We spent a very happy six days at Mahableshwar and saw all sorts of interesting people and places, including the haunts of the great Mahratta Chieftain Sivaji. Our introduction to Indian hill-life could not have been made under pleasanter auspices nor with kinder hosts.

The Duke of Connaught was then Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Presidency troops. H.R.H. and the Duchess lived near the Reays, and they were also very good to us. Lady Patricia Ramsay was then a most attractive little girl of two years old. The older children were in England. The Duke, here as elsewhere, had a great reputation as a soldier.

When we visited Pertab Ghur, one of Sivaji’s thirty-one mountain fortresses, we were told with amazement that the Duke and his officers had lately brought a battery of mule artillery up the steep hill leading thereto. This fort had an arched gateway almost concealed in the hill-side, with a door covered with iron spikes. About fifty people live in the fort, and when they saw the battery approaching they took the soldiers for dacoits and shut the gates against them.

H.H. THE AGA KHAN

One visitor to Lord and Lady Reay while we were with them was the Aga Khan, since so widely known, but then a boy of about thirteen who was brought by his uncle to pay his respects to the Governor. The story of his ancestry as told to me at the time was as follows. Some generations ago a Hindu announced a tenth Avatar, or Incarnation, of Vishnu, and persuaded a number of people to give him offerings for the Avatar. At last, however, the devotees became tired of parting with their goods for an unseen deity and insisted that the Avatar should be shown to his disciples. The Hindu agreed, and selected a deputation of two hundred, whom he conducted on a sort of pilgrimage through Northern India seeking for a suitable representative who would consent to play the required part. At last they reached the borders of Persia, and there he heard of a holy man belonging to the then Royal Family who would, he thought, fulfil all the requirements. Before introducing his followers he contrived a private interview with the Imaun (as I believe he was called) and offered to hand over to him all the disciples and their future offerings if he would assume the character of an Avatar and pretend to have received those already given. The Princely Saint consented on condition that the Hindu believers should become Mohammedans—no doubt this wholesale conversion to the true faith overcame any scruples which he may have felt concerning the requisite trivial deception. Thus arose the sect of the Khojahs, Hindu—or at least Indian—Mohammedans, acknowledging the spiritual headship of this Persian Avatar and his descendants. Some say that this Imaun was one of the tribe or order of the Assassins of whom the Old Man of the Mountains was chief in the time of the Crusades. It was declared that each head of Aga Khan’s family was assassinated in turn, and that his life would be sacrificed in due course to make way for his successor. However, I hope that is not true, as I have known him for over thirty years and saw him very much alive not long ago.

When we met at Mahableshwar he was a stout youth with dark eyes and hair and a very composed manner. His father, who had died before our interview, did not want the boy in childhood to know of his semi-divine character as he justly thought that it would not be very good for him, but the boy was too acute to be kept in the dark. His mother was a Persian princess, and he is immensely rich from offerings made to himself and his ancestors. Even in boyhood he was called “His Highness,” that title having been given him in 1896—but the rank and salute of a chief of the Bombay Presidency was not granted till 1916, as he is not a territorial prince, but owes his wealth and immense influence to the large numbers both in India and Zanzibar who acknowledge his spiritual sway.

We were told that he sometimes had a milk bath and that his followers were then allowed to drink the milk in which he had bathed! Lord Reay asked whether he would have to fast in Ramadan, but he said not till he was fifteen. I asked what was done to people if they did not keep the fast. He said nothing in India, but in Persia the Moollahs beat defaulters.

When Aga Khan grew up he managed to reconcile his followers to the orthodox Mohammedan faith. He traces his descent from Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali. What his private religious views may have been is impossible to say; I should think he was really a Mohammedan, but considered it necessary to allow his followers to regard him as semi-divine. He was supposed in after years to have said to his friends that he could drink wine if he liked because his devotees were made to believe that his throat was so holy that it changed to water on touching it—and he added that “being a god was not all beer and skittles!” I must say that when he sat near me at dinner at Osterley he did not drink wine. He was once dining there when in England for King Edward’s coronation, and I told him that the Sikh High-Priest was reported to have said that he did not like to be mixed up with “these secular persons” and wanted to hold the robe of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the occasion. Aga Khan comically protested against such an invasion of his ecclesiastical status, and said in that case he should complain to the King and go back to India!

From Mahableshwar a journey of two days and a night brought us to Hyderabad (Deccan)—where we stayed at the Residency with the Acting-Resident Mr. Howell and his wife. We were enchanted with Hyderabad—a real typical Native State and extraordinarily picturesque. We saw various interesting examples of native life and tradition both in the pauses on our journey and from the train. As we drew near Hyderabad there were numbers of immense syenite stones piled on each other or scattered over the plain. Legend says that when Rama was pursuing the giant Ravana who had carried off Siva he enlisted the aid of the monkey-god Hanuman and his army to make a bridge to Ceylon. The monkeys carried rocks from the Himalayas, but not unnaturally became pretty tired by the time they reached the Deccan and let a good many fall, which may still be seen scattered about.

RACES AT HYDERABAD