We visited the Raj school, established for girls, and which corresponds to that of the college for boys. Miss Joyce has enrolled on her books pupils who are classed as follows, "Unmarried, married, or widows!" The Hindu girls are married as early as ten years of age. The education is supposed to be entirely secular, but she has a class for religious instruction—a Sunday-school at her bungalow on Sunday.
We drove home through the Zoological Gardens, which are extremely pretty and well laid-out. At their entrance is the Mayo Hospital, dedicated to Lord Mayo by the late Maharajah, who was his personal friend, and further on is the Albert Hall, or Town Hall, the memorial of the Prince of Wales' visit. Jeypore is celebrated for its marble quarries, of which so many of the beautiful buildings in India are built, notably the Taj.
We left Jeypore that evening, and arrived at Ajmere at the inconvenient hour of midnight. This did not prevent Major Loch, the Principal of the Mayo College, in his kindness, coming to meet us at the station, and driving us to his abode inside the grounds. He has a most charming "house," for bungalow it cannot be called, as it possesses the remarkable feature for India of a staircase.
Mayo College was founded by the late Lord Mayo for the education of the sons of rajahs. It was a grand and statesmanlike idea, this scheme for the education of the native ruler, under the immediate guidance of English master minds, thereby engendering a patriotism and attachment to England as a mother country, raising and elevating the tone and domestic life of the native prince, who in his turn was being prepared to wield power humanely, and make the influence of his bringing up felt on those around him. It was the stone dropped in the pool, with ever-widening and concentric influence.
The College is very happily situated under the lee of an amphitheatre of hills, that rise, like all those in this part of the country, sheer out of the plain. It is a very charming feature of the College, the ten houses, of such very varied architecture and style, that lie about the compound, for each state has built and endowed its own college, for the use of the sons of its nobles. There has been a certain amount of rivalry exhibited in their erection. Some have marble cupolas, others arches, and others towers; some are of pure white marble, others a mixture of white and red stone; all are tasteful and uncommon. In the centre, and holding them together as a mother university, is the College Hall, with its clock tower, entirely built of white marble, but rough hewn and unpolished. In the centre hall stands the statue of Lord Mayo; the class-rooms lie around it. The white, green, pink, and black marbles used for the decorations of the hall are all quarried within a radius of fifteen miles around Ajmere.
These colleges are really boarding-houses, where each prince brings his own establishment of servants. One lately admitted, brought twenty-two retainers, which, with some difficulty, Major Loch reduced to eleven. They ride, play cricket, tennis, and football, and are encouraged to be as European in manners and habits as possible. With all this Major Loch does not approve or encourage their being sent to England when their education is complete, as they return impressed with a sense of their own importance; of the number of their servants, their jewels, their state and magnificence compared to that of the same class in England. The native states represented by their colleges at Ajmere are as follows:—Jeypore, Alwar, Bhurtpoor, Ajmere, Tonk Bikanir, Toohpur or Narwar, Kotah, Thallawar, and Udaipur. It is often observed that the College of Jeypore stands apart from the others. The late Maharajah of Jeypore was very angry with Dholpore being allowed the first choice of site, and so he built his college outside the compound. It is only lately that Major Loch has succeeded in smoothing his vanity, and been allowed to include Jeypore, thus completing the circle.
After seeing the College we drove through the walled city of the native population, as Ajmere bazaar is particularly picturesque and dirty. It lies on the hill-side, and the glimpse of mountains as a background to the narrow streets adds to this effect.
There is a very curious tank here, filled with slimy green water, which lies in a natural hollow on the hill-side. Houses lie above it; and the marble courts and gilded minarets of a mosque overhang it on one side. The only access to the tank is by innumerable flights of irregular steps running up and down in all directions. Up and down these steps are always staggering innumerable bheesties, bent under the weight of their bursting skins, and disappearing through the archway of the passage tunnelled through to the street.
Then we drove on to the Adhai-din-ka-Ghompra, which is very interesting, on account of its being a Hindu Temple, with the facing of a Mohammedan mosque. The signification of its long-drawn-out name literally is, "the screen of two and a half days," which is generally supposed to mean that it was built in that short space of time; but Major Loch and others take a more practical view, in suggesting that it meant compulsory labour from every man of two and a half days. The lofty arches are most splendidly carved, and verses of the Koran are introduced among the bold design of the tracery. Inside you see irregular rows of Hindu pillars, carved with that grotesque figure-life of the gods of Hindu religion. These pillars are easily detected to be in three separate pieces, and were doubtless piled on each other to give the necessary height for a Mohammedan mosque, by comparison with the low, intricate structure of pillars of a Hindu temple. General Cunningham, the archæologist, considers this mosque the most interesting piece of antiquity in India.
We are much struck, as are all new arrivals in India, with the ridiculous number of servants required in one establishment. All say it is unavoidable, as each servant will only undertake one duty, and the wages given are extremely small; and there is another thing, you never know what your servant eats, nor where he sleeps—he "finds" himself in a very comprehensive sense of the term. The caste compels the first institution, and the second is in accordance with the habit of all natives. I thought it very strange at first to see the verandahs full of recumbent figures wrapped in their quilts and striped blankets, and looking like so many corpses. They sleep on the mats outside the door, under a tree, or on the road—it is all the same to them where it is, so long as they may sleep long and heavily, for all natives are very somnolent.