Hinglaj, a famous pilgrimage.
Tatta stands on the high road from India to Hinglaj, in Mekran, a place of pilgrimage and great celebrity, situated under the barren mountains of Hala (the Irus of the ancients), and marked only by a spring of fresh water, without house or temple. The spot is believed to have been visited by Ramchunder, the Hindoo demi-god, himself; an event which is chronicled on the rock, with figures of the sun and moon engraven as further testimony! The distance from Tatta exceeds 200 miles; and the road passes by Curachee, Soumeeanee, and the province of Lus, the country of the Noomrees, a portion of the route of Alexander the Great. A journey to Hinglaj purifies the pilgrim from his sins; a cocoa-nut, cast into a cistern, exhibits the nature of his career: if the water bubbles up, his life has been, and will continue, pure; but if still and silent, the Hindoo must undergo further penance, to appease the deity. The tribe of Goseins, who are a kind of religious mendicants, though frequently merchants and most wealthy, frequent this sequestered place, and often extend their journey to an island called Seetadeep, not far from Bunder Abbass, in Persia. They travel in caravans of an hundred, or even more, under an “agwa,” or spiritual guide. At Tatta they are furnished by the high-priest with a rod, which is supposed to partake of his own virtues, and to conduct the cortège to its destination. In exchange for its talismanic powers, each pilgrim pays three rupees and a half, and faithfully promises to restore the rod on his return; for no one dares to reside in so holy and solitary a spot. The “agwa” receives with it his reward; and many a Hindoo expends in this pilgrimage the hard-earned wealth of a whole life. On his arrival at Tatta from Hinglaj, he is invested with a string of white beads, peculiar to that city, and only found on the rocky ridge near it. They resemble the grains of pulse or juwaree; and the pilgrim has the satisfaction of believing that they are the petrified grain of the Creator, left on earth to remind him of his creation. They now form a monopoly and source of profit to the priests of Tatta.
Climate. Return to the mouth of the Indus.
We quitted Tatta on the morning of the 10th of April, and retraced our steps to Meerpoor; a distance of twenty-four miles, over roads nearly impassable from rain. I observe, in Hamilton’s “India,” that there is frequently a dearth of it here for three years at a time; but we had very heavy showers and a severe fall of hail, though the thermometer stood at 86°. The dews and mists about Tatta make it a disagreeable residence at this season; and the dust is described as intolerable in June and July.
Our road lay through a desert country along the “Buggaur;” one of the two large branches of the Indus, which separate below Tatta. It has its name from the destructive velocity with which it runs, tearing up trees in its course. It has been forsaken for a few years past, and had only a width of 200 yards where we crossed it, below Meerpoor. The Indus itself, before this division takes place, is a noble river; and we beheld it at Tatta with high gratification. The water is foul and muddy; but it is 2000 feet wide, two fathoms and a half deep, from shore to shore. When I first saw it, the surface was agitated by a violent wind, which had raised up waves, that raged with great fury; and I no longer felt wonder at the natives designating so vast a river by the name of “durya,” or the Sea of Sinde.
Notions of the people.
On our return, we saw much of the people, who were disposed from the first to treat us more kindly than the government. Their notions regarding us were strange: some asked us why we allowed dogs to clean our hands after a meal, and if we indiscriminately ate cats and mice, as well as pigs. They complained much of their rulers, and the ruinous and oppressive system of taxation to which they were subjected, as it deterred them from cultivating any considerable portion of land. Immense tracts of the richest soil lie in a state of nature, between Tatta and the sea, overgrown with tamarisk shrubs, which attain, in some places, the height of twenty feet, and, threading into one another, form impervious thickets. At other places, we passed extensive plains of hard-caked clay, with remains of ditches and aqueducts, now neglected. We reached the sea in two days.
Alexander’s journey.
Arrian informs us, that, after Alexander returned from viewing the right branch of the Indus, he again set out from Pattala, and descended the other branch of the river, which conducted him to a “certain lake, joined either by the river spreading wide over a flat country, or by additional streams flowing into it from the adjacent parts, and making it appear like a bay in the sea.” There, too, he commanded another haven to be built, named Xylenopolis. The professed object of this second voyage to the sea was to seek for bays and creeks on the sea-coast, and to explore which of the two branches would afford the greatest facilities for the passage of his fleet; for Arrian says, “he had a vast ambition of sailing all through the sea, from India to Persia, to prove that the Indian Gulf had a communication with the Persian.” In this bay Alexander landed, with a party of horse, and travelled along the coast, to try if he could find bays and creeks to secure his fleets from storms; “causing wells to be dug, to supply his navy with water.” I look upon it, therefore, as conclusive that Alexander the Great descended by the Buggaur and Sata, the two great branches below Tatta, and never entered Cutch, as has been surmised, but that his three days’ journey, after descending the eastern branch, was westward, and between the two mouths, in the direction his fleet was to sail.
Embark on the Indus. Boats.