January 30, 1850.—Kurheya Para, twelve miles, over a plain of excellent muteear soil, a good deal of which-is covered with jungle. Para is a short distance from Kurheya, and our camp is midway between the two villages. The boundary of the Sandee Palee and Mahomdee districts we crossed about four miles from our present encampment. This district, of Mahomdee was taken in contract by Hakeem Mehndee, at three lacs and eleven thousand rupees a-year, in 1804 A.D., and in a few years he brought it into full tillage, and made it yield above seven lacs. It has been falling off ever since it was taken from him, and now yields only between three and four lacs. The jungle is studded with large peepul-trees, which are all shorn of their small branches and leaves. The landholders and cultivators told me that they were taken off by the cowherds who grazed their buffaloes, bullocks, and cows in these jungles; that they formed their chief and, in the cold season, their best food, as the leaves of the peepul-tree were supposed to give warmth to the stomach, and to increase the quantity of the milk; that the cowherds were required to pay nothing for the privilege of grazing their cattle in these jungles, by the person to whom the lands belonged, because they enriched the soil with their manure, and all held small portions of land under tillage, for which they paid rent; that they had the free use of the peepul-trees in the jungles, but were not permitted to touch those on the cultivated lands and in villages.
White ants are so numerous in the argillaceous muteear soil, in which their food abounds, that it is really dangerous to travel on an elephant, or swiftly on horseback, over a new road cut or enlarged through any portion of it that has remained long untilled. The two fore legs of my elephant went down yesterday morning into a deep pit made by them, but concealed by the new road, which has been made over it for the occasion of my visit near Shahabad, and it was with some difficulty that he extricated them. We have had several accidents of the same kind since we came out. In cutting a new road they cut through large ant-hills, and leave no trace of the edifices or the gulf below them, which the little insects have made in gathering their food and raising their lofty habitation. They are not found in the bhoor or oosur soils, and in comparatively small numbers in the doomuteea or lighter soil, but they abound In the muteear soil in proportion to its richness. Cultivation, where the crops are irrigated, destroys them, and the only danger is in passing over new roads cut through jungle, or lands that have remained long untilled, or along the sides of old pathways, from which these land-marks have been removed in hastily widening them for wheeled carriages.
A Brahmin cultivator, whose cart we had been obliged to press into our own service for this stage, came along with me almost all the way. He said, "The spring crops of this season, sir, are no doubt very fine; but in days of yore, before the curse of Bhurt Jee (the brother of Ram) came upon the landholders and cultivators of Oude, they were much finer; when he set out from his capital of Ajoodheea for the conquest of Cylone, he left the administration to his brother, Bhurt Jee, who made a liberal settlement of the land tax. He put a ghurra or pitcher, with a round bottom, turned upside down, into every half acre (beegha) of the cultivated land, and required the landholder or cultivator to leave upon it, as much of the grain produced as the rounded bottom would retain, which could not be one ten-thousandth part of the produce; he lived economically, and collected at this rate during the many years that his brother was absent. But when his brother returned and approached the boundary of his dominions, he met hosts of landholders and cultivators clamouring against the rapacity and oppression of his brother's administration. The humanity of Ram's disposition was shocked, sir, at all this, and he became angry with his brother before he heard what he had to say. When Bhurt had satisfied his brother that he had not taken from them the thousandth part of what he had a right to take, and Ram had, indeed, taken from them himself, he sighed at the wickedness and ingratitude of the agricultural classes of Oude; and the baneful effects of this sad sigh has been upon us ever since, sir, in spite of all we can do to avert them. In order to have the blessing of God upon our labours, it is necessary for us to fulfil strictly all the responsibilities under which we hold and till the land; first, to pay punctually the just demands of Government; second, all the wages of the labour employed; third, all the charities to the poor; fourth, all the offerings to our respective tutelary gods; fifth, a special offering to Mahabeer, alias Hunooman. These payments and offerings, sir, must all be made before the cultivator can safely take the surplus produce to his store-room for sale and consumption."
Old Bukhtawar Sing, who was riding by my side, said, "A conscientious farmer or cultivator, sir, when he finds that his field yields a great deal more than the usual returns, that is when it yields twenty instead of the usual return of ten, gives the whole in charity, lest evil overtake him from his unusual good luck and inordinate exultation."
I asked the Brahmin cultivator why all these offerings were required to be made by cultivators in particular? He replied, "There is, sir, no species of tillage in which the lives of numerous insects are not sacrificed, and it is to atone for these numerous murders, and the ingratitude to Bhurt, that cultivators, in particular, are required to make so many offerings;" and, he added, "much sin, sir, is no doubt brought upon the land by the murder of so many female infants. I believe, sir, that all the tribes of Rajpoots murder them; and I do not think than one in ten is suffered to live. If the family or village priest did not consent to eat with the parents after the murder, no such murders could take place, sir; for none, even of their nearest relatives, will ever eat with them till the Brahmin has done so."
The bearers of the tonjohn in which I sat, said, "We do not believe, sir, that one girl in twenty among the Rajpoots is preserved. Davey Buksh, the Gonda Rajah, is, we believe, the only one of the Biseyn Rajpoot tribe who preserves his daughters;* his father did the same, and his sister, who was married to the Bhudoreea Rajah of Mynpooree, came to see him lately on the occasion of a pilgrimage to Ajoodheea, on the death of her husband; of the six Kulhuns families of Chehdwara, two only preserve their daughters—Surnam Sing of Arta, and Jeskurn of Kumeear; but whether their sons or successors in the estates will do the same is uncertain." These bearers are residents of that district.
[* There are a great many families of the Biseyn Rajpoots who never destroy their infant daughters.]
I may here remark, that oak-trees in the hills of the Himmelah chain are disfigured in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as the peepul and banyan trees are here; their small branches and leaves are torn off to supply fodder for bullocks and other animals. The ilex of the hills has not, however, in its nakedness the majesty of the peepul and banyan of the plains, though neither of them can be said to be "when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most."
January 31, 1850.—Puchgowa, north-east, twelve miles over a plain of doomuteea soil, a good deal of which is out of tillage at present. On the road we came through several neat villages, the best of which was occupied exclusively by the families of the Kunojeea Brahmin proprietors, and the few persons of inferior caste who ploughed their lands for them, as they are a shade too high in caste to admit of their holding their own ploughs. They are, however, very worthy people, and seemed very much pleased at being put so much at their ease in a talk with the great man about their own domestic and rural economy. They told me, that they did not permit Rajpoots to reside in or have anything to do with their village.
"Why?" I asked.—"Because, sir, if they once get a footing among us, they are, sooner or later, sure to turn us all out." "How?"—"They get lands by little and little at lease, soon refuse to pay rent, declare the lands to be their own, collect bad characters for plunder, join the Rajpoots of their own clan in all the villages around in their enterprises, take to the jungles on the first occasion, of a dispute, attack, plunder, and burn the village, murder us and our families, and soon get the estate for themselves, on their own terms from the local authorities, who are wearied out by the loss of revenue arising from their depredations; our safety, sir, depends upon our keeping entirely aloof from them."