Modern India

by William Eleroy Curtis

Siwai Madhao Singh was received with distinguished honors by the king, the court, the ministry, the statesmen and the commercial and industrial interests of England. He was one of the most conspicuous persons at the coronation, and if he had been trained from childhood for the part he could not have conducted himself with greater grace and dignity. Everybody was delighted with him, and he was delighted with his reception. He returned to Jeypore filled with new ideas and inspired with new ambitions to promote the welfare of his people, and although he had previously shown remarkable capacity for government he feels that his experience and the knowledge he acquired during his journey were of inestimable value to him. One of the results is a determination to send his sons to England to be educated, because he feels that it would be an injustice to them and to the people over whom they must some time rule, to deprive them of the advantages offered by English institutions and by association with the people that he desires them to meet. Caste is no longer an objection. The maharaja has broken caste without suffering any disadvantage, and has discovered that other considerations are more important. He has learned by actual personal experience that the prejudices of his race and religion against travel and association with foreigners has done an immeasurable amount of injustice. He has seen with his own eyes how the great men of England live and prosper without caste, and is willing to do like them. They do not believe in it. They regard it as a narrow, unjust and inconvenient restriction, and he is partially convinced that they are right. The most distinctive feature of Hindu civilization thus received a blow from which it can never recover, because Siwai Madhao Singh is recognized as one of the ablest, wisest and most sincere of all the Hindu princes, and his influence in this and as in other things is almost unlimited. He expects to go to England again. He desires to visit other countries also, because he realizes that he can learn much that is of value to him and to his people by studying the methods and the affairs of foreign nations.

HALL OF THE WINDS--JEYPORE

In November, 1902, when Lord Curzon visited Jeypore, a banquet was given in his honor, at which the maharaja made a remarkable speech, alluding to his experience in England and the benefit he derived from that visit. In reply Lord Curzon said: "When I persuaded Your Highness to go to England as the chosen representative of Rajputana at the coronation of the king, you felt some hesitation as to the sharp separation from your home and from the duties and the practices of your previous life. But you have returned fortified with the conviction that dignity and simplicity of character, and uprightness and magnanimity of conduct are esteemed by the nobility and the people of England not less than they are here. I hope that Your Highness' example may be followed by those who come after you, and that it may leave an enduring mark in Indian history."

The palace and gardens of the maharaja cover one-seventh of the entire area of the city of Jeypore, and are inclosed within a mighty wall, which is entered through several stately gates. The only portion of the palace visible from the street is called the Hawal Mahal, or "Hall of the Winds," which Sir Edwin Arnold's glowing pen describes as "a vision of daring and dainty loveliness, nine stories of rosy masonry, delicate overhanging balconies and latticed windows, soaring tier after tier of fanciful architecture, a very mountain of airy and audacious beauty, through a thousand pierced screens and gilded arches. Aladdin's magician could have called into existence no more marvelous an abode, nor was the pearl and silver palace of the Peri more delicately charming."

Those who have had the opportunity to compare Sir Edwin Arnold's descriptions with the actual objects in Japan, India and elsewhere are apt to give a liberal allowance to his statements. He may be an accomplished poet, but he cannot see straight. He looks at everything through rose-colored magnifying glasses. The Hall of the Winds is a picturesque and unique piece of Hindu architecture. It looks like the frosting on a confectioners' cake. But it is six instead of nine stories in height, is made of the cheapest sort of stucco, and covered with deep pink calcimine. It is the residence of the ladies of the harem, or zenana, as that mysterious part of a household is called in India.

The palace of the maharaja is a noble building, but very ornate, and is furnished with the most tawdry and inappropriate French hangings and furniture. It is a pity that His Highness did not allow his own taste to prevail, and use nothing but native furniture and fabrics. His garden is lovely, being laid out in the highest style of Hindu landscape art. At the foot of the grounds is a great marble building, open on all sides, with a picturesque roof sustained by a multitude of columns, which is the public or audience hall, where His Highness receives his subjects and conducts affairs of ceremony. Behind it is a relic of some of his semi-barbarous ancestors in the form of a tank, in which a lot of loathsome crocodiles are kept for the amusement of people who like that sort of thing. They are looked after by a venerable, half-naked old Hindu, who calls them up to the terrace by uttering a peculiar cry, and, when they poke their ugly noses out of the water and crawl up the steps, teases them with dainty morsels he has obtained at the nearest slaughter-house. It is not a soul-lifting spectacle.

The stables are more interesting. The maharaja maintains the elephant stud of his ancestors, and has altogether about eighty monsters, which are used for heavy work about the palace grounds and for traveling in the country. In the stud are two enormous savage beasts, which fight duels for the entertainment of the maharaja and his guests. These duels take place in a paddock where horses are exercised. His Highness has erected a little kiosk, in which he can sit sheltered from the sun while the sport goes on. He also has a lot of leopards, panthers and cheetahs (Hindu wildcats), trained like dogs for hunting purposes, and are said to be as useful and intelligent as Gordon setters. He frequently takes a party of friends into the jungle for tiger shooting, and uses these tame beasts to scare up the game.

He is fond of horses and has 300 breeding mares and stallions kept in long stables opening upon the paddock in which they are trained. Each horse has a coolie to look after it, for no coolie could possibly attend to more than one. The man has nothing else to do. He sleeps on the straw in the stall of the animal, and seldom leaves it for a moment from the time he is assigned to the duty until his services are no longer required. The maharaja has spent a great deal of money and taken a great deal of pains to improve the stock of his subjects, both horses and cattle. He has an experimental farm for encouraging agriculture and teaching the people, and a horticultural garden of seventy acres, with a menagerie, in which are a lot of beautiful tigers captured by his own men upon his own estates within twelve miles of town. They catch a good many tigers alive, and one of his amiable habits is to present them to his friends and people whom he desires to honor.

In the center of the horticultural garden stands one of the noblest modern buildings in India, a museum which the maharaja established several years ago for the permanent exhibition of the arts and industries of his people, who are very highly skilled in metal and loom work of all kinds, in sculpture, enameling, in making jewelry of gold and silver, and varieties of glass work. At great expense he has assembled samples of similar work from other countries in order that his subjects may have the benefit of comparing it with their own, and in connection with the museum has established a school of art and industry. This at present has between five and six hundred students receiving instruction in the arts and industries in which the people of Jeypore have always excelled. The museum is called Albert Hall, in honor of the King of England, and the park is christened in memory of the late Earl of Mayo, who, while Viceroy of India, became an intimate friend and revered adviser of the father of the maharaja. An up-to-date hospital with a hundred beds is named Mayo Hospital.

The Maharaja's College is another institution which has been established by this public-spirited and progressive Hindu, who has done more for the education of his people than any other native prince. There are now about 1,000 students, with a faculty of eighty-two professors, including fifteen Englishmen and twelve Persians. The college is affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and has the best reputation of any institution of learning among the native states. But even higher testimony to the liberality and progressive spirit of this prince is a school for the education of women. It is only of recent years that the women in India were considered worth educating, and even now only about half a million in this vast country, with a female population of 150,000,000, can read and write. But the upper classes are gradually beginning to realize the advantage of educating their girls, and the Maharaja of Jeypore was one of the first to establish a school for that purpose, which now has between 700 and 800 girls under the instruction of English and native teachers.