Wanderings in India, and Other Sketches of Life in Hindostan

MISCELLANEOUS

The house of a civilian (a magistrate and collector) in the heart of a district, such as Bijnore, is really worthy of contemplation. With the exception of a bungalow, which is usually occupied by the assistant, and which may, therefore, be said to belong to the magistrate's house, there is no other Christian abode within five-and-thirty or forty miles. The house is usually well, but not extravagantly, furnished; the walls are adorned with prints and pictures, and the shelves well stored with books. In a word, if the punkahs and the venetian blinds, the therm-antidotes, and sundry other Indian peculiarities were removed, you might fancy yourself in some large country-house in England.

There was at Bijnore a native moonshee who was a very good scholar; and, as I was anxious to read Hindostanee and Persian with him (the more especially as I much enjoyed the society of mine host and his assistant), I was induced to accept an invitation to remain for a month. During this period I studied for several hours a-day, besides attending the Court House regularly, to listen to the proceedings, and acquire some knowledge of a most extraordinary jargon, composed of a little Hindostanee, a little Persian, and a good deal of Arabic. This jargon is known in India as the language of the courts. A good Persian and Hindostanee scholar cannot understand it, unless he is accustomed to it. Many magistrates and judges have insisted upon having pure Hindostanee spoken; but to no purpose. Up to a recent period, Persian mixed with Arabic was the language in which legal proceedings were conducted, – Persian and Arabic being as foreign languages to the people of India as English, German, or French. And, when the order went forth that Hindostanee was to be used, the native officers of the courts, and the native lawyers who practised therein, complied with it by putting a Hindostanee verb at the end of each sentence, and using the Hindostanee pronouns, retaining in all their integrity (or rascality) the Persian and Arabic adverbs, prepositions, nouns, adjectives, and conjunctions. An indigo planter in Tahoot, who spoke Hindostanee perfectly, having lived amongst the natives for upwards of twenty years, assured me that he did not comprehend a single sentence of a decree in court Hindostanee, that he heard read out to him – a decree in a case to which he was a party. What is even more absurd, each court has its own peculiar jargon, so that the magistrate or judge, who from long experience has acquired a thorough knowledge of the jargon of his own court, has very great difficulty in comprehending the jargon of another court. This might be altered by fining any officer of court, or native lawyer, who, in matters connected with a suit, used words and phrases unintelligible to the mass of the people; but the order would have to emanate from Government. No magistrate or judge would venture on even an attempt to bring about so desirable a reform.

Whilst at Bijnore, I was seized with an attack of tic-douloureux, and suffered all its extreme agonies. One of my host's servants informed me that there was a very clever native doctor in the village, who could immediately assuage any pain – tooth-ache, for instance – and he begged permission to bring him to see me. I consented.

The native doctor was a tall, thin Mussulman, with a lofty forehead, small black eyes, long aquiline nose, and finely chiselled mouth and chin. His hair, eye-brows, and long beard were of a yellowish white, or cream colour. Standing before me in his skull-cap, he was about the most singular looking person I ever beheld. His age did not exceed forty-four or forty-five years. He put several questions to me, but I was in too great pain to give him any replies. He begged of me to sit down. I obeyed him, mechanically. Seating himself in a chair immediately opposite to me, he looked very intently into my eyes. After a little while, his gaze became disagreeable, and I endeavoured to turn my head aside, but I was unable to do so. I now felt that I was being mesmerized. Observing, I suppose, an expression of anxiety, if not of fear, on my features, he bade me not to be alarmed. I longed to order him to cease; but, as the pain was becoming less and less acute, and as I retained my consciousness intact, I suffered him to proceed. To tell the truth, I doubt whether I could have uttered a sound. At all events, I did not make the attempt. Presently, that is to say, after two or three minutes, the pain had entirely left me, and I felt what is commonly called, all in a glow. The native doctor now removed his eyes from off mine, and inquired if I were better. My reply, which I had no difficulty in giving at once, was in the affirmative; in short, that I was completely cured. Observing that he placed his hands over his head, and pressed his skull, I asked him if he were suffering.

"Yes, slightly," was his reply; "but I am so accustomed to it, it gives me but little inconvenience."

I then begged of him to explain to me how it was that he had the power to afford me such miraculous relief. That, he said, he was unable to do. He did not know. I then talked to him of mesmerism and of the wonderful performances of Dr. Esdaile, in the Calcutta hospital. He had lately heard of mesmerism, he said; but, years before he heard of it, he was in the habit of curing people by assuaging their pain. The gift had been given to him soon after he attained manhood. That, with one exception, and that was in the case of a Keranee – a half-caste – no patient had ever fallen asleep, or had become beehosh (unconscious), under his gaze. "The case of the half-caste," he went on to say, "alarmed me. He fell asleep, and slept for twelve hours, snoring like a man in a state of intoxication." I was not the first European he had operated upon, he said; that in Bareilly, where he formerly lived, he had afforded relief to many officers and to several ladies. Some had tooth-ache, some tic-douloureux, some other pains. "But," he exclaimed, energetically, "the most extraordinary case I ever had, was that of a Sahib who had gone mad – 'drink delirious.' His wife would not suffer him to be strapped down, and he was so violent that it took four or five other Sahibs to hold him. I was sent for, and, at first, had great difficulty with him and much trembling. At last, however, I locked his eyes up, as soon as I got him to look at me, and kept him for several hours as quiet as a mouse, during which time he had no brandy, no wine, no beer; and, though he did not sleep, he had a good long rest. I stayed with him for two days, and whatever I told him to do he did immediately. He had great sorrow on his mind, poor man. Three of his children had died of fever within one short week, and he had lost much money by the failure of an agency-house in Calcutta. There was a cattle serjeant, too, an European, whom I also cured of that drinking madness by locking up his eyes."

"What do you mean by locking up his eyes?"

"Well, what I did with you; I locked up your eyes. When I got his eyes fixed on mine, he could not take them away – could not move."

"But can you lock up any one's eyes in the way that you locked up mine?"

"No; not everybody's. There was an artillery captain once who defied me to lock up his eyes. I tried very hard; but, instead of locking up his, he locked up mine, and I could not move till he permitted me. And there was a lady, the wife of a judge, who had pains in the head, which I could not cure, because she locked up my eyes. With her I trembled much, by straining every nerve, but it was of no use."

"Do you know any other native who has the same power that you possess?"

"Only three; but, I dare say, there may be hundreds in these provinces who have it, and who use it. And now, Sahib," said the native doctor, taking from his kummerbund (the cloth that encircles the waist) a bundle of papers, "I desire to show you some of my certificates, at the same time to beg of you to pardon my apparent want of respect in appearing in your presence in this skull-cap instead of a turban; but the fact is, that when I heard you were in such great pain, I did not think it humane to delay until I had adorned myself."

I proceeded to examine very carefully every one of his many certificates; not that I was in any way interested in them, but because I knew it would afford him great pleasure. In all, they were quite as numerous as those which English charlatans publish in testimony of their skill in extracting corns. They were more elaborate however; for it is by the length of a certificate that a native judges of its value – just in the same way that Partridge, when Tom Jones took him to see Hamlet, admired the character of the King, because he spoke louder than any of the company, "anybody could see that he was a king." As for myself, I sat down and covered a whole sheet of foolscap in acknowledgment of my gratitude to Mustapha Khan Bahadoor, for having delivered me from unendurable torments. To my certificate I pinned a cheque on the North-West Bank for one hundred rupees (ten pounds), and, presenting both documents to the doctor, permitted him to take his leave. Some months afterwards, on discovering that this cheque had not been presented for payment, I wrote to the assistant-magistrate, and asked him, as a favour, to send for the native doctor, and obtain some information on the subject. In reply, I was informed that the doctor preferred keeping the cheque appended to my certificate as an imperishable memorial of the extraordinary value in which his services had been held by an European gentleman, and that he would not part with it for ten times the amount in gold or silver. Such a strange people are the natives of India! Their cupidity is enormous certainly, but their vanity (I am speaking of the better class) is even greater. One hundred rupees was equal to half a year's earnings of the native doctor, and yet he preferred holding the useless autograph of an insignificant Sahib like myself for the amount rather than realize it. The native doctor evidently reasoned thus: – "I might spend the one hundred rupees, might not be believed if I made the assertion that I had received it; but here is the voucher." Some may imagine that he kept it as a sort of decoy-duck; but this I am perfectly satisfied was not the case.

I was now about to leave Bijnore, and, as time was of no object to me, I made up my mind to travel no more by palkee, or horse dâk, but in the most independent and comfortable manner. I therefore provided myself with two small tents, and two camels to carry them, two bullocks to carry the tent furniture, my baggage, and stores; a pony for my own riding, and a similar animal for a boy khitmutghur, who was also my personal servant or bearer.

I engaged also a cook and a sweeper, or general helper; so that, when the sawans (camel drivers), the bullock-man, and the syces (grooms), were included, my establishment numbered, in all, eight servants, whose pay in the aggregate amounted to fifty rupees (five pounds) per mensem. This, of course, included their "keep," for they provided themselves with food. The expense of keeping the camels, the bullocks, and the ponies, was, in all, thirty-five rupees (three pounds fifteen shillings) per mensem; while my own expenses, including everything (except beer and cheroots), were not in excess of fifty rupees per month; so that I was thus enabled to travel about India at a cost of not more than two hundred pounds per annum, or two hundred and twenty-five pounds at the very outside. The reader must remember that in almost every one of the villages in India, fowls, eggs, rice, flour, native vegetables, curry stuff, and milk are procurable, and at very small prices, if your servants do not cheat you, and mine did not; for I made an agreement with my boy khitmutghur to that effect; indeed, I entered into a regular contract with him previous to starting, touching the purchase of every article that would be required during my journey. This boy was, in short, my commissariat department. His name was Shumsheer (a word signifying in the Persian language, "a sword"), but he generally went by the name of Sham. He had been for several months in the service of the assistant magistrate of Bijnore; who, as a very great favour, permitted the boy to accompany me on my travels; he was so clever, so sharp, so intelligent, and so active a servant. He was not more than sixteen, and very short, for his age; but stoutly built, and as strong as a young lion. He was, moreover, very good-looking, and had, for a native of Hindoostan, a very fair complexion. He had been for several years the servant, or page, of an officer on the staff of a governor-general, and he spoke English with considerable fluency, but with an idiom so quaint, that it was amusing in the last degree to listen to him. He had been "spoilt," in one sense of the word, while at Government House, not only by his own master, but by the whole staff, who had encouraged him to give his opinions on all subjects with a freedom which was at first very disagreeable to me. But, ere long, I too encouraged him to do so; his opinions were so replete with such strong common sense, and were expressed in such an original fashion. If an inquiry touching a certain administration had been called for by Parliament, what an invaluable witness would that boy have been before a Committee of either house – provided he had not been previously "tampered with!"

When all my preparations had been completed, I took leave of my friends, and left Bijnore at three o'clock one morning. My destination was Umballah. I did not take the main road; but a shorter cut across the country, conducted by a guide who knew the district well, and who was enjoined to procure for me another guide as soon as his information failed him.

By seven o'clock we had travelled over twelve miles of ground, and as the sun was beginning to be very warm, I commanded a halt. Our tents were then pitched beneath a tope (cluster) of mango-trees whose branches formed a dense shade. Having bathed, breakfasted, smoked, and read several pages of a Persian book, I fell asleep, and was not awakened until noon, when Sham came into my tent and reported that there was an abundance of black partridge in the neighbourhood: he then proposed that I should dine early – at one p. m. – and at half past four take my gun; and, permitting him to take another, sally forth in search of the game. To this proposal I at once assented, and removing my camp stool to the opening of my little hill tent, I looked out into the fields, where I saw some men ploughing. For the first time during my travels I was struck with the appearance of the instrument which the natives use for tilling the soil; an instrument which, in fact, closely resembles that used by the Romans, according to the directions laid down in the Georgics:

and at first I felt some surprise that an implement so apparently ill-fitted for the purpose for which it is designed, should answer all the requirements of the cultivator. The substitution of the English plough for this native hùr has been several times projected by gentlemen who were zealous in the cause of agriculture; but without any success, or reasonable hope thereof; for when we consider the cheapness, and the great amount of labour always available, the general lightness of the soil, the inaptitude of the natives of India for great or continued physical exertion, the inferiority of the cattle, all of which are the marked characteristics of India, it would not only be undesirable, but impossible to introduce the English plough generally as an implement of husbandry – an implement requiring physical strength, manual dexterity, and a superior breed of cattle for draught. Rude and simple as the native hùr is, or as it may seem to the casual observer, cursorily viewing the operation of ploughing, it has still many good qualities which render it peculiarly suited to the genius of the Indian cultivator; and it is not in any immediate endeavour to improve it or alter it that any real benefit can be conferred on the cause of Indian agriculture. All the efforts, therefore, that have been made in that direction have been time and trouble expended to no purpose. It has been said that all improvement to be real must be spontaneous, or take rise within itself; and it would seem to be more reasonable to improve such means and appliances as the natives use and understand, without running counter to the ideas and shocking the prejudices which they entertain, by endeavouring to compel their adoption of European modes of culture, which, however well suited to the land of their origin, have not the quality most necessary to their practicability, that of being comprehensible to the people of India. The true end of agriculture: