The first battery opened fire on the northern face of the fort on October 28th, while the Zenobia and the Firoz poured a well-directed fire of shells on the houses and temples which sheltered the enemy towards the sea. The shells did immense execution and relieved the attack on the Naval Brigade which continued to hold its position with the greatest gallantry though several times surrounded by the enemy. On the night of the 31st October the garrison evacuated the fort and cut its way through a picket of Her Majesty’s 28th Regiment, wounding Ensign Hunter and four men. A detachment under Colonel Christie followed the fugitives next morning and overtook them near Vasatri. A skirmish ensued, but they escaped without much loss and took refuge in the Barda hill. They continued to disturb the peace of Káthiáváḍa for several years. In one of the desultory skirmishes which followed, Lieutenants LaTouche and Hebbert were killed.
Rising in Nagar Párkar.While these events were in progress, Karranji Hati the Rána of Nagar Párkar on the Sindh frontier of Gujarát, took up arms at the head of a band of Sodhás, plundered the treasury and telegraph office at Nagar Párkar, and released the prisoners in the jail. Colonel Evans commanded the field force which was employed against him for many months without any very definite results. The country is a desert and the Sodhás avoided a collision with the troops. The Rána eventually submitted and peace was restored.
[1] The rite of passing cakes from village to village or of passing a dog from village to village is in such complete accord with magical and religious rites practised all over India that it seems hardly possible to accept either as meaningless or as accidental the passing of cakes and of a dog from one part of the country to another on the brink of the Mutinies. Knowing how suitable such a rite is to the state of feeling as well as to the phase of belief prevalent among the plotters of rebellion in Northern India it seems difficult to suppose that the passing of the cakes and the passing of the dog were not both sacramental; that is designed to spread over the country a spirit which had by religious or magical rites been housed in the dog and in the cakes. The cake-spirit, like the sugar-spirit of the Thags, was doubtless Káli, the fierce longing for unbridled cruelty, which worked on the partaker of the Thag sugar with such power that he entered with zest and without remorse on any scheme however cowardly and cruel. Like the Thags those who ate the Mutiny cakes would by partaking become of one spirit, the spirit of the indwelling Káli, and, in that spirit would be ready to support and to take part in any scheme of blood which the leaders of Mutiny might devise and start. Similarly by religious rites the Central India dog, possibly the dog of Báiza Bái of Gwálior (See Text page [437]), had been made the home of some fierce war-spirit, apparently of the dog-formed Khandoba the Marátha Sword God and Dog of War. The inspired dog and the inspired dogs-meat were passed through the land in the confidence that through them the spirit of unrest would pervade every village of Gujarát. Since the Mutinies, by the magic of letters, Káli has passed from the wafer into the leaflet, and the paid political propagandist has taken the place of Khandoba’s pariah dog.
The correctness of the view suggested above is supported if not established by certain passages in Kaye’s Sepoy War, I. 632–642. Chuni says; ‘The circulating of cakes was supposed to foretell disturbance and to imply an invitation to the people to unite for some secret purpose.’ According to the king of Delhi’s physician (page 636) some charm attached to the cakes. The people thought they were made by some adept in the secret arts to keep unpolluted the religion of the country. Another authority (page 637) says; ‘The first circulation of the cakes was on the authority of a pandit who said the people would rise in rebellion if cakes were sent round and that the person in whose name the cakes were sent would rule India.’ The secret comes out in Sitárám Báwá’s evidence (pages 646–648); ‘The cakes in question were a charm or jádu which originated with Dása Báwa the guru or teacher of Nána Sáheb. Dása told Nána Sáheb he would make a charm and as far as the magic cakes should be carried so far should the people be on his side. He then took lotusseed-dough called makána and made an idol of it. He reduced the idol to very small pills and having made an immense number of cakes he put a pillet in each and said that as far as the cakes were carried so far would the people determine to throw off the Company’s yoke.’ With this making of a cake as a sacramental home of Durga or Káli compare the Buddhist of Tibet offering in a human skull to the Máháráni or Queen, that is to Durga or Káli, a sacramental cake made of black-goat’s fat, wine, dough, and butter. (Waddell’s Buddhism in Tibet, 365.). As to the effect of sharing in Durga’s mutiny cakes compare the statement of the Thag Faringia (Sleeman’s Ramaseeana, page 216); The sugar sacrament, gur-tapávani, changes our nature. Let a man once taste the sacramental sugar and he will remain a Thag however skilful a craftsman, however well-to-do. The Urdu proverb says Tapauni-ki-dhaunika gur jisne kháyá wuh waisá huá Who eats the sugar of the sacramental Vase as he is so he remains. The Thags are tools in the hand of the god they have eaten. (Compare Ramaseeana, 76.)—J. M. C. [↑]
[2] Rova in the south-east corner of Sirohi: Mandeta in Ídar in the Máhi Kántha. P. FitzGerald Esq. Political Agent Máhi Kántha. [↑]
APPENDIX III.
BHINMÁL.
Appendix III.
Bhinmál.
Description. Description.Bhinmál,[1] North Latitude 24° 42′ East Longitude 72° 4′, the historical Shrimál, the capital of the Gurjjaras from about the sixth to the ninth century, lies about fifty miles west of Ábu hill. The site of the city is in a wide plain about fifteen miles west of the last outlier of the Ábu range. To the east, between the hills and Bhinmál, except a few widely-separated village sites, the plain is chiefly a grazing ground with brakes of thorn and cassia bushes overtopped by standards of the camel-loved pilu Salvadora persica. To the south, the west, and the north the plain is smooth and bare passing westwards into sand. From the level of the plain stand out a few isolated blocks of hill, 500 to 800 feet high, of which one peak, about a mile west of the city, is crowned by the shrine of Chámuṇḍa the Śrí or Luck of Bhinmál. From a distance the present Bhinmál shows few traces of being the site of an ancient capital. Its 1500 houses cover the gentle slope of an artificial mound, the level of their roofs broken by the spires of four Jain temples and by the ruined state office at the south end of the mound. Closer at hand the number and size of the old stone-stripped tank and fortification mounds and the large areas honeycombed by diggers for bricks show that the site of the present Bhinmál was once the centre of a great and widespread city. Of its fortifications, which, as late as a.d. 1611, the English merchant Nicholas Ufflet, in a journey from Jhálor to Ahmedábád, describes as enclosing a circuit of thirty-six miles (24 kos) containing many fine tanks going to ruin, almost no trace remains.[2] The names of some of the old gates are remembered, Surya in the north-east, Śrí Lakshmí in the south-east, Sanchor in the west, and Jhálor in the north. Sites are pointed out
Appendix III.
Bhinmál.
Description. as old gateways five to six miles to the east and south-east of the present town, and, though their distance and isolation make it hard to believe that these ruined mounds were more than outworks, Ufflet’s testimony seems to establish the correctness of the local memory.[3] Besides these outlying gateways traces remain round the foot of the present Bhinmál mound of a smaller and later wall. To the east and south the line of fortification has been so cleared of masonry and is so confused with the lines of tank banks, which perhaps were worked into the scheme of defence, that all accurate local knowledge of their position has passed. The Gujarát gate in the south of the town though ruined is well marked. From the Gujarát gateway a line of mounds may be traced south and then west to the ruins of Pipalduara perhaps the western gateway. The wall seems then to have turned east crossing the watercourse and passing inside that is along the east bank of the watercourse north to the south-west corner of the Jaikop or Yaksha lake. From this corner it ran east along the south bank of Jaikop to the Jhálor or north gate which still remains in fair preservation its pointed arch showing it to be of Musalmán or late (17th–18th century) Ráhtor construction. From the Jhálor gate the foundations of the wall may be traced east to the Kanaksen or Karáda tank. The area to the east of the town from the Karáda tank to the Gujarát gate has been so quarried for brick to build the present Bhinmál that no sign remains of a line of fortifications running from the Karáda tank in the east to the Gujarát gate in the south.