CHAPTER 23. The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of His Many Ministers.

The Râjâ of Orchhâ--Murder of his many Ministers.

The present Râjâ, Mathurâ Dâs, succeeded his brother Bikramâjît, who died in 1834. He had made over the government to his only son, Râjâ Bahâdur, whom he almost adored; but, the young man dying some years before him, the father resumed the reins of government, and held them till his death. He was a man of considerable capacity, but of a harsh and unscrupulous character. His son resembled him; but the present Râjâ is a man of mild temper and disposition, though of weak intellect. The fate of the last three prime ministers will show the character of the Râjâ and his son, and the nature of their rule.

The minister at the time the old man made over the reins of government to his son was Khânjû Purôhit. Wishing to get rid of him a few years after, this son, Râjâ Bahâdur, employed Muhram Singh, one of his feudal Râjpût barons, to assassinate him. As a reward for this service he received the seals of office; and the Râjâ confiscated all the property of the deceased, amounting to four lakhs of rupees and resumed the whole of the estates held by the family.

The young Râjâ died soon after; and his father, when he resumed the reins of government, wishing to remove the new minister, got him assassinated by Gambhîr Singh, another feudal Râjpût baron, who, as his reward, received in his turn the seals of office. This man was a most atrocious villain, and employed the public establishments of his chief to plunder travellers on the high road. In 1833 his followers robbed four men, who were carrying treasure to the amount of ten thousand rupees from Sâgar to Jhânsî through Tehrî, and intended to murder them; but, by the sagacity of one of the party, and a lucky accident, they escaped, made their way back to Sâgar, and complained to the magistrate. The minister discovered the nature of their burdens as they lodged at Tehrî on their way, and sent after them a party of soldiers, with orders to put them in the bed of a rivulet that separated the territory of Orchhâ from that of the Jhânsî Râjâ. One of the treasure party discovered their object; and, on reaching the bank of the rivulet in a deep grass jungle, he threw down his bundle, dashed unperceived through the grass, and reached a party of travellers whom he saw ascending a hill about half a mile in advance. The myrmidons of the minister, when they found that one had escaped, were afraid to murder the others, but took their treasure. In spite of great obstacles, and with much danger to the families of three of those men, who resided in the capital of Tehrî, the magistrate of Sâgar brought the crime home to the minister, and the Râjâ, anxious to avail himself of the occasion to fill his coffers, got him assassinated. The Râjâ was then about eighty years of age, and his minister was a strong, athletic, and brave man. One morning while he was sitting with him in private conversation, the former pretended a wish to drink some of the water in which his household god had been washed (the 'chandan mirt'), and begged the minister to go and fetch it from the place where it stood by the side of the idol in the court of the palace. As a man cannot take his sword before the idol, the minister put it down, as the Râjâ knew he would, and going to the idol, prostrated himself before it preparatory to taking away the water. In that state he was cut down by Bihârî, another feudal Râjpût baron, who aspired to the seals, and some of his friends, who had been placed there on purpose by the Râjâ. He obtained the seals by his service, and, as he was allowed to place one brother in command of the forces, and to make another chamberlain, he hoped to retain them longer than any of his predecessors had done. Gambhîr Singh's brother, Jhujhâr Singh, and the husband of his sister, hearing of his murder, made off, but were soon pursued and put to death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted to three lakhs of rupees. The Râjâ boasted to the Governor- General's representative in Bundêlkhand of this act of retributive justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of that confiscated. The Râjâ alleged that, according to our rules, the chief within whose boundary the robbery might have been committed, was obliged to make good the property. On inspection, it was found that the robbery was perpetrated upon the very boundary line, and 'in spite of pride, in erring reason's spite', the Jhânsî Râjâ was made to pay one-half of the plundered treasure.

The old Râjâ, Bikramâjît, died in June, 1834; and, though his death had been some time expected, he no sooner breathed his last than charges of 'dînaî', slow poison, were got up, as usual, in the zenana (seraglio).

Here the widow of Râjâ Bahâdur, a violent and sanguinary woman, was supreme; and she persuaded the present Râjâ, a weak old man, to take advantage of the funeral ceremonies to avenge the death of his brother. He did so; and Bihârî, and his three brothers, with above fifty of his relations, were murdered. The widows of the four brothers were the only members of all the families left alive. One of them had a son four months old; another one of two years; the four brothers had no other children. Immediately after the death of their husbands, the two children were snatched from their mothers' breasts, and threatened with instant death unless their mothers pointed out all their ornaments and other property. They did so; and the spoilers having got from them property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, and been assured that there was no more, threw the children over the high wall, by which they were dashed to pieces. The poor widows were tendered as wives to four sweepers, the lowest of all low castes; but the tribe of sweepers would not suffer any of its members to take the widows of men of such high caste and station as wives, notwithstanding the tempting offer of five hundred rupees as a present, and a village in rent-free tenure. I secured a promise while at Tehrî that these poor widows should be provided for, as they had, up to that time, been preserved by the good feeling of a little community of the lowest of castes, on whom they had been bestowed as a punishment worse than death, inasmuch as it would disgrace the whole class to which they belonged, the Parihâr Râjpûts.

Tehrî is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of capital and credit. There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs, in or around the city, if city it can be called. The stables and accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses. The revenues of the state are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds; and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Râjâ and all his court have just been assisting--ceremonies which concentrate for a few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee followers (Bairâgîs) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose, either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people.

This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is supposed to cost the Râjâ, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue. The highest officers of which his government is composed receive small beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence; and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like gentlemen, lest the Râjâ might be tempted to take their lives in order to get hold of it. All his feudal barons are of the same tribe as himself, that is, Râjpûts; but they are divided into three clans-- Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls. A Bundêla cannot marry a woman of his own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawârs or Chandêls; and so of the other two clans--no member of one can take a wife from his own clan, but must go to one of the other two for her. They are very much disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do not, I believe, exist than the Râjpûts of Bundêlkhand, who all carry their swords from their infancy.

It may be said of the Râjpûts of Mâlwa and Central India generally, that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no government at all, the land remained the only thing worth appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The one was the Zamîndârî, and the other the Mâlguzârî tenure of India.

The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were continually fighting, either against each other, or against the peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to the ban of the empire, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the victor. This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction of the former occupants. The new possessors gave the name of their leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new possession, and the tract of country over which they spread. Thus were founded the Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls [sic] upon the ruin of the Chandêls of Bundêlkhand, the Baghêlas in Baghêlkhand, or Rîwâ, the Kachhwâhâs, the Sakarwârs, and others along the Chambal river, and throughout all parts of India.

These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Râjpût chief, next to leading a gang of his own on great enterprises, delights in nothing so much as having a gang or two under his patronage for little ones.

There is hardly a single chief of the Hindoo military class in the Bundêlkhand or Gwâlior territories, who does not keep a gang of robbers of some kind or other, and consider it as a very valuable and legitimate source of revenue; or who would not embrace with cordiality the leader of a gang of assassins by profession who should bring him home from every expedition a good horse, a good sword, or a valuable pair of shawls, taken from their victims. It is much the same in the kingdom of Oudh, where the lands are for the most part held by the same Hindoo military classes, who are in a continual state of war with each other, or with the Government authorities. Three-fourths of the recruits for native infantry regiments are from this class of military agriculturists of Oudh, who have been trained up in this school of contest; and many of the lads, when they enter our ranks, are found to have marks of the cold steel upon their persons. A braver set of men is hardly anywhere to be found; or one trained up with finer feelings of devotion towards the power whose salt they eat. A good many of the other fourth of the recruits for our native infantry are drawn from among the Ujainî Râjpûts, or Râjpûts from Ujain, who were established many generations ago in the same manner at Bhôjpur on the bank of the Ganges.

Notes:

1. A purôhit is a Brahman family priest.

2. Four hundred thousand rupees, worth at that time more than forty thousand pounds sterling.

3. The magistrate was the author.

4. 'That' in author's text.

5. The water of the Ganges, with which the image of the god Vishnu has been washed, is considered a very holy draught, fit for princes. That with which the image of the god Siva, alias Mahâdêo, is washed must not be drunk. The popular belief is that in a dispute between him and his wife, Pârvatî, alias Kâlî, she cursed the person that should thenceforward dare to drink of the water that flowed over his images on earth. The river Ganges is supposed to flow from the top- knot of Siva's head, and no one would drink of it after this curse, were it not that the sacred stream is supposed to come first from the heel of Vishnu, the Preserver. All the little images of Siva, that are made out of stones taken from the bed of the Nerbudda river, are supposed to be absolved from this curse, and water thrown upon them can be drunk with impunity. [W. H. S.] The natural emblems of Siva, the Bâna-linga quartz pebbles found in the Nerbudda, have already been referred to in the note to Chapter 19, ante, note 9. In the Marâthâ country the 'household gods' generally comprise five sacred symbols, namely, the sâlagrâma stone of Vishnu, the bâna-linga of Siva, a metallic stone representing the female principle in nature (Sakti), a crystal representing the sun, and a red stone representing Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. The details of the tiresome ritual observed in the worship of these objects occupy pp. 412 to 416 of Monier Williams's Religious Thought and Life in India.

6. 'Beearee' in author's text.

7. Then worth more than thirty thousand pounds sterling.

8. On the customs of the sweeper caste, see ante, Chapter 8, following note .

9. The Parihârs were the rulers of Bundêlkhand before the Chandêls. The chief of Uchhahara belongs to this clan.

10. Wealthy Hindoos, throughout India, spend money in the same ceremonies of marrying the stone to the shrub. [W. H. S.] Three lakhs of rupees were then worth thirty thousand pounds sterling or more.

11. The numerous clans, more or less devoted to war, grouped together under the name of Râjpûts (literally 'king's sons'), are in reality of multifarious origin, and include representatives of many races. They are the Kshatriyas of the law-books, and are still often called Chhattrî (E.H.I., 3rd ed., pp. 407-15). In some parts of the country the word Thâkur is more familiar as their general title. Thirty-six clans are considered as specially pure-blooded and are called, at any rate in books, the 'royal races'. All the clans follow the custom of exogamy. The Chandêls (Chandella) ruled Bundêlkhand from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Their capital was Mahoba, now a station on the Midland Railway. The Bundêlas became prominent at a later date, and attained their greatest power under Chhatarsâl (circa A.D. 1671-1731). Their territory is now known as Bundêlkhand. The country so designated is not an administrative division. It is partly in the United Provinces, partly in the Central Provinces, and partly in Native States. It is bounded on the north by the Jumna; on the north and west by the Chambal river; on the south by the Central Provinces, and on the south and east by Rîwâ and the Kaimûr hills. The traditions of both the Bundêlas and Chandellas show that there is a strain of the blood of the earlier, so--called aboriginal, races in both clans. The Pawâr (Pramara) clan ranks high, but is now of little political importance (See N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii, p. 68).

12. The paramount power often assigned a portion of its reserved lands in 'Jâgîr' to public officers for the establishments they required for the performance of the duties, military or civil, which were expected from them. Other portions were assigned in rent-free tenure for services already performed, or to favourites; but, in both cases, the rights of the village or land owner, or allodial proprietors, were supposed to be unaffected, as the Government was presumed to assign only its own claim to a certain portion as revenue. [W. H. S.] The term 'ryotwar' (raiyatwâr) is commonly used to designate the system under which the cultivators hold their lands direct from the State. The subject of tenures is further discussed by the author in Chapters 70, 71.

13. For elaborate comparisons between the Râjpût policy and the feudal system of Europe, Tod's Rajasthân may be consulted. The parallel is not really so close as it appears to be at first sight. In some respects the organization of the Highland clans is more similar to that of the Râjpûts than the feudal system is. The Chambal river rises in Mâlwâ, and, after a course of some five hundred and seventy miles, falls into the Jumna forty miles below Etâwa. The statement in the text concerning the succession of clans is confused. The ruling family of Rîwâ still belongs to the Baghêl clan. The Maharâjâ of Jaipur (Jeypore) is a Kachhwâha.

14. The barbarous habit of alliance and connivance with robber gangs is by no means confined to Râjpût nobles and landholders. Men of all creeds and castes yield to the temptation and magistrates are sometimes startled to find that Honorary Magistrates, Members of District Boards, and others of apparently the highest respectability, are the abettors and secret organizers of robber bands. A modern example of this fact was discovered in the Meerut and Muzaffarnagar Districts of the United Provinces in 1890 and 1891. In this case the wealthy supporters of the banditti were Jâts and Muhammadans.

The unfortunate condition of Oudh previous to the annexation in 1856 is vividly described in the author's Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, published in 1858. The tour took place in 1849-50. Some districts of the kingdom, especially Hardoî, are still tainted by the old lawlessness.

The remarks on the fine feelings of devotion shown by the sepoys must now be read in the light of the events of the Mutiny. Since that time the army has been reorganized, and depends on Oudh for its recruits much less than it did in the author's day.

15. Ujain (Ujjain, Oojeyn) is a very ancient city, on the river Sipra, in Mâlwa, in the dominions of Sindhia, the chief of Gwâlior.

16. Bhajpore in the author's text. The town referred to is Bhôjpur in the Shâhâbâd district of South Bihâr.