Begums, Thugs and White Mughals

by Fanny Parkes

  Two coolies, to throw water on the tattīs, at Rs 2 each Rs 4

  Two chaukīdārs, or watchmen, at Rs 4 each Rs 8

  A darwān, or gatekeeper Rs 4

  Two chaprāsīs, or running footmen, to carry notes, and be in attendance in the verandah, at Rs 5 each Rs 10

  Total for the 57 servants per month Rs 290 or about £290 per annum

  During the hot winds, a number of extra coolies, twelve or fourteen, are necessary if you have more than one thermantidote, or if you keep it going all night as well as during the day; these men, as well as an extra bihishti, are discharged when the rains set in.

  We, as quiet people, find these servants necessary. Some gentlemen for state add an assa burdar, the bearer of a long silver staff; and a sonta burdar, or chob-dar, who carries a silver club with a grim head on the top of it. The business of these people is to announce the arrival of company.

  If many dogs are kept, an extra doriya will be required.

  The above is a list of our own domestics, and the rate of their wages.

  The heat of the climate, added to the customs and prejudices of the natives, oblige you to keep a number of servants; but you do not find them in food as in England. One man will not do the work of another, but says, ‘I shall lose caste’, which caste, by the by, may be regained by the expenditure of a few rupees in a dinner to their friends and relatives. The Mohammedan servants pretend they shall lose caste; but, in fact, they have none: the term is only applicable to the Hindus.

  If your khānsāmān and sirdār-bearer are good and honest servants, you have little or no trouble with an Indian household; but, unless you are fortunate with your head servants, there is great trouble in keeping between fifty or sixty domestics in order.

  CHAPTER XX

  SCENES AT ALLAHABAD

  JULY 6TH 1831 – I study the customs and superstitions of the Hindus so eagerly that my friends laugh and say, ‘We expect some day to see you at pooja in the river!’

  [ … ]

  The Peepal Tree (Ficus religiosa)

  A peepal tree grows on the banks of the Jumna, just in front of our house; the fine old tree moans in the wind, and the rustling of the leaves sounds like the falling of rain; this is accounted for by the almost constant trembling of its beautiful and sacred leaves, which is occasioned by the great length and delicacy of the foot stalks; whence it is called Chalada, or the tree with tremulous leaves. The leaves are of a beautiful bright glossy green, heart-shaped, scalloped, and daggered; from their stalks, when gathered, a milky juice pours out; on wounding the bark of the trunk this milk is also poured out, with which the natives prepare a kind of birdlime.

  There is a remarkable similarity between the Ancient Britons and the Hindus: on the sixth day of the moon’s age, which is called Aranya-Shashti, ‘women walk in the forests, with a fan in one hand, and eat certain vegetables, in hope of beautiful children. See the account, given by Pliny, of the Druidical mistletoe, or viscum, which was to be gathered when the moon was six days old as a preservative from sterility’ (Moor’s Pantheon).’ The Hindu women eat the fruit of the peepal tree and believe it to have the same wondrous qualities. There is another similarity between the hill tribes and the Ancient Britons, which will be mentioned hereafter. The peepal is sacred to Vishnu, one of the Hindu Triad; they believe a god resides in every leaf, who delights in the music of their rustling and their tremulous motion.

  During the festival of the Muharram, the followers of the Prophet suspend lamps in the air, and in their houses, made of the skeleton leaves of the peepal tree, on which they paint figures; some of these lamps are beautifully made; no other leaves will form such fine and delicate transparencies; I have tried the large leaf of the teak tree, but could not succeed as well with it as with that of the ficus religiosa. The Chinese paint beautifully on these leaves, first putting a transparent varnish over them. At Schwalbach, in Germany, I purchased skeleton leaves of the plane, in the centre of which the figure of Frederick the Great was preserved in the green of the leaf, whilst all around the skeleton fibres were perfect; how this is accomplished, I know not. The skeleton leaves are very beautiful, and easily prepared.

  The peepal is universally sacred; the Hindu women, and the men also, are often seen in the early morning putting flowers in pooja at the foot of the tree and pouring water on its roots. They place their idols of stone beneath this tree and the bér (banyan), and worship them constantly; nor will they cut a branch, unless to benefit the tree.

  The native panchāyats (courts of justice) are often held beneath it. The accused first invokes the god in his sylvan throne above him, to destroy him and his (as he himself could crush a leaf in his hand), if he speak anything but the truth; then gathering and crushing a leaf, he makes his deposition.

  The Hindus suspend lamps in the air on bamboos in the month Kartika, in honour of their gods; these lamps are generally formed of ubruk (talc). Sometimes they are formed of clay, pierced through with fretwork in remarkably pretty patterns. This offering to all the gods in this month procures many benefits, in their belief, to the giver; and the offering of lamps to particular gods, or to Ganga-ji, is also esteemed an act of merit.

  Speaking of ubruk reminds me of the many uses to which it is applied. The costumes of native servants, nāch women and their attendants, the procession of the Muharram, the trades, etc., are painted upon it by native artists, and sold in sets; the best are executed at Benares. By the aid of ubruk, drawings can be very correctly copied; they are speedily done, and look well. We also used ubruk in lieu of glass for the windows of the hammām.

  It was a source of great pleasure to me at Allahabad to ride out long distances in the early morning, hunting for rare plants and flowers; on my return I took off the impressions in a book of Chinese paper, and added to it the history of the tree or plant, its medicinal virtues, its sacred qualities and all the legends attached to it, that I could collect.

  From the Calcutta John Bull, July 26th, 1831

  ‘The Governor-General has sold the beautiful piece of architecture, called the Mootee Masjid, at Agra, for Rs 125,000 (about £12,500), and it is now being pulled down! The Tāj has also been offered for sale! but the price required has not been obtained. Two lacs, however, have been offered for it. Should the Tāj be pulled down, it is rumoured that disturbances may take place amongst the natives.’

  If this be true, is it not shameful? The present king might as well sell the chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey for the paltry sum of £12,500: for any sum the impropriety of the act would be the same. By what authority does the Governor-General offer the Tāj for sale? Has he any right to molest the dead? To sell the tomb raised over an empress, which from its extraordinary beauty is the wonder of the world? It is impossible the Court of Directors can sanction the sale of the tomb for the sake of its marble and gems. They say that a Hindu wishes to buy the Tāj to carry away the marble and erect a temple to his own idols at Bindrabund!

  The crows are a pest; they will pounce upon meat carried on a plate, and bear it off: they infest the door of the cook room (bawarchī khānā) and annoy the servants, who retaliate on a poor kawwā, if they can catch one, by dressing it up in an officer’s uniform, and letting it go to frighten the others. The poor bird looks so absurd hopping about. Sometimes they drill a hole through the beak and passing a wire through it, string thereon five cowries; this bears the poor crow’s head to the ground, and must torture it. Such cruelty I have forbidden. The crow is a bird of ill omen.

  [ … ]

  My ayah is ill with cholera: there is no hope of her recovery. The disease came across the Jumna, about four miles higher up than our house, and is regularly marching across the country to the Ganges: as it proceeds no fresh cases occur in the villages it leaves behind.

  The old peepal moans and rustles in the wind so much that, deceived by the sound, we have often gone into the verandah joyously exclaiming ‘There is the rain!’ To our sorrow it was only the leaves of the tree agitated b
y the wind.

  In such a climate and during the hot winds, you cannot imagine how delightful the noise of the wind (like rain) in the old peepal appeared to us, or the lullaby it formed. It is a holy tree, every leaf being the seat of a god. They do not listen to the music of its rustling with greater pleasure than I experience; indeed, my penchant for the tree is so great, I am half inclined to believe in its miraculous powers.

  August 31st – The ice has lasted four months and fifteen days, which we consider particularly fortunate. It was opened the 15th of April.

  October – We are collecting grass and making hay for use during the hot winds. The people cut the grass in the jungles, and bring it home on camels. We have one stack of hay just finished, and one of straw.

  ‘Bring me the silver tankard.’ ‘I have it not, I know not where it is,’ said the khidmatgār. The plate-chest was searched. It was gone.

  It was the parting gift of a friend; we would not have lost it for fifty times its value. The servants held a panchāyat and examined the man who had charge of the plate. When it was over, he came to me, saying, ‘I had charge of the tankard – it is gone – the keys were in my hands; allow me to remain in your service; cut four rupees a month from my pay and let another silver cup be made.’ The old man lived with us many years, and only quitted us when he thought his age entitled him to retire on the money he had earned honestly and fairly in service.

  My tame squirrel has acquired a vile habit of getting up the windows and eating all the flies; if he would kill the mosquitoes, it would be a very good employment, but he prefers the great fat flies – a little brute. The little squirrel is the only animal unaffected by the heat; he is as impudent as ever, and as cunning as possible.

  October 24th – A slight earthquake has just taken place – this instant. I did not know what was the matter; there was a rumbling noise for some time, as if a carriage were driving over the roof of the house. My chair shook under me, and the table on which I am writing shook also. I became very sick and giddy, so much so that I fancied I had fallen ill suddenly. When the noise and trembling ceased, I found I was quite well and the giddy sickness went off. I never felt the earth quake before. Every one in the house was sensible of it. At the Circuit bungalow, nearly three miles off, it was felt as much as on the banks of the Jumna.

  In a native family, if a person be ill, one of the relations takes a small earthen pan, filled with water, flowers, and rice, and places it in the middle of the road or street, in front of the house of the sick person, believing that if any one en passant should touch the offering, either by chance or design, the illness would quit the sufferer and cleave to the person who had touched the flowers or the little pan containing the offering. A native carefully steps aside and avoids coming in contact with the flowers.

  Today, a man was punished for perjury in this manner; he was mounted on a donkey, with his face to the tail of the animal; one half of his face was painted black, the other white, and around his neck was hung a necklace of old shoes and old bones. Surrounded by a mob of natives, with hideous music and shouts, he was paraded by the police all through the town! An excellent punishment.

  [ … ]

  November 7th – We took the hounds to Papamhow and soon found a jackal in the grounds: he took shelter in a field of jwār or millet (Andropogon sorghum), from which he could not again be started. Hounds in this country are extremely expensive; it is scarcely possible to keep them alive. Out of eight couple brought from England and added to the pack at Allahabad a few months ago, only three couple are alive. We rode over the grounds: how deserted they looked! The flowers dead, the fountain dry.

  ’Twas sweet of yore to see it play

  And chase the sultriness of day;

  As springing high, the silver dew

  In whirls fantastically flew,

  And spread luxurious coolness round

  The air, and verdure on the ground.

  ‘Demons take possession of an empty house. The place is a wilderness. The old Brahman, who lives at a picturesque temple in the grounds by the side of the Ganges, did not remember me; he spoke in the warmest terms of the agent for gunpowder to the Government, who formerly lived here; and said he prayed to Mahadēo to send him back to Papamhow, as the natives had never had so good a master, either before or since.

  A fair is annually held in these grounds, at which period the old Brahman reaps a plentiful harvest of paisa. The people who attend the fair make pooja at his little temple. The old man had an idiot son who, having a great dislike to clothes, constantly tore all his attire to pieces. The poor boy was speechless, but not dumb, for he could utter the most horrible sounds: and when enraged at his father’s attempting to clothe him, he would howl, make angry gestures, and tear off the obnoxious attire. During the time of the fair the groups of natives, of horses, and odd-looking conveyances are very picturesque beneath the spreading branches of the great Adansonia trees.

  Our friend was not only agent for gunpowder but also, by the order of Government, he had established a manufactory for rockets at Papamhow, in consequence of the congreve rockets sent from England having proved unserviceable. He was obliged to make many experiments to suit the composition to our burning climate, and to test the result of exposure to the sun. When the trials were to be made and the rockets proved, I often went down upon the white sands in the bed of the river to see the experiments.

  The Ganges is from forty to forty-five feet deeper during the rains than during the dry season; and banks of the finest white sand, of immense extent, are left dry for many months in the bed of the river when the rains have passed away. The sands extended three or four miles and being without cultivation or inhabitants were exactly suited to the purpose. When the rockets were laid upon the sands and fired, it was beautiful to see them rushing along, leaving a train of fire and smoke behind them; the roar of the large rockets was very fine – quite magnificent.

  When the rockets were fired from an iron tube at an elevation, it was surprising to see them ranging through the air for a mile and a half or two miles before they came to the sands, where, a certain distance being marked by range pegs at every fifty yards, the extent of their ranges was accurately ascertained: one of the large rockets ranged 3,700 yards, upwards of two miles. I should think they would prove most formidable weapons in warfare.

  November 14th – Some natives have just brought a lynx to the door – such a savage beast! It was caught in the grounds of the Circuit bungalow; the first animal of the sort I have beheld. At Papamhow we found a wolf and had a long chase, until the hounds lost him in an immense plantation of sugar-cane, from which there were too few dogs to dislodge him.

  November 15th – This is delightful weather; we ride from six to eight o’clock, and take a drive at four in the evening, returning to dinner at six, at which time a coal fire is agreeable. I am in stronger health than I ever before enjoyed in India, which I attribute to the cold weather and great exercise.

  CHAPTER XXI

  LIFE IN THE ZENĀNA

  FEBRUARY 2ND 1832 – I went to the Bura Mela, the great annual fair on the sands of the Ganges, and purchased bows and arrows, some curious Indian ornaments, and a few fine pearls. On the sands were a number of devotees, of whom the most holy person had made a vow that for fourteen years he would spend every night up to his neck in the Ganges; nine years he has kept his vow: at sunset he enters the river, is taken out at sunrise, rubbed into warmth, and placed by a fire; he was sitting, when I saw him, by a great log of burning wood, is apparently about thirty years of age, very fat and jovial, and does not appear to suffer in the slightest degree from his penance. Another religious mendicant lies all day on his back on the ground, his face encrusted with the mud of the Ganges. The Hindus throw flowers over them and feed them, paying the holy men divine honours.

  The fair this year is thinly attended, the people not amounting to a lakh, in consequence of the very heavy rain which fell throughout December last and prevented many of those from at
tending who had to come from a very great distance.

  February 25th – I went with my husband into tents near Alamchand, for the sake of shooting; and used to accompany him on an elephant, or on my little black horse, to mark the game. Quail were in abundance, and particularly fine; common grey partridge, plentiful; a few black partridges, most beautiful birds; and some hares. Instead of dogs, we took twenty men with us armed with long bamboos, to beat up the game; as for dogs in such high plantations, they are useless and invisible.

  March 14th – During the cold weather we collect wild ducks and keep them for the hot winds. We have just finished a new brick house for the birds, consisting of a sleeping apartment with a tank in front, in which they have a fine supply of running water; the whole surrounded by lattice work, covered with an immense climber, the gāo pāt, or elephant creeper (Convolvulus speciosus Linn.), of which the large velvet-like leaves shade the birds from prying eyes. Unfortunately, by some mischance or other, a jackal got into the place at night and killed fifty out of one hundred: very unlucky, as the season for collecting them is nearly over, and we require wild ducks and teal during the hot winds when beef and mutton are disagreeable even to see on table; fowls, turkeys, rabbits, wild fowl, game and fish are the only things to tempt one’s appetite in the grilling season, when curries and anchovies are in requisition.

  Speaking of wild ducks; we used to send out men into the jungle to catch them, which was performed in a singular manner. The man, when he got near water on which the wild fowl were floating, would wade into the stream up to his neck with a kedgeree pot upon his head; beneath this mask of pottery the birds would allow him to approach them without taking alarm, they being used to the sight of these earthen pots (thiliyas) which are constantly to be seen floating down the stream, thrown away by the natives. When close to a bird, the man puts up his hand, catches its legs, pulls it instantly under water, and fastens it to his girdle. Having caught a few, he quits the river and secures them in a basket. The wild ducks are in beautiful condition and very fine when first brought in. They pine and waste away in confinement for the first fortnight; then resigning themselves with all due philosophy to their fate, they devour barley with great glee and swim about in the tank, eating principally at night. They must be surrounded by mats to keep them quiet and composed: in a short time they again become fat and are most excellent. As soon as the rains commence, the wild ducks lose all their flavour; it is then better to open the door and let the survivors escape. They are good for nothing if kept for the next season. The teal are as good, if not superior, to the wild ducks.