But it may be said that these kind of visits do not amount to social intercourse. Certainly not. Nor, on the other hand, do we admit that there is any social intercourse, in the true meaning of the word, where the official goes to a party at the house of a wealthy native gentleman, to some special entertainment such as a nautch or fireworks in honour of a wedding or any other domestic occurrence. It will be admitted that two of the main elements of social intercourse according to English ideas consist (1) in dining together, (2) in the interchange of ladies’ society. But the native gentleman will seldom come to dine with the English gentleman; and although an English lady has no objection to receive the visit of a native gentleman, or to go to his entertainments, there seems to be little prospect at present of seeing a native lady come forth to welcome the English visitors at her husband’s house. Behind the mere external difficulties there come all the complications of caste and religious observance, and also of dress, of which the etiquette is almost unfathomable. The natives themselves are not in accord with one another on many points which come into prominence in their contact with English society; and although many parties are now given in the capital of Calcutta and in other large towns by high officials on the one hand, and by native gentlemen on the other hand, where people of both races meet for one or two hours, we fear that on such occasions there is very little real mutual enjoyment, and that the hosts are usually very glad when the last of the guests has departed.
Several wealthy native noblemen and gentlemen in the interior keep a neatly-furnished bungalow or house, in which they can entertain their English friends who visit them on their estates for the sake of hunting and shooting. In the Burdwan district the late Maharajah used in former years to entertain parties of his English friends at the Dilkoosha and Kishensaugor garden-houses, especially at the time of the Burdwan Races. We could name several other similar places, but we must give the preference to the recollection of the happy days spent in the country house of our good old friend Rajah Kalinaraian Roy of Dacca. He had built a suite of apartments contiguous to his own old native palace, and it was his pleasure to invite his English friends from Dacca to come out and stay with him, to shoot tigers and hunt wild hogs. His property was very extensive, and contained a great portion of the Madhupore jungle, which runs more than fifty miles to the north of Dacca, with an average breadth of about ten miles. The ground is undulating and slightly hilly in parts, and is well intersected with streams of fresh water, so that it afforded a good harbour for all sorts of game, tigers, leopards, bears, buffaloes, sambur and spotted and hog deer, and a few wild boars, with a fair sprinkling of hares and partridges and jungle-fowl, and occasionally a woodcock. An easy drive of about twenty miles from Dacca brought the visitors to the Rajah’s palace, where the Rajah was sure to be ready to greet them on their arrival. He was a fine-looking man, with pleasant features and a strong vigorous figure. When he came out to join the shooting-party on his elephant he used to be stripped to the waist, and his shoulders and chest were covered with thick grey hairs, which were suggestive of the στηθεσσιν λασιοισι of Homer. A little fillet of white muslin bound round his temples protected his head from the sun; but of course his servant behind him in the howdah always carried an umbrella. He had a good battery of guns and rifles, and was a very good shot. It was almost always a sure sign that there was a tiger to be got when the Rajah came out with the party. The visitors were always ready to go out at any time to shoot whatever turned up, as they had come out for perhaps only a few days’ holiday and must take their chance. One great advantage of the shooting at the Rajah’s was that we usually went after a tiger on receiving information of “a kill.” An excited peasant would come rushing in with the news that his cow had just been killed, and imploring the Rajah to go out to take revenge. It was a pleasure to see the Rajah’s face when he felt sure that the information was true, and from his knowledge of the country he also was certain that the tiger was watching the carcase from a patch of cover which could be conveniently beaten by the elephants. By approaching the cover judiciously, and with due regard to the wind, we were almost certain to find a tiger, and it was our fault if it was not killed.
The Rajah was a large landholder, and the visitors at his house had a most favourable opportunity of seeing how he managed his property and conducted his affairs with his tenants and his neighbours. The people flocked in daily in considerable numbers to attend the Rajah’s office, and if they had leisure they would come and have a good stare at the English visitors. The principal part of the office-work was carried on by the Rajah’s native ministerial officers of various grades and titles; but he almost invariably took his seat in office for an hour or two, and had no objection to our going to hear what passed between him and his people, for he was always courteous and considerate to them, and their complaints and grievances were not often directed against him, but were chiefly the result of petty disputes among themselves about caste and other such matters of which the Rajah was a highly competent judge. He would occasionally order a fine to be paid, or compensation to be levied from the delinquent party, and disregard to such an order was seldom exhibited. It sometimes happened that our visits to the Rajah’s palace were paid on the native holidays and festivals; and on these occasions the whole country-side used to flock to the entertainments given at the Rajah’s expense. It is hardly necessary to say that he distributed charitable gifts in food and money day by day to a considerable number of religious mendicants and professional beggars; but on the great holidays or festivals the expenditure of gratuitous food was something enormous, and due respect was shown to the visitors according to their various ranks and grades in native society. Music and song and dancing would last long past midnight, and few of the guests were allowed to go away empty-handed. It would be difficult to imagine a more genial and healthy state of relations than that which existed generally on the Rajah’s estates between him and his people. Doubtless many of them were poor and ignorant, but the mild despotism with which the Rajah ruled them required very little tempering from the interference of English law or officials.
With regard to his English visitors, the Rajah showed the kindest hospitality. He did not object if they took out their own provisions and wines, and their own cook, for the better preservation of their own health. But the Rajah always had supplies of food provided for his visitors, and his wines were undoubtedly the most costly that could be purchased by him from the Armenian shops in Dacca. The Rajah would usually look in to see his visitors when breakfast was nearly over, and preparations were beginning for the day’s sport. But his great delight was to come in at dessert when the visitors had done their dinner, and he would not object to smoke a quiet cigar with them. He was full of fun, and liked his little jokes and puns, especially if any visitor had any knowledge of the Persian language to enable the Rajah to show his proficiency in that tongue. For the Rajah did not know English, his education having been completed in the olden time, when Persian was the Court and fashionable language. He was full of anecdotes connected with shooting, and the various adventures with tigers in which he had shared with the best sportsmen from Dacca for a long course of years. He was a capital mimic, and it was easy to recognise his imitation of some of the old sportsmen in their moments of excitement. He used to have his little son and daughter brought into the room in their smartest native dresses. The son has now grown up, and is a worthy and liberal successor to his father. The daughter came very quickly to the marriageable age, and after she was married it was no longer permissible for her to come down and talk to strange gentlemen. But she used to take opportunities of seeing the visitors, she herself being unseen; and, as a fact, the visitors were almost always paraded quietly so that they might be seen by all the ladies of the Rajah’s household. He had two wives, of whom the eldest was childless, the second wife being the mother of his two children. To those with whom he was best acquainted he was in the habit of discoursing about his domestic affairs, and, if imperious native custom had not forbidden it, we believe that he would have been very willing to have introduced them to his wives, when English ladies were of the party, they were always taken into the inner apartments to make the acquaintance of the ladies. Perhaps one of the most curious illustrations of the incongruity of native and English feeling occurred during one of our visits. The Rajah’s daughter had been married to a Kulin Brahmin of the highest caste, who lived with her at the Rajah’s palace. But as he was a man of specially high caste, it was his privilege to be married to any number of wives whose parents could pay for their espousal to him. And so we became accidentally witnesses of the occasion on which the young husband set forth with a grand marriage procession from his own first wife’s house, in order to be married to another young lady of high family. It is an Hindoo institution, and it was not in the Rajah’s power to resist it for his own daughter’s sake. But to the English visitors, especially to the ladies who were present, the whole proceeding seemed very uncomfortable, and the more so as we were fully aware that the Rajah and his daughter were, in their inmost hearts, most averse to what was taking place.
As we have ventured to write of our old Hindoo friend, Rajah Kalinaraian Roy, we feel bound to speak in no less grateful terms of the chief Mahomedan zemindars in Dacca, the Nawab Khajeh Abdul Gunnee, and his son, the Nawab Khajeh Ahsanoollah. They too had a shooting-box at a convenient distance from Dacca, to which they would invite their English friends, and they kept a stud of about twenty elephants, some of which were of the finest and staunchest of their kind. They were most liberal and good-natured in lending their elephants to those whom they could trust, though there were always plenty of elephants at Dacca, as it is the head-quarters of the Government elephant depôt. Many years after I had left Dacca, they sent a couple of elephants to meet a friend of mine nearly a hundred miles from Dacca, when he wanted them with the Calcutta Tent Club. In every public and private work of utility and charity both father and son were equally munificent. They sent their handsome contributions to the subscriptions raised for various charitable purposes in England. They were always amongst the first to give whatever was needed for the improvement of the town and district of Dacca, and for the good of its inhabitants. To the poor and needy they never turned a deaf ear, and whenever an opportunity presented itself they were always ready with their handsome entertainments in honour of the Lieutenant-Governors or any other great people who visited Dacca. We wish them long life and prosperity. But we must reluctantly put an end to the record of those many pleasant days which we spent in Dacca, nearly twenty years ago, with this imperfect acknowledgment of how much was due to the kindness of our Hindoo and Mahomedan friends there.
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TROPICAL TRIALS.
A HANDBOOK