by Ruskin Bond
GHOSt StORiES
FROM
THE RAj
Edited by
RUSKIN BOND
Selection Copyright © Ruskin Bond 2002
First Published 2002
Eighth Impression 2011
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Dedication
To Jai Shankar
in memory of those ghostly
twilight walks across
Dehra's old parade ground.
Contents
Introduction by Ruskin Bond
1. The Wondrous Narrative of John Cambell
Gunfounder to the Mogul Emperors, (1669-70)
2. The Men-Tigers
Lt. Col. W.H. Sleeman (1844)
3. Haunted Villages
Lt. Col. W.H. Sleeman (1844)
4. The Return of Imray
Rudyard Kipling (1891)
5. The Summoning of Arnold
Alice Perrin (1926)
6. Chunia, Ayah
Alice Perrin (1926)
7. Caulfield's Crime
Alice Perrin (1926)
8. A Ghost in Burma
Gerald T. Tait (1928)
9. 'There are more things—'
A Tale of the Malabar Jungles
H.W. Dennys (1930)
10. The Aryan Smiles
J. Warton and N. Blenman (1933)
11. Panther People
C.A. Kincaid (1936)
12. The Old Graveyard at Sirur
C.A. Kincaid (1936)
13. The Munjia
C.A. Kincaid (1936)
14. The Pool
John Eyton (1922)
Introduction
HE RAISON D'ÊTRE FOR TELLING A GHOST STORY WAS robably best summed up by the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers, when he said: "I wants to make your flesh creep!"
But it isn't always as simple as that, and not all ghosts are frightening.
The other night I woke up around midnight with bright moonlight streaming in at the window and lighting up the bedroom. Someone, or something—a vague, nebulous figure was standing beside my bed, looking down at me. It could only have been a ghost. I waited for the spectre to say something but it remained silent; nor did it move away.
"Hello," I said. "And what can I do for you?"
No answer. Not even a gesture, either of goodwill or ill-will.
A most ineffective ghost.
"Do you have a message for me?" I asked. "Anything you'd like me to do for you?"
No response. It just stood there, shimmering in the moonlight.
"Well," I said, "I've got better things to do than just lie here holding a one-sided conversation." And I turned over and went to sleep again.
***
The ghosts in this collection are far more alarming. Most of them were observed, experienced or imagined by British writers during the period 1840 to 1940: a century of ghosts! The British are a phlegmatic people, not given to displaying much emotion or excitement, with the result that their supernatural experiences are quite convincing when put down on paper. When C.A. Kincaid of the Indian Civil Service described people who turned into panthers (or vice-versa), and mischievous spirits who entered the bodies of straitlaced Englishmen, we have to believe him. As we believe those who found themselves in haunted dak bungalows, graveyards, villages, forests, forts.... Haunted India, in fact! For the British, coming from a land where haunted houses and castles were the norm, were fascinated by the wonderful variety of supernatural manifestations that they found in India: churails (the ghosts of wayward women, whose feet always faced backwards), munjias (the spirits of Brahmin youths who died before marriage), bhoots who took up residence in peepal trees, or mischievous prets (Indian poltergeists) who sometimes entered the homes of living people and created havoc in their lives. When I was a boy, one such pret took up residence in my grandfather's house and made life hell for everyone—throwing dishes around, knocking pictures off walls, pulling the cat by the tail, and tying knots in my Uncle Ken's pyjamas—so much so, that we had to move to another house for a time. But the pret followed us and would not leave until it had been propitiated with the help of a wandering mendicant. He taught me the following useful mantra:
Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,
Shiv ka kehna, sab nikal jana!
(Ghosts and spirits in house or tree,
In Shiv's great name we bid thee flee!)
Amongst the writers represented here, two were keen observers of Indian customs and folklore: Lt. Col. Sleeman, an administrator who, in the mid-nineteenth century helped eliminate the menace of the Thugs, a sect who waylaid and murdered innocent travellers; and C.A. Kincaid, one of the more enlightened of British officials, who wrote sympathetic books and essays on Shivaji, the Rani of Jhansi, and other heroic figures. Kipling, poet of Empire, wrote the occasional ghost story; as did Alice Perrin, wife of an Indian official; her stories were quite popular in the 1920s. In Caulfield's Crime, she reveals the more arrogant, cruel aspect of the colonial official. In The Summoning of Arnold she demonstrates that the spirits of the dead recognise no frontiers. Ghosts require no passports. They are truly universal beings! Kincaid brings a touch of humour to his stories, but this does not lessen their dramatic impact. The stories of this period tell us something about colonial attitudes—ranging from the paternalistic to the cynically indifferent—but we must remember that they were written purely to entertain, to enliven a dull railway journey, a sleepless night, a rainy day in the hills, a long sea voyage, or a period of recuperation from a tiring illness. Ghost stories are meant to frighten you, but at the back of your mind you know it's all a nightmare from which you are going to wake. In other words, it's a "safe" fear and you can enjoy the process of being frightened.
Doctor Johnson once said of the supernatural: "All argument is against it, but all belief is for it." Those of us who enjoy reading ghost stories are the people who half believe or want to believe. Those who are already convinced of the existence of ghosts usually look for 'factual' accounts rather than fiction. Unfortunately these factual accounts are usually very dull and consist of "sightings" of unusual phenomena, rather like the sightings of UFOs, unidentified flying objects, whose reconnoitrings are singularly without interest or purpose.
The human imagination is a wonderful thing, and I shall conclude this brief introduction with a 'factual' experience of my own, which was certainly hair-raising.
Some years ago, a neighbour of mine, an old English lady who lived alone, died of heart failure and was laid out on her bed for the night, as it was too late for the funeral. A friend and I decided that we would take turns at her beside, and at about midnight I sat down on an easy chair in the bedroom to undertake my part of the vigil. There had been the usual power failure, but we had lit candles and I could see the features of the corpse quite clearly.
For some reason I couldn't take my eyes off her face. Her eyes were closed, but after a while I was sure I could make out a slight smile on her lips. This smile gradually grew wider until it became a rather menacing grin. I was frightened out of my wits. Was I about to see her rising from the dead? As the grin grew even wider, I got up from my chair, ready to flee the room. Just then there was a loud report, like a pop-gun going off, and her false teeth shot out of her mouth and rolled off the bed.
We had forgotten to remove her false teeth. Rigor mortis having set in, the rigidity of her jaws had forced her mouth into that terrifying grin, ejecting the teeth with considerable force.
Not a ghost story, but a ghostly one all the same.
Happy hauntings!
Ruskin Bond
1 August 2002
The Wondrous Narrative of John Cambell
Gunfounder to the Mogul Emperors, 1654-1667
MONEGST THE MSS. TREASURES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM ARE a number of contemporary manuscripts relating to Englishmen who dwelt or travelled in India during the Seventeenth Century. Ranking high amongst them in interest, if not in veracity is one called the Richard Bell MSS. from its having been inscribed by a traveller of that name in the years 1669-1670.
The document purports to contain an exact account of the travels and adventures of one John Cambell who met Bell at Alleppo in 1669 whilst on his way home overland from India and continued the journey in company as far as Rome, meeting with more wondrous adventures on the way. During this journey the narrative was written to the dictation of Cambell and completed at Rome on the 20th December 1670 the joint signatures being attested by Joseph Kent, the English Consul.
How this manuscript came into the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, from which it passed into the British Museum in the year 1780, there is nothing to show, nor why it should have remained unknown to all but the curators until it was discovered by that indefatigable antiquary Sir Richard Temple in the year 1905 and published in the Indian Antiquary of that year, which we have permission to use. Concerning Cambell, Sir Richard Temple thus writes:
"Some of Cambell's statements explain why travellers' tales have become a byword and synonym for pure invention. There is no chronological sequence and anachronisms are frequent. Indeed were it not for the testimony of Manucci who mentions several of the persons alluded to by Cambell it would be difficult to attach any credence at all to the narrative. However, the records of the English in India of this date are so scanty that any account by an eyewitness is worthy of reproduction, and especially so, when, as in this case, out-of-the-way information is blended with accounts of magical occurrences wondrously described." To this William Irvine, the Translator of Manucci, adds:
"This is a wild and utterly unchronological narrative, by the side of which the wildest flights of Manucci read as sober sense. But there are some grains of fact, as the men whom he mentions Robert Smith, John White, Thomas Roach and William Gates are all mentioned by Manucci as with Shah Jehan and Aurungzebe when Cambell was with Murad Baksh and Dara Shekoh, Smith and Roach also appear in the Surat Records in 1667 and 1672 and the son of the latter is mentioned in 1704."
In these, both men are mentioned as having considerable influence at court notably Smith "who has the ear of the Mogul". They were also men of considerable wealth, apparently for these first two letters concern large sums they had advanced to the Company's merchants at Agra on private accounts and of which they were applying to the Company to recover for them. They do not figure very creditably in the pages of the Venetian adventurer Manucci, who was himself a gunner in the service of Dara Shekoh, a son of Shah Jehan, for he alleges that they tried to rob him of the effects of Lord Bard after the death of the latter to whom Manucci had been page. Though Manucci is circumstantial enough it seems that he exaggerates for these men were then high in the service of Shah Jehan and acted by his orders.
However, there seems little doubt but that, like all such men in the service of Indian princes at this period, might meant right. From the opening decade of the Seventeenth Century Europeans were entertained in considerable numbers at the Mogul courts both by the reigning Emperors and their sons, each of whom had his personal army, the artillery of which was worked or supervised by European master gunners, mostly runaway seamen from the vessels of the various East Indian Companies, Dutch, English, and French, or ex-pirates wrecked or marooned on the coasts.
So early as 1612 William Hawkins headed some 60 of all nations in a procession to the Catholic Church at Agra the occasion being the baptism of two nephews of Jehanghir willing to embrace a new faith in the hope of those Portuguese brides which had been promised them. However as the brides were not forthcoming, the bargain was cancelled. These Europeans comprised all sorts of trades and professions, such as jewellers, lapidaries, surgeons, doctors, painters and sculptors, though the great bulk were always artillerymen and military artificers, of whom at the period of which we write there were over 200 in the various services.
All received high pay for the time ranging from Rs. 200 to 300 a month, the captain gunners, such as Roach and Smith, drawing much more. The salary of John Whelo, master gunner, in 1712 is recorded as equal to about Rs. 2,000 a month by the Dutch ambassador, so probably Smith and Roach may have been paid almost as liberally if not quite. As a special inducement for European gunners to enter and remain in such service the Mahomedan rulers as to spirituous liquor were relaxed in their case, they being permitted not only to distil, but to sell such liquor to non-Mussalmans, the privilege was valuable for Manucci records that he himself drew Rs. 300 a month for the use of his. Of the origin of the privilege he tells the following amusing story:
"Finding that his own gunners were of no use and hearing that Europeans were very expert at the art, Jehanghir ordered his Governor at the Port of Surat to procure him a master gunner, from the English who were the very first to arrive at this port. They sent him a most skilful gunner who was assigned Rs. 500 a month. But this man, like all the other Englishmen, was very fond of spirituous liquor, and, this being forbidden by the Mahomedan religion, he was consequently very unhappy. Therefore he set about to obtain his heart's desire so, one day when Jehanghir ordered him to fire a shot at a great sheet stretched on sticks on the opposite bank of the river, he intentionally missed every shot."
"At this the Emperor was much put out thinking the man unskilful, and sending for him asked him the reason for such bad shooting when he had such a reputation for skill. The Englishman replied that there was no lack of skill, but that he was unable to see straight unless he had drunk spirits. On this the Emperor directed some to be brought from the elephant stables where there was no lack of :t on account of it being kept to give to the elephants to increase their courage in battle or fighting with each other. When the Englishman saw the spirits he was highly delighted, and seizing the bottle put it to his mouth with the same eagerness as a thirty stag would rush to a crystal spring."
"Then at one draught he swallowed the lot licking his moustache for the few drops that clung to it. The Emperor was astounded at the pleasure; of the Englishman who expressed his satisfaction by all kinds of gestures. He then went to his gun and after rubbing his eyes told the Emperor they were now clear, and directed that the sheet should be taken away and an earthen pot on a stick put in its place. At the very first shot he knocked the pot to pieces. Therefore in consequence of this amazing skill derived from spirituous liquor, the Emperor gave the Europeans the sole privilege of distilling liquor with which none were to interfere. He said that the Englishmen must have been created at the same time as spirits as without them they were as fish out of water."
The only appearance of Cambell in the records of the East India Company is a mention of his arrival at Bundar Abbas in January 1669 in poor condition having been robbed of Rs. 8,000 and a quantity of jewels whilst on his way through Sind to Tatta whence he took boat for Bunder Abbas. The letter goes on to say that Cambell had served the Mogul for a number of years and conc
ludes by stating that he had been advanced money and since departed for Alleppo with a recommendation to the English Consul there. It is difficult to decide Cambell's real nationality. In his own account and the mention by the Factor, with whom Cambell claimed relationship the name is thus spelt, and he also writes concerning rich relations in England. But against this is set a statement that though he put the English coat of arms on all the guns he cast for the Emperors, on the trunnions he cast a lion rampant, which was the Scotch crest.
Whatever else he may have been, however, John Cambell ranks very high amongst tellers of travellers' tales of the Baron Muchausen or Sir John Maundeville school. Though he emulates the worthy Sir John in the matter of two headed men and men with eyes in their necks or foreheads, Cambell far excels him in the matter of monstrous beings of unmortal origin who slay whole armies in a single afternoon, of chance met wizards who transmute the money in his pouch to base metal or completely empty it from a distance with other as wondrous feats. But most of all does Cambell revel in tales on Jinns and Demons who pay visits in state or drop in casually on an afternoon or evening for theological and family discussions, and reward their entertainers, or unwilling hosts with revelations of the hiding places of vast treasures.
But with all Cambell's extravagance much that is useful may be extracted from his wonderful tales, for undoubtedly he did serve the Moguls and equally did he make extensive travels in India, Persia and Asia Minor. We have spent much time in reducing his chaotic tale to some chronological sequence and a measure of actual fact, the clue seeming to be in that the narrative was written over a period of eighteen months or so, at many different places, and haphazard, just as the facts were recalled to the mind of the dictator, or his imagination most lively. Judging by internal evidence both narrator and scribe seem to have indulged rather freely in the beverage so relished by Jehanghir's gunner. It must also be remembered that in those days when works of fiction were unknown actual travellers were relied on for tales of the wonderful. Nobly some of them met the demand.