15. Ujain (Ujjain, Oojeyn) is a very ancient city, on the river Sipra, in Mālwa, in the dominions of Sindhia, the chief of Gwālior.
16. Bhajpore in the author's text. The town referred to is Bhōjpur in the Shāhābād district of South Bihār.
[CHAPTER 24]
Corn Dealers—Scarcities—Famines in India.
Near Tehrī we saw the people irrigating a field of wheat from a tank by means of a canoe, in a mode quite new to me. The surface of the water was about three feet below that of the field to be watered. The inner end of the canoe was open, and placed to the mouth of a gutter leading into the wheat-field. The outer end was closed, and suspended by a rope to the outer end of a pole, which was again suspended to cross-bars. On the inner end of this pole was fixed a weight of stones sufficient to raise the canoe when filled with water; and at the outer end stood five men, who pulled down and sank the canoe into the water as often as it was raised by the stones, and emptied into the gutter. The canoe was more curved at the outer end than ordinary canoes are, and seemed to have been made for the purpose. The lands round the town generally were watered by the Persian wheel; but, where it [scil. the water] is near the surface, this [scil. the canoe arrangement] I should think a better method.[1]
On the 10th[2] we came on to the village of Bilgaī, twelve miles over a bad soil, badly cultivated; the hard syenitic rock rising either above or near to the surface all the way—in some places abruptly, in small hills, decomposing into large rounded boulders—in others slightly and gently, like the backs of whales in the ocean-in others, the whole surface of the country resembled very much the face of the sea, not after, but really in, a storm, full of waves of all sizes, contending with each other 'in most admired disorder'. After the dust of Tehrī, and the fatiguing ceremonies of its court, the quiet morning I spent in this secluded spot under the shade of some beautiful trees, with the surviving canary singing, my boy playing, and my wife sleeping off the fatigues of her journey, was to me most delightful. Henry was extremely ill when we left Jubbulpore; but the change of air, and all the other changes incident to a march, have restored him to health.
During the scarcity of 1833 two hundred people died of starvation in this village alone;[3] and were all thrown into one large well, which has, of course, ever since remained closed. Autumn crops chiefly are cultivated; and they depend entirely on the sky for water, while the poor people of the village depend upon the returns of a single season for subsistence during the whole year. They lingered on in the hope of aid from above till the greater part had become too weak from want of food to emigrate. The Rājā gave half a crown to every family;[4] but this served merely to kindle their hopes of more, and to prolong their misery. Till the people have a better government they can never be secure from frequent returns of similar calamities. Such security must depend upon a greater variety of crops, and better means of irrigation; better roads to bring supplies over from distant parts which have not suffered from the same calamities; and greater means in reserve of paying for such supplies when brought—things that can never be hoped for under a government like this, which allows no man the free enjoyment of property.
Close to the village a large wall has been made to unite two small hills, and form a small lake; but the wall is formed of the rounded boulders of the syenitic rock without cement, and does not retain the water. The land which was to have formed the bed of the lake is all in tillage; and I had some conversation with the man who cultivated it. He told me that the wall had been built with the money of sin, and not the money of piety (pāp kē paisā sē, na pun kē paisā sē banā), that the man who built it must have laid out his money with a worldly, and not a religious mind (nīyat); that on such occasions men generally assembled Brahmans and other deserving people, and fed and clothed them, and thereby consecrated a great work, and made it acceptable to God, and he had heard from his ancestors that the man who had built this wall had failed to do this; that the construction could never, of course, answer the purpose for which it was intended—and that the builder's name had actually been forgotten, and the work did him no good either in this world or the next. This village, which a year or two ago was large and populous, is now reduced to two wretched huts inhabited by two very miserable families.
Bundēlkhand suffers more often and more severely from the want of seasonable showers of rain than any other part of India; while the province of Mālwa, which adjoins it on the west and south, hardly ever suffers at all.[5] There is a couplet, which, like all other good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahdēo [Sahadeva], one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahābhārata, to this effect: 'If you hear not the thunder on such a night, you, father, go to Mālwa, I to Gujarāt;'—that is, there will be no rain, and we must seek subsistence where rains never fail, and the harvests are secure.
The province of Mālwa is well studded with hills and groves of fine trees, which intercept the clouds as they are wafted by the prevailing westerly winds, from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of the Ganges, and make them drop their contents upon a soil of great natural powers, formed chiefly from the detritus of the decomposing basaltic rocks, which cap and intersect these hills.[6]