CHAPTER XVIII.
The carnival at Indore—Extraordinary scene in the palace of the Holkar—A night at the caves of Ajunta—The caves of Ellora and fortress of Doulatabad—The merits of a palkee—Reflections on the journey from Agra to Bombay—Adieu to India.
After a few days’ more travelling over the hot dry plains of Malwa we reached its capital, Indore, where we spent some days at the hospitable mansion of the Resident, and paid a visit to the Rajah, whose palace is situated in the centre of that large and populous town. During our visit a most extraordinary scene occurred. It happened that a sort of carnival was going on; but the bonbons and bouquets of Italy are here represented by little balls containing red, purple, or yellow dust, which burst the moment they strike the object at which they are thrown, and very soon after the row commences two-thirds of the population are so covered with red dust that they present the most extraordinary appearance; but it is not the dust-balls which contribute so much to the dyeing of the population as the squirts full of similar coloured liquids, which are to be seen playing in every direction. Woe to the luckless individual who incautiously exhibits himself in the streets of Indore during the “Hoolie;” not that we ran any risk upon the occasion of our visit to the Rajah, as we were on that account tabooed, and could laugh at our ease at the rest of the claret-coloured world. Here a woman passed spotted like a coach-dog: she had just come in for a spent discharge, and had escaped the deluge, which her puce-coloured little boy had received so fully that his whole face and person seemed to partake of the prevailing tint; while yonder old greybeard is dusting his moustache from the red powder which tinges it in strong contrast to the rest of his sallow countenance.
After going through the ceremony of squatting on the floor of the Durbar—our seven pair of unruly legs all converging to a common centre, from our inability to double them under us, as his Majesty did—we adjourned to the hall below to witness the “Hoolie” in safety. On each side of the court-yard was a sort of garden-engine, one filled with a purple and the other with a light-red fluid. The King’s body-guard were now marched in and divided into two parties, each sitting under one of the garden-engines. At the main gateway of the court-yard stood two elephants, with tubs of coloured liquid before them. At a given signal the gallant troops were exposed to a most murderous cross-fire, which they were not allowed to return: both garden-engines began playing upon them furiously, and the elephants, filling their trunks, sent the contents far and wide over the victims, who crouched down and bore in patience the blood-red storm. At the same moment that a dexterously-applied squirt whisked off some individual’s turban, a fountain from the other side playing into his eyes and mouth prevented him from recovering it until some more fortunate neighbour, suffering perhaps from ear-ache, received the claret-coloured salvo with such violence that, if it failed to drive away the pain altogether, it must have rendered him a martyr to that complaint for the rest of his life.
After getting a thorough soaking they were sprinkled all over with a fine red powder, which, caking upon them, completed the ceremony by rendering them the most muddy, sticky-looking objects imaginable, as they withdrew from the presence of the young Rajah, after receiving pawn.
We were now offered balls of powder: had we thrown one at his Majesty, which some of his household seemed very anxious we should do, nothing could have saved us from a deluge. To commence the game upon the royal platform is the signal of indiscriminate warfare throughout the whole palace; the now passive troops would then have been allowed to retaliate, the garden-engines would have been stormed and captured by opposing squadrons, and the battle would have raged furiously until dark whereas now, company of soldiers after company were ordered in to be shot down like sheep. We, however, were contented with seeing each party come in white and go out red, without wishing to go out red ourselves; besides which, we should have been outnumbered, and Britons, for the first time, would have been obliged to beat a retreat with tarnished honour as well as tarnished jackets.
The usual ceremony of presenting scents, spices, and garlands, having terminated, we left the young King, much pleased with his intelligence and good-nature: though only seventeen, he is a stranger to those vices which are generally inherent in natives, and inseparable from their courts.
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We were ten days on our journey to the caves of Ajunta, having spent two or three at the hill fort of Aseerghur, a characteristic Mahratta stronghold; it is perched 700 feet above the plain, and just capacious enough to contain a regiment, who must find some difficulty in climbing its rocky steep approach, up which, however, the ponies of the garrison scramble nimbly enough.
We galloped over one afternoon from Furdapore to the caves of Ajunta, and were delighted with their romantic situation high up the rocky glen terminating in a waterfall, and so narrow, gloomy, and silent that it harmonized well with these mysterious caverns, in one of which, more free than the rest from bats, we determined to pass the night; and here, surrounded by staring Bhuddas and rampant elephants, and gods and goddesses making vehement love, according to the custom of such gentry, we had a most comfortable tea preparatory to turning in: spreading my blanket under the nose of a huge seated figure of Bhood, and guarded by two very tall individuals in faded painting, which, as they had watched over Bhood for twenty centuries, must have been well competent to perform the same kind office for me, I was soon comfortably asleep, my head pillowed on a prostrate little goddess, whom I was very reluctant to leave when daylight warned us to proceed upon the work of examining the wonders of the Rock Temples of Ajunta.
So much has already been written on the interesting subject of the caves of Ajunta, that they are more or less familiar to every one, or, if not already familiar, are destined soon to become so, thanks to the skill and energy of Captain Gill, who is at present engaged in making copies of all the paintings. These will form a splendid collection, and some of them have already been sent to England, and placed in the collection at the East India House. It was doubly delightful to us, who had just previously examined the originals, to look over the portfolios of this talented draftsman.
Ere we left the village of Ajunta we visited its neat whitewashed mosque: the association connected with it must be replete with interest to the Englishman, when he calls to mind that in it the Duke of Wellington—then Sir Arthur Wellesley—wrote his despatches immediately previous and subsequent to the victory of Assaye.
The caves of Ellora are two days’ journey from those of Ajunta, and are much more cheerfully situated on the face of a hill commanding an extensive view over a more smiling country than is usually to be met with in the Deccan.
It is difficult to say which set of caves are most worth seeing; differing in many respects, they may be said to afford equal attraction to the traveller. Ellora can boast of the wonderful “Kylas;” Ajunta of those most interesting frescoes which carry the art of painting back to an unknown period, but which at Ellora have been almost totally obliterated by the ruthless and fanatical zeal of Aurungzebe.
A few miles from the caves of Ellora frowns the rock fortress of Doulatabad, a conspicuous object from every side, and we soon discovered its interior to be as singularly interesting as its exterior was formidable and imposing. The rock itself is a pyramid rising abruptly to a height of 700 feet above the village which nestles at its base, while it is scarped all round to the broad moat by which it is encircled, forming a sheer precipice of 100 or 150 feet in depth.
Passing through a massive gateway which led into the town, we entered the fort by a similar approach, and crossing the moat by a narrow bridge we plunged into a dark hole directly opposite; then passing by torchlight through some small caves which were entered by very low portals, we began to ascend the inclined plane which wound up the interior of the rock, and which gradually became steeper till it ended in a flight of steps, our guides lighting us on our uncertain path, until we emerged into daylight by a large iron trap-door, pierced with innumerable small holes, the object of which, as well as of a groove in the rock communicating with the subterranean passage, was to enable the garrison, by filling the passage with smoke and flame, to suffocate and blind the besiegers should they ever succeed by any accident in penetrating thus far—in itself, as it seemed to me, a very improbable contingency. We clambered up the face of the rock to its summit, whence we had an extensive view of the arid plains of the Deccan.
Arungabad is the first station which we had visited in the dominions of the Nizam. We were now approaching the confines of civilization, and it became necessary to part with our palkees and the bearers, who had accompanied us from Agra. A separation from the latter was easily borne, and they, on their part, were no doubt glad to get rid of the burdens they had been carrying for the last month. But to bid adieu for ever to one’s palkee is a severe trial; and no wonder, for to a man not in a hurry it is the most luxurious and independent means of travelling conceivable.
If judiciously arranged it contains everything the traveller can want—a library, a cellar, a soda-water range, a wardrobe, a kitchen; in fact, there is no limit to the elasticity of a palkee. My plan was, surreptitiously, to add a new comfort every day, and the unsuspecting coolies carried me along as briskly as if my palkee contained nothing but myself, and never seemed to feel the additional weight, upon the principle of the man who could lift an ox by dint of doing so every morning from the time when it was a calf.
Then the delightful feeling of security, and the certainty that your bearers won’t shy, or come into collision, or go off the rails, or otherwise injure your nerves or bones. You are independent of hotels and hospitality. If the traveller in India depended upon the former, he would pass many a night with the kerbstone for his pillow, if he had not courage to claim the latter—which, be it remembered, he is certain to receive abundantly at the hands of the Burra Sahib. A modest man has his palkee; and for lack of courage on the one hand, and a rest-house on the other, he orders himself to be set down for the night by the wayside, and, shutting the doors towards the road, after boiling the water and making tea with the apparatus contained in his pantry, he lights his lamp, reads for an hour, pulls a light shawl over him, turns round, and goes to sleep as soundly as if he were sumptuously couched in Belgravia.
If the palkee be a good one, it defies weather; but I admit it is not pleasant, on a dark night, to be carried along a slippery road with a careless set of bearers.
During the whole period of our journey since we had left Agra, with one or two breaks in its ordinary routine, we seemed to have been passing a monotonous existence at the same small and uncomfortable bungalow. It consists of two rooms; in front is a tope of trees; behind are a few low sandstone or trap hills, some scrubby bushes climbing up the sides, out of which a partridge may easily be flushed: for the rest, the view extends over a boundless plain, assuming during the heat of the day a light yellow colour, at which period the coolies are all asleep in the verandah, snoring in an infinite and interesting variety of notes and keys.
At sunset we take a constitutional, followed by our portable residences, into which, after a romantic tea-drinking by the roadside, we turn in for the night, awaking at daylight to find ourselves thirty miles nearer to our journey’s end, in a bungalow precisely similar to the one we had lately quitted, and containing the same rickety table, greasy with the unwiped remains of the last traveller’s meal, which the book will inform you was eaten a month ago—the same treacherous chairs, which look sound until you inadvertently sit upon them—the same doubtful-looking couch, from which the same interesting round little specimens emerge, much to the discomfort of the occupant—the same filthy bathroom, which it is evident the traveller a month ago did not use—the identical old kitmutgar or bungalow-keeper, who looks as uncivilized as the bungalow itself, and seems to partake of its rickety and dirty nature—the same clump of trees before, and the same desert plain behind;—all tend to induce the belief either that you have never left the bungalow in which you spent the previous day, or that some evil genius has transported the said bungalow thirty miles for the express purpose of persecuting you with its horrors and miserable accommodation.
Thus are 700 miles insensibly accomplished in a month by the traveller, who only passes a dreamy existence in dak bungalows, to be roused into violent action on his arrival at some sporting vicinity, a large cantonment, a native Court, rock temples, or other excitements, which must occur in the experiences of the Indian traveller.
I went seventy miles in a bullock hackery, the most unpleasant mode of travelling I conceive that can exist; then one hundred miles in a rickety phaëton with a pair of horses, which was in a slight degree less intolerable; and after visiting Mahabuleshwa, the hill station of Bombay, I reached that mercantile emporium itself, not a little pleased at seeing the sea on the English side of India. I was disappointed with the far-famed Bay; but perhaps it is difficult to do justice to scenery after so much wandering, when the most interesting view is the sight of home. Certainly one’s impressions of a place are regulated in a great degree by the circumstances under which it is visited. Had Bombay been the port of debarkation instead of embarkation, the bay would have been lovely and the various points of view enchanting; as it was, the prettiest object to my perverted vision was the “Malta” getting up her steam to paddle me away from that land, whose marble tombs’ and rock-cut temples will continue to afford attractions to the traveller when its Princes no longer exist sumptuously to entertain them, and whose towering mountains will still disclose fresh wonders when that last independent state which now extends along their base shall have been absorbed into one vast empire.
[{121}] The arms of his body-guard were bought in London, of Purdy, Lancaster, and other eminent rifle-makers, and cost Jung about 2000 pounds.