“For they were dead and buried and embalm’d,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled:
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after their primæval race was run.”
On my return to the tents, my ayha complained bitterly of the annoyance she had experienced on the long march of thirteen miles and a half, over bad roads; she had been upset in her bailī, a native carriage, drawn by two bullocks, and her serenity was sadly discomposed.
7th.—This day, being Sunday, was a halt,—a great refreshment after toil; and Divine Service was performed in the tent of the Governor-General; after which, at 3 P.M., I went, on an elephant, to see two most ancient and curious specimens of Hindū sculpture, the figures of Rām and Lutchman, which are about five feet in height, carved on separate stones, and surrounded by a whole heaven of gods and goddesses: the stones themselves, which are six or seven feet high, are completely covered with numerous images; and a devi (goddess), rather smaller, is on one side.
Passing through the bazār at Kanauj was a fearful thing. There lay the skeleton of a woman who had died of famine; the whole of her clothes had been stolen by the famished wretches around, the pewter rings were still in her ears, but not a rag was left on the bones that were starting through the black and shrivelled skin; the agony on the countenance of the corpse was terrible. Next to her a poor woman, unable to rise, lifted up her skinny arm, and moaned for food. The unhappy women, with their babies in their arms, pressing them to their bony breasts, made me shudder. Miserable boys, absolutely living skeletons, pursued the elephant, imploring for bread: poor wretches, I had but little money with me, and could give them only that little and my tears: I cannot write about the scene without weeping, it was so horrible, and made me very sick. Six people died of starvation in the bazār to-day. Lord Auckland daily feeds all the poor who come for food, and gives them blankets; five or six hundred are fed daily;—but what avails it in a famine like this? it is merciful cruelty, and only adds a few more days to their sufferings; better to die at once, better to end such intolerable and hopeless misery: these people are not the beggars, but the tillers of the soil. When I was last at Kanauj the place was so beautiful, so luxuriant in vegetation,—the bright green trees, the river winding through low fields of the richest pasture: those fields are all bare, not a blade of grass. The wretched inhabitants tear off the bark of the wild fig tree (goolèr), and pound it into food; in the course of four or five days their bodies swell, and they die in agonies. The cultivators sit on the side of their fields, and, pointing to their naked bodies, cry, “I am dying of hunger.” Some pick out the roots of the bunches of coarse grass, and chew them. The people have become desperate; sometimes, when they see a sipahī eating they rush upon him to take his food; sometimes they fall one over the other as they rush for it, and having fallen, being too weak to rise, they die on the spot, blessed in finding the termination of their sufferings. The very locusts appear to have felt the famine; you see the wings here and there on the ground, and now and then a weak locust pitches on a camel. Every tree has been stripped of its leaves for food for animals. The inhabitants of Kanauj, about a lākh of people, have fled to Oogein and to Saugar. The place will be a desert; none will remain but the grain merchants, who fatten on the surrounding misery. There is no hope of rain for five months; by that time the torments of these poor wretches will have ended in death;—and this place is the one I so much admired from the river, with its rich fields, and its high land covered with fine trees and ruins!
I returned to the ancient Hindū building that had so much interested me, to sketch it at leisure, and was thus employed, when I was surrounded by numbers of the starved and wretched villagers. I performed my task as quickly as possible, and whatever errors there may be in the performance, must be attributed to the painful scene by which I was surrounded; some of the poor people flung themselves on the ground before me, attempting to perform pā-bos, that is, kissing the feet; wildly, frantically, and with tears imploring for food; their skeleton forms hideously bearing proof of starvation; the very remembrance makes me shudder. I quitted the ruin, and returned to my tents. To-morrow we quit Kanauj, thank God! It is dreadful to witness and to be unable to relieve such suffering.
I picked up a curious piece of ancient sculpture, Mahadēo, with Pārvatī in the centre, and a devi on each side, which I brought to my tent on the elephant. Considering it too heavy to carry about on the march, we buried it at night under a peepul tree, and shall take it away on our return home, if it will please to remain there.