It seems highly necessary for travellers in India anywhere off the track of hotels to provide themselves with bedding of some sort, at least quilts, rugs, sheets, and pillows. The nights at this time of year in Rajpootana are quite cold, and warm wraps are welcome.
The next morning we engaged a large elephant—which waited at the station to take travellers to Chitorgarh—to carry us to the fort and deserted city on the height we could see from the station. This was a distance of some seven miles there and back, it was said.
FIRST ELEPHANT RIDE. (CHITORGARH)
The elephant was made by the driver to kneel while we mounted, by means of a ladder of bamboo, and seated ourselves on the flat, cushioned seat, having a low hand-rail and a foot board, slung by ropes. The elephant moved with a peculiar swaying, swinging movement, not unlike that of a ship, though regular. We started over a stretch of rough, common-like ground, broken into hillocks and hollows, overgrown with scrub bush, the track not being very definite. The elephant picked its way most carefully over the rough parts, especially when descending a hollow. We reached a roadway which led over a bridge across a river, and brought us up to the city of Chitor at the foot of the hill, and extending upon its lower slopes. We entered the city through a Moslem arched gateway, and threaded our way through the narrow streets, our elephant filling the whole of the roadway. Pottery, beads, glass bracelets, cheap lacquered ornaments, and small merchandise of various kinds were spread out on the ground, their proprietors squatting by their stock in trade. The native houses were small and low, for the most part hardly more than huts of mud, roofed with sun-baked tiles, laid scalewise over a trellis of bamboo, often very dilapidated. There were remains of better houses and older, with arcaded balconies, and here and there we passed a small white-washed temple, with quaint elephants with gay housings painted in profile on the white walls each side the entrance. These elephants are drawn in a very spirited manner, and are generally represented going at a trot, and full of action with trunk and tail in the air, decorated with bells on his feet and gorgeous red and yellow housings and domed howdah, set off by the solid black of the elephant and his ivory tusks, the turbaned driver flourishing his goad. From our commanding eminence, the elephant’s back, we could take a comprehensive survey of the life of the city, and see the people at work at various trades. The inhabitants did not take much notice of us; some would stare and others would salaam as we passed. I imagine the elephant with European travellers on its back not infrequently passed through Chitor, although we managed to startle a tethered camel in one of the streets considerably, and the animal tugged at its rope and plunged alarmingly at the sight of our elephant.
Leaving the city of Chitor, which seemed very poverty-stricken, we reached the first gate of the fortress, and began the ascent of some 200 or 300 feet. The road zigzags up the side of the rocky plateau, upon the summit of which the fort and ancient city were built, the ancient capital of Rajpootana. Massive walls protect this road on the outer side, and a continuous warder’s walk runs along it, with flights of stone steps to the roadway at intervals. We passed through five gateways on the way up, generally enriched with sculptured ornament—the last one, Ram Pol, being the richest, and this was finely carved with Hindu detail and symbols, having friezes of elephants. There have been extensive restorations at Chitorgarh. The whole length of the wall seems to have been gone over, and replastered, and in many places rebuilt with new stone. The tops of the gates were crenellated in a fashion which suggested a perpetuation in stone of an earlier type of wooden palisading, a horizontal band connecting the rounded or pointed stone heads, the divisions between each being continued below it. In many cases the old massive wooden gates were left under the archways, bound with old iron bands. By the way, at Ajmir we noted that the wooden doors of the gateways to the courts were covered with old horse-shoes nailed on, close together, in some instances actually over the old rich carved work, and apparently with the same idea of good omen as is associated with the same emblem in our country.
Arrived at the summit there were wonderful ruins to be seen. Scattered over the plateau, half overgrown, amid heaps of shattered stones and carved fragments, there were the remains of Mohammedan palaces and Hindu or Jain Temples, rich within and without with intricate carving.
The guides showed us where the Hindu Queen and the women of the city, all suffocated themselves in a subterranean chamber to escape their fate had they fallen into the hands of the Mohammedan conquerors, when Ala-ud-din took Chitor by storm in 1290.
The hand of the restorer was seen here again and had been in some parts rather too thorough. I noticed an arcade over the gateway of the Moslem Palace, which seemed to have been entirely rebuilt in a kind of pale green marble, almost the colour of jade, quite sharply cut and new, and out of keeping with the old work more or less battered and ruined around it. The famous Tower of Victory had been extensively restored, even the carving in parts recut. This is going too far, as it is impossible to unite modern workmanship with old, even in India. Watchful and careful, timely repair is the only way to preserve ancient buildings, but there should be no attempt made to replace lost carving and decoration by modern imitation.
We entered over broken steps a wonderful Jain temple, very richly carved, with a remarkable domed ceiling over the central chamber, arranged in a series of concentric circles, intersected by figures of dancing girls, with emblems radiating from the centre. Another Jain temple formed a most picturesque pile, and a delightful mass of light and shade filled in with intricate detail, in the full sunlight. In these temples a favourite deity is Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, whose carved image constantly appears.