9. Attractions of a Pindāri’s life
The freebooting life of the Pindāris, unmitigated scoundrels though they were, no doubt had great charms, and must often have been recalled with regret by those who settled down to the quiet humdrum existence of a cultivator. This feeling has been admirably depicted in Sir Alfred Lyall’s well-known poem, of which it will be permissible to quote a short extract:
When I rode a Dekhani charger with the saddle-cloth gold-laced,
And a Persian sword and a twelve-foot spear and a pistol at my waist.
It’s many a year gone by now; and yet I often dream
Of a long dark march to the Jumna, of splashing across the stream,
Of the waning moon on the water and the spears in the dim starlight
As I rode in front of my mother[12] and wondered at all the sight.
Then the streak of the pearly dawn—the flash of a sentinel’s gun,
The gallop and glint of horsemen who wheeled in the level sun,
The shots in the clear still morning, the white smoke’s eddying wreath,
Is this the same land that I live in, the dull dank air that I breathe?
And if I were forty years younger, with my life before me to choose,
I wouldn’t be lectured by Kafirs or bullied by fat Hindoos;
But I’d go to some far-off country where Musalmāns still are men,
Or take to the jungle like Chetoo, and die in the tiger’s den.
[1] The historical account of the Pindāris is compiled from Malcolm’s Memoir of Central India, Grant-Duff’s History of the Marāthas, and Prinsep’s Transactions in India (1825). Some notes on the modern Pindāris have been furnished by Mr. Hīra Lāl, and Mr. Waman Rustom Mandloi, Naib-Tahsīldār, Harda.
[2] Memoir of Central India, i, p. 433.
[3] Indian Antiquary, 1900.
[4] Transactions in India, 1813–23, by H.T. Prinsep.
[5] Marātha and Pindāri Campaigns.
[6] The above is compiled from the accounts given by Prinsep and Malcolm.
[7] That is when Malcolm wrote his Memoir.
[8] This account is copied from Prinsep’s Transactions.
[9] Memoir, ii. p. 177.
[10] Rājasthān, ii. p. 674.
[11] Malcolm, ii. p. 177.
[12] The Pindāri’s childhood is recalled here, vide poem.