II.
I had now learned to place myself unreservedly in the hands of Bhima Gandharva. When, therefore, on regaining the station at Khandallah, he said, "The route by which I intend to show you India will immediately take us quite away from this part of it; first, however, let us go and see Poona, the old Mahratta capital, which lies but a little more than thirty miles farther to the south-eastward by rail,"—I accepted the proposition as a matter of course, and we were soon steaming down the eastern declivity of the Gháts. As we moved smoothly down into the treeless plains which surround Poona I could not resist a certain feeling of depression.
"Yes," said Bhima Gandharva when I mentioned it to him, "I understand exactly what you mean. On reaching an unbroken expanse of level country, after leaving the tops of mountains, I always feel as if my soul had come bump against a solid wall of rock in the dark. I seem to hear a dull thud of discouragement somewhere back in my soul, as when a man's body falls dead on the earth. Nothing, indeed, could more heighten such a sensation than the contrast between this and the Bombay side of the Gháts. There we had the undulating waters, the lovely harbor with its wooded and hilly islands, the ascending terraces of the Gháts: everything was energetic, the whole invitation of Nature was toward air, light, freedom, heaven. But here one spot is like another spot; this level ground is just the same level ground there was a mile back; this corn stands like that corn; there is an oppressive sense of bread-and-butter about; one somehow finds one's self thinking of ventilation and economics. It is the sausage-grinding school of poetry—of which modern art, by the way, presents several examples—as compared with that general school represented by the geniuses who arise and fly their own flight and sing at a great distance above the heads of men and of wheat."
Having arrived and refreshed ourselves at our hotel, whose proprietor was, as usual, a Parsee, we sallied forth for a stroll about Poona. On one side of us lay the English quarter, consisting of the houses and gardens of the officers and government employés, and of the two or three hundred other Englishmen residing here. On the other was the town, extending itself along the banks of the little river Moota. We dreamed ourselves along in the lovely weather through such of the seven quarters of the town as happened to strike the fancy of my companion. Occasionally we were compelled to turn out of our way for the sacred cattle, which, in the enjoyment of their divine prerogatives, would remain serenely lying across our path; but we respected the antiquity, if not the reasonableness, of their privileges, and murmured not.
Each of the seven quarters of Poona is named after a day of the week. As we strolled from Monday to Tuesday, or passed with bold anachronism from Saturday back to Wednesday, I could not help observing how these interweavings and reversals of time appeared to take an actual embodiment in the scenes through which we slowly moved, particularly in respect of the houses and the costumes which went to make up our general view. From the modern-built European houses to the mediæval-looking buildings of the Bhoodwar quarter, with their massive walls and loop-holes and crenellations, was a matter of four or five centuries back in a mere turn of the eye; and from these latter to the Hindu temples here and there, which, whether or not of actual age, always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression to the obscure depths of time. So, too, one's glance would often sweep in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode to a Hindu whose sole covering was his dhotee, or clout about the loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct stages in the process of evolution through which our clothes have gone. In the evening we visited the Sangam, where the small streams of the Moola and the Moota come together. It is filled with cenotaphs, but, so far from being a place of weeping, the pleasant air was full of laughter and of gay conversation from the Hindus, who delight to repair here for the purpose of enjoying the cool breath of the evening as well as the pleasures of social intercourse.
But I did not care to linger in Poona. The atmosphere always had to me a certain tang of the assassinations, the intrigues, the treacheries which marked the reign of that singular line of usurping ministers whose capital was here. In the days when the Peishwas were in the height of their glory Poona was a city of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and great traffic was here carried on in jewelry and such luxuries among the Mahratta nobles. The Mahrattas once, indeed, possessed the whole of India practically; and their name is composed of Mahu, a word meaning "great," and often to be met with in the designations of this land, where so many things really are great, and Rachtra, "kingdom," the propriety of the appellation seeming to be justified by the bravery and military character of the people. They have been called the Cossacks of India from these qualities combined with their horsemanship. But the dynasty of the usurping ministers had its origin in iniquity; and the corruption of its birth quickly broke out again under the stimulus of excess and luxury, until it culminated in the destruction of the Mahratta empire in 1818. So, when we had seen the palace of the Peishwa, from one of whose balconies the young Peishwa Mahadeo committed suicide by leaping to the earth in the year 1797 through shame at having been reproved by his minister Nana Farnavese in presence of his court, and when we had visited the Hira-Bâgh, or Garden of Diamonds, the summer retreat of the Peishwas, with its elegant pavilion, its balconies jutting into the masses of foliage, its cool tank of water, reposing under the protection of the temple-studded Hill of Pararati, we took train again for Bombay.
The Great Indian Peninsula Railway's main line leads out of Bombay over the Gháts to Jabalpúr, six hundred miles; thence a railway of some two hundred and twenty miles runs to Allahabad, connecting them with the great line, known as the East Indian Railway, which extends for more than a thousand miles north-westward from Calcutta viâ Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra and Delhi. Our journey, as marked out by Bhima Gandharva, was to be from Bombay to Jabalpúr by rail; thence by some slow and easy conveyance across country to Bhopal, and from Bhopal northward through Jhansi to Delhi and the northern country, thence returning by rail to Calcutta.
As one ascends the Western Gháts shortly after leaving Bombay one has continual occasion to remark the extraordinary resources of modern railway engineering. Perhaps the mechanical skill of our time has not achieved any more brilliant illustrations of itself than here occur. For many miles one is literally going up a flight of steps by rail. The word Ghát indeed means the steps leading up from pools or rivers, whose frequent occurrence in India attests the need of easy access to water, arising from the important part which it plays both in the civil and religious economies of the Hindu. The Gháts are so called from their terraced ledges, rising one above another from the shores of the ocean like the stairs leading up from a pool. In achieving the ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles on the Thull Ghát Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven, involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghát Incline there are thirty tunnels.
That which gives tone and character to a general view of the interior of a railway-car in traveling is, from the nature of things, the head-covering of the occupants, for it is this which mostly meets the eye; and no one who has traveled in the United States, for example, can have failed to observe the striking difference between the aspect of a car in the South, where the felt slouch prevails, and of one in the North, where the silk hat is more affected. But cars full of turbans! There were turbans of silk, of muslin, of woolen; white turbans, red, green and yellow turbans; turbans with knots, turbans with ends hanging; neat turbans, baggy turbans, preternatural turbans, and that curious spotted silk inexpressible mitre which the Parsee wears.
Bhima Gandharva was good enough to explain to me the turban; and really, when within bounds, it is not so nonsensical a headdress as one is apt at first to imagine. It is a strip of cloth from nine to twelve inches wide, and from fifteen to twenty-five yards long. They are known, however, of larger dimensions, reaching to a yard in width and sixty yards in length. The most common color is white; next, perhaps, red, and next yellow; though green, blue, purple and black are worn, as are also buff, shot colors and gray, these latter being usually of silk; but this does not exhaust the varieties, for there are many turbans made of cotton cloth printed in various devices to suit the fancies of the wearers.
"The puttee-dar (pugri, or turban)," continued my companion, "is a neat compact turban, in general use by Hindus and Mohammedans; the joore-dar is like the puttee-dar, except that it has the addition of a knot on the crown; the khirkee-dar is the full-dress turban of gentlemen attached to native courts; the nustalik is a small turban which fits closely to the head, and is worn for full dress at the Mohammedan durbars or royal receptions; the mundeel is the military turban, with stripes of gold and ends; the séthi is like the nustalik, and is worn by bankers; the shumla is a shawl-turban; and I fear you do not care to know the other varieties—the morassa, the umamu, the dustar, the—"
"Thank you," I said: "life is short, my dear Bhima, and I shall know nothing but turbans if this goes on, which will be inconvenient, particularly when I return to my home and my neighbor Smith asks me that ghastly question, 'What do I think of India?'"
"It is a more 'ghastly' question as to India than as to any other country in the world," said the Hindu. "Some years ago, when Mr. Dilke was traveling in this country, a witty officer of one of the hill-stations remarked to him that all general observations about India were absurd. This is quite true. How could it be otherwise? Only consider, for example, the languages of India—the Assamese, with its two branches of the Deccan-göl and the Uttar-göl; the Bengalee; the Maithilee, Tirhutiya or Tirabhucti, spoken between the Coosy and the Gunduck; the Orissan, of the regions around Cuttack; the Nepalese; the Kosalese, about Almora; the Dogusee, between Almora and Cashmere; the Cashmiran; the Panjabee; the Mooltanee, or Vuchee, on the middle Indus; the two dialects of Sindhí, or Tatto, on the lower Indus; the Cutché, on the west coast of the peninsula; the Guseraté, spoken on the islands of Salsette and Bombay and the opposite coast of the Coucan, as well as by the Parsees in the cities, where it is corrupted with many words of other languages through the influence of commercial relations; the Coucané, from Bombay to Goa and along the parallel Gháts where it is called Ballagate; the Bikaneeré, the Marvaré, the Jeyporé, the Udayaporé, of Rajpootana; the Vraja-bhasha (the cow-pen language) of the Doab, between the Ganges and the Jumna, which is probably the parent of Hindi (or Oordú); the Malooé, of the tableland of Malwa; the Bundelakhandé, of the Bundelkhand; the Mogadhé, of Behar; the Maharachtré, of the country south of the Vindhyas; the—"
"It gives me pain to interrupt you, Bhima Gandharva," I said (fervently hoping that this portion of my remark might escape the attention of the recording angel); "but I think we are at Jabalpúr."
Apropos of Jubbulpoor, it is well enough to remark that by the rules of Indian orthography which are now to be considered authentic, the letter "a" without an accent has a sound equivalent to short "u," and a vowel with an acute accent has what is usually called its long sound in English. Accordingly, the word written "Jabalpúr" should be pronounced as if retaining the "u" and the "oo" with which it was formerly written, "Jubbulpoor". The termination púr, so common in the designation of Indian places, is equivalent to that of ville in English, and means the same. The other common termination, abad, means "dwelling" or "residence": e.g., Ahmedabad, the residence of Ahmed. Jabalpúr is but about a mile from the right bank of the Nerbadá (Nerbudda) River; and as I wished to see the famous Marble Rocks of that stream, which are found a short distance from Jabalpúr, my companion and I here left the railway, intending to see a little of the valley of the Nerbadá, and then to strike across the Vindhyas, along the valley of the Tonsa, to Bhopal, making our journey by such slow, irregular and easy stages as should be compatible with that serene and philosophic disposition into which the Hindu's beautiful gravity had by this time quite converted my American tendencies toward rushing through life at the killing pace.
It was a little past midday when we made our first journey along the river between the Marble Rocks. Although the weather was as nearly perfect as weather could be, the mornings being deliciously cool and bracing and the nights cold enough to produce often a thin layer of ice over a pan of water left exposed till daybreak, yet the midday sun was warm enough, especially after a walk, to make one long for leaves and shade and the like. It would be difficult, therefore, to convey the sensations with which we reclined at our ease in a flat-bottomed punt while an attendant poled us up toward the "Fall of Smoke," where the Nerbadá leaps out eagerly toward the low lands he is to fertilize, like a young poet anxious to begin his work of grace in the world. On each side of us rose walls of marble a hundred feet in height, whose pure white was here and there striped with dark green or black: all the colors which met the eye—the marmoreal whites, the bluish grays of the recesses among the ledges, the green and black seams, the limpid blue of the stream—were grateful, calm-toned, refreshing; we inhaled the coolness as if it had been a mild aroma out of a distant flower. This pleasant fragrance, which seemed to come up out of all things, was presently intensified by a sort of spiritual counterpart—a gentle breath that blew upon us from the mysterious regions of death; for on a ghát we saw a small company of Hindus just launching the body of a pious relative into the waters of Mother Nerbadá in all that freedom from grief, and even pleasant contemplation, with which this singular people regard the transition from present to future existence. These corpses, however, which are thus committed to the wave, do not always chime so happily in with the reveries of boating-parties on the Nerbadá. The Marble Rocks are often resorted to by pic-nic parties in the moonlit evenings; and one can easily fancy that to have a dusky dead body float against one's boat and sway slowly round alongside in the midst of a gay jest or of a light song of serenade, as is said to have happened not unfrequently here, is not an occurrence likely to heighten the spirits of revelers. Occasionally, also, the black, ugly double snout of the magar (or Nerbadá crocodile) may pop up from the surface, which may here serve as a warning to the young lady who trails her hand in the water—and I have yet to be in a boating-party where the young lady did not trail her hand in the water—that on the Nerbadá it is perhaps as well to resign an absent-minded hand to the young officer who sits by her in the boat lest Magar should snap it off.
Leaving the Nerbadá we now struck off northward toward the Tonsa, intending to pass round by way of Dumoh, Sangor, Bhilsa and Sanchi to Bhopal. We might have pursued a route somewhat more direct by following directly down the valley of the Nerbadá to Hoshangabad, and thence straight across to Bhopal, but my companion preferred the circuitous route indicated, as embracing a greater variety of interesting objects. He had procured for our conveyance a vehicle which was in all respects suitable to the placidity of his temper; and I make bold to confess that, American as I am—born on the railroad, so to speak—I have never enjoyed traveling as I did in this novel carriage. It was what is called a chapaya. It consisted of a body nearly ten feet in length by more than five in breadth, and was canopied by a top supported upon sculptured pillars of wood. The wheels were massive and low. There were no springs; but this deficiency was atoned for by the thick cushionment of the rear portion of the vehicle, which allowed us to lie at full length in luxurious ease as we rolled along. Four white bullocks, with humps and horns running nearly straight back on the prolongation of the forehead line, drew us along in a very stately manner at the rate of something like a mile and a half an hour.
We were now in the Góndwana, in some particulars one of the most interesting portions of the country. Here are the Highlands of Central India; here rise the Nerbadá and the Tapti—which flow to the westward in a generally parallel direction, and empty into the Gulf of Cambaye, the one at Broode and the other at Surat—as well as the Sôn, the Keyn (or Cane) and the Tonsa, which flow northward into the Jumna. The valley of the Keyn and that of the Tonsa here run across the Vindhyas, which are known to the eastward of this as the Kyrmores, and afford communication between Northern and Southern India. It is along the depression of the latter stream that the railway has been built from Jabalpúr to Allahabad.
The eight hundred thousand Gónds of the Góndwana are supposed to be members of the great autochthonal family of ancient India. These hills of the Góndwana country appear to have been considered by the incoming Aryans for a long time as a sort of uncanny land, whose savage recesses were filled with demons and snakes: indeed, in the epics of the Máhábháráta and Rámáyana this evil character is attributed to that portion of India lying south of the Vindhyas. The forest of Spenser's Fairy Queen, in which wandering knights meet with manifold beasts and maleficent giants, and do valorous battles against them in the rescue of damsels and the like—such seem to have been the Góndwana woods to the ancient Hindu imagination. It was not distressed damsels, however, whom they figured as being assisted by the arms of the errant protectors, but religious devotees, who dwelt in the seclusion of the forest, and who were protected from the pranks and machinations of the savage denizens by opportune heroes of the northern race. It appears, however, that the native demons of the Góndwana had fascinating daughters; for presently we find the rajahs from the north coming down and marrying them; and finally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the keen urgency of the conquering Mohammedans sends great numbers of Rajpúts down into the Góndwana, and a considerable mixture of the two bloods takes place. With this incursion of Hindu peoples come also the Hindu gods and tenets; and Mahadeo, the "great god," whose home had been the Kailas of the Himalayas, now finds himself domesticated in the mountains of Central India. In the Mahadeo mountain is still a shrine of Siva, which is much visited by pilgrims and worshipers.
The Gónd—he who lives back in the hills, far off from the neighborhood of the extensive planting districts, which have attracted many of those living near them to become at least half-civilized laborers in harvest-time—is a primitive being enough.
"Only look," said Bhima Gandharva, "at that hut if you desire to see what is perhaps one of the most primitive houses since ever the banyan tree gave to man (as is fabled) the idea of sheltering himself from the elements artificially." It was simply made of stakes driven into the ground, between which were wattled branches. This structure was thatched with grass, and plastered with mud.
The Gónd, like the American Indian, has his little patch of grain, which he cultivates, however, in a fashion wholly his own. His sole instrument of agriculture seems to be the axe. Selecting a piece of ground which presents a growth of small and easily-cut saplings—and perhaps, by the way, thus destroying in a few hours a whole cargo of teak trees worth more than all the crops of his agricultural lifetime—he hews down the growth, and in the dry season sets fire to the fallen timber. The result is a bed of ashes over a space of two or three acres. His soil is now ready. If the patch thus prepared happens to be level, he simply flings out a few handfuls of grain, coarse rice, kútki (ponicum) or kódon (paspalum), and the thing is done. The rest is in the hands of the god who sends the rains. If the patch be on a declivity, he places the grain at the upper part, where it will be washed down by the rains over the balance of the field. Next year he will burn some more wood—the first burning will have left many charred stumps and trunks, which he supplements with a little wood dragged from other parts of the forest—on the same spot, and so the next year, by which time it will become necessary to begin a new clearing, or dhya. The dhya thus abandoned does not renew the original growth which clothed it, like the pinelands of the Southern United States, which, if allowed to run waste after having been cleared and cultivated, clothe themselves either with oaks or with a wholly different species of pine from the original growth. The waste dhya, which may have perhaps nourished a splendid growth of teak, becomes now only a dense jungle.
The Gónd also raises pumpkins and beans; and this vegetable diet he supplements with game ensnared in the dhyas, to which peafowl, partridges, hares and the like resort. Many of the villages, however, have a professional huntsman, who will display the most incredible patience in waiting with his matchlock for the game to appear.
Besides these articles of diet, the aborigines of the Góndwana have their mhowa tree, which stands them in much the same multifarious stead as the palm does to its beneficiaries. The flowers of the mhowa fall and are eaten, or are dried and pressed, being much like raisins: they also produce a wine by fermentation and the strong liquor of the hill-people by distillation. Of the seed cakes are made, and an oil is expressed from them which is an article of commerce.
In addition, the poor Gónd appears to have a periodical godsend resulting from a singular habit of one of the great Indian plants. The bamboo is said to undergo a general seeding every thirty years: at this period, although, in the mean time, many individual bamboos may have passed through the process of reproduction, it is said that the whole bamboo growth of a section will simultaneously drop its leaves and put forth large panicles of flowers, after which come great quantities of seeds much like rice. These are gathered for food by the inhabitants with all the greater diligence in consequence of a tradition—which, however, does not seem to be at all supported by facts—that the general seeding of the bamboo portends a failure of the regular crops. The liberal forests of the Góndwana furnish still other edibles to their denizens. The ebony plums, the wild mango, the seeds of the sál tree, the beans of the giant banhinia creeper, a species of arrowroot, and a wild yam, are here found and eaten.
It is not long since the Gónds had arrived at a melancholy condition under the baleful influences of the kulars, or liquor-dealers, who resided among them and created an extraordinary demand for their intoxicating wares by paying for service and for produce in liquor. The kulars have, however, been thrown into the background by wise efforts toward their suppression, and matters have improved for the poor autoch-thones.
We spent our first night in our chapaya, my companion having so arranged matters that we were quite independent of the bungaloos which the Englishmen have erected at suitable distances along the great roads for the convenience of travelers. The night was clear; betwixt the corner pillars which upheld our canopy a thousand friendly salutations from the stars streamed in upon us; the tranquil countenance of my friend seemed, as he lay beside me, like the face of the Past purified of old errors and calm with great wisdom got through great tribulation, insomuch that betwixt the Hindu and the stars I felt myself to be at once in communication with antiquity and with eternity.
Thus we pursued our ambulatory meditations through the Góndwana. If we had been sportsmen, we should have found full as varied a field for the bagging of game as for that more spiritual hunt after new ideas and sensations in which we were engaged. Gray quail, gray partridges, painted partridges (Francolinus pictus), snipe and many varieties of water-fowl, the sambor, the black antelope, the Indian gazelle or ravine deer, the gaur or Indian bison, chewing the cud in the midday shade or drinking from a clear stream, troops of nilgaé springing out from the long grass and dwarf growth of polás and jujube trees which covered the sites of abandoned villages and fields,—all these revealed themselves to us in the most tempting situations. But although I had been an ardent devotee of the double-barrel, the large and manly tenderness which Bhima Gandharva invariably displayed toward all animals, whether wild or tame, had wrought marvels upon me, and I had grown fairly ashamed—nay, horrified—at the idea that anything which a generous and brave man could call sport should consist wholly in the most keen and savage cruelties inflicted upon creatures whom we fight at the most unknightly odds, we armed, they unarmed. While I knew that our pleasures are by the divine order mostly distillations from pain, I could not now help recognizing at the same time that this circumstance was part of an enormous plan which the slaughter of innocent creatures in the way of "sport" did in nowise help to carry out.
The truth is, although I had been for some days wavering upon the brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Góndwana route gun in hand. It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to bring my growing convictions sharply face to face with my decreasing practice, and thus to quite frown the latter out of existence. It happened in this wise: One day, not far from sunset, I was walking idly along behind the chapaya, in which Bhima Gandharva was dreamily reclining, when suddenly a pair of great sáras cranes rose from the low banks of a small stream and sailed directly across the road. Quick as thought—indeed, quicker than thought; for if I had thought, I would not have done it—I fired, and brought down one of the monstrous birds. As I started to approach it, Bhima Gandharva said, in a tone just a trifle graver than usual, "Stop! wait a moment," and at the same time halted the chapaya. The mate of the bird I had shot, seeing him fall, alighted on the same spot, then flew up, then returned, flew up again, returned again, with an exhibition of sad and lingering affection of which I had not dreamed, and which penetrated me beyond expression; so I stood half stolid outwardly and wholly ashamed and grieved inwardly. "The sáras," said my friend, "is the type of conjugal affection among the Hindus. The birds nearly always go in pairs; and when one is killed, the other invariably makes those demonstrations of tenderness which you have just seen."
As we journeyed along in the dusk came notes from another pair of feathered lovers, "chukwa, chukwi," "chukwa, chukwi," in a sort of mournful alternation. They were the branning ducks, he on one side, she on the other side of the stream, as is their habit, whence they are fabled to be a pair of lovers who must yearn unavailingly through the long nights from opposite banks of the river.
That night, when Bhima Gandharva was asleep, I gently arose, took my double-barrel—thou dear Manton! how often has not Jonesville admired thee returning from the field at late evening slanting at a jaunty angle high above my bagful of snipe or of quail as the case might be!—yes, I took this love of a gun, together with the cartridges, accoutrements and all other rights, members and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in any wise appertaining, and slid the whole lot softly into a deep green pool of the very stream from which had flown my sáras.
The taste of gypsy life which I was now enjoying contributed to add a sort of personal element to that general interest which hangs about the curious Banjaris, whom we met constantly, with their families and their bullocks, along our road. Banjara is literally "forest-wanderer." The women were especially notable for their tall stature, shapely figures and erect carriage; which circumstances are all the more wonderful from the life of hardship which they lead, attending as they do at once to the foraging of the cattle, the culinary preparations for the men and the cares of the children. From the profusion of ornaments which they wore, one may imagine, however, that they were well cared for by their lords in return for their affectionate labors; and the general bearing of the tall Banjara who bore a long two-handed sword gave evidence of a certain inward sense of protection over his belongings which probably found vent in many an affectionate gift of rings and bracelets to his graceful partner. It must be confessed that the gypsying of these Eastern Bohemians is not so free a life as is popularly supposed. The naik or sovereign of each tanda, or camp, seems to be possessed of absolute power, and in this connection the long two-handed sword suggested much less gentle reflections. The Banjara, however, though a nomad, is a serviceable one, for he is engaged in trade. With his bullocks he is the carrier of Central India, and is to be met with all over that section, bringing salt and other commodities and returning with interior produce.