Peeps at Many Lands—India

CHAPTER IX

THE LAND OF THE MOGUL KINGS (continued)

It was Shah Jehan who returned to Delhi as the seat of government of the Mogul Kings, and largely rebuilt the city. But the memories of Delhi reach far, far back before the time of the Mogul Kings; they stretch away into the dim dawn of Indian history, where the threads of truth and fable are so intermingled that the historian cannot disentangle them.

The modern Delhi stands in the midst of a plain covered with ruins – the ruins of many cities built by many Kings before the present Delhi came into being. It is a striking sight to drive from the city to the great Tower of Kutb Minar, eleven miles away to the south. The road runs through the traces of the Delhis that have been: heaps of scattered brick, a mound that was once a gateway, a broken wall that was once the corner of a fort, a tumbling tower, and a ruined dome. Through these tokens of shattered palaces and tombs of dead and forgotten Kings you pass on till the vast shaft of the Kutb rises from the plain like a lighthouse from the sea.

It is an immense tower of five stories, rising 240 feet into the air. At the base it measures about 50 feet through, but the sides taper till it is only 9 feet wide at the top. The three lower stories are of red sandstone; the two upper are faced with white marble, and the whole forms a very striking and wonderful monument.

This colossal tower preserves the name of Kutb, one of the "slave" Sultans of Delhi. Seven hundred years ago Kutb, who had been a slave, rose by his military talents, first to the position of a General, and then made himself Emperor of Delhi. He was the first of ten Moslem rulers who reigned from 1206 to 1290, and it is believed that the Kutb Minar was raised as a tower of victory. It is possible to ascend the lofty shaft by a flight of 378 steps, which winds up the interior, but "the view from the top is nothing. The country is an infinite green and brown chess-board of young corn and fallow, dead flat on every side, ugly with the complacent plainness of all rich country. Beyond the sheeny ribbon of the Jumna, north, south, east, and west, you can see only land, and land, and land – a million acres with nothing on them to see except the wealth of India and the secret of the greatness of India."

But near at hand is a far more ancient monument than that of the slave King. This is the famous Iron Pillar, the "arm or weapon of victory." It is a pillar of pure malleable iron, and its erection is ascribed to the fourth century before Christ, when it was raised to commemorate a great Hindu victory. At present it projects some 23 feet from the earth, and it is about a foot in diameter at the capital, but a great part of it is buried.

In Delhi itself stand the great fort and the great mosque, the Jama Masjid, both built by Shah Jehan. The fort was at once the stronghold and the palace of the Mogul Emperors who followed Shah Jehan. It is surrounded by a towering wall built of gigantic slabs of sandstone, crested with battlements and moated below. The usual entrance to the fort is through the noble Lahore Gate, and the palace stands before you.

You enter the hall of audience, a great hall of red sandstone open on three sides. There is an alcove in the centre of the wall at the back, and from the alcove projects a great slab of marble. From the four corners of this marble platform spring four richly-inlaid marble pillars supporting an arched canopy. The marble is beautiful, but the work upon it is ten times more beautiful. The wall of the alcove is gorgeous with tiny pictures of flowers and fruits and birds, wrought most cunningly in paint and precious stones. In this alcove was sometimes set the Peacock Throne, whose glories are still celebrated in story and song, the marvellous throne which Shah Jehan had built for himself, the throne which blazed with gems set by the most skilful jewellers of Delhi, men famous throughout India for their craftsmanship.

Next comes the hall of private audience, where the King sat among his Court. This, too, is open, a noble pavilion on columns, where the breezes could blow if any such were moving in the burning heats of summer. "The whole is of white marble, asheen in the sun; but that is the least part of the wonder. Walls and ceilings, pillars, and many-pointed arches, are all inlaid with richest, yet most delicate, colour. Gold cornices and scrolls and lattices frame traceries of mauve and pale green and soft azure. What must it have been, you ask yourself, when the Peacock Throne blazed with emerald and sapphire, diamond and ruby, from the now empty pedestal, and the plates of burnished silver reflected its glory from the roof?"

Peacock Throne and plates of silver have long been gone. Nadir Shah carried them off in 1739, when he entered the city with his victorious troops, put the inhabitants to the sword, and sacked the place. Many an attack has been made on the fort, but none, in English eyes, has so deep an interest as the assault of 1857, and all English travellers visit the Cashmere Gate.

The Siege of Delhi by our troops is one of the great incidents of the Indian Mutiny, and the historic ridge to the north-west is the site of the British camp. After a patient siege the fort was attacked, the Cashmere Gate was blown open by a storming-party, and the British poured in, victorious at last. Upon the gate is an inscription telling of the deeds of the noble forlorn hope who led the way and opened a path for their comrades to rush in. Other monuments speak of the heroic telegraph operators who "saved India" by sending far and wide news of the Mutiny, and stuck to their posts though it cost their lives; and of the gallant party under Lieutenant Willoughby who blew up the powder-magazine in which they were posted rather than let its precious contents fall into the hands of the rebels.

Beyond the fort stands the Jama Masjid, the vast mosque, said to be the largest in the world. It is a great building of red sandstone and marble, "upstanding from a platform reached on three sides by flights of steps so tall, so majestically wide, that they are like a stone mountain." At the head of each flight is a splendid gateway, and that which faces eastward is opened for none save the Viceroy, who rules India, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. At the mosque are preserved some Moslem relics, which the guardian priest will show for a fee – a slipper of Mohammed, a hair of the Prophet, his footprints in stone, and a piece of the green canopy which was once over his tomb.

Now we will go into the city proper. Here is indeed a change! Mill chimneys pour into the blue sky their long trails of black smoke. Marble halls and mighty Kings seem very far off as you traverse a cotton-spinning quarter where Delhi measures itself against Manchester. The narrow streets are dirty and squalid, and filled with a crowd whose dingy robes and shabby turbans bespeak the modern artisan of industrial India. Many strange things has this ancient city seen, but nothing stranger than this last turn of her fortunes, when she bends to her clacking loom, and boasts that with her own cotton she can spin as fine as any mill in Lancashire.

CHAPTER X

IN THE MUTINY COUNTRY

Now we will leave Delhi and the Jumna, and strike away to the south-east towards the parent river, the Ganges. Our journey lies across a rich portion of the Great Plain, and this portion has a name of its own. It is called the Doab, or Douab, the Land of Two Rivers, since it lies between the Jumna and the Ganges. It is a most fertile stretch of country, well watered and well tilled, yielding great crops of sugar, rice, and indigo.

At last we reach Cawnpore, on the Ganges, and now we are in the very heart of the Mutiny country. Here took place the most dreadful incident of that great struggle – the massacre of white women and children who fell into the hands of Nana Sahib, a rebel leader. Their bodies were flung into a well, and to-day a beautiful monument stands over the place. The well is enclosed by a fine stone screen, and over the gateway is carved the words: "These are they which came out of great tribulation." In the centre of the enclosure, directly over the well itself, rises the figure of a beautiful white marble angel, and the well bears this inscription: "Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July, MDCCCLVII." Near by is the pretty little cemetery where the victims were buried when the British troops seized Cawnpore two short days after the massacre.

The Cawnpore of to-day is a busy industrial town noted for the manufactures of cotton and leather, and when the visitor has seen the places connected with the massacre, the railway will soon carry him to Lucknow, where the most deeply interesting memento of the Mutiny is to be found. This is the Residency, the great house where the tiny British garrison, with hundreds of women and children in their charge, held at bay vast numbers of rebels from May to November, 1857.

The defence of Lucknow is among the finest stories of British valour and British endurance. Assault after assault was made by hordes of well-armed and well-trained mutineers, for the men who wished to slay the British had been drilled by them. Ceaseless showers of shot and shell were poured into the place, and by the middle of September two-thirds of the gallant defenders were dead of wounds or disease. Still the brave remnant held their own, and kept the foe at bay. Among the earliest losses was the greatest of all. This was the death of Sir Henry Lawrence, who governed at Lucknow. By the foresight and prudence of this great and unselfish man means were provided by which the garrison was enabled to make good its defence; but he was killed by a shell, and died on the 4th of July, 1857. His grave is covered by a marble slab, on which is carved this fine and simple inscription, chosen by himself: "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty."

Towards the end of September General Havelock cut his way into Lucknow, but he had not men enough to carry away the besieged in safety. The rebels closed round the Residency once more, and the siege went on. In November Sir Colin Campbell arrived with a stronger army, and, after most desperate fighting, defeated the mutineers and relieved the heroic garrison.

As a memento of that stern struggle and noble defence, the Residency has been preserved to this day just as it stood at the end of that terrible six months. The walls still bear the marks of shot and shell, the shattered gates show where assault after assault was delivered, the brick gateway of the Baillie Guard is pointed out as the famous spot where rescued and rescuers met.

The modern city of Lucknow is one of the largest in India. Standing on the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges, it is a place of great trade, and its large native quarter is packed with bazaars devoted to commerce. This part of the city was once famous for the excellence of its steel weapons and the beauty of its jewellers' work. But the native Princes and noblemen who purchased arms and ornaments are no longer to be found, and these arts have decayed.

Lucknow is the chief town in the province of Oudh, and when there were Kings of Oudh, Lucknow was their capital. The palaces of the Kings still stand in the court suburb, but there is nothing here to compare with the magnificence of Delhi or Agra. The European quarter is of great importance. Broad, smooth roads run through it, shaded by trees and bordered by turf. On either side of these pleasant roads stand the large, handsome bungalows of merchants, of officials, and of the officers in command of the strong force of troops always stationed in the place. There are beautiful gardens and parks, and the business streets are lined with handsome shops and offices.

Returning to the Ganges, and descending the course of that great stream, the next place of importance is Allahabad, standing at the point where the mighty Jumna joins its flood to the parent river. Allahabad is a town of Akbar's founding, and the Great Mogul built the fine red stone fort which is the chief object in the place. The fort looks across the broad waters of the Jumna, here about three-quarters of a mile wide. "The appearance of the Jumna, even in the dry season, strikes one as very imposing, with its enormous span from shore to shore, shut in by high, shelving, sandy banks, its then placid waters a clear bright blue. What must be the effect in the freshes, when its surging waters rush resistlessly past, and its banks are hidden by a suddenly formed expanse of water more resembling sea than river?"

The spot where the Jumna pours its bright flood into the muddy stream of the Ganges is a sacred one in the eyes of all Hindoos. Great numbers of pilgrims resort to it, above all at the time of the melas, or religious fairs, held every year at the full moon in January and February. They gather upon the sandy shores and recite their prayers and bathe in the holy river.

But there is one spot on the Ganges still more sacred to Hindoo worshippers, and that is Benares, the holy city. It lies below Allahabad, and in the fort of the latter city the mouth of a small subterranean passage is pointed out. The priests say, and the natives believe, that this passage runs to Benares.

CHAPTER XI

THE SACRED CITY OF THE HINDOOS

There is one city of India to which pilgrims are for ever going or returning. Its temples are always crowded with worshippers; its broad stone ghats running down to the sacred Ganges are packed day after day with adoring and reverent throngs. This is Benares, the most sacred city in the world in Hindoo eyes.

Its sacred character arises from the fact that here stands the temple of Buddha, the great Hindoo teacher, who was born six centuries before Christ, and whose followers are to be counted in myriads in India. From all parts of that great country they come on pilgrimage to see the place where their master taught, and to bathe their bodies in the sacred stream.

It is a wonderful sight to see the row of riverside palaces, temples, and ghats which here fringe the broad river. It is still more wonderful to see the vast crowd of worshippers who throng the wide stone stairs as they stream up and down to the river to make their ablutions and to repeat their prayers.

The best time to see this striking sight is at sunrise. Then the crowds are thickest, for all wish to enter the water at that instant when the sun springs into the cloudless Indian sky and pours a flood of golden splendour over the wide stream, and lights up the long row of temples and palaces which face him as he rises.

Viewed from a boat on the river, the scene is one of wonderful animation and of most brilliant colour. The broad stone steps come down the bank in stately sweep and vanish into the stream. They run on down to the river-bed, and the saying goes among the natives that the river is here so deep that it would cover the back of one elephant standing on the top of another. Each ghat is crowded with Hindoo worshippers, and their robes of bright and delicate colours make the flight of stairs look like a huge bed of flowers. But it is a bed where the flowers are on the move, and mingle with each other to form new pictures at every moment, ever-changing combinations of the most delicate pinks, blues, greens, yellows, of silk and muslin, with snowy turbans and white robes intermingled with the brighter shades.

At the foot of the great flight many worshippers are already in the water. The men cast aside their robes, and the sunlight strikes upon their brown bodies and makes them glitter like figures cast in bronze, and then flashes brighter still as the bronze glistens with the sacred water flung by the hands or poured from a brazen ewer; the women slip a bathing-robe over their shoulders, and then remove their ordinary dress, and not only bathe themselves but their garments also in the sacred water. Many of the devotees throw offerings of sandal-wood, betel, sweetmeats, and flowers into the stream, and some of them have great garlands of flowers round their necks. These have been worshipping at a temple which gives such garlands to those who frequent it, and now these worshippers go into the stream and bend lower and lower until the garlands are raised by the water from their necks and float away down the river.

At one place clouds of smoke rise into the air, and huge fires are burning fiercely. This is the burning ghat, where the dead bodies of Hindoos are burned, and their ashes cast into the sacred Ganges. Every Hindoo wishes for this, but only the rich can have their bodies carried to Benares; for the poor it is impossible. Yet, if the poor Hindoo has a faithful friend who is going on pilgrimage, this may, in some degree, be accomplished. A frequent sight is that of a man earnestly pouring into the water a stream of ashes from a brazen vessel. The ashes are those of a friend who has died far from the sacred river, and have perhaps been brought many hundreds of miles by the pilgrim.

And so our boat might move along the stream past ghat after ghat and temple after temple, the steps packed with those who wish to bathe and those who have bathed. The latter spread out their clothes to dry in the sun, and sit near them, reciting prayers or reading sacred books or in the perfect silence of deep meditation, their bodies rigid and unmoving as figures cast in bronze. For miles this wonderful scene of devotion stretches along the river, and the bank is crowned with a broken line of minarets, domes, and towers, which rise against the deep blue of the sky.

The first thing for a pilgrim to do is to bathe. After that he must make the round of the city – a walk of about ten miles – and pay a visit to the temples. The ten-mile walk is more easily done than the latter task, so innumerable are the temples of the sacred place. Some, of course, are more famous than others, and every one goes to see the Monkey Temple, where offerings are made to a concourse of chattering monkeys; and the holy Golden Temple, whose dome is plated with gold, and whose shrine is always crowded with devotees. Near by is the Well of Knowledge, where the god Shiva is said to live, and this well is half filled with flowers thrown in as offerings to the god.

For twenty-five centuries Benares has been a holy city. Through this vast stretch of time an unceasing throng of pilgrims has swept to it across the great plain in which it lies. They bathe in the Ganges, and visit the temples. Then they depart for their distant homes, satisfied that they have set their eyes on the sacred places of their faith, and in sweep fresh thousands to take the place of each departing band.

CHAPTER XII

THE CAPITAL OF INDIA

Below Benares the great river flows quietly on, ever widening as its tributaries flow in on either bank, and watering as it goes vast stretches of paddy-fields. Many pilgrims from the sacred city descend it by boat as far as Patna, where they branch away to the south on a new pilgrimage. They walk some ninety miles to Buddh Gaya, where Gautama sat in deep meditation beneath the sacred Bo-tree, and became the Buddha.