Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

by Sir W. H. Sleeman

While looking upon the slab under which his head reposes, I thought of the slight 'accidents by flood and field', the still slighter thought of the brain and feeling of the heart, on which the destinies of nations and of empires often depend—on the discovery of the great diamond in the mines of Golconda—on the accident which gave it into the hands of an ambitions Persian adventurer—on the thought which suggested the advantage of presenting it to Shāh Jahān—on the feeling which made Dārā get off, and Aurangzēb sit on his elephant at the battle of Samūgarh, on which depended the fate of India, and perhaps the advancement of the Christian religion and European literature and science over India.[17] But for the accident which gave Charles Martel the victory over the Saracens at Tours,[18] Arabic and Persian had perhaps been the classical languages, and Islamism the religion of Europe; and where we have cathedrals and colleges we might have had mosques and mausoleums; and America and the Cape, the compass and the press, the steam-engine, the telescope, and the Copernican System, might have remained still undiscovered; and but for the accident which turned Hannibal's face from Rome after the battle of Cannae, or that which intercepted his brother Asdrubal's letter, we might now all be speaking the languages of Tyre and Sidon, and roasting our own children in offerings to Siva or Saturn, instead of saving those of the Hindoos. Poor Dārā! but for thy little jealousy of thy father and thy son, thy desire to do all thy work without their aid, and those occasional ebullitions of passion which alienated from thee the most powerful of all the Hindoo princes, whom it was so much thy wish and thy interest to cherish, thy generous heart and enlightened mind had reigned over this vast empire, and made it, perchance, the garden it deserves to be made.

I visited the celebrated mosque known by the name of Jāmi (Jumma) Masjid, a fine building raised by Shāh Jahān, and finished in six years, A.H. 1060, at a cost of ten lākhs of rupees or one hundred thousand pounds. Money compared to man's labour and subsistence is still four times more valuable in India than in England; and a similar building in England would cost at least four hundred thousand pounds. It is, like all the buildings raised by this Emperor, in the best taste and style.[19] I was attended by three well-dressed and modest Hindoos, and a Muhammadan servant of the Emperor. My attention was so much taken up with the edifice that I did not perceive, till I was about to return, that the doorkeepers had stopped my three Hindoos. I found that they had offered to leave their shoes behind, and submit to anything to be permitted to follow me; but the porters had, they said, strict orders to admit no worshippers of idols; for their master was a man of the book, and had, therefore, got a little of the truth in him, though unhappily not much, since his heart had not been opened to that of the Korān. Nathū could have told him that he also had a book, which he and some fourscore millions more thought as good as his or better; but he was afraid to descant upon the merits of his 'shāstras', and the miracles of Kishan Jī [Krishna], among such fierce, cut-throat-looking people; he looked, however, as if he could have eaten the porter, Korān and all, when I came to their rescue. The only volumes which Muhammadans designate by the name of the book are the Old and New Testaments, and the Korān.

I visited also the palace, which was built by the same Emperor. It stands on the right bank of the Jumna, and occupies a quadrangle surrounded by a high wall built of red sandstone, about one mile in circumference; one side looks down into the clear stream of the Jumna, while the others are surrounded by the streets of the city.[20] The entrance is by a noble gateway to the west;[21] and facing this gateway on the inside, a hundred and twenty yards distant, is the Dīwān-ī-Amm, or the common hall of audience. This is a large hall, the roof of which is supported upon four colonnades of pillars of red sandstone, now white-washed, but once covered with stucco work and gilded. On one of these pillars is shown the mark of the dagger of a Hindoo prince of Chitōr, who, in the presence of the Emperor, stabbed to the heart one of the Muhammadan ministers who made use of some disrespectful language towards him. On being asked how he presumed to do this in the presence of his sovereign he answered in the very words almost of Roderic Dhu,

I right my wrongs where they are given,
Though it were in the court of Heaven.[22]

The throne projects into the hall from the back in front of the large central arch; it is raised ten feet above the floor, and is about ten feet wide, and covered by a marble canopy, all beautifully inlaid with mosaic work exquisitely finished, but now much dilapidated. The room or recess in which the throne stands is open to the front, and about fifteen feet wide and six deep. There is a door at the back by which the Emperor entered from his private apartments, and one on his left, from which his prime minister or chief officer of state approached the throne by a flight of steps leading into the hall. In front of the throne, and raised some three feet above the floor, is a fine large slab of white marble, on which one of the secretaries stood during the hours of audience to hand up to the throne any petitions that were presented, and to receive and convey commands. As the people approached over the intervening one hundred and twenty yards between the gateway and the hall of audience they were made to bow down lower and lower to the figure of the Emperor, as he sat upon his throne, without deigning to show by any motion of limb or muscle that he was really made of flesh and blood, and not cut out of the marble he sat upon.

The marble walls on three sides of this recess are inlaid with precious stones representing some of the most beautiful birds and flowers of India, according to the boundaries of the country when Shāh Jahān built this palace, which included Kābul and Kāshmīr, afterwards severed from it on the invasion of Nadir Shāh.[23]

On the upper part of the back wall is represented, in the same precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from Shīrāz, Amānat Khān, who designed all the noble Tughra characters in which the passages from the Korān are inscribed upon different parts of the Tāj at Agra, was permitted to place his own name in the same bold characters on the right-hand side as we enter the tomb of the Emperor and his queen. It is inscribed after the date, thus, A.H. 1048 [A.D. 1638-9], 'The humble fakīr Amānat Khān of Shirāz.' Austin was a still greater favourite than Amānat Khān; and the Emperor Shāh Jahān, no doubt, readily acceded to his wishes to have himself represented in what appeared to him and his courtiers so beautiful a picture.[24]

The Dīwān-i-Khās, or hall of private audience, is a much more splendid building than the other from its richer materials, being all built of white marble beautifully ornamented. The roof is supported upon colonnades of marble pillars. The throne stands in the centre of this hall, and is ascended by steps, and covered by a canopy, with four artificial peacocks on the four corners.[25] Here, thought I, as I entered this apartment, sat Aurangzēb when he ordered the assassination of his brothers Dārā and Murād, and the imprisonment and destruction by slow poison of his son Muhammad, who had so often fought bravely by his side in battle. Here also, but a few months before, sat the great Shāh Jahān to receive the insolent commands of this same grandson Muhammad when flushed with victory, and to offer him the throne, merely to disappoint the hopes of the youth's father, Aurangzēb. Here stood in chains the graceful Sulaimān, to receive his sentence of death by slow poison with his poor young brother Sipihr Shikoh, who had shared all his father's toils and dangers, and witnessed his brutal murder.[26] Here sat Muhammad Shāh, bandying compliments with his ferocious conqueror, Nādir Shāh, who had destroyed his armies, plundered his treasury, stripped his throne, and ordered the murder of a hundred thousand of the helpless inhabitants of his capital, men, women, and children, in a general massacre. The bodies of these people lay in the streets tainting the air, while the two sovereigns sat here sipping their coffee, and swearing to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God, Prophet, and Korān;—all are now dust; that of the oppressor undistinguishable from that of the oppressed.[27]

Within this apartment and over the side arches at one end is inscribed in black letters the celebrated couplet, 'If there be a paradise on the face of the earth, it is this—it is this—it is this.[28] Anything more unlike paradise than this place now is can hardly be conceived. Here are crowded together twelve hundred kings and queens (for all the descendants of the Emperors assume the title of Salātīn, the plural of Sultan) literally eating each other up.[29]

Government, from motives of benevolence, has here attempted to apportion out the pension they assign to the Emperor, to the different members of his great family circle who are to be subsisted upon it, instead of leaving it to his own discretion. This has perhaps tended to prevent the family from throwing off its useless members to mix with the common herd, and to make the population press against the means of subsistence within these walls. Kings and queens of the house of Tīmūr are to be found lying about in scores, like broods of vermin, without food to eat or clothes to cover their nakedness. It has been proposed by some to establish colleges for them in the palace to fit them by education for high offices under our Government. Were this done, this pensioned family, which never can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great to themselves, since they would be encouraged to entertain hopes that could not be realized. Better let them shift for themselves and quietly sink among the crowd. They would only become rallying points for the dissatisfaction and multiplied sources of disaffection; everywhere doing mischief, and nowhere doing good. Let loose upon society, they everywhere disgust people by their insolence and knavery, against which we are every day required to protect the people by our interference; the prestige of their name will by degrees diminish, and they will sink by and by into utter insignificance. During his stay at Jubbulpore, Kāmbaksh, the nephew of the Emperor, whom I have already mentioned as the most sensible member of the family,[30] did an infinite deal of good by cheating almost all the tradesmen of the town. Till he came down among them with all his ragamuffins from Delhi, men thought the Padshāhs and their progeny must be something superhuman, something not to be spoken of, much less approached, without reverence. During the latter part of his stay my court was crowded with complaints; and no one has ever since heard a scion of the house of Tīmūr spoken of but as a thing to be avoided—a person more prone than others to take in his neighbours. One of these kings, who has not more than ten shillings a month to subsist himself and family upon, will, in writing to the representative of the British Government, address him as 'Fidwī Khās', 'Your particular slave'; and be addressed in reply with 'Your majesty's commands have been received by your slave.'[31]