their way along the course of the Ganges and Jumna, 
 until in the Epic period, as represented by the Mahabharata, 
 we find them settled at Hastinapura, in the present Meerut 
 district. 
 
 It is probable that, at the earliest stage of their colonisation, 
 the dense forests which then covered the middle Plains 
 presented almost insurmountable obstacles to their progress. 
 Following the example of all colonists in tropical lands, they 
 would naturally cling to the highlands which flank the 
 valley, and avoid the deep, malarious jungle infested by 
 beasts of prey. The references to an Aryan civilisation of 
 an advanced type on the slopes of the Siw^lik range and 
 
 58 
 
|±;k^i.iaik. 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 the lower Himalaya indicate that this may have been their 
 earliest route to the eastward. Here they encountered the 
 indigenous races. At one time the relations between the 
 new-comers and the old settlers would seem to have been 
 amicable, for we read that, at Hardwar, Arjuna espoused the 
 daughter of King Visuki, of the Niga or serpent race. 
 Later on we learn that the Aryas destroyed the Nigas, and 
 burnt them out of the Khindava forest in the valley of the 
 Jumna, near Indraprastha, or old Delhi, which may have 
 been one of the early frontier posts. 
 
 The Vedas represent the Aryas as having attained a high 
 grade of civilisation. They had acquired a knowledge of the 
 higher handicrafts, and — ^though many of them were nomads, 
 living on the produce of their flocks and herds — others had 
 already occupied the land, were engaged in the cultivation 
 of the soil and had founded villages and towns. 
 
 As they advanced they came in contact with a race whom 
 they called Dasyu, a word which, if derived from an Aryan 
 root, seems to mean " hostile." These people are represented 
 as autochthonous. The popular theory of the ethnology of 
 Northern India describes this black, jungle-dwelling race 
 as conquered and enslaved by the white invaders. Recent 
 investigations, and particularly anthropometry, make it prob- 
 able that the absorption of the indigenous races may have 
 been more complete than is indicated by the mj^hs of the 
 invaders. The new-comers were probably, at least in the 
 earlier stages, limited in numbers, and may have freely inter- 
 married with the population which then occupied the land. 
 This absorption may have gone on in the Panjab at the close 
 of the Vedic period, and was continued as the advance to 
 the eastward progressed. From it arose the present Hindu 
 race, the institution of caste, and the national polity and 
 religion. 
 
 This Dasyu race was possibly itself the result of two 
 streams of migration — the Negritic or Dravidian, which 
 occupied the Central Indian hill tract, with its nucleus in 
 Chota Nigpur ; and the Mongoloid or Lohitic, which flowed 
 from north-east Bengal into the centre of the Province, and 
 
 59 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 thence into the valleys of the Gandak and Gh&gra, The 
 former are now represented by the Santal, Orion, Kol, and 
 BhJl of the southern hills ; the latter by the Kurmi, Bind, 
 Dusadh, and other servile tribes of the eastern Plain. That 
 the culture of these races was, on the whole, at a much lower 
 level than that of the Aryas is generally admitted. They, 
 too, seem to have clung to the hills flanking the Plain, in 
 preference to the deeper forest of the valley. This is 
 indicated by the absence, so far £is enquiries have progressed, 
 of any remains of the Stone Age in the Ganges-Jumna 
 Duib ; but all along the southern hills, as at Jagner in the 
 hilly tract of Agra and on the Vindhyan plateau of BundeU 
 khand, Mirzapur, and Chota Nigpur, we meet the primitive 
 cemeteries, menhirs, and dolmens erected by these races. 
 As far south as the Narbada valley, neolithic stone weapons 
 abound, and in some places, as at Kon in the Mirzapur 
 district, we can examine the workshops of these early crafts- 
 men. If the evidence of rude ochre drawings in some of the 
 caves of the Vindhyan range is to be trusted, these Dravidian 
 tribes, up to comparatively modern times, may have slain the 
 rhinoceros and the sambhar stag with their agate-tipped 
 arrows, spears, and axes. Even now the form of the weapons 
 used by the hillmen indicates that they cannot be far removed 
 from the neolithic age. That some of them on the outskirts 
 of the real Dravidian fringe may, as the Aryan legends 
 indicate in speaking of their forts and castles, have reached 
 a higher stage of culture, is perhaps possible. 
 
 But what it is really important to grasp is that the fusion 
 between the old and the new peoples must have been more 
 complete than has hitherto been supposed to be the case. 
 To use Mr Nesfield's illustration, the Arya became absorbed 
 in the Dasyu as the Lombard in the Italian, the Frank in the 
 Gaul, the Roman (of Roumania) in the Slav, the Norman in 
 the Frenchman, the Moor of Spain in the Spaniard, the Indian 
 Portuguese in the Indian. This conclusion rests on the evi- 
 dence of anthropometry, which establishes the substantial 
 unity of the Hindu race as we now find it in Northern India. 
 It is probable, then, that the Aryan conquest was more moral 
 
 60 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 and intellectual, more a blending of the new-comer with the 
 native, than a substitution of the white man for the dark- 
 skinned people. 
 
 What we must also understand is that the Aryan invasion 
 was not a definite conquest carried out once for all as the 
 Norman Conquest of England or the French occupation of 
 Tonquin. From the very earliest times there must have been 
 a constant flow of settlers from the hilly tract of Central 
 Asia into the lower Indian Plain. The completeness of the 
 absorption of or fusion with the indigenous races was certainly 
 at all times not uniform. Thus, one of these waves of in- 
 vasion from Sc37thia may have remained more completely 
 isolated from the indigenous races and developed into the 
 Rajputs, jats, and Gfijars of the Western Plain. Another 
 party of colonists may have been the forefathers of the 
 Agarwilas and some of the prouder Vaisya or Banya tribes, 
 which are perhaps more free from local admixture than most 
 of the races existing at present. 
 
 Between the fourteenth and fifth centuries before Christ — 
 the period extending from the era of the composition of the 
 Vedas to the construction of the law code which we know as 
 the Institutes of Manu — the present Hindu polity was estab- 
 lished. It represents a period about as long as that between 
 the Norman Conquest and the creation of our Colonial Empire. 
 In this time the great institution which we call caste was built 
 up. The Vedas know nothing of caste. In the code of Manu 
 it is fully developed, even if its rules are somewhat less 
 stringent than at the present time. 
 
 We are now in a position to conclude with tolerable cer- 
 tainty that the basis of caste was not ethnical but occupational. 
 The Brihmans, instead of being a body of pure Aryan Levites, 
 we know to be a mixed race, representing on the one hand 
 the body of churchmen who took the place of the Aryan 
 house-father when ritual and the worship of the gods became 
 gradually more and more intricate ; on the other hand they 
 absorbed the Baiga and the Ojha, the devil priest and ghost- 
 finder of the forest races. Even now-a-days we see traces of 
 this intermixture in the Dakaut or beggar Brahman, and the 
 
 6i 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Mahibrahman who superintends the funeral rites, who have 
 little kinship except in name with the contemplative sages of 
 Mathura and Benares ; and in the local groups, such as those 
 of Gonda or Gaur, those of the trans-Sarju land, the PraySg- 
 wal and Chaube who act as cicerones to the pilgrim along 
 the holy rivers. So with the Rijputs, who represented the 
 higher political class of the infant Hindu State. Some of 
 these, like the prouder septs of the western deserts, have 
 maintained a dignified isolation, and boast a pedigree longer 
 than any family of the western aristocracy ; others, like many 
 of the Oudh Rajputs, are almost certainly of local origin. 
 Even at the present day many of the Dravidian tribes of the 
 Vindhyan range are being gradually promoted to Rajput 
 rank. 
 
 Beneath those the mass of the people has organised itself 
 in endogamous groups of the eponymous, territorial, and more 
 particularly of the occupational type. New castes of this 
 kind are every day becoming separated from the parent stock, 
 with which, on the ground that they accept or prohibit widow 
 marriage, from some dispute connected with precedence, or 
 from the use of or abstinence from special kinds of food, they 
 decline to intermarry. The effect of the break-up of the 
 Hindu polity under the stress of the Musalmin inroads is 
 shown by the number of groups known by Muhammadan 
 names. 
 
 Within the same period of about nine centuries the social 
 institutions of Hinduism were founded. These were codified 
 in the compilation known as the Grihya SQtras, which prob- 
 ably dates from the eighth century before Christ. Some two 
 hundred years later — about two hundred years before the 
 Leges Regiae of Rome were reduced to writing — we find the 
 system of government fully established as it appears in the 
 Institutes of Manu. Here the duties of the Raja and his 
 ministers, the ideal career of the Brahman recluse, the arts 
 of war and peace, the rules for the collection of the revenue — 
 in short, the whole organisation of the Hindu State — are set 
 forth in detail. The code assumes throughout the supremacy 
 of the Brihman, the division of the people into four functional 
 
 62 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 groups, of which the lowest or the Sfldras were quite outside 
 the pale of civil law. Much of it is perhaps an ideal picture 
 of how a State might be guided under a benign priestly rule. 
 It inculcates a body of criminal law, in which the high caste 
 man is beyond control and the outcast is cruelly repressed. 
 But comparing it with the codes at that time in force in 
 Europe, that of the Romans, Germans, or English, it 
 contains much to deserve the reverence which the modern 
 Hindu lavishes on this, the greatest of his Shastras. 
 
 It is from legend alone that we learn that this supremacy 
 of the Brahman Levite was not attained without a struggle. 
 Their ascendancy was fiercely contested by the Kshatriya, or 
 warrior race. One legend, that of Parusarama, tells how 
 "thrice seven times did he destroy the Kshatriyas." The' 
 same contest is represented in the strife of Vasishtha the 
 priest with Visvamitra the warrior. In the end the Kshatriya 
 wins admission to the priesthood. 
 
 When the Brihmans emerged successful from this struggle 
 they used their triumph with discretion. They continued the 
 kingship in the hands of the military order, and preferred to 
 enjoy the pre-eminence in the council of the State. In their 
 priestly guise they controlled the policy of the kingdom, the 
 forerunners in an earlier age of Pandulf or Wolsey. 
 
 Meanwhile they devoted their energies to the conversion of 
 the heathen, and the whole country to the east and south was 
 overrun by Brahman missionaries. They worked on the same 
 lines as the wandering Jogi or Sannyisi of our day who is ever 
 spreading the knowledge of the faith among the Gond, Bhtl, 
 or Kharwar of the central highlands. No missionary reports 
 tell the story of these pioneers of Hinduism, the prototypes 
 of Xavier or Las Casas. At a later date the Ramayana 
 gives a picture of their sufferings, which would be almost 
 pathetic if it were not ludicrous. — " These shapeless and ill- 
 looking monsters testify their abominable character by various 
 cruel and terrific displays. These base-born wretches impli- 
 cate the hermits- in impure practices, and perpetrate the 
 greatest outrages. Changing their shapes and hiding in the 
 thickets adjoining the hermitages, these frightful beings 
 
 63 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 delight in terrifying the devotees. They cast away the 
 sacrificial ladle and vessels, they pollute the cooked oblations, 
 and utterly defile the offerings with blood. These faithless 
 creatures inject frightful sounds into the ears of the faithful 
 and austere eremites. At the time of sacrifice they snatch 
 away the jars, the flowers, the fuel, and the sacred grass of 
 these soberminded men." ^ We can almost picture the precise 
 Brihman being harried by a pack of shock-headed jungle 
 men. One of the greatest of these saints has come down to 
 us by name — the Muni Agastya, who is said to have converted 
 southern India, and whose grave is to this day shown in the 
 Gonda district in north Oudh, near the banks of the Ghagra. 
 This conquest of the older by the new creed followed the 
 general lines of Aryan colonisation. It was by the absorp- 
 tion, rather than by the annihilation, of the local deities that 
 Brahmanism triumphed. We hear of none of the persecution, 
 none of the iconoclasm which characterised the MusalmSn 
 inroad. A fitting home was found in the Brahmanic pan- 
 theon for the popular village deities, the gods of fear and 
 blood of the indigenous faith. Under these changed circum- 
 stances and to meet the wants of the new Hindu people the 
 Vedic theology was reconstructed. The vague nature deities 
 of the older faith were gradually and without any sudden 
 dislocation of familiar traditions modified into the supreme 
 triad — Brahma, the Creator ; Vishnu, the Preserver ; Siva, the 
 Destroyer and Reproducer. The first two were in name at 
 least found in the Veda ; the last was assumed to represent 
 Rudra, the Vedic storm god. But the conception of Brahma 
 was too abstract to suit the taste of converts reared in the 
 traditions of a coarsely animistic faith. He has fallen out 
 of popular regard, save so far as he is identified with Para- 
 meswar, the Almighty of these later days, or has been revived 
 by some modern, struggling theistic sects. Vishnu, by his 
 successive incarnations, has been made the vehicle for con- 
 ciliating the tribal gods or totems of tribes now well within 
 the fold of Hinduism. Siva as Mahadeva — the great god — 
 with his consort Kali, Devi or Durga, has swept up and 
 
 1 Muir, AtuUnt Sanskrit Texts, II., chap, iii., section iv., 427. 
 64 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 absorbed much of the demonolatry of the indigenous servile 
 races. 
 
 This reformed Brihrnanism provided the land not merely 
 with a new faith but with a new philosophy. These sages in 
 their secluded hermitages scattered through the eastern and 
 southern jungles were deep students of the mysteries of life 
 and of the mind of man. Hence came the six schools of 
 Hindu philosophic thought, which endeavoured to solve 
 those problems which will remain the battle-ground of 
 thinkers as long as the world exists — ^how matter was evolved 
 from chaos, how the soul by a succession of new births is 
 to be freed from the burdens of sensual existence, and finally 
 absorbed in the divine essence of the universe. 
 
 The contrast between the militant faith of the Aryas in 
 their early settlement east of the Jumna at Hastinapura, in 
 the Upper Ganges- Jumna Duab, and the later faith evolved 
 after centuries of peaceful meditation, is marked by the dif- 
 ference of tone of the two great epics. The Mahabharata, 
 the Iliad of the Hindus, is one long paean in commemoration 
 of martial glory. The Ramiyana, their Odyssey, must be 
 later than Manu's Institutes, which were almost certainly 
 compiled before the Aryan missionaries crossed the Vind- 
 hyas. In the one the poet sings of " the battle of the warrior 
 with confused noise and garments rolled in blood " ; in the 
 later epic we have little of activity and self-assertion, and 
 these are replaced by the calm resignation of the saint, the 
 passionless observance of duty, the reticence, the self-sacrifice 
 of the ascetic. In the one we find the Sturm und Drang of 
 the Iliad, in the other the stiller life and artistic calm of the 
 Odyssey. One is eozoic in its stern intensity: the other 
 neozoic — ^the scene is lapped in the softer air of peace and 
 meditation. The hero of the later poem emulates the eremite 
 of the woods, who has shaken himself free from the bondage 
 of the flesh and lives to God alone. 
 
 Thus Brahmanism, which had its birth within or on the 
 
 frontier of the Province, pursued its quiet path, but not for 
 
 loiig. It yielded for a time to another faith which, while it 
 
 now offers salvation to half the world, has hardly a follower 
 
 E 65 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 in the land of its birth. If the supremacy of Brahmanism be 
 fixed about looo B.C., it lasted till the fifth century B.C., when 
 Gautama Buddha was bom at Kapilavastu, which has per- 
 haps erroneously been identified with Bhuila Dih in the Basti 
 district. All we really know about the situation of this place 
 is that it lay on the route between the Buddhist cities of 
 Gorakhpur and Sravasti in Gonda and somewhere between 
 the rivers Ghagra and Rapti. The well-known tale of his 
 miraculous birth, his marriage, the Great Renunciation, his 
 studies as a recluse in the hermitage at Rajagriha, his en- 
 lightenment, his missionary journeys through a large part of 
 the Province, and the pathetic story of his death at Kusi- 
 nagara, said, probably incorrectly, to be the modern Kasiya 
 in Gorakhpur, need not be told again. 
 
 The historical facts of the great reformer's life are shrouded 
 in a mass of legend, and the chronology is most uncertain. 
 Many of the places sacred to his followers through the various 
 incidents of his career have been identified by General Cun- 
 ningham in the course of the Archaeological Survey. We 
 have already mentioned Kapilavastu and Kusinagara, the 
 scenes of his birth and his attainment of Nirvana, the release 
 attained by the performance of duty from the recurring series 
 of new births in the world of existence. We know with more 
 or less certainty that he visited and expounded the law at 
 Ajudhya in Faizab^d, at Benares, Mathura, Sravasti (now 
 Sahet Mahet, in Gonda), and at Sankisa in Farrukhabad : and 
 that after his cremation his ashes were enshrined in a StApa 
 -at Moriyanagara, possibly Barhi in Gorakhpur. The piety of 
 his followers adorned these sites and many others supposed 
 to be associated with the events of his life by a series of stately 
 Stupas or richly ornamented sepulchral mounds, containing 
 relics of the Teacher. There seems no reason to doubt that his 
 begging bowl, the Grail of eastern legend, after being removed 
 to Peshawar, is now shown to the pilgrim at Kandahar. 
 
 It was not for at least two centuries after the death of the 
 Teacher that his faith under the influence of Asoka, the 
 Constantine of the new revelation, became the established 
 religion of Northern India. The new faith, we must remem- 
 
 66 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 ber, did not at least in its early days involve the overthrow 
 of the existing belief. Buddha would undoubtedly have 
 called himself a Hindu, and admitted that his was only one 
 of the multitudinous sects which Hinduism is always throwing 
 off. It was an immediate consequence of the system of the 
 four Asramas, or stages in which the life of an orthodox 
 Brihman was supposed to be passed. " If," he would say, 
 " it is only at the third stage that perfect truth can be attained, 
 why should any one waste time over the preliminary stages 
 and in sacrifices and oblations which profit nothing ? " His 
 attitude towards Brahmanism was not that of St Paul in the 
 face of the paganism of Greece or Rome, but rather that of 
 Isaiah towards the Mosaic law as interpreted by the later 
 priestly schools. Of the causes which led to the establish- 
 ment of the new faith as the State religion, we can only form 
 conjectures. The movement was possibly as much social as 
 theological. It found, on the one hand, a haughty, bigoted 
 priesthood, on the other an aristocracy ruthless in its coercion 
 of the lower races. According to Manu,^ the sole duty of 
 the Sddra was to serve the twice-born classes, " without de- 
 preciating their worth." There can be no doubt that their 
 condition was one of galling servitude and oppression. The 
 bonds of the caste system lay heavily upon them. The 
 conquest had been completed and the country was broken 
 up into a number of petty principalities, which waged inter- 
 necine war upon each other. The childlike joy of life, so 
 marked in the Vedic literature, had been replaced by a dull 
 age of settled government, from the control of which they 
 were excluded ; theology had fallen into the hands of a body 
 of pedants. To people like these the personal influence of 
 the Teacher, his sympathy for the oppressed, his life of 
 charity and benevolence, his repudiation of caste, his preach- 
 ing of a lofty moral code, must have come as a new revelation. 
 As Christianity in its earlier days was the consolation of the ' 
 fisherman and the slave. Buddhism opened a new world to 
 the village menial serf. That Brihmanism was thoroughly 
 extirpated from the land is most improbable, that Buddhism 
 
 ^ Institutes, i. 91. 
 67 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 never called in the aid of persecution against the rival sec- 
 taries is certain. The two religions may in many places have 
 existed side by side, as Jainism and Hinduism do at the 
 present time. Probably the peasant continued to worship 
 his fetish, to bow before his holy tree, to bathe in the sacred 
 rivers, as we see him doing to-day. 
 
 After the death of the Teacher, the foundations of the new 
 faith were consolidated at the two general councils held at 
 ,' Rajagriha in the Patna district, and Vaisali in Muzaffarpur, 
 both beyond the eastern frontier of the Province. With the 
 accession of Asoka to the throne of Magadha, the modern 
 Bihar, another stage is reached. During his reign (264-223 
 B.C.), Buddhism rose to the rank of the State religion. He 
 published the principles of the faith throughout northern 
 India, from Peshawar to Kathiawar on the western, and 
 Orissa on the eastern ocean. Within this Province copies of 
 his edicts have been found at Khalsi on the Jumna in Dehra 
 Dun, on the pillar taken to Delhi from Meerut by Firoz 
 Shah, on a third removed at the same time from Paota in 
 Saharanpur, or Bara Topra in Ambala, and lastly, on the 
 well-known pillar now shown in the Allahabad Fort. All 
 these, with some slight variations, preached a creed, much of 
 which might have been taught at Olney or Little Gidding. 
 He inculcated the duty of obedience to parents, kindness to 
 children and friends, mercy to animals, compassion towards 
 the weak and suffering, reverence to Brahmans and members 
 of the Order, suppression of anger, passion, cruelty, and 
 extravagance ; generosity, tolerance and charity. 
 
 To the historian these edicts are of supreme importance, 
 because they lead to a settled chronology. The Khalsi 
 pillar names five Greek kings as contemporaries of Asoka — 
 Antiochus Theos of Syria (B.C. 261-46) ; Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus of Egypt (B.C. 285-47) ; Antigonus Gonatas of 
 Macedonia (B.C. 276-43) ; Magas of Cyrene (B.C. 258) ; and 
 Alexander of Epirus (B.C. 272-54). This brings the date 
 of the pillar to about 253 B.C., about the time of the cam- 
 paign of Regulus against Carthage. With this begins the 
 series of dated monuments in India. 
 
 68 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 But about half a century before this, the synchronism of 
 dates in the histories of India and Europe had been estab- 
 lished through the travels of the Greek traveller Megasthenes, 
 who came as the ambassador of Seleukos, the ruler of Syria, 
 from 312 to 280 B.C. Megasthenes lived for some time at 
 the court of Sandrokottos, king of the Prasii, as the Greeks 
 called him, but who is known to Indian historians as 
 Chandragupta, king of' Magadha, whose capital was at 
 Pataliputra, the modern Patna. Chandragupta seems to 
 have been an adventurer who rose to power after the con- 
 vulsion caused by the invasion of Alexander, when he (327-6 
 B.C.) pushed his conquests of the Panjab as far as the 
 Hyphasis or Biy^s, but never reached this Province. It was 
 Megasthenes who first opened the world of the East to the 
 curious Greeks. His account follows much the same lines 
 as that of the Institutes of Manu. The people were truthful, 
 sober, and industrious ; there were Brihmans and members 
 of the Buddhist orders ; there were inspectors and super- 
 visors of morals, who perhaps acted the same part as the 
 news-writers of Mughal times and of modern China. The 
 rural economy was much the same as we found it twenty 
 centuries later. 
 
 " It falls to the lot of most nations," says Mommsen, " in 
 the early stages of their development, to be taught and 
 trained by some rival sister nation." The same service 
 which the Greeks performed for Rome, they conferred on 
 India. Their influence on art, as we see from remains 
 recently discovered at Mathura, was no less profound than 
 that exercised on science and religion, philosophy and social 
 life. The school of architecture which arose under their 
 guidance has been styled by Dr Ferguson the Indo-Roman 
 or Indo-Byzantine, and reached India through Gandhara or 
 Kabul in the period subsequent to the Christian era. But 
 the theory that any of the legends or doctrines of Buddhism 
 were due to Christian influence is disbelieved by the best 
 authorities.^ 
 
 The next standpoint in history is the invasion of the Indo- 
 
 1 Rhys Davids, Uibbert Lectures, iSSi, p. 151. 
 69 
 
 / 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Skythians, which occurred in the first century before Christ. 
 They introduced the northern form of Buddhism, which, for 
 the next six centuries, competed with the earlier form estab- 
 lished by Asoka. This new form of the faith was organised 
 by the council of Kanishka, held in 40 A.D., while Caligula 
 reigned in Rome. He appears to have done the same 
 service to Buddhism in Gandhara, or Afghanistan, as Asoka 
 did in the Indian Plains — ^that is to say, he made it the State 
 religion. His reign marks the introduction of Buddhism in 
 its corrupt form into Tibet, Burma, and China, a movement 
 which has been compared by Dr Ferguson with the super- 
 session by Gregory the Great of the simpler primitive form 
 by the hierarchical system. 
 
 Of three of these Indo-Skythian monarchs — Kanishka, 
 Huvishka, and Vasudeva — inscriptions have been found at 
 /Mathura; from Pidham in Mainpuri comes a record of the 
 / satrap Saudasa, and their coins abound in the piles of ruins 
 scattered all over the Province. Earlier even than these are 
 what are known as the Punch-marked coins, which General 
 Cunningham thinks may be as old as any of the coinages of 
 Greece or Asia Minor. It is on the basis of this fragmentary 
 inscriptional record, and from the evidence of numismatics, 
 that the early history of the Province is now being patiently 
 worked out. 
 
 The effects of these Skythic raids on the people are very 
 uncertain. There seems reason to believe that some of the 
 Rajput septs and perhaps the Jats and Gfljars are descended 
 from these invaders; but they have become so intermixed 
 with the indigenous races that the verdict of anthropometry 
 is uncertain, and the evidence from survivals of custom 
 equally vague. 
 
 The final overthrow of the Indo-Skythian kingdom is 
 attributed to the Indian hero Vikramaditya of Ujjain, and he 
 is said to have founded the Sambat era (57 B.C.) in honour 
 of his victory. Of him we practically know nothing, and as 
 the restorer of the ruined shrines of Ajudhya he has perhaps 
 been confounded with Chandragupta II. of the Imperial 
 Gupta dynasty. 
 
 70 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 This kingdom forms the next landmark in our local 
 history. Our slight knowledge of these monarchs is being 
 gradually worked out from a study of their inscriptions and 
 coins, the latter of which, owing to their rarity and beauty, 
 are a treasure to the numismatist. The most recent 
 authority on the gold coinage of the Guptas ^ fixes their era 
 about 160170 A.D., and the death of Skandagupta, or at 
 least the downfall of his empire, in 318-19 A.D. All we know 
 about them is that they were most probably Kshatriya princes 
 and reigned at Patna. The Hindu character of their coins 
 is a legible record of a native reaction against the domina- 
 tion of the foreign Skythian power. There were seven 
 princes of the line, of whom Samudragupta has left an 
 inscription at Mathura; Kumaragupta at Bilsar in the 
 Central Duab ; Samudragupta, on the Asoka pillar at 
 Allah^bcLd ; and Skandagupta, the last »jf the line, at Bhitari 
 in Ghizipur. One of them, Srigupta, may have been a 
 Buddhist; all his successors were certainly Hindus. But 
 they could not have been bigoted Brahmanists, if one of 
 them was the monarch whose gifts made to the Buddhist 
 StGpa at Sanchi are recorded on that famous monument. 
 
 By this time, in fact. Buddhism was on the decline. The 
 degradation of the faith seems to be indicated by the intro- 
 duction of the Statue worship of the Teacher. Dr Ferguson 
 thinks that none of these images can be dated earlier than 
 the first century of our era. It has been supposed that the 
 fall of the Gupta dynasty was due to fresh incursions of 
 Huns or Tatars from the west Buddhism probably decayed 
 because the faith became more and more the religion of 
 priests and monks, and gradually lost its hold on the 
 affections of the people. But of the details of its decline we 
 know practically nothing. It is tolerably certain that the 
 reform of Brahmanism exercised a powerful influence, and 
 the old religion, warned by the experience of fifteen hundred 
 years of eclipse, again strove to regain the confidence of the 
 nation. At last, about the tenth century, when the Norman 
 was invading England, it finally disappeared from Northern 
 
 1 Mr. V. A. Smith, Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1884, pp. 1 20, sqq^ 
 
 71 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 India, leaving scarce a trace of its dominion save the ruins of 
 its noble religious edifices. 
 
 For this period of decline, we have the valuable records of 
 three Chinese pilgrims, who visited this part of the country 
 — Shih-Fa-Hian (a.d. 400); Sung Yun (A.D. 518); Hiuen 
 Tsiang (A.D. 629).^ The information which these travellers 
 give of the country and people only makes us long for more. 
 Thus Hiuen Tsiang, writing of Mathura, tells us that the 
 soil is rich and fertile. "This country produces a fine species 
 of cotton fabric, and also yellow gold. The climate is warm 
 to a degree. The manners of the people are soft and com- 
 placent. They seem to prepare secret stores of religious 
 merit. They esteem virtue and honour learning."^ There 
 the Buddhist ascetics apparently lived in holes scraped in 
 the high mounds which surround the city. 
 
 Everywhere we find signs of the Brihmanical reaction. 
 At Matipura (Mandawar in Bijnor) "the followers of truth 
 and error are equally divided. The King belongs to the 
 caste of the Sudras. He is not a believer in the law of 
 Buddha, but reverences and worships the spirits of heaven." ^ 
 In Brahmapura or Garhwal he found heretics mixed with 
 believers in Buddha. There the country was ruled by 
 women, a story which has been supposed to be a ramifi- 
 cation of the widespread fable of the Amazons.* At 
 Govisina, Kashipur in the Tarai, " there are many believers 
 in false doctrine who seek present happiness only." At 
 Virasdna, which was perhaps Bilsar in the Central Duib, 
 the people were chiefly heretics. "There are a few who 
 believe in the law of Buddha."^ Kanyakubja, the modem 
 'Kanauj, was ruled by the great king Siladitya, whom the 
 pilgrim calls a Vaisya, perhaps a Rajput of the Bais sect. 
 He wavered between the two rival creeds, but was finally 
 converted to the true faith by a miracle.® At PraySga or 
 Allahabad, he finds the people "much given to heresy."^ 
 At Sravasti in Gonda the city was in ruins, and there were 
 
 ' Eeal, Buddhist Records of the Western World. = Ibid., i. i8o. 
 
 s Ibid., i. 190. ^ Ibid., i. 199; Yule, Marco Polo, ii. 339. 
 
 ^ Il/id., i. 201, « Ibid., i. 207. '' Ibid., i. 230. 
 
 72 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 numerous Brihrnan temples. Of Kausambi, the modern 
 Kosam near Allahabad, he says: "The law of Sakya be- 
 coming extinct, this will be the very last country in which 
 it will survive; therefore from the highest to the lowest all 
 who enter the borders of this country are deeply affected, 
 even to tears, ere they return." ^ When he came to Benares 
 and ended his pilgrimage in the Province, he describes the 
 people as mostly unbelievers : a few reverence the law of 
 Buddha. " In the capital there are twenty Deva (Brahmanical) 
 temples, the towers and halls of which are of sculptured 
 stone and carved wood. The foliage of trees combines to 
 shade the sites, while pure streams of water encircle them. 
 The statue of the Deva Mahesvara is somewhat less than a 
 hundred feet high. Its appearance is grave and majestic, 
 and appears as though really living." ^ 
 
 According to current belief the downfall of Buddhism 
 was accompanied by massacre and persecution. The ruins 
 of the Samath monastery near Benares appear to indicate 
 that the building was consumed by fire ; and it is possible 
 that in some places the passions of the mob may have been 
 roused against the adherents of an unpopular faith. On 
 the other hand, the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, as we 
 have seen, indicate that the believers in the two rival cults 
 were then living together on fairly amicable terms, and if 
 the growth of Brihmanism had been aided by persecution 
 they would hardly have failed to notice the fact. Their 
 relations seem to have been much as we find Jainas and 
 orthodox Hindus living side by side at the present day. 
 The decay of Buddhism seems to have been gradual, and 
 it was by degrees replaced by the more liberal form of 
 Brihmanism, to the growth of which it may have given the 
 original impulse. In many cases the Brahmans occupied the 
 sacred sites and even the buildings of the Buddhists. Thus 
 we constantly find that images of Maya the mother of the 
 Teacher, have become the village Devi, or guardian Mother. 
 At Ahichhatra in Rohilkhand images of Buddha robbed from 
 the adjoining Stflpa are to this day worshipped by Hindus ; 
 » Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World, i. 257. s Ibid., ii. 45. 
 
 73 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 in Benares many Buddhist edifices have been utilised both 
 by Hindus and Musalmans, and can now be recognised by 
 the fragments of the characteristic railings of the Buddhist 
 moncisteries ; the famous temple at Gola Gokarnnath in the 
 Kheri district of northern Oudh has been built on the ruins 
 of a Stflpa. The same was the case at places like Mathura, 
 Hardwar and Prayig (Allahabad), held sacred by the followers 
 of both faiths. 
 
 With the decay of Buddhism came the first beginnings of 
 the Jaina faith. The earliest images of this religion appear 
 to be those found by General Cunningham at Mathura with ' 
 dates which are with some probability assigned to the first 
 and second centuries of our era. Though many links in the 
 chain of evidence are still wanting, it seems probable that 
 the architecture of the Jainas was derived from Buddhist 
 models ; at any rate, the late Buddhist and early Jaina bas- 
 reliefs and sculptures are practically indistinguishable. That 
 the later faith was the direct descendant of the earlier is 
 proved by a long series of facts. The Jainas worship the 
 Jinas, a line of deified worthies who have gained exemption 
 from the constant changes of transmigration, and their tenets 
 thus discard a personal God and a Ruling Providence. Like 
 the Buddhists, their laity are known as Sr&vaka or "hearers"; 
 Buddha himself is often called Jina or "the vanquisher"; the 
 Swastika is the sacred symbol of both ; both call their 
 temples Chaitya, and those who have gained perfection, 
 Arhan ; both point to Bihir as the cradle of the faith, and 
 Buddha is often called Mahavtra, the name of the last of the 
 Tirthankaras or Jaina'saints. In this Province the charac- 
 teristic Jaina architecture is best represented at Mathura, 
 Ahichhatra, Dinai, Khukhundu, and Sahet Mahet. 
 
 While Buddhism thus rose on the ruins of the older form 
 of Brahmanism, only to be itself in turn discredited and 
 expelled from the land of its birth, the change in religion 
 had been accompanied by a profound change in the political 
 situation. The action of the new religion in discarding the 
 bonds of caste naturally brought it into sympathy with the 
 emancipated inferior races. Not that the mass of the people 
 
 74 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 seem ever to have been ardent votaries ; but the humani- 
 tarian tendencies of States where Buddhism was the official 
 faith probably influenced them in taking the side of a govern- 
 ment which was at least somewhat less intolerable than those 
 to which it succeeded. Thus, in Oudh apparently, after the 
 fall of Sravasti, a State in alliance with or subject to the 
 Imperial Gupta dynasty, the northern districts fell for a 
 time into the hands of a tribe whom tradition calls Bhars," 
 and to whom it attributes many of the old ruined cities, 
 wells and tanks which are found all over the country. The 
 modern Bhars, a widely spread tribe of landless labourers" 
 and village drudges, know nothing of the glorious deeds of 
 their ancestors, and there can be little doubt that some at 
 least of these ruins were not their work. We have no evi- 
 dence from coins or inscriptions to settle the matter. It 
 may be that this widespread local tradition does rest on some 
 basis of fact, and that the hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water of the Aryan colonists did gain a brief lease of power 
 during the internecine struggles of their masters, or on their 
 ruin by some inroad of Huns or Tatars from the west. This 
 much seems tolerably certain, that when the Rijput colonis- ' 
 ation began in the twelfth or thirteenth century, the new 
 colonists found the country occupied by low caste tribes 
 whom they conquered and brought into subjection. 
 
 In the seventh-century of our era the Province was divided 
 among a number of petty kingdoms. The Upper Ganges — 
 Jumna Duab was included in the kingdom of SthSnesvara, 
 which included a tract to the west of the Jumna with the 
 holy land of Kurukshetra, the traditional site of the war of 
 the Mahabhirata. Higher up the Ganges in the neighbour- 
 hood of Hardwar was the kingdom of Srughna, the ruins of 
 whose capital have been traced close to the Western Jumna 
 Canal. Western Rohilkhand was under the rule of a petty 
 State with MandSwar as its chief town ; and further north 
 the present Garhwil and Kumaun highlands owed allegiance 
 to the Rajas of Brahmapura. The TarSi was a kingdom of 
 itself, ruled from GovisSna, the modem KSshipur ; and the 
 numerous remains found in the jungles testify to a degree of 
 
 75 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 prosperity which was hardly possible except under climatic 
 conditions much more favourable than they are at present. 
 Southern Rohilkhand and the Central Ganges — ^Jumna Duib 
 were included in the kingdom of Panchala, divided into two 
 regions by the Ganges — that on the right bank governed , 
 from Ahichhatra in the modern Bareilly district, and the part 
 west of the Ganges from Kampil in Farrukhabad. Further 
 west Mathura was the capital of another Rfija who ruled a 
 strip of the Duab, and what are now the Native States of 
 Bhartpur, Karaoli and Dholpur on the right bank of the 
 Jumna. The Lower Ganges — Jumna Duab was under the 
 kingdom of Vatsya with its capital at Kausambi near Alla- 
 habad. North Oudh and the trans-GhUgra region were 
 included in the kingdom of Kosala, while southern Oudh 
 had two kings — one of Paschhima-rashtra, or the western 
 State, the other of Piirva-rashtra, the eastern. 
 
 This collection of petty States possessed none of the 
 elements of permanence. They were engaged in constant 
 local struggles, and all that remains of them is the shapeless 
 mounds which cover the ruins of their cities. Some of these 
 have been to a certain extent explored ; it is only by their 
 excavation that the local history of the country can be re- 
 covered. 
 
 Many of these kingdoms were tributary to the Gupta 
 Empire ; but some of them enjoyed at least the right of 
 issuing a local coinage. At Mathura the series commences 
 with a line of Rajubala and three other Indo-Skythian 
 Satraps, all of which have legends in Greek ; these are fol- 
 lowed by the coins of eight Hindu princes. So for the 
 kingdom of Panchala we have the names of twelve kings 
 whose coinage was in copper and the characters later than 
 the time of Asoka and earlier than the Christian era. They 
 contain no Buddhist symbols, and the princes who issued them 
 were almost certainly followers of Brahmanism. At Ajudhya, 
 again, we find a dynasty ruling not earlier than the second 
 century before Christ. It is impossible to judge from their 
 coins whether they were Buddhists or Brahmanists ; possibly 
 they were indifferent to both religions. 
 
 76 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 It was about the middle of the seventh century that the 
 pressure of the Musalmans of the West began to be felt 
 in India, and this continued up to the accession of Sultan 
 Mahmfid (997-1030 A.D.), by whom the conquest was first 
 undertaken in earnest. This led indirectly to an important 
 modification of the political condition of the Province, due 
 to the inroad of the Rajputs, of which ordinary histories take 
 little account But it marks the point at which the organis- 
 ation of the land, as we find it at present, took shape. It was 
 one of those ethnical movements which have been landmarks 
 in the history of the world, and was produced by causes 
 which had their counterpart in the events which pushed the 
 Umbrians on the infant city of Rome, the Gauls into northern 
 Italy, the German tribes into Gaul, and finally the Goths and 
 their kinsfolk over the Roman Empire. This movement 
 continued over a lengthened period. Some of these Rajputs 
 appeared in the Province in the tenth century ; others were 
 displaced and emigrated as a result of the campaigns of 
 Muhammad Bin SS.m in the end of the twelfth century ; 
 much of the colonisation of Oudh took place under the 
 Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century. 
 
 With the opening of the period of Musalman invasion we 
 meet two powerful Rajput dynasties — that of Delhi and 
 Kanauj. The Tomar Rajput dynasty of Delhi appears to 
 have been founded by Anang Pal in 736 A.D., and the nine- 
 teenth Raja in succession to him was Prithivi Rija or Rie 
 Pithaura, in whose time (1193 A.D.) the capital was besieged 
 and captured by Muiz-ud-dtn Muhammad bin Sam, or Shihab- 
 ud-din, as he was known in his youth. It has been supposed 
 that the Tomar kingdom originally included Kanauj, and 
 that the rebuilding of Delhi about 1052 A.D. was due to the 
 loss of Kanauj, which was then conquered by Chandra Deva, 
 the founder of the famous dynasty of the Rahtaur Rijputs. 
 Delhi seems to have been captured by the Chauhans about 
 a century later (1151 A.D.). Visala, the Chauhan Raja, 
 married the daughter of the Tomar Raja, who became his 
 dependent, and adopted as his heir his grandson, known to 
 history as Prithivi Rija. 
 
 77 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The Tomar dynasty of Delhi ruled over a great part of 
 the eastern Panjab, and the Ganges-Jumna Duab up to the 
 Kalindri or Kali Nadi, which drains it, and rising in the 
 Muzaflfarnagar district, joins the Ganges at Kanauj. A 
 kindred house of the same sept ruled at Gw&lior. 
 
 The kingdom of Kanauj seems to have been even more 
 powerful. Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim, found Harsha 
 Vardhana (607-648 A.D.) at the zenith of his power. He tells 
 us that his kingdom extended from the foot of the Kashmir 
 hills to Assam and from Nepal to the Narbada river. The 
 dominions of their Rahtaur successors were more limited ; 
 still it was a goodly heritage. From the Kalinadi eastward 
 they occupied most of Oudh, and one of the line, Sri Chandra 
 Deva, conquered the old Buddhist sacred city of Sravasti in 
 Gonda, which at that time was held by a family of Jaina 
 princes — one of the last in Upper India who professed that 
 faith. The son of the great Jaya Chandra himself, Lakhana 
 Deva, erected a pillar of victory in 1 196 A.D. in the Mirzapur 
 district. From inscriptions and land grants of Jaya Chandra 
 himself it is clear that his rule extended to the eastern 
 boundary of the province. 
 
 Here a third R4jput kingdom appeared upon the scene — 
 the Chandel dynasty of Mahoba, which ruled in the present 
 Bundelkhand, south of the Ganges, and left as their monu- 
 ments the splendid _temples of Khajuraho and the vast 
 irrigation reservoirs along the base of the Vindhyan range. 
 Between the houses of Delhi and Kanauj constant wars 
 occurred. Jaya Chandra, the Rahtaur, chief of Kanauj, cele- 
 brated the Asvamedha, or horse sacrifice, and the feud was 
 increased by Prithivi Raja of Delhi carrying off in open day 
 the Rahtaur princess, who threw herself into the arms of her 
 lover. A quarrel between the Rajas of Delhi and Mahoba 
 led to an invasion of Bundelkhand, and to the annihilation of 
 the Chandel monarchy, which was supported in the struggle 
 by a contingent from Kanauj. Thus weakened, the Hindu 
 houses of Upper India were in no position to resist the attacks 
 of the Musalmans under their king Muhammad bin Sam. 
 In his first campaign in 1191 A.D. he was defeated by the 
 
 78 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 Hindu monarch on the plain of P4nipat, where the fortunes 
 of India were so often decided. Two years after he returned, 
 defeated Prithivi Raja, captured Delhi, and next year the 
 tide of battle turned on Kanauj. The decisive battle was 
 fought at Chandwar in the ravines of the Jumna in the Agra 
 district Another legend fixes the scene of the death of the 
 Hindu king at Benares. We are told that his corpse was 
 recognised by the gold stopping of his teeth. 
 
 Thus the last great Hindu monarchy of northern India 
 ended in ruin. Eighteen years after, the grandsons of their ' 
 monarch, with a scanty troop of followers, abandoned the land 
 of their birth and journeyed into the western desert to avoid 
 the hated invader. Like Aeneas of old in the Roman story, 
 they founded another kingdom in Mirwir, which played an 
 important part in the later history of India, and their de- 
 scendants are its lords to the present day. A princess of the 
 house, Jodh Bii, became the wife of the Emperor Jah&nglr. 
 
 Here we may pause to consider the architectural remains 
 which are left of the period of Hindu domination. As has 
 been already said, there is nothing in the way of a stone or 
 brick building which can at present be proved to be older 
 than the time of Asoka, or the latter part of the third century 
 B.C. The explanation of this is probably to be found in the 
 fact that the earlier buildings were constructed of wood, as 
 is the case to this day in Burma. 
 
 The buildings of the Buddhist period have been classified 
 by Dr J. Ferguson as — Lats or pillars ; Stflpas or sepulchral 
 mounds ; Rails ; Chaityas or assembly halls ; Vihiras or 
 monasteries. Of all of these numerous interesting remains 
 exist in the Province. We have the pillars of Asoka already^ 
 enumerated — Stfipas at Sarnith near Benares ; Kasiya in 
 Gorakhpur ; Sahet Mahet in Gonda and many other places ; 
 the Buddhist cave at Pabhosa near Allahabad ; the Vihara 
 at Sarnith; the Jatavana Vihara, one of the eight most 
 celebrated Buddhist buildings in India, at Sahet Mahet ; the 
 frc^ments of the Buddhist railing found at Mathura. Putting 
 aside as at present inconclusively proved the identification 
 of the sites of the birth and death of the Teacher in the 
 
 n 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 ^Gorakhpur and Basti districts, it is at least quite certain that 
 at Bhuila Dih, Khirnipur, Maghar, Rampur Deoriya, Barhi, 
 Chetiyaon, Kasiya, Rudrapur and Sohanag, we have a series 
 of sites connected with the faith and extensive ruins, images 
 and buildings, which, when their secret is finally solved, will 
 throw enormous light upon the origin, development, and final 
 destruction of Buddhism in northern India. The same is the 
 case with Mathura, Benares, Sankisa, Kausambi, Bihar, and 
 many other places. 
 
 In remains of the early Brahmanical and Jaina periods 
 there are also vast materials which await investigation at 
 places like Benares, Karanbis, Soron, Chitrakut, Rudrapur, 
 Khukhundu, Ajudhya, Ahichhatra, and many other sites. 
 
 But though the Archaeological Survey has done much to 
 elucidate the early history of the country, it is needless to 
 say that much still remains to be accomplished. Even in 
 the more famous sites the amount of excavation already done 
 has been quite inadequate. It is true that the Vandalism of 
 past generations, which permitted the sale of the marbles of 
 Agra, the removal of the inlaid pictures of the Delhi palace, 
 the destruction of carvings and statues by railway con- 
 tractors, has been checked, and something has been done to 
 protect and repair the best surviving examples of the archi- 
 tecture of the Mughals. At the same time it is certain that 
 our Government has never risen to a sense of its Imperial 
 responsibilities in this matter. Its own buildings, in their 
 incongruity and tastelessness, are a standing reproach to the 
 administration. It has doled out insignificant sums for 
 archaeological research with a niggard hand, while all over the 
 Province immense stores of priceless material lie hid beneath 
 the surface, awaiting the spade of the explorer. 
 
 One point may be noted in connection with the sacred 
 buildings of the Hindus — their comparatively small size. It 
 has been said that the limited size of these temples is the 
 result of Musalman oppression, which enforced the con- 
 struction of religious edifices of modest dimensions. This is 
 obviously incorrect. The Hindu so-called temple has no 
 analogy to the stately fanes of the western world. The 
 
 80 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 shrine is intended merely for the accommodation of the idol 
 and its officiant priests, not for the attendance of crowds of 
 worshippers, like St Peter's or Westminster Abbey ; nor, as 
 is the case with our churches, are they used for the perform- 
 ance of ceremonies, such as marriage or for the disposal of 
 the dead. In this they resemble the Temple of the Jews, 
 which according to Dr Ferguson was only 150 feet in length, 
 breadth and height. So the Govind Deva temple at Brin- 
 daban, erected in an era when the liberal policy of Akbar 
 encouraged the construction of splendid temples, is in the 
 form of a Greek cross, the length and breadth of the nave 
 being only one hundred feet, half the length of the transept 
 of Westminster. But in these Hindu shrines the limitation 
 of the floor area and height, as compared with those of the 
 great Christian churches, is made up for by the wealth of 
 decoration which has been lavished on every inch of the 
 surface. 
 
 In winding up the history of these Hindu dynasties we 
 have anticipated the course of events. Under Musalman 
 rule the history of the Province is more or less that of India ; 
 and we can only touch on the main incidents so far as they 
 directly influenced the fortunes of the people. 
 
 It was in his ;iinth raid that Mahmiid of Ghazni (A.D. 1016),'' 
 fifty years before the Norman Conquest, reached the Province. 
 He passed down the Duab, where he found Baran, the modern 
 Bulandshahr, ruled by Haradatta, a Rijput of the Dor sept, 
 who submitted — as the chronicler says — "they proclaimed 
 their anxiety for conversion and their rejection of idols." 
 Thence he went on to Kanauj, then a great city, but its 
 splendour, as far as we can judge from existing remains, was 
 much exaggerated. The thirty miles of circuit, of which a 
 Hindu writer talks, were as unreal as the thirty thousand 
 shops for the sale of betel which are said to have existed 
 within its walls. At any rate in the eyes of the rude invader 
 it was not lacking in magnificence. Mahmfid himself in a 
 letter to the Governor of Ghazni speaks of "a thousand 
 edifices firm as the faith of the faithful, most of them of 
 marble, besides innumerable temples. Nor is it likely tjiat 
 F 81 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the city has attained its present condition but at the expense 
 of many millions of Dinars. Nor could such another be 
 constructed under a period of two centuries." With such 
 greed and wonder must the Goths of Alaric have gazed on 
 the temples and treasures of Rome. The RSja, Jayapal, the 
 Tomar, submitted, became a feudatory of the invader, and 
 was spared. 
 
 Thence he went to Mathura, which he calls Maharatu-1- 
 Hind. There, also, to quote the annalist, " he saw a building 
 
 ^'of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants said had been 
 built not by men but by genii, and there he witnessed 
 practices contrary to the nature of man, and which could not 
 be believed but from evidence of actual sight. The wall of 
 the city was constructed of hard stone, and two gates opened 
 upon the river flowing under the city, which were erected 
 upon strong and lofty foundations to protect them against 
 the floods of the river and rains. On both sides of the river 
 
 ^there were a thousand houses to which idol temples were 
 attached, all strengthened from top to bottom with rivets of 
 iron, and all made of masonry work ; and opposite to them 
 were other buildings supported on broad wooden pillars to 
 give them strength. In the middle of the city was a temple 
 larger and firmer than the rest, which can neither be described 
 nor painted. The Sultin thus wrote concerning it — ' If any- 
 one should wish to construct a building equal to this he 
 would not be able to do it without expending a hundred 
 thousand red Dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years, 
 even though the most experienced and able workmen were 
 employed.' Among the idols there were five made of red 
 gold, each five yards high, fixed in the air without support. 
 In the eyes of one of these idols were two rubies of such 
 value that if anyone were to sell such as are like them, he 
 would obtain fifty thousand Dinars. On another was a 
 sapphire purer than water and more sparkling than crystal ; 
 the weight was four hundred and fifty Miskals. The two feet 
 of another idol weighed four thousand and four hundred 
 Miskals, and the entire quantity of gold yielded by the bodies 
 of these idols was ninety-eight thousand three hundred 
 
 82 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 Miskals. The idols of silver amounted to two hundred, but 
 they could not be weighed without breaking them to pieces, 
 and putting them into scales. The Sultan gave orders that 
 all the temples should be burned and levelled with the 
 ground." ^ 
 
 Thence he went to Mdnj, which is believed to be lower 
 down the Jumna in Etiwah. There he found a fort full of 
 fighting men. " Some rushed through the breaches on the 
 enemy, and met that death which they no longer endeavoured 
 to avoid ; others threw themselves headlong from the walls 
 and were dashed to pieces ; others burned themselves in their 
 houses with their wives and children, so that not one of the 
 garrison survived." ^ 
 
 Mahmfid returned to Ghazni laden with the spoils of 
 conquered cities. On his way home he captured so many 
 prisoners at Sarsiwa in Sahiranpur that captives sold in his 
 camp at from two to ten Dirhams each, and he brought over 
 five thousand slaves in his train to Ghazni. Mahmfld, with 
 all his ferocity, was a scholar, a patron of literature, and his 
 admiration of the Indian architecture was shown by the 
 splendid buildings with which he adorned his northern capital. ^ 
 
 For a century and a half the land had peace, the Panjabl 
 remaining an appanage of the Ghazni kingdom. It was not 
 till 1 191 A.D.,as has been already mentioned, that Muhammad i 
 bin Sim appeared before Delhi, and three years later Kanauj 
 was overthrown. The Hindu kingdoms had doubtless failed 
 to recover from the raids of Mahmfld, and their internal dis- 
 sensions left them an easy prey to the invader. He carried 
 fire and sword through the Duib from Meerut to Benares ; 
 the Ganges was no longer an obstacle to the Musalman arms, 
 and he crossed into Rohilkhand and sacked Budaun. Koil 
 (Aligarh), Atranji Khera, a little lower down the Duab, 
 Kilpi on the Jumna, afterwards to become a Muhammadan 
 outpost to facilitate the passage into Central India, and 
 AUahabid, all fell before him. At Patiyali on the old course 
 of the Ganges he erected a strong fort to guard the pass^e 
 into Rohilkhand. He seems to have met with no serious 
 * Elliot, History of India, ii, 44. ^ Briggs, Ferishtah, L 59, 
 
 83 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 opposition. As the chronicler says of the conquest of Koil : 
 " Those who were wise and acute were converted to Islam, 
 but those who stood by their ancient faith were slain with 
 the sword." 
 
 He had two able lieutenants who aided in the conquest. 
 Bakhtiyar Khilji led an army into Bengal and reduced Bihar 
 and eastern Oudh. Mahmfld of Ghazni himself introduced 
 the practice of promoting distinguished Turkish slaves. 
 Shihclb-ud-din followed his example, and left his Indian 
 dominions in charge of his viceroy, the slave Kutub-ud-din 
 Aibak, and another Turkish slave, Altamsh, succeeded him. 
 It is to the former we owe the magnificent pillar at Delhi, 
 called after him the Kutub Minar — the tower from which the 
 call of prayer summoned the faithful to worship in the stately 
 mosque close by, with colonnades constructed out of the pillars 
 of a Hindu temple. It became the custom of the early 
 Musalmin conquerors to utilise the edifices of the conquered 
 religion in this way. Thus Altamsh built the mosque at 
 Budaun on the ruins of a Saiva shrine. The mosque at 
 Amroha has still the old Hindu chain hanging from its roof, 
 that at Hathgaon in Fatehpur has been built out of the ruins 
 p{ four Hindu temples, and the same is the case with Man- 
 dawar in Bijnor, Mahaban and Noh Jhil in Mathura, Etawah, 
 Ajudhya, and many other places. In fact, when we remem- 
 ber that to the early Musalmins the destruction of a Hindu 
 shrine furnished the destroyer with a ready means of building 
 a house for himself on earth as well as in heaven, it is wonder- 
 ful that so many temples should have survived to our day. 
 Of all the places which they permanently occupied, in Mahoba 
 alone did they spare one of the shrines erected by the Chandel 
 princes, and this probably owed its preservation to its isolated 
 position on a rocky island in the deep waters of the Madan 
 Sigar lake. Everywhere else " Bel boweth down and Nebo 
 stoopeth " before the ruthless troopers of Central Asia. 
 
 We have only scattered notices of the ruin which must 
 have accompanied this destruction of a historic civilisation. 
 When Kutub-ud-din captured Budaun we are told that nine 
 hundred queens committed sati. When he seized Kalinjar 
 
 84 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 the annalist tells that "the temples were converted into 
 mosques and abodes of goodness, and the ejaculations of the 
 bead-counters and the voices of the summoners to prayer 
 ascended to the highest heaven, and the very name of 
 idolatry was annihilated."^ Most significant of all, when 
 Bakhtiyar Khilji took Bihar, he found a library of Hindu 
 books, but it W2is impossible to get them read because " all 
 the men had been killed." 
 
 Still his attack was merely a raid, not a permanent conquest, 
 and though iconoclasm and massacre raged through the 
 land, after the tempest of war and rapine the people settled 
 down again to till the fertile soil and enjoy the kindly fruits 
 of the earth. But the memories of this crowning, disaster to 
 the Hindu polity still live in the recollection of the people. 
 The heroism of Jaya Chandra and the BanSphar heroes, 
 Alha and Udal, who fought in vain for their race in the hills 
 oTBundelkhand, form the subject of an epic still sung round 
 village fires. Even to this day the respect for the brave \ 
 Chandel princes is so widely felt that no one dares to beat a 
 drum near the ruins of Mahoba, lest their heroic spirits should 
 be roused to vengeance. 
 
 It was in the time of N.asir-ud-dtn Altamsh that the greatest 
 of oriental travellers, Ser Marco Polo, visited India and re- 
 corded his impressions of the southern kingdoms ere yet the 
 MusalmcLn kings of Delhi, occupied at home with Mughal 
 incursions, had been able to devote time to the conquest of 
 the Deccan. It is one of the misfortunes of literature that 
 the shrewd Venetian did not include northern India in his 
 wanderings. What would we not give for his views of the 
 condition of the country in his time ? We miss his graphic 
 pictures of social life. In Malabar " there is never a tailor to 
 cut a coat or stitch it, seeing that everybody goes naked." 
 He tells of the animals who to escape execution are allowed 
 to sacrifice themselves to an idol ; of the debtor confined in 
 a holy circle till he payeth what he oweth ; of the temple 
 dancing-girls who when the god has partaken remove the 
 viands to be eaten by themselves " with great jollity " ; " the 
 1 Elliot, History, ii. 231. 
 
 85 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 children that are bom here are black enough, but the blacker 
 jthey are the more they are thought of, so that they become 
 as black as devils " ; the way the Brahmans take omens ; the 
 Jogis, some of whom live to one hundred and fifty years of 
 age ; the chewing of betel ; the monkeys of Comorin, " of 
 such peculiar fashion that you would take them for men " ; 
 and so on. This was the first real revelation of the East to 
 western men, and one can fancy the gallant wise explorer 
 convincing his relatives of his identity after an absence of 
 half a century by cutting out the piles of diamonds and 
 precious stones sewn up in his garments, and in an honour- 
 able old age describing to a wondering audience the marvels 
 he had seen. 
 
 During the period which followed these events the eastern 
 movement of the Rajputs continued. Thus in Oudh the 
 Janwar sept marched eastward after the fall of Kanauj, and 
 a cadet of the clan crossed the Ghigra and founded the 
 Ikauna Rij, now included in the principality of Balrampur. 
 Then followed the Dikhits from Gujarat, who were settled 
 from Kanauj. They were closely followed by a contingent 
 of the blue-blooded Chauhans from Mainpuri and by the 
 Raikwars, who left their home in Kashmir in the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century. It was about the middle of the 
 thirteenth century that the powerful Bais clan, lords of 
 southern Oudh, settled at Dundiya Khera on the lower 
 Ganges. They came from Rajputana, where they are said 
 to have conquered the powerful Raja Vikramaditya of 
 Ujjain, and they received from the lords of Argal in the 
 lower Ganges-Jumna Duab the broad fat lands they now 
 hold in southern Oudh in gratitude for their rescue of a 
 princess of their house from the lust of one of the Musalman 
 governors of Oudh. 
 
 Further east as far as Ghazipur the same tale is told of an 
 emigration of the septs to escape the detested invader, and of 
 the long struggle which gave the Rijputs mastery over the 
 Bhar and the Suiri, the Pasi and the Arakh, Dravidian races 
 which ruled tliFland from the time of the overthrow of the 
 early Aryan civilisation. It was possibly the fact that the 
 
 86 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 Rajput tribes were but new-comers and recent conquerors of 
 the low caste peoples that accounts for the feeble resistance 
 they offered to the Musalman inroad. 
 
 This eastward advance of the RSjputs has continued into 
 quite recent times. The later lords of Agra and Delhi with 
 whom the conciliation of and alliance with the Rajputs 
 became a settled policy in substitution for the older pro- 
 gramme of persecution and repression, encouraged bands of 
 western settlers to colonise the rich plains of Oudh and the 
 Dudb, and completed the land settlement of the country 
 which has lasted to our day. Later still the Chandel and 
 Gaharwir clans gained the mastery over the Dravidian Kols 
 and Minjhis of the broken hilly tract between the lower 
 course of the Son and Ganges in Bundelkhand and Mirzapur. 
 
 To return to the Musalman conquest, the Slave dynasty 
 reigned at Delhi from about the beginning to near the end of 
 the thirteenth century (1206- 1290 A.D.). The greatest king 
 of this line, Altamsh, had by the time of his death, in 1236 
 A.D., brought the whole Province — Bengal, Rajputina, and 
 Sindh — under his authority. He it was whose independence 
 was first recognised by the Khalifa of Bigdad, the overlord 
 of Islam, a dynasty which but a short time before had lost all 
 but the semblance of power under the attack of the Tatars. 
 The Slave dynasty had to contend with constant internal 
 revolt and the pressure of Mughal raids from the north-west. 
 The last but one of the line, Balban, was obliged practically 
 to reconquer the Duab. Of his cruelty to the Hindus we have 
 most ghastly narratives. We are told that the gates of his 
 palace were decorated with the skins of captives, who would 
 seem to have been slaughtered for the purpose. As William 
 the Conqueror devastated Yorkshire from the Humber 
 to the Tees, so Balban converted the country for forty miles 
 round Delhi into a preserve for the larger game. His stern 
 measures of repression followed the lines of the instructions 
 of the Roman Emperor Gallienus to his lieutenant in 
 Illyricum.1 When Katehr or Rohilkhand rebelled, to use the 
 words of the chronicler, "sending forward a force of five 
 ' Gibbon, Decline aiid Fall, i. 412. 
 87 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 thousand archers, he gave them orders to burn Katehr and 
 destroy it, to slay every man, and spare none but women and 
 children, nay, not even boys who had reached the age of 
 eight or nine years. The blood of the Hindus ran in streams, 
 heaps of slain were to be seen near every village and jungle, 
 and the stench of the dead reached as far as the Ganges. 
 This severity spread dismay among the rebels, and many 
 submitted. The whole district was ravaged, and so much 
 plunder was made that the royal army was enriched and the 
 people of Budaun were satisfied. Wood-cutters were sent 
 out to cut roads through the jungles, and the army passing 
 along these brought the Hindus to submission. From that 
 time to the end of the glorious reign no rebellion made head 
 in Katehr.^ 
 
 The Slave dynasty of Delhi was succeeded by the house 
 of Khilji (1290- 1 3 20 A.D.). The founder of the dynasty, 
 Jalal-ud-din Firoz Shah, was treacherously murdered at 
 Karra, near Allahabad, in 1295 A.D., by his nephew, Ala-ud- 
 din Muhammad Shih, the ablest of his line, who, between 
 repelling a Mughal invasion at Delhi and extending the 
 Musalman Empire in southern India, was too much occupied 
 to find leisure for local politics. His restless career closed 
 in 1315 A.D., and the Khilji house was overcome by the 
 rebellion of another Turki slave, Ghayas-ud-din Tughlak, 
 who built, perhaps, the most impressive of all Musalman 
 edifices, the Cyclopean walls of his new capital at Tugh-' 
 lakabad, near Delhi. His successor, Muhammad Tughlak, a 
 curious compound of scholar, warrior, and relentless tyrant, a 
 planner of wild schemes of conquest in Persia and China, but 
 who possessed some dim idea of the necessity of a settled 
 revenue system', spent his reign (1324-51 A.D.) in fighting the 
 Mughal invaders and suppressing revolts, the result of his 
 own insane cruelty and maladministration. The cessation of 
 pilgrim records during the Khilji and Tughlak times at shrines 
 like Soron is silent evidence of the character of their rule. 
 
 His son, Firoz Tughlak (1351-88 AD.) pursued the same 
 policy. The chronicler tells us how he instructed his lieu- 
 
 ^ Elliot, History, iii. 105. 
 
 88 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 tenant, Malik DaM, an Afghin, to remain at Sambhal in 
 Rohilkhand, and "to invade the country of Katehr every 
 year, to commit every kind of ravage and desolation, and 
 not to allow it to be inhabited till the rebel Kargu was given 
 up. The king himself, also under the pretence of hunting, 
 marched annually in that direction to see that his orders 
 were fulfilled, and to do what Malik Daiid had left undone ; 
 and for six years not an inhabitant was to be seen in the 
 district, nor was a single acre of the land cultivated." ^ 
 
 At the same time he was a great builder, and to him was 
 due the beginning of canal irrigation in northern India. The 
 Jumna Canal was his work. He was the builder of Ftroza- 
 bad, now a pile of ruins on the outskirts of Delhi, which 
 he ornamented with one of the pillars of Asoka; and to 
 him IS due the conversion of the Atala Devi temple at 
 Jaunpur into a stately mosque. But he did nothing to 
 strengthen and organise the government, and ten years after 
 his death (1398 A.D.) the terrible raid of Timur broke over 
 the country. 
 
 After defeating Mahmud Tughlak under the walls of 
 Delhi, Timur captured and sacked the capital. Then cross- 
 ing the Jumna he pillaged Meerut, and niassacred in the 
 Hardwir gorge an enormous crowd of Hindus, who had 
 retreated there in the vain hope of saving their lives. His 
 own Memoirs give the most vivid pictures of these terrible 
 events. Of one fight on the Ganges, in Muzaffarnagar, he 
 writes : " I mounted my horse, and taking with me one 
 thousand troops who were at hand, we struck our heels into 
 the flanks of our horses and hastened to the side of the river. 
 As soon as my braves saw the boats, some of them rode their 
 horses into the river and swam to the vessels ; then seizing 
 fast hold of the sides, they defeated all the efforts of the 
 Hindus to shake them off. They forced their way into some 
 of the boats, put the infidels to the sword, and threw their 
 bodies into the river, thus sending them through water to the 
 fires of hell. Some of my men dismounted, and proceeding 
 to the ford, assaulted the enemy with arrows. The occupants 
 
 • Elliot, History, vi. 229 ; Briggs, Ferhhtah, i. 457. 
 89 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the boats returned the arrows, but the vessels were at 
 length wrested from their possession, and were brought with 
 their contents to my presence. The enemy had lashed ten 
 of their boats together with chains and strong ropes, and 
 these vessels maintained the fight My men plied them 
 with arrows till they slew many of them ; they then swam 
 off, and, boarding the boats, put every living soul to the 
 sword, sending them through water to the fires of hell." ^ 
 So we find in the story of the Meenit raid another familiar 
 incident. When he ordered an assault, " many of the Raj- 
 puts placed their wives and children in the houses and 
 burned them ; then they rushed to the battle and were 
 killed." When, again, he tells of the massacre at Hardwar, 
 he says : " Spurring their horses, shouting their war-cry, 
 and brandishing their swords, they fell upon the forces of 
 the enemy like hungry lions on a flock of sheep." ^ 
 
 It is impossible to exaggerate the misery caused to an un- 
 warlike people by savage raids like those of Shihib-ud-din 
 and Timur. They rank with the deeds of the Spaniards in 
 Peru or Mexico, or a foray of Kurds or Turkomans in our day. 
 
 The Delhi kingdom never recovered from this supreme 
 disaster. Henceforward the Mughal supremacy was inevit- 
 able. But this was not to be till a century and a quarter 
 more had passed in decadence and misrule. 
 
 The most noteworthy figure in the interval is that of 
 -•' Sikandar Lodi_(i48.8TiSi7 A.D.), about the period between 
 the accession of Henry VII. and Luther's break with Rome. 
 He was a soldier and a statesman, and re-established his 
 authority over the province and Bihar. But he was a bigot' 
 of the most extreme type. He has left his name in the 
 towns of Sikandra Rao in Aligarh, and Sikandrabad in the 
 Bulandshahr district. Near the latter place, at Shikarpur, 
 he had his hunting lodge, a fertile plain now watered by the 
 Ganges Canal, which must in those days have been an exten- 
 sive jungle. The mound which covers the ruins of his lodge 
 
 1 Elliot, History, ii. 453. 
 
 « Ibid., iv. 25 ; iii. 455, 513. The authenticity of these Memoirs has been 
 disputed, but Professor Dowson accepts them. 
 
 90 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 is suggestively known to the peasant of our days as Anyai 
 Khera, or " the tyrant's mound." He completed the work of 
 Shihib-ud-din at Mathura by destroying all its temples. He ^ 
 also left his mark at another holy city, Soron, by demolishing 
 its most sacred shrine. 
 
 But his most important act was the transier_of the capital- 
 Jrom— Delbi-^to. Agra, which marks the increasing importance 
 of the Duib, now that the Panjib was practically lost. 
 
 It was in the time of his son Ibrahim that the dynasty of 
 Delhi ended, by his defeat and death at the battle of Panipat, 
 which left northern India at the mercy of Bibar and his 
 Mughals. Why it fell is stated by the embassage of nobles 
 which came out to meet the conqueror : " Sultan Ibrahim 
 ill-treats his father's nobles, and has put twenty of them, the 
 supporters of his kingdom, to death, without any cause, and 
 ruined their families. He has suspended some from walls, 
 and has caused others to be burned alive. When many of 
 the nobles saw that they could hope for no safety from him, 
 they sent me to your presence. They are all ready to obey 
 you, and look with anxiety to your coming." ^ 
 
 The Mughals are the well-known Mongols of Central Asia. 
 The poet Khusru had the ill luck to fall in with them, and 
 his account represents what the effeminate Indian Musalmins 
 of his day thought about them. He speaks about them in 
 the tone which Bailie Nicol Jarvie would speak of Rob Roy. 
 " There were more than a thousand Tartars riding on camels, 
 great commanders in war, all with steel-like bodies, clothed 
 in cotton, faces like fire, with caps of sheepskin on shaven 
 heads. Their eyes were so sharp, they might have bored a 
 hole in a brass pot ; their smell was more horrible than their 
 colour ; their faces were set on their bodies as if they had no 
 necks; their cheeks were like empty leathern bottles, full 
 of knots and wrinkles ; their noses extended from cheek to 
 cheek, their mouths from ear to ear ; their mustaches were of 
 extravagant length ; they had but scanty beards about their 
 chins ; their chests were covered with vermin, and their skin 
 rough like shagreen ; they ate dogs and pigs." * 
 
 1 Elliot, History, v. 24. ^ Ibid., ii., Appendix. 
 
 91 
 
NORTH-WESTER^f PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Babar is the first character in Indian history of whom we 
 can claim any personal knowledge. His Memoirs are nearly 
 as naltve and amusing as those of Mr Pepys. He has been 
 called a mixture of Henri Quatre and the Roi d'Yvetot ; but 
 this rather exaggerates the festive side of his character, and 
 his confessions of his love for wine. He was a man of infinite 
 observation ; he had a sharp eye for scenery and the world 
 of nature ; he was a keen observer of humanity, and made 
 curious ethnological enquiries and suggestions unknown to 
 the men of his time. By Europeans he would have been 
 regarded as distinctly a good fellow, and his personal tastes 
 inclined him rather to the more polished Persians than to his 
 own rude kindred. His life was spent in wandering, in war, 
 in sport, so that he says he never kept the RamazSn fast 
 twice in any one place. Even in his later days, without any 
 particular reason for dispatch, he rode from KSlpi to Agra, 
 i6o miles, and swam the Ganges twice. He died at Agra 
 three years after his great victory, and his body rests at 
 Kibul. 
 
 Of Hindustan he formed a poor opinion. " It is a 
 country," he says, " that has little to recommend it. The 
 inhabitants are not good looking ; they have no ideas of 
 social pleasures or of friendly intercourse ; they have no 
 genius or comprehensive ability, no polish of manner, amia- 
 bility or sympathetic feeling ; no ingenuity or mechanical 
 inventiveness ; no architectural skill or knowledge ; they 
 have no decent houses, ice, or cold water ; their markets are 
 not well supplied ; they have neither public baths nor 
 colleges ; neither candles nor candlesticks. If you want to 
 I read or write at night, you must have a filthy fellow standing 
 over you with a flaring torch." 
 
 We must turn back to describe another kingdom which 
 arose in the eastern portion of the province after Timftr's 
 raid. In 1388 a.d., Malik Sarwar Khwaja, a eunuch who 
 had become Wazir at Delhi, was deputed by Muhammad 
 Tughlak to govern the eastern Province, which extended 
 from Kanauj to Bihar. In 1393-94, this ambitious upstart, 
 taking advantage of the disorder of the country, proclaimed 
 
 92 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 his independence and called himself Sultin-us-shark, or the 
 Eastern Emperor. Six kings in succession occupied the 
 throne of Jaunpur, with the control of the eastern part of 
 the Province and Oudh. The most noted member of the 
 family was Ibrahim Shiih Sharki, whose reign of thirty-nine 
 years (1401-40 A.D.) was spent in a long struggle with the 
 Delhi kings for the possession of Kanauj and Kilpi on the 
 Jumna. In these projects he was for the most part un- 
 successful; but he ruled over a splendid tract of country 
 from Kanauj to Bihir, and from Bahraich in North Oudh to 
 Etiwah. The Jaunpur kings, in contrast to their Delhi 1 
 rivals, were great builders. The only Delhi monuments off 
 this period are tombs at Delhi and Budaun; the Jaunpuif 
 kings were simply laid to rest in the open air, but thejj 
 adorned their capital with a series of splendid mosques and a 
 noble fort. They were equally great iconoclasts, as every 
 mosque is built on the site of a Hindu temple. The 
 grandest of these mosques is the Atala Masjid, erected on! 
 the site of a temple of Atala Devi, said to be the work of 
 Jaya Chandra, the last Rahtaur king of Kanauj. This 
 magnificent building was completed in 1408 A.D. Larger, 
 but of less architectural beauty, is the Jimi Masjid or 
 Cathedral Mosque, which was completed about seventy years 
 later. Of the fort, only the ruins remain, the walls having 
 been needlessly demolished after the Great Mutiny. The 
 fine stone bridge over the Gumti river was the work of the 
 Mughal governor in the time of Akbar. 
 
 In 1477-78, Husain Shah, the sixth monarch of the line,' 
 having made ineffectual efforts to resist Bahlol Lodi, the 
 King of Delhi, was defeated in a great battle at Kalpi on 
 the Jumna. Flying to Kanauj, he was again defeated, lost 
 all his western dominions, and his capital was seized. But 
 Husain was permitted to live there as a dependent and 
 complete his Cathedral Mosque. 
 
 If we date, then, the effective establishment of a MusalmSn 
 dynasty at Delhi at the very end of the twelfth century, we 
 find that, up to the Mughal conquest in the first quarter of 
 the sixteenth, a period which roughly corresponds to the age 
 
 93 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 from the accession of King John to the fall of Wolsey, the 
 Delhi kingdom had altogether failed to secure complete 
 control over the Province. We read of raids, wars, and 
 insurrections; the kings exhibited at the capital a certain 
 rude magnificence, while viceroys ruled the more distant 
 provinces, and often took occasion from the disasters which 
 overtook their lords to assume temporary independence. 
 
 But of the people we hear nothing, and no records exist 
 to show how they lived, what revenue they paid, how order 
 was maintained, how justice was administered. With a much 
 smaller population the pressure on the soil was much less 
 intense than is the case at present. At the same time the 
 repeated famines which devastated the land show that a 
 terrible amount of misery must have existed. The petty 
 local Rijas doubtless continued to hold the country as 
 [dependents of the Delhi suzerain, or his lieutenants. The 
 village organisation, with its priest, its watchman, its artizans, 
 and at the top of all, the Rajput headman, under the local 
 Raja, must have gone on much as it does at present. This 
 social life withstood the tyranny and maladministration of 
 the overlord, not so much perhaps because in itself, except in 
 the kinship of the members of the clan, it possessed elements 
 of permanence, but because the wants of the people were so 
 few, and their accumulated capital so small, that, after the 
 tempest of war was overpast, the peasant was able to re- 
 establish his meagre household, though one of his stalwart 
 bread-winners may have fallen before the lance of a Tatar 
 trooper, or his daughter had been swept away within the 
 walls of a harem at Agra or Delhi. 
 
 To illustrate some of the phases of the gradual progress of 
 the Musalmdn conquest, we may take the case of Rohilk- 
 hand, which was in the days before artillery protected from 
 invasion on the west by the broad stream of the Ganges. 
 
 It began with the raid of Shihab-ud-din in 1194 a.d. In 
 1252 A.D., Nasir-ud-din Mahmfld again invaded it, and 
 directed an attack "such that the inhabitants might not 
 forget for the rest of their lives." In 1266 Balban appeared, 
 and we have already described the vigour of his proceedings. 
 
 94 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 In 1290 Ftroz II. arrived, and the Musalmins "made their 
 swords red with the blood of the Hindus ; whatever live 
 Hindu fell into the king's hands was pounded into bits 
 under the feet of the elephants. The Musalmans who were 
 country born had their lives spared, and were distributed 
 among the chiefs as slaves." In 1380 A.D. there was another 
 rebellion. "The Emperor's justice," the chronicler admits, 
 "in this instance degenerated into extreme cruelty. Neither 
 did the misfortunes of these miserable captives satisfy his 
 thirst for revenge. He returned every year under pretence 
 of hunting to that unhappy country ; but the people, and not 
 the beasts of the forest, were his prey. He by degrees cut 
 off all the inhabitants, and converted whole provinces into 
 wildernesses." It Wcis not till 1424 A,D., after nearly two 
 centuries of conflict, that the Hindu leaders surrendered, and 
 the country was pacified. When we remember the short 
 distance of Rohilkhand from Delhi, this throws a lurid light 
 on the incapacity of the Delhi kings. Under much more 
 difficult circumstances, the pacification of Upper Burma was 
 concluded by the British in less than a decade. 
 
 In Oudh the course of events was very similar. The story 
 begins with the romantic tale of Silir Masaud, which has 
 become so shrouded in the mists of legendThat it is difficult 
 to judge where myth ends and sober history begins. He is 
 said to have been nephew of Mahmfid of Ghazni ; to have led 
 his forces as far as Ajudhya; then to have sacked Meerut 
 and reduced Kanauj, Mathura, and Benares. He is supposed 
 to have met his death at Bahraich in Northern Oudh, in 
 1033 A.D. Some of the MusalmSn settlements, which were 
 the agency in the spread of the faith, are alleged to date 
 from this time. But even his very existence has been 
 doubted, and according to some authorities he is little more 
 than the hero of a solar myth. He has now been deified 
 under the title of Gh|zi_Miy|n, the counterpart of Krishna 
 and Narcissus, the divine youth snatched from the joys of 
 earth in the prime of boyish beauty. In this form, he claims 
 the devotion of one and three-quarter millions of people in 
 the Province. 
 
 95 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Most of the Oudh colonies, planted on the Roman system^ 
 to coerce a subject population, date from a later period. 
 Such were the Sayyid colony at Jarwal in Bahraich, the 
 Shaikhs of Bilgrim and Gopamau in Hardoi in the thirteenth, 
 the Sayyids of Birhar, in Faizibad, at the end of the four- 
 teenth, and the Shaikhs of Malinwan, in Hardoi, in the 
 beginning of the fifteenth centuries. 
 
 Many of the existing towns throughout the Province, not 
 to mention the Imperial or provincial capitals, like Agra, 
 Lucknow, or Jaunpur, owe their importance to having been 
 early seats of the local Musalman governors. Such are 
 Sahiranpur, in the Upper Duab, and lower down, Farruk- 
 habad and Ghizipur ; in Rohilkhand, Bareilly, Shahjahinpur, 
 Budaun, RSmpur, and Moradabad ; in Oudh, Bahraich, and 
 Faizibad ; in Bundelkhand, BSnda. Many of these Musal- 
 min towns, in the good old days, supplied a large proportion 
 of our native officials. But the Hindu, with his aptitude for 
 English education, has proved a dangerous competitor. The 
 lanes become more and more deserted, the fine brick man- 
 sions more and more dilapidated ; and if ruin is to be 
 avoided, the attitude of the Musalman towards the new 
 learning must undergo a radical change. 
 
 On the death of Babar, his son Humayun succeeded to the 
 throne. He was then at the age of twenty-two, and the 
 young, inexperienced monarch soon found himself opposed 
 by a master in statecraft — the Afghan Shir Shah. He 
 headed the reaction of the Hindustani Musalmans against 
 the Mughals. Humayun led a force eastward and captured 
 Chunar, the strong fortress on an outlying scarp of the 
 Vindhyan range, which commands the lower course of the 
 Ganges. But he was out-manoeuvred by his adversary 
 in the plains of Bengal. By the compromise with his 
 brother Kamran, he had surrendered Kabul, and thus lost 
 the advantage of reinforcements of hardy mountaineers. 
 Humayun himself was of voluptuous disposition, an opium 
 eater, and the Indian Plains proved to be the Capua which 
 demoralised his forces. In the ninth year of his reign he 
 was defeated in a decisive battle at Chaunsa, near the Karam- 
 
 96 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAn RULE 
 
 nisa river, just beyond the limits of the Province ; and the 
 next campaign ending in another defeat at Kanauj, he was 
 compelled to fly across the western desert, where his son 
 Akbar was born, and thence to Persia. 
 
 To the extraordinary man who had driven Humayun from 
 the throne, it can hardly be said that the ordinary histories 
 do sufficient justice. Himself an adventurer from the Afghan 
 hills, he learned the details of administration in Bihar. He 
 was the first Musalmin ruler who studied the good of his 
 people. He had the genius to see that the government 
 must be popularised, that the king must govern for the 
 benefit of his subjects, that the Hindus must be conciliated' 
 by a policy of justice and toleration, that the land revenue 
 must be settled on an equitable basis, that the material 
 development of the country must be encouraged. All this 
 and more Akbar strove to do later on ; but Shir Shah was 
 the first who attempted to found an Indian empire " broad- 
 based upon the people's will." 
 
 He carried a great military road from Bengal to the Indus, 
 and it was he first who established Sarais or hostelries, which 
 opened up trade throughout the empire. His revenue 
 system was, for the first time, based upon the measurement- 
 of the land and calculation of the produce. He relaxed the 
 oppressive Muhammadan law code, and provided for the 
 administration of justice. That he introduced such exten- 
 sive reforms in his .short reign of five years — interrupted as 
 it was by campaigns against Rajputana, in the course of 
 which he met his death — is a wonderful proof of his executive 
 ability. "No government, not even the British, has shown 
 so much wisdom as this Path&n," is Mr Keene's summary of 
 his career. He was killed by the accidental explosion of a 
 magazine at the siege of Kalinjar, in Bundelkhand, in 1 545 ; 
 and though his son Islam Shih carried on to some extent 
 the wise policy of his father, he alienated the nobility by his 
 cruelty, and when he died, in the ninth year of his reign, the 
 road was open for the return of Humayun from exile. 
 
 He was only forty-eight years old when he was restored. 
 But he was wearied, and in indiff"erent health ; the vicissitudes 
 G 97 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of his career had taught him the uncertainty of human great- 
 ness ; he was unfit for great enterprises. Perhaps he found 
 in religion a solace for his troubles. At any rate, he was 
 killed by a fall on the steps of his palace at Delhi, as he rose 
 to obey the call to prayer. His remains rest in a noble 
 mausoleum, where, by the irony of fate, the last degenerate 
 princes of his line, stained with the innocent blood of helpless 
 Europeans, fell by the sword of Hodson. 
 
 The life of his successor, Akbar, is the history of India 
 during his long reign of forty-nine years (1556-1605 A.D.), 
 and his personality stands high, even when compared with 
 his great contemporaries — Elizabeth of England and Philip II. 
 of Spain. In his courage and strength, his love of sport, and 
 knightly exercises, he was curiously like another notable 
 prince of the same age — Henri IV. of Navarre. He was 
 only thirteen when, with the aid of the gallant Bairam Khin, 
 he crumpled up the Afghan host, on the historic field of 
 P^nipat. It is a curious sign of the degeneracy of the 
 Hindustani Musalmins that they had to accept as their 
 leader Hemu, who, brave as he was, was a Banya or corn- 
 chandler, a caste rarely endowed with military prowess. 
 
 When his rule was thus established, the later life of Akbar 
 falls, as Mr Keene has shown, into three periods. — " During 
 the first, which lasted about fifteen years, he was much 
 occupied with war, field sports, and building ; and the men 
 by whom he was ultimately influenced were still at that time 
 young, like himself Opinions were forming ; territorial and 
 administrative operations were in hand. About 1576 began 
 a second period, marked by the arrival of certain Shiahs and 
 other persons of heretical opinions from Persia, and the 
 growth of their influence over Akbar. At the same time the 
 emperor, now in the maturity of his intellect, turned his 
 attention to the Hindus, and to the amelioration and estab- 
 lishing of the revenue system, by which they were so much 
 affected. This period lasted for about fifteen years, and was 
 followed by that sadder period when, as must happen, except 
 under exceptional circumstances, men in power grow old 
 without having found competent successors. In such con- 
 
 98 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 ditions originality drivels into cant and caution withers into 
 decay. One by one the reformers, a few years since so full 
 of hope and vigour, drop into senility, or, more fortunate, into 
 the tomb. No one is left but some lover of letters who, wiser 
 than the rest, retires betimes into the shade to prepare the 
 record of departed greatness." 
 
 Let us endeavour to sketch the state of the country in his 
 time. That, in spite of the prevailing disorder, there was a 
 considerable amount of prosperity is certain. Babar, though 
 he writes with a backward glance at the bleak hill country of 
 his birth, speaks of Hindustan as a rich and noble country, 
 abounding in gold and silver ; and he expresses astonishment 
 at the swarming population, and the innumerable workmen 
 in every trade and industry. That there was much waste 
 and jungle where we now see smiling fields is clear. The 
 chronicler writes: "It had become manifest to Akbar that 
 much of the culturable land of Hindustan was lying unculti- 
 vated ; and, to encourage cultivation, some rule for dividing 
 the profit of the first year between Government and the 
 proprietor seemed to be required." ^ Bernier, writing in 1664, 
 in the reign of Aurangzeb, says that in the neighbourhood of 
 Agra and Delhi, along the course of the Jumna reaching 
 to the mountains, and even on both sides of the road lead- 
 ing to Lahore, there was a large quantity of uncultivated 
 land, covered either with copse wood or with grasses six feet 
 high.2 
 
 We know that, for instance, in Bulandshahr and Shah- 
 jahanpur, the plains, now green with wheat and sugar-cane, 
 were occupied by extensive jungles. According to the 
 Ain-i-Akbari, the cultivation in Azamgarh amounted to 
 106,005 acres, and the revenue was R.x. 25,264. The present 
 cultivated area is 587,797 acres, and the revenue R.x. 165,810. 
 We really know too little of the purchasing power of money 
 in those days to make any trustworthy comparison. As the 
 Settlement Officer, Mr J. R. Reid, writes: "What trust is 
 to be placed in the figures of the Ain-i-Akbari it is difficult 
 to say. Probably they understate the areas rather than 
 
 1 Elliot, History, y. 383. '' Constable's Edition, p. 375. 
 
 99 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 exaggerate them. ... In respect to the revenue recorded in 
 the Ain-i-Akbari, it may be questioned whether it was not 
 an ideal assessment, and whether it was ever collected for 
 the State. We have also to bear in mind that Akbar pro- 
 fessedly took one-third of the average value of the land. In 
 our day the Azamgarh cultivator cannot pay that and live. 
 Moreover, we profess to take half the rent that the landlord 
 or middleman realises, or ought to realise, from the actual 
 cultivator. To judge by our figures, our present revenue 
 arrangements are, with reference to the fall in the value of 
 silver, less favourable to the State than were those of Akbar. 
 But we scarcely know enough of the domestic history of the 
 population in the latter's time to draw a comparison between 
 its condition and that of the population at the present day." ^ 
 We may with advantage leave Akbar's revenue system to 
 be discussed in another place. It is easy to see on what 
 grounds the fame of Akbar as a statesman is based. He 
 was the first of the Indian rulers, with perhaps the exception 
 of Shir Shah, who accepted the responsibilities of government 
 as we understand it. Before his time nothing that can be 
 called a civilised administration existed. This he found 
 time to establish, though much of his life was spent in war. 
 He was the first ruler who displayed a spirit of tolerance 
 and a desire to improve the condition of his Hindu subjects. 
 How his predecessors treated them is graphically described 
 by the annalist of Firoz Shah. " When the Collector of the 
 Diwan asks the Hindus to pay the tax, they should pay it 
 with all humility and submission ; and if the Collector 
 wishes to spit in their mouths, they should open their mouths 
 without the slightest fear of contamination, so that the Col- 
 lector may do so. In this state, with their mouths open, 
 they should stand before the Collector. The object of such 
 humiliation and spitting into their mouths is to prove the 
 obedience of the infidel subjects under protection, and to 
 promote the glory of the Islam, the true religion, and to 
 show contempt to false religions."^ 
 
 ^ Azamgarh Settlement Report, p. 176. 
 ' Blochmann, Ain-i-Akbari, i. 237. 
 lOO 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 In direct contrast to this, which it may be hoped was only 
 a counsel of perfection, Alcbar showed extreme consideration 
 for Hindus. For instance, one result of his visit to Brindaban 
 in Mathura, accompanied by a train of Hindu princes, was 
 his permission or advice for the erection of the group of 
 splendid temples, the finest examples of Hindu architecture 
 in the Province. He interdicted on certain occasions the 
 use of beef, which the modem British Government dares not 
 propose. He made careful rules to prohibit injury to the 
 peasants' crops by the horde of followers which thronged 
 his camps. He married at least one Hindu princess, the 
 daughter of Rija BihSri Mai, the Kachhwaha Rajput, who 
 was the mother of his successor Jahangir. He employed a 
 host of Hindu officers both in the army and the Civil 
 Service. Bernier, writing at a later date, describes in detail 
 the objects of this policy — ^to utilise the large Rijput con- 
 tingents as auxiliaries ; to keep in check other Rijas not in 
 the Emperor's pay ; to foment jealousy between those whom 
 he favoured and their brethren ; to coerce the Pathans or 
 rebellious governors; to oppose the Persians who were of 
 the Shiah sect and opposed to the Mughals, who were Sunnis.^ 
 Rija Todar Mai, a Khatri of Laharpur in Oudh, was his chief 
 revenue officer; Rija Birbal, a needy Bhat or genealogist of 
 Etawah, became his Wazlr, and round him and his learned 
 daughter a large cycle of modem folk-lore has collected. 
 
 But granting all this, and fully admitting the enormous 
 advance in the principles of Government which he effected, 
 no one who reads the Atn-i-Akbari, the cyclopaedic annals of 
 his rule, can fail to be conscious of a certain lack of depart- 
 mental perspective. Akbar, it is needless to say, was a 
 master of detail : but here detail is pushed to the extreme. 
 We find careful accounts of the organisation of the camp and 
 household, the stable and wardrobe, the armoury and the 
 hunting establishment. For all these rules are prescribed 
 with the greatest minuteness ; but it is everywhere assumed 
 that the control of business depends on the compilation of 
 appropriate registers, which is one of the besetting delusions 
 
 1 Travels, p. 210. 
 lOI 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the native official of our days. On the other hand, we 
 learn little of the essentials of administration as we under- 
 stand it — about the police and judicial services, the develop- 
 ment of the national resources, the relief of famine, education 
 and medical aid. We would give much of the Ain-i-Akbari, 
 valuable and amusing as it is, for one Census or Settlement 
 Report, with its elaborate statistics and full information 
 regarding the social condition of the people. But no con- 
 temporary government thought it part of its duty to put 
 its proceedings-on record for the instruction of posterity. 
 
 What Gibbon says of the Antonines may be said of Akbar 
 — "The labours of these monarchs were overpaid by the 
 immense reward that inseparably waited on their success, 
 by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight 
 of beholding the general happiness of which they were the 
 authors. A just but melancholy reflection embittered, how- 
 ever, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often 
 have recollected the instability of a happiness which de- 
 pended on the happiness of a single man. The fatal moment 
 was perhaps approaching when some licentious youth or 
 some jealous tyrant would abuse to the destruction that 
 absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of 
 the people." ^ 
 
 So it was with the Mughals. Their system of education 
 and training entirely failed to maintain a line of promising 
 heirs-apparent Humayun was an opium eater ; Akbar's 
 son D^niyal died of delirium tremens ; his nephew KaikobSd 
 was addicted to drugs; Salim, the heir-apparent, was the 
 slave of wine and opium. Akbar himself, it is said, could 
 neither read nor write, and his immediate descendants, when 
 they were educated at all, were trained in the old Musalman 
 style — the recitation of the Koran, quibbles of theology, the 
 dull verbiage of legal subtleties were their mental food. In 
 early boyhood they lived amidst the vain gossip and squalid 
 intrigues of vicious women who filled the harem. As they 
 grew up, the jealousy of rival queens forbade their taking a 
 leading part in the politics of the capital. The herd of 
 
 ^ Decline and Fall, i. 217. 
 102 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 knavish flatterers and adventurers, the palace gang, were 
 averse to their acquiring a competent knowledge of adminis- 
 tration. A prince who took his proper part in the council of 
 the State was suspected of intriguing against the monarch ; 
 so he was often packed off to a distant province, where the 
 same influences opposed his trjiining. The local viceroy 
 acted as his bear-leader, and took care to hoodwink him and 
 prevent him from meddling in the conduct of affairs. He 
 was better pleased to see him waste his time in dissipation 
 than to educate him in 'statecraft The case has ever been 
 the same among societies organised on the polygamous plan 
 — in Imperial Rome, Teheran, or at the Yildiz Kiosk in our 
 time. Hereditary succession, in short, is only tolerable under 
 a system where the responsibility falls on a Ministry, which 
 screens the viciousness or incompetence of the occupant of 
 the throne. 
 
 Such a Ministry the Mughals were never able to organise. 
 Deprived of the assistance of the princes of the blood royal, 
 the monarch was obliged to fall back on the mob of ad- 
 venturers who crowded round his Darbar. Even the best of 
 these, men like Abul Fazl or Faizi at the court of Akbar, 
 were of the dilettante type, literateurs, minor poets, dabblers 
 in religion and philosophy, destitute of any defined principle, 
 whose function was more to amuse their master than to act 
 as a modern Cabinet or Council of State. Bernier, a very 
 shrewd observer, says : " The Omrahs, therefore, mostly con- 
 sist of adventurers from distant nations, who entice one 
 another to the Court, and are generally persons of low 
 descent, some having been originally slaves, and the majority 
 being destitute of education. The Mogol raises them to 
 dignities or degrades them to obscurity, according to his own 
 pleasure and caprice." ^ Again he tells us that situations of 
 trust were filled indifferently by Mughals and strangers from 
 all countries, " the greater part by Persians, some by Arabs, 
 and others by Turks. To be considered a Mogol, it is 
 enough if a foreigner have a white face, and profess Mohamet- 
 anism." ^ Even adventurers from Europe crowded round the 
 ^ Travels, p. 212. " Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 103 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Court of Akbar. Such was the sordid palace gang which 
 led the last French Empire to destruction. 
 
 It was never the Mughal policy to foster the growth of a 
 hereditary aristocracy, or to encourage anything to be com- 
 pared to an established Church. Islim in India has always 
 remained politically weak because she has never dreamed of 
 an Episcopate or even of a Convocation. To quote Bemier 
 again : " The Omrahs of Hindustan cannot be proprietors of 
 land or enjoy an independent revenue, like the nobility of 
 France and the other States of Christendom. Their income 
 consists exclusively of pensions, which the King grants or 
 takes away according to his own will or pleasure. When 
 deprived of this pension they sink at once into utter insigni- 
 ficance, and find it impossible to borrow the smallest sum." ^ 
 Hence the main object of every rising man was to obtain a 
 lucrative provincial government, where he could feather his 
 nest, as Verres did in Sicily, or a Turkish or Persian Pasha 
 does to-day in Anatolia or Khoras^n. 
 
 There was thus a constant tendency, as for instance in the / 
 case of Jaunpur or Oudh, for the provincial viceroy to become 
 independent. This was the result of the centralisation of the ' 
 power and expenditure of the Empire at the capitals, Delhi 
 or Agra. The surplus revenue was spent there in paying the 
 army or carrying on splendid public works, while the Pro- 
 vinces were starved. It is only a bureaucracy of the highest 
 class, like the Roman Senate or the modem Indian govern- 
 ment, that can maintain a vigilant control over its outlying 
 provinces. Akbar was, it is true, for a time successful in 
 curbing his Pashas, but it was only because his activity was 
 incessant and his industry unwearied. The example of 
 Philip II. of Spain proved once for all that such a task is 
 beyond the powers of any single man, however clear-sighted 
 and laborious. The results of the same arrangement in 
 weaker hands is seen in the case of Aurangzeb and his 
 successors and in the Turkish and Persian Empires of our 
 own time. 
 
 Gibbon fixes the era of the decline of the Roman Empire 
 
 ^ Travels, p. 65. 
 104 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 in the age of Commodus. When it is asked when the Mughal 
 Empire showed signs of decadence, it may be answered that 
 even in the time of Akbar it could have been saved only by 
 a radical change in the methods of government, by a closer 
 tightening of the bonds which united the provinces, by a wise 
 development of the resources of the country, by the establish- 
 ment of a competent police and judiciary. That this task 
 was beyond the powers of a genius such as that of Akbar is 
 a lesson which every Englishman in India would do well to 
 remember. 
 
 It was the consciousness of this failure and the prescience 
 of trouble in the future which clouded the last years of the 
 great statesman, as the scandals of his family broke the spirit 
 of Augustus. With Akbar the work of practical government 
 gave place to a vain seeking after a creed which he could 
 believe, in disputations about theology with Hindu Pandits, 
 Parsi fire-worshippers, or European Jesuits. Out of these he 
 hoped to work out a new faith, a State religion of which, like 
 Henry VIII., he was to be himself the head, a faith based 
 on natural religion which was to draw both Hindu and 
 Muhammadan within its fold. Such a scheme was from the 
 outset hopeless. Thus the end came at last ; the friends of 
 his early days were taken from him one by one ; from his 
 own family he could derive no consolation. The gloom of 
 his spirit speaks in the inscription which he, the master 
 builder, graved on the great portal of the mosque at Fatehpur 
 Sikri — "Said Jesus, on whom be peace! The world is a 
 bridge : pass over it, but build no house there ; he who hopeth 
 for an hour may hope for an eternity ; the world is but an 
 hour, spend it in devotion ; the rest is unseen." 
 
 The reign of his successor, Jahingir (1605-27), a period 
 covering a little more than that of our James I., need not 
 detain us long. He spent most of his time beyond the Pro-j 
 vince, at Ajmir, Lahore, Delhi, or Kashmir, and did little in 
 the way of local administration. He was, as we have seen, 
 the son of a Hindu mother. Badly educated and uncon- 
 trolled in his youth, with no sage counsellor to guide his early 
 manhood, he fell into indulgence in wine and drugs. Some- 
 
 lOS 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 times, as in the case of his eldest son Khusru's revolt, he gave 
 way to horrible cruelty. He thus writes himself of the 
 punishments inflicted on the associates of his unhappy son : 
 " I gave Khusru into custody, and I ordered these two villains 
 to be enclosed in the skins of a cow and an ass, and to be 
 placed on asses, face to the tail, and so to be paraded round 
 the city. As the skin of a cow dries quicker than the skin of 
 an ass, Husain Beg lived only to the fourth watch, and then 
 died. Abdul Aziz, who was in the ass's skin, and had 
 moisture conveyed to him, survived."^ 
 
 The best account of him is that by the English ambassador, 
 Sir Thomas Roe : " The king hath no man but eunuchs that 
 comes within the lodging or retyring room of his house ; his 
 women watch within and guard him with manly weapons. 
 He comes every day to the window called the Jaruco 
 (Jharokha) looking into a plain before his gate, and shewes 
 himself to the common people. At noone he returns thither 
 and sits some houres to see the fights of elephants and wilde 
 beasts. Under him within the raile attend the men of ranke ; 
 from whence he retyres to sleep among his women. At 
 afternoone he returnes to the Durbar before mentioned. At 
 eight after supper he comes down to the Guzlecan (Ghusl- 
 khana), a faire court, wherein in the middest is a throne 
 erected of freestone, whereon he sits, but sometimes below in a 
 chaire, to which none are admitted but of first quality, and few 
 without leave, where he'discourses of all matters with much 
 affabilitie. There is no business done with him concerning 
 the State, Government, disposition of war and peace, but at 
 one of these two last places, where it is publickly propounded 
 and resolved and so registered ; which, if it were worthe the 
 curiositie, might be scene for two shillings ; but the common, 
 base people know as much as the Council, and the newes 
 every day or the King's new resolutions, tossed and censured 
 by every rascal. This course is unchangeable, except sick- 
 nesse or death prevent it ; which must be knowne, for as all 
 his subjects are slaves, so he is in a kinde of reciprocall 
 bondage ; for he is tyed to observe these houres and customs 
 ' Elliot, History, vL 301. 
 106 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 so precisely that if he were unseene one day and no sufficient 
 reason rendered, the people would mutinie ; two days no 
 reason can excuse, but that he must consent to open his 
 doores, and be seene by some to satisfie others. On Tuesday 
 at the Jaruco he sits in judgment, never refusing the poorest 
 man's complaint, where he heares with patience both parts and 
 sometimes sees with much delight in blood the execution 
 done by his elephants." 
 
 The same writer describes the end of a party given in 
 honour of Muhammad Roza Beg, who had recently arrived 
 as ambassador from Shah AbbSs, the King of Persia. "The 
 King returned at evening, having been overnight farre gone 
 in wine ; some by chance in malice spoke of the merry night 
 past, and that many of the Nobilitie dranke wine, which none 
 may doe but by leave. The King, forgetting his order, 
 demanded who gave it ; it was answered, ' The Buxie ' 
 (Bakhshi), (for no man dares say it was the King, when he 
 would onely doubt it). The custom is that when the King 
 drinkes (which is alone), sometimes he will command that 
 the Nobilitie shall drink after, which if they do not, it is an 
 offence too, and so that every man who takes the cup of 
 the wine of the officers his name is written, and he makes 
 Teselim (Taslim), though perhaps the King's eyes are mistie. 
 The King, not remembering his own command, called the 
 Buxie, and demanded if he gave the order. He replyed 
 ' No ' (falsely, for he received it and called such by name as 
 did drinke with the Embassadour) ; whereat the King called 
 for the list and the persons and fined some one, some two, 
 some three thousand rupias, some lesse ; and some that 
 were neerer his person he caused to be whipped before him, 
 receiving one hundred and thirty stripes with a most terrible 
 instrument, having at eache end of foure cords irons like 
 spur rowels, so that every stroke made foure wounds. When 
 they lay for dead on the ground, he commanded the standers- 
 by to foot them, and after the Porters to breake their staves 
 upon them. Thus most cruelly mangled and bruised they 
 were carried out, of which one dyed in the place. Some 
 would have excused it on the Embassadour ; but the King 
 
 107 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 replyed he only had given him a cup or two. Though 
 drunkennesse be a common and a glorious vice, and an 
 exercise of the King's, yet it is so strictly forbidden, that 
 no man can enter into the Guzelchan where the King sits, 
 but the Porters smell his breath ; and if he have but tasted 
 wine is not suffered to come in ; and if the reason be known 
 of his absence, he shall with difficulty escape the whip ; for 
 if the King once take offence, the father will not speake for 
 the Sonne. So the King made the company pay the Persian 
 Embassadour's reward." 
 
 In reading the account of this terrible scene, almost as 
 bad as any of the acts of the insane Roman Emperor in his 
 seclusion at Capreae, we remember what Mr Pepys says of 
 Charles II.: "Sir H. Cholmley tells me that the King hath 
 this good luck, that the next day he hates to have any one 
 mention what he had done the day before, nor will he suffer 
 any one to gain upon him that way." ^ 
 
 Yet with all this wild, wilful cruelty, there is something 
 very human about Jahangir. His Memoirs show the struggles 
 of a weak nature to resist temptation. He has been much 
 blamed for his dealings with Shir Afgan and his wife, the 
 future Empress Nur Jahan, a tale which, as commonly told, 
 is one of the mad lust of a tyrant, a story of the type of 
 David and Bathsheba, or Nero and Poppoea Sabina. But, 
 as Mr Keene has shown, the fact that she did not marry 
 Jahangir till she had been four years a widow puts quite a 
 different complexion upon the case. One of the best points 
 in his character is the love and confidence he lavished upon 
 this lady, who seems to have fully deserved the honour to 
 which she was raised. Her affection for him was some con- 
 solation to him for the undutiful conduct of his sons, Khusru 
 and Shah Jahan, both of whom rebelled against him. Khusru 
 died of cholic in the Deccan ; his remains rest under a fine 
 tomb in the Khusru Bagh at Allahabad, where the Anglo- 
 Indian society occasionally meets to dine and dance. 
 
 Jahangir was a mighty hunter. He kept up his game- 
 book carefully, and he tells us that from the age of twelve to 
 ' \\'heatley, Pepy^ Diary, vii. 122. 
 108 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 fifty he killed 28,532 animals and birds. This curious bag 
 includes 86 tigers, 889 ntlgie, 1372 deer, 36 wild buflfaloes, 
 and 3276 crows ! He must have had considerable taste, as 
 he is said to have remodelled the design of his father's tomb 
 at Sikandra, which shows decided traces of Hindu or Bud- 
 dhist influence. The beautiful tomb at Agra of ItimSd-ud-^ 
 daula, father of his queen Nflr Jahan, was apparently com- 
 pleted in the year after the Emperor's death. 
 
 Jahangir died in 1627 A.D., and he and Nflr Jahan, who 
 survived him for many years, are buried at Lahore. 
 
 The reign of his successor, Shih Jahan, familiar to the 
 Europe of his day as The Great Mogul (1628-58 A.D.), includes 
 nearly the period from the commencement of the struggle 
 between Charles I. and his Parliament to the Restoration. 
 He had little influence on local history, save in the erection 
 of his splendid buildings at Agra — the Taj Mahal, raised as 
 a memorial to his queen, known as Mumtaz-i-Mahal, "the 
 exalted one of the palace," who was niece of NOr Jahan, bore 
 Shih Jahan eight sons and six daughters, and died in child- 
 birth at Burhanpur, in the Deccan, in 163 1 ; the Moti Masjid,^ 
 or Pearl Mosque, and the Zanana of the Agra Fort and " 
 Shahjahanabid, or modern Delhi, with its splendid palace, 
 the last home of his degenerate successors, until this Alsatia 
 was cleared out after the Mutiny. 
 
 The wealth and magnificence of this famous monarch are 
 part of the world's history. In his early days he was a keen 
 soldier; but he was three parts a Hindu, and to this was due 
 the support of the Rijputs in the early part of his career. 
 In his time that persecution of the Hindus, which was fated 
 to cause the ruin of the dynasty, recommenced. Jahangir 
 seems to have treated their religion with contemptuous 
 toleration. His own belief was too vague to encourage 
 iconoclasm. But in 1632, the year after the death of 
 Mumtaz-i-Mahal, Shah Jahin embarked in active persecu- 
 tion. The chronicler writes : " It had been brought to the 
 notice of His Majesty that during the late reign many idol 
 temples had been begun, but remained unfinished, at Benares, 
 the great stronghold of infidelity. The infidels were now 
 
 109 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 desirous of completing them. His Majesty gave orders that 
 at Benares, and throughout his dominions in every place, all 
 temples that had been begun should be cast down. It was 
 now reported from the province of Allahabid, that seventy- 
 six temples had been destroyed in the district of Benares." ^ 
 This evil example was followed with disastrous results by his 
 bigoted successor. 
 
 The popular idea is that Shah Jahan was always absorbed 
 in the pleasures of the harem, and neglected the duties of 
 administration ; this is certainly incorrect. In his early 
 years he followed the example of his famous grandfather, in 
 a laborious attention to the affairs of the empire. It was the 
 opinion of Mr Elphinstone, himself a trained statesman, that, 
 as was the case of Rome in the days of Severus, the Empire 
 as a whole never enjoyed such good government and pros- 
 perity as in the time of Sh&h Jahin. The native chronicler 
 says that, in his days, " the Pargana, the income of which was 
 three lakhs in the days of Akbar (whose seat is in the highest 
 Heaven !), yielded in this happy reign a revenue' of ten 
 lakhs." 2 
 
 But later on in his career the sensuous side of his nature, 
 the natural result of his birth, developed a taste for splendour 
 and display. He devoted himself to the erection of those 
 splendid buildings which are the glory of his reign, and he 
 more and more entrusted the active work of government to 
 his son Dara. How his latter days were clouded by the war 
 between his sons and intrigues in his family ; how Aurangzeb, 
 by ceaseless machinations, finally succeeded in supplanting 
 his elder brother Dira, whom, with the aid of his brother 
 Murad, he defeated on the field of Samogarh, near Agra, in 
 1658; how the luckless Emperor was confined as a State 
 prisoner in the Agra Fort, where he died after seven years of 
 imprisonment, has been often told. 
 
 Nor can we linger over the long reign of Aurangzeb 
 
 (1658-1707 A.D.), which extended from the death of Cromwell 
 
 -to the campaign of Blenheim. As has been already shown, 
 
 the decadence of the Empire commenced at least from the 
 
 1 Elliot, History, vii. 36. ^ /^^-^^ yj; jy,_ 
 
 no 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 later years of Akbar's life. That it lasted so long was due 
 to the fact that, up to the closing years of Shih Jahan's 
 government, the RSjput power, linked by ties of blood to 
 the reigning dynasty, was always ready to fight its battles. 
 The original causes of weakness — the centralisation of the" 
 government at the capital where the revenues were lavishly 
 expended on public works; the failure to control the 
 governors of the more distant provinces ; the want of atten- 
 tion to the development of agriculture, industries, trade, and 
 communications ; the unsuitability of the law of Islam to the 
 wants of the people, and the lack of a well-organised police 
 and a competent judiciary; the degradation of the nobility 
 and Church ; the cabals of the adventurers who crowded in 
 the Imperial Darbar — all these are found intensified when 
 Aurangzeb ascended the throne. 
 
 Of his character and policy it is not easy to form a fair 
 estimate. In popular parlance he was called Namizi — " the 
 man of prayer." He was honest and conscientious, as James 
 II. was when he lost his throne in the attempt to force a 
 hated faith on his people; as Philip II. was when he let 
 Alva loose on the Netherlands. Figures like these, men 
 good enough in their way, but led aside by some cruel flaw 
 in their nature to desert the ways of tolerance, and think 
 that in killing the votary of another faith they do God service, 
 are among the most pathetic in history. 
 
 His foreign policy failed because it was based on wrong 
 principles. It seems now obvious enough that the destruction 
 of the Musalman kingdoms of the Deccan was calculated to 
 remove the last barrier between the Marhattas and northern 
 India; that any objects which kept the Emperor engaged 
 for a quarter of a century in a remote part of his dominions, 
 cut off from his capital and the main sources of his power,, 
 could not be worth pursuing ; that his Empire, as it stood, 
 with its obvious administrative needs, would tax the powers 
 of any ruler, however industrious and energetic. It is at the 
 same time quite possible that he felt that without war the 
 spirit of the nation would decay, and that the vast accumu- 
 lation of wealth in the treasury of his father had led him to 
 
 III 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 form a too sanguine view of the resources of the country ; or, 
 that once embarked in a campaign like this, it had to be 
 fought out to the bitter end. 
 
 Aurangzeb has gained the name of being the archicono- 
 clast of India. It has been suggested that much of his 
 alleged destruction of temples is mythical, because, were it 
 true, he would be held in much more general abhorrence by 
 Hindus ; and that many of these legends were invented to 
 enhance the reputation of some shrine which he failed to 
 destroy, because the deity himself intervened by a miracle 
 to prevent the sacrilege — letting loose a swarm of hornets to 
 repel the enemy, or causing blood to flow from an image 
 when struck by the sword of the Musalman. That many 
 such tales are current may be readily admitted. But there 
 is good evidence that he destroyed several famous temples, 
 and built mosques on the sites which they occupied. Thus, 
 there seems little doubt that the Alamglri mosque at Benares '^ 
 was built on the site and out of the materials of the temple 
 of Kirtti Visvesvara, at that time quite a modern shrine of 
 Akbar's period ; that at Mathura he replaced the desecrated 
 shrine of Kesava Deva ; that he partially destroyed the 
 Sitarimji temple at Soron; that one of his officers slew the 
 priests, broke the image, and defiled the sanctuary at Devi 
 Pitan in Gonda. At the same time it seems probable that the 
 scarcity of early Hindu remains at places like Benares is to be 
 attributed more to the lack of temple-building instincts among 
 the Brahmanical Aryans than to Musalman iconoclasm. 
 
 But it would almost seem as if the institution of the Jizya 
 or poll-tax on Hindus gave greater offence. A protest 
 against it forms the chief part of the famous letter of re- 
 monstrance from Rana Raj Sinh of Mew^r.^ This impost 
 was avowedly based on a religious motive. The chronicler 
 writes : " With the object of curbing the infidels, and of 
 distinguishing the land of the faithful from an infidel land, 
 the Jizya or poll-tax was imposed upon the Hindus all 
 through the provinces." ^ As in the days of Wat Tyler, it 
 led to serious rioting and disaffection. 
 
 1 Tod, Annals (Calcutta reprint), i. 403. " Elliot, History, vii. 296. 
 
 112 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 But there is much to be said against this indictment of 
 Aurangzeb. He never sanctioned direct persecution, torture, 
 the devastation of the country, of which we have many 
 instances in the time of his predecessors. His zeal against " 
 the Hindus shows itself in a constant suspicion and distrust, 
 deprivation of civil employment, prohibition of fairs and 
 religious ceremonies, with the occasional destruction of a 
 shrine, or the erection of a mosque on one of their most 
 sacred sites, to remind them that they were a conquered 
 race, and to mark the triumph of the true faith. All this is 
 bad enough, as was the case of James II. coercing an Oxford 
 Collie, or prosecuting the Seven Bishops; but, after all, 
 there is a great difference between acts like these and the 
 sterner methods which led Hooper to the stake. 
 
 We have seen already what an importance in public opinion 
 was assigned to the appearance of the Emperor at the daily 
 Darbar. We are told that many Hindus were known as 
 Darshani, because they would not eat till they had enjoyed 
 their daily view of the Emperor. " His religious Majesty," 
 says the annalist,^ "looked on this as among the forbidden 
 and unlawful practices ; so he left off sitting in the window 
 and forbade the assembling of the crowd beneath it." It 
 was marked as the introduction of the detested customs of 
 the East when Diocletian secluded himself from the sight of 
 the people.^ 
 
 As in the case of Akbar, the last years of Aurangzeb, 
 whose methods of government differed so widely from those 
 of the founder of the Empire, passed on clouded with the 
 sense of failure. In his old age he wrote: "The instant 
 which has passed in power has left only sorrow behind it. 
 I have not been the guardian and protector of the 
 Empire." 
 
 It is unnecessary to attempt a detailed account of the age 
 of anarchy which followed the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 
 A.D. Just a century of chaos was to be endured to prove \ 
 that no tolerable native government was possible. 
 
 " The history of the successors of Theodosius," writes Lord 
 ' Elliot, History, vii. 284. * Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ii. 94. 
 
 H 113 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Macaulay,^ " bears no small analogy to that of the successors 
 of Aurangzeb. But perhaps the fall of the Carlo^wngians 
 furnishes the nearest parallel to the fall of the Moguls. • 
 Charlemagne was hardly interred when the imbecility and 
 disputes of his descendants began to bring contempt on 
 themselves and destruction on their subjects." The story of 
 their fate best enables us to realise the horrors of the years 
 which followed. Out of twenty princes, fourteen were 
 murdered or died violent deaths : four were blinded ; two 
 died in prison. We are reminded of the later Roman 
 Empire, when from Commodus to Decius, a period of fifty- 
 nine years, eleven princes wore the purple ; in one hundred 
 and seventy years, seventy Emperors sat on the throne. 
 We now come to the rise of the kingdom of Oudh. It 
 - Was not till the time of Akbar that this part of the Province 
 • came completely under Mughal influence. The revenue 
 settlement was introduced and the country was ruled by a 
 viceroy ; but the Hindu Rajas remained practically un- 
 disturbed because the new government was too weak to 
 dream of exterminating them. Some of them were sup- 
 ^ ported by grants out of the revenue ; others were allowed 
 to hold estates revenue free. Many of them were conciliated 
 by posts in the public service and by high-sounding titles of 
 honour. The Rajput chief of Hasanpur Bandhua adopted 
 the faith of the conqueror, and was placed as a sort of super- 
 intendent over the Rajas to the south of the Province. 
 
 On the fall of the Empire, before the attacks of the 
 Marhattas, these chiefs became practically independent, and 
 the more powerful houses aggrandised themselves at the 
 expense of their poorer neighbours. This was the period 
 of the creation of the Talukas or principalities, which so 
 deeply affected the later history, of the Kanhpuriya R^jputsi 
 of Rie Bareli, the Bais of Dundiya Khera in Unao, and the\ 
 Bisens of Gonda. 
 ^y■- It was in I232_that Saadat Ali Khin, a Persian merchant, 
 was appointed Mughal governor of Oudh, and founded the 
 dynasty which ruled till 1856. He became hereditary Wazir 
 
 ^ Essay mi Clive. 
 114 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 of the Empire, and before his death in 1743 he had brought 
 the country into subjection, and converted_iLinto..an_-inde- 
 .pendent -State. He was succeededTiy his son, Safdar Jang, 
 who reigned from 1743 to 1753. He was a soldier and a 
 statesman, and was engaged in wars with the Marhattas and 
 Rohillas. He lived little in Oudh, and was buried at Delhi 
 in a stately monument 
 
 His son Shuja-ud-daula(i7S3-75) made Faizabad his capital. 
 He it was who first came in contact with the British. He 
 was tempted to interfere in Bengal politics, but his army was 
 crushed in the battle of B^carj[i264), and he lost the 
 provinces of Kora and Allahabad in the peace concluded 
 in the following year. His son, Asaf-ud-daula (177S-98) was 
 obliged to surrender on his accession the districts of Benares, 
 Jaunpur and Ghazipur, with the dominions of Chait Sinh of 
 Benares, while he was confirmed in the possession of Kora 
 and AllahSbid, which were recovered from the Emperor. It_ 
 was he who removed the seat of government to Lucknow, 
 and to him are due some of the finest buildings in the city — 
 the RiQmi Darwaza or fine gate leading out of the Machhi 
 Bhawan Fort, and the great Imambara in which his ashes 
 rest. It was he who negotiated the Chunar treaty of 1781 
 with Warren Hastings, and the proceedings in connection 
 with the Begams, widow and mother of Shuja-ud-daula, 
 formed one of the counts in the indictment tried at West- 
 minster Hall. Asaf-ud-daula gained a reputation for liber- 
 ality ; but from his time dates the decline of the kingdom. 
 
 His half-brother, Saadat Ali Khin, succeeded in 1798, but 
 the pressure of Sindhia on the advance of Zamin Shah to the 
 Indus led to a new treaty in 1801, by which he lost half his 
 dominions, and Rohilkhand passed under British rule. To 
 him are due the group of tawdry palaces in Lucknow — the 
 Farhat Bakhsh, the Dilaram, the Dilkusha, and the Sikandar 
 BUgh — names familiar to English readers of the story of the 
 Mutiny campaign. 
 
 His son, Ghazi-ud-din Haidar, the first king of Oudh, was" 
 followed by three princes — Nasir-ud^Un Haidar (1827), 
 Muhammad Ali Shah (1837), and Amjad Ali Shah (1841), 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 who followed that career of reckless extravagance, malad- 
 ministration, and sensuous luxury which made the Court of "^ 
 Oudh a byword in the last generation. Of the demoralisation 
 and ruin of the country under the last king, Wajid Ali Shih 
 
 ^ (1847), we have a graphic account in General Sleeman's 
 Famous report which formed the justification of the annexation 
 by Lord Dalhousie in 1856. 
 
 Meanwhile, except in the later days of the kingdom, Oudh 
 enjoyed perhaps a happier destiny than the western part of 
 the Province and the Ganges-Jumna Duab. The Delhi ; 
 Empire in the earlier years of the eighteenth century waslj 
 menaced by Marhattas from the south and Sikhs from the' J 
 north-west. Bundelkhand, south of the Jumna, had been 
 lost even during the lifetime of Aurangzeb, when a Bundela 
 chief Chhattar Sil raised the standard of revolt Later on 
 (1732) he was so hard pressed by the Pathin chiefs of Farruk- 
 habad that he was forced to call in the aid of the Marhattas, 
 and at his death two years later one-third of his dominions 
 fell into the hands of the Peshwa. 
 
 In the same way in Rohilkhand the Rohillas, themselves 
 newcomers into the country and not the ancient lords, as it 
 pleased the accusers of Warren Hastings later on to assert, 
 rose in rebellion. Their first leader, Ali Muhammad Khin, 
 after conquering the hill tract of Kumaun as far as Almora, 
 was finally defeated by the Emperor Muhammad Shih. His 
 successor, the notorious Hafiz Rahmat Khin, was engaged 
 in war with the Wazir of Oudh, allied with the Marhattas. 
 The end came when the Oudh Government called in the aid 
 of a British contingent, and the stormy career of the Rohilla 
 chief ended in his death in 1774 at the battle of Miranpur 
 Katra. It is needless to say that these events led to pro- 
 tracted controversy. A consideration of fresh evidence tends 
 to acquit Warren Hastings of blame in the transaction. 
 Further west the last blow fell on the feeble Delhi Empire 
 
 y in the invasion of Nad ir Shah of Persia, who captured and 
 plundered the capital in 1738, and perpetrated a horrible 
 massacre of the inhabitants^ After his departure the Mar- 
 hattas became paramount over Delhi and the greater part 
 
 116 
 

 
 fed.. 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 of the Duab, until their power was shattered and their last 
 hopes of founding an Empire in northern India defeated on 
 the fatal field of Panipat, when the Marhatta chivalry went 
 down before the onset of the Persian chief Ahmad Shjlh 
 Durrini. 
 
 During this general chaos another race, the Jits, made a 
 bid for power in the Central Ganges-Jumna jSukh. They 
 had always been more or less independent Both Tim<ir and 
 Babar were obliged to turn aside to repress these sturdy 
 freebooters. In the latter half of the eighteenth century they, 
 too, joined in the general scramble for the Duab carried on 
 by the WazJr of Oudh, Marhattas, and Rohillas. After the' 
 rout of the Marhattas at Panipat they managed to seize 
 Agra. The_g uides still show the crack in the black marble 
 throne of Jahangir which occurred , they say, when the impious 
 Jat of Bhartpur placed his foot upon the seat o f the Emperor. 
 Another story is more probable, that they tore off and melted 
 down the silver ceiling of the Diwan-i-Am or private audience 
 chamber of Shih JahUn. The Jats were wise enough to ally 
 themselves with the stronger power when at last the British, 
 under Lord Lake, invaded the Duab in 1803. But their 
 allegiance was short-lived, and in 1805 Lake made an ill- 
 judged attack on Bhartpur. The means at his disposal for 
 conducting the siege were insufficient, and the fortress was 
 more capable of defence than he supposed. The attack was 
 defeated, and Bhartpur remained the virgin fortress which 
 had foiled the conquering power till 1827, when it fell before 
 the assault of the British forces under Lord Combermere. 
 
 Here on the fall of the Muhammadan Empire we may 
 pause to consider the main features of the splendid buildings 
 which remain their monument. 
 
 The style begins with the Pathan, as it has been inac- 
 curately called, because the only true Pathan dynasty was 
 that of the Lodis. This lasted from the conquest of Shihab- 
 ud-din to the time of Akbar — about three centuries and a 
 half— (1193-1554 A.D.). The finest examples of this style 
 are found outside the province at Delhi and Ajmir. At 
 Delhi we have the Kutab Minar and the adjoining mosque 
 
 117 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 constructed out of the materials of one or more Jatna 
 temples, and the great mosque at Ajmir. The notable 
 improvement which marks the buildings of this style is the 
 arch of the pointed form ; it was only the horizontal arch 
 without radiating voussoirs with which the Hindus were 
 acquainted. Thus writing of the great mosque of the Kutub, 
 near Delhi, Dr Ferguson says : " It seems that the Afghan 
 conquerors had a tolerably distinct idea that pointed arches 
 were the true form for architectural openings, but being 
 without science sufficient to construct them, they left the 
 Hindu architects and builders whom they employed to 
 follow their own devices as to the mode of carrying out the 
 form. The Hindus, up to this time, had never built an arch, 
 nor, indeed, did they for centuries afterwards. Accordingly, 
 they proceeded to make the pointed openings on the same 
 principle on which they built their domes. They carried 
 them up in horizontal courses as far as they could, and then 
 closed them by long slabs meeting at the top." ^ 
 
 The chief beauty of this style is the elegance with which 
 the Cufic and Tughra inscriptions are adapted to serve the 
 purpose of surface decoration. This elaborate style gave 
 way in the later buildings to one of almost puritanical 
 simplicity. It was at a later period that the minaret was 
 associated with the bulbous dome; with the earlier archi- 
 tects it was used more as an emblem of victory than as a 
 necessary adjunct to a house of worship, from whence the 
 Muezzin could raise the call to prayer. The power of the 
 earlier kings was too limited to encourage the erection of 
 buildings in this style. Within the Province, all that re- 
 mains of the time of Shihab-ud-din is the tomb of Makhdflm 
 Shah Wilayat at Meerut; another Meerut tomb, that of 
 Sayyid Salar Masaud, is attributed to his viceroy, Kutub-ud- 
 din Aibak. Of Shams-ud-din Altamsh, we have three tombs 
 at Budaun, and one in the RSe Bareli district. Ala-ud-din 
 Khilji left no remains ; Muhammad bin Tughlak erected no 
 original building, he repaired the Jimi Masjid mosque at 
 Budaun. 
 
 ' Iiidian and Eastern Architecture, p. 504. 
 118 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 Firoz Shah Tughlak (1351-1388 A.D.) was one of the chief 
 builders of the Delhi kings, but his main work is at his 
 capital. He is perhaps best known further east as removing 
 the pillar of Asoka to AUahibid, and by at least commenc- 
 ing the conversion of the Atala Devi temple at Jaunpur into 
 a mosque. 
 
 We have already noticed the fine series of buildings 
 erected by the dynasty of Jaunpur. Dr Ferguson shows 
 that these buildings illustrate the transition between the 
 Hindu and the Musalmin styles, the main building display- 
 ing the arch work of the newcomers, and the corridors the 
 flat roofs formed of slabs of stone, characteristic of Hindu 
 construction. The reason of this was that most of the work- 
 men were Hindus, and clung to their traditional methods. 
 
 To attempt any review of the grand series of works exe- 
 cuted at Agra and its neighbourhood by Akbar, and par- 
 ticularly by Shah Jahin, would be beyond the scope of a 
 sketch like this. We have only to mention the magnificent 
 palace in the Agra Fort ; the pile of buildings at Fatehpur 
 Sikri, a grand mosque and archway, and the palace, which, 
 more than any building of the Mughal period, enables us to 
 realise in some degree what the Court and home life of the 
 Emperors may have been. One characteristic feature of 
 Agra is the splendid garden tombs — the Taj, Akbar's 
 mausoleum at Sikandra, which is supposed to have been 
 planned on a Buddhist model, thus illustrating the Catholic 
 views of the early Emperors, and that of Itimad-ud-daula, 
 father of the queen of Jahangir, Nur Jahan, which, marvel- 
 lously beautiful as the inlaid decoration is, Dr Ferguson 
 thinks to be one of the least successful of its class : " The 
 patterns do not quite fit the place where they are put, and 
 the spaces are not always those best suited to this style of 
 decoration." 
 
 Of the great Agra buildings, the T4j, perhaps, would be to 
 some extent disappointing, were it not for its noble sur- 
 roundings — the mighty river flowing at its base ; the delicious 
 greenery of the foliage ; the grace of the flanking minarets ; 
 the grandeur of the gateway through which the first view of 
 
 119 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 it is caught ; the artistic design of the mosques beside it. 
 But it is a poem in stone, and worthily commemorates the 
 love story of which it is the subject. A lady said to General 
 Sleeman : " I would die to-morrow to have such another 
 over me ! " As Bishop Heber wrote in words which have 
 become proverbial : " These Pathans built like giants and 
 finished like jewellers." For sheer delicate beauty, nothing 
 is more lovely than the cool marble court, graceful Saracenic 
 arches and domes of the Moti Masjid, which, from a distance, 
 look like bubbles above the dark red masses of the Fort. 
 
 Nothing is more eloquent of the decay of the Empire than 
 the sudden failure in taste which set in with the accession of 
 Aurangzeb. Not a single building of the latter days deserves 
 notice, and the style finally degenerated into the crude stucco 
 palaces with which the kings of Oudh endeavoured to decorate 
 their capital. Only one of their buildings, the grand Imam- 
 bira, embodies any survival of the genius of the older 
 architects. 
 
 In the period immediately preceding our occupation, the 
 European adventurers are the most notable figures. 
 
 Samru, or Sombre, was a butcher from Luxemburg, whose 
 real name was Walter Reinard or Reinhard. He deserted 
 from the French to the British service, and back again to the 
 French. He then joined Mir Kasim in Bengal, and was the 
 leading actor in the brutal massacre of the English prisoners 
 at Patna in 1763. After a series of adventures, serving at 
 one time the Jats, at another the Marhattas, he settled as a 
 free-lance at Sardhana, in Meerut, where he occupied an 
 extensive tract of country. He died in 1778, leaving a 
 widow, the famous, or infamous, Begam Samru, a Musalman 
 of Arab descent. Of her early career the less said the better. 
 A few years after she joined the Roman Catholic Church, 
 and appointed as her lieutenant George Thomas, a native of 
 Tipperary. He remained in her service till 1792, when the 
 Begam married a young French adventurer, M. le Vaisseau. 
 In 1798, Thomas formed the design of carving out an inde- 
 pendent principality for himself in the country west of the 
 Jumna. If gallantry and genius, the power of forming 
 
 120 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 extensive political combinations, the faculty of influencing 
 lawless confederates could have ensured success against enor- 
 mous odds, this remarkable man might have made a great 
 name in Indian history. But the Marhattas, under their 
 French commander, General Perron, were too powerful. His 
 forces were surrounded and routed, and he himself escaped 
 across the British frontier, only to die soon after in Bengal. 
 
 Meanwhile the Begam Samru and her husband, Le Vais- 
 seau, carried on desultory warfare, at one time against 
 Ghulam KUdir, the ruffian who had blinded the Emperor, 
 Shah Alam, now against Thomas, her former confederate. 
 She seems to have found Le Vaisseau incompetent to control 
 the disorderly elements of which her force was composed ; 
 she may have had grounds for jealousy. At any rate, 
 husband and wife seem to have made a vow to commit 
 suicide together. A sound of a pistol from his wife's palan- 
 quin, the wails of her attendants, and the sight of her 
 garments stained with blood, convinced him that she had 
 taken her life, and he shot himself in a fit of remorse and 
 despair. By another and perhaps a more probable story, 
 she did really wish to die, but the dagger failed to do its 
 work, and she had not resolution to repeat the blow. She 
 lived to make terms with the British after the capture of 
 Delhi in 1802. Her career did not close till 1836. Hence- 
 forward she lived as a semi-independent potentate at Sar- 
 dhana. Dark tales are told of her private life. She is said 
 to have buried alive a slave girl who offended her, and, to 
 make her deadly purpose sure, to have had her buried 
 beneath her tent, and her bed arranged over the wretch's 
 grave. She was a devoted believer of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, built a Cathedral and an Orphanage at Sardhana, 
 distributed large sums in charity, and died in the odour of 
 sanctity. Her grandson, Dyce Sombre, visited England, 
 where his eccentricity and extravagance led to a cause celebre 
 in the English Courts. The estates are now held by the 
 Forester family. 
 
 Two other large estates to the west of the Province have 
 had a less happy fate — one founded by Colonel James 
 
 121 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Skinner, an officer in the Marhatta service, who afterwards 
 joined Lord Lake, and received a large assignment of lands 
 in Bulandshahr ; the other by Colonel William Gardner in 
 the Central Ganges-Jumna Duib. Both these properties 
 have fallen on evil days through the mismanagement and 
 extravagance of the descendants of the original grantees. 
 Part of the Skinner estate has been saved by the protection 
 of the Court of Wards ; that of the Gardners was wasted in 
 profuse extravagance, and an English peerage granted to a 
 gallant naval officer in the wars with the French is now 
 claimed by the head of the Indian branch of the family, 
 who is destitute of funds to pursue his claim. 
 
 The fate of these great properties, which, if retained intact, 
 would now be a worthy endowment of an English dukedom, 
 is a melancholy example of the result of the su^ender of the 
 European to the fascinations of a sensuous Oriental life. 
 
 We have now reached the point at which British rule 
 became paramount over the province ; and it may be 
 well to summarise the stages by which it came under our 
 authority. 
 
 In 1775, Asaf-ud-daula, Nawab of Oudh, ceded to us the 
 eastern portion, including the present districts of Ghazipur, 
 Benares, Jaunpur, and part of Mirzapur, which, for the time 
 being, were left in charge of Chait Sinh, Raja of Benares. 
 
 In 1801 the Nawib again ceded to us, in lieu of a subsidy, 
 the present districts of Gorakhpur, Basti, and Azamgarh, as 
 well as his dominions in the Duib, comprising our districts 
 of Allahabad, Fatehpur, Cawnpur, Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah, 
 Farrukhabad, and the greater part of Rohilkhand. In the 
 same year the Nawib of Farrukhabid, who had then become 
 our tributary, ceded his dominions to the Company in con- 
 sideration of a pension. 
 
 In the next year (1802), as the result of General Lake's 
 campaign against the Marhattas, we obtained, by the treaty 
 of Surji Anjangion, the country included in the present 
 Meerut division, and the greater part of the present districts 
 of Mathura and Agra, besides considerable territory west of 
 the Jumna. 
 
 122 
 
UNDER HINDU AND MUSALMAN RULE 
 
 In the next year (1803), by a new treaty with the Peshwa, 
 we obtained the present Bundelkhand province, south of the 
 Jumna, in exchange for other territories ceded to us under 
 the treaty of Bassein. 
 
 By the treaty of Sigauli, which closed the Nepil war in 
 1 8 15, we gained the hill tract, comprising the present Garh- 
 wil, Kumaun, and Dehra Dfln districts. 
 
 In 1840 we obtained, by lapse on the death of the RSja 
 of Jalaun, who died without an heir, a tract in western 
 Bundelkhand, to which were added, in 1853, the dominions 
 of the Rija of JhinsL 
 
 Except a recent readjustment of the frontier with Sindhia 
 in Jhinsi, the boundaries of the Province, as they now stand, 
 were finally settled by the annexation of Oudh in 1856, and 
 in 1858 the Delhi and Hissar divisions, west of the Jumna, 
 were transferred to the Panjib, and in 1861 the outlying 
 tract to the south, known as the S&gar and Narbada terri- 
 tories, were included in the Central Provinces. 
 
 We have thus endeavoured to sketch the tangled and 
 romantic history of this Province. We have seen how the 
 Hindu religion and polity were established to the west under 
 the earlier settlers from the north; how this faith became 
 the heritage of a tribe of Levites, and failed to retain its 
 hold upon the people : how a polity based on the depressing 
 restrictions of caste and priestly domination possessed no 
 elements of permanence ; how Hinduism succumbed before 
 Buddhism, and how, many centuries after, it reasserted its 
 authority over a religion which became gradually inert ; how 
 the Hindu kingdoms sank into decrepitude, and were unable 
 to offer any successful resistance to another swarm of invaders 
 from the north ; how the eastward movement of the Rajputs'' 
 saved the Hindu faith in the hour of its direst need ; how the 
 Mughal Empire rose to the zenith of its glory, and — in spite , 
 of the wise revenue policy initiated by Shir Shih, and the 
 tireless devotion to details which characterised Akbar — was 
 itself worm-eaten at the core, and sure to fail when the first 
 pedant or bigot became its master. Then came the weary 
 century of chaos, when Marhatta, Sikh, and JSt, and Euro- 
 
 123 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 pean free-lance growled and squabbled like so many jackals 
 round a carcase. 
 
 Perhaps the best parallel to this wonderful story is that 
 of Spain, with its ancient Phoenician colonies ; its conquest 
 by Roman and Goth ; its absorption into Islam, which gave 
 it master-pieces of Moorish architecture, as Shah JahSn did 
 at Agra and Delhi ; the establishment of a national govern- 
 ment ; its splendid empire, followed by political degeneration, 
 saved from foreign domination only by English aid. And, as 
 we have seen was the case with Hinduism, there was all 
 through the course of Spanish history a power of resistance 
 and a capacity for recuperation which ensured its existence, 
 even after much affliction, and secured it an honourable 
 position among the nations of the world. 
 
 124 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE PROVINCE UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 IN the opening years of the nineteenth century the British 
 Government had thus brought the most valuable portion 
 of the Province under its control. But we did not enter the 
 country as the heirs of a civilised administration in the 
 ordinary sense of the term. Even in the best days of the 
 Mughal rule no effective measures had been taken to develop 
 its resources, to secure internal peace, to protect the people 
 from outrageous oppression. The resources of the State had 
 been lavished on warlike preparations, or on the construction 
 of splendid edifices at the capital. The case was indescrib- 
 ably worse in the century of misrule, which followed on the 
 decay of the Empire. 
 
 The only law administered by the Courts was the code 
 of Islam. "The penal code of the Moslems," writes Mr 
 Keene,^ " has the incurable evil of being derived from revela- 
 tion. Imagine the Central Criminal Court administering 
 Leviticus, and sentencing a coster-monger to death for sell- 
 ing oranges on Saturday. Even then but an imperfect idea 
 would be formed of the interfering nature of the legal system 
 of Islam, or of the terrible, though uncertain, severity of its 
 punitive sanctions. And this on the supposition, probably 
 not always justifiable, that the stern casuists of these tribunals 
 were as honest and impartial as they were indifferent to 
 human suffering." And he goes on to say : " Besides regard- 
 ing all law as a direct emanation from the Deity, the law of 
 Islim regards some crimes as penal, because of their being 
 offences against the Divine Majesty. It also classifies offences 
 according to whether they are punishable by (i) retaliation ; 
 (2) statutory penalties; (3) discretion of the Magistrate. 
 1 Turks in India, 150 sq. 
 125 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Under the first come offences against the human body, 
 including murder, where the prosecutor was dominus litis, 
 and might accept or remit the price of blood. Under the 
 second were ranged offences against property, drinking wine 
 and committing adultery ; these latter, being offences against 
 God, could not be compounded. The third included punish- 
 ments, extending from riding backward on a donkey to 
 death or mutilation — for offences as to which there was a 
 doubt regarding the class to which they might belong ; and 
 murder was not only r^arded practically as less heinous 
 than drinking, but its definition depended, not on the inten- 
 tion to cause death, but on the instrument employed. As to 
 procedure, the like eccentricity prevailed. Approvers were 
 not recognised, nor was the evidence of one witness, under 
 any circumstances, sufficient. In the testimony of witnesses 
 the most absurd technicalities existed, as on that question 
 on which the Sheikhs so much differ, as to whether or not 
 it is a condition of testimony that the witness should say : 
 ' It is incumbent on this defendant that he should shorten 
 his hand.' The trial opened with the praise of God ; the 
 judge was bound to invoke the guidance of the Almighty in 
 a set form before pronouncing sentence. No wonder that 
 Lord CornwalUs spoke of the ' gross defects ' of a law imder 
 which such hairs were pivots." 
 
 Of the method of trial we have an instance in Tavemier's 
 account of the proceedings of the Nawab Mir Jumla.^ — 
 " While we were with the Nawab, he was informed that four 
 prisoners, who were then at the door of the tent, had arrived. 
 He remained more than half an hour without replying, 
 writing continually, and making his secretaries write ; but 
 at length he suddenly ordered the criminals to be brought 
 in; and, having questioned them and made them confess 
 with their own mouths the crime of which they were accused, 
 he remained nearly an hour without saying anything, con- 
 tinuing to write and making his secretaries write. Among 
 these four prisoners who were brought into his presence there 
 was one who had slain a mother and her three infants. He 
 
 ' Ball, Tavemier, i. 292 sq. 
 126 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 was condemned forthwith to have his feet and hands cut off, 
 and to be thrown into a field near the high road to end his 
 days. Another had stolen on the high-road, and the Nawib 
 ordered him to have his stomach slit open and to be flung 
 in a drain. I could not ascertain what the others had done, 
 but both their heads were cut off. While all this passed the 
 dinner was served, for the Nawib generally eats at ten 
 o'clock, and he made us dine with him." 
 
 The civil law, again, was used as a direct means of advanc- 
 ing Islim at the expense of other religions ; and the law of 
 inheritance, based on r^ulations suitable enough for the 
 partition of the cattle and camels of a pastoral Arab tribe, 
 was quite inadequate for the distribution of landed property. 
 
 Bernier, writing to Colbert, thus sums up his experience of 
 the Courts : ^ "In Asia, if justice be ever administered, it is 
 among the lower classes, among persons, who being equally 
 poor, have no means of corrupting the judges and of bringing 
 false witnesses — ^witnesses always to be had in great numbers, 
 at a cheap rate, and never punished. I am speaking the 
 language of several years' experience : my information was 
 obtained from various quarters, and it is the result of many 
 years' careful enquiries among the natives, European mer- 
 chants long settled in the country, ambassadors, consuls and 
 interpreters." 
 
 It has sometimes been asserted that during the Mughal 
 Empire there were less peculation and dishonesty among the 
 native official class than in our time. It would be difficult to 
 produce any evidence in support of this statement ; there are 
 many facts which suggest that the reverse was the case. The 
 elaborate rules contained in the Ain-i-Akbari for the peri- 
 odical parades of the troops, for the management of the 
 horses, elephants and so on, imply the necessity in those times 
 of a most minute scrutiny of the War Department and Com- 
 missariat. This has always been the case under an oriental 
 despotism. We know on the authority of Mr Curzon and 
 other travellers that the Persian army is to a great measure 
 a paper force. On the general tone of official morality he 
 
 1 Travels, 237. 
 127 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 writes : ^ " Under its political aspects, the practice of gift- 
 making, though consecrated in the adamantine traditions of 
 the Ecist, is synonymous with the system elsewhere described 
 by less agreeable names. This is the system on which the 
 government of Persia has been conducted for centuries, and 
 the maintenance of which opposes a solid barrier to any real 
 reform. From the Shah downwards, there is scarcely an 
 official who is not open to gifts, scarcely a post which is not 
 conferred in gifts, scarcely an income which has not been 
 amassed by the receipt of gifts. Every individual, with hardly 
 an exception, in the official hierarchy above-mentioned, has 
 only purchased his post by a money present either to the 
 Shih, or to a minister, or to the superior governor by whom 
 he has been appointed. If there are several candidates for a 
 post, in all probability the one who makes the best offisr will 
 win." 
 
 So we read in the time of Akbar of Abdun-nabi, the Sadr 
 or officer in charge of the land grants, who was guilty of 
 gross corruption. " When His Majesty," we are told,* " dis- 
 covered that the Qizis were in the habit of taking bribes 
 from the grant-holders, he resolved with a view of obtaining 
 God's favour, to place no further reliance on these Qazis, 
 who wear a turban as a sign of respectability, but are bad at 
 heart, and who wear long sleeves, but fall short in sense." 
 The result of his enquiries was the dismissal of a number of 
 these officers. In the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 Tavernier, a shrewd man of business, found it necessary, 
 before he could dispose of his goods, to give bribes to the 
 Court officials to the value of £i?39, an enormous sum in 
 those days. 
 
 Except the canals constructed by AH Mardan Khan in the 
 time of Shah JahSn, which, owing to faults of alignment and 
 absence of subsidiary channels, could at no time have been a 
 very effective source of irrigation, it would be difficult to 
 point to any considerable work intended to promote the 
 prosperity of the country. Shir Shah and his successors 
 drove a great military highway through the land. Part of 
 
 ' Persia, i. 438. 2 BJochmann, Atn-i- Akbari, i. 269 sq. 
 
 128 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 this must have been, occasionally at any rate, doubtless with 
 a lavish use of the corvie, kept in tolerable order. We know- 
 that Jahangtr was able to travel from Ajmir to Agra in a 
 coach-and-four and urged his nobility to provide similar 
 equipages for themselves.^ In the time of Tavernier the 
 journey from Agra to Surat occupied between thirty-five and 
 forty days.- He travelled in a bullock cart, and tells us that 
 some oxen could trot twelve or fifteen leagues a day. He 
 also used to ride on an ox, a mode of conveyance which 
 would astonish a modem Anglo-Indian. He adds the sage 
 advice — " But you should take care when you buy or hire an 
 ox for riding that he has not horns longer than a foot ; 
 because, if they are longer, when the flies sting him, he chafes 
 and tosses back the head, and may plant a horn in your 
 stomach, as has happened several times." ^ Most people 
 performed their journeys on horseback, as was the case in 
 England till stage coaches were introduced in the latter half 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Worse than the want of good roads was the danger of 
 robbers. Tavernier tells us that he who desires to travel 
 with honour in India ought to take with him twenty or thirty 
 armed men, some with bows and arrows and others with 
 muskets.* On one occasion in the reign of Jahingir a 
 caravan on its way from Mathura to Delhi was delayed for 
 six weeks at the former place until a suitable escort could be 
 collected. In fact, short of holding the wretched villagers 
 in the neighbourhood of the main lines of communication 
 responsible for loss of life and property, there was no effi- 
 cient police and no means of repressing disorder except by 
 occasional expeditions against some specially notorious 
 tribe or village. 
 
 The periodical progresses, again, of the Emperor with his 
 enormous camps must have been a terrible source of oppres- 
 sion. Now-a-days the people have learned to grumble at the 
 loss inflicted by the modest camps of our officers on tour. 
 We have seen that Akbar made some attempts to remedy 
 this evil, but in the time of Aurangzeb the camp followers 
 
 ' Elliot, Historians, vi. 347. Ball, Tavernier, i. 42. ' Ibid., ii. 46. 
 
 I 129 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 seem to have been uncontrolled. Bernier ^ says that he was 
 accompanied by at least one hundred thousand horsemen, 
 one hundred and fifty thousand animals, including horses, 
 mules, and elephants, fifty thousand camels, and nearly as 
 many oxen and ponies of the grain-sellers and camp-followers. 
 Many guessed that the camp contained between three and 
 four hundred thousand persons. " Accurately to determine 
 the question the people should be numbered. All I can 
 confidently assert is that the multitude is prodigious and 
 almost incredible. The whole population of Delhi is in fact 
 collected in the camp, because deriving its employment and 
 maintenance from the Court and army, it has no alternative 
 but to follow them in their march or to perish from want 
 during their absence." 
 
 When this was the condition of things under the only settled 
 government which the country ever enjoyed until the advent 
 of the British power, we may easily imagine the state of 
 affairs during the anarchy which followed the break-up of the 
 Mughal Empire. 
 
 There was perhaps most disturbance in the western part of 
 the Province, where Sikh and Marhatta, Rohilla and Euro- 
 pean adventurers struggled for the mastery. We see signs 
 of this even in the present day in the appearance of the 
 villages. The western village is like a miniature fort, the 
 houses huddled together by preference on some ancient 
 mound, from whence the approach of an enemy can be 
 observed. The entrance is narrow and commanded by the 
 heavy mud houses of the landlord. The eastern village is of 
 a much less militant type, the houses less strongly built, the 
 lanes and spaces wider, while the population is more dis- 
 persed in hamlets, which are to the west all of quite modern 
 growth — the creation of a period of tranquillity. 
 
 For the Sikh raids in the Upper Duab we have the evidence 
 of Dr Guthrie in Saharanpur.^ The villages were sunk in 
 poverty owing to the extortions of these freebooters. They 
 often reduced the landlords to total ruin by burning their 
 houses and driving off their cattle. The appearance of the 
 
 1 Travels, 380 sq. « North-West Provinces Gazetteer, a. 211. 
 
 130 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 villages showed the general state of insecurity ; almost every 
 one was surrounded by a wall or ditch, or both, as a means of 
 defence against invasion. " Though the MusalmSns were the 
 first objects of their attack, the Sikhs were not restrained by 
 any considerations of religion or any mercy for age or sex. 
 Whole communities were massacred with wanton barbarity, 
 and it is -said that even the bodies of the dead were dug up 
 and thrown out to the birds and beasts of prey." 
 
 Across the Ganges in Rohilkhand the state of affairs was 
 hardly better. Mr Tennent, who passed through it in 1799, 
 describes the country as a vast desert.^ " Extensive wastes 
 everywhere meet the eye which were lately in cultivation, but 
 which are now covered with long grass." " The wild animals 
 are in danger of devouring the people and their sustenance." 
 " Few manufactures are vended in a country where the in- 
 habitants are scanty, and where even these are so poor as not 
 to aspire to any of the luxuries of life." 
 
 So from Cawnpur one of the first Collectors writes ^ — " The 
 subjects in this part of the country are in the most abject 
 state of poverty. Let the face of the country be examined 
 and there will hardly be a manufacture found, or an individual 
 in such circumstances as to afford the payment of a tax. 
 The whole is one desolate waste, in which tyranny and 
 oppression have hitherto universally prevailed." 
 
 It was such a country, with a people depressed by mis- 
 government, a Province lacking in all the essentials of 
 civilised government, without roads or bridges, public 
 buildings, courts, jails, police stations, schools, and hospitals, 
 that the first generation of British officers set themselves to 
 organise. We shall see that they made mistakes; in par- 
 ticular, the demands of the central government enforced an 
 assessment of the land revenue which an exhausted tenantry 
 were unable to meet. But we must consider the extreme 
 difficulties under which they laboured, the magnitude of the 
 task which was imposed upon them. As one half-despairing 
 officer in the early days writes from Cawnpur * : — " I found 
 
 1 SettUnunt Report, 40 sq. * North- West Provinees Gazetteer, vi. 91 
 
 ^ Ibid., vi. 82 
 
 131 ;. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 an ignorant and incapable establishment, an inefficient and 
 corrupt police, unacquainted with or disregarding the most 
 common rules prescribed for their guidance, a community in 
 which honest men were at a discount, and rascality, fraud, 
 and insubordination were the only means of protection ; 
 extensive combinations between individuals who had profited 
 by the old system ; and finally, a want of co-operation on 
 the part of the subordinate officers, both covenanted and 
 uncovenanted." 
 
 It was, in short, much the same condition of things which 
 was exposed to a later generation by General Sleeman's 
 merciless disclosures of the condition of Oudh a short time 
 before annexation. We have an exact parallel in the Persia 
 of our own time ; the Austrian officers who took charge of 
 Bosnia could tell a similar story. 
 
 It was not possible to remedy this condition of things by 
 a stroke of the pen. The people were, even up to the time 
 of the Mutiny, armed to the teeth with swords and match- 
 locks — the latter more than a match for the musket of the 
 British soldier of those times. The country swarmed with 
 petty forts, which it was necessary to reduce and demolish. 
 The Central Duab, Aligarh and its neighbourhood, was 
 notorious for the lawless character of its people, for the 
 abundance of Thags and Dacoits. The FarrukhabUd land- 
 lords are described as a bold, uncivilised race, preferring the 
 chase and fighting to labour, much of their income being 
 derived from the protection they affi^rded to refugees from 
 Oudh, who flocked in when the Amil or Prefect, with a small 
 army, made his annual tour to collect the revenue. 
 
 The western districts were thus hemmed in by a circle of 
 Alsatias. Central India was then practically in the hands 
 of the free-booters, known as the Pindaris. One of these, 
 Amir Khan, raided into the province in 1805, plundered the 
 holy city of Gokul in Mathura, crossed into Rohilkhand, 
 looted the town of Kashipur, and, after an active pursuit and 
 defeat by General Smith and his dragoons, W2is forced to 
 recross the Ganges. Even after our control of the country 
 was well assured, the elements of disorder still existed. 
 
 132 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 Bishop Heber, writing of Bareilly in 1824,^ describes the 
 disaffection of the people, the large amount of crime, " the 
 crowd of lazy, profligate, self-called Sowars (troopers), who, 
 though many of them are not worth a rupee, conceive it 
 derogatory to their gentility and Pathin blood to apply 
 themselves to any honest industry, and obtain for the most 
 part a precarious livelihood by spunging on the industrious 
 tradesmen and farmers, on whom they levy a sort of black- 
 mail, or as hangers-on to the few noble and wealthy families 
 yet remaining in the province." Of such ruffians, "who 
 had no visible occupation except lounging up and down with 
 their swords and shields, like the ancient Highlanders," it was 
 estimated that there were no less than one hundred thousand. 
 
 It was out of such disorderly elements that the industrious 
 and fairly well-conducted people of the present day have 
 been disciplined by the force of British law. Save for the 
 brief carnival of loot and massacre in 1857, and some 
 religious riots, directed more against the followers of rival 
 sects than against the Government, the Queen's peace has 
 not been seriously disturbed for nearly a century. 
 
 The police have always been the weakest point in the 
 administration. There is a certain danger of exaggeration 
 in general charges of corruption and misconduct brought 
 against a body of men who work in isolated places, beyond 
 the control of their superior officers, opposed by the whole 
 criminal population and their partisans, and encouraged to 
 make some one or other responsible for an offence because 
 the efficiency of their work must be, to a large extent, judged 
 by statistics. But here it is necessary to distinguish. There 
 is^a minor form of misconduct which shows itself in petty 
 bribery, in the exaction of supplies of food, forage, and the 
 like. From such acts it is very improbable that a low-paid 
 service, with Oriental traditions of morality, and drawn from 
 a class much inferior to that which supplies candidates for 
 other branches of the public service, would habitually abstain. 
 On the other hand, there is misconduct of a much more 
 serious kind — the fabrication of false charges, the procuring 
 ' Diary, i. 243 sq. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of information or confessions by coercion or actual torture. 
 Charges of this kind are readily made, and with difficulty 
 disproved ; and it is not easy to imagine that a high-spirited 
 peasantry, like that of northern India, would endure oppres- 
 sion of this kind, which we know was at one time rife among 
 the more submissive Madrasis. 
 
 Many causes have contributed to obstruct the efiSciency of 
 the native police. Such are the absence of a healthy public 
 opinion, of respect for law, of a courageous spirit of indepen- 
 dence, particularly among the upper classes. False accusa- 
 tions are, again, promoted by the feeling of caste partisanship 
 which so widely prevails. The cowardly Oriental sees that 
 his best chance of ruining his enemy lies in bringing him 
 within the grasp of the law ; when his kinsman is in trouble 
 the tie of blood prevails above the claims of justice, and he 
 holds it no sin to forswear himself in his defence. This low 
 conception of moral duty is shown in Manu's rule,^ lacking 
 though it be in the sense of perspective : — " To women in 
 order to win their love, or on a proposal of marriage, in the 
 case of grass or fruit eaten by a cow, of wood taken for sacri- 
 fice, or of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman, 
 it is no deadly sin to take a light oath." 
 
 The reorganisation of the police has lately engaged the 
 serious attention of the Local Government. What is chiefly 
 wanted is to raise the general tone of the service, and 
 encourage recruits of a better class. This will hardly be 
 secured by a small increase in the rates of pay. The evils 
 which exist would be much abated if the higher classes of 
 the community exhibited a larger measure of public spirit, 
 and showed a greater readiness to co-operate with the autho- 
 rities in the repression of abuses. 
 
 While few people have a good word for the police, we may 
 select two instances in which their work has been successful 
 — Thagi and Infanticide. 
 
 Though the peculiar form of strangling practised by the 
 Thags prevailed from very early times, and was known to 
 our officers soon after we occupied the country, it did not 
 
 ' Institutes, viii. 112. 
 
 134 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 attract much general attention till the revelations of Captain 
 (afterwards General) Sleeman were published about 1830, 
 when it became apparent that this brotherhood of crime had 
 its agents all over India. Traders and pilgrims, dancing 
 girls, and soldiers returning from leave, were all victims of 
 these fiends in human shape. Many of these ghastly tragedies, 
 played at these lonely halting places, or even in frequented 
 camps, where the tent of the European officer was sometimes 
 pitched over the very grave of the victim, will never be told 
 on this earth. But enough was soon known to put the detec- 
 tives, aided by the statements of informers, on the track of 
 the strangler. In the ten years between 1826 and 1835, 
 1562 persons were tried in India for this crime, of whom 
 1404 were convicted, and sent to the gallows or transported 
 for life. Many who escaped the hangman were interned for 
 the rest of their days in a special prison at Jabalpur. By 
 i860, after a steady campaign prosecuted for thirty years, 
 these gangs had been completely destroyed, and Thagi, in 
 its original form, was completely stamped out. 
 
 But, as too often happens, one form of crime disappears 
 only to be succeeded by another of a similar type. In this 
 case the poisoner followed on the tracks of the strangler. A 
 little powdered datfira or stramonium deftly mixed in the 
 food of some traveller at a native inn was sufficient to 
 produce insensibility or even death, and afford the criminal 
 an opportunity of appropriating the valuables of his victim. 
 The increase of travelling consequent on the extension of 
 railways in the latter half of this century gave a temporary 
 stimulus to this class of crime ; but by a patient system of 
 investigation the chief offenders were hunted down, and the 
 crime is now comparatively infrequent. 
 
 At the same time, there is reason to suspect that secret 
 poisoning is not so uncommon as it is generally believed to 
 be. The secrets of Zanana life are seldom disclosed, and 
 the existence of polygamy and concubinage supplies an 
 obvious motive. To this may be added the occasional out- 
 breaks of deadly epidemics which supply favourable chances 
 of evading detection. Proposals for the control of the sale 
 
 135 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of poisons have often been suggested, but they have always 
 failed, on the ground that even if the sale of mineral poisons 
 were supervised, this would do nothing to check the use of 
 those of vegetable origin, which grow almost in every hedge. 
 
 Infanticide, though first attacked by our Government, has 
 prevailed among certain tribes, the Gakkars of the Panjib, 
 for instance, from time immemorial. In this Province atten- 
 tion was first directed to it by Mr Jonathan Duncan, one of 
 the ablest officers of the Civil Service, who, in 1789, found 
 it prevalent among the Rajkumar Rajputs of the eastern 
 districts. For many years~the Government endeavoured to 
 counteract it by the personal influence of its officials, by 
 tribal conferences, and engagements for the reduction of 
 marriage expenses. It was soon realised that the practice 
 rested on social influences of great stringency. Rajputs, one 
 of the tribes chiefly addicted to the practice, follow in their 
 marriage arrangements what has been called hypergamy ; 
 in other words, the rule is that the honour of the family 
 depends on the alliance of girls with youths of a sept 
 superior in rank to their own. This involves, if not the 
 actual payment of a bridegroom price, such inordinate 
 expenditure in marriage entertainments and dowry as seri- 
 ously cripples the resources of a man whose quiver is full of 
 daughters. 
 
 The result of this feeling among Rijputs, Jits, GQjars, and 
 Ahtrs, the castes among whom it most widely prevailed, was 
 the wholesale destruction of new-born girls. In 1 843, among 
 the Chauhans of Mainpuri, one of the proudest of the local 
 R&jput septs, there was not a single female child to be found. 
 Under pressure enforced by the district officers, notably by 
 Messrs Unwin and Raikes, the number rose to 299 in 1847, 
 and 1079 in 1854. At the same time, Mr Raikes recognised 
 the futility of all attempts to enforce a sumptuary law. " The 
 real motive for extravagance, and, therefore, the hidden cause 
 of infanticide," he wrote.^ " lay entirely beyond the reach of 
 any such law. A Thikur's ambition to make an illustrious 
 alliance could only be gratified by purchasing a son-in-law of 
 
 ' North- West Provinces Gazetteer, iv. 574 sqq. 
 136 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 nobler blood than his own ; the nobler the alliance the larger 
 the sum. So long as this costly ambition remained rooted 
 in the Thakur's soul, the scale of expenditure could not be 
 controlled. The habit of contracting equal marriages must 
 be naturalised to him directly by advice and encouragement, 
 and indirectly by the enactment of heavy penalties to follow 
 the destruction of daughters." 
 
 The Government was still loath to adopt direct measures 
 of repression ; but later enquiries showed that determined 
 action could no longer be delayed. In 1868, a special census 
 of the suspected clans showed only 22 per cent, of girls in 
 the whole minor population. It was found, also, that the 
 wise councils of the local officers had done little to check 
 marriage expenses. In 1869, the Raja of Mainpuri, the head 
 of the Chauhans, married his daughter to the son of the Rija 
 of Bhadawar ; and though there was no actual dowry paid, 
 tlie relations of the bridegroom appropriated whatever took 
 their fancy, and the total cost was not less than a lakh and a 
 half of rupees (R.x. 15,000). 
 
 All this led to the enactment of the law of 1870, which has 
 remained in force since that time. The main provisions of 
 the statute prescribed special registration of births and 
 periodical parades of the infant population, registration of 
 the movements of women of the child-bearing age, special 
 inquests in the case of the death of girls, and control over 
 the village midwives. The result of these measures, accord- 
 ing to the latest available statistics, those of 1893-94, may 
 be thus summarised : — The proclaimed population included 
 93,135 persons, spread over 608 villages in 21 districts. In 
 100 children under the age of six, there were 40 girls to 60 
 boys, the provincial average of girls under five years of age 
 being 1020 to 1000 boys. The statistics are to some degree 
 affected by the fact that among the tribes known still to 
 practise infanticide, there is a natural tendency at each 
 decennial census to conceal the existence of girls, whose 
 presence unmarried in a family is a mark of dishonour. 
 Thus, in the Central Ganges-Jumna Duab the last census 
 showed in 10,000 of the population 4581 females to 5419 
 
 137 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 males. Here the figures point to a concealment of females 
 at all the age periods. 
 
 The general result is that infanticide is decreasing every- 
 where except in the block of districts represented by Etah, 
 Etawah, Mainpuri and Budaun, where it was always most 
 prevalent, and even in those districts the improvement since 
 the first introduction of repressive measures has been marked. 
 There seems also to be an increasing tendency to the ex- 
 action of a bride-price, one of the most efficient checks on 
 the practice ; and, among some of the more intelligent castes, 
 the movement for the reduction of marriage expenses has 
 met with a certain degree of success. The actual murder 
 of little girls has in a great measure ceased, but it has been 
 replaced in some of the tribes by a degree of carelessness 
 hardly less criminal. It is found in some districts that, when 
 fever is prevalent, the girl deaths, and more especially in the 
 first three years of life, so largely exceed those of males that 
 it is impossible not to believe that but small efforts are made 
 to save the girls, and in many places deaths caused by disease 
 of the lungs or malnutrition suggest the same conclusion. 
 
 The only effective remedy for this is to utilise the pro- 
 vision of the Act which empowers the Magistrates to take 
 charge of sickly infants and rear them at the expense of the 
 parents. This rule of the law has been enforced in some 
 places with marked success. There is little chance of secur- 
 ing the conviction of the parents where deaths occur through 
 neglect, and it seems clear that the only chance of repressing 
 this crime is to make the supervision so effective and irksome 
 that the people will find it to their interest to protect their 
 girls until they reach a percentage which will entitle them to 
 exemption from the control of the law. 
 
 The lack of brides among Rajputs, in that part of the 
 country where infanticide was most rife, seems also to be one 
 of the causes which have contributed to that outbreak of 
 violent crime which has been a distinguishing feature of 
 the returns in recent years. Young men, deprived of the 
 chance of enjoying married life, have been forced into con- 
 nections with women of the vagrant tribes — Hiburas, Beriyas, 
 
 138 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 and the like, who are nothing short of a pest to the country. 
 It is the children of such unions who have been foremost in 
 the outbreak of dacoity in the Central Duib and Rohilkhand. 
 
 Dacoity or gang robbery usually appears in one of two 
 well-recognised forms. There is, first, that of the bread-riot 
 type, which occurs in seasons of scarcity and high prices. 
 Here the outbreaks are generally isolated and fortuitous, and 
 easily repressed. The other and more serious form is more 
 fitful in its occurence, and the first essential to success is an 
 efficient leader. It is aided by the neighbourhood of Native 
 States, whence recruits can be obtained, and where the gang 
 can take refuge when pursuit by the police becomes really 
 serious. 
 
 In the four years ending with 1893, 736 of these gang 
 robberies occurred. These bands of ruffians were fairly well 
 armed ; they were organised under regular leaders, and in 
 some cases they risked open conflict with our police. The 
 loss of life and property, chiefly among the trading classes, 
 who are always the victims, was most serious. In some 
 cases, the gangs were led or reinforced by wild spirits from 
 Gwalior and other Native States south of the Jumna, but 
 they consisted mostly of Rajputs and other local tribes, 
 among whom restlessness, the effect of the increasing pres- 
 sure of population on the soil, and sales of landed property 
 in execution of Civil Court decrees, formed an incentive 
 to crime of the highwayman or bushranger type. To these 
 were sometimes added the nomads of the gipsy class, among 
 whom the SSnsiyas of the upper Ganges-Jumna valley had 
 been for years most notorious. These dacoit gangs were 
 gradually hunted down and dispersed, not without some loss 
 of life, and then the Government directed special attention 
 to their nomad allies. 
 
 The North Indian gipsy in many ways resembles his 
 European brethren. The latter probably had their origin in 
 Indian soil, but in the course of their wanderings the race 
 has been largely modified in its new surroundings, and in 
 particular, they learnt the new arts of the tinker and the 
 horse-coper. The eastern gipsy is a nomad pure and simple ; 
 
 139 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 a wanderer on the face of the earth ; he lives in a miserable 
 state of squalor under a wretched tent or shelter made of 
 reeds; he steals corn at harvest time, or a lamb from the 
 shepherd's flock, and he is tolerated merely because of his 
 women, who dance, perform on the tight-rope, or earn their 
 living in less reputable ways. He is a pilferer of any small 
 article that comes in his way, and he is ever ready to engage 
 in violent crime. 
 
 Of these pests, the most notorious tribes are the Sansiyas 
 of the western districts, the Barwars of Oudh, and the 
 Sanaurhiyas of Bundelkhand. When the Barwars were 
 brought under the provisions of the Criminal Tribes Act in 
 1884 they were about 4000 in number, and sixty per cent, of 
 their adult males had undergone imprisonment. The law 
 attempted to deal with these people on somewhat the same 
 method which the English police apply to the ticket-of-leave 
 man. They are subject to periodical registration and inspec- 
 tion ; wandering beyond the boundaries of the settlement is 
 forbidden without a pass. But in recent years the Sinsiyas 
 had passed the limits of forbearance, and in 1890, by an 
 executive order of the Provincial Government, the more 
 stringent provisions of the law were applied to them. In a 
 single night their camps throughout the western districts 
 were surrounded by a cordon of police, and 1236 men, 
 women, and children suddenly found themselves under 
 arrest. The adult males, who were practically all incorrigible 
 criminals, were swept off and interned in the jail at Sult&npur, 
 where it was intended that they should remain for the rest of 
 their lives, treated with as much indulgence as was com- 
 patible with their safe custody, and allowed to practise any 
 of their petty handicrafts for their own advantage. Similarly 
 the women and children were removed to a settlement at 
 Farrukhabad, where they were brought under discipline and 
 educated. Some were apprenticed in the factories at Cawn- 
 pur ; others were assisted to emigrate to one of the Colonies, 
 with a chance of gaining a respectable livelihood. The 
 young ladies of the tribe were a more embarrassing charge, 
 and grave Magistrates have found themselves saddled with 
 
 140 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 the delicate duty of negotiating suitable matches for these 
 blushing maidens. The English tramp, as he enjoys the 
 comforts of the doss-house or casual ward, might, if he only 
 knew the fate of his eastern brethren, thank Heaven that he 
 does not enjoy the blessings of a paternal government. 
 
 Recently, on a change in the head of the Local Govern- 
 ment, this policy has been reversed. The present view 
 seems to be that the Sansiya is more a loafer than a 
 criminal ; that the stringent measures enforced against him 
 in recent years were unnecessary and unjustifiable, and that 
 he must be at once released. It is not possible at present 
 to estimate the force of the considerations which may be 
 held to justify this sudden volte face. It may be that the 
 present system is too indiscriminate ; but with all the 
 SSnsiyas again at large it is certain that the gangs will 
 re-establish themselves, and the old condition of habitual 
 pilfering and occasional outbreaks of violent crime will 
 recommence. 
 
 Though there is perhaps no class in Europe so completely 
 abandoned to a criminal life as some of the Indian nomad 
 tribes, and though chiefly owing to the absence of means for 
 isolation, jail discipline has little deterrent effect, and the 
 average of reconvicted prisoners is very high in proportion to 
 their total number, the general amount of crime is satisfactorily 
 low. It is out of the question to draw any useful analogy 
 from the crime statistics of two countries so different as 
 England and Wales and the North-Western Provinces. One 
 main cause of the difference is the temperate habits of the 
 people. Drunkenness is a crime hardly known to the Indian 
 magistrate; in 1894 in England and Wales 595 in every 
 100,000 of the population were tried for this offence. The 
 number of persons brought to trial in 1892-93, out of a 
 population of forty-seven millions, was a quarter of a million, 
 of whom half were convicted — ^about the number prosecuted 
 in the home country for drunkenness and under the Licensing 
 Acts. The admissions to jail were 86,000, of whom about a 
 quarter were convicted of petty theft. The incidence of this 
 crime is closely connected with the character of the season — 
 
 141 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 a bad season like 1880 raised the average jail population to 
 27,000, to fall to 18,000 in 1885. The popular proverb that 
 crime is due to woman, money, and land is amply illustrated 
 by the returns. The latest returns indicate that the scarcity 
 which now prevails is producing its usual effect by increasing 
 crime. 
 
 One of the greatest boons which any Government has ever 
 conferred on the people is the system of canals. We have 
 seen that artificial irrigation commenced with the canals con- 
 structed from the Jumna by Ali Mardan Khin in the time 
 of the Emperor Shah Jahan. They were of comparatively 
 small dimensions, lacked a chain of distributaries, and being 
 built without sufficient experience of the complex problems 
 which such a work involves, could even at their best have 
 been but of little practical value. For the great modern 
 series of irrigation works, the country is indebted to the 
 genius of a distinguished Engineer officer. Sir Proby Cautley. 
 
 Classifying the canals of the province into productive, 
 ordinary and protective, the first class includes the Upper 
 Ganges, the Lower Ganges, the Eastern Jumna and the Agra 
 Canals ; the second, the canals of Rohilkhand, Dehra Diin 
 and Bijnor; the third, the Betwa Canal in Bundelkhand, 
 south of the Jumna. 
 
 The Upper Ganges Canal, the first constructed from the 
 designs of Sir Proby Cautley, owes its origin to the severe 
 famine of 1837-38, which first directed the attention of 
 Government to the protection of the crops by means of 
 irrigation. Commenced in 1842, it was opened in its earliest 
 form in 1854. It starts from the Ganges at Hardwar, where 
 by a series of embankments the water is diverted into the 
 old channel of the river flowing under the town, and thence 
 to the head-works proper of the canal, where by means of a 
 magnificent series of sluices the supply is finally regulated. 
 In the early part of its course the engineering difficulties 
 were enormous. It crosses four torrents, which in the rainy 
 season are subject to dangerous floods from the Siwalik hills, 
 along the base of which the canal is constructed. Two of 
 these torrents are carried over the canal ; the third is passed 
 
 142 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 on a level crossing provided with drop gates ; over the fourth, 
 the Sol&ni, the canal is carried by a fine aqueduct with fifteen 
 spans of 50 feet each. It is thus brought to the Bingar or 
 central plateau of the Ganges-Jumna Duab. At the twenty- 
 second mile the Canal throws off the Deoband branch to the 
 wesl; 52 miles long ; at mile 50 the Anupshahr branch, 107 
 miles long, and at mile 181 it bifurcates into what were called, 
 before the construction of the Lower Ganges Canal, the 
 Cawnpur and Etawah branches, the former 172 and the 
 latter 179 miles in length. Since the construction of the 
 Lower Ganges Canal its irrigation has been combined with 
 that of the older work, and crossing both these branches, 
 they are supplied with water from it, and are considered 
 below this point to belong to the Lower system. The total 
 length of the main course of the Upper Ganges Canal is 213 
 miles; the original main line is navigable to the junction 
 with the Lower Canal. When fully developed the Upper 
 Ganges Canal will be capable of irrigating a million and 
 a half acres, an area as great as that of the County of 
 Galway. 
 
 The Lower Ganges Canal is taken from the Ganges at 
 Nadrai in the Aligarh district, 140 miles below Hardwar. It 
 is now, as we have seen, combined with the Upper Canal. 
 Its area of possible irrigation is r, 100,000 acres. 
 
 The Eastern Jumna Canal starts from the river just at 
 the foot of the Siw^lik hills and thence waters the FanjSb 
 districts west of the river Jumna to a point opposite Delhi. 
 Its irrigating capacity is 300,000 acres. 
 
 The Agra Canal is taken from the Jumna close to the 
 point where the Eastern Jumna Canal ends. It waters the 
 trans-Jumna portion of the Province country towards Mathura 
 and Agra, and will ultimately irrigate 240,000 acres. 
 
 When fully developed these four canals in the western 
 portion of the Province will ultimately water nearly three 
 and a quarter million acres, an area nearly as great as 
 that of the counties of Aberdeen and Argyllshire joined 
 together. 
 
 The other canals in the northern tract are petty works, 
 
 143 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 which utilise, to the great advantage of the country, the 
 smaller streams which flow from the lower hills. The Betwa 
 Canal is a more important undertaking. It is intended to 
 protect the tract in the neighbourhood of JhSnsi, the poorest 
 and most famine-stricken part of the Province, from the 
 periodical droughts which may always be expected. In a 
 season like the present, when drought again prevails in 
 Bundelkhand, the value of this Canal will be decisively 
 proved. Its total length with its branches is 167 miles, and 
 its irrigating capacity 150,000 acres. 
 
 The Canals of the Province have thus a main line length 
 of 1464 miles, 6706 miles of distributaries, and 2003 miles of 
 drainage channels — in all, 10,173 miles, or about half the 
 length of all the railways in the United Kingdom, more than 
 twice the distance from London to Calcutta vid the Suez 
 Canal. The financial results of the irrigation system, accord- 
 ing to the figures of 1895-96, may be thus summarised. In all, 
 1 1,437 villages and over 2 million acres were under irrigation ; 
 the value of the crops irrigated was estimated at R.x. 
 6,410,000; the total income in 1893-94 was R.x. 716,658; 
 the net income R.x. 428,540 ; the total capital spent up to 
 date, R.x. 8,286,659, on which the interest realised was at 
 the rate of 5-17 per cent. The undertaking has thus been 
 a great financial success. 
 
 Besides the works already completed, another enormous 
 scheme has been prepared for the irrigation of parts of Oudh and 
 Rohilkhand. This is known as the Sarda Canal, and it is intended 
 to utilise the surplus water of the Sarda, a snow-fed Himalayan 
 river, called further down its course the Chauka or GhSgra. 
 According to one version of this scheme, the Canal was to 
 start in the Tarai of the Pilibhit district, and lower down, to 
 divide into three branches — one running south into the 
 district of Shihjahanpur ; the second to be navigable through- 
 out and tail into the Ganges, near Benares ; the third, before 
 ending in the Ghagra at Faizabad, was to throw off branches 
 to Azamgarh and Jaunpur. The estimated cost of one 
 scheme was about four millions sterling, and the income was 
 expected to realise 8 per cent, on the outlay; by another 
 
 144 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 version the cost was to be over six millions, and the protected 
 area over two and a quarter million acres. 
 
 This undertaking has been for the present suspended, and 
 the proposals have given rise to much controversy. It was 
 opposed by the Oudh Talukd^rs, who appear not to desire 
 the interference with their methods of estate management, 
 which would result from the invasion of their villages by a 
 troop of canal officers. Much of the land also which would 
 come under the influence of the new canal is already fully 
 supplied with wells. 
 
 Oudh has been on the whole much less exposed to famine 
 than the sister Province, and the dread of subsoil saturation 
 which has produced such disastrous results in parts of the 
 Central Duab will probably, for the present at lesist, cause 
 this project to be deferred ; but another drought such as that 
 now prevailing in this part of the country is sure to revive 
 the scheme. With the prospect of famine now hanging 
 over the Province, the most reasonable forecast of the 
 situation seems to be that the divisions of Meerut and 
 Agra, with an area of 21,465 square miles and a population 
 of about ten millions, are tolerably safe. The strain will 
 probably be most severe in the divisions of Allahabad 
 which includes Bundelkhand, Benares, and Gorahkpur, with 
 an area of 37,169 square miles and a population of nearly 
 eighteen millions. The condition of Oudh and parts of 
 Rohilkhand, which are unprotected by canals, is also 
 dangerous. In the former, with an area of 24,217 square 
 miles and a population of twelve and a half millions, there 
 has been a succession of indifferent harvests, and the poorer 
 tenantry and day labourers will suffer acuteh-. Much, how- 
 ever, depends on the weather during the present cold weather 
 (1896-97). The latest accounts report welcome rain during 
 the winter which will do much to improve the prospects of 
 the spring harvest and promote the growth of fodder. This 
 was followed by ample showers about Christmas, by which 
 the tension will be much reduced. But in any case the 
 high prices of food grains which must prevail until the crops 
 ripen next spring are certain to cause widespread suffering, 
 K 14s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 which can only be alleviated by the opening of relief works 
 and poorhouses on an extensive scale, and by liberal private 
 benevolence. 
 
 In fact it would seem that for a time, unless in the event 
 of the occurrence of famine, the policy of construction of 
 great irrigation works will remain in abeyance, and the 
 opportunity will be taken to develop the existing canals 
 to their highest capacity, and to supplement them by drainage 
 operations, which must do something to check the more 
 crying evils which critics, imperfectly acquainted with the 
 facts and ignoring the special climatic influences to which 
 the country is habitually exposed, have attributed to them 
 alone. 
 
 And here a word may be said of the staff of officers under 
 whom this vast system of irrigation is controlled. Partly drawn 
 from the Royal Engineers, partly from the Civil Engineering 
 College at Cooper's Hill, and partly from the Thomason 
 College at Rurki, the Government possesses no more able 
 or devoted body of officials. The exigencies of his work 
 compel the Canal Officer to be always on the move among 
 the people. In the more busy agricultural seasons he is 
 occupied with the distribution of the water-supply over a 
 network of minor channels. He has to see that each village 
 receives its due share of water ; that the distributaries are 
 kept in perfect order ; that no favour shall be shown to any 
 special class of the peasantry; that wanton waste of the 
 precious fluid is checked. In the slack season, during the 
 hot weather and rains, he is employed in works of repair and 
 construction. He sees little of the amusements and hos- 
 pitality of the headquarters station ; his time is spent in 
 solitude, marching day by day from one rest-house on the 
 Canal bank to another. Hence he sees much more of the 
 villager and his social life than other officers do whose tours 
 are confined to the cold weather. He thus accumulates an 
 immense store of experience regarding agriculture and the 
 conditions under which the peasant lives : and he is usually 
 a benevolent Hakim, who directs the issues of prosperity. 
 As he has little to say to imposing taxation or realising 
 
 146 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 revenue, he can hardly fail to acquire popularity, sympathy, 
 and insight ; if he uses his unique opportunities aright he 
 must gain wide influence over the rural classes. For a young 
 man of active habits, with an observant eye and unfailing 
 good temper, no career can be more attractive. On the 
 other hand, it is a life with no amusements except those of 
 sport and healthy exercise; to the man who longs for the 
 flesh-pots of civilisation, who has no rural tastes and no idea 
 of relaxation except in the ball-room or on the tennis-lawn, 
 it must be insufferably tedious. But here Government has 
 been well served by its officers, and there is-no more striking 
 instance of the unselfish devotion to duty, often irksome, 
 always tedious and monotonous, than is seen in this branch 
 of the public service. From its ranks has been drawn a select 
 staff which has applied the fruits of experience gained in 
 India to the reconstruction and development of Egyptian 
 irrigation. 
 
 The extent to which tlie country can be protected from 
 famine must always depend on the intensity of drought and 
 on the amount to which the water supply provided by the 
 canals can be supplemented by irrigation from wells and 
 tanks. Assuming the necessary amount of food grains per 
 unit of the population to be five maunds, or four hundred 
 pounds, it was calculated in 1878 that in the Ganges-Jumna 
 Duab districts, working on the food-irrigated area, the 
 protection afforded by the canals varies from one-tenth in 
 Etah and Farrukhabad to three-fifths in Muzaffarnagar, and, 
 working on the total irrigated areas, the protection is a 
 minimum of one-ninth in Etah to a maximum of two-thirds in 
 Muzaffarnagar. It was assumed that on the completion of 
 the Lower Ganges and Agra Canals the protection would 
 be to the extent of rather more than one-third of the area 
 under food grains. But since the time when these estimates 
 were framed the situation, as far as the food supply is con- 
 cerned, has been largely modified by railway and canal 
 exteiisions. 
 
 The case for and against canal irrigation may perhaps be 
 briefly stated, as follows : — In the event of protracted drought 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the protection afforded by it is of the highest value. The 
 main canal supply, being drawn from rivers fed by the 
 Himsllayan snows, is practically beyond the reach of the 
 causes which from time to time affect the periodical rains. It 
 releases a large amount of labour usually employed on wells, 
 which can be devoted to better and wider tillage. By the 
 security it confers it has largely increased the area sown with 
 the more valuable food crops, replacing the poorer millets 
 by wheat and sugar-cane, and thus improving the land 
 revenue. Lastly, it has exercised a most civilising effect on 
 the wilder and more intractable races, such as the RSjputs 
 and Gujars, who since its introduction have turned their 
 swords into plough-shares, and have adopted a life of pros- 
 perous industry, while their brethren beyond its influence 
 have quite maintained their ancient evil reputation. 
 
 On the other hand, the abundant water supply has pro- 
 moted the cultivation of inferior lands, which for a time 
 respond to the stimulus, but owing to the limited manure 
 supply rapidly decrease in fertility, and thus confirm the 
 impression current among the peasantry that the soil is 
 steadily becoming less productive. Another complaint is 
 that the canal water has been introduced into villages where 
 the supply from wells was already abundant That this has 
 occurred in some places cannot be denied, but on the other 
 hand there are instances where the canal, by raising the water 
 level, has made the supply from wells more accessible. Such 
 a competent authority as Dr Voelcker makes light of this 
 objection.^ 
 
 What is more to the point is the allegation that the canal 
 by raising the water level in the tracts under its influence 
 has seriously affected the health of the population, and is 
 accountable for the terrible epidemics of malarious fever 
 which have devastated the Duab in recent years. 
 
 This increase in the mortality from fever is one of the 
 most severe disasters which have attacked the people since 
 the Mutiny. People who are unaware of the facts speak as 
 if the main dangers to human life in Northern India arose 
 
 1 Report, 69. 
 148 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 from cholera and snake-bite. As a matter of fact, owing to 
 improved sanitation and in particular to the precautions 
 enforced at religious fairs, cholera has been in no sense 
 serious in recent years. During the decade 1 881-91 cholera 
 accounted for only 4-22 per cent, of the total deaths, but has 
 had a large share in determining the variation from year to 
 year in individual districts. Smallpox, always endemic, is 
 not accountable for any serious mortality. The number of 
 deaths from snake-bite is quite inappreciable. 
 
 The case with fever is quite different The annual death- 
 rate from all classes of disease in the period 1881-91 was 
 thirty-two per thousand, of which twenty-four was due to 
 fever. Admitting that ignorant natives class all kinds of 
 inflammatory disease under " fever," the result is sufficiently 
 startling. Fever in the rainy season attacking the majority 
 of the people is followed naturally with the first chills of 
 winter by pneumonia, which, spreading among a community 
 ignorant of the most elementary principles of hygiene, poorly 
 fed, insufficiently clothed, destitute of medical aid or appli- 
 ances for nursing the sick, is often attended with fatal results. 
 To quote a graphic account by a writer on the spot ^ — " In 
 Bulandshahr in the autumn of 1879 ^n unusually heavy rain- 
 fall, following upon several years of drought, developed a 
 terrible epidemic, which literally more than decimated the 
 population of the district The crops stood uncut in the 
 fields : the shops remained closed in the bazars : there was 
 no traffic along the high roads, and no hum of business in 
 the market-places ; the receding flood of the great rivers 
 showed their sands piled with corpses, while scarcely a water- 
 course or wayside ditch but contained some ghastly relic of 
 humanity hsistily dropped by hireling bearers or even by 
 friends too fearful for themselves or too enfeebled by disease 
 to observe the funeral rites which are ordinarily held so 
 sacred. In most of the towns and villages there was not a 
 single house in which there was not one dead ; in many entire 
 families had perished — parents, grand-parents and children, 
 and whole streets became deserted. Probably not a thousand 
 
 ^ Mr F. S. Growse, Calcutta Review, Ixxvii. 352. 
 149 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 people in all from one end of the district to the other escaped 
 without some touch of the disease." The result was that in 
 a flourishing agricultural tract the population between 1871 
 and 1 88 1 fell from 937,427 to 924,882. 
 
 Again in 1885 there was a mortality of 1,124,150 persons 
 from fever, or 25 per mile of the population, chiefly in the 
 Duab and Rohilkhand. Commenting on this fact the Local 
 Government writes^ — " So much for the scientific facts, as far 
 as they are reliable, and these bear out our former contention, 
 that while in an undrained country abnormal rainfall in- 
 creases the normal death-rate, and defect of rainfall decreases 
 it, precisely the same law holds good in irrigated districts, 
 with this important difference, however, that as irrigated 
 districts suffer from what may be called a higher fever tension 
 than exists in non-irrigated districts in the same country, 
 increase of rain which in these Provinces generally might 
 raise the fever rate, might at any time cause an explosion of 
 fever in the irrigated districts. For this result the only avail- 
 able remedy is to keep the subsoil water moving at a lower 
 level." 
 
 It may be freely admitted that much of the water-logging 
 of the soil is due to the wasteful method in which the peasant 
 uses the Canal water. Many attempts have been made to con- 
 struct a workable water module, something like our household 
 gas meter, which would register the actual amount of water 
 supplied to each peasant and afford a means of levying the 
 water rate according to the quantity consumed. The appli- 
 ances hitherto proposed to meet this want have failed, either 
 because they were too delicate or complicated, or because they 
 became gradually clogged by the mass of silt which the water 
 carries with it. Possibly at the present time there is no 
 machine which would confer a greater advantage both on the 
 Government and on an enormous population whose health is 
 seriously affected by the over-saturation of the soil than a 
 simple and effective appliance for registering the water supply 
 to each holding. In default of such an appliance, the only 
 method of controlling supply is by regulating the number and 
 
 ' Administration Report, North-Westem Province.', 1885-86, p. 170. 
 
 150 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 capacity of the inlet pipes through which the water flows to 
 each village, and by insisting as far as possible on a limitation 
 of the size of the beds into which for irrigation purposes each 
 field is divided. These checks on wasteful use of water are 
 admittedly rude and inefficient. 
 
 While extravagance in the use of water among an ex- 
 tremely ignorant and jealous people, destitute of regard for 
 the public weal and too suspicious of each other to combine 
 to secure what is of primary importance to their welfare, 
 must eventually lead to subsoil saturation and induce 
 epidemics of fever, there is some ground for believing that 
 this outbreak of disease may depend on wider causes. During 
 the last twenty years parts of Bengal have suffered from what 
 is known as Bardwin fever, from the district where its effects 
 were most conspicuous. In twelve years before 1881 the 
 fever which prevailed in Bardwan is said to have carried off 
 not less than three-quarters of a million of people. In the 
 next decade its effects in western Bengal were hardly less 
 destructive. It was more of the choleraic than of the malarial 
 type, and it would almost seem that the wave of infection 
 can be traced through the North- West Provinces and into the 
 Panjib between 1887 and 1892. It appears, in fact, to have 
 been one of those terrible remedies which, in spite of all that 
 human sanitary science can do. Nature from time to time 
 applies to check the over-fecundity of her children. All the 
 great epidemics which have devastated the world, such as the 
 Black Death of the fourteenth centurj% have been accom- 
 panied by violent climatic changes, even by earthquakes and 
 other geological disturbances.^ Influenza, which in some of 
 its forms closely resembles the Dengue fever, which has from 
 time to time been epidemic in India, has been connected by 
 some authorities with inundations in China, by others with 
 the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa. It is possible that 
 other than local causes may have contributed to produce tlie 
 fever epidemics of Northern India. 
 
 It is only quite recently that the Province has been aroused 
 from its attitude of complacency on the question of education. 
 ' Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain, i. 143. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 It has always been regarded as an axiom that if we were 
 surpassed by the Bengali in the matter of English education, 
 we were, thanks to Mr Thomason, the founder of the system 
 of village schools, and Sir W. Muir, the patron of the higher 
 studies, well ahead of other parts of the country in elementary 
 instruction. And while it was admitted that Muhammadans 
 were somewhat behindhand in taking advantage of the new 
 learning, it was naturally supposed that a steady taste for the 
 higher culture spread from centres of the Hindu faith like 
 Mathura and Benares. 
 
 But the chill evidence of statistics has proved that this 
 feeling of self-satisfaction was ill-founded. We are now 
 assured on the best authority that these Provinces enjoy the 
 distinction of being the most illiterate tract in India, except 
 the Central Provinces, where educational facilities are few, 
 and where the jungle dweller has naturally no desire to learn. 
 
 The figures on which these results are based are in them- 
 selves surprising. It may be true that, owing to a misunder- 
 standing of the Census schedule, only those " learners " were 
 recorded as such who were attending a Government School. 
 But even granting this, the so-called private school is a 
 negligeable quantity so far as culture is concerned. If the 
 school be devoted to the sciences of Islam, the pupils squat 
 in a row and sway their bodies backwards and forwards, all 
 shouting in different keys the passages from the Koran 
 which they are occupied in committing to memory. If the 
 teacher be a Pandit, and his pupils young Brahmans, he is 
 teaching them the science of constructing a horoscope or 
 the mysteries of astrology. Nor is it surprising that the 
 number of " learners " recorded at the Census does not cor- 
 respond with those entered in the departmental records. In 
 every school there is a lowest class of .tyros, who scrabble 
 in the dust and chatter a letter or two of the alphabet 
 to each other, and would certainly not pass the entrance 
 examination of an English Kindergarten. 
 
 What is really important is to know the extent of the 
 literate clciss, and even here the definition is wide enough 
 to include learning of the meanest order. But still in every 
 
 152 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 10,000 males only 615 are "literate " or "learning," and only 
 21 females out of 10,000 fall in either category; or to put 
 the case in another way, out of 1000 of each sex, 937 males 
 and 997 females are illiterate. In the most backward of 
 European countries, Portugal, the corresponding figures for 
 males and females are 750 and 892. In Scotland there are 
 Only 46 illiterate males and 82 females in 1000 of each sex. 
 
 Again, comparing the results of the last two decennial 
 enumerations, the rate of progress is far from satisfactory. 
 It is true that in the case of males there is an increase of 1 2 
 per cent, of " literates " and boys under instruction, as con- 
 trasted with an increase of 6 per cent, in the total population ; 
 but with the vague standard for children under instruction 
 this information is of little value. There is also the fact that 
 the number of women educated or being educated has about 
 doubled in ten years ; but the numbers of such females — 
 46,872, or 21 in 10,000 of the population, are exceedingly small. 
 
 The degree of literacy among the main religions and 
 castes is worth considering. In the case of Hindus, out of 
 10,000 of each sex, there are 8103 males and 8553 females 
 illiterate. The proportion for Musalmins is slightly higher, 
 but though this part of the country was the centre of their 
 power, the seat of their courts and capitals, and the amount 
 of land held by them in proprietary right higher than in 
 other places, education has progressed less rapidly among them^ 
 than in other parts of India. The best educated class in the 
 whole community is that of the Christians ; then follows the^ 
 small body of Aryas and Jaina trading clcisses, whose occupa- 
 tion makes some education a necessity. About 50,000 people,"^ 
 half of whom are Christians, are recorded as knowing English. 
 
 Among Ccistes, the best educated are naturally the Kayasth "^ 
 or writing class, with 61 per cent, of literates ; next come the 
 Banyas or trading caste, while among Brahmans only 18 per^ 
 cent of males and 6 per cent, of females are educated. As a 
 matter of fact, the great mass of the Brahmans are agricul- 
 turists, and the amount of learning which suffices for the 
 village priest is the power of mumbling a few texts in a 
 language of which he does not understand a word. 
 
 153 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 We are thus in this Province face to face with a standard 
 of ignorance, which, when compared with that of civilised 
 countries, is simply appalling. It is no wonder that every 
 foolish rumour is believed ; that any factious agitator finds 
 an audience. According to the returns of 1893-94, the 
 number of primary and secondary schools amounted to 4814, 
 each school thus serving 22 square miles of area. But this 
 does not quite represent the actual facts, as the total area 
 includes the vast hilly tracts to the north and south of the 
 valley, where the population is exceedingly sparse. And it 
 would hardly be just to assert that there is a demand among 
 the people for a considerable extension of State schools 
 which the Government has been unable or unwilling to meet 
 If the policy has been mistaken, the error lies in diverting 
 the labours and expenditure of the Educational Department 
 towards the provision of higher class teaching instead of 
 instructing the mass of the people. 
 
 But, in the present condition of things, it is impossible that 
 the State can at once change its policy and withdraw its aid 
 from higher education. This would immediately lead to the 
 closing of a large proportion of the existing schools. If there 
 were no other reason against adopting such a course, it is 
 obviously necessary to maintain a supply of qualified clerks 
 for our offices and candidates for the subordinate Civil 
 Service. The progress of the country absolutely depends on" 
 the creation of a body of educated men for the Bar and 
 Bench, the medical and engineering professions, business and 
 the higher handicrafts. If the efforts of the Local Govern- 
 ment were checked in this direction, it is certain that the 
 want would be supplied by the immigration of the Bengali 
 B§bu, the Groeculns esuriens of modern India, who would 
 exclude the youths of the Province from every post of dignity 
 and emolument. On the other hand, candidates for such 
 employment are drawn, as a rule, from the wealthier classes, 
 and it is only reasonable that they should bear a much larger 
 proportion of the cost of that class of school which is now 
 maintained for their personal advantage and advancement. 
 It also seems obvious that it would be to the advantage 
 
 1 54 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 of the State to dissociate itself as far as possible from the 
 direct control of the higher education, instead of centralising 
 it, as is the case at present, under the Education Department. 
 It has been more than once suggested that these schools 
 should be, as far as possible, made over to any respectable 
 local bodies, who could give reasonable security that the 
 cause of education would not suffer from a transfer of manage- 
 ment, the Committee agreeing to adopt the prescribed text 
 books and submit the pupils to periodical inspection, a 
 grant in aid on the principle of payment by results being 
 sanctioned. At present the youth, who has been trained in 
 the higher learning mainly at the public cost, looks to the 
 local authorities for an appointment, in fact, almost claims as 
 a right that due provision should be made for his support in 
 after life. This tends to give undue prominence to the public 
 service as a career in preference to trade or other industrial 
 pursuits. It imposes a serious burden on the official class 
 which they should not be forced to assume, and it tends to 
 create a class of discontented semi-educated men, who are a 
 standing reproach and almost a menace to the administration. 
 It is this class which supplies the writers to the vernacular 
 press of the country, a body of journalists who, to use the 
 words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, are " full of the flippant 
 loquacity of half-knowledge." It is easy to say that the 
 circulation of these papers is small, and their influence slight 
 among the illiterate masses ; but it cannot tend to the well- 
 being of the country that the acts of its rulers should be 
 habitually misrepresented, and its officers constantly vilified 
 with practical impunity. On this point it may be well to 
 quote the deliberate opinion of the head of the Government, 
 whose calm review of the situation is impressive from its 
 extreme moderation : — ^ 
 
 " The native press of these Provinces is to a considerable extent free 
 from the charge of excess which characterises the press of many other 
 parts of India. A more temperate tone and habit of thought exists here ; 
 but there is a tendency, probably a growing tendency, to imitate the 
 violent style and the unreasoning methods of the native press elsewhere. 
 
 ' Adminislration Report, North-West Provinces, 18SS-89, P- xxxv. sq. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The adoption of the tone which characterises most of the native press is 
 the more to be regretted, as it robs it of value as a guide and assistance 
 to the Government, its attacks being without qualification and discern- 
 ment All that emanates from Government being found by this section 
 to be equally bad, it is too often useless to turn to its pages for intelligent, 
 discerning criticism of its measures, or for any useful statement of the 
 views and wishes of the people. There exist, happily, in these Provinces 
 certain native papers which no way expose themselves to these strictures. 
 Nevertheless, the native press is in too great measure in the hands of 
 needy men, who use it to blackmail their respectable fellow-citizens ; 
 and apart from its uselessness, for the reasons above stated, as a guide 
 to general native opinion, the licence which at present characterises it is 
 in the highest degree odious to the large and important class who are 
 thus laid under contribution. The Lieutenant-Governor does not at 
 present see any ground for supposing that the intemperate language of 
 the native press, and its indiscriminating attacks on officials in India, 
 have in any degree corrupted the general tone of thought among the 
 people or led them to adopt its point of view. It is in no sense of the 
 word a representative press, need and greed being its main features. It 
 is difficult, however, to believe^liat'"the uninterrupted and increasing 
 circulation of newspapers, habitually imputing to the Government of 
 India the basest designs, and to its officers the most unscrupulous con- 
 duct, can fail in course of time among a very ignorant people, such as 
 are the masses here, to create a strong feeling of hostility to a Govern- 
 ment which is confidently, and as far as they can see, without con- 
 tradiction, stated to be animated by such motives and served by such 
 subordinates. All that can be said upon the subject at present is that 
 the ignorant classes seem so far to have formed and retained juster 
 conceptions on the subject than those who have assumed the mission of 
 instructing them." 
 
 Another want seriously felt is the provision of a whole- 
 some popular literature. Many of the cheap books on sale 
 are either gross or stupid drivel, without any elevating 
 influence. Many of the current publications are extracts 
 from or commentaries on religious books, so-called " science " 
 of the Oriental type — treatises on magic, astrology, and the 
 like — or cheap cram books for native students. On the 
 other hand, the class trained in English is too limited, and 
 their knowledge of the language insufficient to popularise 
 the study of our literature. Translations, again, of the best 
 foreign books fail to suit the Oriental mind. A society for 
 encouraging the production and dissemination of books suited 
 
 156 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 to the comprehension of the student class would find a most 
 extensive field of operations. 
 
 So far the youths trained in our schools and colleges 
 have shown little aptitude for the pursuit of literature. The 
 acquisition of a degree is considered only a qualification for 
 ofEcial employment, or for entrance into professions such as 
 the Bar. When once this object is attained, the student has 
 no ambition to continue his search for knowledge, and he 
 lacks that mental discipline which the habit of reading 
 through middle and later life secures to the cultured Euro- 
 pean. Hence we too often find among the native educated 
 classes the sublime self-confidence of the half-educated man, 
 the lack of power to concentrate the mind on a special 
 subject, of the taste for minute, laborious investigation ; 
 these are replaced by a love of frothy declamation, of hastily 
 formed theories of life and conduct which do not rest on 
 the solid basis of reflection. The mental powers are over- 
 stimulated in early youth, and in after years become 
 weakened from disuse. In particular, the present system 
 of education seems to develop little taste for practical 
 science. Though the field for new inventions or adaptations 
 of western discoveries to agriculture, irrigation, and the 
 mechanical arts is immense, little has been done. The same 
 is the case with sociology and ethnology, the study of the 
 classical languages, local , history and folk-lore, to which 
 the contributions of the natives of the country have been 
 inconsiderable.'^ 
 
 In considering the results of our higher education we have 
 passed by the really important subject of the gross illiteracy 
 of the masses. Europe can, at least for the present, find all 
 the scientific knowledge which the nation can assimilate. 
 But were it only to protect the peasant from the money- 
 lending shark or the knaveries of the village accountant, the 
 
 1 At the same time the experiments recently carried out by Professor J. C. 
 Bose, in connection with the polarisation of the electric ray, give promise of 
 greater success in the field of scientific enquiry. But he is a Bengali, not a 
 native of Upper India, and in Calcutta and Bombay the standard of culture 
 among the educated classes is much higher than in the interior of the Peninsula. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 encouragement of elementary education is an obvious public 
 duty. The people are illiterate, because no less than 75 per 
 cent of them depend for their livelihood on agriculture — an 
 occupation which in all countries is divorced from literature. 
 The wearied peasant in the short hour of dusk before bed- 
 time finds sufficient mental exercise in the gossip over village 
 politics, by the smoky fire or under the pipal tree. If he 
 sends his boy to school at all, his attendance is irregular, 
 because his services are needed to pasture the goat, cut 
 forage for the cow, or scare the green parrots from the 
 millet. Besides this, why does he support the Brahman 
 Levite or the Kiyasth writer, if it be not that they have 
 the monopoly of learning ? And the Brahman himself finds 
 that the keen-witted school-boy is apt to laugh at his old- 
 fashioned learning, and to lower his repute as the sole de- 
 positary of culture by wild talk of sciences beyond his ken. 
 " We can thus see that the field in which the seeds of literacy 
 have to be sown consists of a few square yards of what we 
 may call relatively good soil, prepared to receive all the seed 
 it can get, and thirsting for the whole of the attention of the 
 husbandman. Then comes the vast stony waste of labour 
 and menial offices, without sufficient depth of soil to allow 
 the seed to strike root, and, lastly, the many miles of arable 
 mark, so taken up with the production of the food and 
 clothing of the whole community, that whatever else is sown 
 in it is inevitably choked before it can ripen." ^ 
 
 With female education the case is even stronger, for here 
 the influence of Mrs Grundy comes into play. The learned 
 lady has ever been an object of suspicion to her less advanced 
 sisters, and in India book-learning has always been deemed 
 to suggest in the woman who possesses it some analogy to 
 the free-living Hetaira. The duties of the housewife are pre- 
 scribed by immemorial custom to be — to bear a son, to cook 
 the savoury dishes which her lord loveth, to distribute charity 
 to the religious mendicant. Thus saith Manu, the sage '^ : — 
 " Let the husband keep his wife employed in the collection 
 and expenditure of wealth, in purification and female duty 
 
 ' Baines' Indian Census Report, 1891, p. 212. " Institutes, ix. II, 17, i8. 
 
 158 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 in the preparation of daily food, and the superintendence of 
 household utensils. Prone are they to love of their bed, of 
 their seat, and of ornament, impure appetites, wrath, weak 
 flexibility, desire of mischief and bad conduct They have 
 no business with the texts of the Vedas." Within an horizon 
 thus bounded by cooking and spring cleaning there is no 
 room for the intellectual companionship of man and wife, the 
 ideal of wedlock in the West. The wife is ever in tutelage, 
 married when a child, a mother when European girls are at 
 school ; monotonous household work, the tending of the 
 cattle, the weeding of the field, the scaring of the birds, are 
 her portion from maidenhood to old age. Petted in the 
 beauty of youth, when this is gone she is a drudge in her 
 later years. All through her life education is not to be 
 thought of, even if it were not choked out by meaner cares. 
 
 One thing is quite clear — the provision of education for 
 these illiterate millions is entirely beyond the resources of 
 the State. All that can be done is to save in the expendi- 
 ture for the higher education, and work up the hedge schools 
 to some degree of efficiency. 
 
 In another department the results are more encouraging. 
 It would really seem that we have now succeeded in con- 
 vincing the peasant of the superiority of our medical, or 
 rather surgical, treatment over his familiar methods. The 
 last few years have shown an enormous increase in the 
 hospital attendance. In 1893-94, this amounted to no less 
 than 3I millions of patients. In particular, the confidence 
 of the people in the ophthalmic skill of our surgeons is 
 obviously increasing year by year. The conditions of vil- 
 lage life — the close smoky air of the huts, the fierce glare of 
 the summer sun, the dust, the flies — are all causes of eye 
 affections. Added to these, the inferior quality of the food, 
 especially in fatty and saline principles, the prevalence of 
 malarial fever and the leprosy taint are all favourable to 
 the development of cataract and other forms of eye disease. 
 The native oculist, with his rough methods, coarse instru- 
 ments, and lack of scientific knowledge or sanitary precau- 
 tions, is now pretty generally discredited. The average 
 
 159 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 number of blind people in 100,000 of the population for the 
 whole of India is 164 men and 171 females ; the correspond- 
 ing figures for these Provinces are respectively 216 and 224. 
 — more than double the English average. Blindness is thus 
 exceedingly prevalent, and the only parts of India where it 
 is more common are Berar, the Panjab, and Upper Burma. 
 There seems no doubt that there has been a decrease of no 
 less than 15 per cent, in the number of the blind since the 
 last decennial Census. Probably the main reason of this is 
 the diminution of smallpox, which, before vaccination was 
 introduced into England, accounted for 35 per cent of the 
 cases of blindness. But much of the decrease is certainly 
 due to the skill of our surgeons, who, in the same period, 
 dealt with 54,535 cases of eye disease, of which 47,081, or 
 86 per cent, were cured or relieved — a record which would 
 do credit to any country, but particularly laudable consider- 
 ing the adverse circumstances under which the work was done 
 as compared with the well-equipped ophthalmic hospitals of 
 Europe. 
 
 The same is the case with the use of quinine as a remedy 
 for malarial fever. A generation ago its high price was pro- 
 hibitive ; now-a-days, with improved methods of manufacture 
 and increased culture of the cinchona tree, it is within the 
 reach of all. In Bengal it is now sold in penny packets at 
 every Post Office, and it is quite time that this boon was 
 extended to other parts of the country. Anything which 
 would reduce the terrible loss of life, and, even when the 
 patient recovers, the weakness which accompanies conval- 
 escence, would be an inestimable blessing. No more painful 
 sight is to be seen in rural India than a line of pallid wretches 
 warming their chilled bodies in the morning sun, while the 
 cattle stand idle in the shed, and the broad fields lie un- 
 ploughed, because the husbandman's energies have been 
 sapped by the foul malaria fiend. 
 
 The progress made in sanitation during the last thirty 
 years serves only to emphasise the fact that the task is of 
 stupendous difficulty, that much of it is beyond the power of 
 any Government to undertake unless it throws to the winds 
 
 160 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 all considerations of finance, and all regard for the prejudices 
 of the people. The striking fact in this connection is that 
 with a very liberal definition of a " town," only 1 1 per cent, 
 of the people are urban, occupying 484 sites. To put 
 this in another way — of the total population nearly 5J 
 millions live in the towns ; about 42^ millions occupy 105,716 
 villages. This distinction is vital from the point of view of 
 sanitation. In the towns we may do something: who will 
 dare to apply sanitary regulations to the villages .' 
 
 To take the city and town population first — out of these 
 103 cities or towns with a population of 3^ millions are 
 managed by Municipal Boards, which realise an annual 
 income of nearly R.x. 300,000 mostly by means of an octroi 
 tax, and spend about 45 per cent, of their income on sani- 
 tation. The remaining towns are under the direct manage- 
 ment of the district Magistrate, and a small income is realised 
 by means of a house tax assessed by a body of members, of 
 which part is spent on the town Watch and Ward, and part 
 on roads and sanitation. 
 
 The cities under Municipal control are as a rule fairly well 
 provided with surface drainage, latrines and a conservancy 
 establishment. During the last decade the larger cities have 
 at considerable cost provided a good supply of filtered water. 
 In some cases these works are a serious burden on the Muni- 
 cipal finances. 
 
 In the smaller towns which are not managed by a Muni- 
 cipal Board the income, much of which is levied from very 
 poor people, suffices only to maintain a small conservancy 
 staff and to carry out sanitary works of the simplest kind. 
 Where the town is the headquarters of a Tahsildar or Sub- 
 Collector the control is fairly efficient ; in the more isolated 
 towns a general spring cleaning goes on when the visit of an 
 official may be expected. At other times many of these 
 places revert to their priniitive state of filth. The death 
 returns for the ten years prior to the last Census show 1 19 
 deaths in towns for each lOO in villages for equal numbers 
 living. In England there are III town deaths for every 100 
 country deaths, and though in India the record of deaths in 
 L 161 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the urban is more accurate than in the rural circles, the 
 existing figures, when allowance is made for the inevitable 
 overcrowding in the towns, probably closely represent actual 
 facts. 
 
 The constant crusade carried on to enforce some degree 
 of cleanliness among the town population has undoubtedly 
 been to some extent effective. The Hindu in regard to the 
 preparation of his food, the purification of his person and 
 raiment, professes to be under the influence of religious 
 sanctions which are ostensibly of a most stringent nature. 
 From these the Musalman holds himself in a large measure 
 relieved. But while all classes of the people profess an 
 academic acquiescence in rules enforcing cleanliness, practice 
 always tends to lag behind theory. While, for instance, the 
 cooking place of the Hindu is carefully guarded against 
 pollution, and the touch, or even in some cases the shadow 
 of a low caste person, will be held to defile the food ; in the 
 purity of the water which he drinks, in the disposal of his 
 house refuse, in the minor decencies of civilised life he is 
 absolutely careless. And it is also very noticeable that the 
 habit of cleanliness does not improve as we compare the 
 richer and higher classes with the poor and those of low 
 degree. The narrow hut of the leather-worker or scavenger 
 will be usually found purer than the mansion of the banker ; 
 and the English-speaking clerk or lawyer will as consistently 
 neglect the commonest rules of cleanliness as his most 
 ignorant neighbour. This is particularly the case among 
 those classes which enforce the seclusion of their women, 
 and resent with the most passionate insistence any attempt 
 to explore the mysteries of the Zanina. 
 
 It is this fact which makes the cleansing of the Augean 
 stables in our towns a task of such difficulty and delicacy. 
 The roads may be regularly swept, the street drains periodi- 
 cally flushed ; but it is only, after all, the cleansing of the 
 outside of the cup and platter, while behind these jealously- 
 guarded walls lies a region where sanitation cannot be en- 
 forced without offending the most deeply-seated prejudices 
 of the people. 
 
 162 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 The problem of village sanitation has been debated ad 
 nauseam. Something has been done by means of extensive 
 drainage works to remedy the water-logging of the Central 
 Ganges-Jumna Duab, where the outbreaks of fever have been 
 most destructive. Vaccination has been pressed forward, 
 and the main prejudice against it on the assumed ground 
 of interference with caste is gradually being overcome by 
 the object-lesson of the protection afforded by it against the 
 ravages of small-pox. But the problem of applying sanitary 
 regulations to the vast village population distributed over 
 an enormous area remains pretty much where it was. All 
 are agreed as to the advantage of some reform, but the 
 practical difficulties are overwhelming. Officials in their 
 periodical tours can and do something to help in the struggle 
 against dirt; but steady, effective control involves the ap- 
 pointment of a great special staff, which, unless paid at rates 
 which are at present prohibitive, would involve far-reaching 
 evils. A sanitary inspector must be a man of tact, common 
 sense, and honesty. He must contend with the patent 
 difficulty of reconciling the requirements of the law with the 
 needs of established industries, such as the muck-heap of the 
 Jat cultivator or the tan-pit of the Chamar. To hustle or 
 worry either of these pillars of the State would be as intoler- 
 able as to prosecute every old lady who scours her cooking 
 pots outside her narrow hut, and drag her before a Magistrate 
 who holds his Court perhaps fifty miles away. Village 
 cleanliness is an ideal not to be lost sight of; not to be 
 secured by ill-judged, fussy interference with people whose 
 ways of life are prescribed by immemorial custom, and who 
 measure the efficiency of a Government by the degree to 
 which they are carefully let alone. On the other hand, 
 much good may be done by regulating the village well and 
 protecting it from the worst forms of pollution. But as for 
 a general crusade against filth in rural India the people will 
 not endure it, and no Government in its senses would seriously 
 propose to wage it. Like many other reforms in lands more 
 advanced than India, it must await the growth of a healthy 
 public feeling in its favour. 
 
 163 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The sphere in which our work has been most beneficial to 
 the people is undoubtedly in the matter of communications. 
 What the condition of things was at the commencement of 
 our rule may be gathered from the accounts of contemporary 
 writers. We have seen that the Mughal Government, beyond 
 the construction of a great highway for military purposes, did 
 little in this direction. After we took over the country we 
 introduced the corvee system, and from Dr Buchanan's 
 account of Gorakhpur in the first decade of the century the 
 result was, as might have been expected, unsatisfactory. He 
 suspected, not perhaps without good reason, that many of the 
 roads had been made for the convenience of gentlemen going 
 on shooting parties.^ Writing in 1824, Bishop Heb.er says^ — 
 " Nothing could be more unfounded than the assurance which 
 I have heard in Calcutta that an open carriage is an eligible 
 method of travelling in the Duab on any other ground than 
 cheapness. I have been told that the road as far as Meerut 
 would answer perfectly for a gig. The fact is there are no 
 roads at all, and the tracks which we follow are often such as 
 to require care even on horseback. By driving slowly no 
 doubt a gig may go almost anywhere, but it is anything but 
 an agreeable pastime to drive along tracks which, when 
 beaten, are so poached by the feet of horses and cattle and 
 so hardened by the sun as to resemble a frozen farmyard ; 
 while if the traveller forsakes those roads he encounters 
 cracks deep and wide enough to break his wheels. Here 
 and there is a tolerably level mile or two, but with a few 
 exceptions there is no fast or pleasant driving in this part of 
 India." And when he came into Oudh things were even 
 worse. We can now hardly realise that he devoted anxious 
 enquiries to ascertain whether there was any practicable 
 route between Lucknow and Bareilly. Even about 1840 
 things were not much better. An officer on service writes^ — 
 " The road between Allahabad and Cawnpur passeth all 
 understanding. The head of our column got on pretty well, 
 not sinking much above their knees in the impalpable soil ; 
 
 ^ Eastern India, ii. 579. * Diary, 192, 227. 
 
 ' Military Service and Adventures in the Far East, ii. 20. 
 164 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 but the centre and rear stj^gered blindly onward, and not 
 unfrequently downward, through the clouds raised by their 
 predecessors till they reached more substantial ground ; others 
 jostjed against mud walls and trees, trod on their neighbours' 
 toes, or wandering from their comrades, groped their way out 
 of the dense atmosphere and only discovered the locality of 
 the column by the glimpse of a few miller-like objects 
 preceding the column." 
 
 In those days the journey from Calcutta to Benares cost ■ 
 E,x. 76 in a palanquin; the first-class fare is now about one- 
 fourth of this. In 1851 the post took four days to travel 
 from Calcutta to Patna^; the mail train now conveys it in 
 little more than a quarter of this time. It was not till 1833 
 that the great highway known as the Grand Trunk road from 
 Calcutta to the Panjab was commenced ; it was not till 1852 
 that it was extended to Ambaia. In 1841 mail carts were 
 first brought into use, and about the same time the modern 
 Dik Gari or travelling carriage was evolved out of an in- 
 vention by which the palanquin was laid on a truck and 
 dragged from stage to stage by coolies. It was in the year^ 
 1856, just before the Mutiny, that railways were introduced. 
 The last returns show 2734 miles of railway open in the 
 Province, and this will soon be largely increased by the lines 
 of Light Railways which are now being started as famine relief 
 works. The increase in travelling has been enormous. The 
 number of passengers conveyed by the Oudh and Rohilkhand 
 line rose between 1881 and 1891 from 2,632,000 to 5,254,000, 
 on the East Indian railway from 2,437,000 to just under 
 4,000,000. The whole country has been covered with a net- 
 work of roads, of which those that are bridged and metalled 
 are excellent. 
 
 The effect of this extension of communications has been 
 most remarkable. The theory that the high-caste native, 
 through dread of contamination from his meaner fellow- 
 passengers, would not use the railway, has been quite 
 discredited. Considerations of obvious convenience have 
 in this case, as in the use of pipe water in the larger cities, 
 ^ Good Old Days cfjohn Company, ii. 89. 
 165 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 caused a modification of the rules of social life and traditional 
 custom. From the point of view of the railway official the 
 native is an admirable passenger. Possessed of little sense 
 of the value of time, he does not care for a high rate of speed, 
 and he will wait for half a day with sublime patience till his 
 train chances to draw up at the platform. He does not mind 
 overcrowding, and will 'pack his carriage with malodorous 
 bundles of luggage which he is much too canny to make over 
 to the guard. He will gladly accept a seat in a cattle truck 
 if no better conveyance be forthcoming, and once he has 
 secured his seat his power of enduring fatigue makes him 
 quite callous to minor inconveniences against which a less 
 stolid race would fret and fume. 
 
 Though the facility of travelling has increased the attend- 
 ance at the great bathing fairs, the rush of pilgrims shows 
 as yet no signs of becoming unmanageable. The pilgrim is 
 beginning shrewdly to understand that at these enormous 
 gatherings he and his womenkind are liable to be hustled 
 and overcharged ; he chafes under the sanitary restrictions 
 which a crowded fair necessitates. So he finds it to his 
 interest to defer his visit until times are quieter, and then he 
 receives better terms and more attention from his Brahman 
 cicerone. This personage does not entirely approve of the 
 new regime. If more pilgrims visit his shrine, they stay for 
 a shorter time, pack in visits to more than one sacred place 
 on the journey, and have less to spend at each. Railway 
 travelling is making the Hindu more of a man of the world, 
 more self-reliant, less easily fleeced, more disposed to depart 
 at once if he finds himself ill-treated. But life has become 
 sensibly brighter to the village yokel and the blushing, 
 giggling maidens since a bath in the holy water of Mother 
 Ganges has been brought more within the reach of their 
 narrow purses. 
 
 Trade under the changed conditions has been simply 
 revolutionised. The telegraph now flashes the hourly 
 fluctuations of the market from Calcutta to Peshawar ; " time 
 bargains" and "corners" in wheat or cotton gratify the 
 native merchant's innate love of a gamble. The great 
 
 i66 
 
MALLAH GOAT.Mr^N WITH DUG-OUT. 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 ancient merchant houses with their wide .storehouses, their 
 fleets'of boats, their convoys of merchandise, have disappeared, 
 and the middleman is rapidly sharing their fate. The petty 
 village cloth merchant or corn chandler deals direct with the 
 agent of some firm in Bombay and Calcutta. Prices have 
 become practically the same all along the line. The old- 
 fashioned days in which grain or other produce lay stored 
 in the warehouses till the river rose, or the chance of turning 
 a large profit appeared, have passed away, and have been 
 replaced by the new system of rapid sales and quick, if 
 smaller, returns on investments. Many historic marts, like 
 Mirzapur, which once commanded the trade with the Deccan 
 or Fatehgarh, which was the business entrepot between Oudh 
 and the west, have found themselves stranded in a com- 
 mercial backwater. Their warehouses are empty, their 
 once busy bazars deserted, and business has sought more 
 convenient centres, like Cawnpur, Agra or Hathras. 
 
 Far the most famous of the old coinmercial ffrms was that 
 of the Sethso f Math ura. who in former days ranked as the 
 Rothschriaim- Barings of Northern India. Founded in the 
 commencement of the century, this banking house acquired 
 enormous wealth, and became well known by their distin- 
 guished loyalty to the Crown and their widespread bene- 
 ficence. Between 1845 and 1851 they erected on the Madras 
 model the splendid temple of Vishnu in his manifestation as 
 Rangji, at Brindaban, at a cost of nearly half a million, and 
 their expenditure on works of charity and celebrations of 
 worship has been always on a princely scale. No more 
 striking spectacle can be witnessed than the annual procession 
 of the god on a car like that of Jaggannath. But under 
 changed conditions this great commercial house has failed 
 to maintain the pre-eminence which it once enjoyed in trading 
 circles. 
 
 With this shaking up of the dry bones of Indian com- 
 mercial life has been born the new organisation of trade 
 which has brought the wheat of the Upper Duib on English 
 breakfast tables, and has made the merchant of Mark Lane 
 anxiously watch the progress of the monsoon or the failure 
 
 167 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the winter rain. One condition precedent to a more 
 extensive exportation is the maintenance of a low silver 
 exchange. Should the course of events tend to re-establish 
 the value of the rupee it will act as a check to trade. In any 
 case the widespread native opinion that it is this increase 
 of exports which has led to the great rise in prices is obviously 
 incorrect The fear that the amount of these exports would 
 intensify scarcity is no less ill-founded. The rise of internal 
 prices caused by drought would at once operate as a check 
 on foreign exportation, and the amount of wheat exported 
 at present is only one per cent, of the total food grains pro- 
 duced in Northern India, and only one-tenth of the total 
 crop of wheat.^ 
 
 This leads to the subject of Famine — one of the most 
 notable chapters in the history of our rule. Lying, as we 
 have seen, at the meeting-point of the two chief rain currents, 
 the Province has been from time immemorial liable to scarcity 
 of rain. Of the famines which occurred before we assumed 
 charge of the country we have no clear accounts, and some 
 of them were perhaps due as much to the ravages of war as 
 to actual drought 
 
 One of the earliest famines of which we have any record 
 'occurred in 1291 A.D., in the reign of Firoz Shah Khilji. 
 "The Hindus of that country," says the chronicler, "came 
 into Delhi with their families, twenty and thirty of them 
 together, and in the extremity of hunger drowned themselves 
 in the Jumna. The Sultan and his nobles did all they could 
 to help them." ^ 
 
 The next famine we hear of was caused mainly by the 
 oppression of the Sultin, Muhammad bin Tughlak (1327-35 
 A.D.). The traveller Ibn Batuta was a witness of this. -He 
 says he saw women eating the skin of a horse which had been 
 dead some months, and others fighting for blood at the 
 slaughter-houses. The Government is said to have distri- 
 buted food for six months.* 
 
 ^ Voelcker, Report, 295. 
 
 - Elliot, Historians, iii. 146 ; Gazetteer, North- West Provitues, a. 35. 
 
 * Elliot, ibid., iii. 238. 
 
 168 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 The invasion of TimQr was followed by another terrible 
 scarcity. Many died of hunger, and for two months Delhi 
 was desolate.^ 
 
 We have an account of an outbreak of cholera in 1616 A.D., 
 caused by a famine which prevailed for two years in succes- 
 sion. " Life was offered for a loaf," says the annalist," " but 
 no one would deal." The Emperor Shah Jah^n opened 
 kitchens and remitted revenue. Again in 1660 many districts 
 lay entirely waste, and crowds of people made their way to 
 the capital. 
 
 The century of misrule which preceded our occupation 
 witnessed at least one severe famine. Scarcity, as might have 
 been expected, followed in the train of Nadir-Shah's raid on 
 Delhi in j[239_and on the Sikh inroads in the western dis- 
 tricts which occurred soon after. The terrible famine which 
 ravaged Bengal and Bihar in 1770 had little influence further 
 west, except that excessive exports raised the local prices. 
 
 But in 1783-84 occurred the great famine, of which vivid 
 stories still live in the memories of the people. This was in 
 popular parlance the ChcLlisa or " fortieth," so called because 
 it occurred in the year 1840 of the Sambat or Hindu era. A 
 complete failure of the autumn rains followed two years of 
 partial drought Its ravages seem to have been most serious 
 in the Central Duib. Mr Girdlestone tells us^ that in the 
 emigration of the famine-stricken wretches to Oudh, where 
 the scarcity was supposed to be less severe, "death left its 
 mark freely along the road. Such was the general apathy 
 that the bodies were not removed from the place where they 
 lay, even in towns and villages. No relief was held out to 
 the sick and dying. Every man's hand was against his 
 neighbour, and the strong ruthlessly seized the portion of the 
 weak, for the struggle to maintain life overcame all scruples." 
 Warren Hastings was at the time in Benares, and was a 
 personal witness of the misery of the people. Many a 
 deserted village mound is in the popular tradition attributed 
 to the ravages of the dreaded Chilisa. 
 
 The first years of our administration were clouded by 
 
 1 Elliot, Historians, iv. 38. ^ Ibid., vL 346. ^Famine Report, 8. 
 
 169 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 famine, a calamity which the people were not slow to asso- 
 ciate with our conquest. Famine in their view of the case, like 
 disease or any other calamity, is not a misfortune due to 
 natural causes, but to the sins or ill-luck of their rulers. At 
 one time it has been attributed to the operations of the 
 Survey, a sacrilegious interference with the benign Mother 
 Earth, who is sure to resent the insult of meting her out 
 with chain and compass and confining her with boundaries 
 by withholding her kindly fruits in their season. At another 
 it is the profane slaughter of sacred kine which aroused the 
 wrath of the gods, as it did when the ill-fated companions of 
 Odysseus slew the holy cattle of Helios Hyperion. In this 
 case the scarcity which followed the footsteps of Lord Lake 
 was due in 1803-4 partly to a natural drought, partly to the 
 interruption of husbandry by the contending armies. The 
 Duab, again, was the chief seat of the scarcity. The Govern- 
 ment met the emergency by a remission of revenue to the 
 amount of R.x. 300,000. 
 
 In fact, these early years of our rule seem to have been 
 marked by an unusual amount of scarcity, to which excessive 
 revenue assessments, the disorganisation of the district estab- 
 lishments, and the ignorance of the Civil officers of the 
 resources of the country and the needs of the people doubt- 
 less contributed. In one of these scarcities parts of Bundel- 
 khand, already harassed by the Central Indian marauders, 
 suffered severely. 
 
 But all these minor disasters pale before the horrors of 
 the famine of 1837-38, which, on the analogy of the Chalisa, 
 is known as the Chauranav^, or "ninety-four," because it 
 occurred in the year 1894 of the Hindu era. It affected the 
 whole country between Allahabad and Delhi, but was most 
 severe in the Central Duab, in the neighbourhood of Agra 
 and Cawnpur. Including Rajputina, the population exposed 
 to it was about 28 millions. In 1836 the rains failed, and 
 the distress was intensified by poor harvests in the preceding 
 years. Grain merchants closed their shops, the peasantry 
 took to plunder ; cattle starved and died ; in the part of the 
 Mathura district west of the Jumna, the village thatches were 
 
 170 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE. 
 
 torn down to feed the starving beasts. There was a general 
 move of the people in the direction of Malwa, that Cathay or 
 land of plenty, where, in the imagination of the North Indian 
 rustic, the fields always smile with golden grain and poverty 
 is unknown. 
 
 We have graphic accounts from eye-witnesses of the suffer- 
 ings of the people. In FarrukhabSd,^ " Brahmans, who had 
 before rejected their cooked food if the defiled Christian 
 came too near, were now seen by us stealing the scraps from 
 our dogs. Mothers sold their infants to the despised 
 foreigners, or left them a prey to the wolves ; society was 
 entirely disorganised, and horrors of every kind pervaded the 
 land." Prices rose to three times the ordinary rates, but 
 common grain seldom sold at less than 20 lbs. to the rupee — 
 a rate which would not now-a-days indicate extreme tension. 
 
 This famine for two reasons marks an important change in 
 the attitude of the State to calamities such as these. Now, 
 for the first time, the obligation of the Government to pro- 
 vide for the relief of the starving masses was recognised. 
 Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, personally assumed 
 charge of the operations. Nearly half the land revenue of the 
 affected tract was remitted ; public works were opened for 
 the able-bodied ; while charitable organisations assisted the 
 helpless and infirm. But our officers did not then possess 
 that grasp of the country which they afterwards secured, and 
 the agricultural statistics of the time were verj-- incomplete. 
 In spite of all exertions there was a lamentable loss of life. 
 It was long after calculated by Colonel Baird Smith at 
 800,000, but this is probably much below the mark. 
 
 The second important result of this famine was the plan 
 for the construction of the Ganges Canal, to which reference 
 has been already made. 
 
 After this for about twenty years the land had rest. The 
 disturbances of 1857-58 seriously interrupted agriculture, 
 much property was destroyed, and the land remained un- 
 tilled. Two scanty years were followed by failure of the 
 rains in i860, and though the injury to the crops was sup- 
 
 1 Gazetteer, A'orth- West ProvitueS, -nil. ^■^. 
 171 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 posed to be not less than in 1837, the area of suffering was 
 much smaller. This time it again severely attacked the 
 country between Delhi and Agra, inhabited by about 5^ 
 millions of people. The Government actively interfered on 
 the lines laid down in 1837-38. But, on the initiative of Sir 
 John Strachey, then Collector of Moradabad, the system of 
 supplying cooked food to persons who consented to be tem- 
 porarily confined in an enclosed workhouse was for the first 
 time introduced, and secured an admirable check on the 
 class of professional mendicants. This arrangement has 
 been embodied in the standard Code regulating the principles 
 on which famine relief is administered. The general result 
 is that the able-bodied labourer is provided with work at a 
 living wage, either on extensive public works managed by a 
 trained engineering staff, or on smaller local undertakings 
 supervised by the district officials ; while the sick and weak, 
 old people and young children, are relieved in a poorhouse 
 or famine camp, where medical attendance is supplied and 
 sanitary rules enforced. A further extension of artificial 
 irrigation, and in particular the construction of the Lower 
 Ganges Canal, followed this famine. 
 
 There was another drought of less intensity in 1868. In 
 1873-74 Government was again called upon to start relief 
 works in the Benares division, which, however, was less 
 seriously affected than the neighbouring districts in Bengal 
 and Bihar. By this time, as a result of the drought of 1868, 
 the principle had now become established that it was the 
 object of Government to save every life, and that its officers 
 would be held responsible for any preventible mortality. 
 The experience in Gorakhpur showed that it was absolutely 
 necessary, by the reduction of wages to the limits which 
 provided a mere subsistence, to put a check on the masses 
 who, at certain times of the year when agricultural work is 
 slack, will always crowd on relief works. With stricter super- 
 vision and the enforcement of the rule that labourers should 
 remain continuously on the works, and not occasionally 
 return home, as soon as the rains set in the vast masses of 
 paupers melted away. The same policy was pursued in the 
 
 172 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 drought which occurred in the western parts of the Province 
 in 1877-78, and though the Government did not escape 
 criticism for the rigidity of its methods, the suffering was 
 nowhere of a really serious type. Since that period, ex- 
 cept for the drought which in 1896 prevailed in parts of 
 Bundelkhand, there has been no exceptionally severe distress. 
 But the failure of this year's monsoon, following on, at least 
 in Oudh, a couple of lean seasons, has again brought the 
 question of famine relief to the front. 
 
 It will be shown later on that the increase of the popula- 
 tion does not progress at such a rapid rate as is commonly 
 supposed, and that natural causes and prudential considera- 
 tions do exercise some check upon the fertility of the people. 
 At the same time, there is in some parts of the Province a 
 dangerous degree of congestion which creates a depressed 
 residuum, exposed to want on the occurrence of even a 
 minor check to agriculture, their only means of support. 
 Putting aside the earlier enumerations, which were to some 
 extent imperfect and affected by changes of area, we have 
 the definite fact that in twenty years (1872-91) the popula- 
 tion of the North-West Provinces rose from 3of to 34J 
 millions, and that of Oudh from iij to nearly I2f millions. 
 Parts of the country offer instances of a density of population 
 which can be compared only with that of exceptional tracts 
 in Europe, where industrial and commercial life is most 
 highly organised. This people, again, definitely refuses to 
 avail itself of that relief by emigration to less congested 
 areas which led the surplus population of Ireland to the 
 American Continent, and is now driving Italians to Brazil 
 or Argentina, and the Chinaman to the Malay Peninsula and 
 the islands of the Southern Sea. 
 
 The State is thus here confronted with a problem which 
 would tax the resources of the greatest Governments. There 
 is, perhaps, no more pathetic situation in the whole range 
 of human history than to watch these dull, patient masses 
 stumbling in their traditional way along a path which can 
 lead only to suffering, most of them careless of the future, 
 marrj^ng and giving in marriage, fresh generations ever 
 
 173 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 encroaching on the narrow margin which separates them 
 from destitution. Anxious statesmen peer into the mists 
 which shroud the future, and wonder what the end of all 
 this may be. Will some grand agricultural discovery, some 
 invention in the way of a new system of culture, some secret 
 of chemistry which the world as yet knows not, some idea 
 which will flash through the land, simple and cheap enough 
 for any rustic to employ, and yet such as will not give a 
 shock to his habitual methods, expel for a time the demon of 
 poverty, and give them another start? Or will Nature in 
 one of her relentless moods intervene, as she has often done 
 before, and sweep away the useless mouths by pestilence or 
 famine ? Or will some sudden impulse, the trumpet voice 
 of some teacher, drive them, as it drove Goth or Vandal or 
 Tatar, to seek new homes under another sky in Burma, the 
 jungles of Central India, or Uganda? 
 
 Meanwhile, all that can be done is being done ; the 
 resources of the Province are being steadily developed by 
 the construction of railways and canals; the conditions of 
 the more depressed tracts, such as Bundelkhand, have been 
 carefully investigated ; in the pigeon-holes of each district 
 officer are to be found a number of well-considered estimates 
 for public works, which can be put in hand when necessity 
 arises ; and the principles which should regulate the action 
 of the Government have been formulated. 
 
 The expense of meeting an emergency of this kind is a 
 serious financial difficulty ; but economy is secured by the 
 enforcement of the principle that famine relief is a Pro- 
 vincial, not an Imperial charge. And it must be remem- 
 bered that the annual charge for poor relief in England and 
 Wales is nearly ten millions per annum, from which, so far, 
 India has escaped. Nowhere has the practice of charity 
 been more generally raised to the level of a religious duty. 
 Much of it, it is true, such as the food and gifts lavished on 
 Brihmans and religious mendicants, is sheer waste ; much of 
 the marriage alms and daily doles distributed to all-comers 
 by rich traders are merely a form of ostentation, and do 
 harm by pauperising the recipients. On the other hand, 
 
 174 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 there is a vast amount of quiet, simple benevolence in rural 
 life. The widow is ever bringing her gift to the treasury, 
 and the very poor can always find a handful of grain for the 
 destitute. With a large indigent population the temptations 
 to start some form of permanent relief is largely felt ; but 
 the risk of pauperisation is fully recognised, and it is very 
 doubtful if sufHcient voluntary contributions could be secured. 
 All native benevolence takes the personal form, and regular 
 subscriptions to permanent charities, like hospitals, are not 
 readily given. In any general scheme of relief, the burden 
 thus undertaken would ultimately fall on the State, which 
 has no sufficient funds to meet it. 
 
 Nor is much to be expected, from the local organisations 
 known as District Boards. At present the incidence of 
 Municipal taxation is only three-quarters of a rupee per 
 head of the urban population per annum. Nor is it prob- 
 able that this amount can at present be exceeded. The 
 to^vn residents have lost heavily in recent years through the 
 rise in food grains, and the class of unskilled town labourer 
 suffers from the danger of being swamped by the hungry 
 emigrants from the villages round him. City industries, par- 
 ticularly that of weaving, are depressed. The hand-loom 
 has given way to competition with machinery, both English 
 and local, and it is very doubtful how far recent fiscal legisla- 
 tion will improve it. In any case, the village weaver is more 
 and more abandoning the use of hand-made yam for the 
 cheaper article turned out by the mills. 
 
 It is not easy to estimate exactly the effect of this devolu- 
 tion of the business of government upon local bodies. When 
 these measures were first brought into force, the Government 
 admitted that it was prepared for a certain amount of failure, 
 which would be, it was hoped, compensated for by the edu- 
 cational value of the training in practical administration. In 
 most cases the Magistrate continued to act as Chairman of 
 the Local Board ; he was to dry-nurse the administrative 
 bantling, and gradually train it to walk by itself; at the 
 same time, he was to work more by advice and persuasion 
 than by active personal interference. This was obviously a 
 
 I7S 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 task requiring the utmost tact and discretion. He had to 
 waste valuable time listening to turgid harangues over petty 
 details, which an official trained in business could dispose of 
 summarily; he had to close his eyes to some amount of 
 jobbery and partisanship. In some few places the control 
 of the Board has been fairly efficient. But as the Lieutenant- 
 Governor himself remarks ^ — " Public spirit is little known in 
 these Provinces, and must not be confounded with public 
 agitation. The co-operation of individuals and classes for 
 the common good, as distinguished from the co-operation of 
 individuals and classes for religious or race aims, is extremely 
 rare. The Lieutenant-Governor has usually found that those 
 who are most conspicuous in the latter direction are the last 
 to assert or exhibit the smallest sympathy or interest in 
 schemes having for their aim the general well-being." 
 
 The membership of these boards is a post of some distinc- 
 tion, inasmuch as it confers the much-coveted honour of a seat 
 in the district Dirbar, and the parvenu values this privilege 
 in direct proportion to the repugnance with which the local 
 Rija or Nawab deigns to associate with the novus homo on 
 such occasions. But it is one thing to put in the minimum 
 amount of attendance at the municipal meetings and another 
 to devote time and trouble to the practical duties of ad- 
 ministration — to check the collection of octroi, to supervise 
 the conservancy establishment, to encourage vaccination, to 
 visit schools and dispensaries. Sanitary work in particular 
 always involves some amount of odium, and to preach the 
 gospel of cleanliness — of which the would-be preacher is 
 himself only an indiffisrent disciple — stirs up local ill-will, 
 which the class out of which municipal members are drawn 
 is naturally unwilling to provoke. With the official it is 
 another matter ; he is only discharging his ordinary duty, 
 and people who violate sanitary rules will tolerate inter- 
 ference from him which they will resent at the hands of their 
 neighbour, the corn chandler or attorney. The influence of 
 caste and religion is also potent in such matters, and the 
 amateur apostle of hygiene has one way of looking at short- 
 
 1 Administrative Report, North-West Provinces, 1888-89, PP- iv. sqq. 
 
 176 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 comings when the offender is a Brihman or a kinsman, and 
 another if he be a stranger or a scavenger. 
 
 What is a worse point in the existing system is that the 
 controlling body is perhaps inevitably drawn from classes 
 which are not in complete sympathy with the mass of the 
 people. The banker who has sufBcient business in his own 
 counting-house, and the pushing pettifogger, who, but for the 
 honour of the thing, prefers to spend his morning hours in 
 coaching witnesses for the court in the afternoon, have little 
 community of interest with the Ishmaelite of the slums, an 
 ignorant fanatic who would loot the Banya's storeroom or 
 explore the attorney's harem if he got the chance. And 
 behind them all are the wild shock-headed Jogi and the 
 gloomy MuUa, both of whom loathe what we call civilisation, 
 and are by policy and tradition steadily opposed to progress. 
 Recent events in Benares showed that while the sleek city 
 counsellors were calmly debating on what they thought a 
 petty dispute about a ruined shrine, the rough of the slums 
 was being preached at till he broke out in a wild passion of 
 riot, and would have massacred and plundered to his heart's 
 content had he dared to look down the muzzles of the rifles 
 of English troops. 
 
 The sphere of the District Board is, on the other hand, much 
 more limited. It has practically no income under its own 
 control. It prepares an annual budget, to meet which funds 
 are doled out by the Government, but it has no power of 
 raising its income by taxation, and even the income from 
 local rates is not spent in each district but credited to a 
 general fund, from which grants are made by the central 
 authority. This policy has enabled the Government to cany- 
 out various works of general utility, such as provincial light 
 railways and the like ; on the other hand, it deprives the 
 Board of all power of initiative. It may and does advise 
 expenditure, but the control of the purse lies in other and 
 stronger hands. There is, again, in the case of public works 
 and education a division of control which hardly tends to 
 efficiency. The more important buildings and roads are in 
 direct charge of the Public Works Department and with 
 M 177 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 these the Board has no concern. Similarly the higher schools 
 and colleges are beyond its control, being managed by the 
 Educational Department. The primary schools are inspected 
 by the Department, but the appointment of and discipline 
 over the masters lies with the Board. The Board has its 
 own overseer to manage the repair of the village roads, mere 
 cart tracks mostly impassable in the rainy season, and 
 roughly repaired when traffic recommences with the opening 
 of the cold weather. With these the trained district engineer, 
 who must use them as he visits works in progress through- 
 out his charge, has no concern. The evils of this system of 
 divided control are chiefly seen in the neglect of primary 
 education, to which reference has been already made. In 
 the case of the minor roads the exclusion of the expert from 
 all supervision is a clear waste of power. 
 
 This is not the place to suggest remedies for all this. It 
 will possibly be found that the only radical cure is a policy 
 of decentralisation, when the district will become a self-sup- 
 porting unit, with a definite income for local purposes, and 
 relieved from the bondage of the Departments. 
 
 But far more important to the people at large than these 
 rather humdrum duties of daily administration is the fact that 
 whatever our Government may have done or failed to do in 
 the matter of local administration, it can at least claim the 
 credit of having given the Province for nearly a century 
 almost uninterrupted peace. 
 
 The only great convulsion which has disturbed the general 
 tranquillity for about a hundred years was the Mutiny of 1857, 
 which, though its more important events took place within 
 the Province, is more a part of the national than local history. 
 The causes of this outbreak have hardly as yet passed beyond 
 the range of controversy. As regards the military side of the 
 revolt, the circumstances which led up to it seem fairly clear. 
 The native army had been for a long time in a condition 
 which, in the eyes of many far-seeing officers, was fraught 
 with all the elements of danger in the future. It was largely 
 drawn from a single class — the Brahmans and Rajputs of 
 Oudh and the immediate neighbourhood, or from the tur- 
 
 178 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 bulent, faithless, restless Pathins of Rohilkhand. This force 
 had been for a long time so ill-controlled that a spirit of 
 insubordination had become almost normal ; breaches of 
 discipline had been either ignored or explained away, and 
 the problem of adapting what was originally a force raised 
 for local purposes to the needs of a rapidly increasing empire, 
 and the provision of armies and garrisons for service on 
 distant expeditions, still awaited solution. The officers were 
 in many cases too old — too wedded to tradition, their energies 
 sapped by long periods of service in a debilitating climate. 
 With them a complacent reliance in the fidelity of their men 
 had become habitual, until they looked upon the sepoys as 
 their children, and shut their ears to" warning till it was too 
 late. 
 
 Hence resulted a feeling among the native soldiery that 
 they were essential to the State, and that the toleration with 
 which their vagaries were treated was due to the fears of 
 their masters. This feeling was increased by the weakening 
 of the European garrison during the Crimean war, and 
 exaggerated accounts of the inefficiency of our army before 
 SebastopoL To this was added a fatal ignorance of the 
 resources and warlike spirit of the mother country, and in 
 particular of the influence which was secured to her from the 
 command of the sea. That the Oudh Brihman should ignore 
 this, the potent fact of modern politics, is not wonderful 
 when we remember that it was left to an American naval 
 strategist to bring the lesson home to our generation. In 
 those days the sepoy in the long, quiet days spent in his 
 secluded lines continued to dream that freedom, as he 
 imagined it, could be won if he could only sweep away in 
 one common massacre the little party of wearied, listless 
 men, pale-faced ladies and children, the feeble contingent 
 which w£is all the petty island beyond the seas could spare 
 to keep him in thrall. Fortunately for us there were at least 
 two Indian statesmen, Jang Bahadur in Nepal and Silar 
 Jang in Haidaribad, who knew better. 
 
 Further, irrespective of the weakness of the British garrison, 
 the country was much more powerful to resist us than is the 
 
 179 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 case at present. To begin with, every man was armed, and 
 the rude blunderbuss or musket which he carried was a 
 weapon rather more efficient than that with which the 
 European was armed. It was not till the sepoy understood 
 the effect of the Menai rifle later on in the struggle that 
 he realised how circumstances had changed. The artillery, 
 again, since the time of the Mughals, had been a dominant 
 factor in Oriental warfare, and at this time our guns were 
 largely in the hands of native artillerymen, while every petty 
 Raja had a park of ordnance nearly as good as our own. All 
 this has been changed by the introduction of rifled guns, all 
 in the charge of British troops, and of breech-loading rifles, 
 for which the native cannot improvise ammunition. Still 
 more dangerous at the time was the lack of railways and 
 telegraphs, which prevented concentration, and allowed mobs 
 of rabble to sweep away our outlying stations. Lastly, the 
 people themselves, with the traditions of war still fresh in 
 their minds, were much more formidable than they are now. 
 It was not till later days that the half-savage cattle-raiding 
 Gujar or the predatory Rajput of the western districts was 
 tamed and induced by the spread of Canal irrigation to turn 
 his sword into a ploughshare, or the little Oudh Raja learned 
 that his ill-manned guns and ragged regiment of matchlock- 
 men were unfit to face regular troops. 
 
 " The matter of seditions," says Bacon, " is of two kinds — 
 much poverty and much discontent. The causes and motives 
 of seditions are — innovation in religion, taxes, alteration of 
 laws, breaking of privileges, general oppression, advancement 
 of unworthy persons, strangers, dearths, disbanded soldiers, 
 factions grown desperate, and whatever in offending people 
 joineth and knitteth them in a common cause." It is worth 
 while considering how far this summary represented the state 
 of things at the time. 
 
 There was a general suspicion that the progress of our 
 government involved interference with religion. The matter 
 of the greased cartridges shows that this was the case. There 
 was undoubtedly a feeling of restlessness and suspicion 
 among the religious classes, who believed that we seriously 
 
 1 80 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 meant to limit their privileges and undermine their authority. 
 The cartridge question may have been only a pretext for 
 disaffection, but it certainly was the outcome of a widespread 
 feeling, quite baseless of course, but all the same vividly held 
 by a people most conservative in their instincts and just then 
 ready to believe any story, however wild and improbable. 
 
 The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie had sent a 
 thrill of alarm among the ruling families, and it awoke the 
 sympathy of a people always tolerant of maladministration 
 provided it were of the familiar Oriental type; prone to 
 acquiesce in vices of their rulers if only they would lavish 
 their revenue on those Court pageants so dear to the native 
 mind, inasmuch as they cause money to flow in the cities, 
 the centres of social life. No one dreamed of questioning 
 the acts of the King of Oudh; who wasted the public funds 
 on tawdry shows or tasteless buildings and lavished them on 
 pandars and dancers. It was enough that the bazars were 
 crowded, that he was devoted to almsgiving, that he sup- 
 ported a host of riffrafir, the recipients of partem atque Cir- 
 censes, which the mob of Lucknow valued as much as did the 
 mob of Rome. That he never made a road beyond the 
 boundaries of his capital, that he never opened a school, that 
 he sent his Amils round to collect his revenue with a battery 
 of guns — all this was only the old Eastern way of govern- 
 ment, which half the world still complacently accepts, and 
 which no one dreams of resisting. 
 
 It may be seriously doubted if with our methodical Puri- 
 tanism we have not erred in the opposite direction. Even 
 now the yokels of an English provincial town reverence the 
 Judge at the Assizes because he has the Mayor to meet him 
 and an escort of cavalry and trumpeters. Our Anglo-Indian 
 Judge strolls into Court dressed in a shooting-coat; our 
 Magistrates administer justice in hovels. But one has only 
 to watch how the people delight in an unaccustomed show, 
 how they scramble for places to see the Raja go past ^vith 
 his scarecrow troopers mounted on broken-kneed screws, tlie 
 Banya's son with his ragamuffin rout starting to fetch his 
 bride, the air thick with dust, the whole neighbourhood 
 
 i8r 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 resounding with discordant music and the crash of a few 
 fire-works — and the thought comes into our minds that 
 we are perhaps mistaken in our contemptuous disregard 
 of pomp and pageant in our every-day dealings with the 
 people. 
 
 As social influences which affected popular feeling, we 
 may notice the rigid action of our Civil Courts and the 
 constant sales of landed property. Like the Ofellus of 
 Horace, the man who had to plough the land he no longer 
 owned could not be a loyal citizen. Our revenue system, 
 again, was too hard, and though remissions of revenue, as 
 in the famine of 1837-38, were sometimes granted, there 
 was little consideration for the tax-payer in less serious 
 calamities. 
 
 The weighty words in which Mr Hume, than whom no 
 man had better knowledge of the facts, summed up the 
 matter should be graven on the heart of every officer in 
 India : — " Give the Rajputs and fighting men more reason- 
 able means and happy homes, free from those instruments 
 of torture, the Civil Courts and the native usurer, and they 
 will fight for order and the Government under whom they 
 are well off. Make it easier for your Gujar, Ahir, and thief 
 classes to grow richer by agriculture than by crime, and 
 besides making criminal administration cheaper, most of 
 them will side with the Government. Tax the Banyas, 
 Kayasths, Mahajans, and such like, who, while growing rich 
 by the pen, oust their betters from their ancestral holdings, 
 and then are too great cowards to wield a sword either to 
 protect their own acquisitions or to aid the Government 
 which has fostered their success." 
 
 But allusion to these causes of rural discontent assumes 
 that the revolt was in a large degree agrarian. This was 
 probably not the case. That the Gujars of Meerut, the 
 yeomanry of Oudh joined in it, murdered Europeans, 
 plundered Government buildings and Civil Stations, is cer- 
 tain. But in most places the attitude of the villagers seems 
 to have been apathetic ; they had no particular feeling of 
 loyalty, but the advent of native rule was welcomed with 
 
 182 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 little enthusiasm. They troubled themselves as little about 
 the Nina as about the Faringi, and were as careless as the 
 English squire during the Great Rebellion, who, as Horace 
 Walpole was so fond of telling, was seen calmly riding out 
 with his hounds to look for a hare as the armies were 
 mustering for the battle of Edgehill. 
 
 So Mr Sherer writes ^i — "I followed but the other day 
 close upon the retreating footsteps of Firoz Shah (in Cawn- 
 pur), but I found the ploughman in the field ; the boy singing 
 at the well as he urged the bullocks down the slope ; the old 
 woman sitting at her door, twisting her little cotton gin, and 
 her daughter grinding the millet — all supremely unconscious 
 of the descendant of Timfir, who, with somewhat unseemly 
 haste^ had made but yesterday a royal progress through their 
 fields and villages. The taste for misrule has clearly for the 
 time departed. The people have seen that neither Raja nor 
 Nawib can construct a practicable administration, and the 
 old rule seems better than none." 
 
 Again, it seems doubtful, though possibly discontent and 
 vague hopes of the advantage to be gained from an outbreak 
 may have been widespread, whether there was any definite 
 conspiracy for anything like a simultaneous revolt. It may 
 be that the occurrences at Meerut and Delhi precipitated 
 matters ; but a study of the Mutiny narratives does not 
 reveal any general intention of this kind. Many regiments 
 and detachments waited for weeks before declaring them- 
 selves. Some appear to have been driven into mutiny by 
 the sudden attack of some ruffians on their officers by which 
 their comrades were involved. 
 
 That the rebellion centred round the miserable, degraded 
 survivors of the Mughal royal family, who, with a degree of 
 folly which now seems almost incredible, had been allowed 
 to continue their sordid regime in the Delhi palace, seems 
 clear. Observers at the time, who were in the best position 
 to ascertain the facts, like Mr Fleetwood Williams at Meerut, 
 were agreed, in spite of cases of individual loyalty, in con- 
 sidering that the rebellion was planned by Musalmins.^ 
 1 Gazetteer, North- West Provinces, vL 195. 2 Ibid., ii. 116. 
 
 183 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 This is not the place to attempt a review of the military 
 operations which resulted in the suppression of the revolt 
 It is possible that an immediate advance of the Meerut 
 brigade to Delhi would have prevented massacre, saved the 
 city, and paralysed the forces of disorder by the occupation 
 of the Fort and the capture of the king and his followers. 
 But it seems clear that the Bengal army was rotten at the 
 core, and sooner or later the time must have come when 
 mutiny in some form or other would have broken out. Had 
 the revolt been summarily suppressed, it would have de- 
 prived the British race of the splendid object lessons which 
 the men who fought and died left as a legacy to their 
 successors. We should never have known the real dangers 
 which accompany a native mercenary army ; the magnificent 
 courage which the imperial race can display, fighting against 
 overwhelming odds in the fierce heat of an Indian summer 
 and the stifling damp of the rains. What the English 
 soldier could do had been proved on a hundred battle fields. 
 What the Mutiny taught us was that their brother officials 
 who had never worn the red coat could display valour not 
 less admirable, self-reliance in the face of danger as heroic 
 as that of men trained in the art of war. Above all, the 
 world learned how nobly the traditional courage of English 
 womanhood had been sustained in the stress of trial more 
 terrible than it had ever been forced to share. 
 
 "These are they," says the inscription on the well at 
 Cawnpur, " which came out of great tribulation." A proud 
 race like ours cannot secure an empire such as that of India 
 without grievous sacrifices. What these have been is shown 
 by the thickly clustering monuments of the dead, brave men, 
 patient women, little children which fill the God's acre of 
 our Indian stations. But losses like these, grievous as they 
 are, to a people which entrusts year by year the best of its 
 youth to the dangers of a tropical climate, do not impress 
 the imagination of the nation as the Aceldama of Cawnpur 
 or Lucknow does. These will ever remain a memorial how 
 English men and women, splendidly isolated as none of their 
 kin ever were before, are prepared to dare in the face of 
 
 184 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 death. Well will it be for the Empire if it is always so 
 served in the hour of its direst need. It is over the memories 
 of some of these half-forgotten heroes that the Englishman 
 in India loves to linger — ^John Mackillop, the young Cawnpur 
 civilian, appointed captain of the well, and when wounded to 
 the death, begging that the lady to whom he had promised a 
 drink of water might not be disappointed : Captain D'Oyley 
 at Agra, who with his last breath prayed that it might be 
 recorded on his grave-stone that he died fighting his guns : 
 Alan Hume and Claremont Daniel, in the face of tremendous 
 odds attacking the temple at Jaswantnagar ; Brand Sapte, 
 Turnbull, Melville, and Alfred Lyall, charging the guns at 
 Bulandshahr ; John Power at Mainpuri fortifying his Court- 
 house, and gaily reporting to the Sadar Court that the file of 
 a riot case "prepared after the last and most approved 
 fashion, and thickened with false evidence, is an excellent 
 article of defence and has by experience been found to be 
 bullet-proof." 
 
 There were, again, the men who nobly stood to their posts 
 when all the world was against them, and maintained the 
 Queen's authority in the midst of a host of enemies — Spankie 
 and Robertson at Sah&ranpur ; Dunlop with his Khiki Risala 
 and Cracroft Wilson at Meerut ; Watson and Cocks at 
 Aligarh; Colvin at Agra; and many others whose very 
 names are almost unknown to this generation. And we 
 must not forget the natives who stood firm against those of 
 their own race and creed, saved the lives of Europeans or 
 fought beside them — Sa.yyid Ahmad Khan at Bijnor; Lachh- 
 man Sinh at Etawah"; Khushi Ram, the Jat at Bulandshahr ; 
 Sa)^id Mir Khan at Meerut. 
 
 Another fact which the Mutiny narrative brings out clearly 
 is the absence of any man with even a pretence to be re- 
 garded as a statesman on the losing side. The Nana S4hib, 
 even with the traditions of Marhatta supremacy, failed to 
 do anything but murder women and children ; the blood- 
 stained dastard only saved his miserable life to die like a 
 dog in the jungles of the TarSi. Three men at least had a 
 chance of proving that they could organise a new govem- 
 
 i8s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 ment on the ruins of the old — Kh^n Bahadur, the grandson 
 of Hafiz Khan, the brave Rohilla, at Bareilly; Tafazzal 
 Husain, the Bangash Nawab of Farrukhabad ; Muhammad 
 Hasan at Gorakhpur. They were all for a time in more or 
 less undisputed mastery of these districts. But the result 
 was in every case the same — internal dissensions and inter- 
 necine quarrels, the plunder of the helpless by the strong, 
 murder and anarchy, utter failure to establish an efficient 
 government, inability to organise the forces of resistance to 
 oppose the avenging armies which soon gathered round them. 
 The monuments of all these bear the inscription — Mene, 
 Tekel, Upharsin — "God hath numbered thy kingdom and 
 finished it ; thou art weighed in the balances and are found 
 wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes 
 and Persians." The only really heroic figure is that of a 
 woman — Lachhmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi, who though stained 
 with innocent European blood, had the courage, like Cleo- 
 patra, to die in the hour of disaster rather than grace an 
 English triumph. 
 
 Since the Mutiny the Province has been spared the horrors 
 of war and civil tumults. The only casual interruptions to 
 the reign of tranquillity have occurred through religious 
 quarrels directed rather by the partisans of one faith against 
 those of the other than in opposition to the Government. 
 Disputes of this kind are not the creation of our rule, and 
 were common under the native administration. They were, 
 in fact, the natural legacy of the intolerance of the later 
 Muhammadan rulers, and it was inevitable that when the 
 Hindus awoke to a sense of their power and came under a 
 Government which showed an ostentatious tolerance of both 
 religions, the chance of reprisal would be utilised. Even 
 under the Oudh administration, which was in no sense 
 fanatical, on at least two occasions in modern times such 
 outbreaks occurred. In 1850 General Sleeman describes 
 how a Muhammadan mob at the Muharram nearly killed a 
 respectable merchant at ShahabSd in Hardoi and looted his 
 goods. In 1855 at Ajudhya a fight over a temple resulted 
 in the slaughter of seventy-five Musalmans and eleven Hindus. 
 
 186 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 In our own days Rohilkhand has gained an unenviable repu- 
 tation for , such outbreaks, as at Bareilly and Pilibhit in 
 1 87 1, and in Bijnor at a later date. 
 
 Since, then, in various parts of the Province, though there 
 have been few actually serious riots, the coincidence of the 
 Musalmin Muharram and the Hindu Dasahra, the dates of 
 which being regulated by the lunar calendar come together 
 at tlie end of recurring cycles, has caused much trouble and 
 anxiety to district officers. Only three years ago, the weavers 
 of Benares, always a turbulent, fanatical class, took advantage 
 of a quarrel over an alihost— deserted Hindu shrine, with 
 which they had no possible concern, to spread rapine and 
 outrage through the city. Unless some modus vivendi can 
 be established between these fanatical sectaries, it may be 
 necessary in the interests of law and order to prohibit all 
 processions of a religious nature in the crowded streets of 
 our Indian cities. Perhaps one of the most amusing in- 
 stances of this religious tension is that recorded at the last 
 Census in Bengal, where a Hindu clerk deliberately recorded 
 a large number of the followers of the Prophet as lepers. 
 
 But more serious than this friction between the followers 
 of rival creeds is the crusade against cow-killing, which was 
 started a short time ago in Bihir and the eastern districts of 
 this Province. Here the people had been always regarded 
 as about the most law-abiding subjects of the Crown. Ballia, 
 a little sleepy hollow, supposed to be one of the easiest ot 
 district charges, was the seat of the worst trouble. Here it 
 was suddenly discovered that a really serious movement had 
 been started ; the country was marked out into circles, each 
 under a local committee ; considerable funds were raised in 
 support of the agitation ; boycotting and intimidation were 
 freely resorted to against the eaters of beef; disorderly mobs 
 assembled and committed serious acts of violence ; in some 
 cases they even risked an encounter with our local officials 
 and police. 
 
 The agitation was promptly suppressed and the ring- 
 leaders brought to justice. But of the causes which led ta 
 the disturbance no satisfactory explanation was ever given> 
 
 187 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 By one account it was connected with the agitation against 
 the Revenue Survey in Bihar ; by another with the protest 
 of the Bengilis against the prohibition of infant marriage. 
 It is very doubtful how far it was influenced by such causes. 
 More probably it was an outcome of the general restlessness 
 of Hinduism in the face of the progress encouraged by our 
 Government. Brahmanism is subject to these periodical 
 revivals, as its ignorant leaders think they feel the world 
 slipping from beneath them, and to put off the evil day 
 encourage their half-hearted disciples to raise the trumpet 
 call of danger to the faith. 
 
 The policy of our Government in the face of movements 
 like these is prescribed by well-defined considerations. The 
 ignorant masses must be, on the one hand, reassured once 
 more that the State has no concern with religious belief, and 
 has, and never had, any desire to interfere with their faith and 
 worship ; on the other hand, they must be taught that the 
 tolerance they enjoy is conditional on its being shared equally 
 with the Musalman and the Christian. The missionary of 
 any creed must be protected so long as he carries on his 
 propaganda in an orderly way, without giving wanton offence 
 to people who disagree with his teaching, so long as he 
 refrains from that intolerant vituperation which the best 
 creeds carefully discourage. 
 
 Besides this there is another side to the question of the 
 protection of the cow. The wealthy European seldom uses 
 beef, except perhaps for a short time in the cold weather ; 
 but it is a necessity to the European garrison, and is the only 
 animal food within the reach of the poor Musalman of the 
 towns. To check its use in any way, as Akbar seems to 
 have done, is out of the question. AH that can and should 
 be done is to secure by municipal regulations that the 
 slaughter of cattle and the sale of beef shall be rendered as 
 little offensive as possible. 
 
 We have now to consider the general result of the system 
 of Government which we have been describing. Contrasting 
 the condition of things now as compared with the time of 
 the Mutiny, we remark among the upper classes a wider 
 
 1 88 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 diffusion of intelligence, due largely to better communications, 
 more travelling, and education. But this has not been accom- 
 panied by a corresponding improvement in culture. Among 
 the classes brought more in contact with Europeans there is 
 a noticeable increase in the knowledge of English, in the 
 adoption of English titles of courtesy and the foreign habit 
 of dress. Among some of the more advanced Musalmcins 
 there has been a movement to associate more freely with 
 Europeans at entertainments and social meetings of various 
 kinds. But these influences have not extended to the mass 
 of the people, and have little affected the traditional customs 
 of the race — such as infant marriage, the seclusion and en- 
 forced ignorance of women, the rules of caste particularly as 
 regards exogamy, and the precautions against the contamina- 
 tion of food by mere contact with an unbeliever. In religious 
 matters there has been little weakening of old prejudices ; 
 the tension between Hindu, Musalmdn and Christian is as 
 strong as ever, the priestly classes as nervous and suspicious. 
 The Brihman and the Sadhu are as opposed as they ever 
 were to the new learning, the orthodox Musalman as bigoted 
 as at any period of his history. 
 
 The practical work of administration has largely fallen 
 into native hands. Nearly all the subordinate Civil Courts 
 are manned by native judges, assisted by"a native Bar. It is 
 only what we in England call the Courts of Assize and the 
 High Court of Justice, which are largely held by European 
 judges and Barristers. At the close of 1895, out of six judges 
 of the High Court, one was a native ; seven natives out of 
 thirty-one held the post of District and Sessions Judge ; all 
 the twenty-two posts of Subordinate and Small Cause Court 
 judges were held by natives of the country. 
 
 On the other hand the executive magisterial-revenue 
 charge of districts is almost entirely held by members of the 
 Civil Service. With the existing tension between Hindus 
 and Musalmins this arrangement must continue for some 
 time to come. 
 
 Another leading influence in the spread of intelligence is 
 the Post Office. In 1893-94, throughout the Empire, 8978 
 
 189 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 post ofifices conveyed 370 millions of letters, newspapers, &c. 
 In the time of the Mutiny there were only 810 offices open. 
 The business is, it is true, small as compared with our British 
 department, which disposed of 177 1 millions of letters in 
 1894-9S, and distributed seven newspapers for every one in 
 India. But considering the illiteracy of the people the work 
 done is very large; and besides, all that the British Post 
 Office does in the way of selling stamps, receiving deposits, 
 insurances and the like, the Indian Post Office transmits a 
 large amount of revenue, and does a considerable business 
 in collecting tradesmen's bills by what is known as the 
 Value Payable system. 
 
 To this and similar causes are due the largely extended 
 use of European fabrics, and foreign articles like matches, 
 kerosine oil, and. umbrellas, which are seen even in the most 
 remote corners of the land. Quite recently a movement, said 
 to be started by the oilman caste to boycott kerosine oil, has 
 largely spread in Bihar. It is as difficult to put new wine in 
 old bottles in India as anywhere else. 
 
 Our record is thus on the whole creditable. We have kept 
 the peace ; we have settled the land ; we have relieved the 
 miseries of famine ; we have spread artificial irrigation ; we 
 have made railways, roads, and telegraphs, established the 
 education and postal systems, codified the law with a due 
 regard to local custom and social wants, organised medical 
 relief and sanitation. We have made corruption and oppres- 
 sion an unwelcome incident instead of an element of the civil 
 administration. We have freely admitted natives to public 
 office ; we have given them municipal and local government. 
 Lastly, we have striven to secure toleration of all religious 
 beliefs ; we have shown a desire to treat all classes fairly, 
 without tyranny or prejudice, without regard to caste or creed. 
 To compare "this with the condition of things which we found 
 at the beginning of our rule is usually considered a sufficient 
 answer to any one who asks if our rule commands the love 
 and admiration of the people. 
 
 Besides all this, we have not encountered the same diffi- 
 culties which ;^met us in other lands. There is no really 
 
 190 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 patriotic feeling in the country, no yearning for the return of 
 a dynasty of exiled kings such as influenced the Scotch 
 Jacobites ; no craving for the revival of a constitution such as 
 that exhibited by the Irish Celt The Musalmins, even 
 with their recent memories of empire, have no place of 
 national pilgrimage. No one dreams under an impulse of 
 patriotism of visiting the tomb of Akbar or the Council 
 Chamber of Shah Jahan. There is no sacred site which stirs 
 the blood of the race like Westminster, the Chapel in the 
 Tower, Runymede, or Stratford-on-Avon. Still less are the 
 affections of the Hindus associated with the heroes of their 
 race. There is nothing which leads them to revere Buddha 
 or Asoka, Jay Chand or Todar Mall. All their reverence 
 takes a religious shape as in the cultus of Krishna or Rima. 
 
 And yet in spite of all we have done in advancing civilisa- 
 tion, and though we have no rivals in the historical past, we 
 have not succeeded in exciting any ardent feelings of devotion 
 to our rule. Many individual officers have, it is true, gained 
 the affection or respect of large masses of the people. But 
 these were rather men of the old type — strong-handed and 
 autocratic, prompt to punish crime, and at the same time con- 
 ciliatory and polite, ready to respect traditional prejudices, 
 not prone to innovation, never wearied by complaints, how- 
 ever petty or prolix. Most sensible people probably believe 
 that ours is for the present the only possible government, 
 that a constitution on a popular basis is out of the question, 
 and that our withdrawal from the country would be the signal 
 for internecine war and terrible misery. 
 
 The Englishman in India is what he is in most parts of 
 the world — strong and energetic, with a thorough belief in 
 himself, and a way of looking down on people who do not 
 think exactly as he does. He makes on the whole an ex- 
 cellent ruler of weaker races, but he is wanting in imagination, 
 insight, and sympathy, inclined to be brusque in manner, and 
 to despise those little convenances which the Oriental values 
 so much. 
 
 Each class of the community has its special grievance. 
 The nobility feel themselves excluded from the only occupa- 
 
 191 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 tion which they feel they can accept without loss of dignity — 
 military service. They disapprove of the cold impartiality of 
 our law, which has abolished the traditional distinction be- 
 tween the gentleman and the menial, and makes it possible 
 for the serf to drag the Raja before one of our courts. This 
 is shown in the ardent desire of the higher classes to secure 
 exemption from personal attendance before our judges. 
 They dislike the democratic policy which gives them a seat 
 on our Boards, but only on condition that they tolerate the 
 banker or educated parvenu as a colleague. They know well 
 that they must lose influence under any system of represen- 
 tative government. They prefer the rule of a gentleman who 
 is usually polite and sympathetic to the control of a committee 
 filled with the parvenus whom they loathe. They miss the 
 chances of amusement which a native court provided ; they 
 have no real desire for public improvement, and they would 
 like fewer roads and schools and more Darbars and cere- 
 monial functions, where they would be received with dignity 
 and have a chance of gaining a higher seat than some 
 detested rival. They think our rule is deficient in colour and 
 stateliness. They despise our orders, which they have to 
 share with the rich trader who builds a school or endows an 
 hospital. What they really love is to hear the artillery 
 thunder when they arrive at a cantonment, and more diplo- 
 macy is exerted to add a gun to the salute than to win the 
 jewel of the Indian Empire. 
 
 The middle classes are perhaps those who most approve of 
 our Government, but they do not like the restrictions, in- 
 effective as they are, which we try to enforce in order to 
 prevent them increasing their hold on the land, and they 
 find the Courts slow to enforce their decrees with adequate 
 rigour. They, too, dread being dragged before a judge when 
 some menial dares to sue them. They agree with the Raja 
 in detesting the educated interloper. Business has, it is true, 
 increased, but it is spread over a wider area, and the popular- 
 isation of trade is ruining the middleman. It is less easy to 
 make a great coup, to start a " corner " in grain or cotton. 
 With the railway and telegraph the margin of profit has been 
 
 192 
 
UNDER BRITISH RULE 
 
 reduced. The European merchant meets them everywhere. 
 It is less easy to make a large fortune in a short time. They 
 dread the police, and their timidity and want of independence 
 expose them specially to extortion, which is always possible 
 with an under-paid menial establishment At the same time 
 they are equally afraid of the town rough and bully — those 
 whom De Quincey calls " the ferocious but cowardly Ishmaels 
 of imperfect civilisation." The Banya dreads that these 
 gentry may blackmail him, loot his warehouse, or explore his 
 harem. He thinks our laws weak because such persons are 
 not summarily strung up, and because the Courts are indis- 
 posed to take action against them in the absence of a 
 prosecutor — a role which he has no desire to play. Above 
 all, he objects to direct taxation, and the income tax is his 
 nightmare. 
 
 The town labourer finds his handicraft less remunerative 
 because he has to compete with machine-made goods, and he 
 has suffered from the rise in the price of food for which he 
 has no other explanation than that it is somehow the result 
 of our action. Of the economic causes which have brought 
 about this result, the pressure of an increasing population on 
 the resources of the soil, he has not the dimmest conception. 
 
 The people who like us best are undoubtedly the village 
 yeoman class. As long as they are let alone, not too much 
 bothered over new-fangled measures, such as sanitation and 
 the like, as long a^ the revenue demand is kept within moderate 
 limits and they are granted reasonable protection for life and 
 property, they will remain fairly content. If it were possible 
 to relieve them from the incubus of the money-lender, and 
 restrict the sale and mortgage of ancestral holdings, we would 
 certainly secure, if not ardent loyalty, which is hardly to be 
 expected from a stolid race immersed in a sordid life, at least 
 their contented acquiescence in the stability of our rule. 
 
 Another boon we can and should confer upon them is 
 cheaper and more certain law. The costs of petty civil, and 
 revenue suits are far too high ; the opportunity of appeal is 
 recklessly abused ; the crowd of pettifoggers which surrounds 
 our Courts encourages purposeless litigation, much of which 
 N 193 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 would be better disposed of by the village council of grey- 
 beards. Our Codes, as they stand, are models of legislation, 
 but we have allowed them to become overlaid by immense 
 masses of judge-made law, decisions many of which are con- 
 flicting, dangerous traps for a native judiciary, whose minds 
 are naturally inclined to quibbling and a taste for the mint, 
 anise and cummin, rather than the weightier matters of 
 the law. 
 
 To quote Bacon again : — " Contentious suits ought to be 
 spewed out as the surfeit of Courts. A judge ought to pre- 
 pare his way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare his 
 way, by raising valleys and taking down hills ; so when 
 there appeareth on either side a high hand, violent pro- 
 secutions, cunning advantages taken, combination, power, 
 great counsel ; then is the virtue of a judge seen to make 
 inequality equal ; that he may plant his judgment upon an 
 even ground." 
 
 194 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PEOPLE: THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 THE course of the ethnological history of northern India 
 has ever been prescribed by the physical features of 
 the country. To the north and north-west the mountain 
 barrier of the Himalaya and Hindu Kush, while it prevented 
 wholesale movements of the people, such as that described 
 in De Quincey's classical account of one of the Tartar 
 migrations, has been constantly passed by armies of invaders 
 or small bodies of colonists, influenced by that tendency of 
 all northern races to reach the southern lands of the continent 
 When they emerged from the hilly region, they found before 
 them the fertile lands of the Panjab, which were first occupied 
 and where the beginnings of the Hindu social polity took 
 shape. As they advanced, their progress to the south-west 
 was barred by the deserts of Rijputana. They were thus 
 directed into the region watered by the upper courses of 
 the Ganges and Jumna. The lowlands, now the seat of 
 a crowded agricultural people, were then probably covered 
 with jungle, and the migration followed the route along the 
 lower slopes of the northern hills, whence the new-comers 
 gradually spread into the plains below, cleared the forest, and 
 adopted an agricultural and pastoral life. To the south, 
 again, their movements were checked by the Vindhyan 
 range, the backbone of the peninsula, then occupied by 
 fierce forest tribes whose conquest was not seriously under- 
 taken till a much later date. The course of conquest or 
 colonisation was thus directed along the basins of the two 
 great rivers. It was not till many years had passed in 
 conflict and the absorption of the indigenous peoples that 
 the new civilisation spread into the delta of Bengal 
 
 The advancing bands of colonists, at the earlier stages of 
 
 I9S 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 their progress, seem to have thrown out offshoots which 
 occupied Kashmir and the other more fertile valleys on the 
 fringe of the northern range. As they pushed eastward they 
 appear to have found the land which we now call the western 
 Panjab occupied by a yellow race, who were perhaps like 
 themselves of foreign origin. These people may have in 
 very early times moved to the east and south under pressure 
 from the Mongol or Tartar races of the central Asian plateau. 
 This race, which has been supposed to be Skythian, appears 
 to have worshipped the snake, and the early legends record 
 the contests of the whiter-skinned people who called them- 
 selves Arya, or "noble," with these yellow races, one of 
 whose titles seems to have been Naga, " the kindred of the 
 dragon," which they may have deified as the tribal totem. 
 One famous tale tells how the great KhUndava forest in the 
 valley of the Jumna was occupied by these NSgas under 
 their king Takshaka, and how they were expelled by fire 
 and forced to take refuge in the hills. But in some cases 
 the two races amalgamated, and we read that Arjuna, one 
 of the Pandavas, visited Hardwar and there married Ulupt, 
 the daughter of the Naga king VSsuki. Of his city we are 
 told that it contained two thousand krores of serpent inhabi- 
 tants, " and the wives of all those serpents were of consummate 
 beauty ; and the city contained more Jewels than any person 
 in the world has ever seen, and there was a lake there which 
 contained the waters of life and in which all the serpents 
 used to bathe." Thence led by Agni, the fire god, the 
 Aryas continued their conquest as far as the banks of the 
 Gandak, which divides the Province from Bengal. 
 
 It was in the course of this later migration that they 
 encountered the second race which had occupied the country 
 prior to their arrival. These are collectively known as 
 Dasyu, and between them and the Aryas we are told that 
 there raged continual war. No terms are too vile to describe 
 these people as we know them from Aryan literature. They 
 were dark of skin, low-statured, treacherous, foul in manners, 
 eaters of raw flesh, an abomination to the new-comers, and 
 this was probably the bcisis of much of the early stories of 
 
 196 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 cannibalism. At the same time there are indications that 
 they had acquired a certain degree of culture. The common 
 theory represents these Dasyus as finally reduced to the 
 position of helots or serfs of the new-comers. But later 
 evidence, mainly based on anthropometry, indicates that 
 they must have been gradually absorbed among their foreign 
 conquerors ; that the numbers of the Aryan colonists were 
 never large, and that from the union of the white, the yellow, 
 and the black men, arose the modern people of northern 
 India. 
 
 Much speculation has been devoted to working out the 
 ethnical affinities of these black people ^ — ^whether they were 
 autochthonous or immigrants, and if immigrants from what 
 direction they reached Indian soil, and whether they were 
 one or a combination of several distinct races. 
 
 By one, and the current theory, they consisted at least of 
 two stocks — the Drividians and the Kolarians, the latter 
 entering Bengal by the north-eastern passes and thence 
 pushing on to the north and north-eastern portion of the 
 Central Indian plateau ; while the Dravidians found their 
 way into the Panjab by the north-western valleys, the route 
 afterwards followed by the Aryas. The two streams are 
 supposed to have converged and crossed in the Central 
 Indian Tract ; the Dravidians being the stronger, crushed and 
 pushed aside the Kolarians, and advancing occupied the 
 southern portion of the peninsula. 
 
 That these Dravidians were of the Negritic type seems 
 fairly certain, but the theory that this African migration 
 took place through Suez, Arabia, Palestine, and Persia is 
 opposed to all our knowledge of these ancient lands, where 
 their way was barred by the Semites in Egypt and Coelo- 
 Syria by the Turanian Hittites and by the empires of 
 Babylon, Nineveh, and Persia. The rise of the Hittite 
 empire may have originated the southern movement of the 
 white or yellow races, but it must have been an insurmount- 
 able obstacle to the Negritic movement eastwards. 
 
 ' Baines, Itidian Census Report, 1891, p. 121 sqq.; O'Donnell, Bengal Census 
 Report, 1891, p. 250 sqq. 
 
 197 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Another and perhaps more plausible theory would account 
 for the arrival of these Negritic people on Indian soil by the 
 existence of an ancient continent now submerged. " A chain 
 of islands," says Mr O'Donnell, " is known to still feebly 
 connect Madagascar and Southern India, but they are only 
 the remnants or relics of lands of much greater magnitude. 
 Many of them are atolls or are surrounded by encircling coral 
 reefs, which Darwin and Huxley have proved to be the most 
 certain sign of sinking land. Deep sea soundings have also 
 proved the existence of a vast shoal or submerged island, 
 nearly as large as Madagascar, extending from a point only 
 250 miles north-east of Madagascar to the Admirante and 
 Seychelles group of islands. Midway between the latter and 
 India a similar expanse of shoal, which lifts itself above the 
 water as the Chagos Islands, marks the third great halting- 
 place between Africa and Southern India,of which Madagascar 
 is the first. The Lacadive and Maldive Islands, the summits 
 of a long narrow island on the south-west coast of India, 
 form the last link in the chain." 
 
 But whether these black people arrived in India from the 
 north-west, north-east, or south-west, one fact is tolerably 
 certain — the distinction between the Dravidian and Kolarian 
 races, which depends mainly on the evidence of language, is 
 disproved by anthropometry and must now be definitely 
 abandoned. 
 
 The invasion popularly known as the Aryan was followed 
 by that of other races of cognate origin, classed under the 
 great head of Skythian. In fact the Aryan invasion and the 
 subsequent inroad of the Muhammadans were only incidents 
 in the southward march of the northern peoples which has 
 continued since prehistoric times. The chief seat of power 
 of these Skythians was in the Panjib, and thence they threw 
 out colonies down the valley of the Indus. Attempts have 
 been made to identify this race with certain tribes occupying 
 the western part of this Province and the eastern Panjab, 
 such as the Jats and Giijars. It has been suggested that there 
 are survivals of custom among these tribes which closely link 
 them to the Central Asian type, but these customs, if they 
 
 198 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 ever existed, have become so modified by their new environ- 
 ment as to afford no safe basis for argument, and the 
 philological conclusions, though plausible, are not quite con- 
 vincing. At any rate this race seems to have only slightly 
 influenced the people of this Province, and the Ganges, like 
 all -rivers in ancient times, was a most effective ethnical 
 barrier. Thus the Panjab type has been less affected by 
 Negritic or Dr^vidian influence, and this becomes more 
 potent as we pass eastward along the great river valleys. 
 
 All that the evidence at present available warrants us in 
 concluding is then that from very early times Upper India 
 was occupied by a dark race who lived in the Age of Stone 
 and occupied the slopes of the northern valleys where their 
 remains in the shape of flint weapons, kistvaens, and other 
 primitive forms of sepulture are to be found in abundance ; 
 that these people were of the Negritic type and possibly 
 crossed into the south of the peninsula either from Africa or 
 Melanesia and pushed their way northward across the 
 plateau of the Deccan ; that they were conquered or absorbed 
 by successive waves of invaders of the Aryan or Skythian 
 race ; that this process of colonisation and absorption was 
 not, as the Hindu legends lead us to infer, the work of a 
 single age or of one body of invaders, but was gradual and 
 spread over an enormous period of time — the result being 
 the population of the present day. 
 
 What it is really important to grasp is that the Dravidian 
 element was prepotent and that the so-called Aryan conquest 
 was more social than ethnical, more the gradual enlightenment 
 of the indigenous peoples by scattered bands of missionaries 
 and teachers whose civilisation was of the peaceful, unwarlike, 
 and intellectual form rather than the upheaval and wreck of 
 the existing polity by an army of conquerors who forced their 
 law and civil institutions on the necks of their slaves. The 
 hymns of the Rig Veda and the earlier Aryan literature 
 would in this view not be an historical record of the conquest 
 as the hymns of Moses and Deborah commemorate the con- 
 quest of Canaan. They are probably of an age far subsequent 
 to this ethnical movement They more probably represent 
 
 199 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the desire of the Court bards to provide a respectable 
 pedigree for the ruling classes of the people when the various 
 elements of which it was composed had been finally absorbed. 
 It pleased the fancy of these writers to cast their thoughts 
 back to the times when the forefathers of their patrons were 
 supposed to have lived beyond or on the lower slopes of the 
 northern mountain barrier, and to imagine that their 
 superiority in the arts of peace and war was the result not 
 of a slow evolutionary process but of racial supremacy. 
 
 To the theory that the existing population represents at 
 the top a white-skinned race and beneath it a mass of black 
 helots, anthropometry, the final test, lends no support. Still 
 less does it provide any proof that the Brahman and RSjput, 
 as we see them before us, are in any sense the kinsfolk of the 
 modern Englishmen who have reduced them as well as the 
 dark non-Aryan to subjection. 
 
 On the contrary, the evidence, so far as it has been collected, 
 tends to prove the essential unity of the existing races. As 
 Mr O'Donnell puts the case — " On the evidence of anthro- 
 pometry, in Bengal the Brahman is at one end of the scale 
 and the cultivated Kayasth at the other, whilst at the top of 
 the Bihar list the fisherman, priest, farm labourer, landlord 
 and cowherd are in close proximity. In the North- Western 
 Provinces the Kshatriya, the Rajput soldier, and the Khatri, 
 the Rajput trader, stand at opposite extremes, rat-catchers, 
 carpenters, dancing women, cultivators, toddy-drawers and 
 priests coming in between. No evidence could be more con- 
 vincing, if anthropometery has any meaning. The Indian 
 races and tribes in the valley of the Ganges from the Afghan 
 frontier to the Bay of Bengal are so absolutely intermingled 
 in blood, that it is impossible to discriminate between the 
 skull characteristics of the castes or functional guilds which 
 have grown up under later Brahmanical usage." 
 
 The existing type of man in northern India is thus prob- 
 ably the result of the combination of at least three strains of 
 blood — Aryan, Skythian and Dravidian : but of these the last 
 is distinctly predominant. The new-comers, in fact, imposed 
 their religion, their culture, their social polity upon the old 
 
 200 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 races ; but they have been themselves absorbed, as the Portu- 
 guese in India have been ; as Normans into Frenchmen, 
 Alexandrian Greeks into Egyptians, and as Irishmen, Ger- 
 mans, Italians and half-a-dozen other European races are 
 being combined in the Yankee. 
 
 The truth seems to be that, as Mr Pearson has shown, the 
 emigrant from Northern lands has no chance against the 
 more vigorous tropical races. Unless the stock is maintained 
 by constant streams of emigrants, the higher race inevitably 
 succumbs to the rigour of the climate ; if supplies of fresh 
 blood from the old country fail its only chance of survival 
 lies in amalgamation with the indigenous peoples. 
 
 There is ample evidence to show that even the higher so- 
 called Aryan tribes — the Rajputs and Brahmans, for instance 
 — have largely drawn recruits from the native races. It is 
 perhaps possible that some of the highest septs, such as the 
 Sisodiyas of Mewar, the pedigree of whose ruling house goes 
 back to Rama and can certainly be traced to the second 
 century of our era, may have maintained their lineage almost 
 uncontaminated. But this is certainly not the case with many 
 of the septs of lower rank. Even the names of many of these 
 indicate that they were of meaner descent. There is fairly 
 good evidence to show that many of the Oudh septs were 
 promoted from the lower castes within historical times. It 
 is only quite recently that many of the Gond tribes of Central 
 India have been elevated to the rank of Rajputs, a general 
 term which with them merely implies that they are the de- 
 scendants of men holding the rank of princes. Undoubtedly, 
 as the amalgamation of the races progressed, many of these 
 local Rijas were dignified with the rank of Rajput and estab- 
 lished the right of connubium with those who possessed or 
 claimed to possess genuine Rajput blood. 
 
 This is still more the case with the aggregate known as the 
 Brihmans. The early legends abound in stories of Kshat- 
 riyas being promoted to be Brahmans. In later times whole 
 sections of the lower races were elevated to priestly rank. 
 Thus the Baiga, or devil-hunting priest of the jungle tribes, 
 was converted into a BrShman Ojha or exorcisor of evil 
 
 201 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 spirits. There are sections of Brahmans, such as the Dakaut 
 or sturdy beggar cliiss and the Mahabrahman who discharges 
 the functions of funeral priest wKo are also without doubt 
 drawn from the lower races and are an object of abhorrence 
 to the higher ranks of the tribe, the keen-faced, intellectual 
 Pandits of Mathura and Benares. 
 
 We must, in short, discard the theory which professes to 
 identify distinct races in the existing castes. The native of 
 our day, so far as he has any definite views of the matter, 
 regards caste as based on religion : as eternal and immutable : 
 as peculiar to his own people. The modern view refuses to 
 admit any of these assumptions. It regards the endogamous 
 groups which we call castes as more social aggregates than 
 based on any religious principle. We see them changing 
 before our own eyes. We know that the same system pre- 
 vailed among other nations. The legend tells us that in the 
 beginning of things the Brahman was produced from the 
 head of the primal male. But, as has been already pointed 
 out, there are historical evidences of the creation of BrAh- 
 mans in modern times. Even in the time of Manu the rule of 
 endogamy was only in the making, and it was not till the 
 revival of Hinduism after the decay of Buddhism that the 
 modern rule requiring a Brahman to marry in his tribe was 
 enforced. 
 
 Caste, in short, is in the main based on function, as was the 
 case among the Egyptians and the Perso-Aryans. At the 
 outset there were in all probability two main divisions of the 
 people, the Vaisyas, or " settlers," and the Sudras or helot serfs. 
 It was not till a much later period that the privilege of con- 
 nubium between these two classes was lost. Out of them two 
 great functional groups, the Brahman or Levite and the Rajput 
 or landholder, were evolved. The distinction between the 
 Patres and the Populus Romanus grew up in the same way. 
 
 It was soon discovered by the Brahman guild that it was 
 an essential condition of their existence that the privilege of 
 intermarriage with the lower tribes should cease. The primi- 
 tive Aryan priest was the house-father, who performed the 
 simple family rites at the household hearth. But by aind by, 
 
 202 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 as ritual became elaborated, a special class of officiants was 
 required, and these gradually asserted novel claims. They 
 pretended to possess authority over all in earth, beneath the 
 earth, and in the heaven above. They held the secret of this 
 world and the next; they were equal to, in some respects 
 superior to, the gods themselves ; by them alone could meet 
 sacrifice be offered ; they alone could bless the marriage rite ; 
 they alone could safely pass the disembodied soul to heaven. 
 Hence the obvious advantage of forming a close Levite guild 
 which maintained the monopoly of all religious functions, 
 prohibited all connection with outsiders, and has ended by 
 making this group of priests an iron-bound caste of inter- 
 related families. 
 
 It was probably in imitation of the rule of endogamy thus 
 established that the practice was adopted by the other occu- 
 pational groups. 
 
 This stage of Br4hman supremacy in the religious world 
 was not, however, reached without a struggle. The early 
 legends are full of the contest between the Brahman and the 
 Kshatriya, and even between one Brahman group and another. 
 Parasurama, " Rama with the axe," is said to have cleared 
 the earth twenty-one times of the race of the Kshatriyas, and 
 to have given the land to the Brahmans. The contest be- 
 tween the rival sages, Vasishtha and Visvamitra, regarding 
 the right to be family priest to Raja Sudas, marks the 
 struggle within the BrShmanical body itself. 
 
 To disguise this development of caste on the basis of 
 occupation, the fiction was invented, which we find in the 
 Code of Manu, that all the minor castes were derived from 
 an intermixture between the four so-called original castes — 
 Brahmans, Vaisyas, Kshatriyas, Sudras. Thus, we are told, 
 that the Ambastha or physician is the offspring of a Vaisya 
 woman by a Brahman father. But here a distinction was 
 made, and a special stain was attached to the connection of 
 a Brahman woman with a Sfidra. Their child was the 
 Nishada, the degraded race from which the forest tribes of 
 the Central Indian hills are by the Brahmanical fiction sup- 
 posed to have sprung. 
 
 203 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 It is perhaps needless to say that the early grouping of 
 the castes into a fourfold division no longer exists for practical 
 purposes. The present Brahman group contains elements 
 veiy different from that of the ancient, contemplative Rishis, 
 who, in their hermitages, meditated on the problems of life 
 and death. The Rajputs are, as we have seen, much debased 
 by intermixture with meaner tribes. The Vaisyas practically 
 no longer exist, unless they have been perpetuated in some 
 of the higher Banya castes, such as the Agarwala. The 
 aggregate of Sudras, also, contains the most diverse elements 
 and hardly survives, except as a convenient term of abuse 
 for tribes which are supposed to be in a low grade of purity. 
 
 But though the basis of caste is probably in the main 
 occupational, any grouping of the existing castes, according 
 to occupation, is out of the question. Only quite a minority 
 of Brahmans devote themselves exclusively to the study of 
 the law and the Scriptures, or to other religious duties. Many 
 are agriculturists, domestics or clerks, serve in the army or 
 in the police, or engage in trade. The vast majority of the 
 Rajputs are not landowners. There is no identity of occu- 
 pation characteristic of the Vaisya or Sudra groups. 
 
 It is, however, possible in a rough way to arrange the 
 castes according to their traditional occupation, though, as 
 has been observed, this does not even approximately represent 
 the actual state of affairs. 
 
 In the first great group we have a population of about 17 
 millions, or 36 per cent, of the whole, who are more or less 
 devoted to agriculture or kindred occupations. Among these 
 we have — first, about 4^ millions who are either owners of 
 land or yeomen, the most notable of these being the Bhuin- 
 hars and Tagas, who claim to be Brahmans, but have now 
 completely abandoned sacerdotal functions, and the higher 
 class of yeomen, such as the Jats and Rajputs. Next come 
 6J millions of the middle class cultivators, of whom the most 
 important is the great Kurmi race. This has thrown off 
 numerous endogamous groups, such as the Kachhis, Koeris, 
 Kisans and Milis, mostly employed as market-gardeners and 
 growers of the more valuable crops — opium, spices, flowers, 
 
 204 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 and so on. These are followed by about 5^ millions of 
 people, whose traditionary business is the management of 
 cattle and the sale of milk and other products. Of these 
 the leading castes are the:Ahirs, Ghosis and G6jars, who 
 tend milch cattle, and the Gadariyas, who breed sheep, sell 
 wool or blankets. This division is completed by about 
 200,000 from the Dravidian fringe, who inhabit the southern 
 hills or the malaria-haunted TarSi. The latter shows only 
 the Tharus, who number about 25,000 souls ; most of these 
 people come from the Vindhyan range — the Kharw^rs, Kols, 
 Cheros, and their brethren, who link the Bhtls and Gonds of 
 the western part of the range to the Santals of Bengal \ 
 
 Next come about 6J millions of people traditionally de- 
 voted to a religious life and the service of the gods, or who 
 act as writers, genealogists, dancers, singers and actors — 
 rather a miscellaneous culture group. Of these the great 
 majority, 4f millions, are Brahmans. Next come over half a 
 million of Fakirs, who include both the devotee class and the 
 common beggars. Next in importance are the Kayasths 
 or writers, a most intelligent and pushing people, about 
 whose origin and social rank there has been much contro- 
 versy. The Code of Manu classes them as the children of 
 twice-born men begotten on women of the class immediately 
 below them. That the Brahmans, their rivals in the State 
 council, should tell scandalous stories about them is only 
 natural. But the evidence of anthropometry tends to show 
 that they have little intermixture of Dravidian blood. Under 
 our rule their aptitude for Western learning has greatly im- 
 proved their social position, and, like all people on their 
 promotion, they are extremely sensitive to any imputation 
 on the purity of their descent. The group is completed by a 
 mixed body of Bhats or genealogists, who represent in func- 
 tion the panegyrists or Court ballad-singers of the earlier 
 era, and by a mass of singers, dancers, actors and mimes, 
 many of whom are really drawn from the distinctively gipsy 
 or nomadic tribes. 
 
 The third group is that of the trading classes, who number 
 a million and a half. Nearly all of them are Banj^as, who 
 
 205 ' 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 are also a very mixed cIjiss. Some of them, like the Agar- 
 walas, are perhaps that part of the present population which 
 has remained most unaffected by local influences ; others are 
 drawn from lower races and hardly claim to be the successors 
 of the ancient Vaisyas. 
 
 Below these comes the great collection of artisans and 
 village menials, numbering in all 19 millions and 40 per 
 cent of the whole population. Most of these are distinctly 
 of Dravidian blood. Nearly 6 millions, or 12 J per cent of 
 the whole population, are ranked as workers in leather — the 
 Chamar and his kinsman the Mochi, who makes shoes, and 
 the Dabgar and Dhalgar, who makes shields or leathern 
 jars. As most of them eat beef and some work up the hides 
 of the sacred cow, they are looked upon with detestation by 
 orthodox Hindus. Where the tanning business is carried on 
 local prejudices insist that it shall be conducted in an isolated 
 hamlet, apart from the dwellings of people who claim a 
 higher rank of purity. But the majority of Chamars do not 
 work in leather : they till the soil, act as labourers and village 
 drudges, as grooms, messengers and the like. In the chief 
 centres of the leather trade, like Cawnpur, many of them 
 have amassed considerable wealth, and have even begun to 
 seclude their women, which is the first object of a man who 
 has attained a fairly respectable social standing. 
 
 The only other members of this artisan class who labour 
 under special social discredit are the butchers and breeders 
 of fowls — an unclean bird in the opinion of orthodox Hindus. 
 But here there is a sharp line of distinction drawn between 
 the cow butcher, who is loathed by his Hindu neighbours, 
 and was in the recent disturbances arising out of the cow 
 question often boycotted, bullied and ill-used : and the man 
 who deals in mutton and goat's flesh, which is eaten by many 
 of the higher classes and involves no social discredit. Lower 
 still are the 400,000 sweepers, closely allied to the Dom, who 
 is regarded as the very dregs of impurity — a scavenger and 
 remover or burner of corpses, the descendant of the Chandila 
 of Manu, who is ranked by the law-^ver with the town boar, 
 the cock, the dog, and a woman in a state of impurity, none 
 
 206 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 of whom are allowed to see a Brahman lest they may defile 
 his food. They must live outside the town, eat out of 
 potsherds, have as their sole wealth dogs and asses, wear 
 the cerecloths of the dead, have as their ornaments rusty 
 iron, and roam continually from place to place. "Let no 
 man who regards his duty, religious or civil, hold any inter- 
 course with them," ^ says the old-world sage. 
 
 We have next the great mass of other artisans and handi- 
 craftsmen, of which the largest group is that of fishermen, 
 boatmen and bearers of palanquins — the Mallah, Kewat, 
 Kahar and their brethren, who number 2^ millions. After 
 these come the weaving classes — ^Koris and Julahas, number- 
 ing if millions, much of whose business has been ruined by 
 competition with Manchester, and they have been forced to 
 adopt other forms of labour. The Telis or oil manufacturers 
 have, again, suffered by the increasing importation of kerosine 
 oiL At the bottom of this class are a million and a half of 
 so-called village watchmen — Pasis, Arakhs and the like, 
 many of whom are thieves themselves. 
 
 To illustrate briefly how little this traditional classification 
 of castes represents actual facts, it is sufficient to note that 
 while, as we have seen, the traditional agricultural castes 
 number about 17 millions, nearly 35 millions are wholly or 
 partly dependent on agriculture ; there are 4f millions of 
 Brihmans, but only 156,000 ministers of religion ; 466,000 
 people live by making pottery, while there are 713,000 
 Kumhars. Similar differences are found throughout the 
 caste lists. 
 
 The regular village menials constitute almost a distinct 
 class of the community. The constitution of the old village 
 body provided for a regular staff of these workmen — the 
 barber, who performed the ceremonial shaving at the initia- 
 tion of youths, shaved the corpse and acted an important 
 part in marriage; the carpenter-smith, the two functions 
 being often combined, who makes and repairs agricultural 
 implements, and assists in building the hut ; the potter, who 
 prepares the earthen vessels so ^essential to village house- 
 ^ Manu, Institutes, iii. 239 ; x. 51 sqq. 
 207 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 wifery ; the goldsmith who makes jewellery ; the washerman 
 who cleans the foul raiment, and hence ranks very low in the 
 social scale. These functionaries have each their body of 
 constituents whose families they serve, and they are remuner- 
 ated, not by a daily wage, but sometimes by the use of a plot 
 of rent-free land, or more usuall}-- by a donation of grain at 
 each harvest per family, or on each plough or cane-press 
 which the peasant owns. 
 
 There is no class of the people on whom British rule has 
 worked a more radical change. In the old times they were 
 little better than serfs, ascripti glebae, at the mercy of the 
 leader of the village body. But the extension of railways, 
 the needs of modern city life, have attracted many of them to 
 the towns, where they obtain ample remunerative employ- 
 ment. This has been accompanied by a notable increase in 
 their sense of dignity and self-importance ; and nothing is 
 more regretted by the conservative yeoman than the fact 
 that the craftsman, who a generation ago was at his beck 
 and call, and was satisfied with the most meagre wage, is 
 now more exacting in his demands, and not alone resents 
 ill-usage, but is quite prepared to drag his betters before our 
 democratic tribunals. 
 
 On the other hand, our rule has wrecked the industries of 
 some of these craftsmen. The native courts at places like 
 Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow attracted large numbers of work- 
 men who prospered under the protection of the ruling power, 
 and provided articles of luxury for the King and his nobles 
 who attended his Darbar with a host of followers in their 
 train. Under our practical and, from this point of view, 
 rather dreary and shabby rule much of this has ceased. The 
 Rija is no longer a permanent courtier in attendance on his 
 sovereign. If he is seen in a city he has come to do business, 
 to pay a visit of ceremony to the chief European officers, to 
 appear at an infrequent DarbSr, to attend a race meeting. 
 And he is now-a-days contented with a much smaller suite. 
 The city is no longer the haunt of the rich roysterer, the 
 cadets of princely houses,. and is given over to the merchant 
 and petty trader and craftsman. Many occupations have 
 
 208 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 from this cause permanently disappeared. Thus, the maker 
 of fireworks does not supply one rocket now for a hundred in 
 the good old times. When every one went armed, the trade 
 of the armourer, the gunsmith, the shield maker, was an 
 important industry. Now-a-days hardly any one wears a 
 sword, and if a sportsman uses a gun or rifle it is usually of 
 European make. 
 
 In the same way the artistic handicrafts have suffered 
 grievous decline. The fine work in gold, silver, brass, or 
 ivory has almost disappeared. The native demand for the 
 more delicate fabrics, the muslins of Dacca, the lovely 
 embroideries of Benares or Delhi, has been much reduced. 
 English stuffs are much cheaper and have taken their place. 
 The beautiful productions of the jeweller, the engraver, the 
 enameller, the inlayer, have been replaced by foreign pro- 
 ductions. Every little town has its "Europe shop," where 
 glassware and crockery, German cutlery, lamps, and a myriad 
 of similar articles are sold at rates with which the native 
 handicraftsman cannot possibly compete. Even in the matter 
 of dress there has been a great revolution. The young 
 lawyer, surgeon, or schoolmaster prefers, to the graceful 
 turban and flowing robes of his forefathers, a caricature of 
 the frock coat and trousers of the Englishman, and he wears 
 shoes or boots of western pattern, because he is thus enabled 
 to escape the necessity of removing them at the threshold of 
 his European host, to which the old-fashioned person with his 
 slippers has to submit. 
 
 The same change has come over the occupations of other 
 craftsmen. The national ox cart in which the village land- 
 owner or the portly merchant still sometimes rides is being 
 replaced by the dogcart or barouche. The general use of 
 watches has opened out quite a new trade In fact, what 
 support is given to the more delicate native art industries is 
 largely due to European patronage. The English lady uses 
 the embroidered shawls of the Jat woman as hangings or 
 curtains ; she invests her surplus cash in Lucknow silver 
 work or Delhi embroideries ; she orders carved tables from 
 SahSranpur, native chintzes from Bulandshahr, brass trays 
 O 209 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 and bowls from Benares. Large quantities of such work of 
 coarser and less artistic make are prepared for the home 
 market. Here fashion is ever changing. The native patterns 
 have been modified to suit the vile taste of the globe-trotter, 
 and when some new local production becomes popular the 
 best specimens are bought up by some one on the spot who 
 has an eye for colour or delicacy of pattern. When the 
 demand develops it is met by coarser replicas of the old 
 work, which gradually lose all its refinement. 
 
 It is this development of the original crafts which accounts 
 in a great measure for the constant change which is ever 
 going on in these occupational groups. They are continually 
 by a process of fission giving birth to fresh combinations. 
 We can watch this process going on from one decennial 
 census to another. Thus the old occupation of the Kunjra 
 or greengrocer breaks up into that of the Mewafarosh or 
 fruitseller and the Sabzfarosh or dealer in green stuff ; that 
 of the carpenter-smith into those of the farrier, joiner, cabinet- 
 maker, coachbuilder, carver, and gilder. It throws new light 
 on the confounding of all things which resulted from the 
 Muhammadan conquest to notice the change in nomenclature 
 of these occupations. The boatman calls himself by the 
 Arabic title of Mallah ; the old S^uji or tailor has become the 
 Persian Darzi ; the painter is Rangsaz, the dyer Rangrez, the 
 firework maker Atishbaz — all names derived from the lan- 
 guage of the conqueror. English titles are, too, becoming 
 more common. The maker of biscuits calls himself Biskut- 
 wala, the meat purveyor Buchar, or he modifies native titles 
 to suit the new condition of things. The telegraph clerk 
 calls himself Tarwala or "wireman," the watchmaker Gharisaz, 
 from the old-fashioned Clepsydra. 
 
 [In '^short, a study of the 419 classes of occupations as 
 analysed at the last census discloses the most curious 
 admixture as the new civilisation develops fresh wants and 
 hustles aside the time-worn duties of primitive oriental life. 
 We meet ear-pickers, tattooers, makers of caste marks, 
 twisters of the sacred thread, tooth-stick sellers, makers of 
 henna and carmine, exorcists, hail averters, astrologers, casters 
 
 210 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 of horoscopes, genealogists, side by side with watchmakers, 
 photographers, journalists, missionaries, astronomers, meteor- 
 ologists, firemen and shunters, electro-platers, and ice 
 manufacturers. Our old friend " the flatterer for gain," who 
 used, so to record himself in former enumerations, has un- 
 happily disappeared. 
 
 The rise of this artisan or craftsman class in social 
 respectability has also had an influence on the endogamous 
 groups which we call castes. There are certain usages 
 which naturally disable a group from rising in popular 
 estimation. Such are the marriage of widows or of adult 
 girls, the 1 evirate, the non-seclusion of females. These all 
 savour of vulgarity and mean extraction. So these occu- 
 pational groups as they rise in the world find it advantageous 
 to follow the usages of their orthodox neighbours in such 
 matters. It is on widow marriage that the most stress is 
 laid. But here common sense or the innate conservatism of 
 the native mind often tends to make a section of the group 
 lag behind their more ambitious brethren. Thus we often 
 find a group split up into two sections over this question. 
 Those who favour the new views announce that they will wed 
 none but virgin brides, and promptly refuse to eat, smoke, or 
 intermarry with their vulgar kindred who prefer the old ways. 
 So a group often divides over some question of food or drink 
 or similar social usage. The curious point is that these 
 disputes generally centre round a social, not a religious 
 controversy. An Englishman who becomes a teetotaller or 
 vegetarian will hardly boycott all his kindred who adhere to 
 the moderate use of beer or beef, while an Anglican house- 
 hold will give short shrift to a member who joins the Church 
 of Rome or the Salvation Army. But it is quite different in 
 India. It is adequate reason for boycotting a person if he 
 eats beef, marries his sister-in-law, or messes with a menial. 
 But many a Hindu Banya has one wife a Brahmanist and the 
 other a Jaina. The ladies live in perfect amity, but each 
 practises her own religious rites. 
 
 The last great division of the people (excluding those of 
 foreign nationality, comprising^ Muhammadans and Euro- 
 
 2ii 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 peans, Eurasians and Armenians, and occasional strange 
 visitors, such as the Bhotiyas of Tibet and emigrants from 
 southern India, in all numbering about 2 J millions) are the 
 vagrant or gipsy tribes, of whom the last census enumerated 
 about 600,000 souls. These are in many ways the most un- 
 conventional and interesting of the races of the plains, but 
 their propensity to petty thievery and even to the more 
 serious forms of violent crime has made their control a 
 difficult problem. 
 
 But there is much difference in the various elements of 
 which this group is composed. Some of them — like the 
 Khumra, who chips grindstones ; the Saikalgar, who is a 
 wandering cutler and knife-grinder ; the Dusadh, a village 
 menial, a swineherd and petty cultivator ; the Kharot, a 
 matmaker ; and some members of the great Dom race, like 
 the Bansphor or Basor, who settle in the outskirts of towns, 
 work in bamboos or act as scavengers, while their women 
 practise as midwives — are fairly respectable people. All of 
 them live in poverty and social contempt ; but, as it is at 
 present constituted, they are a necessary element in Hindu 
 society. It will be one of the problems of the future to 
 find substitutes for these menial and scavenger tribes, should 
 they, as is not impossible, come under the rule of some 
 teacher, and the word be suddenly passed among them that 
 to touch filth is impious. Even now among the lower 
 menials there are few bodies more touchy and sensitive than 
 the sweepers, and the special trade of scavenging is likely to 
 become more and more odious. 
 
 Again, grouped with these scavengers and menial workmen 
 there are others, who, though they lead a partially nomadic 
 life, seldom offend against the law. Typical among these 
 are the Baheliya or hunter, and the ChiryamSr or fowler. 
 The former, whenever he can secure a gun licence, wanders 
 in the jungle and shoots game for sale in towns. To the 
 east he is a fine, bold, athletic fellow, but notoriously un- 
 trustworthy. From this caste are drawn many of the best 
 ShikHris, who track down game and arrange shooting parties 
 for European sportsmen. "It is he who ties up the young 
 
 212 
 
BAHELIVA SHIKAUrS. 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 buffalo as a bait for a tiger, and at the first blush of dawn 
 steals through the jungle and often watches the brute sleep- 
 ing the sleep of repletion beside his victim; Some of them 
 are exceedingly plucky in such dangerous work, and their 
 knowledge of woodcraft, the 'habits of game, the marking 
 down of footsteps in the sand of a dry watercourse, are often 
 admirable. But, like their brethren in other lands, they are 
 gifted with a playful imagination, and will beguile the con- 
 fiding "grif" with tales of legendary tigers of gigantic size 
 and terrible ferocity, from whose clutches they have only by 
 a miracle escaped. Or they will enlist a real jungle man, a 
 Kol or Kharwar, to do all the really dangerous part of the 
 tracking and claim the credit themselves. But to the sports- 
 man they are indispensable from their marvellous knowledge 
 of the jungle, and if he treats them well and believes a tithe 
 of what he is told they will show him game. 
 
 The Nats are another group, more of the real gipsy type. 
 Their peculiar appearance, the dark flashing eye, the black 
 skin, mark them down as essentially non-Aryan. The Nat 
 and his kinsfolk wander all over the country, carrying their 
 paltry goods on the backs of oxen or donkeys, sheltering 
 themselves under a screen of grass. The men are acrobats, 
 perform feats on a long bamboo and dance on the tight-rope. 
 Their women loaf about villages, selling herbs and various 
 simples, love-philtres and charms which extract " the worm " 
 from carious teeth. Like the gipsies of Europe, they practise 
 many uncanny arts, and are supposed to be adepts in sorcery. 
 Many gangs live on the unchastity of their girls, and though 
 they are not exactly of criminal habits, the Nats are a 
 degraded, dissolute race. Much lower than these are the 
 criminal nomads, like the Sansiya, Beriya, or Habftra, to 
 whom some reference has been made in another connection. 
 These people wander about in gangs, commit all kinds of 
 petty pilfering, or even gang-robbery with violence. They 
 are one of the pests of our time, and would receive short 
 shrift from the peasants whom they persecute were it not for 
 the restraining influence of British law, and the countenance 
 and protection they receive from men of higher castes who 
 
 213 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 intrigue with their women. Riding through one of the 
 western districts, you will often come across a camp of these 
 vagrants, which is usually pitched on one of the sand dunes, 
 which are a characteristic feature of the landscape. In the 
 selection of such sites, they seerir to be influenced partly by 
 sanitary considerations ; partly because from such a coign 
 of vantage they can espy dangerous visitors ; partly because 
 the sand is a safe hiding-place for stolen property. The 
 cattle of the gang graze down the neighbouring fields, and 
 the peaceful rustic cares little to interfere with such sturdy 
 marauders. The men, tired after their night-prowl, sleep in 
 the shade ; the women cook whatever their husbands have 
 been able to pilfer. They are a wild, fierce-looking people, 
 and their manners and customs when search or arrest is 
 inevitable daunt the rural policeman, who will not interfere 
 with them if he can possibly avoid the necessity. He follows 
 the sage advice of Dogberry in dealing with " vagrom men " : 
 " Take no note of him, but let him go ; and presently call 
 the rest of the watch together and thank God you are rid of 
 a knave." 
 
 Another and perhaps less criminal branch of the same 
 race is the vagrant known as the Bengali, who has nothing 
 to say to the sleek clerk with his meagre calves and flowing 
 loin cloth, who may be seen at the railway stations. The 
 speciality of this loathsome vagrant is rural surgery, and his 
 " pocket-ciise " of instruments, a set of rude spikes which 
 he uses as lancets, and a foul bamboo tube with which he 
 empties abscesses, would send a thrill of horror through one 
 of our surgeons trained to the antiseptic method. Much 
 disease and suffering must be due to practitioners such ias 
 these. 
 
 The Kanjar is another kinsman of these people. He is 
 half tamed from a savage life : traps wild ducks or quail for 
 his European employers : kills wolves or makes up young 
 jackals to resemble them and claims the Government reward. 
 He is a fellow of great interest to a naturalist, for he is a 
 born hunter and trapper, and deeply learned in the ways of 
 beasts and birds. The latter he catches with a series of thin 
 
 214 
 

 - _ *^jj-2 •«;•"' 
 
 - ^'t 
 
 
 ■ ^'^_"' t^'- 
 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 canes which he fixes together like the joints of a fishing-^od. 
 The top he smears with birdlime, and pushes it through a 
 tree ; then with infinite deftness and patience he adds joint 
 to joint till it reaches the highest branches where he ensnares 
 some incautious bird. If it is edible he sells or eats it ; some 
 he takes to a city where tender-hearted Jaina ladies, reared 
 from childhood to believe that killing an animal is the 
 deadliest of sins, bribe him to let it go. 
 
 Lowest of all is the Dom, who is the true survival of the 
 loathsome Chandala of Manu. Of these there is a settled 
 and a vagrant branch. Those who are settled live in cities, 
 where they work as scavengers or provide a light for the 
 funeral pyres at the burning Ghat Hence he is detested 
 and despised ; but he pays back this contempt by insolence 
 and rapacity when he can practise such arts with impunity. 
 He lords it among the mourners at a funeral, and when the 
 corpse of a rich banker comes to the Ganges bank he acts the 
 bully and extortioner, and will not give the necessary fire 
 except for an exorbitant fee. 
 
 The nomadic Dom who infests the eastern districts and 
 Bihar is a shameless vagrant, an eater of leavings and car- 
 rion, a beggar, a thief. Curiously enough he has none of the 
 instincts of woodcraft in which the Kanjar is so expert. 
 Though he frequents the jungle he cannot trap wild game or 
 birds or even catch fish. He will eat almost any carrion and 
 the leavings of any tribe except that of the Dhobi or washer- 
 man, between whom and the Dom, other than the hatred 
 which the latter has for cold water, there is hereditary feud. 
 
 Not that he is quite irreclaimable. When he once sheds 
 off his nomadic habits he settles down as a scavenger or as a 
 worker in bamboo, and attempts to civilise him have, in recent 
 years in Gorakhpur, the main hunting ground of the Dom, 
 met with some measure of success. 
 
 To the ethnologist the Dom is a most interesting subject. 
 Among them he finds some most curious survivals of primi- 
 tive practice. His reverence for iron marks him down as 
 having only in comparatively recent times emerged from the 
 Age of Stone. He employs his sister's son as his family 
 
 215 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 priest, which leads us back to the time before the growth of 
 the family, when what anthropologists call the matriarchate 
 prevailed, when kinship was reckoned only through the 
 mother, and no account was taken of the father. 
 
 He is still more interesting as being almost certainly a 
 close relation of the Gipsies of Europe. One popular l^end 
 of their origin describes how about 420 A.D. Bahram Gflr im- 
 ported 1 2,000 Jat musicians from India to Persia; and it is 
 supposed that their descendants may have entered Europe 
 about the eleventh century. One and perhaps the most 
 plausible explanation of the term Rom and Romani is that 
 it is variant of the Hindi Domra or Dom ; and an attempt 
 has been made by Mr Grierson to identify the modern Gipsy 
 tongue with that peculiar dialect of Hindi spoken by the 
 Doms of Bihir. That Romani contains a number of Hindi 
 words which have survived in almost their original forms is 
 admitted on all sides. The curious fact remains that while 
 the Gipsy term for " a horse " is Hindi those of farriery are 
 Greek. It is probable that the Gipsies learned the arts of 
 the horse-coper and tinker after they left Indian soil. It is 
 needless to say that even if some of the first Gypsies came 
 from India the racial type and language have been largely 
 modified since their residence in Europe. It is thus mainly 
 on linguistic arguments that the Indian origin of these 
 wanderers has been asserted. One element among them may 
 be derived from the Doms, Nats, or wandering blacksmith 
 tribes of India. We find occasional references in English 
 newspapers to a custom common among Gipsies of burning 
 the van and other property of a dead man. This seems to be 
 a survival of the custom common among the menial Indian 
 races, and for that matter among many other savages, of 
 providing for the wants of the spirit in the other world by 
 sending with him food or other necessaries burnt at the 
 grave or left with him in the tomb. 
 
 Another most interesting race is that of the Tharus of the 
 sub-Himalayan Tarai. They are the pioneers of civilisation, 
 forcing their way into the malarious jungles at the foot of 
 the hills and converting the swamps into rich stretches of 
 
 216 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 rice They are a curiously shy, retiring race : but they make 
 almost a speciality of tending the elephant, and some of the 
 best drivers employed in capturing the wild herds along the 
 Siwilik range are drawn from them. As has already been 
 said, the assertion that they are malaria-proof is contradicted 
 by statistics. They have undoubtedly some afifinity with the 
 Mongoloid tribes of Central Asia through Nepal. 
 
 A Tharu village in the Tarai is very different from that of 
 the menials of the Plains. He often raises his huts well 
 above the damp ground to avoid malaria ; he surrounds them 
 with the dense green foliage of the plantain, the fruit of 
 which forms an important article of his diet Like those of 
 many secluded races, his women folk are supposed to be adepts 
 in witchcraft, and Tharuhat, " the Tharu land," has an evil 
 repute which makes the emigrant from the Plains carefully 
 avoid it The Tharus themselves are about the most ghost- 
 ridden people in northern India. Once the sun sinks below 
 the horizon they believe that the jungle is full of evil spirits. 
 They sit cowering under their meagre huts in a state of 
 abject terror, and the whistling of the wind in the trees or a 
 rotten branch falling to the ground reduces them to an agony 
 of fear. 
 
 But to find survivals of prehistoric custom in the greatest 
 abundance we must go to the pure Dra vidian fringe of jungle- 
 dwellers who live along the Central Indian hills. They are 
 found only in the Mirzapur district and in parts of Bundel- 
 khand, their main habitat being in the present Central 
 Provinces and Berar, where they form the connecting link 
 between the Bhlls in Rajputana to the west and the Santals 
 and other cognate races of the Bengal hills. In this Province 
 the jungle tribes are mainly represented by the Kols, Khar- 
 wars, Manjhis, and Cheros. Many of these have been brought 
 largely under Brihrnanic influence ; in fact, before the expiry 
 of another generation they will have lost much of the primitive 
 customs which make them so interesting to the ethnologist. 
 It is tolerably certain that many of them have only quite 
 recently adopted the use of metals, and are little removed 
 from the Age of Stone. 
 
 217 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Of these races the most interesting are the Korwas, a few 
 of whom inhabit the low scrub jungle of south Mirzapur. 
 They have attained only the most elementary social stage ; 
 they have no stable exogamous groups and practically no 
 prohibited degrees in marriage ; their houses are of the most 
 primitive type — merely a booth of branches arranged in a 
 circle and fastened roughly together at the apex. The true 
 Korwa neither sows nor reaps; he lives in the forest, and 
 with his sharp spud digs up the edible roots which, with the 
 fruit of jungle trees, constitute his food. He uses the bow and 
 arrow, but he kills little game now that wild animals have 
 become much more shy and less numerous. But in the 
 lordly fashion of the jungle-dweller he claims the woodland 
 as his own, and when he makes over his daughter to the 
 youth of her choice her dowry consists of a mountain side, on 
 which she has the monopoly of foraging for food. 
 
 In his social arrangements he is a regular troglod3rte ; he 
 lives apart from his kinsfolk, and has not even reached the 
 stage at which he would refer the disputes of his tribe to 
 the arbitration of a council of elders. Like Homer's Cyclops, 
 "he is not conversant with others, but dwells apart in law- 
 lessness of mind." " These have neither gatherings for 
 council nor oracles of law, but they dwell in hollow caves on 
 the crests of the high hills, and each one utters the law to his 
 children and his wives, and they reck not one of another." 
 
 Short of stature, black of skin, with his coarse hair floating 
 unkempt over his shoulders, possessing only a modicum of 
 clothing, the Korwa is of the pure, unmixed Drividian type, 
 and is the nearest approach to an absolute savage which 
 northern India can show. His mental culture is on a par 
 with his surroundings. He worships a collection of rude 
 fetishes which his animistic beliefs teach him are the abode of 
 the spirits or ghosts which he dreads. Of a benign Providence 
 he has no conception ; he is witch-ridden and demon-haunted. 
 Every hill and forest, every mighty tree and prominent rock 
 holds a divinity active in mischief, which will slay him or 
 visit him with the cholera, the fever, the rheumatism, unless 
 he conciliates the creature in some uncanny way. 
 
 218 
 

 
 .4 
 
 
 UHANGAKS- MEMBEKS OF DRAVIDIAN ViLLACK l-0^iML^!l^■. MIRZAPUR. 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 It is one of the sad but inevitable results of the progress of 
 civilisation that these simple, law-abiding jungle races who, 
 in their straightforward independence and manliness are in 
 striking, contrast to the degraded serf of the Plains, must 
 exchange the free life of the'hillside for the restraints of an 
 ordered existence. As they are now they are certainly much 
 happier than the menials f of the lowlands condemned to 
 servitude, cribbed and confined within their narrow holdings, 
 toiling without hope on the most niggard wage. But year 
 by year the road and railway are opening up the secret 
 places of these secluded,hills, and with the first settlers comes 
 the money-lender, who jingles rupees before them, suggests 
 new wants and gradually draws them more and more within 
 his clutches. For such people our precise British law brings 
 no message of salvation. They are not like the dweller in 
 the Plains, who has at any rate heard from his forefathers 
 that we have saved the land from war and rapine. These 
 are the veriest children in their recklessness and simplicity, 
 and the State which fails to stand towards them in loco 
 parentis is only shirking an obvious duty which it will soon 
 be too late to discharge. 
 
 The student of sociology will thus find within the limits 
 of a single Indian Province a complete series of the stages 
 through which civilisation must everywhere progress. We 
 start in the lowest grade with the Korwa, a mere savage, 
 living on the roots or fruits which he can collect in the jungle 
 or the animals which he can slay for food. Little higher is 
 the Dom, whose only industry is a little rude work in bamboo, 
 a loafer, a thief, a beggar, an eater of carrion, a collector of 
 filth. Then we meet the Kanjar or Sansiya, a pure nomad 
 who lives by hunting birds and animals, and will eat the 
 lizard which has its home in the salt plains. A little higher 
 is the Baheliya and Chiryamar, who catches birds for food 
 and sale. Then comes the Pasi, who collects palm juice as an 
 intoxicant ; the Bari, who makes leaf platters for use at f&tes ; 
 the Khairaha, who distils catechu from the acacia; the Bans- 
 phor, who makes baskets out of canes or twigs. Then we have 
 the wandering juggler and acrobat like the Nat ; the nomad 
 
 219 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Lobar blacksmith ; the Bengali, an itinerant surgeon ; the 
 Saikalgar, or peripatetic cutler. Another st^e leads us to 
 the Maliab and KahSr, who are boatmen, water-carriers, 
 bearers of palanquins, fishermen, and collectors of tank 
 produce. With the Gfljar and Ahir we come upon the semi- 
 nomad grazier and rearer of cattle, and the Gadariya who 
 breeds sheep and practises agriculture merely as a secondary 
 occupation. 
 
 Above these are the peasant cultivators and yeomen, and 
 from these we come to those who supply the spiritual, moral, 
 and luxurious needs of the people — the Levite, the scribe, the 
 genealogist, the jeweller, the perfumer, the coppersmith and 
 so on ; while at the top of the industrial ladder stands the 
 Banya capitalist. 
 
 It would be easy to press this analysis much further. But 
 even without any attempt at greater precision, it is manifest 
 that in the study of the evolution of these groups there is 
 ample scope for the labours of the sociologist Though there 
 is no absolute severance of occupation, the barber sometimes 
 holding land and the currier working as a day labourer, still 
 these endogamous groups are fairly distinct, much more 
 precisely defined than in western lands, where the guild 
 system has more or less completely disappeared. 
 
 But though labour is the lot of the majority of the people, 
 there is in India no sense of the dignity of labour. A 
 familiar proverb ever on the lips of the people tells us that 
 farming is the best occupation ; trade is middling ; service is 
 bad ; begging worst of all. Here the artisan is significantly 
 left out and agriculture elevated to the highest rank. Yet it 
 is noticeable that Manu depreciated agriculture as a means 
 of livelihood : " Some are of opinion that agriculture is 
 excellent ; but it is a mode of occupation which the benevol- 
 ent greatly blame : " and for this he gives the characteristic 
 explanation : " for the iron-mouthed pieces of wood not only 
 wound the earth, but the creatures dwelling in it." ^ He 
 prescribes as the most commendable occupations of the three 
 higher tribes, respectively, teaching the Veda, defending the 
 ' Manu, InstiluUs, x. 84. 
 220 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 people, or keeping herds and flocks.^ But he permits the 
 Brdhman, if he be unable to subsist by his special duties, to 
 serve as a soldier or even trade like a merchant, or become 
 a tiller of the ground or a tender of cattle.^ 
 
 As for the Sfidra or menial, his proper business is to wait 
 on the twice- born, and it is only if his family be starving that 
 he may adopt a handicraft, but then it should be one of a 
 mechanical nature, such as joinery and masonry, or a practical 
 art, such as painting or writing, by following which he may 
 serve his betters.^ Any attempt on the part of the menial to 
 rise in the social scale was carefully prohibited. " A man of 
 the lowest class who through covetousness lives by the acts 
 of the highest, let the King strip of all his wealth and 
 instantly banish." * 
 
 Though the overthrow of the Brihmanical constitution has 
 given the Svlldra much more chance of rising in the world, 
 still even now the craftsman is held in discredit, and many of 
 them are included in the class from whose hands the Brah- 
 man is forbidden to drink water. Various explanations have 
 been given to account for this. There is not much difficulty 
 in understanding why a butcher, a tanner, a scavenger should 
 be objects of social contempt. But we are told that the 
 washerman is impure because he has to deal with foul 
 raiment ; the potter because he is a sort of butcher and cuts 
 the throats of his pots ; the oilman, because he is filthy. 
 Even the blacksmith and the carpenter, the weaver, gold- 
 smith, and coppersmith remain menials, though there is 
 nothing defiling in their occupations. 
 
 On the process by which these various occupations were 
 evolved the Indian myth of civilisation throws little light. 
 In other countries many tribes endeavour to account for 
 their social progress by the advent of some wise man from 
 the East who taught them the arts of civilised life. By the 
 Indian theory, however, this diversity of occupations is not 
 only of home growth, but the idea of social evolution is 
 barred out by the assertion that in the beginning the Deity- 
 
 ^ Manu, Institutes, x. 80. ^ Ibid., x. 81 sq. 
 
 ' Ibid., X. 99 sq. * Ibid., x. 96. 
 
 221 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 prescribed distinct occupations for his creatures, "as they 
 had been revealed in the pre-existing Veda."^ And here 
 the legends display a curious inconsistency. Brihaspati is 
 the prototype of the priestly body ; he is even called the 
 father of the gods, and a widely extended creative power is 
 ascribed to him. By another story this was the special work 
 of Daksha. By a third legend Prithi makes Swayambhuva 
 Manu the calf, milks the earth and receives the milk in his 
 hands for the benefit of mankind. Thence proceeded all 
 kinds of corn and vegetables upon which the people now and 
 for ever subsist. It was Viswakarma who succeeded to the 
 functions of Twashtri, the divine architect of the Vedas, and 
 from him, like Tubal Cain, the forger of every cutting instru- 
 ment of brass and iron, sprang the race of handicraftsmen. 
 
 We have already said something about the divergence of 
 rural and urban life ; but as this is one of the most vital 
 points in the sociology of the Province, it may be worth while 
 to attempt to push the analysis a little further. 
 
 The first point to be observed is that in Oudh, as com- 
 pared with the sister province, the average village population 
 is much larger and the settlements are much more closely 
 packed. While in Oudh the average number of souls in 
 each village is 519, and each is one-third of a mile distant 
 from the other, in the larger Province there are 418 souls 
 per village, and between every two there is a distance ot 
 rather. more than a mile. The averages, of course, here are 
 kept down by the large and sparsely-peopled mountainous 
 tract. In the hill tract there are only 106 people per village, 
 while in the Upper Duib, where the villages are much 
 larger, the average rises to 565, and falls to 425 in the east 
 of the province, where, as we have already seen, a long period 
 of peace has encouraged the formation of hamlets. In the 
 Panjab and Bombay, where the population is more sparse 
 and the amount of waste greater, the villages are much 
 larger — the Bombay village has double the average popula- 
 tion of those in this Province ; that of the Panjab is greater 
 by nearly one-third. In Sindh each village has attached to 
 
 1 Manu, Institutes, i. 21. 
 222 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 it about 12 square miles of territory ; in Oudh the villages 
 are 2f furlongs, and in the North-Western Provinces rather 
 more than a mile apart, which is a little over the Bengal 
 averse. 
 
 But there is another cause which has contributed to make 
 the villages in Oudh and the eastern part of the Province 
 smaller than those to the west. The land to the west is 
 largely occupied by village communities of the peasant pro- 
 prietary type, where a large proportion of the residents 
 possess rights of ownership in the soil. Here the communal 
 or^nisation has tended to knit the coparceners so closely 
 together that there is little encouragement for the surplus 
 population to overflow into new settlements. As the people 
 increase the shares only become more and more minutely 
 sub-divided ; any one who has ever attempted to partition 
 a Jat or Rijput village in the Upper Duab will understand 
 what that means. So, as a man's household increases, he 
 adds a new hut and a new cattle-steading for his married son, 
 and makes over to him part of his farm ; but they all use the 
 same general courtyard, very often mess together, and share 
 in the common stock. These sturdy yeomen cling closely 
 to the soil, as the Celts do, and are very unwilling to part 
 with an inch of it. Hence they seldom settle day-labourers 
 on a patch of the ancestral holding. They prefer to do the 
 farming work themselves, and if they employ extra labour 
 at harvest time it is paid for then and there in a cash wage 
 or in kind. Lastly, the canny western man is not much 
 Brahman-ridden. He will pay his annual dues with a grumble, 
 or he will fee the priest at Hardwir or Mathura when he 
 visits these shrines on his annual holiday ; but, as for settling 
 a Brahman on part of his land, he is much too calculating, 
 too unemotional in his religious views, to dream of hampering 
 himself in such a way. 
 
 On the other hand, in Oudh and to the east, almost all 
 tenures are the result of the conquest of the soil from some 
 ancient race — Bhars, Pasis, or the like. The traditional way 
 of providing for the cadets of the dominant families was by 
 grants of patches of land, known as Birt or maintenance. 
 
 223 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 This class was much more under the influence of the priestly 
 body than the hard-fisted western yeoman. It is a point of 
 honour with any one who pretends to princely blood to have 
 a Levite in his employment, and he must also support a 
 Bhat or genealogist, who preserves the tradition of the past 
 glories of the family, and maintains the pedigree which is of 
 primary importance when the inevitable question of settling 
 the girls comes to be considered. Hence the priest or 
 marriage-broker is often supplied out of the estate with a snug 
 little village, where he sleeps away his time under the pleasant 
 shade of the trees, and rouses himself to activity only when an 
 approaching marriage or funeral feast is announced. The 
 Levite and his employer both consider it inconsistent with their 
 dignity to handle the plough. So, a plot must be found for 
 the colony of menial serfs, who cluster round the dilapidated 
 homestead of their master, and do the farming work in 
 consideration for the grant of a rent-free holding. 
 
 Thus, contrasting the two types of village, we have to the 
 west a class of hard-handed petty farmers, who work their 
 ancestral fields, and whose love of the soil is as passionate 
 as that of an Irishman ; to the east we find more of the 
 middle class, indolent proprietors and their hangers-on. Not 
 that this relief from manual labour promotes any desire for 
 the higher culture which ease renders possible for them. 
 They are perhaps more acute, because they have more leisure 
 for moving about, possess more of that knowledge of the 
 world which intercourse with men and cities produces. Hence 
 they are wont to laugh . at the western peasant as a dolt 
 and a drudge ; but the appearance of their villages and the 
 character of their farming indicate clearly which type of 
 rural life is the more industrially valuable. 
 
 The question of the degree to which the people are crowded 
 within the inhabited area is one of primary importance from 
 the sanitary point of view. To take the case of the towns 
 first, there is a marked distinction between those towns which 
 are the site of a European cantonment and those occupied 
 only by natives. The European finds air and space an 
 absolute necessity for the enjoyment of a fairly healthy life ; 
 
 224 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 and where land is comparatively cheap he is wont to plcint 
 his house in the centre of a spacious "compound," part 
 occupied by his garden and the miniature village which 
 accommodates his servants and his horses, and a wide extent 
 of rough, ill-kept land, providing scanty grazing for the cow or 
 two he must keep, if he is not to fall a victim to cholera or 
 enteric fever. The adulterated milk and butter of the biz^r 
 are one of the main causes of such diseases. The native 
 town, on the contrary, is a maze of squalid, pestilential lanes, 
 and the cultivated area presses up to the very skirts of the 
 settlement, and few open spaces are left The native rather 
 prefers his house to be closely huddled against that of his 
 neighbour. He believes that he is thus protected against 
 thieves ; he has no desire for privacy, and he is quite inured 
 to what we consider the chief nuisances of city life. He will 
 sleep soundly though pariah dogs bark round him from dusk 
 to dawn. To the annoyance of dust, smoke, and smells he is 
 absolutely callous. There is, again, a vast difference in this 
 respect between the old Imperial cities, like Agra, where 
 population has much decreased since Mughal times, and the 
 present outskirts have wide open spaces, the ruins of old 
 mansions, gardens surrounding stately tombs, like the Taj 
 Mahal, as compared with a religious town like Benares. In 
 the latter sites are much more valuable, and there are no 
 stretches of waste land in the vicinity occupied by the 
 mouldering remains of the tombs, garden houses and 
 mansions of a nobility, the very names of whom have been 
 forgotten. 
 
 Thus to take the cities with a population of more than fifty 
 thousand — the most crowded native sites are Cawnpur and 
 Meerut, with a density of 187 and 167 per acre of area. The 
 nearest analogy to these cities, both of which are largely 
 industrial, is Liyerpool, with 113 souls to the acre. On the 
 other hand, Lucknow, with 46 persons to the acre, about 
 the density of Brighton or Bolton, owes its open spaces to 
 the palaces and gardens of the King and his nobility ; and 
 in Bahraich, a typical country town, there are only 19 people 
 
 P 22s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 to the acre, about the average of Bradford. As a rule, 
 the small country towns, which were never the seat of a large 
 resident aristocracy, are more closely crowded than the cities. 
 In Oudh, however, where many of the towns are of recent 
 creation, care was taken by our officers to restrict building 
 and provide open spaces to a much larger extent than in the 
 older settlements of the sister Province. To the west, again, 
 the town density, as is the case with villages, ranges much 
 higher than to the east. 
 
 But it does not follow that open spaces are an unmixed 
 benefit to a town unless sanitation be efficient An ill-kept 
 expanse devoted to the accumulation of rubbish and dedi- 
 cated, as so many places of the kind are, to the worship of 
 Cloacina is, to say the least of it, a very doubtful blessing, 
 and the resident of a closely-packed but well-swept slum 
 probably leads a healthier life. 
 
 It is unfortunate that, from the straggling character of 
 such settlements, it has been found impossible to procure 
 statistics illustrating the conditions of village life in the same 
 way. The best authorities suppose that the village density 
 cannot be much below 50 per acre (a little less than that of 
 Birmingham), which is about the lowest urban average. This 
 would suggest a greater chance of health and longevity in 
 rural life, and this is to some extent supported by the figures 
 which have been already given. But the villages lose much 
 of the advantage which they should possess in this respect 
 from the absence of all sanitary precautions and the want of 
 medical relief. 
 
 The question of house accommodation, so pressing in 
 Western lands, loses much of its importance in the East. 
 The Englishman always sleeps in his house, and occupies it 
 for a large part of his time ; the Oriental only occasionally 
 shuts himself up within four walls. His house is a store for 
 his property, and a place where he secludes his wife and her 
 grown-up daughters, if he has reached that grade of social 
 respectability, of which the leading indication is the seclusion 
 of his women folk. The peasant, with his family, spends 
 most of his time in the field ; the artisan, such as the weaver, 
 
 226 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 the potter, the carpenter, almost habitually works out of 
 doors. It is only in the drenching rain of autumn that, 
 the family crowds under the narrow thatch. In the sultry 
 summer nights, most of the male population drag their light 
 cots out of doors and sleep there, or roll themselves in a 
 sheet and rest anywhere out of the glare of the moonlight. 
 The streets of a country town present a weird sight in the 
 small hours of the morning when the sleepers crowd the 
 roadway, each wrapped in his white covering, like so many 
 corpses on the slabs of the Morgue. 
 
 In England, one of the best tests of a man's means is the 
 rent of the house he occupies. In India, the reverse is the 
 case. You will see a merchant, whose business transactions 
 are immense, balancing his books in a corner of a squalid 
 verandah, by the light of a glimmering oil lamp. To such a 
 man the plate-glass doors and mahogany desks of a European 
 counting-house represent so much frivolous extravagance. 
 Or the broken-down Pathan, who has fallen in the world 
 and owes more than he is worth, occupies the stately brick 
 mansion built by some prosperous ancestor, which his bank- 
 rupt successor has no means to maintain or repair. It has, 
 again, been one of the chief problems which our census 
 officials have attempted to solve, how to suggest a definition 
 of a house which will include the sweeper's hovel and the 
 case of the nest of families who, more or less detached, cluster 
 within the enclosure of the so-called joint family. 
 
 The result is that there is not much of interest to be 
 gathered from the house statistics. There are, it appears, 
 about 57 persons per house, as compared with 5-3 in 
 England, and the average number of occupants is slightly 
 in excess to the East as compared with the Western districts. 
 
 But the most important sociological facts are those in 
 connection with marriage, the dominant factor in all Oriental 
 life. First as to the marriage age. — At the last census, 1971 
 children were found to be married in the first year of life. 
 After that the numbers gradually rise, until we find 13,076 
 boys and 20,517 girls married under the age of four. The 
 important marriage age is between five and nine, when 433 
 
 227 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 per 10,000 of the male population of that age period and 
 999 of the female population are married. "Between ten 
 and fourteen nearly nine-tenths of the female population 
 pass into the marriage state; but considerably more than 
 half of the males remain unmarried. Between fifteen and 
 nineteen there are fifteen married females for one unmarried, 
 whilst at the end of the period only 60 per cent, of the 
 males have been married. By twenty-four practically the 
 whole of the female population have been married, almost 
 the whole of those unmarried at this and later ages being 
 women whose avocations preclude marriage, or whose physical 
 or mental health forbids it. Of men, considerably more 
 than a fourth are unmarried up to twenty-four, whilst an 
 appreciable but diminishing number remain unmarried 
 through all the subsequent age periods." ^ 
 
 The significance of these figures will become more apparent 
 from a comparison with English statistics. In 10,000 of the 
 whole population over the age of fifteen, there are 1702 males 
 and 150 girls single as compared with 3918 and 3674 in 
 England. Similarly with the proportion of married and 
 widowed of both sexes above the age of fifteen. In 10,000 
 of the people, there are in the Indian Province 7292 married 
 men and 1006 widowers ; in England, the corresponding 
 figures are 5532 and 550. So of women above fifteen there 
 are 7224 married in India against 5164 in England, and the 
 widows are as 2626 to 1 163. 
 
 These figures may seem to give some countenance to the 
 agitation against infant marriage. But these early marriages 
 are really nothing more than betrothals, and the cases in 
 which an immature girl cohabits with her husband are 
 happily most infrequent. When the pair are grown up, 
 there is always a Gauna or second marriage, after which 
 married life begins. 
 
 Again, the prevailing belief that nearly all Hindu widows 
 remain celibate for the rest of their days is utterly opposed 
 to the facts. Recent enquiries show that out of a population 
 of 40,000,000 of Hindus, 9,000,000, or 24 per cent, prohibit 
 
 1 Census Report, North-West Provinces, 1891, p. 246 sq. 
 228 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 widow marriage, while 30,000,000, or 76 per cent., both 
 permit and even encourage the practice. It need hardly be 
 said that widow marriage is freely permitted by Muham- 
 madans. As a matter of fact, among all but the very highest 
 castes, every young widow finds another mate, and the levi- 
 rate, or custom by which the younger brother-in-law takes 
 over the widow of his elder brother, widely prevails. This 
 rule of widow marriage is a most important factor in the 
 development of the country. It would seem, for instance, 
 that in very unhealthy tracts, such as Eastern Bengal, the 
 offspring of virgin brides is barely sufficient to make up for 
 the wastage by disease and maintain the population. In 
 such parts of the country, only those areas in which widow 
 marriage prevails show a rapidly increasing population. 
 
 In connection with the pressure of the population on the 
 soil, the question of the fecundity of the people is most im- 
 portant. Statistics do not bear out the conclusion that the 
 rate of increase is excessive, or even up to the European 
 standard. Assuming the reproductive period to lie for 
 women between the ages of fifteen and forty, we find an 
 average of 251 births per annum for each thousand wives, 
 as compared with the English average of 292. The rate of 
 increase is naturally lowest among those castes of which, 
 like the Banyas, the males lead a sedentary life and the 
 women are secluded. The highest fecundity is among the 
 forest tribes, and here the Bengal figures are most instructive. 
 Thus, the Orions, a DrSvidian race occupying the southern 
 hills, show among 20,000 people of both sexes 7704 children, 
 while Brahmans have only 5288.^ 
 
 We have hitherto said nothing about the occupations of 
 women and children. Among a large section of the culti- 
 vating tribes the women freely assist the men in field labour ; 
 in fact, the effectiveness of husbandry may be to a large 
 extent measured by the degree to which this is the case. 
 You will constantly see the wife of the Kurmi or Jit sowing 
 the seed grain as her husband ploughs, weeding or assisting 
 in irrigation by distributing the water from one little patch 
 
 ' Bengal Census Report, 1891, p. 175. 
 229 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 to another, if she does not take a more active share in the 
 work by helping to empty the well-bucket or raising the 
 %vater-lift. This the BrShman or RSjput woman is not 
 allowed to do, and her husband has to depend on expensive 
 and inefficient hired labour. Recent enquiries in Bihir show 
 that here the pressure of population has resulted in driving 
 the males to emigrate, and leaving the women to till the 
 fields at home, as is the case in some of those countries of 
 Europe where the pressure of the conscription is most severe. 
 On the contrary, the growth in wealth in Eastern Bengal, 
 and the extension of the influence of caste ideas, are causing 
 the women of Bengal Proper to withdraw more and more 
 from an active share in the employments of peasant life.'^ 
 
 On the whole, the peasant woman of Upper India has her 
 time fully occupied. She is obliged to let her children sprawl 
 in the sun and play at making mud pies while she milks the 
 cow, feeds the calves, picks pottage herbs in the field, collects 
 firewood, or makes the cow-dung into cakes for fuel. She 
 has to grind the wheat and barley, which is the chief food of 
 the household, husk the rice and millet, and do all the cook- 
 ing, besides taking her share in field work, and scaring the 
 parrots and monkeys from the ripening crops. If she has 
 any leisure, she can devote it profitably to ginning cotton or 
 spinning thread. If her husband be an artisan, she is able to 
 give him material assistance. In a weaver family she cleans 
 the thread or arranges the web ; for the potter she collects 
 and mixes the clay ; in all cases she does much of the labour 
 of carrying the manufactured goods for sale at the nearest 
 village fair or market. It is this hard monotonous labour 
 which, with the absence of medical aid in child-bearing, con- 
 verts in a few years the buxom village girl into a wrinkled 
 hag. 
 
 But it would be a mistake to suppose the wife of the 
 peasant to be nothing more than a drudge. On the con- 
 trary, she is an influential personage in the household, and 
 little is done without her knowledge and advice, whether it 
 is the selection of a husband for a girl, or the purchase of an 
 
 ' Bengal Census Report, 1891, p. 272. 
 230 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 ox, or a deal with the village banker. If she misconducts 
 herself, she has to endure hard language and sometimes 
 blows ; but if she is badly wronged the tribal council will 
 protect her, and on the whole her position is, perhaps, not 
 worse than that of her sisters in a similar grade of life in 
 other parts of the world. Polygamy, which seems so intoler- 
 able to the woman of the west, she looks on much more 
 calmly. It often happens that as she advances in years, and 
 finds the burden of household work beyond her strength, she 
 will encourage her husband to introduce a young widow into 
 the house who will share her burdens. 
 
 Children, as soon as they begin to grow up, can all be 
 usefully employed, and it is this which to a great degree 
 keeps down primary education. It is the children who do 
 most of the work of pasturing the cattle, collecting fuel and 
 manure, cutting grass for the buffalo. The begging castes 
 keep them constantly at work, and it is one cause of the 
 dexterity of the artisan that the boys are trained to labour 
 at a very early age. Some kinds of agriculture cannot be 
 carried on without them. It is a pleasant sight on a fine 
 morning in the cold weather to see a whole Kurmi or Kichhi 
 household at work in the opium field — men, women, and 
 children weeding, watering, puncturing the capsule and col- 
 lecting the drug. This is a much healthier life than that of 
 the city woman, who has much less liberty and enjoyment 
 of the open air. Her children, if more regularly educated, 
 are more exposed to the demoralising influence of the open 
 profligacy which is tolerated by native opinion. 
 
 This survey of rural life from its industrial side tends to 
 correct some current misconceptions. There is here little of 
 the calm of the mild-eyed, melancholy lotos eaters ; none of 
 that sensuous abandonment to the delights of a tranquil life 
 which we are wont to associate with the Oriental world. 
 The life of the peasant is one of ceaseless, monotonous toil, 
 among the lower ranks squalid and hopeless, a constant 
 struggle to win from adverse fate the very scantiest means 
 of keeping body and soul together. It is an existence which 
 has no room for the higher aims and ambitions, for the cul- 
 
 231 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 ture of patriotism, for speculation on the problems of the 
 future. But, on the other hand, it enforces an unwearied 
 industry and temperance of life, and it is compatible with a 
 good deal of simple charity and kindliness, and a ready 
 cheeriness which can find amusement in the veriest trifles. 
 
 Last of all he has the benign influence of Nature round 
 him. Here one can do nothing but quote once more the 
 words of Sir Ali Baba, which have become almost classical.^ 
 " God is ever with the cultivator in all the manifold sights 
 and sounds of this marvellous world of His. In that myste- 
 rious temple of the Dawn, in which we of noisy mess-rooms, 
 heated Courts and dusty offices are infrequent worshippers, 
 there he offers up his hopes and fears for rain and sunshine ; 
 there he listens to the anthems of birds we rarely hear, and 
 interprets auguries that for us have little meaning. The 
 beast of prey skulking back to his lair, the stag quenching 
 his thirst ere retiring to the depths of the forest, the wedge 
 of wild fowl flying with trumpet notes to some distant lake, 
 the vulture hastening in heavy flight to the carrion that 
 night has provided, the crane flapping to the shallows, and 
 the jackal shuffling along to his shelter in the nullah, have 
 each and all their portent to the initiated eye. Day with its 
 fierce glories brings the throbbing silence of intense life, and 
 under flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of Nature, 
 the cultivator lives his day-dream. What there is of squalor 
 and of drudgery and carking care in his life melts into a brief 
 oblivion, and he is a man in the presence of his God, with 
 the holy stillness of Nature brooding over him. With length- 
 ening shadows comes labour and a reawakening. The air is 
 once more full of all sweet sounds, from the fine whistle of 
 the kite, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure 
 depths of air, to the stir and buzzing of little birds and 
 crickets among the leaves and grass. The egret has resumed 
 his fishing in the tank where the rain is stored for the poppy 
 and sugar-cane fields, the sandpipers bustle along the margin, 
 or wheel in little silvery clouds over the bright water, the 
 gloomy cormorant sits alert on the stump of the dead date 
 
 1 Aberigh Mackay, Twenty-one days in India, p. 131. 
 232 
 
THE PEOPLE : THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 tree, the little black divers hurry in and out of the weeds, 
 and ever and anon shoot under the water in hot quest of 
 some tiny fish ; the whole machinery of life and death is in 
 full play, and our villager shouts to the patient oxen and 
 lives his life. Then gradual darkness and food with homely 
 joys, a little talk, a little tobacco, a few sad songs and kindly 
 sleep." 
 
 233 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 THE materials for a survey of the religious and social life 
 of the people are so ample that it is extremely difficult 
 to bring them in an intelligible way within the limits of a 
 sketch like the present In dealing with religion it must 
 also be understood that in working our way through the 
 intricate jungle of existing beliefs various difficulties must be 
 encountered. It is all but impossible to frame a working 
 definition of a Hindu : Musalmans of the lower class cling to 
 many of the beliefs of the faith from which they were origin- 
 ally drawn ; everywhere in the lower strata the forms of faith 
 known as Brahmanical or animistic constantly overlap. On 
 the social side there is the equal absence of a standpoint 
 from which a general survey can be made. 
 
 To estimate roughly the prevalence of the two great re- 
 ligions — Brahmanism and Islam in northern India — we find 
 that comparing the North-West Provinces with the Panjib, 
 for 10,000 of the people, there are in the former 8579 
 Brahmanists and 1380 Musalmans; in the PanjSb 3771 of 
 the former and 5575 of the latter. The most Hindu Pro- 
 vinces are in rotation — Oudh, the North- West Provinces, 
 Bengal, and the Panjab ; in the proportion of Musalmans the 
 series runs — Panjab, Bengal, North-West Provinces, and 
 Oudh. 
 
 Taking these Provinces alone, we find that out of a popu- 
 lation of about 47 millions, rather over 40 millions are so- 
 called Hindus: nearly 6^ millions, or 13 per cent., are 
 Musalmans. This leaves only 178,000 followers of other 
 creeds, of whom nearly half are Jainas ; next come 58,000 
 Christians, 22,000 modern Theistic Aryas, and 11,000 Sikhs. 
 
 The other creeds may be dismissed in a few words. Budd- 
 
 234 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 hism has absolutely disappeared from the Plains, leaving as 
 the sole representatives of what was once the dominant faith 
 only about 1400 believers, nearly all of whom are residents 
 of the upper Himalayan valleys and have joined the impure 
 worship of Devi according to the Tantric form to the purer 
 doctrines of the Mahiyana school of Buddhism. Besides 
 these there are some 350 PSrsi shopkeepers and sixty Jews. 
 
 Before discussing the two main religions which make up 
 the faith of the people, it may be convenient to dispose first 
 of those which are of less, numerical importance. 
 ' Jainism, the religion of about 85,000 people, has its main 
 seats in Western India. It is believed to be to a large ex- 
 tent an offshoot of Buddhism ; its votaries are chiefly found 
 among the trading classes; its main principles are the 
 reverence paid to a body of holy men, who by long and 
 rigorous devotion have raised themselves to a state of per- 
 fection, and are known as Jina or " conqueror " or Ttrathan- 
 kara — " those who have passed through the pilgrimage of life 
 and attained Nirvana, or absorption into the divine essence." 
 Besides an elaborate temple ritual, their religious duties are 
 for the most part confined to a strict regard for the sanctity 
 of animal life : and a simple code of morality which incul- 
 cates the speaking of the truth, honesty, chastity, temperance, 
 and the repression of immoderate desire 
 
 The high average of wealth among its members has en- 
 couraged the erection of splendid temples and a most ornate 
 ritual. To the west of India they appear to show a desire, 
 not as is the case in these Provinces, to emphasise the dis- 
 tinction of their religion from Brahmanism, with which they 
 have in some places come into conflict by their custom of 
 parading the images of their deities through the towns at 
 certain festivals. But, as has been elsewhere observed, the 
 demarcation between the two faiths does not constitute a bar 
 to intermarriage. 
 
 They are divided into two main sects — the Swetambara 
 and Digambara, between whom, irrespective of minor dis- 
 tinctions, the main difference lies in the former wearing white 
 garments and clothing their idols, while the latter worship 
 
 23s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 "sky-clad " or naked gods, and now conform to the laws of 
 decency by insisting on their ascetics wearing ochre-coloured 
 robes and abandoning the ancient habit of nudity. These 
 last are practically the only branch found in this part of the 
 country. 
 
 Sikhism is found only as the religion of immigrants from 
 the Panjab, most of whom serve in our army and police. 
 
 The Jews are numerically insignificant It is only in 
 Bombay and Cochin that they attain to any importance. 
 Possibly the fact that the place of merchants and traders 
 is already occupied by most astute indigenous races has 
 prevented the migration of Russian and Polish Jews to 
 India. 
 
 The same is the case with the Zoroastrians or Parsis, who 
 increase slowly. "The community," writes Mr Baines,^ "is 
 a small one, and in spite of its general prosperity and the 
 probable infusion of fresh blood from time to time from local 
 sources, the marriage field is a restricted one, and domestic 
 ceremonial, which is very strictly observed, weighs with 
 undue severity on the weaker sex. Hence, especially among 
 the wealthier families, who all belong to the professional and 
 higher commercial classes, there seems to be a tendency 
 towards deterioration in both prolificity and physique, which 
 is not counteracted, as in the case of the middle and rural 
 classes, by outdoor life and the relaxation of caste rule 
 among the latter, or by the energy and success with which 
 the former have of late betaken themselves to athletic sports 
 and exercises." 
 
 The Aryas, though numbering only 25,000, are important 
 from the high standard of intelligence of the majority of 
 the adherents and the active propaganda which they have 
 adopted. The principles of their great teacher, D^yanand, 
 who died in 1883, inculcate a reversion to the primitive 
 Vedic faith, the adoration of one God, abstracted from all 
 ideas of shape and form. " Socially," .writes Mr Baillie,^ 
 " they condemn infant marriage and endeavour to promote 
 
 ' Indian Census Report, p. 177. 
 ^ Census Report, North-Wat Prmiinces,'\. 189. 
 236 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 education, and in particular, female education. They ac- 
 knowledge the existence of caste and the social relations 
 dependent upon it, but deny the superiority of one caste to 
 another in religious matters.; They are strict vegetarians in 
 theory and practice, and condemn the taking of the life of 
 any animal for the purpose of food. Cow-killing is con- 
 demned in particular, not on account of any special reverence 
 due to the cow, but on account of its usefulness being more 
 than ordinary. Theoretically, the SamSj keeps itself apart 
 from all religious movements, but it is doubtful whether 
 individual preachers have adhered to the spirit of the rules 
 of the society on the subject." Except through its advocacy 
 of the cow cultus, " which it seems incredible should affect 
 the beliefs of reasoning and educated men," it is doubtful if 
 the religion has much prospect of permanence or extension. 
 
 Passing on to Christianity — the number of the European 
 branch varies according to the movements of European 
 residents and troops, and the increasing tendency of 
 Eurasians to record themselves as Europeans. Of 3S,ooa 
 European Christians, three-fifths are recorded as members 
 of the Church of England, nearly one-fourth are Roman 
 Catholics, and rather more than one-tenth belong to the 
 various Nonconformist bodies. 
 
 The statistics of the Native Christian body are more 
 remarkable. They have, according to the last census, in- 
 creased in ten years from 13 to 23,000 — a rise of j6 per 
 cent. The increase is almost entirely confined to the 
 members of the Episcopal Methodist Church in Rohilkhand. 
 It is claimed that the increase has been even greater, and 
 that, owing to the prejudices of enumerators, the statistics 
 do not adequately represent the actual progress which has 
 been made. But, according to the records of the Missionary 
 body, out of 25,000 persons shown as members of the Church 
 no less than 16,000 persons were probationers. "It is 
 certain," writes Mr Baillie,i « that the Christian community 
 is in a transition stage, and more than probable that the 
 Missionaries have got ahead of their enquirers in including 
 1 Censiis Report, North-West Provinces, i. 187. 
 237 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 them amongst the Christian community." On the other 
 hand the Collector of Budaun seems to have no doubts in 
 the matter. He ascribes the large increase mainly to "a 
 keener appreciation on the part of low caste people of the 
 social and material advantages to be obtained by professing 
 Christianity : and to greater energy on the part of the 
 Missionaries, whose exertions will probably bring Govern- 
 ment face to face with a very serious social problem before 
 many years are over." It will be interesting to test how far 
 this exceptional rate of progress can be maintained. 
 
 Before discussing the two great religions of the people, it 
 may be well to follow Mr Ibbetson ^ in his review of their 
 external characteristics. The Hindu and Jaina believe in 
 their respective Shistras or Scriptures ; the Buddhist in the 
 Tripitika or " triple basket '' ; the Sikh in the Adi Granth ; 
 the Musalman in the Koran. Hindu, Sikh, and Jaina 
 usually pray facing the east, never the south ; the Musal- 
 man turns towards Mecca. The first three worship in 
 temples, the last in a mosque. The Hindu, Sikh, and Jaina 
 have Brahman Levite priests ; the Buddhist celibate monks ; 
 the Musalman a ministrant drawn from his own congregation. 
 The Hindu venerates the cow, and will not as a rule kill 
 animals, and sometimes abstains from meat ; the Sikh is 
 even more faithful to the cow, but kills and eats most other 
 animals ; the Musalmin loathes the pig and dog, but here 
 his prejudice connected with animals ends: the Buddhist 
 and Jaina scrupulously protect animal life. All except the 
 vagrant, outcast tribes reject carrion and vermin as food. 
 The Sikh refuses tobacco, but uses other narcotics and ardent 
 spirits ; the Hindu may use all ; the Musalman rejects in- 
 toxicants. The Hindu and Jaina shave their heads, leaving 
 a scalp-lock ; the Sikh allows the hair of his head and face 
 to remain untrimmed ; the Musalman never shaves his 
 beard ; he often shaves his head, but keeps no scalp-lock. 
 The Hindu, Sikh, and Jaina button their coats to the right, 
 the Musalman to the left. The male Hindu or Jaina wears 
 a loin-cloth, the Sikh short drawers reaching to the knee, the 
 ^ Panj&b Census Report, 1 88 1, p. 102. 
 238 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 Musalmin long drawers or a loin-cloth arranged like a kilt. 
 The Hindu and Buddhist special colours are red and saffron, 
 and the former abominates indigo blue ; the Sikh wears blue 
 or white and detests saffron ;/the Musalman's colour is indigo 
 blue, and he will not wear red. , ■ The Hindu or Jaina may cook 
 in, but may not eat out of, an earthen vessel which has been 
 already used for that purpose ; his earthen vessels may be 
 ornamented with stripes, and those of metal will be of brass 
 or bell metal ; a MusalmSn may use an earthen vessel over 
 and over again to eat from, but it must not be striped, and 
 his metal vessel is usually of copper ; the Sikh follows the 
 Hindu in the main, but is not so particular. The Hindu and 
 Sikh practise daily ablutions ; the Musalman and Buddhist 
 do not bathe of necessity. 
 
 As regards other social observances, the Hindu. Jaina, and 
 Sikh marry by circumambulation of the sacred fire ; the 
 Musalman by formal consent of the parties asked and given 
 before witnesses. The Musalman practises circumcision, 
 while the Sikh has a baptism of initiation and a ceremony 
 of communion. The Hindu, Jaina, and Sikh as a rule bum, 
 the Musalmin buries, the Buddhist buries or exposes his 
 dead. While, subject to caste rules, a Musalman will eat 
 and drink without scruple from the hands of a Hindu, no 
 Hindu will either take food or water from a Musalmin, nor 
 will he smoke with a member of a strange caste. This is, 
 of course, only a general sketch, and the variance of social 
 usage among different castes is infinite. There is no com- 
 munion of custom between the Brahman on the one hand 
 and the sweeper or nomad gipsy on the other ; the meaner 
 Musalmin tribes, comparatively recent converts from Hindu- 
 ism, retain many of the customs and prejudices of the castes 
 from which they sprang. 
 
 How to frame a working definition of a Hindu has long 
 been a vexed problem to Indian sociologists. The term 
 embraces in popular acceptance the most punctilious disciple 
 of pure Vedantism, the agnostic youth of our Universities, 
 the rude hillman who is quite catholic in his diet, the Brahman 
 whose food is defiled if the shadow of an unbeliever passes over 
 
 239 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 it, the Dom who will eat carrion and the leavings of almost 
 any other caste. Some bury the corpse, some cremate, some 
 fling it into running water. Some worship Siva, Vishnu, 
 Devi, and a host of other deities, some deified worthies, some 
 bow before a fetish, deities of mountain or river, the god of 
 cholera or small-pox, the snake or the tiger, the cow or the 
 tree. To attempt to frame a definite creed from the Shastras 
 is out of the question, nor can any clear line be drawn 
 between the Brahmanic and the Animistic faiths. We know 
 clearly enough who is a Musalman and who is a Christian, 
 but the faith of the low class Musalmin is largely made up of 
 Hindu beliefs, and the low class Hindu has what is almost a 
 special creed of his own; The practical result is that for the 
 purposes of religious statistics we are obliged to strike out 
 first the members of fairly recognisable religions, and we 
 call every one else a Hindu. 
 
 It would be difficult to suggest an analogy for such a state 
 of things as this. The Church of England, to take a common 
 example, is notorious for its toleration of minor differences 
 of belief, and the Anglican or Ritualist, the Broad Church 
 and the Evangelical sections all find shelter within her fold ; 
 but Hinduism is even more comprehensive, and the contrast 
 between the beliefs and practices of the more extreme parties 
 of the English Church is a trifle compared with the gulf which 
 is fixed between the orthodox Pandit and the hillman, gipsy 
 or sweeper. It is this receptivity, this toleration, which has 
 made Brahmanism what it is, the faith of over two hundred 
 millions of the Indian people. 
 
 It is, then, all but impossible to analyse in any intelligible 
 way the beliefs of the forty millions of so-called Hindus. 
 The natural cleavage line is between Brihmanism and 
 Animism, and it has been found possible on this basis to 
 define the religious beliefs of eastern and southern India, but 
 in northern India this distinction is unworkable. Most of the 
 menial and hill tribes profess theoretically a belief in the 
 Brahmanical pantheon ; at the same time even the higher 
 classes are more or less influenced by the Animistic beliefs of 
 the lower races. 
 
 240 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 But here it is necessaty to define the terms which have 
 been used. Brahmanism, to use the words of Sir Monier- 
 Williams,^ " is a reflection of the composite character of the 
 Hindus, who are not one people but many. It is based on 
 the idea of universal receptivity. It has ever aimed at 
 accommodating itself to circumstances, and has carried on 
 the process of adaptation through more than three thousand 
 years. It has first borne with, and then, so to speak, swal- 
 lowed, digested, and assimilated something from all creeds ; 
 or, like a vast, hospitable mansion, it has opened its doors to 
 all comers : it has not refused a welcome to applicants of 
 every grade from the highest to the lowest, if only willing to 
 acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Brahmans and 
 adopt caste rules." 
 
 As for Animism it may be well to adopt the last recog- 
 nised definition — that of Dr Tiele ^ — " Animism is the belief 
 in the existence of souls or spirits, of which only the powerful 
 — those on which man feels himself dependent and before 
 which he stands in awe — acquire the rank of divine beings 
 and become objects of worship. These spirits are conceived 
 as moving freely through earth and air, and, either of their 
 own accord, or because conjured by some spell, and thus 
 under compulsion, appearing to men (Spiritism). But they 
 may also take up their abode, either permanently or tempor- 
 arily, in some object, whether lifeless or living it matters not : 
 and this object, as endowed with higher power, is then wor- 
 shipped or employed to protect individuals or communities 
 (Fetishism). Spiritism, essentially the same as what is now 
 called Spiritualism, must be carefully distinguished from 
 Fetishism, but can only rarely be separated from it" 
 
 The classification of these beliefs adopted by Mr Baillie is 
 far from satisfactory ; but nothing better is available at pre- 
 sent. There are, to begin with, about a million and s half 
 people who were unable to record which deity they wor- 
 shipped. This category should certainly be much larger. 
 Next come nearly four millions classed as Monotheistic; be- 
 
 ^ Br&hnumUm and Hinduism, 57. 
 
 ''Quoted by Baines, Indian Census Report, 157. 
 
 Q 241 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 cause they profess to believe in a single god — Iswar or 
 Brahma. Following these we find about half a million who 
 describe themselves as followers of the earlier Vedic faith, 
 worshippers of the Sun and other powers of Nature. We 
 then come to rather more definite beliefs — seven and a 
 quarter millions worship Vishnu or one of his many forms ; 
 nearly eight and a half millions adore Siva ; ten millions the 
 Saktis or female energies. The seventh class, with over six 
 and a half millions, is a very mob. Over a third of them 
 worship Muhammadan saints ; about a fourth special deities 
 of the menial races : the remainder pay reverence to the god- 
 lings of disease, the snake, the ghosts of persons who have 
 died a violent death, special caste or ancestral deities, demons, 
 godlings of village, wood or river. The eighth class includes 
 worshippers of sacred places, deified devotees and miscel- 
 laneous deities of the Puranas, the Scriptures of the neo- 
 Brahmanism. These number about a third of a million, and 
 last come nearly two millions of professed devotees, of whom 
 the great majority reverence Vishnu in some form or other. 
 
 The brain aches in exploring such a maze as this. The 
 best parallel to it is perhaps the history of Mediaeval Italy. 
 " Can any man living," asks Dr Freeman,^ " repeat — we do 
 not say all the tyrants of Rimini or Faenza, but all the Popes, 
 all the Doges, all the Lords, Dukes and Marquesses of Milan 
 and Ferrara ? It would need a faculty savouring as much of 
 Jedediah Buxton as of Niebuhr, to say without book how 
 many times Genoa became subject to Milan and how many 
 times to France." This is pretty much the position of the 
 student of Popular Religion in northern India. 
 
 But, in truth, all this pretence at elaboration is misplaced 
 in dealing with such a vague entity as the popular faith. 
 Even in the higher strata there is no more certainty. It is 
 little use defining a man as a Vaishnava if we know that 
 on occasion he will worship other gods as well — will rever- 
 ence the cow or the ptpal tree. Mother Ganges or the goddess 
 of smallpox. All that it is possible to do is to attempt to 
 describe briefly what the villager on the one hand and the 
 ' Essays, Second Series, p. 4. 
 242 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 more or less educated man of higher caste on the other 
 believes. 
 
 To begin with the peasant. Of transmigration, that most 
 elaborate theory which endeavours to account for the ap- 
 parent inconsistence of Providence in allowing the righteous 
 to be afflicted in this world while the sinner flourishes as 
 a green bay tree, he does not know much. He may have 
 perchance heard that if he does some impious act he may be 
 reborn hereafter as a flea or a frog, while if he feeds Brah- 
 mans and behaves as a respectable Hindu ought to do, he 
 may become a Raja by and by. But this theory of the 
 future hardly influences his life in this world. So too he has 
 a vague idea that there is a Heaven, or rather several of 
 them, a place of enjoyment somewhere beyond the burning 
 Ghat, and a Hell where the wicked, in other words those who 
 are not Hindus and in particular eaters of beef, are punished. 
 But he knows that if he be a good Hindu, in his sense of the 
 word, he will surely gain the one and avoid the other ; and 
 he has the comforting belief that practically all his race join 
 the sainted dead in the other world : that minor lapses from 
 morality, among which he counts the violation of most of the 
 Ten Commandments, do not matter much. Parameswar 
 would never dream of sending such a respectable person as 
 himself to a place of torment. 
 
 So too he thinks that prayer and worship do not much 
 affect a man's prospects in this way. They are of use to 
 ward off the dangers from evil-minded gods, ghosts, demons 
 and their kindred, who are always besetting him in this life 
 and need constant propitiation and, in particular, the friendly 
 influence of the higher gods to keep them from doing active 
 mischief Prayer and worship are useful too because they 
 may bring him some temporal blessing at the expense of his 
 neighbour. 
 
 Hence the service of the gods tends to turn into a sort of 
 bargaining, in which the worshipper expects full value for 
 his devotion. A benevolent deity may sometimes be over- 
 reached ; but on the other hand the worshipper must do 
 nothing which would give the god an excuse for evading his 
 
 243 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 part of the contract Above all, there must be an intercessor 
 between the man and the god, a pious Brahman priest who 
 is held responsible that the poor human creature gets his 
 rights. 
 
 Hence his moral horizon is decidedly limited. It is good 
 to be charitable and feed a Brihman ; it is right to be kindly 
 to a clansman ; other people can take care of themselves. 
 It is wrong to tell a lie unless to benefit yourself or to 
 avoid punishment or to help a relation or friend ; to cheat 
 another unless you gain a good deal by doing so, or because 
 your friend would certainly cheat you if he got the chance ; 
 to receive a bribe without giving the promised consideration 
 for it To take life is bad, particularly when the British 
 Government is looking ; it is excusable if your enemy have 
 taken your land or your wife, or kills a cow. A woman is a 
 very inferior creature, and you may wrong her with impunity ; 
 with a man you must be more careful. Nothing is worse 
 than to lose your caste, to eat with a sweeper or to touch an 
 impure person. Adultery is a comparatively venial matter 
 unless the woman be of low csiste, when it is really serious. 
 If your enemy wrongs you the safest mode of revenge is to 
 get up a false case against him and let the SirkS.r do the rest. 
 The Penal Code is a useful summary of things which it is 
 dangerous to do. On social matters and questions of pure 
 morality the final tribunal is the caste council. 
 
 He has some sort of undefined belief in a single Providence 
 whose benevolence is mainly shown in restricting malignant 
 heavenly powers from doing mischief This belief is perhaps 
 most general among Brahmans on the one hand and 
 Chamars on the other, who have come under the influence 
 of a curiously powerful monotheistic propaganda. It is in 
 the main the result of the preaching of teachers like Rae 
 Das or Kabir Das ; but there can be little doubt that this 
 form of teaching has been largely stimulated by Christian 
 influence. 
 
 The peasant knows little or nothing of the greater gods of 
 the faith. He will, it is true, bow at their shrines, and he 
 has their names sometimes on his lips. But he trusts more 
 
 244 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 in the host of godlings who inhabit the pile of stones under 
 the sacred tree which forms the village shrine. And besides 
 this the village godling is a more complacent divinity. As 
 Sir A. Lyall says, you can hardly ask an incarnation of 
 Vishnu or Siva to help you to recover a lost Lota or to 
 smite your neighbour's cow with the murrain ; but these are 
 services which the godling will perform if he be suitably 
 approached. 
 
 In the belief of the rustic nothing is the result of natural 
 laws. He would live for ever were it not that some devil or 
 witch plots against his life. It is they who send the cholera, 
 the fever, the rheumatism. No miracle is beyond his belief; 
 in fact, the controlling power normally wbrks through miracle. 
 In omens, in the power of the astrologer to ensure the success 
 of his enterprises by fixing a lucky date for the first move, 
 he has complete confidence. The "cunning man," as he 
 calls him, can charm away a fever ; he can counteract the 
 enemy who casts the Evil Eye upon his children and oxen. 
 Most cranky old women are more or less adepts in witch- 
 craft. To avert these and similar troubles the village devil- 
 priest is always prepared with a suitable remedy. Not that 
 he professes himself infallible ; this he must indeed admit 
 not to be so from sad experience. But he is a poor man, he 
 tells his patient ; he does his best, and if a really powerful 
 devil whose influence is beyond his powers takes the field, 
 he is not to blame. 
 
 Above all the means of religious advancement the peasant 
 values a periodical visit to some sacred shrine or bathing 
 place. From the very soil of such a seat of the gods a divine 
 influence exudes and sheds its blessings upon him. The 
 purification of his body in the cleansing waters is represented 
 by an allegory as the purification of his soul from sin, and 
 by this he accumulates a store of religious merit which lasts 
 till his next pilgrimage. It is also the only holiday of the 
 village woman, the only release from the drudgery and self- 
 repression in which her life is summed up. So they may be 
 seen marching on for days, packed in a rumbling cart which 
 crawls for a week at a time from stage to stage in the glare 
 
 245 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 and dust, or hustled into a truck on the railway where the 
 train creeps slowly to its destination. But this is no hard- 
 ship to people whose sense of the value of time is only 
 partially developed. At last when he sees the golden domes 
 of Benares glittering on the horizon or when he plunges into 
 the healing water his soul is filled with a belief no less 
 steadfast, an enthusiasm quite as exalted as that which draws 
 the European pilgrim to the shrine at Lourdes, or elevates 
 his spirit as he catches the first glimpse of St Peter's across 
 the wide Campagna. 
 
 And when the bath is over and the circuit of the holy 
 places finished, there is the sight of the dawdling crowds of 
 happy visitors, and the expenditure of a few pence in glass 
 bangles or an earring, or the haggling over the purchase 
 of a new Lota and a few yards of coarse calico give the 
 women folk as complete satisfaction as a day's shopping 
 does to the English lady. 
 
 Among the higher classes there are, as we have seen, only 
 a few who believe in the form of worship derived from the 
 Vedas or from Hinduism prior to its modern revival in the 
 Purinas. The vast majority are divided in the threefold 
 cultus of Siva, Vishnu, and the Saktis. It would, however, 
 be a mistake to suppose that there is a distinct line of 
 cleavage between these beliefs ; on the contrary they are 
 complements of each other. 
 
 Saivism, as Sir Monier Williams has explained it, is a 
 faith based on " the awe felt by human beings in the presence 
 of the two mutually complementary forces of disintegration 
 and reintegration ; while the worship of the personal god 
 Vishnu, in his descents upon earth in human form, is nothing 
 but the expression of the very natural interest felt by man 
 in his own preservation, and in the working of the physical 
 forces which resist dissolution." 
 
 The Saivas, then, who by the returns comprise nearly one- 
 fifth of the whole Hindu population, worship Siva, or, as he 
 is often called, Mahadeva, " the great god " under the form 
 of the Linga, or conical stone, which in its primary form 
 represents the regenerative power of Nature, but to the vast 
 
 246 
 
HARIVVASA VAISHNAVA FAKIR. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 mass of the people has no meaning except that of a fetish 
 which is occupied by and represents the deity. His attri- 
 butes have never been better described than in the powerful 
 lines of Sir A. Lyall — 
 
 " The god of the sensuous fire 
 That moulds all Nature in forms divine, 
 The symbols of death and of man's desire, 
 The springs of change in the world are mine, 
 The organs of birth and the circlet of bones, 
 And the light loves carved on the temple stones. 
 
 I am the lord of delights and pain, 
 Of the pest that killeth, of fruitful joys : 
 I rule the currents of heart and vein : 
 A touch gives passion, a look destroys : 
 In the heat and cold of my lightest breath. 
 In the might incarnate of Lust and Death.'' 
 
 He has many forms — that of the primeval Creator, the 
 chief of ascetics, who has won lordship over the gods by the 
 rigour of his austerities, the king of life, the source of the 
 vivifying influence of Nature. As embodying the functions 
 of the Vedic Rudra, he is lord of death and the active agent 
 in dissolution ; as Siva, " the auspicious," he constructs after 
 destruction. He is the chief Brahman deity, and paramount 
 in places like Benares, where the Hindu Levite class are 
 most influential. 
 
 There is another consideration which commends his worship 
 to the economical pejisant. His cultus demands none of the 
 sensuous splendour of ritual which that of Vishnu requires. 
 There is none of the elaborate adornment, dressing, and feed- 
 ing of the image which are practised in the shrines dedicated 
 to Vishnu in his forms of Krishna or Rama. A few flowers, 
 a little water poured over his fetish, are all that he needs. 
 
 On the contrary, the Vaishnava cultus, partly from the 
 opportunities which it offers for magnificent display, partly 
 from the absence of blood-oflferings, which commends it to a 
 class deeply influenced by the Buddhistic reverence for the 
 sanctity of life, is more popular among the rich merchants of 
 the towns. Here the form which the worship usually, takes 
 
 247 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 is that of the adoration of the godhead in one of his many 
 Avatiras or incarnations — as Rima, the hero of the Rama- 
 yana, with his spouse, Sita, the type of wifely virtue; as 
 Narasinha, the man lion who delivered the world from a 
 demon Hiranya-kasipu, the persecutor of his pious son Prah- 
 lada, because he faithfully worshipped Vishnu ; as Para- 
 surama, " Rama with the axe," who freed the Brahmans from 
 the arrogant rule of the Kshatriyas ; as Krishna, who was 
 possibly the tribal deity of the confederation of Rajput septs 
 in the neighbourhood of Mathura, the chief seat of his 
 worship. Krishna is the Hindu form of that veneration of 
 youth and manly beauty which is so common in the history 
 of the world's religions. He and his consort Radha, with 
 the Gopis or cowherd maids, with whom the deity sported in 
 the green woods of the land of Braj, represent Hinduism in 
 its most sensuous form. 
 
 The recorded worshippers of Vishnu number about three 
 and three-quarter millions, among whom the believers in 
 Rama, Krishna, and the deified monkey Hanuman are most 
 numerous. 
 
 In quite a different plane is the Sakta worship of Devi- 
 Durga, the consort of Siva. This worship is based on that 
 form of the Puranas known as the Tantras, by which every 
 kind of supernatural faculty and mystic craft is associated 
 with her. She delights in blood sacrifice, and her shrines, 
 which, unlike those of Siva or Vishnu, are not found in the 
 main centres of Hinduism or at its most holy places, but 
 are hidden away in remote jungles, or associated with the 
 mountain worship special to her, reek with the blood of 
 victims. Such are those in honour of the Vindhya-vasini 
 Devi, the patron goddess of the Vindhyan range at Bind- 
 hachal, near Mirzapur, and Devi Patan in the Gonda forests. 
 Most of her priests are not Brahmans, but drawn from the 
 lower castes, and it is in this branch of the faith that Hin- 
 duism seems to be most largely indebted to the indigenous 
 idolatries. 
 
 But this form of worship has even a darker side than this. 
 It is associated with horrid traditions of human sacrifice, 
 
 248 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 which even now is occasionally reported to occur in the 
 wilder and more secluded corners of the land, and with the 
 foul abominations of what is known as the Bjimmirgi or 
 left-hand worship of the goddess. This is the most loath- 
 some side of the popular belief, and so far from showing 
 signs of disappearance under the influence of enlightenment, 
 it is to Bengali influence that much of its popularity in 
 northern India must be attributed. And here the weighty 
 words of M. Constant, in his work on Roman Polj^heism, 
 represent the exact state of the case : ^ " Des rites ind^cens 
 peuvent etre pratiques par un peuple religieux avec une 
 grande puret6 de cceur. Mais quand I'incr^dulit^ atteint 
 ces peuples, ces rites sont pour lui la cause et la pr6texte 
 de la plus r^voltante corruption." 
 
 We can thus in a manner trace the evolution of the popular 
 faith through all its successive stages. We begin with the 
 sacred grove of the Drividians, the trees of which are reserved 
 as an abode for the wood spirits dispossessed as the jungle 
 is cut down. Next comes the cult of the sacred tree — the 
 banyan, the ptpal, and other varieties of the fig tribe. This 
 tree shrine is next supplemented by a pile of stones laid at 
 the base of the tree, which become the abode of the vague 
 collection of the vill^e guardian deities. In a further stage 
 this is replaced by a mud platform, on which the deity some- 
 times sits and receives the offerings of his worshippers. Here 
 the platform replaces the stone pile, but the thatch is erected 
 under or close to the sacred tree. A higher stage is marked 
 by the village shrine of the Plains — a small masonry building 
 with a platform. When a Lingam is placed on this platform, 
 it becomes a shrine of Mahadeva or Siva, or another rude 
 stone represents Devi. The final point is attained when the 
 stone is carved into an image, dressed in elaborate robes, and 
 laid to rest according to a sensuous ritual, as in the cult of 
 Krishna or Rama. 
 
 This prepares us to understand how all religion in India, 
 so far from being in a condition of stable permanence, is ever 
 undergoing some new form of development This process 
 
 ^ Quoted by Buckle, fftstory of Civilisation, ii. 303, note. 
 249 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 follows much the same course in the east as in the west. In 
 Europe the revival of letters and the study of ancient systems 
 of philosophy stimulated enquiry into the validity of theo- 
 logical conclusions, which had been hitherto accepted without 
 question. So, in India, the upheaval of society, resulting from 
 Musalman invasions and contact with foreign races, brought 
 home to the higher minds of Hinduism that the foundations 
 of their faith were laid on too narrow a basis ; and that its 
 only chance of permanence lay in widening its limits, in 
 giving a hope of salvation to the outcasts hitherto beyond 
 its limits, in checking the predominance of sacerdotalism and 
 purifying its ritual. 
 
 This was specially shown in the growth of sects, which 
 opened their doors to men of all castes, except the most 
 defiled. Of these we have prominent examples in the 
 Bishnois and Kabirpanthis. Kabir was a weaver by caste, 
 and, as- Mr Maclagan notes, the connection between weaving 
 and religion in northern India is as interesting as that of 
 cobbling and irreligion in England. With Vaishnavism the 
 reform took a course analogous to the spread of evangelical 
 theology in the West, which recognises as its main tenet the 
 theory of salvation by faith. But in India this belief had a 
 tendency to develop on sensuous lines. This is most clearly 
 shown in the case of the.modem Vallabhacharyas, who preach 
 spiritual union with the lord Krishna, with the implication 
 that life and body, soul and substance, wife and children 
 must be dedicated to his service. Thus, the leaders of this 
 sect have become the Epicureans of the Eastern world, and 
 claim the most absolute control over their female votaries, 
 with the natural result that serious scandals have occurred. 
 
 It may be true that in the official creeds of many of these 
 sectaries there is nothing objectionable ; that, on the contrary, 
 they encourage charity and purity, kindliness and simplicity 
 of life ; but the basis of the belief is sensuous, and in the 
 hands of disciples, imperfectly acquainted with the inner 
 mysteries of the cult, it tends to develop in the sensuous 
 direction. 
 
 While, then, in the Plains, the primitive animistic beliefs 
 
 250 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 have, among the upper classes, partially given way to this 
 neo-Brihmanism ; among the lower classes, and especially 
 the jungle tribes, the old religion still flourishes. While 
 these people have assumed the title of Hindus, many of them 
 accept the mediation of Br^hmans, some have reached the 
 stage when cow-killing is regarded as a sin, they still retain 
 much of their primitive beliefs. But a rapid proselytism of 
 these forest races is now in progress, and in a generation or 
 two there will remain little to distinguish them from the 
 menial village population of the more highly-cultivated tracts. 
 We can see before our own eyes the method in which this 
 conversion is being effected. There is nothing startling or 
 sudden about it, no persecution of the old faith, no immediate 
 displacement of it by the new form of belief. The revolution 
 is more in the social than in the religious direction. The 
 hillman, as he rises in the world, is told by the Brihman or 
 ascetic, who occasionally visits his hamlet, that it is not con- 
 sistent with his respectability that he should rely solely on 
 the Baiga or devil-priest when he is in trouble ; he ought 
 rather, if he values his position, to appoint a decent orthodox 
 chaplain, who will give him no trouble, will not be un- 
 pleasantly inquisitive about his domestic worship, and will 
 be quite satisfied if he be allowed to start the cultus of the 
 higher gods side by side with those of lower rank. 
 
 It is an essential part of this theory that if you keep a 
 domestic chaplain, you need not take any further trouble ; 
 it is quite sufficient to ensure the prosperity of your house- 
 hold and to satisfy the demands of public opinion if you 
 have the prayers said for you and the offerings made by a 
 qualified officiant. So, the old village shrine, with its mossy 
 stones, which shelter Mother Earth or the Snake gods or 
 some deified ancestor of the hamlet, is not disestablished. 
 Here the Baiga, as he always did, continues to offer a goat 
 or fowl when cholera or drought menace the prosperity of the 
 community ; here the women bring their simple offerings 
 after a baby is born or when small-pox prevails. The house- 
 holder sits contented at home, conscious that his Brihman 
 priest will see that the great gods are restrained from active 
 
 251 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 mischief. But it is to the old gods that he flies when any 
 really serious trouble impends over him. 
 
 By and by the village shrine loses its popularity, except 
 to the women folk and the menial classes of the community, 
 about whose religious welfare the Brahman priest displays 
 no concern ; and even the Baiga himself blossoms out into 
 an orthodox mystery man and becomes the Hindu Ojha or 
 wizard ; but he clings to the old paths, and takes with him 
 his familiar methods of repelling evil spirits and restraining 
 dangerous ghosts. 
 
 A remarkable instance of the receptivity of the popular 
 faith is shown in the worship by Hindus of Muhammadan 
 Saints and Martyrs, a form of religion which has, of course, 
 sprung up in quite historical times. It also shows the curious 
 feeling of resignation in the native mind. These men were 
 heroes of the early Musalman inroads ; they slaughtered 
 Brahmans and desecrated shrines ; but that this was per- 
 mitted by the gods shows that these persecutors of the faith 
 were semi-divine. The leader of the quintette of these Saints 
 is GhSzi Miyan, who, if he be really historical, lived in the 
 early part of the eleventh century. If we could realise 
 Englishmen now-a-days worshipping Taillefer, the minstrel, 
 and Odo of Bayeux, with Woden, Thor, and King Arthur 
 thrown in, we may partially understand the matter. Only 
 here there was no such fusion between the races as made 
 Normans and English one nation in a century or so. The 
 worship of these and other deified Muhammadan Saints 
 constitutes the faith of nearly two and a half millions of 
 Hindus. 
 
 These are followed by a very miscellaneous crowd. We 
 have, to begin with, a small congregation, who worship various 
 caste, tribal or ancestral godlings, one of the chief of whom 
 is Nathu Kahar, the patron of the litter-bearers, who is re- 
 vered because he is said to have been sacrificed by some 
 tyrant of the olden days under the foundations of a fort which 
 he was building. Next comes a collection of deified ghosts, 
 demons, forest or village godlings, and deities of sacred rivers 
 and holy places. These worshippers of godlings of disease 
 
 252 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 of hill and forest, Saints, ghosts and demons, amount to no 
 less than seven millions, or nearly one-sixth of the whole 
 population. ,,,k 
 
 But the mode which was'|employed to elicit the details of 
 religious belief at the last census, the only possible method, 
 tends to lower the numbers of the votaries of animistic beliefs 
 in their varied forms. There is a natural tendency, when a 
 man is asked what god he worships, to name some respect- 
 able deity of the recognised pantheon, in preference to some 
 hedge godling whose worship stamps the believer as a person 
 of mean social position. Hence, if we find nearly a sixth of 
 the people admitting that they practise this form of belief, 
 we may be quite certain that those who follow it are more 
 numerous. This at once disposes of the too commonly re- 
 ceived fallacy, that the great mass of the population worships 
 the orthodox gods, and, as a matter of fact, these old gods of 
 the Nature type have passed almost completely out of the 
 minds of the people. 
 
 Brahma, for instance, owns only 21,000 believers. Indra, 
 who once ruled the sky and gave the kindly rains, is now-a- 
 days only a petty roi fainiant, who has a heaven of his own, 
 where he spends his time listening to the songs and watching 
 the dances of the fairies who form his court. Varuna, the 
 great god of the firmament, is only a minor local godling, 
 who is invoked in seasons of drought. The worship of 
 Vishnu, Siva, the female energies, and Animism in their 
 myriad forms, now make up the faith of the vast bulk of the 
 people. 
 
 Before leaving modem Hinduism, a few words may be 
 said about the mendicant or ascetic classes, commonly 
 grouped together under the Musalmin name Fakir, or 
 beggar, who number nearly 2,000,000, or about one-twentieth 
 of the population. This body comprises a most hetero- 
 geneous mass of people. There are, first, the religious orders 
 pure and simple, many of whom are of the highest respect- 
 ability, live the lives of celibates in monasteries, and though 
 few of them are learned Sanskrit scholars, many have devoted 
 their lives to the study of theology. Out of this class is 
 
 253 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 drawn the Guru, or religious guide, whose functions must be 
 carefully distinguished from those of the Purohit, or family 
 priest While the latter is always a Brihman, and presides 
 over the domestic ceremonies of his clients, he seldom sup- 
 plies that religious guidance which is the task of the Guru. 
 By the Guru the Hindu, if inclined to a pious life, is initiated 
 into one or other of the great religious systems — as a Vaish- 
 nava, Saiva, or Sakta. To his Guru he resorts for advice 
 and sympathy in the graver crises of life. The influence of 
 these Gurus is almost wholly for good ; it is exerted in the 
 cause of temperance and morality; it is the one tendency 
 working in the direction of holiness which raises the Hindu 
 above the dead level of indifferentism or degradation of 
 thought and action which the low standard of polytheism 
 permits, if it does not encourage. 
 
 On the other hand, asceticism always has a tendency to 
 degrade the saint into the mountebank, and many of these 
 wandering ascetics are little more than lusty beggars who 
 traverse the country, extorting alms from the peasantry and 
 trading on their ignorant credulity, acting as exorcisors or 
 charmers of disease, often leading about a deformed cow in 
 whose name they demand charity. The morality of many 
 of them is of the lowest type, and some hardly make a 
 pretence of exercising any religious function whatever. 
 5ome act as priests in village shrines, and those who form 
 a recognised part of the village communal body are much 
 more respected than their dissolute, rapacious, nomadic 
 brethren. Our knowledge of the beliefs of the ascetic orders 
 is as yet far from complete. According to the statistics, only 
 about one in fiftj' out of 2,000,000 follows the Saiva cultus ; 
 the great mass of them are Vaishnavas. 
 
 Among the greater classes there is an immense number 
 of minor sub-divisions, distinguished either by some minute 
 differences of ritual, or by their special veneration for the 
 god in one of his myriad forms. Among the Saivas, the 
 distinction seems to lie more in matters of outward observ- 
 ance than of belief. They are no more distinct sects than 
 the Franciscans or Dominican friars are in the Christian 
 
 254 
 

 A liAMANlll FAKiK 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 world. Among the Vaishnava sects the predominant belief, 
 at least among the modern reformers, is salvation by faith 
 and the recognition of a single benevolent Providence. Here 
 the line of cleavage is found rather in the special worship of 
 one form of the godhead — ^as Krishna, Rimachandra, and so 
 on, or of the female manifestation as R4dha or Slta. Many 
 sects again follow the guidance of the teachers from whom 
 they take their name ; and the democratic influence is shown 
 by the fact that some of these leaders were drawn from the 
 inferior castes — KaWr, the teacher of the Kabirpanthis, was 
 a weaver; Sena was a barber; Namdeo, a cotton-printer; 
 Nabhaji, a Dom. 
 
 The reformation in Hindu belief) which was accomplished 
 under the guidance of these teachers, took place when the 
 Hindu world first came under foreign influence — the result 
 of the movement of the Musalmins into the Peninsula. It 
 may fairly be compared with the great religious reformation 
 which took place almost simultaneously in the Western 
 world. But the analogy is far from complete. The Indian 
 religious reformers were in no sense militant theologians like 
 Luther ; they were neither enthusiasts nor fanatics, but, as 
 a rule, quiet devotees, with no mission to overturn existing 
 religious institutions, no desire, to free the Church from 
 superstitious accretions and re-establish the purer faith of an 
 earlier age. They studiously avoided all idea of resisting 
 the established political government; their followers were 
 merely pupils, and not bound together by any rigid organisa- 
 tion. When the Saint died he seldom left a successor to 
 carry on his work. 
 
 Of these sects, that which includes the largest number of 
 followers is the Rimanandi, which takes its name from the 
 teacher Ramanand. They venerate Rama and his consort 
 Sita, reject the bondage of ceremonial observances and caste 
 so far that many of the heads of the minor sections are drawn 
 from the class of menials. Their leader Ramanand flourished 
 at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth 
 century, and their gospel is the vernacular translation of the 
 epic of the Ramayana by the poet Tulasi Das. This is 
 
 255 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 really the Bible of the Hindus of northern India, and to its 
 poetical beauty and freedom from licentiousness they owe 
 their moral superiority over the more sensuous devotees of 
 Radha and Krishna, not to speak of the Sakta worship of 
 Devi. 
 
 Next in numerical influence are the Nanakshahis, the Sikh 
 order founded by Nanak, who was born in the latter half of 
 the fifteenth century, a few years before Martin Luther. By 
 that time the Panjab, the birthplace of the teacher, had come 
 completely under the Musalman government, and the influence 
 of Islam over the teaching of Nanak was momentous. His 
 aim was to free the Vaishnavism of northern India from the 
 incubus of caste superstition and idolatry. But a reform 
 which had as its object the reconciliation of Hinduism with 
 Islam resulted in exciting the most bitter animosity between 
 the two religions. By the time of the fourth Guru, Ram Dis, 
 the movement assumed so much political importance and was 
 considered so dangerous to the ruling power that Aurangzeb 
 was roused to attempt to extirpate it by persecution, and thus 
 created that undying animosity of the Sikhs towards Muham- 
 madanism which was one of the main causes of the downfall 
 of the Empire. 
 
 The last of the more important Vaishnava sects is that of 
 the R&edisis, who take their name from their teacher Rae 
 Das, ^lio~was a tanner. This sect has a large number of 
 adherents among the Chamars or curriers of Upper India. 
 It is an interesting example of the reformed Vaishnavism, 
 extending to the despised menial races. They follow the 
 theistic form of belief venerating one omnipotent all-seeing 
 god to whom alone worship is due. 
 
 It is then of little practical use to speculate on the increase 
 or decrease of Hinduism because it is made up of such diverse 
 elements. The creed, for instance, of the reformed Vaishnava 
 sects, which inculcate the belief in a single Providence, a 
 respect for animal life, and an utter abhorrence of blood 
 sacrifice, has little or nothing in common with the S4kta 
 worship of Devi or the coarse animistic beliefs of the hillman 
 or village menial. All these people style themselves Hindus 
 
 256 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 but, except the fairly general reverence for the cow, there is 
 no link of connection. Hinduism may on paper, by the 
 inclusion of the animistic beliefs, show an overwhelming 
 superiority : but it is in no sense a creed like those of Europe, 
 which have a permanent constitution. It possesses no 
 functionary like a Pope who can prescribe a rule of faith and 
 thunder forth his anathemas over the Christian world. It has 
 no Bishops, no centre of union like Rome or Canterbury. It 
 holds no Convocation and has never dreamed of convening a 
 General Council. Nor is it at all likely that any powerful 
 teacher will ever arise to reconcile differences of faith and 
 ritual, to sweep away abuses and superstition and form a 
 Church with a well-defined creed and social or political aims. 
 On the contrary, the tendency seems to be rather towards the 
 multiplication of minor sects distinguished each from the 
 other by some quite trivial distinction which the uninitiated 
 outsider finds it very difficult to understand. 
 
 Looked at from the outside, it presents the character of a 
 mass of discordant sects : not animated by any desire for 
 propagandism or missionary effort within its own body ; quite 
 satisfied to permit each form of belief to develop on its own 
 lines, and absolutely free from any tendency of fanaticism 
 towards nonconformists. It is true that it actively converts 
 the heathen, bringing them within the pale of Br&hmanism 
 by inducing them to accept the ministrations of a Levite. 
 But here the effort stops and the convert is free to follow his 
 ancestral beliefs without any interference from his new priest. 
 Nor is this missionary effort regularly organised in any sense 
 of the word. There is no Missionary Society which collects 
 contributions from the orthodox and supports a staff of 
 teachers. This work it leaves to the solitary wandering 
 ascetic who wins converts to the faith not so much by any 
 actual preaching as by enforcing the social advantages which 
 result from acceptance of his message. 
 
 But though Hinduism shows no particular missionary 
 
 enei^y it has great powers of self-defence. It is most 
 
 tenacious of its rights and privileges ; it insists on a policy 
 
 of non-interference on the part of the State ; it is prompt to 
 
 Ts 257 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 resist any assault from without An institution which has 
 weathered such storms as the rise of Buddhism and the early 
 Musalman raids must be treated with respect. And this 
 power of resistance has been greatly aided by the changed 
 condition of things since the British occupation. We have 
 preached, and what is more practised, toleration, and we have 
 ever protected its priests and temples from outrage. The rise 
 of this feeling of safety and the spread of education has made 
 Hinduism not a faith shrinking in a corner and happy if it 
 can escape violence, but a body of worshippers which knows 
 its rights and is determined to assert them. But like a fussy 
 old lady, it thinks that it must always be doing something to 
 make its presence felt and to show everybody that it can hold 
 its own in the face of this new learning and this ridiculous 
 new civilisation : as if indeed the old faith in which their 
 fathers lived and flourished was not good enough for them. 
 So any interference with a petty shrine will set a whole city 
 like Benares or Mathura in a blaze, when all sects and creeds 
 are swept along in a fervour of fanaticism which shrinks from 
 no sacrifice, not even of life itself, and turns for the moment 
 the calm reflective pietist into a desperate bigot. But it is 
 only for a time that this semblance of union prevails. It 
 needs the war cry of religious enthusiasm to rouse it to action. 
 As to combining for any general object — to build a common 
 temple, to relieve the sick and needy, to train the orphan — 
 such union is never dreamed of 
 
 In direct contrast to this is the militant faith of Islam, 
 which for nine centuries has been more or less in contact and 
 in conflict with Hinduism. At the present time it counts 
 nearly six and a half millions of believers, or rather less than 
 14 per cent, of the whole population — a little less than that 
 of Egypt, a little more than that of Belgium. 
 
 The history of Islam in India has yet to be written, and 
 when it is written it will be one of the most interesting 
 chapters in the religious annals of the world. It appeared, 
 as we have seen, the faith of a body of savage marauders and 
 conquerors, who swept over the land at intervals in the course 
 of a couple of centuries in a series of cruel raids, bringing 
 
 258 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 rapine and destruction in their train. What we know of the 
 history of the time between the first Musalman invasion and 
 the final establishment of a fairly settled foreign government 
 in the country is mainly derived from Muhammadan sources. 
 It is a strange sign of the lack of solidarity and patriotic 
 feeling among Hindus, that they never seem to have troubled 
 themselves to place on record their view of one of the most 
 terrible disasters which ever overtook a people and their 
 national faith. There is enough to show that the conquest 
 was not completed without desperate conflict, and that in 
 parts of the country, as for instance in Rohilkhand, the 
 resistance was little short of heroic. 
 
 Next followed the earlier Mughal rule, in which the wise, 
 conciliatory policy of Akbar was in general maintained by 
 his successors for about a century, till the accession of 
 Aurangzeb initiated the regime of iconoclasm and persecution 
 of the Hindus. During this period, and particularly in the 
 western part of the Province, the influence of the ruling 
 power and of the Imperial Court at Delhi and Agra was 
 exercised in favour of the State religion and largely promoted 
 conversion : while the same effect resulted from the powerful 
 outposts or colonies established in Oudh and along the 
 Gangetic valley. It is true that the earlier Mughals raised 
 many Hindus to posts of trust and emolument : but at the 
 same time all the witchery of social impulses must have been 
 exerted in opposition to the indigenous religion. It was at a 
 later date that these influences were aided by the sword of 
 persecution. The main force in favour of Hinduism must 
 have been the Imperial Zanana, which was filled with Hindu 
 ladies and, as we have shown, the successors of Akbar were 
 largely of Hindu blood. And yet the love of Kaula Devi, 
 the wife of Ala-ud-din Khilji, was unable to restrain the cruel 
 tyranny of her husband. 
 
 In modern times the tendency to a rapid increase of 
 Musalmans as compared with Hindus has continued : in 
 the period between the two last decennial enumerations 
 the rate of increase in the former has been 7*15 percent: 
 in the latter 6-17. 
 
 259 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 The causes of this are various. In the first place, Islim 
 in India has to a large extent shed off those militant, Puritan 
 principles which now survive only among the sect known as 
 the Wahhabi, or Ahl-i-hadls, who are purists and reject as 
 idolatrous accretions on the original faith the worship of 
 Saints and their tombs, call ordinary Musalmans Mushrik, 
 or those who associate another with God, and condemn the 
 smoking of tobacco and the use of rosaries. Islam has thus 
 become much more tolerant of Hindu beliefs than it was under 
 wild raiders like Shihab-ud-dtn or the iconoclastic Aurangzeb. 
 This was due no doubt in part to its downfall as an Imperial 
 power, but partly to its lack of organisation. Like Hinduism, 
 Islam in India has never established a Church or a Synod ; 
 it has no well-defined religious centre, and the small isolated 
 colonies which it founded gradually fell under the influence 
 of their environment in the midst of a numerically superior 
 infidel population. As a missionary religion working amid 
 the lower indigenous races, it was in active competition with 
 the reformed Vaishnavism which adopted the most con- 
 ciliatory methods, and spared no pains to make the burden 
 of belief fall lightly on its converts. 
 
 Yet Islam in India has undoubtedly its strong points. Its 
 creed is definite and well-ascertained ; it encourages a lively 
 faith in and resignation to one great controlling Power, which 
 though not by any means a Fatherly Providence, is in direct 
 contrast to the jungle of deities in whom a Hindu believes. 
 In the words " God is great " it shows itself in its highest 
 form — the absolute submission to one Heavenly Master. No 
 cloud of scepticism even temporarily overshadows its placid 
 surface : and yet in tolerating the reverence for Martyrs and 
 Saints, in recognising that a divine breath rises from their 
 graves and relics it provides for the aspirations of votaries 
 raised in an animistic atmosphere. 
 
 The current explanation of Musalmin progress is that it 
 is mainly due to the attraction which the freedom from the 
 bondage of caste ofifers to converts ; to the acceptance by 
 Hindu widows of the role of the Musalman dancing-girl ; 
 to the adoption of Hindu orphans into high-class Muham- 
 
 260 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOiIE 
 
 madan families. To these may be added the democratic 
 character of Musalman society which makes the householder 
 the priest, and discourages the dominance of the official 
 Levite. In some places, as in western Bengal, much of its 
 progress is due to the active preaching of the ubiquitous PJr 
 and Mulla. But, as has been shown by Mr O'Donnell in 
 Bengal, the growth of Islam is due perhaps more to physical 
 than doctrinal forces. The Musalman, an eater of meat, is 
 naturally of more vigorous constitution than the vegetarian 
 Hindu ; his acceptance of widow marriage makes the race 
 more fertile ; he and his wife more usually marry at a mature 
 age, and there are fewer senile husbands and child wives. 
 Polygamy is more common, and he more often takes a widow 
 as his second wife, who acts as a convenient, unpaid house- 
 hold drudge and bears children to her master. At present in 
 northern India there seems to be little active proselytism; 
 had this been common the tension between the creeds in 
 recent years on the subject of cow-killing would certainly 
 have brought it to notice. The statistical facts collected at 
 the last census bear out these conclusions. In io,ooo of the 
 population, Musalmans have 1726 women of the child-bearing 
 age as compared with 1708 Hindus ; Musalmins have 2708 
 children under ten years of age to 2677 Hindus ; there are 
 among 10,000 Musalmans, 1294 persons over fifty as com- 
 pared with 1207 Hindus. These differences, though not 
 large, all act in the direction of promoting greater fertility 
 among the followers of the Prophet. 
 
 While the distribution of Hindus through the Province is 
 fairly uniform, the proportions of Musalmans vary largely. 
 This might have been anticipated from the conditions under 
 which their settlements were established, and from the cir- 
 cumstances of their environment In the northern hill tract 
 Hinduism is preponderant, and as much as 99 per cent of 
 the people follow that faith. The next most important seats 
 of Hinduism are backward Bundelkhand, and the central and 
 eastern districts, which contain the most sacred shrines — 
 Mathura, Prayag, Bindhachal, and Benares. On the other 
 hand, Musalmans are in excess in the Upper Duab, where 
 
 261 
 
* NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the vicinity of Delhi promoted conversion, and in Rohil- 
 khand and northern Oudh, where their settlements were 
 largely founded in newly cleared country occupied by less 
 stubborn septs of Rajputs than those along the lower Ganges 
 valley. 
 
 It is only in the larger towns, like Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, 
 or Lucknow that Musalmans of the older type are largely 
 found. For more than half a century after the British occu- 
 pation, the Mufiammadans lagged behind in the educational 
 race. They were less pliant in accepting the new order of 
 things — they preferred to busy themselves among the dry 
 bones of theology and antiquated science to the exclusion of 
 western learning. The result was that, in the competition 
 for public employment, they were for a time outpaced by the 
 more subtle and adaptative Hindu. In recent years this 
 reproach has been to some degree removed by the efforts of 
 some energetic teachers, notably by Sir Sayyid Ahmad 
 Khan, who, in the Anglo-Muhammadan College at Aligarh, 
 has won a considerable measure of success in introducing 
 education of the English University type among his co- 
 religionists. The result of these measures is now shown by 
 the fact that Musalmans are rather better educated than 
 Hindus. Among 10,000 males, 8049 are illiterate against 
 8103 Hindus; 13 know English as compared with 8. The 
 figures show the vast room which remains for improvement ; 
 but the increase of education among Musalmans is notable 
 and satisfactory. 
 
 In the higher grades of the public service Musalmans 
 enjoy a well-marked superiority. Their nutritious and varied 
 diet makes them more vigorous and active than the Hindu, 
 and their traditions of Empire promote the power of ruling 
 men. Among deputy collectors or native magistrates the 
 last returns show 94 Musalmans to 1 16 Hindus ; 8 out of 
 22 of the chief civil judges are Musalmans — in both cases 
 their numbers much exceed their numerical proportions. 
 
 The record of Musalman sects cannot fail to be inaccurate. 
 The low caste convert lives under an easy religious rule. 
 He so far follows the rule of his faith as to circumcise his 
 
 262 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 sons, and to abstain from the use of pork ; but he retains 
 his old fetishes and animistic beliefs. Even if he occasionally 
 attends a mosque, he still clings to the worship of Devi or 
 some village godling. His marriage ceremonies are per- 
 formed not by the Kazi, the orthodox officiant, but by some 
 Dafali hedge priest, and he takes his omens from a BrShman 
 aS&ologer. If he be a Rajput he keeps his Hindu name, 
 simply replacing his title Sinh by Khin ; he shaves his 
 beard, which the real Musalm^n preserves ; he keeps the 
 Hindu top-knot, and bathes and cooks in the old fashion. 
 The lower caste convert calls himself Shaikh, though he has 
 no more kinship with the nomad of the Arabian desert than 
 the nouveau ricJie of our time -has with the followers of the 
 Conqueror, in spite of the pedigree which an accomdating 
 herald provides for him. 
 
 The two important sects of Islam are the Sunni and the 
 Shiah. The former are in great numerical preponderance — 
 about thirty Sunni to one Shiah, the latter found as an 
 important body only in Lucknow, where they flourished 
 under the protection of the Court of Oudh. The difference 
 between the two sects is vital, as great as that which divides 
 the Eastern from the Western Church. The Sunni, or 
 traditionalist, differs from the Shiah as to what tradition 
 is to be accepted. The latter lay stress on the knowledge 
 of the true Imam, a point which the Sunni considers un- 
 important, and follow Ali, the husband of Fatima, the 
 daughter of the Prophet. Hence they reject as impostors 
 the first three Sunni Imims — Abu Bakr, Umar, and Usman, 
 and detest the memory of the Ummeyid Khalifas who 
 usurped the lordship of the faith, and in particular that of 
 Yazid, who slew the martjTS Hasan and Husain. 
 
 In memory of these holy men they observe the feast of 
 the Muharram as a season of mourning and humiliation, and 
 canylh^procession Tizias, or paper and tinsel representations 
 of their tombs, a ritual which orthodox Sunnis abhor, though 
 village Muhammadans, almost without distinction of sect, 
 join in its observance. One of the most impressive religious 
 spectacles in India is to watch the long procession of Tsizias 
 
 263 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 and flags which streams along the streets, with a vast crowd 
 of mourners, who scream out their lamentations and beat 
 their breasts till the blood flows, or they sink fainting in 
 an ecstasy of sorrow. One of the most difficult duties of the 
 Indian Magistrate is to regulate these processions and decide 
 the precedence of its members. The air rings with the cries 
 of these ardent fanatics, and their zeal often urges them to 
 violence directed against Hindus or rival sectaries. But the 
 English Gallic is no judge of such matters, and his anxieties 
 do not end until he has steered without conflict or disturb- 
 ance the howling crowd of devotees through the stifling city 
 lanes into the open fields beyond, where the mimic sepulchres 
 of the martyrs are supposed to be flung into a tank or buried. 
 But the more canny worshipper, when his short-lived frenzy 
 is spent, brings his Tizia quietly home to grace next year's 
 celebration. 
 
 Such are the prominent features of religious life in 
 northern India, and no land on the surface of the earth 
 presents a more interesting field of observation or more 
 startling diversities of belief. In a single morning the 
 student of the popular faiths may watch them in nearly all 
 their chief stages. He can observe it, first, in the Animistic 
 or fetish phase — the worshipper bowing before the stone 
 which enshrines the deity; the respect for the sacred 
 bathing places ; the women bowing reverently to the pJpal 
 tree ; the holy cow which nibbles unrestrained at the corn- 
 seller's stall ; the monkeys gambolling over the temple carv- 
 ings. He will see the Sannyasi dreaming away life under 
 the thraldom of intoxicants ; the Brahman poring over the 
 Shastras ; the Mulla counting his beads, as he drones out a 
 passage of the Koran ; the white-robed worshippers kneeling 
 reverently in the courtyard of the mosque, as they face in the 
 direction of Mecca ; the pious Hindu saluting the Sun as he 
 starts for his day's labour ; the Christian missionary preach- 
 ing the Gospel to a listless crowd of spectators. 
 
 Everywhere he will observe a fervour of belief, an intensity 
 of conviction in the power of the Unseen God to rule the 
 destinies of humanity, which is in startling contrast to the 
 
 264 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 calm indifferentism of the religious world of the West The 
 prevailing note is that of extreme formalism, a confidence in 
 the minutiae of ritual, in the intercessory influence of the 
 priesthood. And with all this there is an intense belief in 
 the malevolent power of the demon, the ghost, and the witch, 
 which can only be checked by the incantations of the sorcerer 
 and of the exorcisor. 
 
 We now pass on to a brief sketch of the social condition of 
 the people. 
 
 To begin with the Zamindar or better-clsiss yeoman : the 
 house of such a man in the western districts is generally an 
 oblong structure, the walls formed either of small bricks laid 
 in mud, or of masses of indurated clay, which are piled in 
 layers one above the other and allowed to harden in the sun. 
 The roof of the living and store room is supported by cross- 
 beams, over which is placed a covering of brushwood, and 
 this is surmounted by a thick layer of tenacious clay laid in 
 a moist state, pounded down and consolidated by ramming. 
 Such a roof, if properly constructed, affords a good protection 
 from the heat of the sun, and though it often cracks from 
 heat and leaks in the autumn rains, answers fairly well for 
 people who spend most of their time in the open air. Access 
 to the interior is usually through a sort of portico, which is 
 often used as a cart-house or cattle-shed. Inside is a court- 
 yard in which the family live, and in which produce or agri- 
 cultural implements are stored. If the owner be a Musalman 
 or high-caste Hindu, there is often an inner courtyard, which 
 is reserved for the women. In the outer part the males of 
 the family live, guests are entertained, and the unmarried 
 youths sleep. 
 
 You will find the owner resting, smoking on a wooden 
 platform, where he sees visitors, carries on his business, and 
 dispenses a rude hospitality ; and the unexpected visitor will 
 catch, perhaps, on his arrival, a glimpse of a bright-coloured 
 petticoat or mantle, and hear the tinkle of a bangle, or the 
 giggling of the girls, which announce the presence of the 
 women-folk close at hand. Here the pretty naked babies 
 wander about, and are petted by their male relations. In a 
 
 265 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 lower class household the women will be found hard at work 
 in the courtyard, grinding barley, husking rice, cooking, spin- 
 ning, and chattering all the time to each other. 
 
 Further to the east, where there is less danger of damage 
 from hail, the roof of the principal rooms is usually made of 
 tiles, which admit a much freer passage of air, and render the 
 dwelling rooms much less stuffy than in the western districts. 
 To these the chief danger is from the ubiquitous, mischievous 
 monkeys, who scamper in every direction ; and though they 
 are an emphatic nuisance, are protected by a most efficient 
 sanction. It is only by spreading a layer of thorns over the 
 tiles or thatch that they can be prevented from bounding 
 over the roof and groping for the grain which has been 
 dropped by the ever-present, vigilant, restless crow. 
 
 The prevailing atmosphere, especially in one of the western 
 houses, is one of stuffy frowsiness. Here masses of foul bed- 
 ding are stored, the air is full of acrid smoke from the fire of 
 cow-dung fuel, the cattle are stabled close at hand, litter is 
 scarce, dry earth conservancy unknown ; the result is that 
 the subsoil becomes saturated with filth, and the contempt 
 for sanitary precautions shows itself in a foul drain for the 
 removal of the kitchen refuse, often in dangerous proximity 
 to the well from which the water supply of the family is 
 drawn. The native has a rooted objection to the destruction 
 of rubbish ; this and the refuse of his house are stored all 
 round his dwelling^rooms ; it is only the house ashes and 
 sweepings which are periodically carried off to the midden, 
 and thence conveyed to the fields. It is only because the 
 habit of living al fresco is so common, and the weaker sub- 
 jects are swept off by epidemic disease at an early age, that 
 these conditions do not more prejudicially affect the general 
 health of the people. 
 
 The house of the smaller cultivator or artisan is of a simpler 
 type. Here the walls are of clay and the roof of thatch, which 
 leaks freely in the rains, and when the fierce summer hot 
 wind blows, a fire once started in such a village spreads with 
 dangerous rapidity and often leads to loss of life as the 
 inmates struggle to save their meagre property. Or in the 
 
 266 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 rains the water beats against the fragile walls and the whole 
 structure collapses, often crushing the weak or infirm in the 
 ruin. The wooden seat of the better class yeoman is here 
 usually replaced by a mud platform beside the outer door, on 
 which the master sits in his leisure hour and receives his 
 visitors. 
 
 It is only in houses of the better class that there is a court- 
 yard ; the ordinary dwelling is a single sleeping hut, and 
 outside the hut the housewife does her cooking, perhaps under 
 a smaller thatch, near which the oxen stand, and the cow, 
 buffalo, or goat is tethered and milked. 
 
 Towards the hilly tract as in parts of Agra, the hut has its 
 walls often built of stones piled one over the other without 
 mortar. In Mirzapur and Bundelkhand again, where the soil 
 has too little tenacity to admit of the erection of mud walls, 
 the sides of the dwellings are built of wattle and dab, in the 
 shape of hurdles made of bamboos and brushwood smeared 
 with clay or cow-dung, and instead of being crowded within 
 a narrow site, they are scattered about, each in the corner of 
 the owner's field, and the roofs covered with a thick growth 
 of melons or pumpkins, each a little bower of greenery, 
 present from a distance a pretty enough picture. The 
 dispersion of the huts constituting the village has the 
 acjditional advantage of promoting cleanliness, reducing the 
 danger of fire, and distributing the labour and manure over a 
 larger area. 
 
 On the whole, the dwelling of the poorer tenant or artisan 
 is cleaner and less exposed to insanitary conditions than that 
 of his richer neighbour. The floor and outer cooking-place 
 are carefully plastered ; the cattle are less disagreeably 
 prominent, and the unsubstantial materials of which the hut 
 consists allow better ventilation. 
 
 In the Plains the best dwelling in the village is that of 
 the Mahajan or money-lender. It is usually built of brick, 
 periodically whitewashed, with an outer verandah in which 
 the owner sits over his books, meets his clients, and doles out 
 loans to cover the expenses of a marriage or to satisfy the 
 landlord on rent day. Behind this he has a series of store- 
 
 267 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 rooms in which he collects grain or other produce, or hides 
 away the jewelry or brass pots which he receives in pawn. 
 Here is a box for his bonds and stamped papers, which he is 
 careful to keep, of various dates in case he has occasion to 
 fabricate a mortgage document Much of his time is spent 
 in drawing up two sets of accounts, one for his private infor- 
 mation, the other for the inspection of the Collector at the 
 next revision of the Income Tax assessment. 
 
 The prevailing tone of all the domestic arrangements is 
 squalid in the extreme. The small peasant's furniture consists 
 of a few foul rickety cots, some brass cooking utensils, a store 
 of red earthen pottery, a stool or two for the children, a box 
 for clothes or other petty valuables, a mud granary in which 
 the grain supply of the household is stored. In the house of 
 the yeoman or small proprietor the only obvious difference is 
 that brass pots are in greater abundance and the women folk 
 own more heavy silver jewelry, in which, in default of banks 
 of deposit, the surplus income is invested. If the owner has 
 a few spare rupees he piles them in an earthen cup and hides 
 them in a hole of the mud wall or under the place where he 
 does his cooking. The village banker does the same as far 
 as he can, for he is in constant dread of thieves who cut away 
 his mud walls with a chisel during the moonless nights and 
 clear off all his moveables. 
 
 In the house itself the carpentry and masonry are of the 
 very rudest kind. The use of the arch is uncommon, and the 
 lintels consist of weak, unseasoned wood which collapse under 
 the weight of the superstructure and in a short time bring the 
 whole building to ruin. Glass windows, except in the towns, 
 are practically unknown ; there is nothing in the shape of 
 artistic furniture or articles of elegance and beauty such as 
 the Japanese provide with such unerring taste. It is only in 
 the larger towns, and particularly those like Agra, Mathura, 
 or Mirzapur, which are close to good quarries, that the fine 
 stone-carved decorated arches, balconies, or porticoes are to 
 be seen. In the village house there is no such thing as art 
 decoration or painting, except perhaps a rude lithograph of 
 one of the gods hung in the room in which worship is done, 
 
 268 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 or a coarse caricature of the guardian deity, or of a European 
 soldier with musket and cocked hat which scares evil spirits 
 from the household. 
 
 Another striking point is the utter absence of inventiveness 
 as applied to domestic or industrial life. The plough and 
 other agricultural implements are of the traditional form 
 which have been used for a thousand or ten thousand years. 
 Labour-saving tools and appliances are useless to a people 
 where labour is a drug. The shape of the spinning-wheel, 
 the flour mill, the curry pounder, the loom, the tools of the 
 blacksmith or carpenter never changes. It is only when the 
 craftsman is trained under European influence that he adopts 
 the improved methods. 
 
 So, there is no periodical change of fashion in dress. The 
 woman's skirt, mantle or bodice never vary in form, and the 
 lady of the West, with her inventiveness in the way of 
 millinery, is quite beyond the ken of the Oriental woman. 
 All that contact with western civilisation has given them is 
 a greater variety of material, a wider and brighter range of 
 colour. The men wear the turban, loin cloth, and jacket of 
 coarse cotton cloth, which we know from the monuments has 
 been unchanged for nearly twenty centuries. So, in the 
 poorer household the variety of food is very limited, and the 
 people never seem to crave a change of dishes or seasoning. 
 A little pepper and turmeric, a few common spices, exhaust 
 the list of relishes. In a wealthier family the range of 
 delicacies, in the form of curries and sweetmeats, is much 
 greater. In the nutritiousness and variety of his food the 
 MusalmSn has a great advantage over the Hindu, particularly 
 on a journey, when the latter must confine himself to parched 
 grain, greasy sweets or cakes. 
 
 The chief signs of change in rural life are the general use 
 of lucifer matches and umbrellas, the substitution of kerosine 
 for vegetable oils. In urban life, of course, things are differ- 
 ent, and watches and cutlery, petty trumpery of all kinds, 
 mostly of French or German manufacture, are largely sold. 
 
 The prevailing note of village life is the absence of do- 
 mestic privacy and the publicity amidst which the people live. 
 
 269 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Life is largely spent in the open air, and there is none of the 
 isolation of the family which is the predominant feature of 
 Western civilisation of the higher type. Hence there is an 
 utter lack of seclusion, except for the women of the higher 
 classes, and even among them isolation from the outer world 
 is much less stringent than is commonly supposed. Even 
 behind the gloomy enclosure of the Zan^na the wife and 
 mother crave for gossip, and little that goes on outside escapes 
 their vigilant ears. In the general management of the house- 
 hold they exercise wde influence and control. This is more 
 marked in the family of the peasant, where the wife is a true 
 helpmate, works side by side with her husband in the fields, 
 or toils all day long cooking, spinning, or tending the cattle. 
 
 But, living in a narrow ill-fenced house, with no provision 
 for the segregation of the sexes, or for the requirements of 
 common decency, the peasant woman, like her sister of the 
 London slum, loses much of the reticence and modesty of 
 pure womanhood. Under the influence of excitement she 
 will break out in a flood of the coarsest ribaldry. She will 
 objurgate her neighbour in a storm of cursing if a cow trespass 
 in her field or a strange brat boxes the ears of her child. All 
 her domestic affairs are common property, and should her 
 husband be vicious or extravagant, she will appeal for an 
 hour at a time in the shrillest tones to all the viragoes of the 
 quarter, and never dreams of veiling her grievances under a 
 wise reticence, or she will abuse her co-wife in public till the 
 whole village rings with the recital of her wrongs. Her 
 husband is much calmer and less emotional, and during an 
 incident like this will sit and smoke quietly till the storm 
 of her passion exhausts itself. He pays little heed to her 
 flirtations, unless his easy-going tolerance is interrupted by 
 some public scandal, when he will chastise her that all may 
 see, or he will convoke the council of elders and turn her out 
 of house and home if any impropriety is established against 
 her. If he appears in the Criminal Court to prosecute her 
 paramour, he is less regardful of his honour than of the 
 jewelry which she removed on her elopement. But in some 
 cases a scandal will rouse him to a state of mad passion, and 
 
 270 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 he will slay her as she stands before him, and wait quietly 
 till the policeman hales him to prison. 
 
 A scandal of this kind is one of the few interludes in the 
 general stagnation of existence. It is discussed in detail by 
 the women at the well and by the men at the village meeting 
 house. The monotony of life is broken by incidents such as 
 these. Quite as important is a burglary in the money-lender's 
 storeroom, when the red-turbaned police assemble, the chief 
 officer sits in lordly fashion on a cot and accepts a pipe and 
 light refreshments. The whole population is convoked ; the 
 criminals and ne'er-do-wells of the vicinity are interrogated. 
 Or, perhaps, on a cold weather morning, the vill^e receives 
 a visit from an English officer, who harries the watchman for 
 negligence in registering births, or stirs up that dignified 
 functionary, the accountant, for failure to correct his map, 
 and the stagnant village life is wakened with a temporary 
 excitement. Every one turns out to wonder and speculate 
 on the strange manners of the visitors — the curious dress of 
 the lady, the puny baby, the dogs, horses or elephants, the 
 white tents in the mango grove. Every house-top is crowded 
 with interested girls, and the urchins congregate round the 
 camp all day long. Every one bows in reverence to the 
 restless Sihib, who sniffs about the manure heaps or blames 
 the foul surroundings of the water supply. The elders grin 
 acquiescence in his remarks, and promise to carry out the 
 needful reforms ; once he has left the neighbourhood the old 
 apathy and squalor are as intense as ever. 
 
 Amusement in the village there is little. There is no 
 circus, which we know, on good authority, the English yokel 
 prefers to a meeting of the Parish Council. There is no 
 cricket on the green, and it is only the ne'er-do-wells who 
 collect round the dirty shed, where the Kalwar doles out tots 
 of well-watered spirits ; but it does not in any way answer 
 to the English beer-house, the poor man's club. The children 
 have their games, but, like their seniors, they take their 
 pleasures sadly. Sometimes the young men wrestle in the 
 evenings; but the ordinary peasant is too dull, too tired, to 
 get much pleasure out of his life. The only real stir is when 
 
 271 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the banker's daughter is married, amidst a discordant blare 
 of trumpets and a display of fireworks, or when a convoy 
 of laughing girls and awe-stricken bumpkins start to bathe 
 at Hardwftr or Benares, in a lumbering cart, dragged by the 
 patient oxen over many a long mile of glare and dust. 
 
 The really important point for the peasant is what he shall 
 eat and wherewithal he shall be clothed. His talk, if you 
 listen to him as he marches along the roads, is always of pice 
 and food. 
 
 Let us see what he usually eats. Thus, in Bareilly, to 
 follow the very careful report of Mr Moens ^ — the rustic eats 
 two meals, at mid-day and after sunset. For seven months of 
 the year rice in the north of the district and to the south the 
 Bajra millet are the staple diet ; for the remaining five months 
 those who are comfortably off eat wheaten flour, the rest 
 barley. With their cakes they eat pulses or lentils of various 
 kinds and occasionally a few pot-herbs, peas and chillies, and 
 a little ghi and oil. The young shoots of the gram plant and 
 a wild weed called Bathua are largely consumed. In the hot 
 season the farinaceous diet is often supplemented by various 
 preparations of sugar and treacle. Sweets of many kinds are 
 largely eaten ; a family of five will eat, including festivals, 
 rather over two cwt. of sweet stuff. Mr Moens estimates the 
 average consumption of food per head at i"8i lbs. of grain, 
 •29 lb. of pulses, and 142 grains of salt This is rather higher 
 than the jail dietary, where there are no infants, and where 
 extra food is needed to counteract the effects of confinement, 
 regular labour and depression of spirits. According to the 
 best medical opinion 100 grains of salt daily are sufficient to 
 keep a native in health. The consumption of salt in India, 
 exclusive of Burma, rose from 32J million maunds (82f lbs.) 
 in 1885-86, to 34 millions in 1893-94, and the income derived 
 from the State monopoly was in the latter year Rx. yf 
 millions. The present price of salt in the Cawnpur market 
 is about 3 J rupees per maund, or about 4^ rupees per cwt. It 
 would appear that the consumption is fairly keeping pace 
 with the increase in population and this is practically the only 
 
 1 Settlement Report, p. 53 sq. 
 272 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 tax which touches the lower classes. There seems no evi- 
 dence that the existing supply is below the needs of the 
 human population : for the cattle it is probably insufficient 
 
 The food of the low caste Hindu, like the Chamir, and of 
 the MusalmSn, is more varied and nutritious than that of the 
 higher classes, because he adds to it a considerable amount of 
 coarse meat ; the better class Hindu supplies the nitrogenous 
 elements wanting in his daily diet by the use of ghi and oil. 
 
 The amount of clothing, not its fashion, varies with the 
 means of the peasant. The yeoman always has a blanket or 
 coverlet for the winter, and this is the only addition he makes 
 to his raiment as the seasons change. The state of the poor 
 is very different, and young children run about entirely 
 unclad, a cause which must largely contribute to the exces- 
 sive infant mortality. Mr Neale, writing of Etawa in the 
 Central Ganges-Jumna Duab, says ^ — " The very poorest have 
 not even a blanket, which costs about a rupee and a half, but 
 are obliged to protect themselves from the cold by a mere 
 cloth into which they stuff cotton if they can get it I re- 
 member asking a Chamar how he passed the night with so 
 little clothing. He said he slept till the cold awakened him, 
 when he lit a few sticks and warmed himself till the fire 
 went out, when he went back to his cot; and he repeated 
 these proceedings at intervals till the sun arose." When he 
 can get it, the poor man lays a pile of straw on the floor of 
 his hut and huddles inside with his family until daybreak, 
 when he cowers over a smoky fire of rubbish or suns himself 
 beside a sunny wall facing eastwards. This lack of clothing 
 is doubtless the chief cause of the deadly pneumonia which 
 follows fever as autumn changes into winter. 
 
 Mr Moens in Bareilly calculates that a man's clothing costs 
 Rs. 2-9-3 ps'' annum ; that for a woman Rs. 2-11-1 ; that for 
 a child Rs. 0-9-0. Thus a man, his wife and three children 
 would spend in a year on clothes about Rs. 7, or eight 
 shillings. This does not leave much margin for dressmakers' 
 and tailors' bills. Climate, of course, makes all the difference, 
 and probably the poorest Indian labourer does not suffer the 
 
 • Gazetteer, North- IVest Pravinces, iv. 288. 
 
 s 273 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 same privation from want of clothing as is experienced by 
 the destitute classes in English cities. For one thing, he 
 needs little shoe-leather : while want of boots is the sorest 
 trial to the poverty-stricken European. 
 
 The same is to some extent the case with food. Want of 
 food is more terrible in western lands, where it is aggravated 
 by the lack of fire and clothing. At the same time, Europe 
 happily never witnesses the awful suffering which accom- 
 panies drought in India. No one who has had practical 
 experience of a famine camp can ever forget the emaciated 
 forms, the starving children, the ghastly varieties of disease 
 which follow a failure of the harvest What proportion of 
 the people habitually suffer from want of food it is very diffi- 
 cult to determine. It is quite certain that throughout the 
 Province many of the menial labouring class are in a state of 
 abject poverty, hardly raised above the point of starvation. 
 This is clearly shown by the rapid increase of petty theft as 
 the stocks of one crop are exhausted and the new harvest is 
 beginning to ripen. That much of the theft of standing 
 crops is due to sheer want is quite certain ; and when such 
 Ccises come for trial it only needs inspection of the members 
 of the " criminal's " household to be convinced of the fact. 
 Among such people want would be much more urgent were 
 it not that the fields offer a quantity of herbs eatable as 
 pottage, and there are many jungle fruits and roots in addition 
 to the village mango crop which, innutritious as they are, are 
 readily consumed. Above these absolute paupers there is, 
 again, a large but ill-defined class of petty cultivators, field 
 labourers and artizans whom the occurrence of drought drives 
 at once into distress. 
 
 The condition of this residuum of the people has, it is 
 needless to say, frequently attracted the attention of the 
 Government. In 1888 an elaborate enquiry was made into 
 the subject, and the official view, apt though it be to prove 
 decidedly optimistic, may be quoted ^ — " The officers conduct- 
 ing the enquiry have approached the subject from different 
 points of view : some evidently predisposed to think a con- 
 
 1 Administration Report, North- West Provitues, 1888-89, P- H- 
 274 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 siderable section of the people insufficiently fed ; others with 
 contrary conceptions. It is impossible, however, to mistake 
 the consensus of opinion that the people generally are not 
 underfed. It is equally clear that being for the most part 
 an agricultural people, dependent on the seasons and holding 
 small areas of cultivation, or dependent (if artizans) for the 
 disposal of their handiwork on those who hold such areas, 
 they have little reserve in hand, and that in the event of a 
 failure of the rains and of high prices, many of them are soon 
 reduced to a position in which food is obtainable either in 
 insufficient quantities or not at all — in other words, to the 
 point in which the Government intervenes and provides 
 famine labour for their relief. We can see them in ordinary 
 times consuming the produce of their fields, adding to it in 
 season green herbs or leaves, such as those of the gram, or 
 fruit or other accessories. We find them in possession of 
 cattle, of which they drink the milk or consume the butter ; 
 fish and flesh are eaten by them, though not by all of them. 
 The day labourer and the tenant of a small holding are 
 those who are most exposed to the chance of insufficient 
 food ; but the artizans and the more respectable tenants are 
 in ordinary circumstances raised above want. The succession 
 of pictures drawn for us is in a great measure identical with 
 those which were furnished in 1877-78 to the Famine Com- 
 missioners' Report One caution, it should be noted, applies 
 to all evidence on this subject So far as these Provinces are 
 concerned, when an officer speaks of the more indigent class 
 of the people under enquiry as being always on the verge of 
 starvation, this must not be understood to mean that they 
 are always living on insufficient food, but that they always 
 run the risk, in view of a failure of the rains, of finding them- 
 selves in the position where employment will not be forth- 
 coming, and where consequently food will be difficult to 
 obtain. It is not, in other words, that they are habitually 
 underfed, but that if a calamity should arise at any time 
 from a bad season, owing to the failure of the rains, they will 
 have insufficient means of securing an adequate maintenance." 
 This official commentary certainly does not minimise the 
 
 27s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 dangers of the present situation, with a population multiplying 
 almost without restriction and closely trenching on the avail- 
 able means of support. It is true that the recent rise in the 
 price of grain, though the petty tenant has far from realised 
 his fair share of the advantage, has somewhat improved his 
 position ; on the other hand, the day labourer, unless he is 
 paid in kind, has suffered. 
 
 No part of the country is worse situated in this respect 
 than Oudh. In Faizabad.^ "the tenant's profits are probably 
 just what they are in other parts of Oudh — just enough to 
 pay for his labour and for the keeping up of his stock. In 
 recent years, owing to the rise in rent, the bad seasons and 
 cattle murrain, they have not reached this standard." Mr 
 Irwin,2 a good authority, if perhaps slightly pessimistic in his 
 views on the land question, goes so far as to write that " even 
 now, taking the Province as a whole, it is scarcely too much 
 to say that a large proportion of cultivators have neither 
 sufficient food to keep them in health, nor clothes sufficient 
 to protect them from the weather; that their cattle are 
 miserably thin and weak from underfeeding ; that they are 
 hardly ever out of debt for twelve months together, though 
 in good seasons they can pay off their debt within the year, 
 while in a bad one it accumulates ; and that, except in 
 specially favourable seasons, they are dependent on the 
 money-lender for their food for from two to six months in 
 the year." And this, it must be remembered, is written of 
 the tenant and not of the landless labourer. 
 
 At the same time, there is- some evidence that the con- 
 dition of the tenant class is in some places improving. Thus, 
 in Bareilly ^ " since the last Settlement, the earthen vessels, 
 which were almost universal, have entirely been replaced by 
 brass or other metal. According to Lala Gulzari Lai, a 
 retired Deputy Collector, who has been in the district since 
 1828, the improvement in this respect is extraordinarily great 
 Formerly, he says, hardly any cultivator had more than a 
 blanket and a very small loin-cloth. Now every cultivator 
 
 ' Oudh Gazetteer, i. 427. * Garden of India, p. 38. 
 
 ' Settlement Report, p. 55, 
 
 276 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 dresses like a Brahman or a Zamfndar of the old days. Most 
 of the headmen have a small cart to ride in when they go 
 abroad, or at least a pony. . And some of them since last 
 Settlement have been able to save money and buy villages 
 for themselves. The houses, though all with mud walls and 
 thatched roofs, are, as a rule, tolerably good ; many are 
 neatly plastered outside. I doubt much whether the culti- 
 vating class will ever be much better off than they are now. 
 The Rent Law which was meant to protect the cultivator in 
 Bengal is a curse to him here, by the power it gives the 
 landlord to enhance the rents. Population is rapidly spread- 
 ing, and with it a fierce competition for land must set in, as 
 in Bareilly we have nearly reached the limits of cultivation." 
 The evidence of Mr Neale from Etiwa is much to the same 
 effect.! 
 
 To sum up this discussion, it may be said that there is a 
 considerable residuum, which even at the best of times is only 
 one degree removed from destitution, and which even a slight 
 failure of the rains drives on the parish : that above these 
 there is a class of petty tenants deeply in debt, and with no 
 resources in reserve to enable them to resist famine : that in 
 personal comfort and in the general amenities of life there 
 has been some improvement among the better yeoman class, 
 though here civilisation has produced fresh needs and more 
 temptations to extravagance. On the other side of the case 
 we have shown that the tendency to a rapid increase in the 
 population is not so marked as has generally been supposed, 
 and that prudential restrictions do to some extent operate to 
 keep down its numbers. There are, then, no clear reasons for 
 anticipating in the immediate future any striking aggrava- 
 tion of the existing condition. There will always remain a 
 depressed class which, though it suffers in silence, does suffer 
 to an extent which must command the sympathy of a paternal 
 government. 
 
 The power of the State to relieve this mass of poverty is 
 inevitably restricted by its financial necessities. That it can 
 by any practicable methods permanently improve the con- 
 
 1 Gazetteer, North- West Provinces, iv. p. 532, 
 277 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 dition of the depressed classes is the dream of an enthusisist 
 This can only be the result of a radical change in the habits 
 of the people, of which they show no signs at present If 
 they would emigrate, as the Celts of Western Ireland did, if 
 they would check the increase of their numbers as Frenchmen 
 do, the case might be different. They must, in short, work 
 out their own salvation for themselves. It is inevitable that 
 this discipline must involve intense suffering — this is the lot 
 of all creatures until they become adjusted to their environ- 
 ment. The last possibility is the discovery of some new 
 agricultural methods which would suddenly increase the 
 resources of the peasant class, or the appropriation of the 
 areas now producing staples suitable for exportation to the 
 growth of the coarser food grains. The first contingency is 
 almost beyond the bounds of possibility: the latter would so 
 seriously cripple the resources of the State as to make famine 
 relief an intolerable burden. 
 
 It is for us, then, to provide against the danger of adding 
 to the burdens of the peasantry by a rigid economy in 
 administration : to check as far as possible the too prevalent 
 tendency to add to these burdens by an adventurous foreign 
 policy : to resist the desire to extend to a poor country an 
 expensive system of elaborate government suited only to 
 a much more advanced community. Lastly, it should be for 
 us so to diminish the cost and fascination of litigation as to 
 save the peasant from one of the chief causes of the difficulties 
 which surround him. 
 
 These remarks, it must be clearly understood, apply only 
 to the village day labourer, the small tenant, and the artizan. 
 That the case is different with classes of a higher grade is 
 sufficiently shown by the increased expenditure on house- 
 building, particularly in cities, by the general erection of 
 temples and mosques, by the increased use of the railway for 
 purposes of pilgrimage and amusement, by an improvement 
 in equipages and the larger use of horses, by the substitution 
 of metal for earthen cooking vessels, of imported cloths for 
 the coarse fabrics of the country, by the extension of the 
 higher education, by the enormous absorption of the precious 
 
 278 
 
THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 metals, and generally by a decided rise in the standard of 
 comfort This is especially observable among the commercial 
 classes of the middle grade, and their example has encouraged 
 a higher scale of expenditure among the landed proprietary 
 classes, who are not so well able to afford it, and have in 
 consequence sunk more deeply into indebtedness. 
 
 279 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 THE foundation of the village communities of Northern 
 India dates from those early times when the country 
 was overrun by successive waves of invaders from the west. 
 With the original form of the village among the Dravidian 
 races we are imperfectly acquainted. Probably it took the 
 nomadic form as we now find it along the Vindhyan range — 
 small scattered collections of savages living chiefly by the 
 chase or the collection of jungle produce, periodically burning 
 down a fresh patch of forest and sowing a scanty crop of 
 millets in the ashes. 
 
 The current theory of the origin of this class of tenure 
 which has become popular through the writings of Sir H. 
 Maine is that its basis was the undivided patriarchal family. 
 He assumed that the Roman was the standard type of the 
 primitive household, women as they married coming under 
 the dominion of ih.& pater familias, and a number of similar 
 groups gradually forming around it and ultimately organising 
 themselves into tribes. Subsequent investigations have, how- 
 ever, thrown doubt on the correctness of this analysis. It 
 fails to account satisfactorily for the growth of the agnatic 
 bond, or for the forms of early marriage, such as the Beena 
 or polyandrous type : nor does it explain the part which 
 Totemism, however it may have originated, undoubtedly 
 played in their evolution. It now appears probable that 
 the sept is a more primitive form of organisation than the 
 family, which was evolved from it when the rule of male 
 kinship was established. 
 
 V/e can thus imagine the earlier stages of the colonisation 
 of the country to have been carried out by small bodies 
 of inyaders, who occupied the most fertile clearings in the 
 
 280 
 
A I'L'RE DRAVIDIA.N" KORWA. MIUZAPUR. 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 jungle, reduced to a state of serfdom the Autochthones, in 
 many cases intermarrying with them, and thus producing the 
 uniform craniological type which now prevails in Northern 
 India. , These bodies gradually threw off other groups, which 
 divided, the country between, them, and thus formed the 
 village as we see it now. 
 
 The traces of this early form of colonisation may be 
 observed to the present time in the local subdivisions of the 
 Pargana and Tappa, which correspond to the baronial or 
 hundred subdivisions of some of our English and Irish 
 counties. These probably represent the areas originally 
 occupied by the invading septs. The Tappa, for instance, 
 as in Gorakhpur, corresponds with the natural divisions 
 formed by rivers or other natural features. This was a 
 characteristic of the Rtjput settlements, where the various 
 colonising bodies are separated from each other by rivers, 
 the chief ethnical frontiers of the early times. So far is this 
 the case that it is most unusual to find the same tribe occu- 
 pying both banks of the stream. Though subsequent migra- 
 tions and transfers have done much to wear away this primi- 
 tive form of tribal settlement, we still find a decided tendency 
 of many septs to occupy well-defined local areas, such as the 
 Bais of Baisw§TajELSouthern Oudh, the Dikhits of Dikhti- 
 yaria, and so on. A typical instance of this is that of BamiSri 
 in Farrukhabid, which is the headquarters of a Sombansi 
 house of RSjputs, comprising five hundred members, and 
 occupying sixteen contiguous villages, which are divided into 
 six branches, three of them holding respectively a half, a 
 third, and a sixth of the parent village, an arrangement 
 which has naturally been productive of constant litigation. 
 
 We must also recollect that the definition of fixed rights 
 in the land has been mainly the work of our revenue system. 
 First of all the tribe or clan seems to have settled on one or 
 more fertile spots, holding a large tract in common. By and 
 by, as cultivation extended from each centre, boundaries were 
 gradually demarcated, and separate estates were formed, 
 wdthin which part of the area was still held in common. But 
 up to oiir times no one held an indefeasible right in the laqd 
 
 ?84 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 which he cultivated. He merely held so many Biswahs or 
 " twentieths," annas or " sixteenths," ploughs, or whatever the 
 shares were called in the original estate or some division of 
 it. In many cases the old ancestral rights had become 
 modified as more powerful members of the community 
 usurped the rights of their weaker brethren, as desertions 
 through the pressure of war or famine occurred, as the place 
 of the absentees was taken by outsiders, who were admitted 
 as new settlers. The annals of such a village tell a tale of 
 constant modification in the constitution of the proprietary 
 body. There is no actual evidence that the practice of the 
 periodical redistribution of lands took place; but these 
 changes possibly point to the existence of such a custom 
 at an earlier date. 
 
 Under our reorganisation of the district, this Pargana and 
 Tappa division has fallen largely into decay. The more 
 ancient units have been grouped into Tahsils or revenue 
 subdivisions, of which some five or six usually constitute a 
 Collector's charge ; but the boundaries of the Parganas have 
 been largely modified to suit the needs of our administration, 
 so that in many cases all that remains of the ancient division 
 is its name. 
 
 We find, again, survivals of the original grouping in the 
 local areas supposed to be held by the brethren of a single 
 sept. Such are the Chaurisi, or division of eighty-four vil- 
 lages, the Satasi of eighty-seven, the Biyalisi of forty-two, 
 and the Tera of thirteen, which is the traditional number of 
 villages presented by Jay Chand of Kanauj to the bodies of 
 Rijput colonists who settled under his auspices. These, too, 
 have passed through the melting-pot of the Civil Courts and 
 the Sale Laws, and little more than the old title survives to 
 our day. 
 
 But we are now more concerned with the village, or, as it 
 is technically called, the Mauza, into which the whole land is 
 divided. That the whole country is thus divided among pro- 
 prietors or joint communities must be insisted on as an answer 
 to those writers who suppose that the Indian Government 
 in this part of the country has at its disposal large areas of 
 
 282 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 waste or common land, which might under a more liberal 
 system be colonised, and produce crops such as cotton for 
 the benefit of Lancashire mill-owners. After the suppression 
 of the Mutiny it is true that the State had at its disposal 
 considerable areas of confiscated lands ; but these were all 
 conferred as rewards for loyal services. Except the State 
 lands reserved as forests there is now no public waste ; what 
 waste there is is attached to the existing villages, and over 
 this the State has no more authority than the British Govern- 
 ment possesses over a grouse moor in the Highlands or over 
 an Irish peat bog. 
 
 In the village as it now exists we have only faint survivals 
 of the three primitive Marks, as they appear in the Teutonic 
 form of the institution. We can, perhaps, recognise in the 
 village site the original township or village where the right 
 of selecting positions for houses is carefully restricted : in the 
 cultivated area the Arable Mark, and the Common Mark in 
 the Usar Plains and coarse, unculturable tracts where the 
 village cattle graze. But this commonage is the property of 
 the owners of the village, or of the section to which it is 
 attached, and co-sharers have the right to break it up on 
 condition of accounting for the income derived from it at 
 the annual distribution of profits. The primitive custom of 
 the redistribution of the arable lands at periodical intervals 
 has quite disappeared. 
 
 The village, then, as we see it now, is a definite surveyed 
 area, with well-marked boundaries, these sometimes following 
 the line of some natural feature, such as a rivulet or a ravine, 
 at others being merely a line drawn on a map. The city or 
 town is a much newer creation. Every town was founded 
 from considerations of politics or trade in the lands attached 
 to one or more villages ; these are still recognised, separately 
 demarcated, and assessed to revenue. 
 
 In all, the Province contains no less than 106,200 villages 
 of varying size. This gives an average area of somewhat 
 more than a square mile to each village ; in other words, 
 about five Indian villages would go to a parish in Great 
 Britain. There is, or was up to quite recent times, a village 
 
 283 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 in the Hamtrpur district of Bundelkhand with an area of 
 28J square miles, and when it was necessary to collect the 
 revenue a drum was beaten on an adjoining hill to assemble 
 the co-sharers, who numbered 379. But this is quite ex- 
 ceptional. All over the Province one-third of the agricultural 
 population live in villages of less than 500 souls ; there are 
 43,000 villages with less than 200 ; two-thirds live in villages 
 of over 500, of whom two-fifths occupy centres of more than 
 1000 inhabitants. 
 
 There is a steady decrease in the size and population of 
 villages as we pass from West to East — a result, as we have 
 already remarked, of the long reign of peace along the 
 Bengal frontier, which has encouraged the wider dispersal 
 of the people over the village area. Thus, in Meerut each 
 village has an area of i'42 square miles and a population 
 of 669, which decrease all along the course of the Ganges 
 till we come to Basti, where the average area is only '403 of 
 a square mile and the population 260. 
 
 The same rule of distribution applies to hamlets. As a 
 rule, the high caste peasant, the Brahman, and the Rajput, 
 who possesses resources derived from the ownership of the 
 soil, and is less industrious than his lower caste neighbours, 
 clings to the parent settlement; while the low caste man, 
 who, either like the currier or sweeper, practises occupations 
 and ways of life offensive to those in his vicinity, or devoted, 
 like the market-gardener tribes, to petite culture in its most 
 elaborate form, prefers to live close to his field and have his 
 ploughmen and manure supply close at hand. On the other 
 hand, to the West this minute kind of husbandry does not so 
 widely prevail, and the exigences of defence in the days of 
 trouble which accompanied Muhammadan, Sikh, or Marhatta 
 raids have forced him to live close to his brethren in more 
 powerful communities. This tendency has produced a note- 
 worthy economical effect. The closely-knit organisation of 
 the Western districts is more potent to resist the entry of a 
 capitalist purchaser, or to fight the landlord if he embarks on 
 a campaign to enhance rents, than the weaker groups to the 
 East of the country. 
 
 284 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 Before we speak of the organisation of these village bodies, 
 it must be pointed out that, in one respect at least, the 
 landed system of Oudh differs widely from that of the sister 
 Province. The former is the land of the Rij and the Taluka, 
 which are hardly found beyond the limits of Oudh. 
 
 It is in the sub-Himalayan districts that we find the Raj 
 in its most perfect form. This tract was, up to recent times, 
 a waste of jungle and savannahs of grass and reeds. Prob- 
 ably none of the bodies of original colonists here obtained 
 such a degree of fixity of tenure as to permit of any system 
 of collective property, much less any recognition of individual 
 ownership. Hence at the head of rural society stood the 
 ruling Rajput or Muhammadan families, and beneath them 
 was a mass of tenant farmers with no proprietary rights. 
 Some of these clans, like the Bisen Rajputs, organised them- 
 selves on a democratic footing, all the brethren being equal 
 in position and receiving their portion in the joint-inheritance. 
 In most cases, however, the monarchal constitution was 
 preferred, the representative of the ruling branch being, as 
 Raja, vested with supreme authority over the whole ancestral 
 domain, and the younger branches provided for by arbitrary 
 assignments for their support. The Raja had the right of 
 collecting the Government share of the produce where it 
 had not been alienated to a cadet of the house ; he governed 
 the foreign policy of the sept ; made levies for war or repair 
 of the central fort ; he exercised the power of judge in decid- 
 ing disputes among his subjects, and in repressing crime. 
 
 But the important point to notice in this connection is 
 that the peasant tenures under the Raja were the creation of 
 his grants, not in the form of a village community built up 
 on the nucleus of the colonisation of the soil by a body of 
 associated brethren. When the country came under the rule 
 of the Court of Oudh, this condition of things continued ; the 
 Raja paid as little as he could to the ruling power ; he often 
 achieved practical independence, and the coercion of these 
 refractory chieftains became a regular part of the duty of the 
 Administration. It was not till our stronger Government 
 took these chieftains seriously in hand that they were brought 
 
 28s 
 
i. 
 NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 under the rule of law, and the Queen's writ began to run in 
 their estates. 
 
 This condition of things, again, tended to the feudalisation 
 of the country; in other words, to the rise of the Taluka. 
 In these isolated tracts the overlord was enabled in those 
 unquiet times to absorb the weak, straggling village com- 
 munities, many of whom accepted his authority as a means 
 of protection from the extortion and oppression of the ruling 
 power. This process of feudalisation took various shapes. 
 In some cases grants of waste lands were made to some 
 enterprising soldier or courtier, who was from the first prac- 
 tically independent, and all cultivators settled by him were 
 his villeins, destitute of any rights except what he chose to 
 grant or could be induced to sell. In other cases, again, the 
 ruling power would delegate its authority to some officer, 
 like a Turkish Pasha, who was able to enforce his control 
 over the lawless elements of this semi-savage society. He 
 would at the outset be invested with authority only for his 
 single life ; but it is easy to understand how many a lord of 
 the marches would hand down his authority to his successor. 
 
 Another form was the grant by the State to some in- 
 fluential local magnate, devoted to its interests, of the right 
 to a percentage of the revenue over wide tracts of country. 
 To this he gradually added the right of settling the waste and 
 bringing it under the plough to his own advantage. 
 
 Sometimes, too, the same result followed from dissension 
 among the members of a coparcenary community. This 
 ended in the devolution of authority to some able leader, 
 who gradually consolidated his power over the remainder of 
 the brethren. Or, again, in some cases the harassed village 
 proprietors bartered their inheritance for the protection and 
 support of some local magnate, who alone was competent to 
 stand between them and the State harpies. 
 
 Gaining authority by one or more of these varied modes, 
 was developed the Talukdir or overlord, who is such a 
 prominent personage in Oudh politics. Round his rights or 
 usurpations has raged a fierce controversy, which is still 
 going on. 
 
 286 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 At the annexation of Oudh, in 1856, the Government of 
 the time was under the influence of that school of revenue 
 officers of whom Mr Thomason was the leader. They were 
 pledged to the support of the village community, which they 
 regarded as the only element in the country which deserved 
 to be maintained ; they looked on the Talukdir as a grasping 
 interloper, a danger to the State, a curse to the people them- 
 selves. The first move of the new Government was to do 
 what its predecessors would have done had they dared — to 
 settle the land, independently of the overlords, with the 
 people themselves. This was done, and the first Oudh 
 Settlement left the Talukdars deprived of the greater part 
 of their property. 
 
 How far this measure was a promoting cause of the Mutiny 
 of the following year is not quite certain. But the result of 
 its suppression was a conviction that the situation must be 
 reconsidered. In the end a new Settlement was made under 
 the auspices of Sir C. Wingfield, by which, in the main, the 
 condition of things as we found it on annexation was main- 
 tained, and the Talukdars, as they accepted our supremacy 
 and surrendered, were confirmed in the lordship of their 
 estates by virtue of Sanads or title deeds, conferred by the 
 British Government. From the point of view of the op- 
 ponents of this measure, a body of peasant proprietors was 
 made over, bound in chains to the mercy of their hereditary 
 oppressors. By the disciples of the other school this volte 
 face was justified as an act of simple justice to a body of 
 landowners, who deserved our sympathy and protection, 
 and who formed the only stable basis on which the future 
 prosperity and maintenance of peace in the Province could 
 be founded. 
 
 Taking a calmer view of this famous controversy, now that 
 the lapse of a generation has somewhat cooled the pcission 
 of the disputants, it may perhaps be said that both policies 
 were too sweeping. The rights of the village communities 
 might have been safeguarded without wholesale confiscation : 
 the re-establishment of the overlords should have been limited 
 by much more stringent provisions for the protection of the 
 
 287 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 peasantry. Until the Oudh tenant is as perfectly protected 
 as his neighbour in the sister Province, until his rent is 
 definitely fixed for a period long enough to encourage ex- 
 penditure of capital and labour on the land, the claims of 
 the cultivating body will remain a thorn in the side of the 
 Government, and it will be beyond its power to avert the 
 impoverishment of the people. 
 
 The result is that we have at present about two-thirds of 
 the soil of Oudh held by less than three hundred gentlemen, 
 whom it is not very easy to classify. To adopt Mr Irwin's 
 analysis,^ they comprise the old feudal chiefs, mostly Rijputs, 
 some of whom have embraced Islam ; mushroom Talukdars, 
 generally officials of the Oudh Court ; lastly, loyal grantees, 
 mostly Panjabis, who were granted estates by our Govern- 
 ment in consideration of Mutiny services. Mr Irwin, though 
 he condemns the system under which they were invested 
 with nearly absolute control over a large part of the soil of 
 Oudh, does not take a generally unfavourable view of them. 
 " They are," he writes, " probably the most fortunate body 
 of men in India. And, taking them as a whole, one may 
 gladly admit that, considering all things, they have done 
 quite as much in return for the favours they have received 
 as there was any reasonable ground of expecting from them. 
 Though often culpably indifferent to the welfare of their 
 tenantry, they are seldom actively oppressive. They are 
 entitled to the credit, and it is no small praise, of having 
 generally refrained from any marked abuse of the almost 
 unlimited powers conferred upon them by our legislation. 
 Improving landlords, or regenerators of agriculture, they 
 are not, but that was not to be expected." 
 
 So much for Oudh, the land of great landlords, and a 
 depressed peasantry. A few figures will show the difference 
 of the revenue system of the two Provinces. Premising that 
 Oudh has one-fourth of the population, and less than one- 
 fourth of the area of the North-Westem Provinces, the 
 revenue payers in both may be thus contrasted — 
 
 ' Garden of India, p. 8. 
 288 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 
 North-Western 
 Provinces. 
 
 Oudh. 
 
 Paying more thRn R.x. 5,000 
 Paying between R.x. S,ooo and R.x.500 
 Paying between R.x. 500 and R.x. 10 . 
 Paying less than R.x. 10 . . . 
 
 2321 
 
 39.157 
 
 1,448,837 
 
 951,965 
 
 "3 
 
 4578 
 
 8374 
 
 160,125 
 
 In short, while the landed proprietary in the larger Province 
 is essentially composed of petty yeomen, in Oudh this class 
 is practically non-existent. 
 
 Let us turn from this picture to the most instructive 
 example of a peasant proprietary. We have the sub-division 
 of Kosi, on the western bank of the Jumna, in the Mathura 
 district, where fifty-five per cent of the cultivated area is 
 held by Jats ; except a few resident shopkeepers and menial 
 servants here every one is to some extent a proprietor. The 
 revenue is realised by the headmen, and in the whole tract 
 there is not a single land-holder of any social position. Here 
 we find a distinctly low level of social life. The land is held 
 by a mass of peasants, devoted to a career of rather sordid 
 drudgery. There are none of those amenities which we are 
 prone to associate with civilisation. There is no man head 
 and shoulders above his neighbours; no Talukdir, with his 
 showy equipages, his ill-devised rambling house, adorned 
 with European furniture and gaudy French pictures; no 
 half-educated swashbuckler, who frequents cities and loves 
 to attend Darbirs; no horde of tawdry menials. On the 
 other hand, the wealth derived from the soil is more evenly 
 distributed. There is a more general average of comfort, 
 less grinding poverty ; steady, laborious industry is devoted to 
 agriculture, in a land where the seasons are less propitious 
 and the fields of less abundant fertility. But the race is 
 more manly and robust, the tone of daily life more free, 
 honest and self-reliant. And when times grow hard, the 
 heavens withhold the rain, the hail sweeps over the ripening 
 T 289 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 fields, the Jit somehow manages to brave the storm of 
 trouble, while the Oudh serf sinks into beggary. 
 
 It has been the habit to speak of these village communities 
 as if they were the ideal form of land tenure. And indeed 
 when we compare them with the serfage of Oudh they have 
 much to recommend them. The evolution of these proprie- 
 tary bodies is part of the gradual change which we have 
 witnessed in Europe — " the slow breaking-up of that military 
 type of society which reached its highest development in, 
 though it did not disappear with the Roman Empire " ; " the 
 story of political and social enfranchisement of the masses of 
 the people hitherto universally excluded from participation 
 in the rivalry of existence on terms of equality." ^ 
 
 The great advantage of this form of tenure is that the 
 income is not spent to humour the extravagance of some 
 magnate, who has no capital to spend on developing the 
 resources of the country and no real desire to aid in the 
 improvement of the condition of the people. Whatever is 
 gained from the annual harvests is spent in securing the rude 
 comfort of hundreds of industrious households. The peasant 
 here has a future of prosperity before him ; the petty holding, 
 barren and irresponsive to his labour though it may be, is yet 
 his own. If he can save he devotes his capital to widening 
 the bounds of his heritage. He will endure a life of ceaseless 
 labour and the most grinding economy if he can add but one 
 rood to his birthright. He will sink the savings of years in 
 building a well which is the only form of stable improvement 
 in which he has confidence. He is learned in the tending of 
 cattle ; he loves the great white cow and his pair of sleek 
 oxen as if they were his children, and he will starve himself 
 rather than that they should lack their daily provender. In 
 almost every farm is the brood mare whose produce he sells 
 year by year at a profit. Drought may wither the crops, 
 famine and disease may ravage the household : war may 
 destroy the accumulations of generations, and the fields may 
 lie barren for a season. But when the storm of calamity 
 blows over the yeoman returns to his homestead and starts 
 
 ' Kidd, Social Evolution, pp. 150 ff. 
 290 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 afresh his meagre farm supported by the help and sympathy 
 of his brethren. The best example of this recuperative power 
 of the peasant classes is shown in Colonel Baird Smith's 
 celebrated Report on the famine of i860, where he proves 
 that by that time all trace of the disaster of 1837-38 had quite 
 disappeared in the western Duib. 
 
 At the same time it would be incorrect to attribute this 
 rapid recovery altogether to the village system. The peasant 
 of the Upper Duab recovered his position so rapidly mainly 
 because his wants were so few and his appliances so limited. 
 The chief danger to him in time of drought is the loss of 
 his plough cattle. The rain seldom fails for two seasons in 
 succession, and if he can save his oxen or purchase a new 
 team he can easily borrow a small supply of seed grain. 
 Then he at once restores his ruined hut, sets his plough to 
 work, and after a year or two he is nearly as well off as he 
 ever was before. 
 
 But even admitting that the village organisation does to 
 some extent tend to assist in the revival of agriculture after 
 one of those disasters to which husbandry in Oriental lands is 
 always exposed, it brings other evils in its train. Our system 
 of administration is framed to vindicate the rights of the 
 individual to protection for himself and his property, and the 
 growth of private rights is inconsistent with the theory of 
 the communal organisation. In particular, fairly accessible 
 and tolerably equitable Courts of law encourage that spirit of 
 litigation which is the besetting sin of the small proprietor. 
 The sharer in a joint estate lives in an atmosphere of wran- 
 gling and suspicion ; there is constant squabbling over the 
 disposal of the waste, over the partition of tenants, over the 
 annual scrutiny of the accounts. Communal life thus tends 
 to become sordid and unkindly : every man's hand is against 
 his brother ; ancestral feuds are actively fostered, and once a 
 stranger forces his way into the community by purchase of a 
 share, he spends his time devising schemes whereby he may 
 absorb more and more of the estate. Meanwhile the old 
 co-sharers loathe him and spare no pains to work him injury. 
 The estate of a widow is a favourite source of disputes of this 
 
 291 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 kind, and once the pettifogging lawyer is called into con- 
 sultation, the fate of the community is sealed. Often, 
 too, the passion for the land shows itself in wild out- 
 bursts of revenge. There is still many a village where 
 a Banya who has purchased a share dares not enforce 
 his rights. He might go to shear and perchance come 
 away shorn. 
 
 But it may be said that such local quarrels are equitably 
 settled by the council of greybeards who sit under the old 
 pipal tree. This, it may be feared, is only an idyllic picture. 
 The lower castes, it is true, have their tribal councils which 
 sit in judgment on unfaithful wives, girls light o' love, and 
 culprits who have violated the Draconian code of caste or in 
 some way offended Mrs Grundy. Many cases of this kind 
 they settle fairly enough. There is little pretence of hearing 
 evidence or arriving at a judicial decision. The members are 
 compurgators, not jurymen. Village life has so little of 
 repression or reticence that the seniors know fairly well by 
 general repute how the rights of the matter lie. But even 
 here there is much chicanery and partiality. A case of this 
 kind often gives a good opportunity of paying off old scores, 
 of putting down some upstart whose prosperity is an eyesore 
 in the opinion of his neighbours. Often the women folk of a 
 substantial man, who can afford to pay a smart fine and can 
 be compelled to give a series of feasts to the brethren, are 
 more hardly judged than the sluttish quean who is the help- 
 mate of a pauper. 
 
 It is our law which has sapped the authority of the village 
 council. There is no finality about their decisions, and an 
 aggrieved suitor in the face of a hostile decree hastens to the 
 nearest court for redress. Where faction runs so high as it 
 does in these communities, the difficulty of securing impartial 
 arbitrators is very great, and it is the experience of most 
 judicial officers that it is almost hopeless to refer anything 
 like a tangled dispute to the decision of arbitrators. In 
 order to avoid odium they are most averse to give a definite 
 decision. They will potter over minor issues, they will yield 
 a trifle here, clip and pare a little there, but at the end no 
 
 292 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 principle has been established, and the dispute is as far 
 from settlement as ever. Hence most people now-a-days 
 prefer the judgment of the young English officer to that 
 of the village tribunal. He may be sometimes hasty, he 
 may be imperfectly acquainted with the local patois or 
 with rural custom, but at any rate he is honest, and if 
 his ruling be wrong at least the suitor has had good value 
 for his money: he has asserted his independence, and his 
 social importance is enhanced in the eyes of his neighbours 
 by his enterprise in bringing a Sahib to the spot to survey 
 his disputed boundary, or to decide how half a dozen mango 
 trees can be equitably divided. If the claimant fail, all that 
 can be said is that fate was too strong for him and the great 
 gods unkind. 
 
 Influences such as these have for some time been tending 
 to lower the position of the village headman, the pivot on 
 which the whole institution works. It is all very well to be 
 a headman so long as you command general respect, so long 
 as your decrees have the binding force of law. For this it 
 is even worth standing the pressure of the native revenue 
 collector when the instalment is due, to be haled off by the 
 Tahstldar, even to lose hard cash over a defaulting co-sharer. 
 But as soon as some envious neighbour or some menial serf 
 whom you have hitherto despised begins to flout you, and 
 perchance drags you to the Court on some trivial charge, the 
 office is hardly worth the having. 
 
 It is the post office, however, of all things in the world 
 which seems likely to give the village system its final blow. 
 Not long since it came into the head of some bustling official 
 that it would save the sharer a long march to the distant 
 headquarters and the douceur which he must pay to the 
 native accountant if he could remit his revenue instalment 
 through the post. This was all very well, and in some cases 
 the new arrangement was an obvious convenience. But this 
 is not the view of the headman. It suited him that all pay- 
 ments should be made through him alone, and it detracted 
 from his importance that the revenue demand should be dis- 
 charged without his intervention. Hence it is becoming more 
 
 293 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 and more difficult to find suitable persons to discharge duties 
 which have been shorn of much of their old dignity. It rather 
 looks as if we were tending more and more to what will be 
 practically a ryotwari system, where the State deals direct 
 with every petty proprietor. What the end of this may be 
 it is difficult to forecast. One thing is quite certain — if we 
 have to keep the separate accounts of fifty co-sharers in place 
 of one headman, the present revenue establishment must be 
 very largely reinforced. 
 
 In other ways, too, the communal system has become 
 weakened under our administration. Our definition of 
 individual rights in the land and the protection of them 
 which we have guaranteed all tend in the same direction. It is 
 naturally the interest of any man who is cursed by a body of 
 quarrelsome, impecunious co-sharers to get his own property 
 separated from the common stock. He knows exactly what 
 he has and how much revenue he is bound to pay. At one 
 time it was the rule that the creation of no new revenue unit 
 was to be approved unless it was of adequate size. This was 
 intended to limit the amount of partition and save the State 
 from the worry of a mass of trivial accounts. It is much 
 easier to realise a hundred pounds a year from one or two 
 solvent headmen than from a host of embarrassed sharers. 
 But a check like this could only be temporary, and now in 
 practice any man can demand that even a minute share 
 should be divided. 
 
 Another bond which united the sharers was the common 
 responsibility for the revenue demand. The old theory was 
 that if any sharer failed to pay his instalment, the amount 
 might be realised from the headman or some solvent sharer, 
 who was left to recoup himself as best he could by suit 
 against the defaulter. Our milder system has tended to 
 check what was often a cause of crying injustice At present 
 it is only in the most exceptional cases that the communal 
 responsibility is enforced. The Collector will distrain the 
 goods of the defaulter, arrest him, lease his share for a time 
 to some one else; but he hesitates before he compels a 
 neighbour to discharge his arrears. 
 
 •294 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 Thus, by the gradual influence of our administration and 
 changes in practice tentatively introduced, the bond which 
 held the village community together has been seriously 
 weakened, and there has not been for generations any stress 
 of war or rapine which would enforce combination to resist 
 the general enemy. It may be well that the State should 
 deal directly with each proprietor : it may be that the com- 
 munal arrangement is effete. The danger is that we should 
 drift into a new policy for which we are not prepared, and 
 find ourselves exposed to difficulties which will profoundly 
 affect our revenue system. At any rate, it is quite time to 
 realise the direction in which we are moving, and if the 
 village organisation be worth preserving, to do something to 
 prop it up before it be too late. 
 
 It has seemed worth while describing the modern develop- 
 ment of an institution which has aroused widespread interest 
 among European sociologists. We must now attempt to 
 explain what is the actual village organisation of which we 
 have been speaking, and to see what a Settlement and a 
 Record of rights really mean. And here, in the first place, we 
 must draw a distinction. When we speak of a " village " we 
 generally think of a definite area with its site, cultivated 
 fields, wells, tanks, and groves. But it is not of the Mauza 
 or village that the revenue officer thinks : it is of the Mahal 
 or assessment unit. The Mahal is the unit which is separately 
 assessed to revenue. There may be only one Mahil in a 
 village : there may be a dozen. When a village is partitioned 
 one or more new Mahals are formed, each of which, so far as 
 revenue matters are concerned, is quite distinct from the 
 others. The map of a village which has undergone partition 
 into half a dozen new Mahals is a curious sight. You cannot 
 take a ruler and mark off" one corner to A, another to B, and 
 so on. To begin with, the Mahals may be of various sizes — 
 one may be one-third, another one thirty-third of the whole 
 estate. Each of these must have its proper share of the best 
 and worst lands, of the wells, tanks, groves, cultivated area, 
 and waste, not to speak of the village site. So the map in 
 its final form is a mass of apparent confusion — splotches of 
 
 295 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 red and green and blue all over the surface represent the 
 fields which have been allotted to each Mahil. 
 
 How it ever comes to be done is a standing wonder. To 
 the casual visitor only the broad distinctions between the 
 different classes of soil are apparent. He sees that one belt 
 is loam, another sand, one side watered, the other dry. But 
 the keener eye of the peasant trained from boyhood to watch 
 every individual field recognises minute differences of fertility, 
 superiority of position and so on, which are not readily 
 apparent. One field catches the warmth of the morning sun 
 which a grove or belt of trees shuts out from another. The 
 slope of one facilitates the labour at the well : one is grazed 
 by the village cattle as they return from pasture, another is 
 ravaged by pigs or monkeys or deer. So, before a partition 
 can be made there must be many palavers, arguments which 
 go on for days at a time, the wails or imprecations of some 
 disappointed claimant, here a little to be yielded to one, a 
 fragment to be lopped from another, till resignation to the 
 award, not contentment, which is out of the question, is 
 finally secured. Each man, of course, keeps his ancestral 
 fields if it can possibly be so arranged. But it is when he 
 has to surrender a scrap of ground he has ploughed since he 
 was a boy, or has to give up the tree under which his children 
 play or the corner where he stalls his cow, that the real 
 struggle comes, and his emotional nature finds relief in a 
 wild passion of tears, execrations or appeals to the universe 
 at large, if he thinks or chooses to imagine that he has been 
 wronged. 
 
 The theory on which the land system was originally based, 
 one which we inherited from our Musalman predecessors, 
 was that the sovereign was absolute owner of all the land in 
 the country, and that all property in land existed only by his 
 sufferance. " The Muhammadan theory and the correspond- 
 ing Muhammadan practice had put out of sight the ancient 
 view of the sovereign's rights, which though it assigned to 
 him a far larger share of the produce of the land than any 
 western ruler has ever claimed, yet in nowise denied the 
 existence of private property in land. The English began 
 
 296 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 to act in perfect good faith on the ideas which they found 
 universally prevailing among the functionaries whom they 
 had taken over from the Muhammadan semi-independent 
 viceroys dethroned by their arms. Their earliest experi- 
 ments, tried in the belief that the soil was theirs, and that 
 any land law would be of their exclusive creation, have now 
 passed into proverbs of maladroit management" ^ 
 
 This conception that the State is the owner of the soil 
 still occasionally appears. Thus, the Famine Commissioners 
 write ^ — " The expression ' ownership of land ' when used 
 with reference to India must be used in a sense differing in 
 some important respects from that in which it is commonly 
 used in England. In India the immemorial and unquestioned 
 custom of the country is that the landholders do not own the 
 land in the sense in which ownership is understood in Eng- 
 land, but merely certain limited rights to it Originally the 
 occupant of the land possessed the right to hold and till it 
 subject to the payment of a part of the produce to Govern- 
 ment; and the Government possessed the correlative right 
 to a share of the produce of the land, known as the land 
 revenue." 
 
 The controversy whether Government really owns the 
 land or not has become in a great measure academic. The 
 State does reserve the right that its demand is to have pre- 
 cedence of all other claims, and theoretically at each revision 
 of settlement asserts its power of refusing to renew the en- 
 gagement with the landholder in possession ; or it may secure 
 the same end by fixing his revenue on a scale which leaves 
 him no margin of profit, and at which he declines to re-engage. 
 But this right has practically fallen into abeyance. As a 
 matter of fact, the refusal of the Government to recognise 
 the holder in possession or to assess a reasonable demand 
 upon him is as rare as the rejection of the terms of resettle- 
 ment by the proprietor. All the substantial authority of an 
 owner has been conferred upon him. He can sell and mort- 
 gage, he can settle tenants on the waste, he can cut down 
 the trees, he can raise his rents so far as he is not restricted 
 1 Maine, Village Communities, p. 104. ' Report, Part ii. p. no. 
 
 297 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 by special law. If his land is appropriated by the State for 
 a Canal or Railway, he will receive equitable compensation. 
 
 Whether we have been wise in conferring these extensive 
 powers upon a proprietary in this social stage is another 
 matter. What the result has been is clear from the case of 
 Jhansi. Here we have the most backward, least fertile part 
 of the country, the portion of the Province most exposed to 
 drought, worst protected by artificial irrigation, the pro- 
 prietors less intelligent than in other parts, less completely 
 dissociated from the traditions of the wild life which charac- 
 terises Central India. Such people would probably be much 
 happier if they possessed only a limited tenure in the soil 
 and were unable to sell and mortgage their property. As it 
 is, partly from unfavourable economic conditions, partly from 
 their natural boorish simplicity, they have fallen into the 
 hands of the money-lender, and it became necessary not long 
 since to introduce special measures for their relief A Court 
 was established for the purpose of arranging a compromise 
 between debtor and creditor; but it is more than doubtful 
 if such measures are likely to have any permanent effect. 
 
 Under the Hindu rule, as we have seen, the country was 
 divided into a number of semi-independent communities, 
 each of which through its, headman paid the Raja a re- 
 cognised share of the produce. In this state of society the 
 land was the only source of the public revenue. It is only 
 at a later stage that the evolution of industries of the com- 
 mercial and industrial type open up new sources of revenue. 
 Hence came the theory that the land was the property of the 
 State, that the occupant was the tenant of the ruling power, 
 and that if one despot chose to confer his rights on a favourite 
 minion, his successor was perfectly entitled to resume the 
 grant Theoretically the demand had no limit but the 
 expenses of cultivation and the margin on which the peasant 
 could live. But this was a limit which under existing cir- 
 cumstances could never be attained. The demand might be 
 excessive, but it could never be recovered with regularity. 
 If the peasant community or the local chieftain under whose 
 protection they lived could keep their ragged militia in 
 
 298 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 tolerable efficiency, they might hope for a time to baffle the 
 Collector altogether ; but sooner or later the deficiency was 
 realised in a fierce raid, when the torch was applied to the 
 thatched roofs, and the community extirpated for a time. 
 
 It was Shir Shah who first, with the prescience of genius, 
 saw the urgent need of leaving a margin between the profits 
 of cultivation and the demand of the State, and conferring 
 this, or, to use the technical phrase " settling " it with a 
 middleman who would act as an intermediary between the 
 Government and the peasant, and having a secured pro- 
 prietary interest in the soil, would see his advantage in 
 encouraging agriculture, settling new tenants under his pro- 
 tection, and bringing the abundant wjiste under the plough. 
 
 Hence the vocabulary of our land system dates from the 
 Mughal era, and is of Persian origin — ZamJndar, the land- 
 holder ; Mauza, the corporate village ; Mahal, the revenue 
 unit. It is needless to enter on a discussion of the stages 
 by which the rights of these Zamindirs were established. 
 Some of them were mere upstarts, creatures of the Court to 
 whom certain lands were assigned ; they were mere tax- 
 gatherers, who paid a portion of their collections into the 
 Treasury. But in other cases the Mughals recognised the 
 local Hindu Raja, or the leading man of the village com- 
 munity, as the representative of the peasantry, and in this 
 way the continuity of the traditional regime was to some 
 extent maintained. 
 
 It was under Shir Shah that Todar Mall, the Thomason of 
 the Musalmin period, was trained. To him is due a remark- 
 able reform — the substitution of Persian for the Hindi script 
 in which up to his time the village records were maintained. 
 The object of this seems partly to have been to make the 
 system intelligible to the bureaucracy at the capital ; but he 
 had also a patriotic feeling in thus inducing his countrymen 
 to acquire the language of their conquerors and qualify them- 
 selves for public employment The Hindus in the sixteenth 
 century applied themselves so zealously to the new learning 
 that before another hundred years had passed they were fully 
 equal to the Muhammadans in literary acquirements. 
 
 299 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 What we are told that Todar Mall, the first Settlement 
 officer, did, was to carry out a detailed survey, classifying the 
 land into that which was waste, fallow, or cropped. When it 
 was cultivated in vetches, cereals, or oil seeds, the Govern- 
 ment assessment was at the rate of one-third of the gross 
 produce, the remaining two-thirds being left to the middle- 
 man and tenant At the same time, in regard to the more 
 valuable crops, such as cotton and sugar-cane, the custom of 
 cash assessments was introduced, and the principle, hitherto 
 unknown to the jurisprudence of Islam, that the believer and 
 the unbeliever were to be taxed alike, was finally established. 
 
 We could have spared much of the details in the Ain-i- 
 Akbari devoted to the account of the royal elephants and 
 His Majesty's wardrobe for a more particular account of his 
 revenue system. The cursory way in which it is referred to 
 indicates that even then its supreme importance was not fully 
 recognised. In fact, among those scholars who have devoted 
 most time to the study of the records of the later Musalmin 
 Empire, the conviction is gradually growing that too much 
 reliance has been hitherto placed on the traditions of the 
 revenue settlement, that it was far from being as general or 
 detailed as is commonly supposed, and that the assessment, 
 wherever it was really made, was an ideal to be worked up 
 to rather than a methodical definition of the rights of the 
 State, the proprietors and the tenantry. 
 
 What Akbar appears to have done was to take the average 
 produce of the best, of the middling, of the poorest classes of 
 soil in all the chief varieties of crop. Of this, one-third was 
 set aside as the amount of the revenue demand. Statements 
 of price current were then prepared, and on these were based 
 the commutations of the assessment in kind for a cash pay- 
 ment. As Abul Fazl explains, this commutation was made 
 for the convenience of the cultivators and the soldiery. This 
 Settlement was at first annual, but was subsequently made 
 for periods of ten years. 
 
 This Settlement, then, so far as we are acquainted with 
 the details, had one point of contrast with, and one of resem- 
 blance to, our most modern Settlements. The Settlement 
 
 300 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 Officer of our day has given up troubling himself to ascertain 
 the actual amount of produce. He makes, it is true, occa- 
 sional enquiries and experiments in this direction as a check 
 on his work, but what he assesses on is the rent, which is the 
 best measure of the fertility of the soil, and much more easily 
 ascertained than the produce of individual fields. Unlike 
 the Settlement Officer of our earlier period, he bases his 
 revenue demand on the actual assets without speculating to 
 what extent the estate might be expected to develop between 
 one survey and the next. This is, as will be seen, the prin- 
 ciple to which we have now reverted, after close on a century 
 of experiments in revenue administration. 
 
 The variations of tenure within the Mahal are most 
 numerous. M. Thiers is said to have asked Lord Palmer- 
 ston to give him in half-an-hour an account of the British 
 Constitution. A short sketch of Indian land tenures is likely 
 to be quite as misleading.^ 
 
 We find, first, the Zamindari form, in which the whole 
 land is held and manned in common, the profits being 
 thrown into a general fund and periodically divided among 
 the sharers, whose interests are recorded in fractions of the 
 rupee or bigha, the local unit of land measure. This form 
 of constitution as a rule works smoothly only where the 
 sharers are close relations and few in number. 
 
 More numerous are the forms of what is called the Patti- 
 dari tenure, in which the estate is held in severalty by the 
 co-sharers, each of whom is responsible for his due share of 
 the revenue. This is supposed to be paid through a head- 
 man, and theoretically the whole estate is liable for the 
 default of any co-sharer, a penalty which, as has been already 
 said, is very seldom enforced. The varieties of this tenure 
 are infinite. In one form, for instance, only the home farm 
 of the proprietors is held separately, while all else is divided. 
 This is not very usual. In another form the greater part of 
 the cultivated area, the menial cultivators or artisans, and 
 
 1 For complete information on a most intricate and difEcult question, the 
 various forms of the village Constitution, the reader may be referred to Mr Baden 
 Powell's Land System! of British India. 
 
 301 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 some of the waste and manorial dues — income from jungle, 
 fishing, market dues, and so on — may be divided, while the 
 rest is common to all. The case becomes still more com- 
 plicated where the Mahal has been divided into Pattis or 
 sections, and in this constitution we find land held severally 
 by individual households, land held in common by certain 
 households, land held in common by the households consti- 
 tuting the main Patti, and land held in common by the 
 sharers of the original Mahal. The welfare of such a com- 
 plex organisation as this, and the absence of wasteful litiga- 
 tion, depend on the skill with which, at the periodical Settle- 
 ments, the interests of the individual sharers have been 
 defined, and the care with which the code of rules regulating 
 their position has been prepared. 
 
 It is this work of entry of the interest of each co-sharer 
 and the preparation of a village constitution, with the deter- 
 mination of the tenures of the cultivators, which constitutes 
 the Record of Rights. Its basis is a field map in which 
 every minute plot is numbered and entered in an index with 
 the name of the tenant, the area he holds, the crop he plants, 
 the rent he pays, the status he enjoys. Next comes the 
 series of rent accounts, and lastly, those which prescribe the 
 distribution of the surplus among the co-sharers after the 
 Government revenue and other general village charges have 
 been paid. 
 
 Few Englishmen have any conception of the elaborate 
 form which this system of village accounts has assumed, 
 gradually developed, as it has been, by the labours of one 
 generation of officials after another. The accounts are pre- 
 pared in the first instance by the village accountant or 
 Patw^ri, and above him is a regular chain of supervisors, 
 ending with the Collector himself. These officers, field map 
 in hand, trudge day after day through the wide expanse of 
 cultivation, testing and checking, comparing and verifying, in 
 the presence of the parties concerned, a certain proportion of 
 entries regarding these multitudinous plots. It is an irksome, 
 monotonous task, but one of prime importance to the welfare 
 of the peasantry. These records form the basis of a mass of 
 
 302 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 agricultural statistics, such as perhaps no other Government 
 in the world has at its disposal. 
 
 The value of this mass of statistical information it is diffi- 
 cult to overrate. If drought be threatened, an order flashes 
 from the desk of the Collector to a myriad of accountants, 
 and in a few days he has before him complete details of the 
 area sown in crops threatened by ruin, and he is thus in 
 a position to make a trustworthy forecast of the situation. 
 Early in each season he is able to publish an estimate of the 
 coming harvest, which is of the greatest value to the local 
 trader and exporter. 
 
 Even more valuable are these statistics for the purposes of 
 the periodical revision of the Settlement. In olden days, the 
 officer in charge of this work was obliged to prepare all these 
 figures for himself. He began with a survey and a new 
 map ; then he drew up a rent-roll, and so proceeded to fix 
 the fresh demand. Now he finds the maps kept up to date, 
 the annual corrected rent-rolls to hand, the changes of owner- 
 ship regularly recorded ; and, with a certain amount of 
 checking and analysis of the figures, he is able, in a com- 
 paratively limited time, to draw up his scale of rates, and 
 proceed to announce the amount of revenue which he pro- 
 poses to assess. 
 
 It is only because the British public is so ignorant of 
 Indian affairs, so confident that its officers are alive to their 
 duties and responsibilities, that more attention has not been 
 paid to what, in its way, is about the greatest work done by 
 Englishmen in the present generation. 
 
 When the Record of Rights, and more particularly the 
 corrected rent-roll, have been prepared, the way is open for 
 the assessment The next question is, whether this assess- 
 ment is to be for a limited period, or whether it is to be 
 permanent? This is not the place to discuss a matter of 
 Imperial interest — the advantages and disadvantages of the 
 Permanent Settlement. It is sufficient to say that the 
 opinion of all competent authorities is decidedly opposed to 
 its extension to northern India; that under its operation 
 Bengal pays much less than its due proportion of the public 
 
 303 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 burdens ; and that there the main arguments in its favour — 
 the expectation that it would lead to the agricultural develop- 
 ment of the country, that the Zamindar could be converted 
 into the Oriental equivalent of the English country gentle- 
 man, that exceptional benefits conferred upon the landlord 
 class were not inconsistent with the protection of the peasantry 
 from extortion and oppression — have all been disapproved by 
 experience. 
 
 At present in this Province the area under the Permanent 
 Settlement is inconsiderable. In the early days of our rule, 
 about 10,000 square miles to the East were permanently 
 settled. To this have been added about 2000 square miles 
 permanently settled in Oudh, as a reward for Mutiny ser- 
 vices. In all, 11,830 square miles, or 11 per cent, of the 
 total area, is permanently settled, and this, about the richest 
 part of the Province, pays g per cent, of the total revenue. 
 
 What is less generally known is that it was only through 
 a fortunate accident that a large part of the Province was, 
 since the Mutiny, saved from a permanent assessment. 
 There must be a special form of thanksgiving prepared for 
 the daily use of modern finance members of Council that this 
 project was overruled.'^ 
 
 In his famous Resolution of 1861, Lord Canning enunciated 
 his views on two vital questions — one was " the sale of waste 
 lands in perpetuity, discharged from all prospective demand 
 on account of land revenue " ; the other, " permission to 
 redeem the existing land revenue by the immediate pay- 
 ment of one sum equal in value to the revenue redeemed." 
 His Excellency in Council " finds that the ablest and most 
 experienced public officers very generally concur with private 
 parties interested in land, in the expectation that substantial 
 advantage will follow the adoption of both these measures." 
 As to waste lands, he concluded, " there could be no ques- 
 tion." He had still less doubt as to the beneficial results of 
 permitting a redemption of the land revenue. " He believes 
 that increased security of fixed property, and comparative 
 
 ' For a complete review of the whole question, see Sir A. Colvin's Memorandum 
 on Settlements in the North- Western Provinces. 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 freedom from the interference of the fiscal officers of the 
 Government, will tend to create a class which, though com- 
 posed of various races and creeds, will be peculiarly bound 
 to the British rule; whilst under proper regulations the 
 measure will conduce materially to the general revenue of 
 the Empire." 
 
 These proposals did not meet with the approval of the 
 Home Government, and just then came the commercial 
 boom, resulting from the demand for cotton during the 
 American war. So the question was for a time laid aside. 
 
 When it came again under consideration, the conditions 
 on which a tract might be permanently settled were thus 
 formulated — the actual cultivation must have reached 80 per 
 cent of the culturable area; Government was to receive 
 60 per cent, of the existing assets. " Districts in which 
 agriculture is backward, population scanty, and rent not 
 fully developed, were to be exempted from permanent settle- 
 ment. Fully developed districts were to be permanently 
 settled ; comparatively backward estates in forward districts 
 were to be permanently settled, if the proprietors accepted a 
 demand assessed at 80 per cent of the culturable area, but 
 not falling at a rate higher than 60 per cent, of the assets 
 existing at the time of settlement. No assessment was to 
 be made on the strength of unreclaimed land, under any 
 circumstances, until the assessing officer should have per- 
 sonally examined the soil, and assured himself that it might 
 easily and profitably be brought under tillage. The addition 
 to the assessment, it was added, was invariably to be within 
 the full estimate of public improvement In every permanent 
 settlement the initial was to be the permanent demand. No 
 progressive assessments would, under any circumstances, be 
 allowed in a settlement made in perpetuity. All estates not 
 susceptible of permanent settlement under the prescribed 
 conditions would be subject to a temporary settlement for 
 a term of thirty years." To this later on was added another 
 condition — " that no permanent settlement shall be concluded 
 for any estate in which canal irrigation is, in the opinion of 
 the Governor-General, likely to be extended within the next 
 u 305 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 twenty years, and the existing assets would be thereby in- 
 creased by 20 per cent" 
 
 The final blow to these proposals for a Permanent Settle- 
 ment of the land revenue was struck by the revelations of 
 the results in the Baghpat subdivision of Meerut and in the 
 Bulandshahr district. The conditions of this district were 
 peculiar. The settlement, commenced before the Mutiny, 
 was interrupted by the disturbances ; just about that time 
 the conditions of the tract were greatly changed by the intro- 
 duction of canal irrigation ; it possesses a body of landlords 
 stronger than in any other part of the country, who have 
 been notorious for a determination to force up rents and to 
 disguise their real profits, with a view to evade enhancement 
 of the demand. The settlement itself was far from satis- 
 factory. To use the words of the official resolution — " The 
 settlement, which has now been revised, was made in the 
 year 1865. From various causes its operations were un- 
 usually protracted. Though the work was begun before the 
 Mutiny, and resumed in 1858, final orders were not passed 
 till 1 87 1, by which time it had been ascertained that the 
 assessments reported in 1865 were inadequate, and involved 
 the sacrifice of the just rights of the State. Immediately 
 after the settlement there was a very substantial increase in 
 the recorded cash rental. Part of this increase was real, and 
 due to the enhancements made after the announcement of 
 the assessment Part was nominal, and represented assets 
 existing at the time of settlement which had been concealed 
 and not brought to record. Little or no regard was paid to 
 the declared rentals, the village rent rolls were usually left 
 untotalled, and the Settlement Officer scarcely professed to 
 consider actuals. The assessments were based on valuation 
 rates, and there was a failure to gauge the real rent-paying 
 capacity of the district. The valuation rates were inadequate, 
 mainly because they were applied to inaccurate areas of 
 classification. The irrigated area was much understated. 
 Owing to the adoption of a single set of rates for large tracts, 
 containing villages of very varying fertility, the revenue fell 
 heavily in bad estates and very lightly in good ones. But 
 
 306 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 under the rapid increase in material prosperity, which set in 
 soon after the settlement, the demand even in the worst cases 
 became fair or even moderate.", 
 
 It was a settlement thus conducted which, under the new 
 rules, would have become permanent It was soon found 
 that Bulandshahr was not the only case in which the revenue 
 was inadequate. It was perhaps well that this was so. After 
 the disasters caused by the Mutiny, particularly in the western 
 districts and Oudh, the imposition of a moderate demand 
 was prescribed by all considerations of policy and justice. 
 But to make such a demand permanent — in the face of the 
 rapid revival of the country, the spread of railways and canals, 
 the development of industries and commerce — was seen to 
 be out of the question. The Imperial finances suffered for 
 a time, but the moderation of the demand bore its natural 
 fruit in the general prosperity and contentment with the new 
 Government, which assured peace to the country. It was 
 left to the present generation to reap the harvest It has been 
 possible, under the revision now in progress, to make large 
 enhancements of the revenue without encroaching on the 
 resources of the people. Thus we have in Gorakhpur, after 
 thirty years, an increase of 45 per cent ; in Basti 46 ; in 
 Bulandshahr 50; while in Jhinsi, where the progress has 
 been less striking, the increase was only 13 per cent The 
 total land revenue of the joint Provinces has increased by 
 about half a million since 1875. 
 
 The case of Bulandshahr and other districts also directed 
 attention to the principles on which the revision of the assess- 
 ment should be conducted. We have seen that in the case 
 of Bulandshahr nearly fifteen years elapsed between the 
 beginning of and the final orders upon the settlement So 
 in Azamgarh, the work lasted twelve years, and cost R.x. 
 70,000. The recent revision in Bulandshahr, of which the 
 area is 1913 square miles, as compared with 2147 in Azamgarh, 
 was completed in three years, at a cost of about R.X. 20,000. 
 
 " These facts," writes Sir A. Colvin, " are significant to 
 those who know what the settlement of a district means — 
 the value of property depreciated until the exact amount 
 
 307 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the new assessment is declared ; credit affected ; heart- 
 burning and irritation between landlord and tenant; sus- 
 picion of the intentions of Government ; a host of official 
 underlings scattered broadcast over the vexed villages. I 
 can conceive nothing more beneficial than a prompt assess- 
 ment of the public demand, with a speedy adjustment of 
 rents and of proprietary rights. But nothing can equal the 
 injury inflicted by a slow, uncertain settlement, dragging its 
 length along, obstructed by conflicting orders, harassed by 
 successive Administrations, and finally threatened with annihi- 
 lation at the moment when it seemed to have nearly finished 
 its course. Little wonder that we hear of the land needing 
 rest." 
 
 It would be unjust to the former generation of Settlement 
 Officers to blame them in any way for this result. The dif- 
 ference between the old and the new methods of assessment 
 depends almost altogether on the degree to which the existing 
 village records were capable of utilisation for the purpose of 
 ascertaining the rental assets. The modern system of super- 
 vision has secured much more accuracy and completeness 
 in these records. The accountants by whom they are pre- 
 pared are now more fully trained and more closely controlled. 
 The field maps are now annually revised, and thus the need 
 of a fresh survey at each revision of settlement no longer 
 exists. The large increase in rents, due to a rise in the value 
 of produce, leaves such an ample margin for enhancement 
 of the revenue that the assessing officer is no longer required 
 to make such minute inquiries. He knows that an immediate 
 doubling or trebling of the demand is out of the question. 
 A landlord, like any one else, becomes accustomed to a 
 certain scale of expenditure and comfort, and if his income 
 be suddenly reduced by half he is forced either to make a 
 sudden reduction in his establishment or to fall into debt. 
 It is perhaps more difficult for such a man to retrench his 
 expenditure, to reduce his outgoings on entertainments, 
 charity or household expenditure, than it is for an English- 
 man to dispense with the services of his coachman or his 
 cook. Still harder is the case of the yeoman, to whom the 
 
 308 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 loss of a sovereign a month means penury in lieu of moderate 
 comfort The old Settlement Officer had to speculate how 
 much he could take without undue pressure upon the resources 
 of the village ; his successor puzzles his head by thinking 
 what plausible reasons he can suggest for holding back his 
 hand, how to reconcile the moderation of his demand with the 
 traditional right of the State to something like half the rental. 
 
 Hence in former days the investigation was much more 
 searching and minute. Every man's hand was against the 
 official ; not a penny more, so every one told him, could be 
 screwed out of an indigent peasantry ; another straw would 
 break the tenant's back. The village records were fabricated 
 with intent to deceive him ; all sources of trustworthy in- 
 formation were closed. So perforce he had to go on patiently 
 dividing the villages into groups of average fertility ; breaking 
 up each village into belts of uniform soil — first class, second 
 and third, clay and loam, and sand, irrigated and dry, fields 
 that bore wheat or rice, millets or garden crops ; here ex- 
 tracting some information from a solitary peasant in his field, 
 there utilising the envy, hatred, and malice of one dis- 
 contented sharer to match the wiliness of another. It was 
 a thankless, irritating duty ; the wonder is that it was on the 
 whole done so well. 
 
 Even now the work of the assessing officer is one of 
 extreme difficulty. He finds sometimes, as in Bulandshahr, 
 a class of powerful landlords banded together to resist him, 
 with one set of rent rolls for private use, another for settle- 
 ment purposes. But here he is aided by the growing 
 independence and self-reliance of the peasant. It requires a 
 slavish and depressed tenantry to secure full compliance with 
 the landlord's aims. The unjust steward himself must have 
 been backed up by people who dealt in the mammon of 
 unrighteousness ; and the tenant soon comes to see that the 
 advantage is all one way if he gets a receipt for half-a-crown 
 an acre and pays five shillings for the next thirty years. So, 
 as was the case in Bulandshahr, the fraud recoils on those 
 who planned it, and sooner or later comes the time when it 
 must be disclosed. 
 
 309 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 It is to avoid this form of misrepresentation that the 
 Settlement Officer must still frame averi^e rates ; but he 
 uses them not as the sole basis of assessment, but as a 
 check on fraudulent concealment of assets. When he once 
 obtains a fairly trustworthy rent roll his work is nearly done. 
 He has to apply tenant's rates to the landlord's home-farm, 
 which is usually entered in the papers at a nominal rent, 
 and to plots held rent-free or at small rents by the village 
 Brahman or barber. Thus he arrives at a tolerably trust- 
 worthy account of the rental income, and out of this he 
 deducts the proportion due to the State, and distributes the 
 surplus over the shares of the coparceners. 
 
 The case of the smaller village communities requires special 
 consideration. It is obvious that a sudden enhancement of 
 revenue, which can be borne by a great landlord, will press 
 unduly on the resources of a body of yeomen. But this is 
 only one side of the case. As the Government puts the 
 matter in its review of the last Shahjahinpur settlement — 
 " While unquestionably the principle of the Government 
 order, that proprietary cultivating communities should be 
 assessed leniently is right, especially if an assessment at full 
 rates would involve a great enhancement of the previous 
 demand, there is a limit to the indulgence with which they 
 should be treated. Pushed to an excess, it would imply that 
 no assessment should be imposed when the community had 
 multiplied to such an extent, and property become so sub- 
 divided that individual holdings no longer yield a sufficient 
 income for bare subsistence. Apparently, if subdivision go 
 on until holdings are too small to furnish full employment 
 for the proprietor and his family, any leniency encouraging 
 it and tending to increase the burden upon the land is a 
 mistaken policy." 
 
 We now come to consider the proportion of the rental 
 assets which the State claims as its share. It is extremely 
 difficult to compare the proportions taken by the State in 
 Hindu and Muhammadan times with those of our settle- 
 ments. The value of silver, the conditions of social life, the 
 standard of comfort have all greatly changed, and we have 
 
 310 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 no adequate materials for comparing the economical position 
 of the people now with what it may have been five or ten 
 centuries ago. It may be assumed also that the old settle- 
 ments were to a large extent ideal, in other words, the revenue 
 was fixed as a maximum, and the assessment was probably 
 very different from the actual realisations. 
 
 The old Hindu rule is said to have been that the State 
 share was one-fourth of the produce. Manu lays down that 
 the Raja may take an eighth, a sixth, or a twelfth, and his 
 commentator adds that this is according to the difference of 
 the soil and the labour necessary to cultivate it It is very 
 doubtful if the rule was ever distinctly formulated, and it 
 must be remembered that all Governments, prior to ours, 
 enforced the obligation to provide a militia from which the 
 people are now relieved. 
 
 Under Akbar's, the first attempt at a scientific settlement, 
 the State took one-third of the gross assets. Mr Thomas 
 has made calculations showing that, all round, Akbar's 
 revenue was about treble that of the British Government. 
 This seems almost incredible, for, as we have seen, there were 
 enormous areas of waste in his time. In Bareilly it is said 
 that the land tax levied by Akbar, the Rohillas, and that of 
 our last settlement was respectively R.x. 53,468; 194,100; 
 207,512. Calculating 40 DSms to the rupee, Budaun paid 
 in the time of Akbar 26 lakhs of rupees ; our last settlement 
 was io| lakhs. But it must be repeated that these figures 
 furnish no accurate basis for a calculation of the pressure of 
 the assessment. 
 
 It is more important to ascertain the incidence of the 
 revenue on the gross produce. An apparently careful cal- 
 culation made during the last settlement of Etawa, estimates 
 the State share at between one-ninth and one-eleventh of 
 the gross produce. But with such calculations, except in 
 those few tracts in which the rent is paid in kind, the modern 
 settlement officer has no concern. His business is to dis- 
 cover, as best he can, what the average rents are, and then 
 out of this he takes about half as land revenue. 
 
 We do know accurately the incidence of the demand iix 
 
 3ti 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the temporarily and permanently settled tracts. This amounts 
 respectively to Rs. 1-2-4 and Rs. 0-15-3 per acre on the total 
 area; Rs. 1-12-7 and Rs. 1-8-10 per cultivated acre ; Rs. 1-10-9 
 and Rs. 0-14-9 per head of the population. The incidence is 
 thus, as might have been expected, considerably lower in the 
 tract permanently settled as compared with that under the 
 thirty years' period. This is only natural, considering the 
 great rise in prices and spread of agriculture since the per- 
 manent settlement was concluded. It might have been anti- 
 cipated that side by side with this difference in assessment 
 the condition of the people would be much superior under 
 the lighter demand. This is not so. There are no districts 
 in which population presses more closely on the resources of 
 the soil, and in which poverty is more apparent, than in some 
 of the permanently settled districts, like Jaunpur and Gh^zi- 
 pur ; no tract is more prosperous than Meerut under a tem- 
 porary settlement. Nor is this confined to the small tenant 
 or field labourer class. Among the proprietors there is no 
 evidence of greater wealth as shown in houses, dress, or the 
 general average of social comfort, and there the money-lender 
 is as much, or perhaps more, the master of the situation than 
 is the case towards the west of the Province. 
 
 Hence some careful observers have not hesitated to 
 conclude that to bring out the best qualities of the Indian 
 peasant, to encourage thrift and self-reliance, a periodical 
 revision of the demand provides a healthy stimulus. On 
 the other hand, here racial and physical facts influence the 
 situation. The Jat, with abundance of canal water, will 
 thrive almost anywhere, and will make a living where the 
 less sturdy eastern peasant will starve. 
 
 Whilst, then, our modern assessments have been studiously 
 moderate, the reverse was undoubtedly the case in the earlier 
 years of our rule. The Company was always anxious to 
 recoup the money spent on its conquests ; the natural course 
 of events necessitated large military expenditure ; the first 
 ofiicers who were posted to the Province were naturally 
 ignorant of local conditions, and were compelled to rely on 
 a, grossly corrupt native staff. Sufficient consideration was 
 
 312 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 not given to the fact that the country had been desolated by 
 a century of misa-ule and internal disturbance. 
 
 Thus, in Allahabad we began by exacting R.x. 10,000 more 
 than had been paid to the Oudh Government, to which we 
 succeeded. The result was that immediately one-fifth of the 
 revenue-paying lands of the district was brought to the 
 hammer. In Cawnpur the Board of Commissioners wrote at 
 the time : " The district, we have reason to apprehend, was 
 over-assessed at the first triennial settlement, and it is still 
 suffering, we fear, from the consequences of that injurious 
 proceeding. Much too great an anxiety was manifested in 
 this and other instances to draw from the country suddenly 
 the utmost revenue which it could be supposed to yield. 
 Large reductions became necessary in consequence at the 
 second settlement; but even after these concessions were 
 made, the assessment in particular estates was far from 
 moderate." 
 
 Evidences of this reckless severity in taxation are con- 
 stantly found in the earlier reports. The result was that 
 native underlings took advantage of the situation and bought 
 up wholesale the estates of these luckless proprietors. Some 
 efforts were made to restore them as soon as the Government 
 realised the facts ; but immense and irremediable mischief 
 had already been worked, and there are many estates to this 
 day in alien hands, which survive as evidences of the wide- 
 spread ruin caused by well-meaning but inexperienced 
 officials. 
 
 Much the same evils have characterised our rule up to the 
 present time. Every year more and more of the ancestral 
 landed property is being brought to sale under the orders of 
 the Civil Courts. There can be little doubt that this was 
 one of the prime causes of the Mutiny, and since then the 
 question has been debated almost ad nauseam without any 
 tangible results, and still auctions have gone on merrily all 
 the same. 
 
 The fact is, briefly, that it is only under our rule that the 
 proprietor has possessed or exercised the power of alienating 
 the land in perpetuity. There seems to have been under 
 
 313 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 the native Government a principle known as Damdupat, by 
 which interest beyond double the amount of the original loan 
 could not be recovered. We ourselves did try a form of 
 usury law, but with the natural result. It was evaded whole- 
 sale by necessitous debtors, and the simple device was adopted 
 of tacking on the prohibited interest to the original loan. 
 
 With our notions based on the sanctity of contract, we 
 have always, wisely or unwisely, steadily resisted any attempt 
 to go behind the letter of the bond. Be the terms iniquitous 
 or reasonable, our Courts have enforced them. It has not 
 availed to urge that the debtor, pressed to marry his daughter 
 or to perform the rites which ensure to his late father entrance 
 into heaven, is practically in a state of duress, and must 
 borrow, and must accept any terms which Shylock chooses to 
 enforce. To this it is answered that the borrower is neither 
 a minor nor a lunatic, and must be supposed to understand 
 what he signs. All we have done is to set up the Collector, 
 who conducts all sales ordered by the Civil Court, as a sort 
 of conciliator between the parties. It is his duty to call them 
 before him and arrange a compromise if possible. But he 
 has no power of enforcing payment by instalments, or any 
 arrangement of a similar nature, of doing anything, in fact, 
 except giving sage advice ; and as the property has usually 
 been sucked dry before the matter comes before him, his 
 interference is generally futile. He feels like a surgeon who 
 has to deal with a limb distorted by an ignorant bonesetter, 
 or a physician with a patient whose constitution has been 
 irretrievably ruined by quacks. 
 
 Just now the question has reached one of its periodical 
 acute stages, and the wise men of the land have taken it 
 again under consideration. A native ruler of the old type 
 would probably begin by putting half a score of usurers to 
 death by slow torture ; but this is not our way, nor would it 
 in this case do much good except to check money-lending for 
 a season. We are on the horns of a dilemma. We believe 
 in the sanctity of contract, but we loathe Shylock and writhe 
 at seeing the peasant come shorn out of his clutches. But we 
 know too well that any drastic remedy is out of the question. 
 
 314 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 One remedy has been often suggested and seems at last to 
 be seriously considered. Nothing in our rule has been on the 
 whole better done than what is called the Court of Wards — 
 a sort of Encumbered Estates Court It takes over the pro- 
 perty of the widow and orphan or lunatic, and administers it 
 for a time. We have in this way not only rescued a number 
 of properties from ruin, but we have in many cases made 
 them model estates. We have built wells, planted trees, 
 done, in fact, what a liberal English landlord habitually does, 
 and we have preferred to sink the accumulations of a minority 
 in the land than leave a fund for some dissipated youth to 
 squander when he comes of age. This institution has also 
 provided an admirable training school for many of our young 
 officers in the practical management of the land. But hitherto 
 its benefits have been showered on Dives, not on Lazarus. A 
 really large estate it has been always possible to manage 
 with a considerable measure of success ; but the Court will 
 have nothing to do with Naboth and his vineyard ; it is too 
 small a business, and not worth the trouble. This principle 
 will now, it may be hoped, finally disappear. There is no 
 reason why such an institution should not be established in 
 each district, using the surplus funds of solvent properties to 
 pay off the demands of the usurer. It would be a trouble- 
 some business, full of worry and difficulty, but this it would 
 be worth risking if we could only do something to save the 
 sturdy, patient yeomen from ruin. 
 
 The new system of the assessment of the land revenue 
 which has been described was not arrived at without pro- 
 tracted discussion. One plausible proposal was that the new 
 demand should be based on the rates of produce. It was, 
 for instance, suggested that if the staple produce of a district 
 had risen within the period of the settlement by twenty-five 
 per cent, the existing demand should be enhanced to a pro- 
 portionate extent To this there are obvious objections. It 
 would involve a general rateable increase over large tracts 
 or districts, and would therefore operate with great inequality 
 in cases where the initial assessment had been unfairly dis- 
 tributed, or had since it was imposed become unfair in 
 
 31S 
 
NORTHttWESTERN provinces of INDIA 
 
 consequence of the varying rates of progress made by 
 neighbouring villages. 
 
 To quote the official comment^ — "An investigation into 
 the actual incidence of the existing demand showed that in 
 a very large number of estates it was already as high as they 
 could afford to pay ; and as a uniform rate of enhancement 
 must be calculated on a consideration of what the worst and 
 lowest units of assessment could bear, the proposed measure 
 would virtually amount to the abandonment of the right of 
 the State to a share of the increase of the rental, which in 
 many estates was very great, and which there was no reason 
 to forego. The selection of the staples of produce and the 
 periods on which a calculation of a rise in prices should 
 be based presented considerable difficulties, and the whole 
 system was much too indefinite and loose to sustain the hope 
 that any declaration of any principle of the kind would re- 
 assure the minds of the landowners, or give greater security 
 to agricultural enterprise by making known with some degree 
 of exactness the conditions and limitations of future assess- 
 ments. It was found that rents were very generally 
 determined by custom, and bore no recognisable relation 
 to the variation of prices ; so that in order to permit the 
 adoption of any scheme of assessment by prices, it would be 
 necessary to invest Government with extensive powers for 
 the regulation and assessment of rents. A careful enquiry 
 into the relations which existed between landlords and 
 tenants . showed that no such action was required for the 
 protection of the latter ; while the magnitude of the proposed 
 undertaking and the manifest objections to a general inter- 
 ference with long-established rights, which had not been 
 abused by their owners, made any such measure altogether 
 undesirable. The proposal was therefore abandoned ; but 
 the enquiries of which it was the occasion resulted in the 
 establishment of the following principles : — Tracts or districts 
 which were in a backward condition when the existing assess- 
 ments were framed, or where the subsequent process of 
 development has produced inequalities so great and so 
 
 ' Administration Report, North-Western Provinces, 1885-86, pp. xvii. ff. 
 
 316 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 numerous as to make the application of a general uniform 
 rate of enhancement inadvisable or unfair, must be left for 
 regular assessment. In other localities a general rate of en- 
 hancement is to be determined on the basis of a summary 
 enquiry into the conditions and resources of the area under 
 settlement" 
 
 These controversies also led to various useful results. 
 
 It was one of the most time-honoured of fallacies that with 
 a moderate settlement the yeoman saved money in a good 
 year, and was thus able to pay in a bad season. To interfere 
 when times were poor was supposed to be the best means of 
 discouraging thrift and self-reliance. As a matter of fact 
 few of them can or do lay by for a rainy day, and when the 
 crop fails, if the tax-gatherer presses his claims, the peasant 
 must resort to the money-lender. All these ideas are now 
 quite out of date. It is admitted all round that when the 
 strain commences no time should be lost in suspending ^*;he 
 whole or part of the demand, the suspension to be converted 
 into remission if the pressure become more severe. The 
 arrangements proposed to meet the famine now anticipated 
 have been based on this principle. 
 
 Again, the question of the taxation of improvements has 
 been disposed of, and it has been made quite clear that a 
 man who has been enterprising enough to build a well must 
 not be taxed on the profits of his undertaking until he has 
 at least been recouped the initial cost of the work. 
 
 Thirdly, opportunity has been taken to arrange the dates 
 at which the revenue instalments are claimed so as to make 
 the payment least irksome. Some villages depend on the 
 autumn, some on the spring crop; in some the revenue is 
 paid from sugar, in others from wheat, cotton or poppy. 
 The dates have now been arranged so as to suit the con- 
 venience of the peasantry, and a great deal of useless loss 
 and inconvenience has been avoided. 
 
 But the most valuable reform hcis been the assertion of the 
 principle that the assessment is based on the actual rental 
 assets, not on possible future profits. The Settlement Officer 
 of old days used to speculate what the village rental might 
 
 317 
 
NORTHrWESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 be ten years hence, how much waste would be brought under 
 the plough, and so on. Now he has only to find out what is 
 really paid. Thus, to take the important question of cul- 
 turable waste, Mr Moens, one of the ablest of the former 
 generation, thus dealt with it in Bareilly^ — "Where there 
 was a large proportion of waste land I treated it according 
 to the population and circumstances of the neighbourhood. 
 If the land was of fair quality, the village inhabited and the 
 neighbourhood well populated, I then assessed such an 
 amount of the waste at full rates as would bring the culti- 
 vation up to the average of the neighbouring villages. Under 
 similar circumstances, when the waste was poor, I took into 
 account only its actual value as a waste for grass or grazing." 
 This with the uncertain conditions of cultivation was ob- 
 viously risky. No demand of the kind can now be made ; 
 none but actual assets are taken into account in assessing the 
 revenue. 
 
 To sum up the matter, we have now arrived at a fairly 
 workable method of fixing the burdens assessed on the land. 
 Whether this demand be a rent or a land tax does not make 
 any practical difference. Out of a revenue raised within the 
 Province of about nine millions, two-thirds are provided from 
 this source by a mode familiar to the people and collected 
 without any appreciable amount of friction. But the success 
 of a highly elaborate system such as this depends altogether 
 on the efficiency of the staff by which it is controlled. The 
 danger at present is that the district staff tends to become a 
 mere machine working under the orders of a central bureau, 
 by which all power of initiative is lost, and the local officer, 
 immersed in judicial work and the bonds of a heavy corre- 
 spondence, becomes simply an agency for the collection of 
 statistics and the compilation of voluminous reports. The 
 Collector has less time than his predecessors to sit and chat 
 with the village greybeards at the well, to wander through 
 the fields and watch the crops and the cattle, and pick up in 
 this way a practical knowledge of the people, their wants and 
 their prejudices. 
 
 ' Settlement Report, p. 156. 
 318 
 
THE LAND AND ITS SETTLEMENT 
 
 What the peasant of the village likes best is the patriarchal 
 form of rule. He wants some one with time and patience to 
 listen to his complaints, and even if he fail to obtain redress 
 for the actual grievance of the moment, it is something to 
 have had a chance of explaining what he wishes. Above all 
 he wants something done at once, and when the answer 
 comes that his representations will be considered, that his 
 case will be referred to the higher powers, that when sanction 
 comes from some distant office his swamp will be drained or 
 canal water brought into his village, he looks on all this as 
 so much purposeless babble, and he is sure that when a new 
 king comes to rule him who knows not Joseph the whole 
 business must be gone through afresh. 
 
 The obvious remedy for this state of things is wider 
 decentralisation, a strengthening of the hands of the local 
 officer, to free him from much of the work of the desk, and 
 give him more time to study the people for himself and gain 
 his experience at first hand. No code, no digest of rules will 
 furnish him with this kind of knowledge, and without it all 
 the best laid schemes of land revenue administration must 
 remain ineffective. 
 
 319 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 WE now come to consider the relation of the peasant to 
 the land from which he draws his support ; and here 
 it will be necessary to give some figures showing the general 
 distribution of the people, 
 
 In the first place, out of a total population of 47I millions, 
 those wholly or partially dependent on agriculture for their 
 support amount to nearly 35 millions, of which about 4 
 millions are proprietors, 25 millions agriculturists, and nearly 
 6 millions labourers. The persons, then, who derive the 
 whole or a large part of their means of subsistence from the 
 soil form about 74 per cent, of the people. In other words, 
 about three out of every four souls in the Province are de- 
 pendent on the land. 
 
 Next comes the distribution of the people between the 
 urban circles and the rural tracts. Of every 100 souls, eleven 
 live in towns and eighty-nine in villages. Excluding the 
 Hill tracts and those districts, like Lucknow and Benares, 
 where the city population is predominant, we find that, owing 
 to the influence of the Imperial Government at Delhi, the 
 proportion of the urban to the country dwellers is greater 
 towards the west than in the east of the Province. Thus, 
 while in the Meerut division about 19 per cent., or one-fifth 
 of the people, live in towns, in the Central and Lower Duab 
 from 15 to 13 per cent, are urban; in Rohilkhand 16 per 
 cent. But in the Benares division to the extreme east the 
 proportion falls to 12 per cent, and in half the Oudh dis- 
 tricts and Gorakhpur to less than 5 per cent 
 
 The predominance of agriculture is thus the primary social 
 fact which must never be forgotten. Agriculture is the really 
 
 320 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LA^D 
 
 vital industry of the people : with it are most closely linked 
 all the other local industries. It is on its development that 
 all hope of raising the status of the people depends ; in com- 
 parison with it all other industries take a lower room. 
 
 The next vital point for consideration is the pressure of 
 this agricultural population on the resources of the soil. 
 Here, though the density of the people on the whole area is 
 a material factor, what is much more important is the distri- 
 bution on the cultivated area and the reserve of land which 
 is available to meet its increasing needs. 
 
 Throughout the whole Province the population on each 
 square mile of cultivation is Sjj ; in other words, each indi- 
 vidual has to make his living out of less than one acre of 
 tillc^e. But here, as in most cases, the conditions vary enor- 
 mously in different parts of the country. The Azamgarh 
 peasant, with 1244 souls to a square mile of cultivation, has 
 to subsist on about half an acre ; in the Meerut division to 
 the extreme west each person has about an acre and a half; 
 in Oudh about three-quarters of an acre. But in parts of 
 thinly peopled Bundelkhand the average cultivated area per 
 head rises to nearly two acres. 
 
 The same result may be arrived at from a comparison of 
 the average holding and the area cultivated by each plough. 
 Thus, to contrast Saharanpur and Azamgarh — in the former 
 there are nearly twelve acres to each plough : in Azamgarh 
 only five and a quarter. The difference of condition between 
 the east and the west is, as has been already shown, reflected 
 in the forms of husbandry. 
 
 Next comes the question what room there is for extension 
 of tillage in the future. Including new fallow, the actual pro- 
 portion of the total area under cultivation is 5 1 per cent, in 
 the North- Western Provinces and 60 in Oudh. This would 
 seem to imply that at least 40 per cent, is still open to the 
 plough. But from this uncultivated margin large deductions 
 must be made. There is, in the first place, 12 per cent which 
 is occupied by forests. The remaining portion includes the 
 Osar or salt plains, the roads, the beds of rivers, the in- 
 habited sites, the village groves. Besides these there is the 
 X 321 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 large area of rough grazing land, the rugged slopes of the 
 Hill tract, the marshes and savannahs of the Tar&i — all of 
 which are essential for the support of the cattle. 
 
 Most of the recent settlements have shown that the area 
 still available for cultivation is small. All through the 
 western districts the only land uncultivated which could be 
 farmed with advantage is that covered with jungles of the 
 Dhak tree. But if these were destroyed the supply of fire- 
 wood and fodder would be seriously reduced. In Oudh and 
 the eastern districts the case is even worse, and here a con- 
 gested population working largely by spade labour has ex- 
 tended cultivation to what is practically its highest limit. In 
 some districts there has been in recent years an actuai reduc- 
 tion of the cultivated area. It would seem that in some cases 
 land has been brought under the plough which could not be 
 tilled with a profit. The highest estimate of the margin 
 available for cultivation is lO per cent, of the culturable area, 
 or say 3J million acres, which would support about as many 
 additional souls. 
 
 " Whilst, however," says Mr Baillie,^ " the cultivated area 
 has been at a standstill, there has been a considerable in- 
 crease of late years in the cropped area owing to the increase 
 in the practice of double cropping the best land. During the 
 rains in the beginning of the Indian agricultural year the 
 cultivator of the North-West Provinces grows millets, pulse, 
 rice, maize or cotton over nearly 59 per cent, of the cultivated 
 area. In the cold weather, again, he grows wheat, barley, 
 gram, peas or other spring crop over about 60 per cent, of the 
 area, in addition to certain of the rain crops which stand 
 through both harvests. In the hot weather less than i per 
 cent grows melons or vegetables. In all, 20 per cent of the 
 cultivated area in the North-West Provinces of late years 
 grows two crops, whilst a part of the richest land near towns 
 or large villages grows three crops year after year. In Oudh 
 the proportion of double cropped land is still higher, and in 
 two of the Oudh districts it exceeds 40 per cent of the 
 actually cropped area." 
 
 ' Census Report, p. 82. 
 322 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 There can be no question that with a well-regulated system 
 of double cropping, the success of which depends altogether 
 on skill in husbandry, and in particular on careful conserva- 
 tion of manure, a much latter supply of food might be raised 
 from the soil. For the poorer cultivator what is chiefly 
 wanted is something which will carry him over the month or 
 two of leanness, when the stocks of one harvest are approach- 
 ing exhaustion and the new crop is still unripe. There are 
 many vegetables, such as carrots, which would be most valu- 
 able at such seasons. It is to this failure to utilise what may 
 be called the by-products of his land that the Indian peasant 
 owes half his troubles. Everywhere the bonds of caste or 
 custom prevent him from using articles of food which are 
 nutritious and easily produced. It is hardly too much to say 
 that so per cent more Chinamen would live and thrive on 
 the same area. 
 
 Next comes the question whether these congested areas 
 can be relieved by dispersion, either vertically by the develop- 
 ment of new industries and occupations or laterally by 
 emigration. 
 
 We know what has occurred in England, where the emigra- 
 tion of the agricultural population to the towns, as a result of 
 the depression in the farming industry, has become a very 
 serious social problem. We have now to see whether there 
 has been any similar movement in this Province. It must be 
 remembered that the definition of " a town " is very elastic — 
 any area under any form of Municipal constitution and any 
 tract continuously occupied by groups of houses with an 
 aggregate population of not less than 5000 souls. These 
 areas are constantly undergoing change by administrative 
 order, and it is not very easy to make a comparison between 
 the results of the last and the present Census. It would 
 appear from the figures that the urban population has in- 
 creased in ten years from 97 to 11 "3 per cent The enumer- 
 ation in the urban is likely to be much more complete than 
 in the rural tracts, and so far there does not seem to be any 
 decided tendency towards changing a country for a town life. 
 The Indian conditions, again, present no analogy to those of 
 
 333 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 England. While in England 53 per cent, of the people reside 
 in 182 towns with a population of 20,000 or upwards, in India, 
 though there are 227 such towns, only 4"84 per cent of the 
 people dwell in them. 
 
 The conditions of city life have been so well described by 
 Mr Baines that his remarks deserve reproduction.^ — " In the 
 minds of the great majority of the masses, city life and its 
 attractions are no more than a 'nebulous hypothesis,' and 
 the town might just as well not be in existence. To the 
 upper classes it is distasteful, saving to a native chief in his 
 own capital, of which more anon. The local magnate in his 
 own domains is a Triton among minnows, by hereditary 
 right ; but in the city the equality of all before the law, a 
 feature in British administration which he despises, is at its 
 full height, and liberty lords it over birthright. Thus the 
 field is left open to the trader, the professional and business 
 man generally, and under the influence of railways and 
 foreign commerce his horn has been greatly exalted, to the 
 prejudice of others, into whose presence, a few generations 
 back, he could not hope to be admitted. There is also to be 
 considered the stimulating presence of the foreign element 
 found in the centres of trade, which is thrown into the scale 
 in favour of the middle classes. On the whole, then, the 
 main factors in the development of the cities of the present 
 day, such as the seaports. Presidency towns, and the few 
 trading and manufacturing centres in the interior, have been 
 foreign capital administered by foreigners, and the scope 
 given to the talents of the native trading classes." 
 
 And he goes on to point out that " in former times, what- 
 ever the theory in practice, the State existed for the main- 
 tenance of the chief, and his duties began at the outer edge 
 of the frontier. The public revenue was sucked into the 
 treasury, and the expenditure was limited to the army and 
 the personal tastes of the Chief, or the embellishment of his 
 palace and capital" 
 
 Hence came the growth of cities, like Delhi and Agra, 
 which were really little more than overgrown military can- 
 
 ' Indian Census Repoii, p. 45. 
 324 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 tonments. This was not so much the case in the cities ruled 
 by the smaller Rajput chiefs. But even here the most lucra- 
 tive trade was in arms, ornaments, fine fabrics, and the other 
 requirements of a small, luxurious aristocracy, which could 
 not, once the temporary Court stimulus was removed, form 
 the basis of a sound commercial industry. 
 
 The ornamentation of these great cities, with stately 
 buildings, was also not a genuine sign of their prosperity. 
 Tavemier tells us that the royal eunuchs used to build 
 splendid tombs for themselves in their lifetime, because, 
 when they had amassed fortunes, they were not allowed to 
 go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and, as they knew that their 
 property would escheat to the Crown on their death, they 
 built splendid mausolea, so cis to leave at least some monu- 
 ment to posterity. 
 
 There seems then no reason to believe that the congestion 
 of some of the rural tracts is likely to be relieved by emi- 
 gration to the towns. The urban industries are not in so 
 flourishing a condition as to attract much surplus labour, 
 and there is no pressing demand for unskilled workmen. 
 
 It remains to be considered whether the congestion can 
 be relieved by vertical or lateral extension — that is to say, 
 the development of new occupations or by emigration. 
 Lastly, the question of possible improvement in the methods 
 of agriculture must be specially discussed. 
 
 As to new outlets and fresh industries, the prospect is not 
 encouraging. The growth of new handicrafts is checked 
 by the guild or occupational castes, in which, under a rigid 
 rule, the son follows the business of his father, and the entry 
 of outsiders is actively restricted. This is exactly what 
 prevailed in Egypt and Sparta, where, Herodotus tells us, 
 the musician is the son of a musician, the cook of a cook, 
 the herald of a herald. It may be admitted that under our 
 rule these restrictions have been much relaxed, and the 
 occupational castes are ever undergoing re-organisation ; 
 but, at the same time, it tends to act as an efficient check 
 on the industrial progress of the nation. 
 
 The rise of new industries is again checked by the want 
 
 32s 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 of the prime necessaries of an industrial life — a cheap supply 
 of coal and other minerals. Labour is extraordinarily cheap 
 and tolerably effective, and at places, like Cawnpur and 
 Agra, has been enlisted in the service of machinery of the 
 most modern type. But, on the whole, the prospects that 
 occupations, such as those of cloth, leather, or paper-making, 
 will do much service in absorbing the surplus rural labour 
 do not seem encouraging. 
 
 There remains the possibility of relief in the congested 
 districts from emigration, either within or without the 
 Province. In spite of modern facilities for communication, 
 the results have been so far very disappointing. The fact 
 is that the Hindu has little of the migratory instinct, and 
 all his prejudices tend to keep him at home. As a resident 
 member of a tribe, caste or village, he occupies a definite 
 social position, of which emigration is likely to deprive 
 him. When he leaves his home, he loses the sympathy and 
 support of his clansmen and neighbours ; he misses the 
 village council, which regulates his domestic affairs ; the 
 services of the family priest, which he considers essential 
 to his salvation. Every village has its own local shrine, 
 where the deities, in the main destructive, have been pro- 
 pitiated and controlled by the constant service of their 
 votaries. Once the wanderer leaves the hamlet where he 
 was born, he enters the domains of new and unknown deities, 
 who, being strangers, are of necessity hostile to him, and 
 may resent his intrusion by sending famine, disease, or death 
 upon the luckless stranger. The emigrant, again, to a 
 distant land, finds extreme difficulty in selecting suitable 
 husbands for his daughters. He must choose his sons-in-law 
 within a narrow circle, and if he allows his daughter to 
 reach womanhood unwed, he commits a grievous sin. Should 
 he die in exile, he may fail to win the heaven of the gods, 
 because no successor will make the due funeral oblations, 
 and no trusted family priest be there to arrange the last 
 journey of his spirit. So he may wander through the ages 
 a starving, suffering, malignant ghost, because his obsequies 
 have not been duly performed. 
 
 326 
 
-'_£*; ^^r^ <^fT. ""' ^ 
 
 • If 
 
 .-3'}' a 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 All this will to some extent explain why there is so little 
 movement among the people. We may first consider the 
 internal migration. Some of this is due to economic or 
 climatic causes. Thus, during harvest time in Bundelkhand 
 there is some movement of labour from tracts where the crop 
 is late in ripening to others where it is early; in the same 
 way Irishmen from Connaught cross the Channel to northern 
 England. The same is the case in the northern hilly tract, 
 where peasants move into the lowlands of the Bhabar and 
 TarSi when the stress of malaria is reduced, or others are 
 driven by the pressure of the snow from the higher levels to 
 the more sheltered valleys. 
 
 There is, again, another form of migration based on religious 
 or industrial considerations. Besides the great bathing fairs 
 and the constant stream of pilgrims to the holy places, many 
 of the wealthier classes in their old age move to the neigh- 
 bourhood of shrines like those of Benares or Mathura, death 
 within these sacred precincts being a sure entrance to eternal 
 happiness. And on the purely industrial side, Oudh in par- 
 ticular supplies a considerable number of recruits to the army 
 and police, house servants, grooms and the like, as educational 
 centres like AUahibSd, Benares or Agra furnish clerks and 
 tutors. Pandits or Maulavis to rural districts. The railway 
 and the Post Office, commercial entrepots like Cawnpur, large 
 public works or the chances of employment in Settlement 
 Offices or the like add to the number of emigrants of this 
 kind. 
 
 But, curious to say, it is chiefly women who contribute to 
 this stream of internal migration. Every Rajput, for instance, 
 is bound to find a husband for his daughter in a sept superior 
 to his own. The bluest blood is found among tribes like the 
 ChauhSn and Rahtaur of the Central Ganges-Jumna Duab ; 
 hence the well-known rule — "Marry your daughter to the 
 West and your son to the East." With the bride from a dis- 
 tance often come her servants or dependents or poor relations, 
 who hope to better their condition under her auspices. 
 
 This feeling also acts beyond the boundaries of the Pro- 
 vince. Bih&r is. distinguished by its large number of women 
 
 327 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 — there are 1005 women to 1000 men, while in the North- 
 Western Provinces there are only 923. Hence there is little 
 attraction for women to emigrate into a tract already over- 
 stocked, and Bihar sends some of its surplus girls further west. 
 
 For foreign emigrants from outside its borders there is 
 naturally little room. At the last Census 89 per cent, of the 
 people were enumerated in the district of their birth, and no 
 less than 98 per cent, were born somewhere within the Pro- 
 vince. Only 62 per cent, of Londoners are born there ; the 
 proportion in Cornwall, the most stay-at-home of our English 
 counties, is the same as that in this Province. 
 
 As regards foreign emigration, the Province sends criminals 
 to the Andamans, coolies to the tea gardens of Assam, re- 
 cruits to distant cantonments, servants or porters to Calcutta. 
 Along the Nepal frontier there is a constant flux and flow. 
 New settlers move backwards and forwards, criminals or 
 bankrupts fly to the shelter of a strange Government to avoid 
 the police or the bailiff". On the whole we rather lose in this 
 way ; but on the other hand we gain in numbers by the 
 inroad of the Bengal Babu, the Marwari trader from Central 
 India, the Kashmiri Pandit, the Afghan horse dealer, the 
 PSrsi shopkeeper. 
 
 Beyond India the movement is inconsiderable. Some few, 
 of course, leave their homes of whom we have no account. 
 The most important outlet is the State-aided emigration to 
 Natal or the West Indies. But this relieved us of only about 
 90,000 persons between 1881 and 1891. 
 
 Emigration has thus done something, but not very much, 
 to relieve the congestion. The Hindu, like the Irishman in 
 the States, is very loyal to his kinsfolk at home, and many a 
 struggling peasant in Oudh and the eastern districts is helped 
 to pay his rent or appease the money-lender by a remittance 
 from abroad. But striking the balance between immigrants 
 and emigrants, the Province was in the last ten years' period 
 relieved only to the extent of 590,000 souls. These figures 
 are truly insignificant when we remember that between 1853 
 and 1888 six millions of our people emigrated to America, 
 and while Chinamen have been flocking to the Malay penin- 
 
 328 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 sula and the islands of the tropical seas the Hindu has pre- 
 ferred to work out his salvation at home. 
 
 We have heard much lately of the prospects of a move- 
 ment of the people of India to Africa. So far there seems 
 no probability of the peasantry of the north seeking new 
 homes beyond the ocean. Those nearer the coast at Bombay 
 or Madras are more migratory, and a movement of this kind 
 started from those parts of the country might eventually 
 react on the inland population. 
 
 We thus arrive at these conclusions — up to the present the 
 relief of the pressure in the congested tracts from emigration 
 has been and in the immediate future is likely to be incon- 
 siderable ■ secondly, the vast bulk of the people are and must 
 remain dependent on agriculture for their support, and that 
 too within an area where there is little room left for the 
 extension of cultivation. The next question is — how far are 
 the existing methods of agriculture efficient ; to what extent 
 can it be improved so as to provide a larger supply of food. 
 Coupled with this is the enquiry — one of vital importance 
 for the future wellbeing of the people — whether the soil does 
 or does not show signs of exhaustion. 
 
 First, as to the efficiency of the present system of cultiva- 
 tion, there can be no better testimony than that of a European 
 expert like Dr Voelcker. Most men of this class come with 
 preconceived impressions of the superiority of European to 
 Indian methods ; some come, like Balaam, prepared to curse 
 and remain to bless. Of all recent students of the subjects 
 none is better informed, none more cool and impartial than 
 Dr Voelcker. 
 
 " On one point," he writes,^ " there can be no question that 
 the ideas generally entertained in England, and often given 
 expression to even in India, that Indian agriculture is, as a 
 whole, primitive and backward, and that little has been done 
 to try and remedy it, are altogether erroneous. It is true' 
 that no matter what statement may be made, as deduced from 
 the agriculture of one part, it may be directly contradicted by 
 reference to the practice of another part ; yet the conviction 
 > Report, p. lo sq. 
 
 329 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 has forced itself upon me that, taking everything together, 
 and more especially considering the conditions under which 
 Indian crops are grown, they are wonderfully good. At his 
 best the Indian cultivator is quite as good and in some re- 
 spects the superior of the British farmer ; whilst at his worst 
 it can only be said that this state is brought about largely by 
 an absence for facilities for improvement which is probably 
 unequalled in any other country, and that the peasant will 
 struggle on patiently and uncomplainingly in the face of diffi- 
 culties in a way that no one else would." 
 
 And he goes on to say — "To take the ordinary acts of 
 husbandry, nowhere would one find better instances of keep- 
 ing land scrupulously free of weeds, of ingenuity in device 
 of water-raising appliances, of knowledge of soils and their 
 capabilities, as well as of the exact time to sow and to reap, 
 as one would in Indian agriculture, and this not at its best 
 alone, but at its ordinary level. It is wonderful, too, how 
 much is known of rotation, the system of mixed crops, and of 
 fallowing. Certain it is that I, at least, have never seen a 
 more perfect picture of careful cultivation, combined with 
 hard labour, perseverance and fertility of resource, than I 
 have seen at many of the halting places in my tour." 
 
 This is indeed high praise from a very competent authority. 
 But no one who is familiar with the best types of Indian 
 farming, the broad style of the western Jat, the more minute 
 methods of the eastern Kurmi, will hold it to be undeserved. 
 At the same time, there is plenty of slovenly, indifferent 
 husbandry among Br^hmans who are too proud to touch a 
 plough, or Giijars whose proper business is cattle rearing 
 combined with stealing their neighbours' beasts. 
 
 There are two stock charges which are commonly laid 
 against the Indian farmer, both of which are to a large degree 
 undeserved. One is his so-called stupid reverence for tradi- 
 tional methods : the other, that he will only scratch the 
 surface instead of properly ploughing his field. 
 
 First, as to his caution and lack of enterprise, it is true that 
 an appeal to the customs of his ancestors never fails to im- 
 press him ; but, on the other hand, his methods are bjised on 
 
 330 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 an amount of inherited experience which few European 
 farmers possess, and in the absence of books his practice is 
 regulated by tradition and a mass of saws and rural rhymes 
 which are ever on his lips. He is cautious : but caution is 
 enforced for him by the conditions under which he lives. The 
 climate is always rigorous and often very uncertain. He is 
 dependent on the amount and timeliness of the annual rain- 
 fall, which in many parts of the country is very precarious. 
 His crop is exposed to many disasters — a day or two of fierce 
 sunshine, a few hours of drenching rain, frost and hail, locusts, 
 and many other forms of insect life or blight, a bout of fever 
 attacking him at some critical time, murrain which is endemic 
 in the land seizing his plough cattle. And when the crop is 
 ripe, a night snatched for rest may let in the thief, the wild 
 boar, the antelope, or one morning of neglect may set the 
 green parrots tearing down the ears. Such are some of the 
 many risks to which he is exposed. His capital is narrow in 
 the extreme and he is often obliged to borrow his seed grain. 
 A man like this dares not make experiments. Life is much 
 too serious to permit him to leave anything to chance. Still 
 less can he afford to listen to the ill-instructed censors who 
 presume to criticise his methods when they should be at 
 school themselves. His attitude when he is preached at and 
 admonished is rightly that of the old PindSri — 
 
 " Then comes a Settlement H&kim, to teach us to plough and to weed, 
 (I sowed the cotton he gave me, but first I boiled the seed), 
 He likes us humble farmers, and speaks so gracious and wise. 
 As he asks of our manners and customs ; I tell him a pack of lies." 
 
 It is, again, a mistake to say that the cultivator is abso- 
 lutely destitute of enterprise and opposed to all improvement. 
 In fact he is quite ready to cultivate new staples, if they 
 suit his land and modes of tillage and are likely to be 
 profitable. Thus, during the American war, he turned his 
 attention to cotton, and in quite recent times he has largely 
 extended the culture of crops, like sugar, potatoes, indigp 
 and opium, the advantages of which have been made 
 apparent to him.. 
 
 331 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 It is true that he has adopted, on an extensive scale, only 
 one modern machine, the iron roller sugar mill ; but, as 
 regards most of the other machines which a well-meaning 
 but ill-instructed zeal has endeavoured to force upon him, 
 he can show reasonable grounds for his disapproval. They 
 are in some cases too expensive for his narrow means, too 
 intricate and incapable of repair by the unskilled village 
 artisan ; their object is often to save labour, an important 
 gain to a farmer in the Western States, but unnecessary 
 here, where labour is a drug on the market, or, like the 
 plough, they offend the first principles of the science which 
 he has received from the wisdom of his ancestors. He looks 
 on a modern threshing machine or scarifier with amazement, 
 but without any enthusiasm. They are inventions, like the 
 engine on the railway, entirely beyond his practical experi- 
 ence, suitable enough for wealthy Sihibs who can afford 
 to buy and work them, but useless to a poor man like 
 himself. 
 
 And even in his affection for his ancient plough, which 
 is still only one stage ahead of the stake with which the 
 savage scratches up the soil, he is not without some reason 
 on his side. Anything heavier will be beyond the strength 
 of his half-starved cattle, anything that goes deeper and turns 
 over the clods equally offends him. It may bring sterile 
 sand or clay to the surface ; the damp slice turned over and 
 exposed to the power of the relentless sun gets baked like 
 a brick, and it is beyond his power to pulverise it ; it will 
 not give him the fine tilth, which absorbs every drop of the 
 precious dew or other moisture falling upon it ; it may bury 
 the noxious weeds instead of bringing them to the surface, 
 where they can be collected or burnt. But his great com- 
 plaint is that it widens the area to be manured. His present 
 scanty supply barely suffices to fertilise the thin, topmost 
 layer of the upper soil ; what will become of it, he thinks, 
 when a foot or more of the sub-soil, which has never been 
 aerated or manured, is suddenly brought to the surface? 
 Arguments, such as these, may seem crude and meaningless 
 to the capitalist farmer with ample means, abundance of 
 
 332 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 manure and haulage power at his disposal ; but they are 
 very real and forcible to the peasant whose resources are 
 extremely limited. 
 
 Dr Voelcker realises this when he writes^ : — " I cannot 
 help suspecting that the system of shallow ploughing, as 
 practised by the native, and his aversion to ploughs that 
 turn over a broad slice and form a wide furrow, may have 
 something to do with this matter of the retention of moisture, 
 and that the effect of deep ploughing would too generally 
 be to lose the very moisture the cultivator so treasures." 
 
 From arguments such as these it is not pretended to 
 assert that the Indian style of farming is perfect, or that 
 the peasant has nothing to gain from the discoveries of 
 western science. His omissions are not a few, his commis- 
 sions are many. But it is not just to say that from the self- 
 confidence of ignorance he sets his face against all progress. 
 What he understands, and rightly understands, is that he 
 cannot afford to make experiments, that he dare not en- 
 danger one harvest, on the produce of which he must pay 
 his rent and live, on the chance that a year or two hence 
 his crop may improve. The conditions under which he 
 works, and in particular his lack of capital, which he can 
 provide only by borrowing on usurious terms, enforce upon 
 him the most extreme economy. In his own business he 
 is anything but a fool, and any suggestions for the improve- 
 ment of his methods must be based, not on theoretical views, 
 but on practical considerations of what he can afford, and, 
 in spite of his narrow means, utilise to advantage. 
 
 The most effective charge against him is his method of 
 conserving manure. Night-soil, the most valuable of all, he 
 refuses to employ. It is only in the neighbourhood of some 
 towns that the market-gardener class are beginning to under- 
 stand its value. But caste considerations as yet bar the 
 adoption of this potent fertiliser, without which the crowded 
 masses in the great China plain could not live. Bones he 
 also for the same reason will not use and it is sad to see them 
 exported in large quantities to Calcutta from the land which 
 
 1 Refort, p. 43- 
 
 333 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 sorely needs them. As to the ordinary manure from his 
 cattle shed and the sweepings of his house, he leaves it in an 
 open heap exposed to wind, sun and rain. At last he throws 
 it on his field when much of the valuable constituents have 
 been lost, and even then he is in no particular hurry to 
 plough it in. Green soiling he will have nothing to do with, 
 as with his frugal mind he cannot see the advantage of 
 sacrificing one crop to secure a doubtful increase in its 
 successor. 
 
 But even here he is not quite without an excuse. He will 
 put no manure on his field before it is thoroughly decayed, 
 because he fears the ravages of the white ant, and if he is a 
 bad hand at conserving the best part of his farmyard manure 
 he simply replies that he has no stuff available for litter, that 
 any scraps of stalks or straw which he possesses he must use 
 to burn with most of his manure because he has no other 
 fuel, and that he dare not risk an outbreak of foot-rot among 
 his cattle by allowing any dampness in the stall. At the 
 same time there is all the difference in the world between the 
 practice of a good and bad cultivator. The Jat, for instance, 
 makes a pit in the comer of his field and systematically 
 collects manure : the Gujar hardly troubles his head about it. 
 
 Is the soil of Upper India becoming exhausted or not ? The 
 Indian cultivator, like the farmer all over the world, is prone 
 to take a despondent view of the situation ; and here this 
 feeling is strengthened by the uncertainty of the conditions 
 under which his industry is carried on. In addition to this, 
 the fact that the revision of the settlement is likely to add to 
 the revenue which he is called on to pay makes it to the 
 landlord's interest to underestimate his profits. Thus, tenants 
 are all agreed in asserting that the land now yields much less 
 than it did in former years ; but in support of these assertions 
 no distinct evidence is forthcoming. This much may be 
 admitted that within the present generation there has been a 
 cycle of unfavourable seasons in which the annual rainfall was 
 so insufficient as to cause drought or famine, or so excessive 
 as to result in disastrous floods. It is also true that the 
 cultivation of inferior soils and double cropping have reduced 
 
 334 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 the average out-turn over the whole cropped area. This, 
 again, is the case with the poorer soils as they come under 
 the influence of canal irrigation. In their natural state such 
 lands are usually cropped with the coarser millets ; when 
 artificial irrigation is provided they are sown often twice a 
 year with more exhausting crops, the manure supply is in- 
 sufficient and they lose the relief afforded by periodical 
 fallows. For a time they respond to the new stimulus, but 
 after a while the out-turn falls off. 
 
 On the other hand, a much larger amount of labour is now 
 devoted to the land and there is no evidence that the number 
 of cattle maintained has lessened ; in fact, the reverse is 
 probably the case. There is also no evidence that in former 
 times fallows were more general in the area permanently 
 cultivated, and where the fields remained unsown, this was 
 often due to the ravages of war and social disturbances from 
 which in modern times the peasantry have been totally 
 relieved. Such a condition of things as prevailed in the 
 period immediately preceding our rule must have resulted in 
 a much lower standard of agriculture. 
 
 The question could, of course, be definitely solved if we 
 had at our disposal a continuous series of agricultural statis- 
 tics, including both the period of native rule and that of our 
 own administration. But we have no materials for estimating 
 the condition of the peasantry in ancient times ; and it is 
 only quite recently that any attempt has been made to collect 
 statistics of the actual produce. 
 
 One fact seems tolerably well established from the Wobum 
 experiments — that unmanured land will for a long series 
 of years produce crops with but small diminution of out-tum. 
 But though when once a certain level of exhaustion has been 
 reached deterioration does go on very slowly, the returns 
 show that it does go on. 
 
 The case is thus summed up by Dr Voelcker ^ — " The real 
 answer to the question whether the soil of India is becoming 
 exhausted or not, seems to me to He in the fact of the small 
 produce annually removed. In England with its 28 or 30 
 
 1 Report, p. 41. 
 335 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 bushels per acre, what is removed over and above the yield 
 of the unmanured land is due to what is put into the land 
 in the form of manure : India's lo bushels, on the contrary, 
 represent almost entirely what is taken out of the soil itself. 
 The extra crop in England is, in other words, the produce 
 of what is added to and not, as in India, the produce of what 
 is taken out of the soil. Nevertheless the powerful sun 
 of India, aided by moisture, or by water (where it is applied 
 artificially) exercises, I believe, a far more rapid and powerful 
 influence in decomposing and bringing into an assimilable 
 condition the constituents of the lower layers of the soil and 
 of the stones and rocks which go to produce soil than is the 
 case in England ; and why no decline is noticed, after a certain 
 level has been reached, maybe due to there being just enough 
 fresh material decomposed and brought into active condition 
 annually to produce the requisite small yield. It must not 
 be forgotten, it is true, that the wheat crop of England is 
 generally a nine months' crop, that of India only a five months' 
 crop ; but I believe that the influences named above are the 
 most potent factors in causing the differences of yield. Were 
 demand, however, made upon the soil for a greater yield, the 
 soil could no longer supply it, and it would have to be met 
 by outside sources, in other words, by manure." 
 
 The produce of the land of Upper India is much below 
 that of high-class farming in European countries. Thus, 
 while wheat here yields on an average lo bushels per acre, in 
 the United Kingdom the produce is 28, in Germany 18, and 
 in France 17 bushels. The produce in Canada is 14 bushels, 
 in the United States 12^, in Australia 11, and in Russia it 
 falls to 9, less than the Indian average. 
 
 The question then remains — whether it is within the power 
 of the State by any measures to secure a higher out-turn from 
 the soil than it gives at present. And here it must be re- 
 membered that among writers on the rural economy of India 
 there is a tendency to confound two quite distinct things — an 
 improvement in the condition of the tenant, and an increase 
 of the produce of the land. The former may perhaps be 
 secured by a modification of the system of land tenure, by a 
 
 336 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 relief of the burden of taxation, or of the demands of the 
 money lender, by checking wasteful litigation or reducing its 
 cost. But such measures, valuable as they may be, will not 
 add one bushel to the produce of the land or render it better 
 able to support an increasing population. 
 
 The climate of the country, though the peasant hardly as 
 yet realises the fact, is, of course, quite beyond the influence 
 of State control. We can to some extent check the ravages 
 of famine by artificial irrigation. But it is by an improve- 
 ment of the quality or increase of the amount of the manure 
 supply that the general fertility can alone be enhanced. 
 Hence we return to the question of fuel and fodder on which 
 the whole matter depends. If we could relieve the peasant 
 from the necessity of using most of the manure of his cattle 
 as fuel, or if the existing supplies could be more efficiently 
 conserved, there would be a certain increase in the produce. 
 
 As has been already pointed out, it is very doubtful if it 
 would be expedient to take up large areas of culturable land 
 and convert them into fuel and fodder reserves. These, if 
 properly farmed, would yield a larger supply of artificial 
 fodder than can be supplied by the natural grasses ; and, 
 with the existing humanitarian feelings of the people, the 
 provision of open pasture grounds would almost certainly 
 only result in the increase of useless, half-starved cattle. 
 
 There are large areas of poor land which might be planted 
 with advantage. The State has given a powerful inducement 
 to the extension of arboriculture by remitting the revenue on 
 grove land so long as the plantation is maintained and ex- 
 tensive avenues have been planted at the public cost along 
 the roads and canals. There is also a strong sentiment in 
 favour of tree planting among the people themselves, who 
 have raised the formation of a grove to the level of a religious 
 duty. At the same time, the shade of trees is in India most 
 injurious to the crops exposed to it, and the large multiplica- 
 tion of fuel reserves would lead to a great increase in the 
 number of wild animals and birds which even now do con- 
 siderable damage and impose on the cultivator the arduous 
 task of field watching. 
 
 Y 337 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Nor have efiforts been wanting to encourage the utilisation 
 of night-soil. The villager to some degree attains this object 
 in an indirect way by planting a patch of thick crops near 
 the village site, but beyond this he will not move in the 
 matter. His more intelligent brethren near some of the 
 larger towns have been more prompt to recognise the value 
 of this fertiliser, and it is now largely used in the production 
 of potatoes, garden crops and sugar cane. Bones are still 
 under a stringent taboo which will not be lightly abandoned. 
 
 Short, then, of the sudden discovery of some new and 
 cheap fertiliser within the means and not opposed to the 
 prejudices of the peasant, it does not appear reasonable to 
 expect any immediate increase in the manure supply. 
 
 There remains to be considered the question of irrigation. 
 
 Of canal irrigation we have already spoken. It is possible 
 that the next famine in Oudh, such as that now impending, 
 will bring the Sirda canal within the range of practical 
 politics. The water system in the Ganges-Jumna Dutb is 
 being steadily developed, and there are large tracts where 
 water is abundant and at a moderate depth from the surface 
 where the construction of wells might be still further en- 
 couraged. It is not long since a vast scheme, the construc- 
 tion of State wells, was launched by the Government of 
 these Provinces : but it hardly survived the criticism of Sir 
 Andrew Clarke.^ He pointed out that every acre irrigated 
 by the Ganges canal represented a cost of about Rx. 3^, and 
 that, according to the best authorities, the cost of irrigating 
 from wells, is no less than thirteen times that of the canal. 
 But this assumes that an actual money price can be put 
 upon the labour of the peasant and his household which 
 possesses, as a rule, little or no market value. 
 
 It seems clear, that any scheme, such as that which we 
 are now discussing, which proposed to make the construction 
 of wells compulsory, is impracticable. In fact, any plan for 
 widespread protection from famine by the wholesale con- 
 struction of wells is out of the question. There are many 
 places where the common clay well, with its sides protected 
 
 ^ Report, Famine Commission, Appendix, v. p, 104. 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 by fascines when it passes through friable strata, can be 
 cheaply and easily constructed. But there are some tracts 
 where the character of the soil and the depth of the water 
 from the surface make this impossible. It has long been 
 the habit for the Government to make advances at a low 
 rate of interest for the building of masonry wells. But the 
 scheme has not been a complete success. The grant of the 
 loan has been hedged round by vexatious restrictions, too 
 much enquiry is required, too many douceurs have to be 
 paid to menial officials, the instalments have been sometimes 
 realised with too little regard to the temporary difficulties of 
 the debtor, and the native officials on whom falls the burden 
 of collecting the advances, detest the trouble involved in this 
 mass of petty detail and do nothing to encourage the system. 
 There is, lastly, the influence of the local money lender, who 
 actively resents any interference of the Government in what 
 he considers his legitimate domain. 
 
 Many proposals have been made for the establishment of 
 agricultural banks to meet the wants of the peasants. This 
 is hardly a business in which Government can engage 
 with advantage. It is only a man on the spot who has 
 personal knowledge of the circumstances of each tenant who 
 can make such advances with confidence. Here the best 
 chance of improvement seems to lie in a system of local or 
 village co-operation for which the existing caste guild 
 offers a suitable basis. But, as has already been pointed out, 
 the main difficulty lies in the suspicion and internal squabbles 
 which are the result of this communal organisation. 
 
 The same is the case with the provision of seed grain. 
 The cultivator is quite aware of the advantage of selecting 
 his seed, and he does so whenever he is able to affiard it. 
 But a man in a normal condition of indebtedness must 
 take whatever the banker chooses to give him. Enquiries 
 made in this connection vividly illustrate the scantiness of 
 the resources of the peasant. Thus Mr Moens, one of our 
 best authorities, took ninety-three villages at random from 
 every part of the Bareilly district, and he found that out 
 pf 4741 cultivators, 3169, 66 per cent, or in other words, 
 
 339 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 two out of every three were forced to borrow their seed 
 grain. Here, as in many other places in Upper India, most 
 of the grain is made over to the village banker at harvest 
 time and he doles out occasional advances for food and 
 sowing. The arrangement does not involve that depth of 
 grinding want which a similar state of things in any other 
 country would imply; but it obviously prevents careful 
 selection of seed, and to this extent affects the produce. 
 
 But here it must be clearly stated that no State depart- 
 ment can undertake the duty which these village bankers 
 discharge. Let us take a single district, that of Bareilly, 
 from which the previous remarks were quoted, and we find 
 that irrespective of cultivating proprietors, many of whom 
 are hardly better off than the tenantry, there are nearly a 
 quarter of a million of tenants. Taking an average of five 
 to a household, this represents the population of New South 
 Wales, and they cultivate about a million of acres, the area 
 of Hampshire. And this district is only one out of fifty-one 
 similar units. It is quite obvious that the existing staff is 
 quite inadequate to conduct the banking business of this 
 host of peasants. It would need an army of highly paid 
 officials to investigate the solvency of these million of bor- 
 rowers, and the public finances are quite unable to bear the 
 enormous demands if a State bank were to attempt to oust 
 the money lender. 
 
 Before we deal more in detail with the indebtedness of the 
 peasantry, we must refer to the remarkable rise in the value 
 of food grains within the present generation. A movement 
 like this which must involve far-reaching effects has so far 
 passed almost unnoticed by English critics of the economics 
 of India. Since the great famine of 1837-38 the market 
 price of wheat has risen by 42 per cent, and harvest prices, 
 which more particularly affect the peasant, by 55 per cent 
 At some of the last revisions of settlement the tenant was 
 found to be receiving half as much again for his produce as 
 was the case thirty years before. In more recent years the 
 case is even stronger. Thus, in Cawnpur, by the last returns, 
 the rise in prices in thirty years was as much as 90 per cent. : 
 
 340 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 in Bulandshahr, 909 per cent. To quote Mr Stoker, the 
 officer who revised the assessment of the latter district^ — 
 " Not only have quinquennial averages run high, but prices 
 have never on any occasion sunk to the low point they used 
 to attain. This is a matter of the first importance, having 
 perhaps even more effect on rents than the high prevailing 
 quinquennial and decennial averages. Under the old order 
 of things, prices rose to a high point when the local harvests 
 failed and the cultivators had little or no surplus which they 
 could sell at the profitable rate. But in good years, when the 
 yield was bountiful and large surplus stocks available, prices 
 fell so low that profits were still small. The persons who 
 gained were grain dealers, who laid in large stocks in the 
 cheap seasons and sold at high profit when the crops failed. 
 But with the introduction of railways and telegraphs, a better 
 commercial system and large export trade, things have 
 changed. Prices still go up when there are bad years, but 
 the depression is caused not merely by local failure, but by 
 short crops in other parts of India, or even in other parts of 
 the world. In good seasons prices still remain comparatively 
 high and the cultivators sell their surplus stocks to such 
 advantage that they gain large profits which with ordinary 
 prudence would carry them through bad years. They, in 
 fact, secure much of the profits which used to be absorbed by 
 the local grain dealers." 
 
 The causes of this startling rise in the prices of food grains 
 are not far to seek. It is clear that it cannot be due, as the 
 native universally believes, merely to foreign exportation. 
 When trade with Europe was at its highest point, only one per 
 cent, of the total food grains and one-tenth of the whole wheat 
 crop left the country. Such an amount of export could not 
 raise prices all round nearly 100 per cent The really potent 
 cause is the improvement of communications which has made 
 the price practically uniform throughout Northern India. It is 
 seldom that the seasons are uniformly favourable throughout 
 this enormous tract, and the variety of crops sown is so great 
 that it usually happens that every year some one staple at 
 ^ Bulandshahr Settlement Report, p. 36. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 least is in deficiency in some part of the country. To illus- 
 trate the comparative stability of prices which this new 
 system of commerce has produced, between 1861 and 1876 
 the highest and lowest prices of wheat were respectively 7 
 and 45 pounds to the shilling; between 1877 and 1891 the 
 range was only from 12 to 27. 
 
 With this enormous rise in prices, rents have not increased 
 in anything like the same proportion. Thus, in Bulandshahr, 
 with an aristocracy of, rack-renting landlords, though, as we 
 have seen, the rise in prices was 90 per cent, the rise in re- 
 corded rent was between 65 and 70 per cent. Again, in 
 Cawnpur, a rise of 42 per cent, in the price of wheat before 
 the last settlement was found to have practically no effect 
 on rent. This curious fact was thus explained by the Settle- 
 ment Officer — " The effect of a rise in prices ordinarily tells 
 in some such sequence as this — first, the good prices of one 
 year induce competition for home-farm lands to let ; these 
 fetch high rents and have the effect of raising to some degree 
 the rents of all lands held by tenants-at-will. When once the 
 general standard is raised ever so little, the landlord is en- 
 couraged to go into Court against the tenant with rights of 
 occupancy, and by arbitration, as often as not, gets a com- 
 promise in the way of an enhancement given by arbitrators 
 to make one party satisfied without injuring the other. Thus, 
 at a long interval, the rise in prices affects the rent rate of the 
 whole tenantry ; in the meantime prices may have fallen and 
 the temporary gain be even lost to the landlord." 
 
 That rents respond slowly to the stimulus of a rise in 
 prices is certain. In fact, over a large part of the country 
 rents are hardly at all based on prices. What is paid is the 
 customary rate which has always been paid in the village, and 
 the rent is not economical, but dependent on custom, which, 
 particularly in India, is very slow to change. 
 
 It may well be asked how with prices largely increased and 
 rents rising at a much lower rate there can be any peasant 
 problem in Northern India. We have here all the conditions 
 which go to make' a people prosperous. And it cannot be 
 denied that it has had a considerable effect in improving their 
 
 342 
 

 
 ■ v" '-".-^ 
 
 
 ' ^^ vA*-- . -*^ 
 
 A BA.NVA GKAIN MERCHAKT. 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 condition. The higher class of cultivator certainly lives 
 better, travels more, and has more spare cash for amusement 
 and ordinary expenditure than was the case a generation ago. 
 
 At the same time the amount of indebtedness among this 
 class is very serious.^ In the greater part of the Agra dis- 
 trict it was found at the last settlement that 78 per cent, of 
 the tenantry were in the hands of the money lender ; in the 
 Fatehabad subdivision the average rose to 89 per cent. Of 
 two selected subdivisions of Cawnpur, in one 26 per cent, of 
 the cultivators were never in debt ; in the other 47 per cent, 
 declared that they had never been borrowers ; the proportion 
 of those who might be considered permanently involved was in 
 the former 20 and in the latter 12 per cent In the Barabanki 
 district of Oudh it was found that the small farmers, men 
 with from 3 to 15 acres owed as a rule from R.x. 4 to R.x. 10. 
 
 It would be easy to add to instances of this kind. It is 
 in the opinion of the most competent authorities not an 
 exaggeration to say that three-fourths of the tenantry are 
 indebted to the amount of a year's rent at least. To find a 
 parallel to this state of things in Europe we have to go as 
 far as Greece, where, we are told, three-fourths of the landed 
 property is mortgaged for its full saleable value.^ 
 
 Once a man getsinto the hands of the money lender it is 
 easy to understand how his difficulties increase. The follow- 
 ing account of the system prevalent in Azamgarh is from the 
 pen of the Settlement Officer, Mr J. R. Reid*— "The rate of 
 interest charged by the Mahajan is nominally 25 per cent., 
 but is in fact a great deal more. Accounts are settled 
 between him and his constituents in the summer or autumn, 
 usually after the refined sugar of the year has been disposed 
 of. Any balance is then struck in his favour ; if not paid off 
 it is debited as a fresh advance to his constituent. Upon it 
 and upon cash payments made by him during the succeeding 
 season he assesses interest at the rate of 25 per cent, credit, 
 of course, being given by him for the value of all produce 
 made over to him by his constituent The price rate, how- 
 
 • Gazetteer, North- Western Provinces, vii. 548 ; Oudh Gazetteer, i. 239. 
 
 * Reports on Tenure of Land in Europe, p. 27. ^ Settlenunt Report, p. 144. 
 
 343 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 ever, at which, the Mahijan values his constituent's sugar 
 produce is not the full price rate of the open market at the 
 time of its delivery. In that he makes a deduction of from 
 5 to IQ per cent, and moreover he weighs the produce at 
 delivery considerably to his own advantage. There are agri- 
 culturists, of course, who are able to sell their sugar produce 
 in open market ; but these are probably themselves Mahajans 
 in esse or in fosse; and the great bulk of the agricultural 
 population loses part of the value of the sugar produce in 
 the manner above described." 
 
 We have next to consider the main causes of this large in- 
 debtedness. The popular explanation is the extravagance of 
 the peasant On the whole perhaps too much has been made 
 of his occasional foolish lavishness in the marriage of his 
 children, the rites for deceased relations and other ceremonies. 
 Mr Moens in Bareilly found that the average expenditure on 
 marriages amongthecultivating classes was R.x. 4 per marriage. 
 This it is true is a large amount for men of this position to 
 spend : but it is made up for by a lifetime of the most rigid 
 economy or even penuriousness. AH over the world the 
 peasant class are given to outbreaks of lavishness on such 
 occasions. We see it among the Irish Celts, who will often 
 seriously embarrass themselves in providing marriage portions 
 for their daughters and all our lower class habitually spend 
 more than they can afford on the interment of the dead. 
 
 Another and perhaps nearly as serious a cause of indebted- 
 ness is the litigious habits of the people. Whatever a man's 
 difficulties may be he seems always able to afford money 
 for a lawsuit. In many cases considerable sums have been 
 levied among the tenant class to resist enhancement of rent 
 or other law proceedings which affect their interests. In 
 1893 the number of revenue and criminal cases decided, in 
 the great majority of which the parties are drawn from the 
 peasant class, amounted to 682,936, of which revenue suits 
 accounted for more than a third. The minor forms of revenue 
 suits amounted in the same year to 168,433, and the number 
 has about doubled since 1881. This litigation is all of the 
 most trivial kind. The amount in dispute in 22,376 civil and 
 
 344 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 61,854 revenue suits was under !R.x. i; and -in 70,265 civil 
 and 75,095 revenue cases did not exceed R.x. 5. We have 
 already seen that much of the increase in this kind of litiga- 
 tion is due to the gradual break-up of the village organisation. 
 But in addition to this the litigious instincts of the peasantry- 
 are encouraged by a horde of ill-educated, astute legal practi- 
 tioners who, with their touts and agents, throng the purlieus 
 of our Courts of Justice. While native practitioners of the 
 higher grade are, as a rule, men of some learning and position, 
 this is not the case with those who conduct most of the 
 peasant litigation. Many of these disputes might and ought 
 to be disposed of by the village council of elders. But this 
 body has under our legal system become so much discredited 
 that it is very doubtful if any attempt to reconstitute it can now 
 be successful. The boasted simplicity of our Codes has been 
 overwhelmed in a mass of judicial precedents, and the system 
 of justice is yearly becoming more elaborate and expensive. 
 Besides the time lost in attending distant Courts as parties 
 or witnesses, money is never wanting for the conduct of this 
 trumpery, vexatious litigation which is gradually becoming a 
 more and more serious burden upon a class ill fitted to bear it. 
 
 This is not the place to attempt a history of the measures 
 which have been taken by the State for the protection of the 
 peasant. So far as we know the position of the tenant under 
 the old village constitution, a clear distinction which we have 
 ignored, seems to have been drawn between the man who 
 was resident and held land in his own village and he who 
 farmed beyond the limits of his village. The latter appears 
 to have been left to make the best terms with the alien com- 
 munity into which he chose to enter. The resident tenant, on 
 the other hand, seems to have had the right to hold his field 
 safe from disturbance so long as he paid the customary rent 
 payable in the locality. It would have been well if this rule 
 had been kept clearly in view by our legislators. 
 
 The Rent Code, originally passed in 1859, has been gradu- 
 ally revised, until in its final form it provides a fairly simple 
 and on the whole adequate body of law regulating the 
 relations of landlord and tenant 
 
 345 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 To discuss, first, the main provisions of the law in force 
 in the North- Western Provinces — it deals with four modes in 
 which rent may be collected — by division of the ripe crop ; 
 appraisement of the landlord's share ; fixed rents on special 
 crops, such as sugar-cane or cotton; cash rents paid in a 
 lump-sum, or on some measure of area. Payment in kind, 
 the primitive form of rent collection, has in most places 
 given way to cash rents. Much has been written on the 
 results of this change of system. On the one hand, as in the 
 Metayer system of Europe, when the landlord receives a fixed 
 share of the produce, he is more directly concerned in the wel- 
 fare of the tenant ; there is an absence of the competition 
 which tends to enhance rent ; the rent is self-adjusting to 
 meet vicissitudes of the season, and the landlord is more 
 ready to advance seed grain and give other aid to his tenantry. 
 On the other hand, the tenant is not so directly interested in 
 devoting his skill and labour to the improvement of the land ; 
 he is tempted to embezzle the grain as it ripens ; the landlord, 
 if he be hostile, may cause him loss by delay in appraisement ; 
 there is extra cost and friction in watching the produce until 
 it is divided ; lastly, it gives a roguish landlord a better 
 chance of concealing his income and evading payment of his 
 due share of the revenue. 
 
 The law next deals with four classes of tenants. The first 
 class is known as " tenants at fixed rates," which are found 
 only in those districts to the east of the Province where a 
 Permanent Settlement was introduced, as in Bengal, in the 
 early days of our rule. Tenants whose land has been held 
 since the Permanent Settlement (twenty years holding raising 
 a presumption of a fixed rate tenure) by themselves or their 
 predecessors in interest at the same rate of rent, are called 
 " tenants at fixed rates," and are entitled to cultivate at such 
 rates. Their rents may only be enhanced or reduced on 
 account of a change in the area of their holdings by alluvion, 
 diluvion or otherwise. These rights are hereditable and 
 transferable, a concession which has naturally led to much 
 loss of the interest by sale or mortgage. 
 
 Next come the classes known as occupancy or ex-pro- 
 
 346 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 prietary tenants. Those whose land has been continuously 
 occupied or cultivated for twelve years by themselves, their 
 fathers, or those from whom they inherit, are called " occu- 
 pancy tenants." Persons who lose or part with their pro- 
 prietary rights have been secured the right of occupancy in 
 their Sir or home-farm which they held at the time of transfer 
 and pay a rent twenty-five per cent, below that payable by 
 tenants-at-will for similar lands. These are called " Ex-pro- 
 prietary tenants." No tenant can acquire a right of occu- 
 pancy in land which he holds from an Occupancy tenant, or 
 from an Ex-proprietary tenant, or from a Tenant at fixed 
 rates or in home-farm land, or land held by him in lieu of 
 wages, or by including any term during which he has held 
 under a written lease. 
 
 The rent of Occupancy tenants can be enhanced only by a 
 written agreement duly registered, or by the order of a 
 Settlement Officer, or of a Revenue Court, and then only 
 under certain prescribed conditions of change in the area or 
 value of the holding. The right of occupancy is hereditable 
 like land ; but collaterals can inherit only if they were co- 
 sharers during the lifetime of the last incumbent. It is trans- 
 ferable only by voluntary transfer between co-sharers in the 
 right and therefore cannot be sold in execution of a decree. 
 
 Such a tenant can be ejected by suit on proof of any act 
 or omission detrimental to the land, or inconsistent with the 
 purpose for which it was let, or which by law, custom or 
 special agreement involves the forfeiture of the right. Any 
 of these protected tenants may be ejected for decreed arrears 
 of rent remaining due after the close of the year, if after re- 
 ceiving notice the arrear be not discharged within fifteen days. 
 
 Below these are the great masses of the unprotected tenants, 
 the tenants-at-will, who can be summarily ejected by notice 
 served before the beginning of the agricultural year. 
 
 In Oudh the condition of the tenant class is far less satis- 
 factory. The strong landlord body of Talukdirs have been 
 always opposed to any definite measures for their protection. 
 The present Rent Law of Oudh, which is in the manner of a 
 compromise, was introduced only after protracted negotiation 
 
 347 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 between the Government and the landed interest, and can be 
 regarded only as a temporary arrangement. 
 
 Here the ordinary tenants, who form a large proportion of 
 the peasantry, have been so far protected that their rent 
 cannot be enhanced for seven years after the first occupation 
 of the holding, and then if the tenant pays a cash rent, the 
 enhancement cannot exceed 6J per cent. ; or if the rent be 
 payable in kind, more than the customary rates prevailing 
 in the locality. It is only when the landlord himself effects 
 an improvement that he can claim an increased rent during 
 the statutory period. But the tenant is liable to ejectment 
 if he fail to pay his rent, sublet all his holding, use it in a way 
 that makes it unfit for the purposes of his tenancy, or without 
 cause, if he pays in kind, diminish the produce below the 
 local standard. 
 
 Other elaborate provisions have been devised for the pro- 
 tection of those classes who possessed proprietary or sub-pro- 
 prietary rights in villages which were subsequently absorbed 
 into the great Talukdari estates. 
 
 The following table shows the striking differences between 
 Oudh and the sister Province as regards cultivating tenures : — 
 
 Forms of Cultivating Tenure 
 
 Proportion of Cultivated 
 Area. 
 
 North- 
 western 
 Provinces. 
 
 Oudh. 
 
 Home Farm, various forms 
 
 Held with sub-proprietary or privileged rights . 
 
 Held with occupancy rights 
 
 Held by proprietary and occupancy tenants with- 
 out occupancy rights in addition to privileged 
 holdings 
 
 Tenants — at will or statutory 
 
 Held rent-free or in lieu of wages 
 
 22-5 
 
 33'i 
 
 67 
 
 32-8 
 
 1-6 
 
 io'3 
 
 4-2 
 
 1-3 
 
 1-4 
 
 797 
 
 31 
 
 348 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 From this it is clear that the protection of the Oudh 
 tenant is much less satisfactory than in the North-Western 
 Provinces. 
 
 It has often been asserted that the North-Western Pro- 
 vinces have been the scene of a constant struggle between 
 landlord and tenant, the one interested to prevent and the 
 other to secure occupancy rights. This assertion is mistaken. 
 Careful enquiries, made in 1885, showed after a review of 
 the complete statistics that there had been a net increase of 
 7 per cent, in the area held by such tenants at the last 
 settlement ; that more than half the land held by tenants 
 of all classes was protected by rights of occupancy; and 
 that landlords generally were not seriously opposed to the 
 accrual of such rights. Where the occupancy tenant enjoys 
 an advantage over the tenant-at-will lies in the protection 
 from disturbance and from constant enhancement of rent 
 All round, the land which he holds is of the superior class, 
 but he pays a lower rent. In the North-Western Provinces 
 he pays Rs. 3-14-10 per acre as against Rs. 3-14-S paid by 
 tenants-at-will for inferior land. In Oudh the contrast is 
 even greater, the two classes paying respectively Rs. 2-6-0 
 and Rs. 4- 12- 10 per acre. 
 
 Sooner or later. Government must nerve itself to fix the 
 rent with the revenue at the periodical revisions of the settle- 
 ment. When the share of the produce to be paid by the 
 landlord to the State for thirty years is definitely fixed, there 
 seems no logical reason why the same boon should not be 
 conferred upon the tenant. The objection always raised has 
 been the multitude of these petty holdings and the difficulty 
 of disposing of such a mass of litigation in a limited time. 
 This is only a question as to the judicial establishment re- 
 quired. The final settlement of rents for a fairly long period 
 would prevent the ceaseless litigation and heart-burning 
 which result from these cases, and would free the district staff 
 from a mass of irksome work which occupies time to the 
 neglect of more important matters. The words of Mr Hume, 
 written soon after the great Mutiny, are as true now as ever — 
 " I am convinced that nothing would benefit the country 
 
 349 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 at large more than the fixation of rents for a long term of 
 years. Such a measure would do more to prevent famine 
 and misery than all the waters of the rivers of India could 
 they be poured over the country in the canals. The more I 
 see the landowners of this country, the stronger is my con- 
 viction that they are not fit to be entrusted with the power 
 and licence which have been given to them under our system. 
 It mattered little as long as the competition was for tenants 
 and not for the land. But for the last fifteen years the com- 
 petition is the other way, and the result must be the impover- 
 ishment of the land, which is already a general complaint, 
 and the abandonment of the mass of the people to a hopeless 
 poverty that will always embarrass the Government and 
 retard the progress of civilisation." 
 
 It will, in short, come to something like a ryotwari settle- 
 ment which has not been beyond the power of Provinces like 
 Madras and Bombay. 
 
 The necessity for such a measure is emphasised by the 
 recent revelations of the proceedings of the landlord class in 
 Bulandshahr, and by what we know of the condition of 
 serfage which prevails in other places. This is what Mr 
 Smeaton, the Settlement Officer, writes of part of Rohil- 
 khand ^ — " The peasantry of Hasanpur in Mor&dibad are 
 living virtually in a state of serfage. Generally speaking, as 
 long as the tenant submits unconditionally to the will of the 
 landlord, does not hanker after independence, does not seek 
 to have his rent commuted into money, and cultivates his 
 holding diligently, he may live in peace, keep his free graz- 
 ing, use (but not sell) the timber on the waste, and cut as 
 much thatch as he needs for his house and sheds. But the 
 moment he seeks to assert his independence, dares to aspire 
 to money rents, or to claim timber or thatch as his right, the 
 landlord looks on him as renegade and seldom fails to crush 
 him." Up to quite recent times a custom prevailed in 
 northern Oudh, where people in consideration of a small 
 advance became the bond slaves of their creditors. It was 
 t:ommon to meet men whose fathers had incurred these 
 ^ Gazetteer, North-Westem Provinces, ix. (2) p. igi. 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 obligations and who still laboured to discharge them, though 
 they were well aware that the servitude could not be 
 enforced.^ 
 
 Many attempts have been made to frame a budget of the 
 income and expenditure of the average cultivator. The 
 point on which all such estimates fail is the difficulty of 
 assigning a money value to the labour of the peasant and his 
 family, which in most places is not a marketable commodity ; 
 secondly, it depends on individual circumstances whether the 
 cultivator is in a position to dispose of his produce at the 
 most opportune time, or is compelled to make it over to the 
 village banker on more or less inadequate terms. Most of 
 these estimates, too, were made before the era of high prices 
 of cereals. 
 
 Thus, it was calculated at Aligarh that a five acre holding 
 was equivalent to wages at Rs. ^perinensem; in Muzaffamagar 
 that it would take five acres of very good land to support 
 an ordinary family ; in Cawnpur that a low caste tenant will 
 make a profit of Rs. 46 out of the same area, a market gardener 
 Rs. 90 out of eight acres, a really good cultivator Rs. 135 
 out of fifteen acres. All these estimates niust be received with 
 much caution. Agriculture and many of the village industries 
 are very closely connected — the potter spends part of his 
 labour in the field ; the Chamir or currier will in addition to 
 his special work do day labour, cultivate, and so on. What 
 the wife and children contribute to the common stock either 
 by independent labour or by the herbs and wild fruit, fuel, or 
 manure that they can collect is always a variable quantity, 
 and the factors are so diverse that any precise calculation is 
 impossible. 
 
 They do exist and multiply on most minute areas — so 
 much is certain. To bring this fact out accurately from the 
 Census figures is not easy, because the occupation of agri- 
 culture cannot be readily separated from other industries. 
 With this qualification, comparing the number of persons 
 who have an " interest in land " with the net area cultivated, 
 we find that in Aligarh the land per head is I'l acres ; in 
 
 ' Oudh Gazetteer, i. 145. 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 Bareilly i"4, and in Ballia to the extreme east 'g of an 
 acre. 
 
 The information as to the size of the average agricultural 
 holding is more precise. This is in Aligarh 9 acres ; in 
 Bareilly each occupancy tenant holds 47 acres, each tenant- 
 at-will 23 acres ; in Cawnpur each cultivator holds 3J acres. 
 We have to go to Belgium to find any analogy to these 
 figures. There out of every hundred farmers, 43*24 per cent, 
 hold less than fifty acres ; I2'3 percent less than one hectare 
 (2 acres, i rood, 3^ perches) ; and 28*99 per cent, land not 
 exceeding 5 hectares ; only 8 per cent, cultivate more than 
 10 hectares. On this M. Lavelaye remarks ^ — " The sub- 
 division of land is not quite an ideal to propose to modern 
 society, for it demands of man redoubled exertion and labour 
 but little compatible with the development of his intellectual 
 faculties ; but it can be affirmed that up to this time the 
 results in Flanders have proved advantageous, at least as far 
 as production and rents are concerned." 
 
 Why the condition of the peasant of Northern India is so 
 much below that of his Flemish brethren is perhaps mainly 
 due to the fact that the latter combine with farming other 
 industries, such as dairy management, fruit growing, and the 
 rearing of poultry, which, with the English market close by, 
 must be exceedingly profitable. This combination of in- 
 dustries does not prevail in Indian farming. Dairy work is 
 confined to the making of Ghi, and no pains are taken to pre- 
 pare a superior article ; it is sold as it is made to the village 
 Banya or even the produce is mortgaged in advance. The 
 fowl is regarded nearly as impure as the pig, and the rearing 
 of both is confined to the menial castes ; here, again, there is 
 no pretence of care or scientific breeding. The growth of 
 fruit or vegetables is hardly an industry of the ordinary 
 peasant ; it is specialised by the market gardener castes. 
 Even the neighbourhood of a city gives little healthy stimulus 
 to this petite culture ; it merely attracts to the bazir fuel and 
 fodder which would be used to more real advantage at home. 
 The strings of women and children with their bundles of grass 
 
 ' Sepoit on Tentire of Landin Europe, pp. 107, no. 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 or fuel cakes whom one sees plodding along the dusty roads 
 near the towns imply the gradual exhaustion of their lands. 
 But the chief distinction between the Indian and the Flemish 
 peasant is that the one possesses capital and hcis savings to 
 invest in land and other speculations ; the other lives from 
 hand to mouth : if he has a rupee to spare he invests it un- 
 productively in jewellery or simply hoards it 
 
 The only real improvement ever carried out is the building 
 of wells and the excavation of tanks. Of the latter we have 
 already spoken. The former represents a large expenditure 
 in labour and capital. We can realise this from the case of 
 Oudh- Here there are no artificial canals, but still 21 per cent 
 of the cultivated area is irrigated as compared with 24 per cent, 
 in the sister Province. The peasant believes in the superior 
 value of well water as compared with canal irrigation, and here, 
 as in many other instances, scientific investigation has shown 
 the soundness of his faith. " Repeated applications of well 
 water are equivalent to a manuring with readily soluble salts, 
 such as nitrate of soda, carbonate of soda, common salt, and 
 salts of magnesia." ^ It is not easy to realise the extent to 
 which wells have been constructed. In one district, that of 
 Azamgarh, there are twenty-four thousand masonry wells, 
 half of which are used for irrigation. Each well irrigates 
 fourteen acres. But this does not fully represent the degree 
 to which they are used in seasons of scanty rainfall In such 
 years the lever well worked by human labour alone approaches 
 that average, while the area watered from buckets drawn by 
 oxen is probably little less than twenty-five acres. 
 
 The village well is the chief centre of social life. All 
 through the morning hours it is thronged by crowds of merry 
 girls in bright dresses and glittering jewels, who laugh and 
 chatter, flirt and gossip, while the boy sings to his oxen as 
 they wearily descend the slope and the rough pulley creaks 
 and the water splashes in the sunshine, and the pure stream 
 trickles into the thirsty fields, where a woman diverts the 
 current from one tiny patch to another. Here comes the 
 wandering beggar to drink, and tells the news of far distant 
 iVoelcker, Report, p. 78. 
 
 z 352 
 
NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF INDIA 
 
 lands, and accompanied by her friends the mother, safe over 
 the troubles of maternity, brings her brown baby and rever- 
 ently walks round the platform in the course of the sun, 
 smearing the brickwork as she goes with splashes of ver- 
 milion. There the Brahman bathes amid the noisy crowd 
 and draws a little water which, with a few flowers, forms his 
 daily offering to the neighbouring lingam shrine. 
 
 While, then, among the more advanced cultivating tribes 
 this petite culture provides much moderate prosperity over 
 a considerable area, among the less industrious races its 
 evils are apparent. It needs a peasantry of stronger fibre 
 than many of the inhabitants of the great Indian Plain to 
 practise that stern economy and unceasing industry, that 
 power of utilising all the products of the soil, which makes 
 it so successful a social institution in Belgium and France, 
 that our statesmen long to see it extended to the rural 
 districts of Great Britain " and Ireland. But small farms, 
 except under the most favourable conditions, where choice 
 products can be grown for a profitable market, must in the 
 long run fail to secure for the tenant more than a mere 
 subsistence. The Jat or Kachhi makes his little plot pay, 
 because the one grows the finest wheat and sugar and keeps 
 a brood mare or two ; the latter, because he produces opium 
 and vegetables. Without the advantage of such industries 
 the ordinary tenant must waste labour on growing com- 
 paratively unremunerative corn crops for food ; he must 
 work with inferior machines and half-starved cattle. The 
 true blessing of the best form of peasant proprietary can 
 never fall to his lot. 
 
 The problems before the statesmen of Europe and India 
 are thus essentially different. The former aims at restoring 
 a social state which has almost disappeared ; to re-establish 
 the yeoman in his cottage and thus check the emigration 
 of rural labour to the towns. The other has the peasant 
 farm, the three acres and a cow, ready made. What he 
 wants to secure is more protection to the yeoman from the 
 oppression of the landlord and from the stress of rents forced 
 up by competition; to develop a more intelligent rule of 
 
 354 
 
THE PEASANT AND THE LAND 
 
 trade, by which the produce can be disposed of direct without 
 the intervention of that shark, the Banya middleman ; to 
 free the yeoman from the bondage of the usurer, and divert 
 more of the capital of the country, at easier rates, into the 
 cultivation of these little five-acre plots. 
 
 The first steps towards attaining these ends must be to 
 make tenure, particularly in Oudh, more secure; to limit 
 the enhancements of revenue at the periodical revisions of 
 settlement; to devise means for fixing rents part passu with 
 the revenue assessments ; to lose no opportunities of spread- 
 ing a more scientific knowledge of agriculture, and, in 
 particular, of the conservancy of manure among the masses ; 
 to reduce the cost and attractiveness of litigation ; to popu- 
 larise State advances ; and, by improvement of the police 
 and revenue establishments, to relieve the people from petty 
 forms of oppression. The peasant, with his pair of lean 
 oxen and rude plough, is the pillar of the Empire, and our 
 task in India is only half done as long as we neglect any 
 feasible methods for advancing his interests. 
 
 355 
 
INDEX 
 
 Advances, agricultural, 339 
 
 Agariya, a caste of iron smelters, 18 
 
 Agastya Muni, a saint, 64 
 
 Agra, canal of, 143 ; becomes the 
 capital of the Pro^^nce, 91 ; archi- 
 tecture of, 119 
 
 Agriculture, methods of, 329 
 
 Ahmad Khin, Sir Sa)'yid, 262 
 
 Ain-i-Akbari, the, loi 
 
 Ajudhya, an ancient capital, 3 
 
 AJcbar, reign of, 98 ; his revenue settle- 
 ment, 100, 3CX3 
 
 Ala-ud-din, 88 
 
 All Mardan Khan, 142 
 
 Altamsh, 87 
 
 Amusements in village life, 271 
 
 Animism defined, 241 ; prevalence 
 of, 251 
 
 Annexation, policy of, 181 
 
 Antelope, the, 50 
 
 Anthropometry, evidence of, 200 
 
 Arboriculture, 34, 337 
 
 Architecture, Hindu, 79 ; Muhamma- 
 dan, 117 
 
 Aristocracy under the Mughals, 104 
 
 Artisan castes, 208 
 
 Aryas, the, 196 
 
 Aryavarta, the land of the Aryas, 2 
 
 Arms, extensive use of, 132 
 
 Ascetic classes, the, 253 
 
 Asoka, 68 
 
 Aurangzeb, no 
 
 Babar, 92 
 Babu, the, 154 
 Baheliya, the caste of, 212 
 Bakhira lake, 43 
 Bakhtiyar Khilji, 84 
 Balban, 87 
 BSngar, the, 26 
 Bank, agricultural, 339 
 Banker, the village, 343 
 Bard wan fever, 151 
 Bareilly, condition of, 133 
 Barwar, a criminal tribe, 140 
 Bathing, merit of, 245 
 
 Battlefields within the Province, 3 
 
 Bengali, the, 214 
 
 Beriya, the gipsy caste, 213 
 
 Betwa canal, the, 144 
 
 Bhabar, the, 14 
 
 Bhar, the tribe, 75 
 
 Bhartpur, sieges of, 117 
 
 Bhim Tal, 44 
 
 Bhotiyas, the tribe, 1 1 
 
 Biyalisi, the, 282 
 
 Black cotton soil, 20, 53 
 
 Black Death, the, 151 
 
 Blindness, prevalence of, 159 
 
 Brahma, worship of, 242 
 
 Brahmanism, definition of, 241 ; reform 
 in, 64 
 
 Brahmans, a mixed race, 201 ; edu- 
 cation among, 153 
 
 Brahmavarta, the land of the gods, 2 
 
 Bribery, 127 
 
 Bride price, custom of receiving, 138 
 
 Buddhism, 66, 235 
 
 Budget of an average tenant, 351 
 
 Bulandshahr, revenue settlement of, 
 306 
 
 Bundelkhand, scenery of, 19 ; arti- 
 ficial lakes, 43 
 
 Burhganga, the, 23 
 
 Butchers, 206 
 
 Camps of the Mughal Emperors, 129 
 
 Canals, 142 ; under the Mughals, 128 ; 
 irrigation, benefits and evils result- 
 ing from, 147 ; influence on health, 
 148 ; officers, 146 
 
 Caste, establishment of, 61 ; basis of, 
 202 ; introduced under Brahman 
 influence, 203; fourfold division 
 of, 204 
 
 Chalisa famine, the, 169 
 
 Chambal river, ravines along, 26 
 
 Chandel Kingdom, the, 78 
 
 Chandragupta, 69 
 
 Charity, private, 174 
 
 ChaurSnave famine, the, 170 
 
 Chaurasi, the, 282 
 
 357 
 
INDEX 
 
 Children, occupations of, 229 
 Chinese pilgrims, the, 72 
 Chiryamar caste, the, 212 
 Chital deer, the, 50 
 Cholera, mortality from, 149 
 Christianity, progress of, 237 
 Christians, education among, 153 
 Church, the, under the Mughak, 104 
 City, growth of the, 324 ; industries, 
 
 decay of, 193 ; life conditions of, 
 
 324 
 Civil Courts, action of, 182 
 Civil Service under the Mughals, 103 
 Civilisation, myth of, 221 
 Clay soil, 51 
 
 Cleanliness, rules of, 162 
 Climate, the, 53 
 Clothing, 269, 273 
 Colonies in Oudh, 96 
 Colonisation by the Aryas, 195 
 Communications, extension of, 164 
 Continent, a submerged, 198 
 Copper mines, 10 
 Cotton tree, the, 19 
 Council, the village, 292 
 Courts under the Mughals, 127 
 Courts of Wards, 315 
 Cow-killing, agitation against, 187 
 Criminality in Northern India, 141 
 Crowding of the city population, 224 
 
 Dairy management, 352 
 
 Dacoity, 139 
 
 Darbar, the, of the Mughals, 113 
 
 Dasyus, the, 59, 196 
 
 Decentralisation, policy of, 178 
 
 Dehra Dfln, valley of, 13 
 
 Delhi, kingdom of, 77 
 
 Dengue fever, 151 
 
 Density of village population, 226 
 
 Depressed classes, the, 274 
 
 Devi, worship of, 248 
 
 Disease, demoniacal theory of, 245 
 
 District Boards, 175, 177 
 
 Dom, the caste, 215 
 
 Double cropping, system of, 322 
 
 Dravidian races, the, 59, 197 
 
 Drunkenness, 141 
 
 Duab, the, 27 
 
 Dust storms, 52 
 
 Education, extent of, 152 ; of fe- 
 males, 158 
 
 Egypt compared with the Province, 6 
 
 Elephants, wild, 46 
 
 Emigration of rural population to 
 towns, 323 ; prejudice against, 326 
 
 Encumbered Estates Court, 315 
 
 Enteric fever, 55 
 
 Enterprise, lack of, among the peasan- 
 try, 330 
 Ethnology in Northern India, 195 
 Exportation of food grains, 168 
 Exproprietary tenants, 346 
 
 Fakir, the, 253 
 
 Famine, 168 ; influence of irrigation on, 
 
 147; principles of relief during, 171 
 Fashion, immutability of, 269 
 Fatehpur Sikri, 119 
 Fauna, the, 45 
 
 Fecundity of the population, 229 
 Fever, malarious, $6 ; mortality from, 
 
 149 
 Firoz Tughlak, 88 
 Fixed rate tenants, 346 
 Flint weapons, 60 
 Floods, 56 
 Flora, the, 44 
 Fodder supply, 34, 337 
 Food, lack of variety, 269 ; of the 
 
 peasant classes, 272 
 Food grains, export of, 168 ; rise in the 
 
 price of, 341 
 Forest conservation, 34 ; fires, 14, 35 
 Fuel supply, 34, 337 
 
 Game, large, 46 
 
 Gandak, the river, 4 
 
 Gang robbery, 139 
 
 Ganges, the river, 4, 20 
 
 Gardner, Colonel, 122 
 
 Gautama Buddha, 66 
 
 Geology of the hills, 13 ; of the Vin- 
 
 dhyan range, 20 
 Ghagra, the river, 4 
 Ghayas-ud-dln Tughlak, 88 
 Ghi, manufacture of, 25 
 Gipsies, criminal propensities of, 1 39; 
 
 tribes of, 212 ; of Europe, 216 
 Gohna lake, the, 44 
 Gold muling, 10, 18 
 Govisana, kingdom of, 75 
 Grazing grounds, 25 
 Greek influence on India, 69 
 Grihya Sfitras, the, 62 
 Groves, 40 
 Gujar tribe, disloyalty during the 
 
 Mutiny, 182 
 Gupta dynasty, the, 71 
 Gurkhas, the, 11 
 
 Habfira, a gipsy tribe, 213 
 Hamlets, foundation of, 40, 284 
 Handicrafts, decay of, 209 
 Harsha Vardhana, 78 
 
 358 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hastinapura, an ancient capital, 3, 58 
 
 Headman of the village, 293 
 
 Himalayan tract, the, 9 
 
 Hindan river, the, 28 
 
 Hindu, definition of the title, 239 ; 
 education of, 153 ; persecution of, 
 109 
 
 Hindustan, a geographical expression, 2 
 
 Hiranya-vaha, a name for the river 
 Son, 18 
 
 Hiuen Tsiang, 72 
 
 Holdii^, size of the, 352 
 
 Home &rm, the, 347 
 
 Hospitals, popularity of, 159 
 
 House, description of, 265 ; accom- 
 modation, 227 
 
 Household, primitive type of, 2S0 
 
 Human sacrifice, 248 
 
 Humayun, 96 
 
 Ibralitm Lodi, 91 
 Illiteracy, prevalence of, 157 
 Improvements, taxation of, 317 
 Indebtedness of peasantry, 343 ; causes 
 
 of. 344 
 Indecency in worship, 249 
 Indo-Skythians, 69 
 Indra, worship of, 253 
 Industries, new, growth of, 325 
 Infant marriage, 211, 228 
 Infanticide, 136 
 Influenza, 151 
 
 Inventiveness, absence of, 269 
 Iron mines, 10 
 
 Islam in India, 258 ; sects of, 263 
 Itlmad-ud-daula, tomb of, 119 
 
 Jahangir, reign of, 105 
 
 Jainism, 74, 235 
 
 Jats, rise of the, 117 
 
 Jaunpur, architecture of, 119; kingdom 
 
 of, 92 
 Jaya Chandra, 78 
 Jews, 236 
 
 Jhansi, indebted landlords in, 298 
 Jumna, the river, 4 
 
 Kaimur range, the, 16 
 Kalinadi, the river, 28 
 Kanauj, kingdom of, 77 
 Kanishka, 70 
 
 Kanjar, the gipsy tribe, 214 
 Kankar limestone, 21 
 KSyasth, the writer caste, 153 
 Khadir, the, 24 
 Khilji, dynasty of, 88 
 Kolarians, the, 197 
 Korwas, the, 218 
 
 Kosala, kingdom of, 76 
 
 Kulu tree, the, 19 
 
 Kutb-ud-dtn Aibak, 84 
 
 Labour, contempt for, 220 
 
 Lakes, 43 
 
 Landed property, sale of, 182, 314 
 
 Law, deamess of, 193 ; of Islim, 125 
 
 Leopard, the, 17, 48 
 
 Le Vaisseau, 121 
 
 Lion, the, 48 
 
 Literacy, extent of, 153 
 
 Literature, popular, 156 
 
 Litigiousness, growth of, 344 
 
 Loam, the soil, 51 
 
 Lower Ganges Canal, 143 
 
 Loyalty, extent of, 191 
 
 Mahabharata, the epic, 65 
 
 Mahajan, house of llie, 267 
 
 MahSl, the, 295 
 
 Mahmiid of Ghazni, 77, 81 
 
 Mandawar, kingdom of, 75 
 
 Mangesar, peak of, 19 
 
 Manu, Institutes of, 61 
 
 Manure, conservation of, 333 
 
 Mar tract, the, 15 
 
 Marble, quarries of, 20 
 
 Marco Polo, 85 
 
 Mark, the village, 283 
 
 Marriage, statistics of, 227 ; expendi- 
 ture on, 344 
 
 Martyrs, worship of, 252 
 
 Mauza, the, 282 
 
 Megasthenes, 69 
 
 Menial castes, 206, 207 
 
 Mineral resources, 10 
 
 Missionary efforts of Hinduism, 63 
 
 Monotheists, 241 
 
 Moral duty, low conception of, 134 
 
 Mortality, urban and rural, 161 
 
 Moti JhSl, the, 43 
 
 Mughals, the, 91 ; princes, demoralisa- 
 tion of, 102 
 
 Muhammad bin Sam, 83 
 
 Muharram festival, the, 263 
 
 Municipalities, 161, 175 
 
 Musalmans, education among, 153, 
 262 
 
 Mutiny, the, causes of, 178 
 
 Nadir Shah, 1 16 
 
 Nagas, the, 59, 196 
 
 Naini Tal, lake of, 44 
 
 Nanak, 256 
 
 Nat, a gipsy tribe, 213 
 
 Natives, employment of, in the public 
 
 service, 189 
 Naukuchiya lake, the, 44 
 
 359 
 
INDEX 
 
 Noh Jhil lake, the, 43 
 North-Westein Provinces, a clumsy 
 title, I ; how formed, 122 
 
 Occupancy tenants, 347 
 Occupations, castes classed according 
 
 to, 204 
 Ophthalmic surgery, 159 
 Oudh, conquest of, 95 ; kingdom of, 
 
 114; irrigation in, 144 
 
 Panchala, kingdom of, 76 
 Panipat, battles of, 79, 91, 117 
 Parasurama, legend of, 63 
 Pargana, the, 281 
 Parsis, the, 236 
 Partition of villages, 294 
 Pathan architecture, 117 
 Pattidari form of tenure, 301 
 Peace, maintenance of, 178 
 Peacock, the, 45 
 
 Peasant, religion of the, 243 ; pro- 
 prietors of Mathura, 289 
 Permanent settlement, the, 303 
 Perron, General, 121 
 Pigsticking, 24 
 Pilgrimage, 327 ; influence of railways 
 
 on, 166 
 Pindaris, the, 132 
 Plains, importance of the, 8 ; geology 
 
 of the, 20 
 Plough, the native, 332 ; area, the, 
 
 321 
 Poisoning, 135 
 Police, control of the, 133 
 Poll tax, the, 112 
 Polyandry, 25 
 Poultry, 352 
 Population, increase'of the, 1 73, 229 ; 
 
 dependent on agriculture, 320 
 Post Office, the, 189; its influence on 
 
 the village community, 293 
 Press, the native, 155 
 Privacy, absence of, 269 
 Processions, regulation of, 187 
 Property in land vested in the State, 
 
 296 
 Provinces, redistribution of, 5 
 Punyabhumi, the holy land, 2 
 Puranas, the, 242 
 
 Quinine, sale of, 160 
 
 Raedisis, the, 256 
 Rainfall, the, 56 
 Raj, the, 285 
 Raja, position of the, 285 
 
 360 
 
 Rajputs, a mixed race, 62, 201 ; colon- 
 isation by, 86 ; marriage rules 
 among, 136 
 
 Ramanandi, the sect, 255 
 
 Ramayana, the epic, 65, 255 
 
 Ramganga river, the, 23 
 
 Rapti, river, the, 4 
 
 Ravine country, the, 26 
 
 Record of Rights, the, 302 
 
 Redistribution of lands in village com- 
 munities, 2S2. 
 
 Regar soil, 53 
 
 Reh, constituents of, 32 
 
 Religions, external characteristics of, 
 238 ; statistics of, 234 
 
 Religious riots, 186 
 
 Reserves for fuel and fodder, 34 
 
 Rent, fixation of, 349 ; modes of realis- 
 ing, 346; rise of, 342; law, the, 
 
 345 
 
 Revenue, proposed to be assessed on 
 prices of produce, 315 ; instalments, 
 317 ; joint responsibility for payment 
 of, 294 
 
 Rhinoceros, the, 46 
 
 Rice, cultivation of, 39 
 
 Riots, religious, 186 
 
 Rivers, action of, 21; basins of, 4; 
 forming an ethnical frontier, 281 
 
 Roads, condition of in Mughal times, 
 129; at the openingof our rule, 164; 
 poisoning, 135 
 
 Rohilkhand, conquest of, 94 ; desola- 
 tion of, 131 
 
 Rohillas, the, 116 
 
 Robbers, in Mughal times, 129 
 
 Rural population, the, i6l 
 
 Saints, worship of, 252 
 Saivism, 246 
 Saktism, 248 
 Salai tree, 19 
 Salt, consumption of, 272 
 Sambhar deer, the, 50 
 Samru, Begam, 120 
 Sanataria, 8 
 
 Sanitation, progress of, 160 
 Sandy soil, 52 ; tract, the, 31 
 Sansiyas, a criminal tribe, 140, 213 
 Sarda canal, the, 144 
 Samith, monastery at, 73 
 Satasi, the, 282 
 
 Scenery of the hill tract, 1 1 ; of the 
 southern hills, 18 ; of the Dustb, 28 
 Sects, growth of, 250 
 Seed grain, 339 
 Sept, the, 280 
 Serfage in Northern India, 350 
 
INDEX 
 
 Seths of Mathura, the, 167 
 
 Settlement, modem system of, 308 
 
 ShahjaMn, reign of, 109 
 
 Shiah sect, the, 262 
 
 Shih Fa Hian, 72 
 
 Shir Shah, 96 ; his settlement, 299 
 
 Sikandai Lodi, 90 
 
 Sikhism, 236 
 
 Sikhs, raids by the, 130 
 
 Siva, worship of, 246 
 
 SiwSlik range, the, 13 
 
 Skinner, Colonel, 122 
 
 Skythianinvaders, 61 ; immigration, igS 
 
 Slave dynasty, the, 88 
 
 Snakebite, mortality from, 49 
 
 Soil, exhaustion of the, 334 ; varieties 
 
 of, so 
 Son, the river, 4 ; scenery in the valley 
 
 of, 18 
 Smghna, kingdom of, 75 
 Stagnation of village life, 271 
 Statutory tenants in Oudh, 348 
 Sthanesvara, kingdom of, 75 
 Stone Age, the, 60, 199 
 Storms, 57 
 
 Sfidras, positon of, 67, 221 
 Sugar, production of, 38 ; mill, 332 
 Sung Yun, 72 
 Sunni sect, the, 263 
 Surahajhfl, the, 43 
 Sweepers, 206 
 
 Taj Mahal, the, 119 
 
 Taluka, the, 286 
 
 Talukdar, the, 286 ; character of their 
 
 rule, 288 
 Tanks, 42 
 Tappa, the, 281 
 Tarai, the, 14 
 Tea planthig, 11 
 Temples, Hindu, 80 ; destroyed by 
 
 Aurangzeb, 112 
 Tenants, classes of, 346 ; at will, 347 
 Tera, the, 282 
 Thagi, suppression of, 135 
 Tharu, the tribe, 15, 216 
 Thomas, George, 120 
 
 Tiger, the, 17, 46 
 
 Timur, 89 
 
 Totemism, influence of, on ancient 
 
 society, 280 
 Town, definition of, 161 ; rise of, 96 
 Trade, reorganisation of, 166 
 Trees, destruction of, 34 
 Tribal Codlings, worship of, 252 
 Tulasi DSs, 255 
 Typhoid fever, 55 
 
 Upper Ganges Canal, 142 
 Urban population, the, 161 
 Usar plains, the, 32 
 Usoiy, limitation of, 314 ; system of, 
 343 
 
 Vaccination, 163 
 
 Vagrant tribes, 212 
 
 Vaishnava cultus, the, 247 
 
 Vasishtha, 63 
 
 Vatsya, kingdom of, j6 
 
 Vedas, the, 58, 199 ; foUowersof the, 242 
 
 Vikramaditya, 70 
 
 Village defined, 295 ; in the east and 
 
 west, 40 ; size of, 222, 283 
 Village communities, origin of, 280 ; 
 
 advantage of this form of tenure, 
 
 290 ; evils incident to, 291 
 Vindhyan range, the, 16 
 Visvamitra, 63 
 
 Wahhlbi sect, the, 260 
 
 Waste culturable, the, 322 ; attached 
 to villages, 283 ; assessment of, 318 
 
 Water-logging of the subsoil, 150 
 
 Wells, construction of, by the State, 
 338 ; irrigation, advantage of, 353 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 FORTHCOUING BOOKS, 
 
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 OCTOBER 1899 
 
October 1899. 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Travel and Adventure 
 
 THE HIGHEST ANDES. By E. A. FitzGerald. With 
 40 Illustrations, 10 of which are Photogravures, and a Large Map. 
 Royal Zvo. 30^. tiet. 
 
 Also, a Small Edition on Handmade Paper, limited to 50 Copies, 
 fo. £s, 5^- 
 
 A narrative of the highest climb yet accomplished. The illustrations have been 
 reproduced with the greatest care, and the book, in addition to its adventurous 
 interest, contains appendices of great scientific value. It also contains a ver^' 
 elaborate map, and a panorama. 
 
 THROUGH ASIA. By SvEN Hedin. With 300 Illustrations 
 from Photographs and Sketches by the Author, and 3 Maps. Second 
 and cheaper Edition in 16 Fortnightly Parts at is. each net; or in 
 two volumes. Royal %vo. 10s. tut. 
 Extracts from reviews of this ^eat book, which TJie Times has called ' one of the 
 bestbooks of the centurj',' will be found on p. 15. The present form of issue places 
 it within the reach of buyers of moderate means. 
 
 THE CAROLINE ISLANDS By F. W. Christian. With 
 many Illustrations and Maps. Deiny %vo. I2x. 6d. net. 
 This book contains a history and complete description of these islands — their physical 
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 the result of many years' residence among the natives, and is the only worthy work 
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 THREE YEARS IN SAVAGE AFRICA. By Lionel Decle. 
 With 100 Illustrations and 5 Maps. Cheaper Edition. Demy %vo. 
 lox. ()d. net. 
 
 A NEW RIDE TO KHIVA. By R. L. Jefferson. Illustrated. 
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 The account of an adventurous ride on a bicycle through Russia and the deserts of 
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 Poetry 
 
 PRESENTATION EDITIONS 
 
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Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 3 
 
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 A little volume of occasional verse, ''chiefly academic. 
 
 tCbe TKHorfts of Sbafsespearc 
 General Editor, Edward Dowden, Litt. D. 
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4 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
 number of letters to his wife describiDg the circumstances under which his 
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 BISHOP LATIMER. Sy A. J. Carlyle, M.A. Crown Zvo 
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 CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. The Bampton Lectures for 1899. 
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 .\n elementary treatise on geomorphology— the study of the earth's outward forms. 
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8 Messrs. Methuen^s Announcements 
 
 LA COMMEDIA DI DANTE ALIGHIERI. Edited by 
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Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 9 
 
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lo Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
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Messrs. Methuen's Announcements ii 
 
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12 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
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 "ITbe IFlovelist 
 
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A CATALOGUE OF 
 
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 AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 ByE. L. CUTTS, D.D. 
 WILLIAM LAUD. By W. H. 
 
 HUTTON, B.D. 
 JOHN KNOX. By F. MacCunn.'' 
 
 ■ '"^ 
 Other volumes will be 
 
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 announced in due course. 
 
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 Fiction 
 
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 Large crown %vo. 6j. each. 
 
 THE SORROWS 
 Fortieth Edition. 
 
 A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Nineteenth Edition. 
 VENDETTA. Fifteenth Edition. 
 TH ELM A. Twenty first Edition. 
 ARDATH: THE STORY OF A 
 
 DEAD SELF. Eleventh Edition. 
 THE SOUL OF LILITH. Ninth 
 
 Edition. 
 WORMWOOD. Ninth Edition. 
 BARABBAS : A DREAM OF THE 
 WORLD'S TRAGEDY. Thirty- 
 fourth Edition. 
 
 * The tender reverence of the treatment 
 and the imaginative beauty of the writ- 
 ing have reconciled us to the daring of 
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 forced on us that even so exalted a sub- 
 ject cannot be made too familiar to us, 
 provided it be presented in the true spirit 
 of Christian faith. The amplifications 
 
 Anthony Hope's Novels 
 
 Crown %vo. 6s. each. 
 
 of the Scripture narrative are often con- 
 ceived with high poetic insight, and this 
 * * Dream of the World's Tragedy " is 
 a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase 
 of the supreme climax of the inspired 
 narrative.' — Dublin Review. 
 
 OF SATAN. 
 
 A very powerful piece of work. . . . The 
 conception is magni£cent, and is likely 
 to win an abiding place within the 
 memory of man. . . . The author has 
 immense command of language and a 
 limitless audacity. . . . This interesting 
 and remarkable romance will live long 
 after much of the ephemeral literature \ 
 of the day is forgotten. ... A literary \ 
 phenomenon . . . novel, and even sub- 
 Jime,' — W. T. Stead in the Revicm 
 of Reviews. 
 
 THE GOD IN THE CAR. Eighth 
 
 Edition, 
 
 *A very remarkable book, deserwng of 
 
 critical analysis imposable within our 
 
 limit ; brilliant, but not superficial ; 
 
 well considered, but not elaborated ; 
 
 constructed with the proverbial art that 
 
 conceals, but yet allows itself to be 
 
 enjoyed by readers to whom fine literary 
 
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 A CHANGE OF AIR. Fifth Edition. 
 
 *A graceful, vivacious comedy, true to 
 
 human nature. The characters are 
 
 traced with a masterly hand,' — Tinus. 
 
 A MAN OF MARK. Fourth Edition. 
 
 *0f all Mr. Hope's books, "A Man of 
 
 Mark " is the one which best compares 
 
 'ith " The Prisoner 
 National Observer, 
 
 of Zenda." * — 
 
 THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT 
 ANTONIO. Fourth Edition. 
 *It is a perfectly enchanting story of love 
 and chivalry, and pure romance. The 
 Count is the most constant, desperate, 
 and modest and tender of lovers, a peer- 
 less gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a 
 faithful friend, and a magnanimous foe.* 
 — Guardian. 
 
 PHROSO. Illustrated by H. R. 
 
 Millar. Fourth Edition. 
 'The tale is thoroughly fresh, quick with 
 vitality, stirring the blood.*— ^^. James's 
 Gazette. 
 
28 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 * A story of adventure, every page of which 
 is palpitating with action.' — Speaker, 
 
 •From cover to cover *'Phroso" not only 
 engages the attention, but carries the 
 reader in little whirls of delight from 
 adventure to adventure.' — Academy. 
 
 SIMON DALE. Illustrated. Third 
 
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 ' " Simon Dale " is one of the best historical 
 
 romances that have been written for a 
 long while.' — St. JaTnes's Gazette. 
 
 'A brilliant novel. The story is rapid and 
 most excellently told. As for the hero, 
 he is a perfect hero of romance ' — 
 Atketusum. 
 
 ' There is searching analysis _ of human 
 nature, with a most ingeniously con- 
 structed plot. Mr. Hope has drawn the 
 contrasts of his women with marvellous 
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 Gilbert Parker's Novels 
 
 Crown %vo. 6j. each. 
 
 PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. 
 
 Fifth Edition, 
 ' Stories happily conceived and finely ex- 
 ecuted. There is strength and genius in 
 Mr. Parker's style.'— ZJ^w'/y TeUgrafk. 
 
 MRS. FALCHION. Fourth Edition. 
 ' A splendid study of character.' — 
 
 Atheruru7/z. 
 *A very strildng and admirable novel,' — 
 St. /arfzes's Gazette. 
 
 THE TRANSLATION OF A 
 SAVAGE. 
 'The plot is original and one difficult to 
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 reader who is not interested in this 
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 be a dull person indeed.' — 
 
 Daily Chronicle, 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. 
 Illustrated, Sixth Edition. 
 
 * A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like 
 
 this, in which swords flash, great sur- 
 prises are undertaken, and daring deeds 
 done^ in which men and women live and 
 love in the old passionate way, is a joy 
 inexpressible.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 WHEN VALMOND CAME TO 
 PONTIAC: The Story of a Lost 
 Napoleon. Fourth Edition, 
 
 * Here we find romance — real, breathing, 
 
 living romance. The character of Val- 
 mond is drawn unerringly. The book 
 must be read, we may say re-read, for 
 any one thoroughly to appreciate Mr. 
 Parker's delicate touch and innate sym- 
 pathy with humanity.' — Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 AN ADVENTURER OF THE 
 NORTH : The Last Adventures of 
 ' Pretty Pierre.' Second Edition. 
 ' The present book is full of fine and mov- 
 ing stories of the great North, and it 
 
 will add to Mr. Parker's already high 
 reputation." — Glasgovj Herald. 
 
 THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. ■ 
 Illustrated. Ninth Edition. 
 *The best thing he has done; one of the 
 best things that any one has done lately.' 
 — St. Jameses Gazette, 
 ' Mr. Parker seems to become stronger and 
 easier with every serious novel that he 
 attempts. He shows the matured power 
 which his former novels have led us to 
 expect, and has produced a really fine 
 historical novel.' — AtkeneeuTH. 
 * A great hQo\:.:~Black and White. 
 THE POMP OF THE LAVILET- 
 TES. Second Edition. 3J. 6d, 
 ' Living, breathing romance, genuine and 
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 It is, in a word, the work of a true artist.' 
 —Pall Mall Gazette. 
 THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG : 
 a Romance of Two Kingdoms. 
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 ' Such a splendid story, so splendidly told, 
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 tion.' — St. Ja77ies's Gazette, 
 ' No one who takes a pleasure in literature 
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 ' Nothing more vigorous or more human has 
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 romance, both of human life and wild 
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 unique and picturesque interest- Mr. 
 Parker's style,_ especially his descriptive 
 style, has in this book, perhaps even more 
 than elsewhere, aptness and vitality.' — 
 Literature. 
 
Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 S. Baring Gould's Novels 
 
 Crown Zvo. 6s. each. 
 
 29 
 
 *To say that a book is by the author of "Mehalah" is_ to imply that it contains a 
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 tions of Nature, and a weaJth of ingenious imagery.' — Speaker. 
 
 * That whatever Mr. Baring Gould writes is weU worth reading, is a conclusion that may 
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 his diaracters are life-like, and though somewhat exceptional people, are drawn and 
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 Court Circular. 
 
 ARMINELL. Fourth Editiofi. 
 
 URITH. Fifth Edition. 
 
 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Sixth Edition. 
 MRS. CURGEN\^N OF CURGEN- 
 
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 CHEAP JACK ZITA. Fourth Edition. 
 THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fourth 
 
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 trated London News. 
 
 Stanley "Weyman. UNDER THE 
 RED ROBE. By Stanley Wey- 
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 'Every one who reads books at all must 
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 Lucas Malet. THE WAGES OF 
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 Lucas Malet THE CARISSIMA. 
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 George Gissing. THE TOWN TRA- 
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 Author of * Demos,' * In the Year of 
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 * The spirit of Dickens is in itJ^Bookttutn. 
 
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 S. R. Crockett. THE STANDARD 
 
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30 
 
 Messrs. Methuen*s Catalogue 
 
 'Told with consummate art and extra- , 
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 ' We are fascinated by the individuality, 
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 Mary Findlater. OVER THE 
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 Second Edition. Cr. Svo. 6s. 
 
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Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 31 
 
 * A charming romance, and full of incident. 
 
 The book is fresh and stTong,'— Speaker. 
 
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 ' All the characters, indeed, are drawn with 
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 Mrs. Oliphant. SIR ROBERT'S 
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 Mrs. Oliphant. THE TWO MARYSr-;;^ 
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 Mrs. Oliphant. THE LADY'S 
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 * Mr. Norris has drawn a really fine char- 
 
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 •W. E. NorriE. THE DESPOTIC 
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 * A budget of good fiction of which do one 
 
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32 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 W.E.Norris. CLARISSA FURIOSA 
 By W. E. NoRRis. Cr. %vo, ts, 
 
 * As a story it is admirable, as ajeu de^rrit 
 
 it is capital, as a lay sermon studded 
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 W. Claxk RusseU. MY DANISH 
 
 SWEETHEART. By W. Clakk 
 
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Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 33 
 
 J. S. netoher. THE BUILDERS. 
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