Mausoleum of Jaswant Rāo Holkar.
IMAGE OF THE SNAKE KING AT THE FOUNTAIN OF THE AMJAR.
To face page 1770.
I left the master to visit Mahua, whose stall is close to the mausoleum of Holkar, whom he bore in many a desperate strife. The noble animal seemed to possess all his master’s aversion to a Farangi, and when, having requested his body-clothes to be removed, I went up to examine him, he at first backed his ears and showed fight; but at last permitted me to rub his fine forehead. Mahua is a chestnut of the famed Bhimthadi[[7]] breed; like his master, a genuine native of Maharashtra, he exhibits the framework of a perfect horse, though under 14-3; his forelegs show what he has gone through. His head is a model, exhibiting the highest quality of blood; ears small and pointed, eye full and protruding, and a mouth that could drink out of a tea-cup. He is in very good condition; but I put in my arzi that they would provide more ample and sweeter bedding, which was readily promised. The favourite elephant is a pensioner as well as Mahua. Even in these simple incidents we see that the mind is influenced by similar associations all over the world.
Bhanpura is a town of five thousand houses, surrounded by a wall in good order; the inhabitants apparently well contented with the mild administration of Tantia Jog,[[8]] the present Diwan of Holkar’s court; but they are all alive to the conviction that this tranquillity is due to the supervising power alone. I was greatly gratified by a visit from the respectable community of Bhanpura, merchants, bankers, and artisans, headed by the Hakim in person, nor could the inhabitants of my own country, Mewar, evince more kind and courteous feeling. In fact, they have not forgotten the old tie; that the Rao of Bhanpura, though now holding but a small portion of his inheritance, was one of the chief nobles of Mewar, and even still receives the tilak of accession for Amad from the hands of his ancient lord, though nearly a century has elapsed since Holkar became his sovereign de facto: but associations here are all-powerful.
Garot, December 7; distance, thirteen miles; direction, S.S.E.—It was delightful to range over the expansive plains of Malwa, and not to be reminded at every step by the exclamation “thokar!” of the attendant, that there was some stony impediment ready to trip one up, the moment one’s vision was raised above the earth. A singular contrast was presented between the moral aspect of these plains and of Haraoti. Here, though the seat of perpetual war, still visible in sterile fields, we [721] observe comfort displayed in the huts and in the persons of the peasantry; there, amidst all the gifts of Annapurna, the miserable condition of the ryot provokes one to ask, “Whence this difference?” The reason is elsewhere explained.
Garot is a thriving town of twelve hundred houses, the chief of a tappa or subdivision of Rampura, whence a deputy Hakim is sent as resident manager. It is walled in; but the inhabitants seemed to feel they had now a better security than walls. Here there is nothing antique; but Moli, with its old castle, about midway in this morning’s journey, might furnish something for the porte-feuille, especially a fine sculptured toran yet standing, and fragments strewed in every direction. Tradition is almost mute, and all I could learn was, that it was the abode of a king, called Satal-Patal, whom they carried back to the era of the Pandus.
I was much surprised to find the plain strewed with agates and cornelians, of every variety of tint and shape, both veined and plain, semi-transparent and opaque, many stalactitic, in various degrees of hardness, still containing the fibre of grass or root, serving as a nucleus for the concretion. There are no hills to account for these products in the black loam of the plains, unless the Chambal should have burst his bed and inundated them. Nor are there any nalas which could have carried them down, or any appearance of calcareous deposit in the soil, which when penetrated to any depth, was found to rest upon blue slate.
Caves of Dhamnār,[[9]] December 8; direction, south 10° west; distance, twelve miles.—The country reminded us of Mewar, having the same agreeable undulations of surface and a rich soil, which was strewed throughout, as yesterday, with agates. As we approached the object of our search, the caves of Dhamnar, we crossed a rocky ridge covered with the dhak jungle, through which we travelled until we arrived at the mount. We found our camp pitched at the northern base, near a fine tank of water; but our curiosity was too great to think of breakfast until the mental appetite was satiated.
The hill is between two and three miles in circumference; to the north it is bluff, of gradual ascent, and about one hundred and forty feet in height, the summit presenting a bold perpendicular scarp, about thirty feet high. The top is flat, and covered with bar trees. On the south side it has the form of a horse-shoe, or irregular crescent, the horns of which are turned to the south, having the same bold natural rampart running round its crest, pierced throughout with caves, of which I counted one hundred and seventy;[[10]] I should rather say that these were merely the entrances to the [722] temples and extensive habitations of these ancient Troglodytes. The rock is a cellular iron-clay, so indurated and compact as to take a polish. There are traces of a city, external as well as internal, but whether they were cotemporaneous we cannot conjecture. If we judge from the remains of a wall about nine feet thick, of Cyclopean formation, being composed of large oblong masses without cement, we might incline to that opinion, and suppose that the caves were for the monastic inhabitants, did they not afford to the contrary in their extent and appropriation.