In the month of December, 1663, Aurungzebe, attended by his whole court, and an army of ten thousand foot and thirty-five thousand horse, undertook a journey into Cashmere, in the pleasures of which, through the favour of Danekmend Khan, Bernier was allowed to partake. Keeping as long as possible near the banks of the Jumna, in order to enjoy by the way the pleasures of the chase, and the salubrious waters of the river, the army proceeded towards its place of destination by the way of Lahere. The style of travelling adopted by the Great Mogul was perfectly unique. Two sets of tents numerous and spacious enough to contain the whole of the imperial retinue were provided, and of these one set was sent forward, previous to the emperor’s setting out, to the spot marked out for the first halting-place. Here the ground was levelled by the pioneers, the tents pitched, and every convenience provided which the luxurious effeminacy of oriental courtiers, and more particularly of the fretful and capricious inmates of the harem, could require. When the emperor arrived at his camp, a fresh body of pioneers and labourers proceeded with the second set of tents, which they pitched and prepared in like manner; and thus a kind of city, with all its luxuries and conveniences, perpetually moved in advance of the prince, and became stationary whenever and wherever he required it.
During the journey Aurungzebe generally travelled in a species of small turret or houdah, mounted on the back of an elephant. In fine weather this houdah was open on all sides, that the inmate might enjoy the cool breeze from whatever quarter of the heavens it might blow; but when storms or showers came on, he closed his casements, and reclined upon his couch, defended from all the inclemencies of the weather as completely as in the apartments of his palace. Ranchenara Begum, the sister of the emperor, and the other great ladies of the harem, travelled in the same kind of moving palace, mounted upon camels or elephants, and presented a spectacle which Bernier delighted to contemplate. In general the blinds or casements of these splendid little mansions of gold, scarlet, and azure, were closed, to preserve the charms of those within from “Phœbus’ amorous kisses,” or the profane gaze of the vulgar; but once, as the gorgeous cavalcade moved along, our traveller caught a glimpse of the interior of Ranchenara’s mikdembar, and beheld the princess reclined within, while a little female slave fanned away the dust and flies from her face with a bunch of peacock’s feathers. A train of fifty or sixty elephants similarly, though less splendidly, appointed, moving along with grave, solemn pace, surrounded by so vast a retinue as that which now accompanied the court, appeared in the eyes of our traveller to possess something truly royal in its aspect, and with the beauteous goddesses which the fancy placed within, seem, in spite of his affected philosophical indifference, to have delighted him in a very extraordinary manner. True philosophy, however, would have admired the show, while it condemned the extravagance, and despised the pride and effeminacy which produced it.
In this manner the court proceeded through Lahore and the plains of the Pundjâb towards Cashmere; but as their motions were slow, they were overtaken in those burning hollows which condensed and reflected back the rays of the sun like a vast burning-glass, by the heats of summer, which are there little less intense than on the shores of the Persian Gulf. No sooner had the sun appeared above the horizon than the heat became insupportable. Not a cloud stained the firmament; not a breath of air stood upon the earth. Every herb was scorched to cinders; and throughout the wide horizon nothing appeared but an interminable plain of dust below, and above a brazen or coppery sky, glowing like the mouth of a furnace. The horses, languid and worn out, could scarcely drag their limbs along; the very Hindoos themselves, who seem designed to revel in sunshine, began to droop, and our traveller, who had braved the climate of Egypt and the Arabian deserts, writing from the camp, on the tenth day of their march from Lahore, exclaims, “My whole face, hands, and feet are flayed, and my whole body is covered with small red pustules which prick like needles. Yesterday, one of our horsemen, who happened to have no tent, was found dead at the foot of a tree, which he had grasped in his last agonies. I doubt whether I shall be able to hold out till night. All my hopes rest upon a little curds which I steep in water, and on a little sugar, with four or five lemons. The very ink is dried up at the point of my pen, and the pen itself drops from my hand. Adieu.”
His frame, however, was much tougher than he imagined; and he continued to proceed with the rest, till having crossed the Chenâb, one of the five rivers, they ascended Mount Bember, and found themselves in Cashmere, the Tempé of Hindostan. The traditions of the Hindoos respecting the formation of this beautiful valley greatly resemble those which prevailed among the Greeks about that of Thessaly, both being said to have been originally a lake enclosed by lofty mountains, which having, been rent by the agency of earthquakes, or bored by human industry, suffered the waters to escape. Whatever was its origin, the Indian Tempé, though vaunted by less renowned poets, is no way inferior in fertility or beauty to the Thessalian. Fields clothed with eternal green, and sprinkled thick with violets, roses, narcissuses, and other delicate or fragrant flowers, which here grow wild, meet the eye on all sides; while, to divide or diversify them, a number of small streams of crystal purity, and several lakes of various dimensions, glide or sparkle in the foreground of the landscape. On all sides round arise a range of low green hills, dotted with trees, and affording a delicious herbage to the gazelle and other graminivorous animals; while the pinnacles of the Himalaya, pointed, jagged, and broken into a thousand fantastic forms, rear their snowy heads behind, and pierce beyond the clouds. From these unscaleable heights, amid which the imagination of the Hindoo has placed his heaven, ever bright and luminous, innumerable small rivulets descend to the valley; and after rushing in slender cataracts over projecting rocks, and peopling the upland with noise and foam, submit to the direction of the husbandman, and spread themselves in artificial inundations over the fields and gardens below. These numerous mountain-torrents, which unite into one stream before they issue from the valley, may be regarded as the sources of the Jylum or Hydaspes, one of the mightiest rivers of Hindostan.
The beauty and fertility of Cashmere are equalled by the mildness and salubrity of the climate. Here the southern slopes of the hills are clothed with the fruits and flowers of Hindostan; but pass the summit, and you find upon the opposite side the productions of the temperate zone, and the features of a European landscape. The fancy of Bernier, escaping from the curb of his philosophy, ran riot among these hills, which, with their cows, their goats, their gazelles, and their innumerable bees, might, like the promised land, be said to flow with milk and honey.
The inhabitants of this terrestrial paradise, who were as beautiful as their climate, possessed the reputation of being superior in genius and industry to the rest of the Hindoos. The arts and sciences flourished among them; and their manufactures of palanquins, bedsteads, coffers, cabinets, spoons, and inlaid work, were renowned throughout the East. But the fabric which tended most powerfully to diffuse their reputation for ingenuity were their shawls, those soft and exquisite articles of dress which, from that day to this, have enjoyed the patronage of the fair throughout the world. In the days of Bernier these shawls were comparatively little known in Europe; yet his account of them, though highly accurate as far as it goes, is brief and rather unsatisfactory.
During the three or four months which he spent in this beautiful country he made several excursions to the surrounding mountains, where, amid the wildest and most majestic scenery, he beheld with wonder, he tells us, the natural succession of generation and decay. At the bottom of many precipitous abysses, where man’s foot had never descended, he saw hundreds of enormous trunks, hurled down by time, and heaped upon each other in decay; while at their foot, or between their crumbling branches, young ones were shooting up and flourishing. Some of the trees were scorched and burnt, either blasted by the thunderbolt, or, according to the traditions of the peasantry, set on fire in the heat of summer by rubbing against each other, when agitated by fierce burning winds.
The court, having visited Cashmere from motives of pleasure, were determined to taste every species of it which the country could supply; the wild and sublime, which must be sought with toil and difficulty, as well as those more ordinary ones which lay strewed like flowers upon the earth. The emperor accordingly, or at least his harem, ascended the lower range of hills, to enjoy the prospect of abyss and precipice, impending woods, dusky and horrible, and streams rushing forth from their dark wombs, and leaping with thundering and impetuous fury over cliffs of prodigious elevation. One of these small cataracts appeared to Bernier the most perfect thing of the kind in the world; and Jehangheer, who passed many years in Cashmere, had caused a neighbouring rock, from which it could be contemplated to most advantage, to be levelled, in order to behold it at his ease. Here a kind of theatre was raised by Aurungzebe, for the accommodation of his court; and there they sat, viewing with wondering delight this sublime work of Nature, surpassing in grandeur, and by the emotions to which it gave birth, all the wonders of man’s hand. In this instance the stream was beheld at a considerable distance rolling along its weight of waters down the slope of the mountain, through a sombre channel overhung with trees. Arriving at the edge of a rock, the whole stream projected itself forward, and curving round, like the neck of a war-horse, in its descent plunged into the gulf below with deafening and incessant thunder.
An accident which occurred during these imperial excursions threw a damp over their merriment. In ascending the Peer Punjal, the loftiest mountain of the southern chain, from whose summit the eye commands an extensive prospect of Cashmere, one of the foremost elephants was seized with terror, occasioned, according to the Hindoos, by the length and steepness of the acclivity. This beast was one of those upon which the ladies of the harem were mounted; and fifteen others, employed in the same service, followed. The moment his courage failed him he began to reel backwards; and striking against the animal which immediately succeeded, forced him also to retreat. Thus the shock, communicated from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, in an instant threw back the whole fifteen; and being upon the giddy edge of a precipice, no exertion of their drivers or of the bystanders could check their fall; and down they rolled over the rocks into the abyss, with the ladies upon their backs. This accident threw the whole army into consternation. A general halt took place. The most adventurous immediately crept down the cliffs, and were followed by the rest, to aid such as should have escaped with life, and remove the bodies of the dead. Here, to their great astonishment, they found that, by the mercy of Providence, only three or four of the ladies had been killed; but the elephants, which, when they sink under their prodigious burdens even on a smooth road, never rise again, had all been mortally wounded by the fall, and could by no means be lifted from the spot. Even two days afterward, however, when Bernier again visited the place, he observed some of the poor animals moving their trunks.
On returning to Delhi from Cashmere, our traveller appears to have remained quiet for some time, pursuing his researches amid the mazes of the atomical philosophy; for he was a disciple of Democritus, and enjoying those “noctes cœnæque deorum” which seem to have constituted one of the principal pleasures of his friend Danekmend Khan. His influence with this chief he exerted for the benefit of others no less than for his own. Numerous were the individuals who owed to his interference or recommendation their admission into the service of the khan, or the speedy termination of their affairs at court, where Danekmend, who possessed the especial favour of the emperor, could almost always procure an audience, or give success to a petition. These kind offices were uniformly repaid with abundant flattery, if not with gratitude; and the skilful practitioners invariably discharged a portion of the debt beforehand. Putting on a grave face—a possession of infinite value in the East—every person who had need of his services assured him at the outset of the affair that he was the Aristotalis, the Bocrate, and the Abousina Ulzaman (that is, the Aristotle, the Hippocrates, and the Avicenna) of the age. It was in vain that he disavowed all claim to such immediate honours; they persisted in their assertions; argued down his modesty; and eternally renewing the charge, compelled him to acquiesce, and consent to allow all the glorious attributes of those illustrious men to be centred in his own person. A Brahmin whom he recommended to the khan outdid them all; for, upon his first introduction to his master, after having compared him to the greatest kings and conquerors that ever reigned, he concluded by gravely observing, “My lord, whenever you put your foot in the stirrup, and ride abroad accompanied by your cavalry, the earth trembles beneath your feet, the eight elephants which support it not being able to endure so great an exertion!” Upon this, Bernier, who could no longer restrain his disposition to laugh, remarked to the khan, that since this was the case, it was advisable that he should ride as seldom as possible on horseback, in order to prevent those earthquakes, which might, perhaps, occasion much mischief. “You are perfectly right,” replied Danekmend, with a smile, “and it is for that very reason that I generally go abroad in a palanquin!”