Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

The heir to the throne, the Prince Pīr Muhammad, was absent when Tīmūr died; but his wives, who had accompanied him, were all anxious to share in the merit of the holy undertaking; and in a council of the chiefs held after his death, the opinions of these amiable princesses prevailed that the two hundred millions of Chinese ought still to be sent to 'the abyss of hell', since it had been the earnest wish of their deceased husband, and must undoubtedly have been the will of God, to send them thither without delay. Fortunately quarrels soon arose among his sons and grandsons about the succession, and the army recrossed the Jaxartes, still over the ice, in the beginning of April, and China was saved from this scourge. Such was Timūr the Lame, the man whose greatness and goodness are to live in the hearts of the people of India, nine-tenths of whom are Hindoos, and to fill them with overflowing love and gratitude towards his descendants.

In this brief sketch will perhaps be found the true history of the origin of the gipsies, the tide of whose immigration began to flow over all parts of Europe immediately after the return of Tīmūr from India. The hundreds of thousands of slaves which his army brought from India in men, women, and children, were cast away when they got as many as they liked from the more beautiful and polished inhabitants of the cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, which were all, one after the other, treated in the same manner as Delhi had been. The Tartar soldiers had no time to settle down and employ them as they intended for their convenience; they were marched off to ravage Western Asia in October, 1399, about three months after their return from India. Tīmūr reached Samarkand in the middle of May, but he had gone on in advance of his army, which did not arrive for some time after. Being cast off, the slaves from India spread over those countries which were most likely to afford them the means of subsistence as beggars; for they knew nothing of the manners, the arts, or the language of those among whom they were thrown; and as Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Georgia, Circassia, and Russia, had been, or were being, desolated by the army of this Tartar chief, they passed into Egypt and Bulgaria, whence they spread over all other countries. Scattered over the face of these countries, they found small parties of vagrants who were from the same regions as themselves, who spoke the same language, and who had in all probability been drawn away by the same means of armies returning from the invasion of India. Chingīz Khān invaded India two centuries before; his descendant, Tarmah Shirīn, invaded India in 1303, and must have taken back with him multitudes of captives. The unhappy prisoners of Tīmūr the Lame gathered round these nuclei as the only people who could understand or sympathize with them. From his sixth expedition into India Mahmūd is said to have carried back with him to Ghaznī two hundred thousand Hindoo captives in a state of slavery, A.D. 1011. From his seventh expedition in 1017, his army of one hundred and forty thousand fighting men returned 'laden with Hindoo captives, who became so cheap, that a Hindoo slave was valued at less than two rupees'. Mahmūd made several expeditions to the west immediately after his return from India, in the same manner as Tīmūr did after him, and he may in the same manner have scattered his Indian captives. They adopted the habits of their new friends, which are indeed those of all the vagrant tribes of India, and they have continued to preserve them to the present day. I have compared their vocabularies with those of India, and find so many of the words the same that I think a native of India would, even in the present day, be able without much difficulty to make himself understood by a gang of gipsies in any part of Europe.946

A good Christian may not be able exactly to understand the nature of the merit which Tamerlane expected to acquire from sending so many unoffending Chinese to the abyss of hell. According to the Muhammadan creed, God has vowed 'to fill hell chock full of men and genii'. Hence his reasons for hardening their hearts against that faith in the Korān which might send them to heaven, and which would, they think, necessarily follow an impartial examination of the evidence of its divinity and certainty. Tīmūr thought, no doubt, that it would be very meritorious on his part to assist God in this his labour of filling the great abyss by throwing into it all the existing population of China: while he spread over their land in pastoral tribes the goodly seed of Muhammadanism, which would give him a rich supply of recruits for paradise.

The following dialogue took place one day between me and the 'muftī', or head Muhammadan law officer, of one of our regulation courts.947

'Does it not seem to you strange, Muftī Sāhib, that your prophet, who, according to your notions, must have been so well acquainted with the universe and the laws that govern it, should not have revealed to his followers some great truths hitherto unknown regarding these laws, which might have commanded their belief, and that of all future generations, in his divine mission?'

'Not at all,' said the Muftī; 'they would probably not have understood him; and if they had, those who did not believe in what he did actually reveal to them, would not have believed in him had he revealed all the laws that govern the universe.'

'And why should they not have believed in him?'

'Because what he revealed was sufficient to convince all men whose hearts had not been hardened in unbelief. God said, "As for the unbelievers, it is the same with them whether you admonish them or do not admonish them; they will not believe. God hath sealed up their hearts, their ears, and their eyes; and a grievous punishment awaits them."'948

'And why were the hearts of any men thus hardened to unbelief, when by unbelief they were to incur such dreadful penalties?'

'Because they were otherwise wicked men.'

'But you think, of course, that there was really much of good in the revelations of your prophet?'

'Of course we do.'

'And that those who believed in it were likely to become better men for their faith?'

'Assuredly.'

'Then why harden the hearts of even bad men against a faith that might make them good?'

'Has not God said, "If we had pleased, we had certainly given unto every soul its direction; but the word which hath proceeded from me must necessarily be fulfilled when I said, Verily, I will fill hell with men and genii altogether".949 And again, "Had it pleased the Lord, he would have made all men of one religion; but they shall not cease to differ among them, unless those on whom the Lord shall have mercy; and unto this hath he created them; for the word of thy Lord shall be fulfilled when he said, Verily, I will fill hell altogether with genii and men".'950

'You all believe that the devil, like all the angels, was made of fire?'

'Yes.'

'And that he was doomed to hell because he would not fall down and worship Adam, who was made of clay?'

'Yes, God commanded him to bow down to Adam; and when he did not do as he was bid, God said, "Why, Iblīs, what hindered thee from bowing down to Adam as the other angels did?" He replied, "It is not fit that I should worship man, whom thou hast formed of dried clay, or black mud". God said, "Get thee, therefore, hence, for thou shalt be pelted with stones; and a curse shall be upon thee till the day of judgement". The devil said, "O Lord, give me respite unto the day of resurrection". God said, "Verily, thou shalt be respited until the appointed time ".'951

'And does it not appear to you, Mufti Sāhib, that in respiting the devil Iblīs till the day of resurrection, some injustice was done to the children of Adam?'

'How?'

'Because he replies, "O Lord, because thou hast seduced me, I will surely tempt men to disobedience in the earth".'

'No, sir, because he could only tempt those who were predestined to go astray, for he adds, "I will seduce all, except such of them as shall be thy chosen servants". God said, "This is the right way with me. Verily, as to my servants, thou shalt have no power over them; but over those only who shall be seduced, and who shall follow thee; and hell is surely denounced to them all ".'952

'Then you think, Mufti Sāhib, that the devil could seduce only such as were predestined to go astray, and who would have gone astray whether he, the devil, had been respited or not?'

'Certainly I do.'

'Does it not then appear to you that it is as unjust to predestine men to do that for which they are to be sent to hell, as it would be to leave them all unguided to the temptations of the devil?'

'These are difficult questions,' replied the Muftī, 'which we cannot venture to ask even ourselves. All that we can do is to endeavour to understand what is written in the holy book, and act according to it. God made us all, and he has the right to do what he pleases with what he has made; the potter makes two vessels, he dashes the one on the ground, but the other he sells to stand in the palaces of princes.'

'But a pot has no soul, Muftī Sāhib, to be roasted to all eternity in hell!'

'True, sir; these are questions beyond the reach of human understanding.'

'How often do you read over the Korān?'

'I read the whole over about three times a month,' replied the Muftī.953

I mentioned this conversation one day to the Nawāb Alī-ud-dīn,954 a most estimable old gentleman of seventy years of age, who resides at Murādābād, and asked him whether he did not think it a singular omission on the part of Muhammad, after his journey to heaven, not to tell mankind some of the truths that have since been discovered regarding the nature of the bodies that fill these heavens, and the laws that govern their motions. Mankind could not, either from the Korān, or from the traditions, perceive that he was at all aware of the errors of the System of astronomy that prevailed in his day, and among his people.'

'Not at all', replied the Nawāb; 'the prophets had, no doubt, abundant opportunities of becoming acquainted with the heavenly bodies, and the laws which govern them, particularly those who, like Muhammad, had been up through the seven heavens; but their thoughts were so entirely taken up with the Deity that they probably never noticed the objects by which he was surrounded; and if they had noticed them, they would not, perhaps, have thought it necessary to say anything about them. Their object was to direct men's thoughts towards God and his commandments, and to instruct them in their duties towards him and towards each other.

'Suppose', continued the Nawāb, 'you were to be invited to see and converse with even your earthly sovereign, would not your thoughts be too much taken up with him to admit of your giving, on your return, an account of the things you saw about him? I have been several times to see you, and I declare that I have been so much taken up with the conversations which have passed, that I have never noticed the many articles I now see around me, nor could I have told any one on my return home what I had seen in your room—the wall- shades, the pictures, the sofas, the tables, the book-cases,' continued he, casting his eyes round the room,' all escaped my notice, and might have escaped it had my eyes been younger and stronger than they are. What then must have been the state of mind of those great prophets, who were admitted to see and converse with the great Creator of the universe, and were sent by him to instruct mankind?

'I told my old friend that I thought his answer the best that could be given; but still, that we could not help thinking that if Muhammad had really been acquainted with the nature of the heavenly bodies, and the laws which govern them, he would have taken advantage of his knowledge to secure more firmly their faith in his mission, and have explained to them the real state of the case, instead of talking about the stars as merely made to be thrown at devils, to give light to men upon this little globe of ours, and to guide them in their wanderings upon it by sea and land.

'But what', said the Nawāb, 'are the great truths that you would have had our holy prophet to teach mankind?'

'Why, Nawāb Sahib, I would have had him tell us, amongst other things, of that law which makes this our globe and the other planets revolve round the sun, and their moons around them. I would have had him teach us something of the nature of the things we call comets, or stars with large tails, and of that of the fixed stars, which we suppose to be suns, like our sun, with planets revolving round them like ours, since it is clear that they do not borrow their light from our sun, nor from anything that we can discover in the heavens. I would also have had him tell us the nature of that white belt which crosses the sky, which you call the ovarious belt, "Khatt- i-abyāz", and we the milky-way, and which we consider to be a collection of self-lighted stars, while many orthodox but unlettered Musalmāns think it the marks made in the sky by "Borak", the rough-shod donkey, on which your prophet rode from Jerusalem to heaven. And you think, Nawāb Sāhib, that there was quite evidence enough to satisfy any person whose heart had not been hardened to unbelief? and that no description of the heavenly bodies, or of the laws which govern their motion, could have had any influence on the minds of such people? '955

'Assuredly I do, sir! Has not God said, "If we should open a gate in the heavens above them, and they should ascend thereto all the day long, they would surely say, our eyes are only dazzled, or rather we are a people deluded by enchantments."956 Do you think, sir, that anything which his majesty Moses could have said about the planets, and the comets, and the milky way, would have tended so much to persuade the children of Israel of his divine mission as did the single stroke of his rod, which brought a river of delicious water gushing from a dry rock when they were all dying from thirst? When our holy prophet', continued the Nawāb (placing the points of the four fingers of his right hand on the table), 'placed his blessed hand thus on the ground, and caused four streams to gush out from the dug plain, and supply with fresh water the whole army which was perishing from thirst; and when out of only five small dates he afterwards feasted this immense army till they could eat no more, he surely did more to convince his followers of his divine mission than he could have done by any discourse about the planets, and the milky way (Khatt-i-abyāz).'

'No doubt, Nawāb Sāhib, these were very powerful arguments for those who saw them, or believed them to have been seen; and those who doubt the divinity of your prophets mission are those who doubt their ever having been seen.'

'The whole army saw and attested them, sir, and that is evidence enough for us; and those who saw them, and were not satisfied, must have had their hearts hardened to unbelief.'

'And you think, Nawāb Sāhib, that a man is not master of his own belief or disbelief in religions matters; though he is rewarded by an eternity of bliss in paradise for the one, and punished by an eternity of scorching in hell for the other?

'I do, sir, faith is a matter of feeling; and over our feelings we have no control. All that we can do is to prevent their influencing our actions, when these actions would be mischievous. I have a desire to stretch out this arm, and crush that fly on the table, I can control the act, and do so; but the desire is not under my control.'

'True, Nawāb Sāhib; and in this life we punish men not for their feelings, which are beyond their control, but for their acts, over which they have no control; and we are apt to think that the Deity will do the same.'

'There are, sir,' continued the Nawāb, 'three kinds of certainty—the moral certainty, the mathematical, and the religious certainty, which we hold to be the greatest of all—the one in which the mind feels entire repose. This repose I feel in everything that is written in the Korān, in the Bible, and, with the few known exceptions, in the New Testament.957 We do not believe that Christ was the son of God, though we believe him to have been a great prophet sent down to enlighten mankind; nor do we believe that he was crucified. We believe that the wicked Jews got hold of a thief, and crucified him in the belief that he was the Christ; but the real Christ was, we think, taken up into heaven, and not suffered to be crucified.'

'But, Nawāb Sāhib, the Sikhs have their book, in which they have the same faith.'

'True, sir, but the Sikhs are unlettered, ignorant brutes; and you do not, I hope, call their "Granth" a book—a thing written only the other day, and full of nonsense. No "book" has appeared since the Korān came down from heaven; nor will any other come till the day of judgement. And how', said the Nawāb, 'have people in modern days made all the discoveries you speak of in astronomy?'

'Chiefly, Nawāb Sāhib, by means of the telescope, which is an instrument of modern invention.'

'And do you suppose, sir, that I would put the evidence of your "dūrbīns" (telescopes) in opposition to that of the holy prophet? No, sir, depend upon it that there is much fallacy in a telescope—it is not to be relied upon. I have conversed with many excellent European gentlemen, and their great fault appears to me to be in the implicit faith they put in these telescopes—they hold their evidence above that of the prophets, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah. It is dreadful to think how much mischief these telescopes may do. No, sir, let us hold fast by the prophets; what they tell us is the truth, and the only truth that we can entirely rely upon in this life. I would not hold the evidence of all the telescopes in the world as anything against one word uttered by the humblest of the prophets named in the Old or New Testament, or the holy Korān. The prophets, sir, keep to the prophets, and throw aside your telescopes—there is no truth in them; some of them turn people upside down, and make them walk upon their heads; and yet you put their evidence against that of the prophets.'958

Nothing that I could say would, after this, convince the Nawāb that there was any virtue in telescopes; his religions feeling had been greatly excited against them; and had Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Laplace, and the Herschels, all been present to defend them, they would not have altered his opinion of their demerits. The old man has, I believe, a shrewd suspicion that they are inventions of the devil to lead men from the right way; and were he told all that these great men have discovered through their means, he would be very much disposed to believe that they were incarnations of his satanic majesty playing over again with 'dūrbīns' (telescopes) the same game which the serpent played with the apple in the garden of Eden.

Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid;Leave them to God above: him serve and fear;Of other creatures, as him pleases best,Wherever placed, let him dispose: joy thouIn what he gives to thee, this ParadiseAnd thy fair Eve: heaven is for thee too highTo know what passes there: be lowly wise:Think only what concerns thee, and thy being:Dream not of other worlds, what creatures thereLive, in what state, condition, or degree:Contented that thus far hath been revealed,Not of earth only, but of highest heaven.'959

CHAPTER 69

Indian Police—Its Defects—and their Cause and Remedy

On the 26th960 we crossed the river Jumna, over a bridge of boats, kept up by the King of Oudh for the use of the public, though his majesty is now connected with Delhi only by the tomb of his ancestor;961 and his territories are separated from the imperial city by the two great rivers, Ganges and Jumna.

We proceeded to Farrukhnagar, about twelve miles over an execrable road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.962 India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a great city could be approached by such a road from the largest military Station in the empire,963 not more than three stages distant. After breakfast the head native police officer of the division came to pay his respects. He talked of the dreadful murders which used to be perpetrated in this neighbourhood by miscreants, who found shelter in the territories of the Bēgam Samrū,964 whither his followers dared not hunt for them; and mentioned a case of nine persons who had been murdered just within the boundary of our territories about seven years before, and thrown into a dry well. He was present at the inquest held on their bodies, and described their appearance; and I found that they were the bodies of a news writer from Lahore, who, with his eight companions, had been murdered by Thugs on his way back to Rohilkhand. I had long before been made acquainted with the circumstances of this murder and the perpetrators had all been secured, but we wanted this link in the chain of evidence. It had been described to me as having taken place within the boundary of the Bēgam's territory, and I applied to her for a report on the inquest. She declared that no bodies had been discovered about the time mentioned; and I concluded that the ignorance of the people of the neighbourhood was pretended, as usual in such cases, with a view to avoid a summons to give evidence in our courts. I referred forthwith to the magistrate of the district, and found the report that I wanted, and thereby completed the chain of evidence upon a very important case. The Thānadār seemed much surprised to find that I was so well acquainted with the circumstances of this murder, but still more that the perpetrators were not the poor old Bēgam's subjects, but our own.

The police officers employed on our borders find it very convenient to trace the perpetrators of all murders and gang robberies into the territories of native chiefs, whose subjects they accuse often when they know that the crimes have been committed by our own. They are, on the one hand, afraid to seize or accuse the real offenders, lest they should avenge themselves by some personal violence, or by thefts or robberies, which they often commit with a view to get them tumed out of office as inefficient; and, on the other, they are tempted to conceal the real offenders by a liberal share of the spoil, and a promise of not offending again within their beat. Their tenure of office is far too insecure, and their salaries are far too small. They are often dismissed summarily by the magistrate if they send him in no prisoners; and also if they send in to him prisoners who are not ultimately convicted, because a magistrate's merits are too often estimated by the proportion that his convictions bear to his acquittals among the prisoners committed for trial to the sessions. Men are often ultimately acquitted for want of judicial proof, when there is abundance of that moral proof on which a police officer or magistrate has to act in the discharge of his duties; and in a country where gangs of professional and hereditary robbers and murderers extend their depredations into very remote parts, and seldom commit them in the districts in which they reside, the most vigilant police officer must often fail to discover the perpetrators of heavy crimes that take place within his range.965

When they cannot find them, the native officers either seize innocent persons, and frighten them into confession, or else they try to conceal the crime, and in this they are seconded by the sufferers in the robbery, who will always avoid, if they can, a prosecution in our courts, and by their neighbours, who dread being summoned to give evidence as a serious calamity. The man who has been robbed, instead of being an object of compassion among his neighbours, often incurs their resentment for subjecting them to this calamity; and they not only pay largely themselves, but make him pay largely, to have his losses concealed from the magistrate. Formerly, when a district was visited by a judge of circuit to hold his sessions only once or twice a year, and men were constantly bound over to prosecute and appear as evidence from sessions to sessions, till they were wearied and worried to death, this evil was much greater than at present, when every district is provided with its judge of sessions, who is, or ought to be, always ready to take up the cases committed for trial by the magistrate.966 This was one of the best measures of Lord W. Bentinck's admirable, though much abused, administration of the government of India.967 Still, however, the inconvenience and delay of prosecution in our courts are so great, and the chance of the ultimate conviction of great offenders is so small, that strong temptations are held out to the police to conceal or misrepresent the character of crimes; and they must have a great feeling of security in their tenure of office, and more adequate salaries, better chances of rising, and better supervision over them, before they will resist such temptation. These Thānadārs, and all the public officers under them, are all so very inadequately paid that corruption among them excites no feeling of odium or indignation in the minds of those among whom they live and serve. Such feelings are rather directed against the government that places them in such situations of so much labour and responsibility with salaries so inadequate; and thereby confers upon them virtually a licence to pay themselves by preying upon those whom they are employed ostensibly to protect. They know that with such salaries they can never have the reputation of being honest, however faithfully they may discharge their duties; and it is too hard to expect that men will long submit to the necessity of being thought corrupt, without reaping some of the advantages of corruption. Let the Thānadārs have everywhere such salaries as will enable them to maintain their families in comfort, and keep up that appearance of respectability which their station in society demands; and over every three or four Thānadārs' jurisdiction let there be an officer appointed upon a higher scale of salary, to supervise and control their proceedings, and armed with powers to decide minor offences. To these higher stations the Thānadārs will be able to look forward as their reward for a faithful and zealous discharge of their duties.968