GUJERAT, a town of Hindustan, in the Punjab, about 8 miles from the right bank of the River Chenab, and 75 miles N. of the city of Lahore. The place has acquired celebrity from the victory gained in the vicinity on 21st Feb. 1849, by a British force, commanded by Lord Gough, over a Sikh army greatly superior in point of numbers, under the command of Sirdar Chuttur Singh and Rajah Shere Singh. The British, notwithstanding their numerical inferiority, gallantly attacked the Sikhs, drove them in succession from point to point, put them to disorderly flight, and captured their artillery and baggage. N. Lat. 32° 35', W. Long. 74° 8'.
GUJERAT, GAJERAT, or GUZERAT, a very large province of Hindustan, comprising within its limits the dominions of the Guicowar, besides several British districts, and situated principally between the 21st and 24th degrees of N. latitude. It has been computed to be 320 miles long by about 400 broad. On the N. it is bounded by Rajpootana, S. by the Presidency of Bombay, E. by Central India, W. by Cutch and the sea. The S.W. quarter of this province is inclosed on the S.W. and N.E. by the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay, and has the form of a peninsula. A considerable portion, particularly towards the eastern frontier, is hilly, and much covered with jungle. On the N.W. boundary, along the bank of the River Banas or Bunass, the country in some parts produces good pasture; in other parts it is either an acid plain or a low salt swamp, which, where it is dried up, is barren and unproductive. The interior is hilly and rocky; but there are spots, where water is accessible, that are extremely fertile, especially in sugar and tobacco, and which yield all sorts of grain, oats excepted; also cotton, tobacco, indigo, gum, and sugar. The country, notwithstanding its smoothness to the eye, is in many parts intersected by ravines, and much broken by the heavy rains; and some of these chasms contain, during the season of the rains, a large volume of water, not to be crossed without the assistance of rafts or boats; and, accordingly, the natives in these cases establish temporary ferries. The climate is reckoned one of the worst in India, being intensely hot during the greater part of the year, with a heavy thickness in the atmosphere, which is extremely oppressive. A hot wind blows fiercely all the day; and when it ceases at night, it is followed by a still more close and oppressive calm. "I had certainly," says Bishop Heber, "no conception that anywhere in India the month of March could offer such a furnace-like climate." "It is," he adds, "in the same latitude with Calcutta, and seems to be what Bengal would be without the glorious Ganges." During the hot and dry months the surface of the country appears mostly sand or dust, and in the rainy season a thick mire. In the N.W. parts, along the banks of the River Bunass, where there is good pasturage, and in various other parts of the province, they breed excellent horses and camels; and the cattle are superior to those of any other part of India. Some of their bullocks, which are in general white, with large bumps, are sixteen hands high, and will trot in a carriage as fast, and perform as long a journey, as good horses. This province is traversed by several large rivers, namely, the Bunass, the Nerbeddah, Tuptee, Mahy, Melhindry, and Sabermatty, which, being navigable from the sea to a considerable distance up the country, afford great facilities for commerce. But there are many large tracts which experience a great scarcity of water; and the inhabitants are forced to dig wells, which are in many parts from 80 to 100 feet deep. In some particular portions of this province not a stone is to be met with, whilst in some others nothing else is to be seen.
In so extensive a province, never completely subdued by any of its numerous invaders, a great diversity of population may be expected. The population of Gujerat is accordingly very strangely diversified by numerous sects and castes, under the various designations of Grassias, Catties, Coolies, Pheels, Meawassies, Charons, Bhatts, Dheras, and others. In some parts of the province the Grassias form a numerous class of landholders, and in others they merely possess a sort of feudal authority over certain portions of land and villages. The origin of their rights is a controverted point of Hindu history, which has never been very satisfactorily explained. The common account of their title to the land is, that they were robbers and plunderers, who inhabited the hills and jungles, and by their incursions the country was so much infested, that, after the decease of the Emperor Akbar in 1605, the nabobs of Surat ceded to them certain lands in each village in lieu of all demands. But it is asserted that, encouraged by this success, they still continued their depredations; and the Zemindars, in order to purchase peace, agreed to the payment, on certain lands, of what is called toda, or ready money; and the lands which are liable to this payment have been continually increasing, owing to the anarchy which so long prevailed in Gujerat. The proprietors of these claims never allow them to die out; and it is seldom that they prosecute them in person, but, having retired to some secluded residence, they rally round them a band of desperate adventurers, to whom they farm out the Grassia claim, and depute them to levy it. Hence the country, prior to the war of 1817, and the consequent interference of the British government, was a prey to the greatest disorders; it was ravaged by predatory hordes, who acquired new rights, and in this manner it was plundered, and the rent of the land misappropriated. These claims have been involved in such complication and obscurity, that the British officers have found it impossible to reduce them to any accurate standard of law or justice. On the rugged margins of all rivers in Gujerat, many of these Grassias resided in a kind of independence; and also all over the Gujerat peninsula, usually denominated Cattywar by the natives. Their numbers were recruited by criminals from the plains, who fled to their haunts for refuge, and were supposed to amount to one-half of the population N. of the Mahy River. Attempts made by the Bombay government to extinguish the Grassia claims by a payment from the public treasury, and thus to prevent the disorders which they occasioned, have been crowned with success.
Of all the disorderly hordes which infested this country, the most bloody and ferocious were the Coolies. The most barbarous were those in the vicinity of the Runn, the salt morass which bounds the province on the W., and communicates with the Gulf of Cutch. These were taught to despise every approach to civilization; they are of the most filthy habits, and consider it a mark of effeminacy to wear clean clothes; and the priests and other persons of note exceed the laity in dirtiness. They consider cleanliness as indicative of cowardice. That class of men named Bhatts, or Bharotts, abound more in Gujerat than in any other province of India. They cultivate the land; but the greater part of them are recorders of births and deaths, and beggars or itinerant bards, and very frequently traders. They often stand forward as security for the public revenue, and gua-
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Heber, vol. iii., p. 10. antee observance of agreements and rewards. They always possess, however, an intimate knowledge of the person for whom they become security, of his character and resources; and when they find that they have been deceived, and are pressed for money for which they have become security, such is their proud and obstinate character, that they sometimes sacrifice their own lives, or some aged female or child of the family, in the presence of the person for whom they have broken their word. They form, in the rude state of society which prevails in India, a sort of middlemen between the contributors and the government; every Grassia, Coolie, and Bheel having his Bhatt, a class who are rewarded by a small percentage on the amount of the revenues for which they have become surety, and for the security which they afford against the impropriety of the inferior agents of government, their persons being regarded as sacred, and their influence over the persons of the natives very great. They were chiefly employed under the Mahratta princes, between whom and the landholders they stood as middlemen, being bound to the government for the revenue, and acting as a security to the landholders against the oppressions of the government. Within the limits of British rule this agency has been discontinued, being found inefficient as an instrument of control for the unruly tribes of the country. The Charons are a sect of Hindus, allied in manners and customs to the Bhatts. They are often possessed of large droves of cattle for carriage, by means of which they carry on a distant inland traffic in grain and other articles. They also often hire themselves out as protectors of travellers in the wildest parts of the country; and so faithful are they to their charge, that when a band of predatory horse appears, these persons take an oath to die by their own hands, in case those whom they have engaged to protect are plundered; and this threat is always found effectual to restrain those superstitious thieves, who hold the Charons in great veneration. There is in Gujarat, as in other parts of Hindustan Proper, a race of people called Ungreas, whose profession is that of money-carriers, which they contrive to conceal in their quilted clothes. Although they are miserably poor, they may be trusted with large sums of money to carry many miles off, merely on the responsibility of the superior, who is frequently richer than the others. They are of all castes, and in general athletic and well armed; and they are of such singular habits, that in performing distant journeys they form themselves into parties, and fight with desperation to defend a property for which their only recompense is a mere subsistence.
The Bheels are generally described as the original inhabitants of the country, who have been driven to their present fastnesses and their miserable way of life by the invaders of their country, whether Mohammedans or Hindus. These people were, in the first instance, treated with extreme severity by the British; but in 1825 a mild and conciliatory course of policy was introduced; and they have been reclaimed from their barbarous habits and formed into regiments, subject to such discipline as was suited to their turbulent character. They also received grants of land, and freedom from taxes for a number of years; and they were in this manner trained to industrious habits.
The Dheras of this province are of a very degraded caste, and their employment is to carry filth of every description out of the roads and villages. They are miserably poor; they scrape bare the bones of every animal which dies within their limits, and share out the flesh, which they cook in various ways, and feed upon. They are obliged to serve travellers as carriers of their baggage to the village nearest their own. In the course of their business they are always committing petty thefts, and are much given to intoxication.
The Vaneeya, or the merchants and traffickers, form a numerous class in Gujarat. Many of them travel to remote parts of India, where they remain from one to ten years, after which they return to their wives and children. Many also finally settle in the towns of foreign countries, where their descendants continue to speak and write the Gujaratic tongue. The Jains are also a more numerous class here than in any of the contiguous provinces, and possess many handsome temples adorned with well-wrought images. Besides its native hordes or castes, Gujarat, along with Bombay, contains nearly all the Parsees, or fireworshippers, to be found in the continent of India, the feeble remains of the once numerous sect of the Magi. In all the larger towns are to be found that remarkable race of men named the Boras, who, though Mohammedans in religion, are Jews in features, manners, and genius. They form a community amongst themselves, and are everywhere noted for their address in bargaining, minute thrift, and constant attention to lucre. The washermen are also considered as a degraded and cruel class, on account of the numerous deaths which they involuntarily occasion to the animalcula in the process of washing.
The province of Gujarat flourished chiefly during the era of the Mogul government, and even during the most convulsed periods it carried on a much more extensive trade than ever it has done since. The principal trade is with Bombay, and the chief exports are cotton, piece goods, and grain. The imports are chiefly sugar, raw silk, pepper, cocoa nuts, and British fabrics. Its manufacturing industry has decayed, and in general has nearly disappeared, in consequence of the greater cheapness of British wares. The principal towns in this province are Surat, Ahmedabad, Broach, Cambay, Gogo, and the Guicowars capital of Baroda. Gujarat contains populous districts, but in other parts the country is extremely desolate. Surat and the neighbouring country is thickly planted with inhabitants, and the north-western districts are equally naked and destitute of people. The country has been so much exposed to the depredations of thieves and banditti from the jungles and mountains, that, for the sake of security, the great body of the people live, not in sequestered houses, but in villages; and these villages are frequently visited by travelling companies, who exhibit puppet-shows, and histrionical representations. They are also occasionally frequented by musicians, dancing girls, singing men and women, wrestlers, expert jugglers, dancing bears, goats, and monkeys. In the remote and savage districts of the country, where there are no villages, fortifications are numerous; but in all the parts to which the British influence extends, they are fast crumbling into decay. In many parts the people are of savage and cruel manners; and amongst the tribe of Jahrejhas the practice of female infanticide prevails, and the united exertions of all the British officers and statesmen have been employed to prevent it. There is another crime peculiar to this province, known in the British courts of justice by the name of jhama, which is the writing of threatening letters, the destroying of gardens or plantations, and the burning of stacks, in order to extort money, or to enforce a compliance with any other unjust demand. These offences were not formerly confined to the Grassias, but were resorted to in village feuds, even by the heads of villages. But since the regular administration of justice by the British, such disorderly practices have become less frequent. There is a class of persons, the Mahy Kaunta Coolies, who are so named from their residence on the Mahy River, who are thieves by profession, and also very ingenious, active, and courageous. They lurk on the highways, and intercept families and individuals proceeding to distant pilgrimages and religious fairs. They frequently visit Surat and other
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1 Heber, vol. ii., p. 496. large cities in pursuit of their illicit occupation, though, from the increasing vigilance of the British police, their depredations are now more frequently checked. But, beyond the precincts of the British authority, in the northern and western quarters, and the centre of the Gujerat peninsula, the number of societies of armed and sanguinary thieves is scarcely credible; and it is rather surprising that even the thinly scattered population of the country should keep its ground amid the many excesses and outrages which are committed.
There are many remarkable wells and watering-places in Gujerat. One near Baroda is said to have cost nine lacs of rupees. There is another at Vadwa, in the vicinity of Cambay, which, from the inscription, appears to have been erected in 1482.
The province of Gujerat was first invaded about A.D. 1025, by Mahmood of Ghizni, who subverted the throne of its native prince, named Jamund, and plundered his capital. After the establishment of the Delhi sovereignty, Gujerat was subject for many years to the Patan conquerors. In the fifteenth century it came under the dominion of a dynasty of Rajpoot princes, converted to the Mohammedan religion, who removed the seat of government to Ahmedabad; and under their rule it flourished greatly as a maritime and commercial state. This race of princes was overthrown by the Emperor Akbar in 1572; and after the death of Aurungzebe in 1707, hordes of Mahratta depredators overrun the province, which in 1724 was finally separated from the Mogul empire.
Until 1818 the Mahratta Peishwa and the Guicowar possessed large tracts of country, but at present only the last remains, the authority and dominions of the other having devolved to the British. The annual revenue of the Guicowar is estimated at L668,744. The military establishment of this prince, in addition to his regular troops, amounting to 6000 cavalry and infantry, comprises also the subsidiary force at the disposal of the British government, which consists of five regiments of infantry, two of cavalry, and a company of artillery. He also maintains a contingent force of 3000 cavalry, and a corps of irregulars, known as the Gujerat irregular horse, commanded by British officers. In 1802 the British government negotiated with the Guicowar as a sovereign in his own right, and thus secured his independence of the Peishwa. Under the treaty then concluded the Guicowar agreed to receive a British subsidiary force. When, as a result of his first discomfiture, the Peishwa yielded to the British government his rights in Gujerat, the Guicowar received an accession of territory, and a new treaty supplemental to the former was concluded. Under this treaty the subsidiary force was to be increased by a battalion of native infantry, of not less than 1000 men, and two regiments of native cavalry. The establishment of British authority in this country experienced very serious obstructions from the intermixture of the territories ceded by the Peishwa with those of the Guicowar; also from the Nabob of Cambay, and the unsettled tributaries of Cattywar and Mahy Caunta, and still more from the lawless habits of a large proportion of the people, especially beyond the Mahy River. But, by a wise and conciliating policy, these difficulties have been surmounted, and tranquillity has gradually arisen from the confusion which at first overspread the country.