The European officers of native regiments, and many officers formerly in the Company‘s service, habitually show great kindness to the natives, but it is the benevolent kindness of the master for a favorite slave, of the superior for men immeasurably beneath him; there is little of the feeling which a common citizenship should bestow, little of that equality of man and man which Christianity would seem to teach, and which our Indian government has for some years favored.
At Lucknow, I saw the Residency, and at Cawnpore, on my return to the East Indian Railway, the intrenchments which were, each of them, the scene in 1857 of those defenses against the mutineers generally styled “glorious” or “heroic,” though made by men fighting with ropes about their necks. The successful defenses of the fort at Arrah and of the Lucknow Residency were rather testimonies to the wonderful fighting powers of the English than to their courage,—for cowards would fight when the alternative was, fight or die. As far as Oude was concerned, the “rebellion” of 1857 seems to have been rather a war than a mutiny; but the habits of the native princes would probably have led them to have acted as treacherously at Lucknow in the case of a surrender as did the Nana at Cawnpore, and our officers wisely determined that in no event would they treat for terms. What is to be regretted is that we as conquerors should have shown the Oude insurgents no more mercy than they would have shown to us, and that we should have made use of the pretext that the rising was a mere mutiny of our native troops, as an excuse for hanging in cold blood the agriculturists of Oude. Whatever the duplicity of their rulers, whatever the provocation to annexation may have been, there can be no doubt that the revolution in the land-laws set on foot by us resulted in the offer of a career as native policemen or railway ticket-clerks to men whose ancestors were warriors and knights when ours wore woad; and we are responsible before mankind for having treated as flagrant treason and mutiny a legitimate war on the part of the nobility of Oude. In the official papers of the government of the Northwest Provinces, the so-called “mutiny” is styled more properly “a grievous civil war.”
There is much reason to fear, not that the mutiny will be too long remembered, but that it will be too soon forgotten. Ten years ago, Monghyr was an ash-heap, Cawnpore a name of horror, Delhi a stronghold of armed rebels, yet now we can travel without change of cars through peaceful and prosperous Monghyr and Cawnpore—a thousand and twenty miles—in forty hours, and find at the end of our journey that shaded boulevards have already taken the place of the walls of Delhi.
Quitting the main line of the East Indian Railway at Toondla Junction, I passed over a newly-made branch road to Agra. The line was but lately opened, and birds without number sat upon the telegraph-posts, and were seemingly too astonished to fly away from the train, while, on the open barrens, herds of Indian antelopes grazed fearlessly, and took no notice of us when we passed.
Long before we entered Akbarabad, as the city should be called, by the great new bridge across the Jumna, I had sighted in the far distance the majestic, shining dome of the famed Taj Mahal; but when arrived within the city, I first visited the citadel and ramparts. The fort and palace of Akbar are the Moslem creed in stone. Without—turned toward the unbeliever and the foe—the far-famed triple walls, frowning one above the other with the frown that a hill-fanatic wears before he strikes the infidel; within is the secure paradise of the believing “Emperor of the world”—delicious fountains pouring into basins of the whitest marble, beds of rose and myrtle, balconies and pavilions; part of the zenana, or women‘s wing, overhanging the river, and commanding the distant snow-dome of the Taj. Within, too, the “Motee Musjid”—“Pearl of Mosques” in fact as well as name—a marble-cloistered court, to which an angel architect could not add a stone, nor snatch one from it, without spoiling all. These for believers; for non-believers the grim old Saracenic “Hall of the Seat of Judgment.” The palace, except the mosque, which is purity itself, is overlaid with a crust of gems. There is one famed chamber—a woman‘s bath-house—the roof and sides of which are covered with tiny silver-mounted mirrors, placed at such angles as to reflect to infinity the figures of those who stand within the bath; and a court is near at hand, paved with marble squares in black and white, over which Akbar and his vizier used to sit and gravely play at draughts with dancing girls for “pieces.”
On the river bank, a mile from Akbar‘s palace, in the center of a vast garden entered through the noblest gateways in the world, stands the Taj Mahal, a terrace rising in dazzling whiteness from a black mass of cypresses, and bearing four lofty, delicate minars, and the central pile that gleams like an Alp against the deep-blue sky—minars, terrace, tomb, all of spotless marble and faultless shape. Its Persian builders named the Taj “the palace floating in the air.”
Out of the fierce heat and blazing sunlight you enter into chill and darkness, but soon begin to see the hollow dome growing into form above your head, and the tomb itself—that of Noor Mahal, the favorite queen of Shah Jehan—before you, and beside it her husband‘s humbler grave. Though within and without the Taj is white, still here you find the walls profusely jeweled, and the purity retained. Flowers are pictured on every block in mosaic of cinnamon-stone, carnelian, turquoise, amethyst, and emerald; the corridors contain the whole Koran, inlaid in jet-black stone, yet the interior as a whole exceeds in chastity the spotlessness of the outer dome. Oriental, it is not barbaric, and a sweet melancholy is the effect the Taj produces on the mind, when seen by day; in the still moonlight, the form is too mysterious to be touching.
In a Persian manuscript, there still remains a catalogue of the prices of the gems made use of in the building of the Taj, and of the places from which they came. Among those named are coral from Arabia, sapphires from Moldavia, amethysts from Persia, crystal from China, turquoises from Thibet, diamonds from Bundelcund, and lapis-lazuli from Ceylon. The stones were presents or tribute to the emperor, and the master-masons came mostly from Constantinople and Bagdad—a fact which should be remembered when we are discussing the intellectual capacity of the Bengal Hindoos. That a people who paint their cows pink with green spots, and their horses orange or bright red, should be the authors of the Pearl Mosque and the Taj, would be too wonderful for our belief; but the Mohammedan conquerors brought with them the chosen artists of the Moslem world. The contrast between the Taj and the Monkey Temple at Benares reminds one of that between a Cashmere and a Norwich shawl.
It is not at Agra alone that we meet the works of Mogul emperors. Much as we have ourselves done in building roads and bridges, there are many parts of Upper India where the traces of the Moslem are still more numerous than are at present those of the later conquerors of the unfortunate Hindoos. Mosques, forts, conduits, bridges, gardens—all the works of the Moguls are both solid and magnificent, and it was with almost reverential feelings that I made my pilgrimage to the tomb at Secundra of the great Emperor Akbar, grandfather of Shah Jehan, son of Hoomayoon, and founder of Agra City.
It is to be remarked that the Mohammedans in India make a considerable show for their small numbers. Of the great cities of India, the three Presidency towns are English; and the three gigantic cities of Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow, chiefly Mohammedan. Benares alone is a Hindoo city, and even in Benares the Mohammedans have their temples. All the great buildings of India are Mohammedan; so are all the great works that are not English. Yet even in the Agra district the Mohammedans are only one-twelfth of the population, but they live chiefly in the towns.