Leaving your shoes outside the very precincts of the tank, with the police guard that we have stationed there, you skirt one side of the water, and then leave the mosaic terrace for a still more gorgeous causeway, that, bordered on either side by rows of golden lamp-supporters, carries the path across toward the rich pavilion, the walls of which are as thickly spread with gems as are those of Akbar‘s palace. Here you are met by a bewildering din, for under the inner dome sit worshipers by the score, singing with vigor the grandest of barbaric airs to the accompaniment of lyre, harp, and tomtom, while in the center, on a cushion, is a long-bearded gray old gooroo, or priest of the Sikh religion—a creed singularly pure, though little known. The effect of the scene is much enhanced by the beauty of the surrounding houses, whose oriel windows overhang the tank, that the Sikh princes may watch the evolutions of the lantern-bearing boats on nights when the temple is illuminated. When seen by moonlight, the tank is a very picture from the “Arabian Nights.”
This is a time of ferment in the Sikh religion. A carpenter named Ram Singh—a man with all that combination of shrewdness and imagination, of enthusiasm and worldliness, by which the world is governed—another Mohammed or Brigham Young, perhaps—has preached his way through the Punjaub, infusing his own energy into others, and has drawn away from the Sikh Church some hundred thousand followers—reformers—who call themselves the Kookas. These modern Anabaptists—for many are disposed to look upon Ram Singh as another John of Leyden—bind themselves by some terrible and secret oath, and the government fear that reformation of religion is to be accompanied by reformation of the State of a kind not advantageous to the English power. When Ram Singh lately proclaimed his intention of visiting the Durbar Temple, the gooroos incited the Sikh fanatics to attack his men with clubs, and the military police were forced to interfere. There is now, however, a Kooka temple at Lahore.
In spite of religious ferment, there is little in the bazaar or temples of Umritsur to remind one of the times—only some twenty years ago—when the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej, and its leaders threatened to sack Delhi and Calcutta, and drive the English out of India; it is impossible, however, to believe that there is no undercurrent in existence. Eighteen years cannot have sufficed to extinguish the Sikh nationality, and the men who beat us at Chillianwallah are not yet dead, or even old. When the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh returned from England in 1864 to bury his mother‘s body, the chiefs crowded round him as he entered Lahore, and besought him to resume his position at their head. His answer was a haughty “Jao!” (“Begone!”) If the Sikhs are to rise once more, they will look elsewhere for their leader.
CHAPTER XI.
LAHORE.
CROSSING in a railway journey of an hour one of the most fertile districts of the Punjaub, I was struck with the resemblance of the country to South Australia: in each great sweeps of wheat-growing lands, with here and there an acacia or mimosa tree; in each a climate hot, but dry, and not unhealthy;—singularly hot here for a tract in the latitude of Vicksburg, near which the Mississippi is sometimes frozen.
Through groves of a yellow-blossomed, sweet-scented, weeping acacia, much like laburnum, in which the fortified railway station seems out of place, I reached the tomb-surrounded garden that is called Lahore—a city of pomegranates, oleanders, hollyhocks, and roses. The date-groves of Lahore are beautiful beyond description; especially so the one that hides the Agra Bank.
Lahore matches Umritsur in the purity of its Orientalism, Agra in the strength and grandeur of its walls: but it has no Tank Temple and no Taj; the Great Mosque is commonplace, Runjeet Singh‘s tomb is tawdry, and the far-famed Shalimar Gardens inferior to those of Pinjore. The strangest sight of Lahore is its new railway station—a fortress of red brick, one of many which are rising all over India. The fortification of the railway stations is decidedly the next best step to that of having no forts at all.
The city of Lahore is surrounded by a suburb of great tombs, in which Europeans have in many cases taken up their residence by permission of the owner, the mausoleums being, from the thickness of their walls, as cool as cellars. Sometimes, however, a fanatical relative of the man buried in the tomb will warn the European tenant that he will die within a year—a prophecy which poison has once or twice brought to its fulfillment in the neighborhood of Lahore and at Moultan.
Strolling in the direction of the Cabool Gate, I came on the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjaub, driving in an open carriage drawn by camels; and passing out on to the plain, I met all the officers in garrison returning on Persian ponies from a game at the Afghan sport of “hockey upon horseback,” while a little farther were some English ladies with hawks. Throughout the Northern Punjaub a certain settling down in comfort on the part of the English officials is to be remarked, and the adaptation of native habits to English uses, of which I had in one evening‘s walk the three examples which I have mentioned, is a sign of a tendency toward that making the best of things which in a newly-occupied country precedes the entrance upon a system of permanent abode. Lahore has been a British city for nineteen years, Bombay for two centuries and more; yet Lahore is far more English than Bombay.
Although there are as yet no signs of English settlement in the Punjaub, still the official community in many a Punjaub station is fast becoming colonial in its type, and Indian traditions are losing ground. English wives and sisters abound in Lahore, even the railway and canal officials having brought out their families; and during the cool weather race meetings, drag hunts, cricket matches, and croquet parties follow one another from day to day, and Lahore boasts a volunteer corps. When the hot season comes on, those who can escape to the hills, and the wives and children of those who cannot go, run to Dalhousie, as Londoners do to Eastbourne.