The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiyā, passed off more at Dhōlpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them at my tents by the time I came up. The bad rupees were brought to a native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search of the knave, but he could nowhere be found. The gates of the town were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain—he had gone on. I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure; but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in advance of me. I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad coin, and gone on to Agra. The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.
On the 29th, we remained at Dhōlpur to receive and return the visits of the young Rājā, or, as he is called, the young Rānā, a lad of about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull. He came about ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue, and a tolerable show of elephants and horses. The uniforms of his guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please me half so much as those of the Datiyā guards, who were permitted to consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old friend Parīchhit.[9] The lad had with him about a dozen old public servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the lad in their presence that 'these were the greatest ornament of a prince's throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government'. They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among the peasantry of the country. I mentioned that I had understood the boatmen of the Chambal at Dhōlpur never caught or ate fish. The lad seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that 'there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dhōlpur never ate fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared'. I asked the lad whether he was fond of hunting. He seemed again confounded, and the minister said that 'his highness never either hunted or fished, as people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life'. 'And yet', said I, 'they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.' They were all pleased again, and said that they were not prohibited from killing tigers; but that there was no jungle of any kind near Dhōlpur, and, consequently, no tigers to be found. The Jāts are descendants of the Getae, and were people of very low caste, or rather of no caste at all, among the Hindoos, and they are now trying to raise themselves by abstaining from killing and eating animals.[10] Among Hindoos this is everything; a man of low caste is 'sab kuchh khātā', sticks at nothing in the way of eating; and a man of high caste is a man who abstains from eating anything but vegetable or farinaceous food; if, at the same time, he abstains from using in his cook-room all woods but one, and has that one washed before he uses it, he is canonized.[11] Having attained to military renown and territorial dominion in the usual way by robbery, the Jāts naturally enough seek the distinction of high caste to enable them the better to enjoy their position in society.
It had been stipulated that I should walk to the bottom of the steps to receive the Rānā, as is the usage on such occasions, and carpets were accordingly spread thus far. Here he got out of his chair, and I led him into the large room of the bungalow, which we occupied during our stay, followed by all his and my attendants. The bungalow had been built by the former Resident at Gwālior, the Honourable R. Cavendish, for his residence during the latter part of the rains, when Gwālior is considered to be unhealthy. At his departure the Rānā purchased this bungalow for the use of European gentlemen and ladies passing through his capital.
In the afternoon, about four o'clock, I went to return his visit in a small palace not yet finished, a pretty piece of miniature fortification, surrounded by what they call their 'chhāonī', or cantonments. The streets are good, and the buildings neat and substantial; but there is nothing to strike or particularly interest the stranger. The interview passed off without anything remarkable; and I was more than ever pleased with the people by whom this young chief is surrounded. Indeed, I had much reason to be pleased with the manners of all the people on this side of the Chambal. They are those of a people well pleased to see English gentlemen among them, and anxious to make themselves useful and agreeable to us. They know that their chief is indebted to the British Government for all the country he has, and that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army, were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the Bundēlkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwālior side, the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwālior territory seem to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members, so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that, though the Dhōlpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Tīmūr, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty chiefs of Bundēlkhand, who are in the same manner especially dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.
At Dhōlpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humāyūn, by some great officers of his government, whose remains still rest undisturbed among them, though the names of their families have been for many ages forgotten, and no men of their creed now live near to demand for them the respect of the living. These tombs are all elaborately built and worked out of the fine freestone of the country and the trellis-work upon some of their stone screens is still as beautiful as when first made. There are Persian and Arabic inscriptions upon all of them, and I found from them that one of the mosques had been built by the Emperor Shāh Jahān in A.D. 1634,[13] when he little dreamed that his three sons would here meet to fight the great fight for the throne while he yet sat upon it.[14]
Notes:
1. December, 1835.
2. The author's remark that in India the roads are 'nowhere metalled' must seem hardly credible to a modern traveller, who sees the country intersected by thousands of miles of metalled road. The Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Lahore, constructed in Lord Dalhousie's time, alone measures about 1,200 miles. The development of roads since 1850 ha been enormous, and yet the mileage of good roads would have to be increased tenfold to put India on an equality with the more advanced countries of Europe.
3. Ante, Chanter 36, notes 26 & 27.
4. The Baiza Bāī was the widow of Daulat Rāo Sindhia. He had died on March 21, 1827. With the consent of the Government of India, she adopted a boy as his successor, but, being an ambitions and intriguing woman, she tried to keep all power in her own hands. The young Mahārājā fled from her, and took refuge in the Residency in October, 1832. In December of the same year Lord William Bentinck visited Gwālior, and assumed an attitude of absolute neutrality. The result was that trouble continued, and seven months later the Mahārājā again fled to the Residency. The troops then revolted against the Baiza Bāī, and compelled her to retire to Dhōlpur. This event put an end to her political activity. Ultimately she was allowed to return to Gwālior, and died there in 1862 (Malleson, The Native States of India, pp. 160- 4). The author wrote an unpublished history of Baiza Bāī (ante, Bibliography).