Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

by Sir W. H. Sleeman

If Government wishes the Upper Doāb, the Delhi, Mathurā, and Agra districts again enriched and embellished with mango groves, they will not delay to convey this feeling to the hundreds, nay, thousands, who would be willing to plant them upon a single guarantee that the lands upon which the trees stand shall be considered to belong to them and their heirs as long as these trees stand upon them.[11] That the land, the shade, the fruit, and the water will be left to the free enjoyment of the public we may take for granted, since the good which the planter's soul is to derive from such a work in the next world must depend upon their being so; and all that is required to be stipulated in such grants is that mango tamarind, pīpal, or 'bar' (i.e. banyan) trees, at the rate of twenty-five the English acre, shall be planted and kept up in every piece of land granted for the purpose; and that a well of 'pakkā' masonry shall be made for the purpose of watering them, in the smallest, as well as in the largest, piece of ground granted, and kept always in repair.

If the grantee fulfil the conditions, he ought, in order to cover part of the expense, to be permitted to till the land under the trees till they grow to maturity and yield their fruit; if he fails, the lands, having been declared liable to resumption, should be resumed. The person soliciting such grants should be required to certify in his application that he had already obtained the sanction of the present lessee of the village in which he wishes to have his grove, and for this sanction he would, of course, have to pay the full value of the land for the period of his lease. When his lease expires, the land in which the grove is planted would be excluded from the assessment; and when it is considered that every good grove must cost the planter more than fifty times the annual rent of the land, Government may be satisfied that they secure the advantage to their people at a very cheap rate.[12]

Over and above the advantage of fruit, water, and shade for the public, these groves tend much to secure the districts that are well studded with them from the dreadful calamities that in India always attend upon deficient falls of rain in due season. They attract the clouds, and make them deposit their stores in districts that would not otherwise be blessed with them; and hot and dry countries denuded of their trees, and by that means deprived of a great portion of that moisture to which they had been accustomed, and which they require to support vegetation, soon become dreary and arid wastes. The lighter particles, which formed the richest portion of their soil, blow off, and leave only the heavy arenaceous portion; and hence, perhaps, those sandy deserts in which are often to be found the signs of a population once very dense.

In the Mauritius, the rivers were found to be diminishing under the rapid disappearance of the woods in the interior, when Government had recourse to the measure of preventing further depredations, and they soon recovered their size.

The clouds brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing showers. In many other parts of the world governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of nature; and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may, perhaps, induce our Indian Government to turn its thoughts to the subject.[13]

The province of Mālwā, which is bordered by the Nerbudda on the south, Gujarāt on the west, Rājputāna on the north, and Allahabad on the east, is said never to have been visited by a famine; and this exemption from so great a calamity must arise chiefly from its being so well studded with hills and groves. The natives have a couplet, which, like all good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahadēo, one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahābhārata, to this effect: 'If it does not thunder on such a night, you, father, must go to Mālwā, and I to Gujarāt', meaning, 'The rains will fail us here, and we must go to those quarters where they never fail'[14]

Notes:

1. The Archaeological Survey is engaged in unceasing battle with the pīpal seedlings.

2. This proposition is too general.

3. The Hiliyā, or Haliyā, Pass is near the town of the same name in the Mirzāpur district, thirty-one miles south- west of Mirzāpur. A bilingual inscription, in English and Hindī, on a large slab on the bank of the river, records the capture of the fort of Bhōpārī in 1811 by the 21st Regiment Native Infantry. The tank described in the text is at Dibhōr, twelve miles south of Haliyā, and is 430 feet long by 352 broad. The full name of the builder is Srīmān Nāyak Mānmōr, who was the head of the Banjāra merchants of Mirzāpur. The inscription on his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjāra preferred a jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage point he was able to supply Mirzāpur with both wood and charcoal.' (A.S.R., vol. xxi, pp. 121-5, pl. xxxi.)