A picturesque feature of hotel life in India is the impromptu bazaar formed under the arcade, which always shades the rooms on the ground floor, by the travelling merchants, who spread out their wares to tempt the traveller.
In Rajpootana, the land of warriors, collections of arms, swords, sword-sticks, knives and daggers, and fearsome and wonderful blades of all sorts form a conspicuous part of the stock-in-trade of these native merchants, the glittering steel making a brave show with the bright-coloured stuffs, jewellery, and embroideries. At Udaipur they offered also native pictures, painted in tempera, somewhat crude but distinctly decorative, and complete with painted borders or frames. They represented elephants, tigers, maharajahs sabring wild swine, and such-like, painted in profile in frank flat colours, the animals singularly faithful in silhouette to nature. In dealing with these travelling traders, bargaining is, of course, expected, and usually they are willing to accept about half the price originally asked.
RAJPUTS AND THEIR RARITIES. (UDAIPUR)
An impressive sight at Udaipur is the place of tombs, or the burning-place, which is a beautiful garden surrounded by a high wall, full of magnificent domed tombs and cenotaphs. This is the place where the Kings of Udaipur, since it became the capital of Rajpootana, have been buried, or rather cremated, with their wives. The city of Udaipur—a glimpse of which, with its crenellated walls and the huge pile of the Maharajah’s palace rising above the trees, is seen from the hotel—is entered, after a short drive through a fine double gateway. A huge old mango tree grows over the street just inside. Udaipur is a white town; the streets are very picturesque, having arcaded bazaars and pretty fantastic balconies here and there, and the native life is of course very varied and full of colour. The main street rises up to the eminence on which the palace stands. At an angle before this is reached, a steep flight of white steps leads up to the gate of the court of the great temple of Juggernath—a Jain temple dedicated to Vishnu—the second person in the Hindu Trinity. It was the finest of its kind we have yet seen. We were allowed to walk around the court and examine the carvings, but not inside the temple. Two great stone elephants stand facing one another at the entrance to the court—a similar arrangement to that noted at Ellora. There is an elaborate shrine over the gateway in which is a seated bronze or brass figure of Vishnu with his lotus flower, snakes, and other emblems. The exterior of the temple is a wonderful mass of carving. On the plinth was a continuous narrow frieze of elephants on a small scale, having the effect of a richly carved moulding; above this was a line of horses, all saddled and bridled but without riders; above this again was a band of human figures. Over these were carved on a larger scale a series of figures of dancing-girls in different attitudes. These dancers always form an important element in the carved decoration of Jain temples.
We next visited the palace of the Maharajah, which occupies the highest ground in the city of Udaipur. It is a vast, romantic-looking pile. The steep street leads the traveller up to a great arched gateway, and through this is entered a large oblong court. On the right, the vast white palace walls rise to a great height, with hardly any windows, but high up are seen fairy-like arcades, balconies, and domed minarets, glittering with blue tile-work and gold.
A native custodian conducted us over the Palace. Entering an inner court, we ascended a steep stone staircase at an angle, the treads rising about nine or twelve inches high. There were native paintings on the walls of richly caparisoned state elephants bearing maharajahs, tigers, and other figures. We passed through a succession of rooms and courts at different levels, the walls of white marble inlaid with a very fine sort of glass mosaic, not tessellated but let in in pieces cut large or small according to the forms to be expressed. These were generally figures always in severe profile, in elaborate costume, and jewels the details of which were carefully and richly rendered. Flowers and delicate palm trees varied the designs, done in the same way, the leaves and small component parts being cut complete in the glass. There were also formal floral borders outlining the arches of the arcades, and forming ceiling patterns in some of the rooms, and on the walls were hung in frames delicate paintings on vellum, heightened with gold, such as one sees in old Indian illuminated MSS. In some of the corridors it was rather a shock to see inserted in the windows pieces of crudely stained European glass, such as were in vogue in conservatories here in the “forties.” One room was entirely decorated with coloured glass, the walls being veneered with a zigzag pattern in red and white glass.
Other and smaller rooms in the Zenana quarters, which we had now reached, and all at the top storey of the Palace, were lined with old Dutch tiles, others again with Chinese blue and white tiles. These rooms had graceful, arcaded balconies which commanded extensive views. We had a bird’s-eye view of the palace courts and the stable yards, where elephants were tethered in long rows, the busy natives moving about with horses and oxen. Beyond were seen the clustering, small white houses with flat roofs, broken by domes here and there, the green wooded country and the hills far away, while on the other side of the palace the lake with its pavilioned islands mirrored the sunset framed in the blue mountains.
At night we frequently heard the weird cries of the jackals which prowl around most places in India after dark, and when all is quiet in human habitations. It is a very wild, shrill sound, rising almost to a shriek at times. We also thought we caught another note—the laughter of the hyena.
