Letters of Marque

by Rudyard Kipling

The last resting-place of the Maharanas of Udaipur is at Ahar, a little village two miles east of the City. Here they go down in their robes of State, their horse following behind, and here the Political saw, after the death of a Maharana, the dancing-girls dancing before the poor white ashes, the musicians playing among the cenotaphs, and the golden hookah, sword and water-vessel laid out for the naked soul doomed to hover twelve days round the funeral pyre, before it could depart on its journey towards a fresh birth in the endless circle of the Wheel of Fate. Once, in a neighboring State it is said, one of the dancing-girls stole a march in the next world’s precedence and her lord’s affections, upon the legitimate queens. The affair happened, by the way, after the Mutiny, and was accomplished with great pomp in the light of day. Subsequently those who might have stopped it but did not, were severely punished. The girl said that she had no one to look to but the dead man, and followed him, to use Tod’s formula, “through the flames.” It would be curious to know what is done now and again among these lonely hills in the walled holds of the Thakurs.

But to return from the burning-ground to modern Udaipur, as at present worked under the Maharana and his Prime Minister Rae Punna Lal, C. I. E. To begin with, His Highness is a racial anomaly in that, judged by the strictest European standard, he is a man of temperate life, the husband of one wife whom he married before he was chosen to the throne after the death of the Maharana Sujjun Singh in 1884. Sujjun Singh died childless and gave no hint of his desires as to succession and—omitting all the genealogical and political reasons which would drive a man mad—Futteh Singh was chosen, by the Thakurs, from the Seorati Branch of the family which Sangram Singh II. founded. He is thus a younger son of a younger branch of a younger family, which lucid statement should suffice to explain everything. The man who could deliberately unravel the succession of any one of the Rajput States would be perfectly capable of clearing the politics of all the Frontier tribes from Jumrood to Quetta.

Roughly speaking, the Maharana and the Prime Minister—in whose family the office has been hereditary for many generations—divide the power of the State. They control, more or less, the Mahand Raj Sabha or Council of Direction and Revision. This is composed of many of the Rawats and Thakurs of the State, and the Poet Laureate who, under a less genial administration, would be presumably the Registrar. There are also District Officers, Officers of Customs, Superintendents of the Mint, Master of the Horses, and Supervisor of Doles, which last is pretty and touching. The State officers itself, and the Englishman’s investigations failed to unearth any Bengalis. The Commandant of the State Army, about five thousand men of all arms, is a retired non-commissioned officer, a Mr. Lonergan; who, as the medals on his breast attest, has “done the State some service,” and now in his old age rejoices in the rank of Major-General, and teaches the Maharaja’s guns to make uncommonly good practice. The infantry are smart and well set up, while the Cavalry—rare thing in Native States—have a distinct notion of keeping their accoutrements clean. They are, further, well mounted on light wiry Mewar and Kathiawar horses. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that the Pathan comes down with his pickings from the Punjab to Udaipur, and finds a market there for animals that were much better employed in—but the complaint is a stale one. Let us see, later on, what the Jodhpur stables hold; and then formulate an indictment against the Government. So much for the indigenous administration of Udaipur. The one drawback in the present Maharaja, from the official point of view, is his want of education. He is a thoroughly good man, but was not brought up with a seat on the guddee before his eyes, consequently he is not an English-speaking man.

There is a story told of him, which is worth the repeating. An Englishman who flattered himself that he could speak the vernacular fairly well, paid him a visit and discoursed with a round mouth. The Maharana heard him politely, and turning to a satellite, demanded a translation; which was given. Then said the Maharana:—“Speak to him in Angrezi.” The Angrezi spoken by the interpreter was the vernacular as the Sahibs speak it, and the Englishman, having ended his conference, departed abashed. But this backwardness is eminently suited to a place like Udaipur, and a “varnished” prince is not always a desirable thing. The curious and even startling simplicity of his life is worth preserving. Here is a specimen of one of his days. Rising at four—and the dawn can be bitterly chill—he bathes and prays after the custom of his race, and at six is ready to take in hand the first instalment of the day’s work which comes before him through his Prime Minister, and occupies him for three or four hours till the first meal of the day is ready. At two o’clock he attends the Mahand Raj Sabha, and works till five, retiring at a healthily primitive hour. He is said to have his hand fairly firmly upon the reins of rule, and to know as much as most monarchs know of the way in which the revenues—about thirty lakhs—are disposed of. The Prime Minister’s career has been a chequered and interesting one, including, inter alia, a dismissal from power (this was worked from behind the screen), and arrest and an attack with words which all but ended in his murder. He has not so much power as his predecessors had, for the reason that the present Maharaja allows little but tiger-shooting to distract him from the supervision of the State. His Highness, by the way, is a first-class shot, and has bagged eighteen tigers already. He preserves his game carefully, and permission to kill tigers is not readily obtainable.

A curious instance of the old order giving place to the new is in process of evolution and deserves notice. The Prime Minister’s son, Futteh Lal, a boy of twenty years old, has been educated at the Mayo College, Ajmir, and speaks and writes English. There are few native officials in the State who do this; and the consequence is that the lad has won a very fair insight into State affairs, and knows generally what is going forward both in the Eastern and Western spheres of the little Court. In time he may qualify for direct administrative powers, and Udaipur will be added to the list of the States that are governed “English fash” as the irreverent Americans put it. What the end will be, after three generations of Princes and Dewans have been put through the mill of Rajkumar Colleges, those who live will learn.

More interesting is the question—For how long can the vitality of a people whose life was arms be suspended? Men in the North say that, by the favour of the Government, the Sikh Sirdars are rotting on their lands; and the Rajput Thakurs say of themselves that they are growing “rusty.” The old, old problem forces itself on the most unreflective mind at every turn in the gay streets of Udaipur. A Frenchman might write:—“Behold there the horse of the Rajput—foaming, panting, caracoling, but always fettered with his head so majestic upon his bosom so amply filled with a generous heart. He rages, but he does not advance. See there the destiny of the Rajput who bestrides him, and upon whose left flank bounds the sabre useless—the haberdashery of the iron-monger only. Pity the horse in reason, for that life there is his raison d’etre. Pity ten thousand times more the Rajput, for he has no raison d’etre. He is an anachronism in a blue turban.”

The Gaul might be wrong, but Tod wrote things which seem to support this view, in the days when he wished to make “buffer-states” of the land he loved so well.

Let us visit the Durbar Gardens, where little naked Cupids are trampling upon fountains of fatted fish, all in bronze, where there are cypresses and red paths, and a deer-park full of all varieties of deer, besides two growling, fluffy little panther cubs, a black panther who is the Prince of Darkness and a gentleman, and a terrace-full of tigers, bears, and Guzerat lions bought from the King of Oudh’s sale.

On the best site in the Gardens is rising the Victoria Hall, the foundation-stone of which was laid by the Maharana on the 21st of June last. It is built after the designs of Mr. C. Thompson, Executive Engineer of the State, and will be in the Hindu-Saracenic style; having two fronts, west and north. In the former will be the principal entrance, approached by a flight of steps leading to a handsome porch of carved pillars supporting stone beams—the flat Hindu arch. To the left of the entrance hall will be a domed octagonal tower eighty feet high, holding the principal staircase leading to the upper rooms. A corridor on the right of the entrance will lead to the museum, and immediately behind the entrance hall is the reading-room, 42 by 24 feet, and beyond it the library and office. To the right of the reading-room will be an open courtyard with a fountain in the centre, and, beyond the courtyard, the museum—a great hall, one hundred feet long. Over the library and the entrance hall will be private apartments for the Maharana, approached by a private staircase. The communication between the two upper rooms will be by a corridor running along the north front having a parapet of delicately cut pillars and cusped arches—the latter filled in with open tracery. Pity it is that the whole of this will have to be whitewashed to protect the stone from the weather. Over the entrance-porch, and projecting from the upper room, will be a very elaborately cut balcony supported on handsome brackets. Facing the main entrance will be a marble statue, nine feet high, of the Queen, on a white marble pedestal ten feet high. The statue is now being made at home by Mr. Birch, R.A. The cost of the whole will be about Rs. 80,000. Now, it is a curious thing that the statue of Her Majesty will be put some eighty feet below the level of the great bund that holds in the Pichola lake. But the bund is a firm one and has stood for many years.

Another public building deserves notice, and that is the Walter Hospital for native women, the foundation-stone of which was laid by the Countess of Dufferin on that memorable occasion when the Viceroy, behind Artillery Horses, covered the seventy miles from Chitor to Udaipur in under six hours. The building, by the same brain that designed the hall, will be ready for occupation in a month. It is in strict keeping with the canons of Hindu architecture externally, and has a high, well-ventilated waiting-room, out of which, to the right, are two wards for in-patients, and to the left a dispensary and consulting-room. Beyond these, again, is a third ward for in-patients. In a courtyard behind are a ward for low caste patients and the offices.