or Kon, a range of mountains, physically discriminated from the Himalayas by the vast depression which forms the upper part of the valley of the Indus. They form the N.W. boundary of the province of Canbul, separating it from Balk and Buduckshan. The range of mountains so denominated extends in a westerly direction from Long. 78° as far as the snowy peak of Hindu Coosh, nearly N. of Canbul. These mountains are covered with snow the greater part of the year, and void of verdure at the summit, but are well wooded at the base. They form the Indian Caucasus range of the ancients. Hindustan has from the earliest ages been celebrated as one of the most highly favoured countries on the globe, and as abounding in the choicest productions both of nature and art. In ancient times, this distant region was very imperfectly known to the Greeks and other nations of the West; but they imported its most valuable produce, its diamonds, its aromatics, its silks, and its costly manufactures. The country which abounded in those expensive luxuries was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches, and every romantic tale of its felicity and glory was readily believed. In the middle ages, an extensive commerce with India was still maintained through the ports of Egypt and the Red Sea; and its precious produce, imported into Europe by the merchants of Venice, confirmed the popular opinion of its high refinement and its vast wealth. After the discovery of a passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, the same ideas still prevailed; and the maritime states of Europe contended with their fleets and armies for the dominion of the Asiatic seas, and for the commerce of the country. The Portuguese, and afterwards the Dutch, made important conquests, and carried on an extensive trade. In later times, Great Britain and France appeared on the field as competitors for the prize of Indian commerce and dominion, and were allowed to establish factories on the coasts for the reception and the store of goods. These were gradually converted into military posts, defended by soldiers and cannon; and in due time these two powers were ranged on opposite sides in all the wars and politics of India. This contest terminated in the triumph of the British arms. France lost her pre-eminence on the continent of India; and her great rival, enlarging her power on every side, gradually rose to greatness and dominion, and now rules with undisputed sway from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin. This vast extension of the British power in the East has opened the way into the interior of India. It has tended greatly to enlarge our knowledge of this distant region; and if more accurate inquiry has reduced the marvellous tales of its glory and greatness within the bounds of sobriety and truth, Hindustan, the seat of industry, of commerce, and of the arts, when Europe was sunk in barbarism, the scene of many eventful revolutions, from the Mohammedan invasion till its conquest by the armies of Britain, and inhabited by a people of peculiar manners, laws, institutions, and religion, still presents a wide field for interesting inquiry and speculation.
In the following account of this interesting country, we propose to describe— I. Its geography and natural features; its produce, its animals, its manufactures and commerce; the numerous races by which it is inhabited, with their manners, religion, and policy; and the wars and political revolutions which have terminated in establishing the sway of Great Britain over nearly the whole continent of India. II. The transactions and internal policy of the East India Company, with the various reforms introduced into the revenue, judicial, and police departments, will afford ample materials for a separate discussion and inquiry. III. A brief account will be given of the constitution, commercial privileges, and pecuniary transactions of the Company, originally merchants, now the sovereigns of a vast empire.
I. The ancient geographers had no precise ideas of the extent of Hindustan or India, terms which we mean to use synonymously in the following article; and they accordingly extended its frontier westward as far as Persia, and eastward to China. In after ages its limits often fluctuated with the events of war, and served only to mark out the course of conquest, with little or no attention to geographical accuracy. Yet in no part of the earth has nature pointed out, in the great features of the country, more distinct and magnificent boundaries. On the N., it is separated from the elevated table-land of Thibet by the precipitous wall of the Himalaya Mountains, the highest land of the Asiatic continent; on the W., the Sulman range, a continuation of the Sufeid Koh Mountains, separates it from Afghanistan and Beloochistan; its E. boundary is formed by parallel offshoots from the opposite extremity of the Himalayas and by the continuous ranges of forest-covered hills, which, skirting the Bengal district of Chittagong, stretch southward to the recently acquired province of Pegu, and separate the British dominions from the territory of Burmah. The Indus and the Ganges discharge themselves into the ocean on the western and eastern coasts of Hindustan, in about N. Lat. 24° and 22°; and to the south the country is contracted into an irregular triangle, projecting into the Indian Ocean to within eight degrees of the equator, or about 1000 miles, and on all sides inclosed by the sea. The extensive region situated within these limits is nearly comprehended between the 8th and 35th degrees of north latitude, and between the longitudes of 66° and 99° east; and its length from the northern barrier of the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin is about 1900 miles, whilst in breadth it may be estimated at 1800 miles, though, owing to the irregularity of its figure, it does not exceed 1,484,367 English square miles.
Hindustan is of an extremely diversified aspect, and comprehends within its bounds all the varieties of climate, of features, soil, and of natural scenery, from the bare and naked rock, and lofty mountain buried under eternal snows, to the low and fertile plain, scorched by the tropical sun, and the seat of luxuriant vegetation. This diversity in the aspect of the country has given rise to the following territorial divisions, namely:
1. Northern Hindustan, which comprehends the Himalaya Mountains on the N., with their lower ranges of hills stretching southwards to the plains of the Indus and the Ganges, and extending from Peshawur and Cashmere on the W., to Bootan and Assam on the E.
2. Hindustan Proper, which extends southward as far as the Nerbudah River, where the Deccan commences, and which includes the lower provinces of Bengal, the north-western provinces, together with Oude, Malwa or Central India, the Punjab, Guzerat, Sinde, and Cutch.
3. The Deccan, bounded on the N. by the Nerbudah River, and on the S. by the rivers Krishna and Toombudra, comprehends the larger portion of the presidency of Bombay, together with Orissa, the Nizam's dominions, and the territory of Nagpore.
4. India south of the Krishna River, comprehending the territories under the administration of the government of Madras, together with the native states of Cochin, Travancore and the Mysore.
The alpine region of Hindustan, which forms its northern barrier, is a narrow strip of land not exceeding 150 miles in breadth. It is here that the land of Asia attains to its height; and the country is composed of a succession of vast mountains rising far above the level of perpetual snow. These frozen deserts consist in many places of rugged and bare rocks, shooting aloft into the sky, and divided by deep ravines, very steep, and often ending in dark chasms, which are sometimes wooded, but as often bare rocks several hundred feet in height, with little more space between them than has been worn by the violence of the torrents. Here is concentrated all that is sublime in the scenery or phenomena of nature. On every side are to be seen snowy summits of stupendous height, and of every form; the conical volcanic peak; the mountain regularly rounded, or broken into rugged and frightful precipices, rising upwards to a tremendous height, or descending with a frightful declivity into deep hollows, and all covered with snow. This mountainous and frozen region is the scene of the destructive avalanche, when the accumulated snows of successive winters are precipitated from the mountains into the plains below, burying everything in their progress; or when the action of the intense cold upon the solid rock rends it from its base, and sends it bounding down the steep, producing the most fearful ruin of everything beneath. Mr Moorcroft, who in the year 1816 penetrated across the Himalaya ridge, mentions the tremendous crash from the fall of a rock, which he heard at a great distance. The slope of a hill he also saw broken from top to bottom. "In its fall," he observes, "it has overwhelmed large trees, of which some have been hurled into the river, others lay across its bed half buried in rubbish, and others, thrown down, were seen hanging by their roots with their heads towards the base of the mountain." The southern face of the Himalaya Mountains is much more steep than the northern descent into the table-land of Thibet, and it is in proportion difficult and dangerous. There is nothing like a road in these mountainous districts. The traveller has to scale the most terrific heights, by a path so narrow as not to admit two abreast, which winds along the mountain, and often along bare and perpendicular precipices by a narrow and irregular flight of steps, or by natural irregularities in the face of the polished marble rock, and sometimes by a projecting ledge not more than a foot broad, whilst a declivity of 600 or 700 feet in depth opens on the outer side. These steps, at certain projecting points, where the rock is perpendicular, wind in lines of zigzag not more than ten or twelve feet in length, at angles so sharp that, in a length of twenty-four feet, the actual height gained is not more than ten feet, and they are often placed at most inconvenient distances, which greatly increases the danger and the difficulty of access, except to those hardy mountaineers who have been trained from their infancy to agility and steadiness in such tremendous paths. Mr Moorcroft himself had on one occasion a narrow escape. "My left foot," he says, "having slipped off one of these irregularities, I lay for a few seconds upon the poise; but a snatch at a clump of grass, which on being seized did not give way, and a sudden spring, brought me to a comparatively safe spot, with the loss of some skin from my knees and elbows, and some rents in my trousers and sleeves." His Hindoo attendants encountered the same perils, and one of them had very nearly fallen down the precipice. On missing his footing, he mentions that "he shrieked violently, and sunk down almost senseless upon a point of stone, with one leg hanging over the abyss, calling out that he was lost." Another of the bearers was so alarmed that he was incapable of proceeding until he was secured by a turban tied round his waist, and held by one of his companions. In some places the rock was found to project to the edge of the river, and it was turned by rude staircases made of wood and stone, or the path lay over immense stones and rocks, piled up in dangerous disorder, where it was very difficult to secure a footing; whilst in other places the party had to aid their ascent by laying hold of shrubs, roots of trees, clumps of grass, and clods of earth, or by creeping on both hands and knees to prevent slipping down. Yet the heavily loaded native carriers, each carrying a weight of 60 pounds, are seen descending these difficult passes with apparent ease and unconcern.
Lieutenant Webb, who in 1808, along with Captains Raper and Hearsay, was sent to explore the sources of the Ganges, experienced the same dangers as Mr Moorcroft, and was finally compelled to desist from his hazardous journey when he had reached within six or seven days' journey of Gangoutri. The country here assumes a savage wildness, and, except in the passes or beds of the rivers, is totally impervious; and these rivers, in approaching their sources, from rapid and turbulent streams flowing over a rocky channel, become furious torrents dashing from one huge block of stone to another, along which the traveller, climbing over rocks, or picking his dangerous way along the path of precipices, as already described, is at last met by masses of mighty ruins, which entirely check his further progress. More recently these wild regions have been explored by that enterprising traveller Dr Gerard, who crossed the great Himalaya Pass, and penetrated into the Plateau of Tartary. The abstract of his tour, given in the Asiatic Journal, is replete with valuable information, and confirms all the previous accounts of travellers respecting the nature of the country, rude and inaccessible, and exhibiting, on a scale of grandeur hardly to be conceived, all the great phenomena of nature.
The Himalaya Mountains contain the sources of the great rivers which flow through the burning plains of Hindustan. The deep valleys between the mountains are the channels through which the waters flow from the higher grounds; and, by the melting of the snow, those streams, suddenly swollen into torrents, and rushing down the declivity, work out a deep and narrow channel amongst the rocks, where, imprisoned as it were between steep and perpendicular banks, they roar and foam amidst precipices, or in dark and unfathomable glens, exhibiting, in the conflict of their troubled waters, all the great phenomena which belong to rivers, namely, the cataract, the rapid, the boiling eddy, and the dangerous whirlpool, and only subside into smoothness when they break out and spread over the plains. Huge rocks were seen by Dr Gerard whirled along with frightful velocity; nothing visible but an entire sheet of foam and spray, thrown up and showered upon the surrounding rocks with loud concussion, and re-echoed from bank to bank with the noise of the loudest thunder. Across these streams are thrown rude bridges made of ropes or of wood, the usual expedient by which rivers are crossed in all mountain countries. Where the breadth of the river is small, the passage is effected by one or two fir spars laid across from rock to rock; but where the space is wider, a bridge of ropes is constructed, on the principle of the chain bridge. In attempting the passage by one of these rude bridges, a carrier who accompanied Fraser in his journey to the sources of the Ganges unfortunately lost his footing and fell into the water. He was instantly swept down the stream to its junction with the Bhagiruttee, about fifty yards, "when his head," says the traveller, "appeared for a moment, and his load floating beside him; but the foaming current of the Bhagiruttee, here tumbling over large rocks with a mighty roar, seized him and hurried him along with its tremendous torrent."
The greatest height of the Himalaya range has been fixed by accurate measurements at upwards of 28,000 feet above the level of the sea. According to the accounts of all travellers, these mountains present from the plains below one of the sublimest aspects in nature, and they are at a loss for words to express the admiration and awe with which
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1 See Moorcroft's Journal, Asiatic Researches, vol. xii., p. 386. 2 Fraser, Journal of a Tour through part of the Snowy Range of the Himalaya Mountains. Hindustan, they are at first beheld. Bishop Heber mentions that the nearest range rises into a dignity and grandeur which he was not prepared for, divided as it is into successive ridges, in all the wildest and most romantic forms of ravine, forest, crag, and precipice. In his further progress he found "one range of mountains after another quite as rugged, and, generally speaking, more bare than those which we had left, till the horizon was terminated by a vast range of ice and snow, extending its battalion of white shining spears from east to west, as far as the eye could follow it; the principal points rising like towers in the glittering rampart, but all connected by a chain of humbler glaciers." Captain Raper, who accompanied Lieutenant Webb in his survey of the Ganges, viewed the Himalaya ridge from a summit about 4000 feet above the lower plain. "From the edge of the scarp," he observes, "the eye extended over seven or eight distinct chains of hills, one rising above the other, till the view was terminated by the Himalaya or Snowy Mountains. It is necessary for a person to place himself in our situation before he can form a just conception of the scene. The depth of the valley below, the progressive elevation of the intermediate hills, and the majestic splendour of the cloud-capt Himalaya, formed so grand a picture, that the mind was impressed with a sensation of dread rather than of pleasure."1 "The stupendous height of those mountains," says Elphinstone, "the magnificence and variety of their lofty summits; the various nations by whom they are seen, and who seem to be brought together by this common object; and the awful and undisturbed solitude which reigns amidst their eternal snows, fill the mind with admiration and astonishment that no language can express."2
Northern Hindustan varies in its climate and in its aspect with the height of the ground. The lower ranges of mountains, though they scarcely reach the level of perpetual snow, still retain the sublime features of alpine scenery; namely, the rugged and bare mountain, the craggy rock, white, gray, red, or brown, springing up in fantastic forms above the general mass; and the deep and suddenly descending chasm, with the foul torrent foaming over its rocky bed. The luxuriant foliage is wanting which embellishes the lower hills; the rich and smiling valley is not so often seen; whilst the forests of dark brown fir fringing the mountains and the hollows impart a sombre and unvarying appearance to the scene. At a lower level the country improves; and though it still exhibits the mountain and the precipice, the intervening valley is clothed with verdure, and the lower hills with the most magnificent forests of large and lofty trees, the open country with roses, jasmines, and other lovely or odoriferous shrubs, and with the most luxuriant alpine plants.3 The valleys through which flow the head waters of the Indus and the Ganges, namely, the Sutlej, the Pabur, the Jumna, the Baghiruttee, the Alkanunda, with their tributaries, exhibit all the varied and sublime scenery of this romantic country. The valley of the Sutlej is hemmed in by brown and barren mountains, steep and rocky, without the grandeur of lofty precipices or fringing wood. The hollows through which it receives its tributary streams are dark chasms, without cultivation; the heights crowned with forts, but without any neat villages surrounded with trees to relieve the adjacent desert. The banks of the Jumna, on the other hand, though rocky and wild, are wooded and green, and the sloping faces of the hills fertile and well cultivated; and even at its source, the country, however wild and picturesque, is still not nearly so dreary as the valley of the Bhagiruttee.
The features of the landscape are here lofty, rugged, and inaccessible, with less of the beautiful than of the sublime and terrible. A pleasing contrast to this wild scenery is presented by the smiling valley through which the Pabur meanders, chequered as it is with pasture and crops, and the banks and the hills clothed with cultivation, villages, and wood. Such is the usual aspect of the lower valley of Northern Hindustan, the height of which is for the most part from 3000 to 6000 feet above the plains. The difference between the northern and southern exposures of this mountainous country is remarkable, not only in the formation and structure of the hills and rocks, but in the vegetation. The country on its southern face is of a brown and dusky colour; the grass short and parched; the hills rough and humpy, with rocks standing through the ground; the lower parts bare of wood; and above, the Weymouth pine, with a few stunted larches sprinkled amongst the rocks; whilst the higher parts are spread over with oak, holly, and alder, their leaves of brownish green, harmonizing with the burned appearance of the hills, and giving a sombre hue to the whole scene. On the northern exposure a rich colour of dark green is diffused over the whole landscape; the rocky sides of the glens are bolder and grander; and they are clothed with noble forests of larch, silver, and spruce fir, which shroud from the view the highest and steepest cliffs. "All," says Fraser, "was rich and dark; and here and there a glade opened, or a high slope extended from the base of the rock, or projected between two streams, of a bright beautiful green, shining through the sombre forest." This difference between the northern and southern exposures is strongly marked all over the hills.4
That strip of flat country, about twenty miles in breadth, which lies at the base of the great Himalaya range, dividing it from the plain of the Ganges, is called Terrae or Terreana. It is covered with thick forests and low swamps, and, though fertile, it is so unhealthy that it is little cultivated. Bishop Heber graphically describes it as a long, black, level line, extending at the foot of the lowest hills; "so black and level," he adds, "that it might seem to have been drawn with ink and a ruler." This flat does not extend farther north-west than through a portion of Rohilcund, where the healthy cultivated country reaches to the foot of the hills, which rise abruptly from the sandy flat beneath. These low hills are watered by streams from the higher mountains, that rise to the level of 1500 or 5000 feet, from which this lower range is frequently separated by fine valleys of some length, which are called doon by the natives, answering to the Scottish name of strath. The hills which rise beyond this lower range, to the height of about 5000 to 7000 feet, are lofty and majestic, and broken into numerous ridges, divided by deep shaggy dells. This appearance Fraser ascribes to the quality of the rock of which they are composed, which consists of a strongly indurated clay, with a mixture of siliceous matter, forming a rock exceedingly hard, though easily destructible by exposure to the air, and splitting into variously-sized fragments, leaving hard marbly masses staring through the scanty soil. It may be finally remarked of this singular and interesting country, that though it appears from the plains to be divided into distinct ranges of terraces, it is really a vast collection of mountains heaped in masses one above another, without any order or plan that can be discovered, until the height of land is reached at the great Himalaya ridge which extends from beyond the sources of the Indus in a continuous chain far into China.
The great plain of Hindustan presents an entirely different scene. The cold and bracing air of the upper coun-
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1 See Raper's Narrative of a Survey of the Sources of the Ganges, Asiatic Researches, vol. ii., p. 469. 2 Elphinstone's Journey to the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 95. 3 Fraser's Journal, p. 141. 4 Ibid., p. 142. Hindustan is there exchanged for burning heat; the mountain torrents no longer rage, except when they are in flood, but roll their streams lazily over the plains. That large tract which is contained between the Indus and the Brahmapootra, and which extends E. and W. from 1200 to 1400 miles, and about 300 to 400 miles from N. to S., is, with few exceptions, a level country, consisting chiefly of the great plain of the Ganges, rich and fertile, and clothed with the most luxuriant vegetation, in which the spreading palm, with groves of mango and other trees of the most luxuriant foliage, and gardens, are intermixed with cultivated fields. The noble river which intersects this extensive plain determines the aspect and character of the country. Its swelling stream, as it approaches the sea in the provinces of Bahar and Bengal, is very broad and deep, and waters so completely the whole country, that in the driest season there is scarcely any part more than twenty miles distant from some river; and by means of lakes, rivulets, and water-courses, boats may approach the peasant's door. During the annual inundation, a large tract of cultivated country is submerged to a great depth; and the lower part of the Delta, named the Sunderbunds, is chequered by a labyrinth of creeks and rivers, expanding to a breadth of 200 miles; the actual inundation reaching a breadth of 100 miles, in which trees and villages are seen like islands appearing above the water. Higher up the stream the inundation is diminished in extent; and in the province of Bahar the river is not above a mile broad, the country being flat and fertile, though not so abundant in trees as the rich plains of Bengal. Towards the west, the plain watered by the Ganges and its tributary streams yields in abundance all the productions of the tropics; especially the Doobah, or the tract that lies between the Jumna and the Ganges, the provinces of Allahabad and Agra, and in general all the alluvial tracts near the rivers. At a distance from these, irrigation is resorted to by the cultivators, and deep wells are dug. The plain is diversified by ranges of hills, with abrupt peaks occasionally shooting up, and crowned with forts, in which during the decay of the Mogul empire, the rebellious or robber chiefs sought to secure a precarious independence. The plain of Hindustan is generally fertile when water can be obtained; and, as it approaches the mountains, in the northern provinces of Oude and Delhi, and is watered by the numerous streams flowing towards the Ganges, it is flat, fertile, and rich, except towards the western borders of Delhi, on the verge of the great desert, where sterile tracts occur, without cultivation or inhabitants. Towards the south-western portion of the plain, near the Nerbudah, in the province of Malwah, the country is of greater elevation, but has a regular descent from the Vindhya Mountains, which extend along the north side of the river, as is pointed out by the course of the numerous streams that still flow northward into the Ganges. But the aspect of the country changes as it recedes from this great stream; the overflowing river no longer spreads over the plain, and forms a navigable water-course; it is now merely a mountain torrent, of no depth, to float down the produce of the country. Westward, in approaching the Indian Ocean, wild tracts occur, hilly and rocky, and overgrown with jungles, the haunts of wild beasts and of robbers; and still further west, the province of Cutch is a cold sterile waste, half covered with a salt morass called the Rurn. In the interior of Hindustan, large and fertile tracts have been laid waste by misrule, or the devastations of war; these are overrun with a rank vegetation, which quickly springs up under the quickening influence of a tropical sun; and which, consisting of tall trees with spreading branches, interwoven into an impenetrable fence with brushwood, and with innumerable shrubs and creeping plants clinging round the trees, and lacing them firmly together, forms thick jungles, affording abundant cover to the wild animals of the country, and to Hindustan gangs of banditti, who are even more ferocious than the beasts of the field.
Hindustan, as well as almost all other tropical countries, would soon be changed by the great heat into deserts of sand, like a large portion of Africa, if it were not refreshed by the periodical rains and the overflow of the rivers. In the plain of Hindustan, towards the west, occurs a tract of this description, which, having neither rains nor refreshing streams, still remains an arid sand. This great desert reaches northward to the Ghara, a river formed by the united streams of the Beas and Sutlej, and south as far as the salt lakes of Cutch, which communicate with the Gulf of Cutch in the Indian Ocean. It extends about 500 miles from N. to S., and is about 400 miles in breadth, encroaching eastward on the cultivated parts of the Delhi and Agra provinces, and westward on the country fertilized by the Indus. Mr Elphinstone, in his journey to Afghanistan, travelled across this waste, which he describes as consisting mostly of hillocks of loose and deep sand, from 20 to 100 feet in height, which in summer are blown aloft in clouds by the wind, and threaten to overwhelm the traveller. Here a miserable village is sometimes seen, which is merely a few round straw huts with low walls and conical roofs, like little stacks of corn, surrounded by hedges of dry thorny branches stuck in the sand. A few fields, watered by the dews and the rains, surround these abodes of misery, and yield crops of the poorest kinds of pulse, and coarse grain. Water is scarce, and is only obtained from wells often 300 feet deep, with a diameter of only three feet, and all lined with masonry. One was seen by Mr Elphinstone of the enormous depth of 345 feet, with such a scanty supply of unwholesome brackish water, that the whole was drawn out, by two bullocks turning the water-wheel, in a single night. In this sandy desert springs up in profusion the most juicy of all fruits, the water-melon. From about the western frontier of Ajmeer, at Shekawatty, to Baha-wulpoor, the distance is 280 miles, of which the western portion, for 100 miles, is wholly destitute of inhabitants, water, and vegetation. In the Punjab, the abundance of water corrects the sterility of the soil; and in the country watered by the five well-known rivers which flow into the Indus, cultivation, with waving grass and trees, marks the termination of the desert. In the north-western extremity of Hindustan, high up the Indus, and embosomed amongst lofty mountains, is situated the valley of Cashmere, celebrated in oriental tales for its romantic beauty. Here the eastern princes, in the days of their prosperity, were wont to retire, and to seek in those sequestered scenes of natural beauty, a brief oblivion of their daily cares.
The country to the S. of Nerbudah, namely, the Deccan, extending N.W. and S.E. 800 miles, comprehends the whole breadth of Hindustan, between the Nerbudah on the N. and the Krishna or Kistnah River on the S. The western range of the Ghaut Mountains, rising up with the steepness of a wall from the shore of the Indian Ocean, runs along the coast southward from the River Taptee, as far as Cape Comorin, and forms the highest land, only about seventy, or in some places forty miles, from the western shore; whilst on the opposite side of the range, the table-land, elevated about 3000 feet above the sea, has a gradual slope to the eastward for a distance varying from 300 to 700 miles, and owing to this conformation of the ground, all the rivers of any size or length of course, such as the Godavery and the Krishna, which water the Deccan, and the Palar and the Cavery, which belong to Southern India, roll down the eastern declivity of the Ghauts. These mountains also diverge in ridges across the country of the Deccan, which on the eastern coast is low, flat, and sandy, with the exception, however, of the tract between the Godavery and Kistna or Krishna. Hindustan, rivers, 150 miles in length, along the sea-shore, and forty miles broad, composed of rich vegetable mould, such as is usually found at the mouths of rivers, and remarkably fertile. In the interior, the country, especially towards the N., is wild, woody, mountainous, and overrun with thick jungle; in some parts, as on the S.W. frontier of Bengal, it is a primeval wilderness, inhabited by people but slightly reclaimed from natural wildness. Throughout Hyderabad and Nagpore the country has a gradual slope eastward as indicated by the course of the two principal rivers, the Godavary and the Kistna, both of which, though issuing from the base of the Western Ghauts, find their way into the Bay of Bengal. Towards the S. of Nagpore, large tracts have been desolated by war and robbery; and ruined towns, and wasted fields overgrown with jungle, still remain the sad memorials of those calamities. The western districts of the presidency of Bombay extend towards the Indian Ocean, and include the Western Ghauts, which rise to the height of about 3000 feet above the level of the sea. They abound in all the interesting aspects of mountain scenery, and are studded with fortresses and natural strongholds. The eastern declivity stretches out into a table-land, with plains well watered and productive; whilst the intervening strip of land, from the mountains to the sea, is in general a rugged district, but improves as it approaches the mountains, which are fringed with noble forests of teak and other valuable trees. Numerous mountain streams, but no rivers of magnitude, make their way westward to the sea from the Ghauts; and there are few coasts so much broken into small bays and harbours with so straight a general outline.
To the S. of the Kistna River, the country forms a triangle, of which this river is the base, and the coasts of Coromandel and Malabar the sides. Its extent from the Kistna to Cape Comorin, which is the point of the triangle, is 600 miles; and its breadth in the widest point is about 550. It may be shortly described as a table-land 3000 feet in height, containing the principal districts under the Madras Presidency, and enclosed on each side by the Western and Eastern Ghauts, from which the country descends on both sides to the sea—on the E. to the Bay of Bengal, and on the W. to the Indian Ocean, forming the two provinces of the Carnatic and of Malabar; the latter a narrow strip of low country, extending 200 miles along the coast, much broken and interspersed with back-water runs and extensive ravines, shaded with forest and jungle, and filled with population; the former also a long narrow tract, stretching 570 miles along the shore, and nowhere more than 120 miles in breadth, and commonly not more than 75. The Eastern Ghauts extend along the coast of Coromandel. They are not so high as the western range; and naked, sun-burnt, and rocky peaks are more commonly seen amongst them. The table-land in the centre descends both towards the N. and S.; its elevation in the southern province of Coimbatore not exceeding 900 feet. It is extremely diversified with woods, waste, and jungles; and cultivation is here, as in other parts of India, carried on by means of large tanks containing a supply of water for the irrigation of the land. In descending from the hills into the southern plains of Travancore, which extend to the Indian Ocean, the country presents a varied prospect of hill and dale, and winding streams which clothe the valleys in perennial green; and the grandeur of the scene is heightened by the lofty forests which cover the mountains, producing pepper, cassia, frankincense, and other aromatic gums.
The following are the chief rivers of Hindustan, with the length of their respective courses to the sea:—Indus, 1700 miles; Brahmapootra, 1900; Ganges, 1500; Jumna (to its junction with the Ganges, 780), 1500; Sutlej (to the Indus 900), 1490; Ghylum (to the Indus, 750), 1250; Gunduck (to the Ganges 450), 980. In the Deccan and S. of Hindustan, India, the Godavary, 850; Kistna, 700; Nerbuddah, 700; Mahamuddy, 550; Tuptee, 460; Cavery, 400. There are few coasts of such extent, so destitute of islands and harbours as that of Hindustan. With the exception of emerged sea banks and mere rocks, Ceylon is the only island near its shores; and on the eastern coast, Masulipatam, which admits vessels of 300 tons burden, is the only harbour for large vessels between Trincomalee in the island of Ceylon, and the Ganges, which is free from a raging surf. To this inconvenience, Madras, though an important British settlement, is peculiarly liable. On the western coast, the only harbours capable of admitting large vessels are Bombay and Kurachee in Scinde; Mangalore admits no vessels drawing more than ten feet.
Hindustan comprehends within its bounds the opposite extremes of heat and cold. The plains are burnt up with intense heat; whilst winter, with every intermediate variety of temperature, prevails in the mountains. Philosophers have in vain endeavoured to fix the point of perpetual congelation under different degrees of latitude. They have indeed framed a graduated scale of the respective heights at which, according to calculation, this point should begin at corresponding distances from the equator. But theory is here at variance with actual observation. The climate of mountainous tracts depends so much on localities and the particular course of the winds, as to baffle all general speculation. Hence in the Himalaya Mountains harvests of grain are found, where, according to hypothesis, the ground should be buried under deep snow, and trees are seen to flourish in the regions of perpetual winter. Captain Webb, in ascending the Himalaya range, saw around him, at the height of 11,630 feet above the level of Calcutta, rich forests of oak, pine, and rhododendron, the ground covered with vegetation as high as the knee, strawberry beds in full flower, and currant bushes in blossom; and in 1818, at the Niti Pass, 16,814 feet in height, philosophy was again at fault, as the ground was clear of snow, though above the line of perpetual congelation, and many quadrupeds were feeding on the grassy banks of the Sutlej. It was remarked by Dr Gerard that vegetation attained a higher level on the northern than on the southern face of the Himalaya ridge, where the extreme height of cultivation is 10,000 feet; the limit of the forest 11,800 feet, and 12,000 feet that of bushes. On the northern side cultivation rises to the height of 11,400 feet; in other places to 13,600 feet; birch trees to 14,000 feet; and tama bushes, which form excellent fuel, to the height of about 17,000 feet. In Northern Hindustan, great and sudden changes of temperature occur, which is the cause of pulmonary affections. During summer, the thermometer, which is often in the morning at 32° or under it, rises to 70°, 75°, and 80°, or upwards during the day: the winters are, however, uniformly severe. In this also, as in other hilly countries, the traveller may be fainting to-day under a tropical sun, and shivering to-morrow amidst the rigour of perpetual snows. From the banks of the Sutlej, where the thermometer frequently stands at 100° and 108°, three days climbing will carry him into the regions of winter.
In the plains of Hindustan, the heat during the greater part of the year is unintermitting and intense, except where it is modified by the ranges of mountains, or the table-lands towards the W. The seasons here are commonly divided into the hot, cold, and rainy. The spring and the dry season throughout the valley of the Ganges last about four months, the heat gradually increasing with the season, until, in May and June, the thermometer rises to 100°, and frequently in the interior to 108° and 110°, when it is almost intolerable even to the natives, and still more so to Europeans, who resort to various modes of alleviation, such as the cuscus tatty, which is a frame of wood, interwoven with wind, like the blast from a furnace, and the still more sultry calms, have been succeeded by a pure and delicious air. Intermittent rains now fall for about a month, when they come on again with great violence, and in July are at their height. During the third month they rather diminish, but are still heavy; and in September, and at the end of the month, they depart amidst thunders and tempests as they came. From 50 to 80 inches of rain fall in Bengal during the rainy season.
The dense masses of clouds which arise on the Indian Ocean are carried forward by the S.W. monsoon over the plains of Hindustan, as far as the Himalaya Mountains. On the coasts they descend in deluges of rain, which diminish as they recede from the sea, unless where the vapours are intercepted by high mountains, when they pour down in torrents of rain on the plains beneath. But in Southern India, the S.W. monsoon is intercepted by the double chain of the Western and Eastern Ghauts, by which the mass of clouds being as it were cut in twain, is carried forward on the N. and S. sides of this mountain wall, going clear of a considerable tract to leeward of the Eastern Ghauts, namely, the coast of Coromandel, which is thus free from the periodical rains which fall in all other places of Hindustan. The western range of the Ghauts, though it checks, does not altogether impede the passage of the clouds; and we find accordingly, that in the table-land of Mysore and the neighbouring countries, the S.W. monsoon brings on the rains, though they are not so violent nor of such long continuance as in Bengal, and on the western shores of India. But those light and elevated clouds which pass the Western Ghauts, being stopped in their progress by the eastern chain, or descending in rain on the intermediate table-land, never reach the Coromandel coast; and here, accordingly, on the eastern side of the mountains, the dry season prevails, when it rains on the table-land of Mysore to the W., and still more heavily on the Malabar shore. On the other hand, it is the N.E. monsoon which, in the Bay of Bengal, sets in about the middle of October, with thunder and lightning and violent hurricanes, that ushers in the rains on the Coromandel coast, which continue to the middle of December, and sometimes to the 1st of January, whilst at this period southerly gales and fair weather prevail on the opposite coast of the Indian peninsula.
It was formerly supposed that the Ghauts, interrupting the progress of the S.W. monsoon, occasioned a diversity of seasons throughout a great part of India. But it is only that limited tract of country to the leeward of the Eastern Ghauts that is free from the influence of the S.W. monsoon, which accordingly brings on the rainy season at the mouth of the Godaverry, immediately to the N. Major Rennell suggests that those clouds may be blown by the S.W. monsoon from Cape Comorin; though he afterwards adds that this is not his opinion, because the cape bears S.S.W. from the mouth of the Godaverry, and the reigning winds are much more westerly. But the true reason seems to be, that the eastern chain of the Ghauts does not extend so far N.; hence they afford no shelter to the country at the mouth of the Godaverry, which thus lies in the direct course of the S.W. monsoon. To the N. of the Ghaut Mountains, in the parallel of Surat, the S.W. monsoon, meeting with no interruption, carries its supplies of moisture over the whole face of the country. The periodical rains accordingly extend over the great plain of the Ganges. They commence on the coast of Malabar in May, farther N. in June, where they are not so violent; at Delhi they do not come on till the end of June; and a much smaller quantity of rain falls than at Bombay or Calcutta. Near the sea the clouds are still in a deep mass, and descend in
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1 Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 128. 2 Martin's History of the British Colonies, vol. i., p. 91. 3 Memoir of a Map of Hindustan, p. 214. 4 Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, p. 130. Hindustan. deluges of rain; but they are exhausted as they go; the rains become weaker and weaker; and are at last diminished to a few transient showers in the S. of the Punjab. On the sea-shore the S.W. monsoon extends into Beloochistan, and thence into Mekran, the easternmost province of Persia, where the clouds being arrested by mountains, descend in heavy rains. They pass with little obstruction over the countries of Lower Sind; but being intercepted by the mountains of Upper Sind, they occasion the principal rains of the year.
The eastern provinces of Hindustan, including Bengal and the mountainous countries of Bootan, Nepaul, and the other contiguous provinces, are not dependent on the rains that come across the country from the Indian Ocean, which would be very scanty at so great a distance from the sea. Of the mass of clouds driven before the S.W. monsoon, that portion which passes Cape Comorin on the S. is carried north-eastward across the Bay of Bengal, until, meeting with the mountains that join the Himalaya from the S., of which they are indeed a continuation, they follow their direction, and are thus diverted from a northerly into a north-westerly course; and it is from this quarter accordingly, that the north-eastern districts of Bengal and the adjoining provinces receive the rains fresh and abundant from the ocean. Part of these clouds make their way over the first hills, and bring on the rains in Nepaul and Tibbet; and part passing to the N.W., water the plains of Bengal; the southern face of the Himalaya Mountains, the countries which lie to the N. of the Ganges, the northern parts of the Punjab, and, in their progress to the N.W., the southern declivity of the Cashmere Hills, and the plains beneath, though they scarcely make their way over these hills into the Valley of Cashmere. They continue their progress westward to Afghanistan, where they gradually become weaker, and only produce occasional showers. The cold season, which succeeds the rains, lasts from November to the middle of February; and during all this period the air is clear, and the thermometer is from 65° to 84°. In Southern India the heat is greater than in Bengal. In the Carnatic the thermometer ranges from 100° to 106°; and the cold season is of very short duration. On the table-land above the Ghaut Mountains, as at Coimbatore, among the hills, the temperature in the cold season is from 31° to 59°; in summer 64°, 65°, and 75°, or even higher. On the table-land in which Bangalore is situated, the thermometer seldom rises above 82°, or falls below 56°.
Hindustan comprehends all the known varieties of the vegetable tribes. The mountainous tracts of Northern Hindustan produce all the alpine plants, and the various species of European grain, fruits, and flowers. Deep woods cover those lower ranges of mountains, in which are found the pine tree of various species, "the tallest, straightest, and most magnificent," says Fraser, he ever beheld; the larch, the silver, and the spruce fir, from the bark and twigs of which resin exudes in abundance; the yew tree; several species of oak, bolly, alder, sycamore, birch, with mulberry and chestnut trees. Here is also found the mimosa tree, from which is made the catechu or Indian rubber;—the resinous part of this fir, cut into slips, answers the common uses of the lamp. These noble forests extend over immense tracts, and would afford inexhaustible supplies of timber, if they could be transported to the proper market. Fruits in great variety are also produced in this elevated region, such as apricots, peaches, and grapes, apples, pears, currants, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries; roots, such as turnips, carrots, garlic, onions; flowers and plants, as roses, both red and white, lilies of the valley, jasmines, buttercups, yellow, blue, and white cowslips, sweet briar, with numerous other beautiful and fragrant plants. The valleys exhibit, according to their altitude and temperature, the productions of Europe or of the tropical countries. At the height of 6000 feet appear the oak and the pine; at that of 3000 feet rattans and bamboos of enormous dimensions; in some parts the pine-apple, the orange, the sugar-cane, grow to maturity; in others, barley, millet, and similar grains are produced. The lower part of these hills is the seat of the sail forests. The lower valleys yield rice sown broad-cast, maize, wheat, barley, pulse of various kinds, sugar-cane, cotton, Indian madder, a large species of cardamum, besides other productions. The pastoral tribes of Northern Hindustan feed considerable flocks on the lower hills and valleys; in summer they climb the alpine country, and browse on the herbage adjacent to the region of perpetual frost.
The vegetable produce of the plains in Hindustan, and of the southern provinces, is the same as in all tropical countries. The soil, where it is copiously watered, is fertile; and if the country were one unvaried level, the copious rains would afford a sufficient supply for every spot. But, from the inequalities of the surface, the lower parts are frequently overflowed, whilst, in the higher grounds, vegetation is burnt up. To secure a more equal distribution of water, various contrivances are resorted to. It is retained in extensive plains by means of dams, or in reservoirs constructed of stone, or in ponds and water-courses, whence it is distributed over the land. Some of these works, though erected at great cost, are in a dilapidated state. Their construction conferring a reputation for piety, they have been uselessly multiplied; and not being duly repaired, they are soon filled with aquatic plants, putrid water, bad smells, and pernicious exhalations. One of these tanks, seen by Dr Buchanan, is stated to be 8 miles long and 3 broad. "I never viewed a public work," he observes, "with more satisfaction, a work which supplies a great body of people with every comfort which their moral situation will permit them to enjoy." The Hindu, though he is a most industrious, is not a skilful cultivator; his implements are of a very rude kind; and even if he had the skill, he has not the capital necessary for an improved system of husbandry. The ploughing in Hindustan is quite different from any thing seen in this country. The plough has no contrivance for turning up the earth, nor has the share sufficient depth to stir a new soil. Several ploughs in succession deepen the furrows, or rather scratch the surface. The branch of a tree, or some other equally rude substitute for a harrow, is then employed to pulverise the soil, and prepare it for the seed. The plough is drawn by oxen, and in Southern India by buffaloes. The field, after it is sown, must be protected for several days by a person exalted on a bamboo stage, against the depredations of numerous flocks of birds, and still longer in woody districts, from the havoc of wild elephants, buffaloes, and other animals. The harvest is reaped by the sickle; the scythe being unknown. There is no occasion for stacking rice, which is completely preserved by the husk. The grain, after it is winnowed, is stored in jars of unbaked earth, or in baskets made of large twigs. In Benares and the western provinces, and also in the S. of India, it is stored in subterraneous granaries; but in the damp climate of Bengal it is hoarded above ground. The rotation of crops, so essential to the husbandry of Europe, is not known in Bengal; nor are the articles for cultivation ever selected with any view to restore the exhausted powers of the soil. The land is never properly manured. The Hindus, from their limited use of animal food, are no extensive breeders of stock. The labouring cattle are either pastured on small commons, or fed at home on cut grass;
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1 Fraser's Journal of a Tour through the Himalaya Mountains, p. 139. 2 See Journey from Madras, through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. i., p. 16. and those for the dairy graze in numerous herds in the forests or on the downs. The dung is accounted holy by the superstitious Hindus, and is either converted to religious uses, or into fuel, and sold. In Bengal no manure is used; and, in the southern provinces, only a small quantity of ashes and dried vegetables. Oil-cake is sometimes employed as a manure for the sugar-cane. The public revenue is derived chiefly from the land, but the government are no longer the sole landlords; their interest in the soil has been defined by the limitation of the public demand, and new classes of landed proprietors are springing up in all parts of the empire.
Rice is the great staple of agriculture throughout Hindustan, in the plain of the Ganges as well as in Southern India. It is sown at the approach of the rains, and it is gathered during the rainy season, about the end of August; the last crop is sown during the same season, and is gathered in the beginning of December. It is esteemed the best, not being equally liable with the other to decay. The diversity of soil and climate, and the several seasons of cultivation, have given rise to infinite varieties in this species of grain. When the rains fail throughout Hindustan, which occasionally happens, the rice crops are apt to be deficient to a degree altogether unknown in the well-regulated agriculture of Europe, where the severest scarcity hardly ever raises the price of corn more than three times its usual rate. But the famines of Hindustan leave thousands without subsistence, and fill the land with scenes of misery and death. In the great famine of 1769, it was estimated that three millions of the people perished; the air was so infected by the noxious effluvia of dead bodies, that it was scarcely possible to stir abroad without perceiving it, and without hearing also the frantic cries of the victims of famine, who were seen in every stage of suffering and death; whole families expired, and villages were desolated; and when the new crop came forward in August, it had no owners. Bengal has been less liable to famines since this period, but they have frequently occurred in other parts of India. Rice thrives well in the inundated track of the Ganges, and in Southern Hindustan, especially on the low lands of the sea-coast; higher up the Ganges, wheat and barley are more generally cultivated, also in the high grounds and elevated table-lands of Southern India. Other kinds of grain are cultivated, such as Indian corn; and great varieties of pulse and coarse grains, such as peas, beans, chiches, gram, vetches, and raggy, which is the most important crop raised in the dry field, and in some parts of Southern India is the subsistence of all classes, in others of the poorer classes. These are important articles of cultivation, as they have each their particular season, and thrive even on poor soils. Maize is the general produce of poor soils in hilly countries, and is commonly cultivated in the more western provinces. Millet and other grains are also cultivated, and, vegetating rapidly, and in every season, they fill up profitably for the farmer the short intervals between the other modes of cultivation in Lower Hindustan. Sugar is everywhere cultivated, and at little expense, by the Hindu cultivator; and as the sugar of India is no longer subjected in the United Kingdom to an unequal import duty, there is reason to hope that the produce of India may compete not only with the sugars of British colonies, but with those also of Cuba, Brazil, Siam, and Manilla. Though formerly unknown in Europe, sugar has been produced in India from the remotest times, and was thence transplanted into Arabia, whence it has been introduced into Europe, Africa, the West Indies, and America. It grows luxuriantly throughout all the valley of the Ganges and in the plains of Southern India, and could be produced, with the help of European skill and capital, to meet any demand. It thrives more especially in Bahar and Benares, and in particular districts of Bengal. Opium is the peculiar and staple produce of the province of Bahar, and is also extensively cultivated in Malwa, and in other parts of Hindustan. It is a precarious crop, producing alternately high profits and heavy losses. The liquor extracted from the poppy is collected as it exudes, and is then placed in pots, where it is dried and formed into lumps, in which process it loses from one-tenth to one-eighth of its weight. The opium produced in Bahr and Bengal being monopolized by the East India Company, and bought at a fixed price, is a contraband article of trade, and its cultivation is confined to certain districts. Within Bengal no one is allowed to cultivate the poppy except for the government. In Malwa a treaty was entered into with the different rulers and chiefs, by which the monopoly was extended to that country, and all that was produced delivered to the Company, at the rate of three rupees a seer, which is two pounds. But so great was the discontent excited by this extension of the monopoly, that, at the desire of the chiefs, the treaties were rescinded in 1819-1820; and the trade in opium, and its cultivation, is now free in that province, and everywhere throughout India, except in the Company's dominions; but as Malwa is completely surrounded by British territory, a large revenue is derived from the high duty levied on Malwa opium in transit to Bombay for exportation to China. Malwa opium equals that of Bengal, and is brought into competition with the Company's opium in all the foreign markets, and especially in China. The cotton plant has from time immemorial been one of the staple products of Hindustan, and is indigenous from Ceylon in the S., to the Himalaya Mountains. It is cultivated extensively throughout Bengal, and in the interior provinces on the banks of the Jamuna; also in the Deccan, and in Southern India, whence it is imported into Bengal, and into Mirzapoor, and the district of Benares, where it is manufactured. Flax and hemp are also cultivated in several districts both in the N., and in the S. of India. Silk was long the exclusive product of India and China. Silk-worms are now reared principally in the district of Burdwan, and in the vicinity of the Bhagirati and the Ganges, and for about 100 miles down their streams. Four crops of mulberry leaves are obtained in the year, the last in December. A considerable quantity of silk, of a coarse kind, is obtained from wild silk-worms, which do not feed on the mulberry, and are found in the forests of Silhet, Assam, and the Deccan. Indigo was originally a product of India; and the plant was afterwards carried to South America, whence Europe was for a long time supplied with this dye. The manufacture on which the quality of the indigo depends was very unskilfully conducted until the year 1783. Since this period it has been so much improved by the skill and capital of Europeans that it is now a staple article of commerce; and in Bengal the value of the produce in 1854 amounted to L1,701,206. Indigo is produced generally throughout the plains of the Ganges, and in Southern India, but chiefly in Bengal. Tobacco, formerly unknown in India, and introduced from America probably about the beginning of the seventeenth century, is now extensively cultivated in every part, chiefly however in the northern provinces, and more rarely in the S. The tobacco grown in the Mahratta territories is most esteemed; particularly that which is produced near Bilsea, a town in Malwa. Bengal does not yield good tobacco; but the Company's territories in Guzerat, being principally of a rich black soil, are considered as peculiarly
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1 See Appendix to the Report on the East India Company's affairs, p. 15, par. 59, House of Commons Papers, 1831. Minutes of Evidence before Lords' Committee, 26th February 1830. Hindustan, suitable to its cultivation. The Hindustan having been already in the habit of inhaling the smoke of hemp leaves, and other intoxicating drugs, readily adopted tobacco as a more agreeable substitute, and it soon came into general use. Their recent knowledge of it appears from their having no name for it which is not a corruption of some European term. Pepper, though of inferior consequence, is a valuable product of Southern India, especially of Malabar. It is produced from a species of vine which is made to twine round the jack tree. It bears fruit about the third or fourth year, amounting to from three to seven pounds weight, and yields two crops in the year. The areca-nut and betel-leaf, universally chewed by the natives, thrive in the low grounds, where water is abundant; and cardamoms, a spice in great repute. The universal and vast consumption of vegetable oils in Hindustan, for food or unguents, or for the lamp, is supplied by the extensive cultivation of mustard seed, linseed, sesamum, palma christi, besides what is procured from the cocoa nut. The first ripens in the cold season, the sesamum during the rains, or soon afterwards.
The forests in the low plains of Hindustan, of Southern India, and those which cover the western range of the Ghauts, and more sparingly the Eastern Ghauts, abound in the most valuable trees, applicable to many important uses. The extensive woods in Southern India supply the teak tree, valuable for ship-building; and in Malabar, extensive tracts of waste land have within the last few years been converted into teak plantations by the government. Saul, sissoo, toon, and bamboo trees abound; the last of which yields a medicine much used by the native doctors, and which sells for its weight in silver. There are many species of the palm tree, with its luxuriant and spreading leaves, of which the produce is extremely useful. The cocoa-nut tree is in some provinces an important article of culture. The kernel is used for food by the richer natives, either in its raw state, or dressed after various fashions; and it yields by far the finest oil in India, if the nut be fresh and the oil quickly used. Extensive tracts, many miles in length, are planted with the cocoa-nut and betel-nut palms. Many other species of timber are found in the deep recesses of the woods, of which Dr Buchanan, in his account of Mysore, gives a particular description, with the botanical names of the different trees, and to his work we refer; observing generally, that the woods consist of every description of timber, black, heavy, and strong, and adapted for the beams and posts of houses; other kinds are white, hard, and durable, and adapted to all the purposes for which strong materials are required; some are beautifully grained, and take a fine polish, and are well suited for furniture, or exude resins and gums of a sweet scent, that are used in temples for incense; the wood of some kindles readily into a clear light, and is used for torches. Other kinds of wood are employed for dyeing. The sandal-wood is valuable for its perfume, and for the essential oil which it yields. It requires a strong soil, and it is twelve years before it attains the proper size for being cut. The billets of wood are prepared by being buried in the dry ground for two months, when the ants eat up all the outer wood, leaving the heart, which is the sandal. The deeper the colour the higher the perfume. The best sandal wood of Hindustan is now in possession of the rajah of Mysore, who succeeded to a small portion of Tippoo's dominions.
The climate of Hindustan, owing to the long and heavy rains of summer, is not so favourable for many kinds of fruit which are not ripened by the previous heat of the spring. Orchards of mango trees diversify the plains of Bengal, and are common all over Hindustan; the palmyra and the date tree abound everywhere, and especially in Behar. The Hindustan former thrives remarkably well in dry barren spots, and is prized for the tari or wine which it yields. The bassia, which yields an intoxicating spirit, also suits the poorest soils, and abounds in the hilly districts, where the oil expressed from its seeds is a common substitute for butter. The other fruits are the plantain, the lime, the sweet and bitter orange, the guava, the pomegranate, the jack, the tamarind, &c. Under the shade of lofty flower and fruit-bearing trees, and the luxuriant bamboo, and the rank weeds which shoot up along with them, the natives, from shyness, bury their cottages, and especially their females, from the view of strangers; and the damp vapour from the confined air, the loathsome and pernicious animals which harbour among the trees and weeds, and the filthy habits of the natives, are generally sufficient to repel Europeans from their habitations. The Hindustans cultivate in their kitchen gardens a variety of esculent vegetables and roots. But, of the European vegetables, the potato alone is suited to the climate, and is of as good quality as that which is produced in England. Asparagus, cauliflower, radish, onions, and other esculent plants, are raised; but they are comparatively tasteless.
Hindustan, from the great extent and inequality of its Animals surface, its stupendous and snow-clad mountains, and its vast and wooded plains lying under a burning sun, comprehends all the most interesting forms of animal life; more especially those animals of the tropical regions remarkable for ferocity or size, which have been the subjects of scientific research as well as of popular curiosity in all ages, and which find ample cover in the deep woods and jungle-covered wastes of those tracts of the country which have been desolated by tyranny or war. A minute or systematic inquiry into so important a branch of natural history cannot within our limits be attempted. All that we can propose is a brief and popular sketch of the principal animals which give to the zoology of India its distinct and brilliant character. The elephant, which holds a conspicuous place in the animal creation, is seen in all parts of Hindustan, and ranges wild in its deep forests and jungles. This animal, from its size and strength, was employed in the ancient wars, and the prodigious momentum of its charge often turned the tide of battle. The richly caparisoned elephant is still used to swell the gorgeous parade of the Asiatic courts, and is at the same time, from its patience and docility, the humblest of domestic drudges. An elephant is about thirty-five inches high when newly born, and does not attain his full growth of ten or ten and a half feet, or twelve feet when the head is set up, until the age of twenty or thirty years. In length he is about fifteen or sixteen feet. The rhinoceros is between five and six feet high, in length eight feet, the whole body covered with a thick and nearly bare skin, in irregular folds, and the head, at least of the Indian species, armed with a single horn. The rhinoceros is strong and active, of peaceable habits; but when he is hunted he turns on his pursuers and resists fiercely. The Bactrian camel with two humps, so useful in traversing the sandy wastes of the torrid zone, and the dromedary with a single hump, formed more lightly for speed, are natives of Hindustan. The deer is found in all its varieties, from the large and powerful mountain stag, with its well-compacted form, to those lighter forms of the antelope species which sport so gracefully in the woods and in the burning plains. The musk-deer, so named from the perfume contained in a small bag situated in the lower region of the abdomen of the male, is a solitary dweller in the mountain tracts of Hindustan and of Central Asia, amidst
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1 See Letter of the Secretary to the Court of Directors, to the Secretary of the India Board, 5th September 1823. 2 See Journey from Madras, through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. I., p. 25. 3 See Hamilton's Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of Hindustan, vol. I., p. 25. Hindustan. The leopard and the panther are found in the Hindustan woods; the former animal in such numbers, that during the marches of the British troops in 1803, amongst the deep forests at Cuttack, in the province of Orissa, many of the sentinels were carried off by them in the night. The bear abounds in all the wooded mountains; also wolves, which at Cawnpore, where there is a cantonment, were formerly so numerous that they frequently dashed into some corner of the camp, and carried off children under five years of age, who happened to be straggling amongst the huts. The other wild animals are hyenas, jackals, foxes, hares, porcupines, hedgehogs, monkeys in great variety, and prodigiously multiplied by the superstitious Hindus, who consider them as sacred animals, to the great annoyance of Europeans. The wild boar, which inhabits the woods and jungles of India, is a fierce animal, and very destructive to the corn fields and sugar plantations. It affords excellent though sometimes dangerous sport to the hunter, when it turns on its pursuers. The wild dog of the Himalaya Mountains is a remarkable animal, in form and fur resembling a fox, though stronger and larger. Bishop Heber saw one of these animals which had been taken, and was exceedingly wild and fierce. They hunt in packs, give tongue like dogs, and have a very fine scent; and they are said to attack and, by dint of numbers, to destroy the tiger. They are highly valued in these countries.
Dr Gerard observed a pack of these wild dogs stealing along a gulley quite red. The buffalo, both wild and tame, is a native of India. There are different species, one of which (the Bos Arnee) is noted for its gigantic dimensions, its great strength, and its horns, which are nearly six feet in length, by the aid of which it is a match for, and frequently repels the fiercest tiger. Dr Buchanan, however, insists that this is merely the common buffalo in its wild state. The yak, or ox of Tartary, particularly described by Turner in his account of his embassy to Thibet, is numerous among the Himalaya Mountains, where they browse in herds, amidst ice and snow; and constitute, next to corn, the wealth of the inhabitants. It has a downcast, heavy look, and is fierce and of a suspicious temper. The Cashmere goat has been long celebrated for the soft silky nature of the wool found at the root of its long hair, which is manufactured into shawls. The other animals in the alpine regions of Hindustan are also provided with a similar covering of soft wool. "The cow," says Moorcroft in his Journal, "has a material of the same kind, not much inferior in warmth and softness; the hare has her fur of peculiar length and thickness; and even the dog has a coat of fur added to his usual covering of hair."
The goat breed in Southern India, called the maycay or long-legged goat, mentioned by Dr Buchanan, is also of quite a different breed from the common goat. There are other breeds remarkable for long and curiously-twisted horns. The native horse of India is a small, ill-shaped, vicious pony, the finest horses being imported from the countries to the W. of Hindustan. But wild horses are seen in herds in the northern mountains. The sandy de-
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1 Heber's Journey, ii., p. 170. 2 "The Lion," says Bishop Heber, "which was long supposed to be unknown in India, is now ascertained to exist in considerable numbers in the districts of Saharanpoor and Loodnannah. Lions have also been killed on this side of the Ganges, in the northern parts of Rohilcund, in the neighbourhood of Moradabad and Rampoor, as large, it is said, as the average of those in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope. Both lions, where they are found, and tigers, are very troublesome to the people of the villages near the forests; and having no elephants, have no very effectual means of attacking them with safety. The peasantry here (in the province of Delhi) are not so ready to allow themselves to be devoured without resistance, like the Bengalese; and it often happens, that when a tiger has established himself near a village, the whole population turn out, with their matchlocks, swords, and shields, to attack him. Fighting on foot, and compelled to drive him from his covert by entering and beating the jungle, one or two generally lose their lives; but the tigers seldom escape." (Heber's Journeys, that he died from his inflammation from Mr Boulderson, who was a keen sportsman, and had long been in India, and who said that he had seen the skins of tigers which bore the strongest marks of having been fought with, if the expression may be used, hand to hand, and were in fact slashed all over with cuts of the tulwar or short scimitar.") (Heber's Journey, vol. ii., p. 149.) 3 Fraser's Journal of a Tour through the Himalaya Mountains, p. 176. 4 Journey through Mysore, vol. i., p. 118. 5 Fraser's Journal of a Tour through the Himalaya Mountains, p. 263. 6 Asiatic Researcher, vol. xii., p. 469. J. Moorcroft's Journey to Lake Manasarovara. Hindustan. set in the W. of Hindustan is the haunt of the wild ass; as he is described in Scripture, "his house the wilderness, and the barren land his dwelling." This animal is found in herds of 60 or 70 on the banks of the Rurn, the great salt morass or lake of Cutch, where it browses on the brackish and stunted vegetation of the desert. When caught, as it sometimes is by the natives in pits, it is fierce, untamable, and bites and kicks in the most ferocious manner. Its form is that of the mule rather than of the ass; its body is of an ash colour, changing to a dirty white under the belly. It is larger than the tame ass, stronger and more active, remarkable for shyness, and still more for speed; throwing out, at a shuffling trot peculiar to itself, the fleetest horses in the pursuit. In Southern India, the ass, of which there are several varieties as to colour, is very commonly tamed for domestic purposes; some are of a black hue; and there is a species of milk-white ass, though it is rare. The rat tribe abound in Hindustan; and one species is of enormous size, the tail above a foot long, and very mischievous, burrowing to a great depth in the ground, making its way under the foundations of stores and granaries, and perforating the mud or unburnt brick walls of the native cottages.
Birds. The ornithology of India, though it is not considered as so rich in specimens of gorgeous and variegated plumage as that of other tropical regions, still contains many splendid and curious varieties of the feathered race, as well as those that are clothed in nature's gayest attire, far surpassing the richest dyes of art, as of that other class, the birds of prey, distinguished by strength, size, and fierceness. The parrot tribe are the most remarkable for beauty. So various are the species, that we cannot even enumerate them, and must refer for details to the scientific works on the subject. Of the birds of prey, the eagle or the condor, which haunts the inaccessible crags of the great Himalaya range, is the most remarkable. Bishop Heber mentions that one of these animals was shot at Dega by Lieutenant Fisher, with whom he conversed; and, from the bareness of its neck, resembling that of the vulture, the form of its beak, which is longer and less hooked than the eagle's, and from its extraordinary size, he judged it to be the condor. It measured between the extended wings thirteen feet; its talons were eight inches in length; its colour was a deep black. According to Heber, children are sometimes carried away by this animal from the streets of Almorah. Eagles, of which there are three different sizes, are numerous, and do great injury to the flocks of the shepherds in the mountainous districts. There are various kinds of vultures, and also of the falcon tribe. There is the gentle falcon; the goshawk; a large grey short-winged bird; the shaukeen, which is taught to soar over the falconer's head, and strike the quarry as it rises; the chirk, which strikes the antelope, fastening on its head, and retarding its course till the hounds come up; with various other species. Numerous other birds are common in India, such as herons, cranes; the gigantic stork, well known for clearing the country of snakes and other reptiles, and the populous cities of offal; the peacock, which is found wild in the forests in all its various and brilliant hues; the black-backed goose, measuring nearly three feet in length; besides other kinds, which migrate with the seasons, and are very destructive to the corn; swans, partridges, quails, gulls, plovers, wild ducks, and the other common domestic fowls.
Reptiles. The serpent brood in India is numerous; they swarm in all the gardens, and intrude into the dwellings of the inhabitants. Some are comparatively harmless, but the bite of others is speedily fatal. The cobra di capello, the name given to it by the Portuguese, from the appearance of a hood which it produces from the expanded skin about the neck, Hindustan is the most dreaded. It is not above three or four feet long, and about an inch and a quarter thick, with a small head, covered on the forepart with large smooth scales; it is of a pale-brown colour above, and the belly is of a bluish white tinged with pale brown or yellow. It is more frequently the assailant than any other, though the bite of these also is equally dangerous, and often fatal. The Russian snake, about four feet in length, is of a pale-yellowish brown, beautifully variegated with large oval spots of deep brown, with a white edging. Its bite is extremely fatal. The whip snake is a remarkably malignant species; it darts from the thick foliage of the trees at the cattle below, most commonly at their eyes, and inflicts wounds of which they quickly expire, often in great pain. Itinerant showmen carry about these serpents, and cause them to assume a dancing motion for the amusement of the spectators. They also give out that they render them harmless by the use of charms, though it is known that it is by extracting the venomous fangs. But, judging from the frequent accidents which occur, they often dispense with this precaution. The snake-catching fakirs pretend to bear a charmed life; and it is related that one of these impostors being invited by a shopkeeper to catch a snake which had been seen in an inner apartment, was stung in the hip bone, and for shame would not discover the injury he had received, and went home endeavouring to counteract the poison, but in vain. He died; and such is the blind confidence of the natives in these impostors, that they believed he would revive into life, until the body became putrid. Physicians differ respecting the mode in which the poison of serpents acts upon the human frame. The symptoms also vary; the patient being sometimes seized with torpor and insensibility, or falling into feverish heat and convulsions; the breathing laborious; the skin cold and clammy, with a livid countenance and a feeble pulse. The mode of treatment by the British physicians in India is to bind up the limb above the wound; along with this to apply strong stimulants, as ammonia, hartshorn, can de luce, and the like; and, above all, to give the strongest narcotics, such as laudanum and brandy. By this judicious treatment many patients have been brought back from the jaws of death. There are several water-snakes in India, the bite of which is venomous; and scorpions are common.
The rivers of Hindustan and the surrounding seas abound fishes in a great variety of fishes and amphibious animals, such as alligators, porpoises, and small turtle of inferior quality. The voracious shark infests the mouths of the rivers, as well as the sea-coast, and grows to an enormous size. One that was caught in the Ganges measured in length 11 feet 9 inches, and its girth round the shoulders was immense. The dolphin of the Ganges is about seven feet long, and abounds chiefly in the delta of the river. It pursues its prey with great velocity, though at other times its motions are slow and heavy. The Ganges and its numerous branches, and all the tanks, swarm with fish. During the wet months they may be scooped up with a hand-net in every field; and, next to rice and plantains, they form the main food of the poorest classes. The bickry or cockup is an excellent fish; as is also the sable fish, which is uncommonly rich. But the best and highest-flavoured fish is the mango, a favourite delicacy at all the European tables, especially during the two months when it is in ripe. Mullet abound in all the rivers, and are often killed with small shot as they swim against the stream. The Indian eel—of a pale brown colour, with spots of a somewhat deeper hue—is said to possess a certain degree of electrical power. The remora, about seven feet in length, is remarkable for its singular
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1 Elphinstone, p. 7. 2 Buchanan, p. 7. 3 Heber's Journey, vol. ii., p. 277. 4 Elphinstone, p. 144. 5 Asiatic Annual Register, vol. xxiv., p. 760. 6 Asiatic Journal, vol. xviii., p. 391. 7 Ibid., vol. xix., p. 276. It is used by the fishermen for catching turtle. A long cord being inserted through a ring fastened to the tail of the fish, it is carried to sea in a vessel filled with salt water, and is let out into the water near the turtle, when it immediately fastens itself on its breast so firmly that both are drawn out together. There are many other kinds of fish, some of a delicate flavour, others noted for the various colours of their shining scales. The voracious dolphin, and the flying fish, its food, abound in the Indian seas. The pomfret is much esteemed as a delicacy; also the robal, and several others of the same nature. The bumbalo, when dried, is an article of commerce, and is much prized for its nutritious qualities; as is also another fish, the urahi, found in the interior lakes. There are many other kinds of fish which we cannot attempt even to enumerate. The natives are dexterous fishermen. They inclose the fish with nets into a narrow space, when they catch them with their hands or teeth. Bishop Heber, in his excellent Journal, gives a lively account of the fishing of a pool or lake which was nearly dried up owing to the want of rain. The fish were driven into a shallow part of the lake, when four Bheels from the mountains, with bows and arrows, made in a few hours such havoc among them, that they were procured in the greatest abundance. "They singled out the largest," says Bishop Heber, "and struck them with as much certainty as if they had been sheep in a fold. The arrows intended for striking the fish were so contrived that the iron head slipped off the shaft when the fish was struck, but remained connected with it by a long line like a harpoon, and afloat on the water, which not only contributed to weary out the animal, but to show which way he fled, and to facilitate his capture." Oysters are procured from the coast of Chittagong, not so large, but fully as well flavoured, as those of Europe.
The insect tribes in India may be truly said to be innumerable; nor has anything like a complete classification been given of them in the most scientific treatises. The heat and the rains give incredible activity to innumerable noxious or troublesome insects, and to others of a more showy class, whose large wings surpass in brilliancy the most splendid colours of art. Stinging mosquitoes are innumerable; and moths and ants of the most destructive kind, as well as others still more noxious and disagreeable. Amongst those which are useful is the silk-worm; the insect which produces the vermilion dye, the cochineal, a South American species; and that which produces lac, which is imported into Europe and used for varnish, and more recently for cochineal. Clouds of locusts are occasionally seen, which leave no trace of green behind them, and give the country over which they pass the appearance of a desert. Dr Buchanan saw a mass of these insects in his journey from Madras to the Mysore territory, about three miles in length, like a long narrow red cloud near the horizon, and making a noise somewhat resembling that of a cataract. Their size was about that of a man's finger, and their colour reddish. They did no damage at that time to the smallest vegetable, but at other times they eat up every green thing.
From the wild and inaccessible nature of the country in many parts of Hindustan, its metallic products are but imperfectly known. It is found to produce all the metallic ores, as well as diamonds and precious stones, and other mineral substances. Gold is generally found in the sands of the mountain streams, and is extracted by washing. The head streams of the Ganges bring along with them particles of gold, which in Rohilcund are collected by a particular caste of people. It is found in various parts of Mysore, particularly 9 miles E. of Boodicotta, where the country is impregnated with it; also in the Nielgberry Mountains; and in great quantities in all that tract of country that lies west; and in the adjoining Koondanad and Ghaut Mountains. This whole tract, including the mountains, and comprising a space of 2000 miles, contains gold. Unrefined gold is regularly exchanged by many of the mountain tribes of the north for the produce of the plains. It is estimated that about 1000 men are continually employed in collecting this precious metal. Copper is produced in the province of Delhi, which the natives collect either on the surface or with very slight excavations; also in the Rajpoot principality of Jeypoor in the province of Ajmeer, and in other parts of the same province, there are copper mines, and in the Carnatic, about 40 miles N.E. from Cuddapah. The metal is found in layers about two inches, and occasionally two feet thick; they are coated with ochre, and are in general flat, as if they had undergone compression. The ore exists in nearly a metallic state, without any admixture of sulphur, arsenic, or any other substance that requires separation. The best ores yield fifty, and the worst six per cent. of pure metal. The granitic mountains of Nepaul and Northern Hindustan contain much iron, lead, and copper, with a little gold in the river courses. The copper mines are quite superficial, the ore being dug from trenches entirely open above, so that the work is laid aside in the rainy season. Iron ore is found in many parts of Hindustan. There are mines of iron in Lahore and in Ajmeer. In Orissa many of the natives are iron smelters, and most of the iron sent from Balasore to Calcutta is produced in this district. In Bejapoor the working of iron furnishes employment to many of the inhabitants, who extract it by a very rude process. At Porto Novo, in the British district of South Arcot, in the presidency of Madras, extensive iron-works have been erected by a joint-stock association called the East India Iron Company; to whom also belong the iron-foundry works at Beypoor, in Malabar, on the opposite coast of the peninsula. The ore smelted at these establishments is found in great abundance and of excellent quality in their respective vicinities. The Mysore country abounds in iron. There are also forges for manufacturing steel, which are minutely described by Dr Buchanan in his account of the Mysore country. In Coimbatore and in Malabar the iron mines give employment to a considerable number of persons. The process and machinery for extracting the iron are very imperfect. Iron mines were formerly worked in the district of Boglipoor, but they have been long neglected. Rich iron ores are abundant in Cutch. The ore is gathered in baskets from the surface of the earth, and yields twenty-two per cent. of iron; and the steel which is made from this ore is the finest in the world. Lead is produced in various parts; also antimony, plumbago, sulphur, alum; and there are inexhaustible supplies of coal, though the mines are not worked with any effect. Coal is raised in Burdwan in considerable quantities and of a fine quality. Saltpetre is produced in Bengal and Bihar, though its manufacture does not go beyond the eastern limits of the latter province. It might, however, be attempted with success in Bengal, where the tendency of the soil to its production is very great; and there might be manufactories of salt in almost every part of the country, but they are restricted by the Company's monopoly. In the Mysore plains the wells are salt, and the ground is frequently covered with a saline efflorescence. A range of hills, extending from the Indus to the Hydaspes, yields the famous rock-salt of Lahore, of which they are almost entirely composed. Many quarries are found in the hilly districts, which produce fine stone, that is cut by the inhabitants into pillars, flags, statues, and used for other ornamental purposes. Dr Buchanan saw several fine-grained specimens of granite, also a black stone used in the construction of Hyder's monu-
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1 Heber, vol. ii., p. 467. 2 Journey from Madras, vol. i., p. 170, 180; vol. ii., p. 139. 3 See the observations of Lieutenant Burnes on the commercial relations of the Punjab. Diamonds are no longer found in the celebrated mines of Golconda, but they are still gathered in the bed of the Krishna, and in the province of Gundwana. Near the confluence of the Hebe and the Mahanuddi, 13 miles beyond the town of Sumblipoor, after the rains, the natives find diamonds in the red earth washed down from the mountains. The matrix containing them is a clay which has a red appearance like burnt bricks. There are diamond mines in the S. of India, about 7 miles N.E. of Cuddapah, on both banks of the Pennar River. These mines have been worked for several hundred years, and occasionally yield large diamonds, which are either found in the alluvial soil, or are recognised by their sparkling among the gravel after it is washed and spread out, or in rocks of the latest formation. The grounds are leased on behalf of the government to private speculators at a moderate rent. In Bundelcund, also, the table-land which surrounds Pannah, wherever the ground is of a gravelly nature, produces diamonds. The soil is from two to eight cubits deep, and diamonds are found intermixed with small pebbles, though not adhering to them. A very few diamonds in the course of a year repay the labours of the workmen. The diamonds found are mostly under the value of 500 rupees, or L50, though some reach the value of from 500 to 1000 rupees. They are weighed and sold to the merchants residing at Pannah, and are by them carried to all parts of the country. The workmen are allowed three-fourths, two-thirds, or a half of the diamonds they find, according to their size, and any man is at liberty to dig; but the business is less prosperous than formerly, and the workmen are poor. The diamond grounds are strictly guarded against the contraband trader, and the least delinquency draws down the prompt and barbarous vengeance of the rajah. These are supposed to be the diamond mines mentioned by Ptolemy. Their annual produce was estimated, in the reign of Achar, at eight lacs of rupees. In 1750 it had fallen off to one half; the amount, now comparatively insignificant, is divided between the rajahs of Pannah, Banda, and Chirkarep.
The other varieties of precious stones found in India are the ruby from the table-land of Mysore, the beryl, the topaz, the chrysolite, garnet, cat's eye, &c. There are cornelian mines in the province of Guzerat, in the wildest parts of the jungle. They consist of numerous shafts worked down perpendicularly, about four feet wide, and several of them to the depth of fifty feet. Some of them extend at the bottom in a horizontal direction, though not to any distance; the heavy rains cause the banks to fall in, so that new openings are always made at the end of the rainy season. The nodules weigh from a few ounces to two or even three pounds, and lie close to each other in abundance, not in distinct strata, but scattered about. They are of various colours when they are found—of a blackish olive, like common dark flints; others of a lighter hue, with a slight milky tinge; though it is quite uncertain what appearance they will assume after the process of turning. They are carried to Cambay, where they are cut, polished, and formed into the fine ornaments for which that city is so highly celebrated. Beautiful jaspers and agates are also found in this district, and in other parts of India.
In every country the nature and quality of the manufactures must depend on the condition of the consumers, and amongst the depotic states of Asia these naturally consist of two classes,—1st, of the great and powerful, in whose hands the property of the country is accumulated, and who are comparatively few; and, 2dly, of the mass of the people, oppressed under native rule, and sunk in poverty. Such, accordingly, has been from time immemorial the state of Hindustan; and its manufactures, which are necessarily adapted to the use of these two classes, have always consisted of exquisitely fine fabrics of cotton, for the use of the imperial court or of the rajahs and princes of the country, or of coarse stuffs for the common people; and to such perfection have they attained, that the modern art of Europe, with all the aid of its wonderful machinery, has never yet rivalled in beauty the products of the Indian loom. Yet the Hindu workman has no advantage from capital, from machinery, or from the division of labour; he prepares the raw material with his own skilful hand, in all the various stages of its manufacture; his loom and all his implements are of the rudest construction; and yet, by patience, perseverance, and unusual skill, he produces an article which is prized all over the world for its inimitable richness and beauty, as well as for its durability. The native artisan distinguishes at once these fine fabrics from all counterfeits, by the eye, the touch, and the smell. In the district of Dacca are chiefly fabricated plain muslins, variously denominated, according to the closeness or fineness of the texture; also flowered, striped, or chequered muslins, denominated from their patterns; and the thinnest sort of muslins, for the manufacture of which the province is much celebrated, as is Coromandel in Southern India for its calicoes and other piece-goods, of the most brilliant and durable colours. Other kinds more closely woven are fabricated in the western parts of Bengal; and another sort, of a more rigid texture, in every district. Coarse muslins, in the shape of turbans, handkerchiefs, &c., are made in all parts of Hindustan; and in its northern provinces plain and flowered muslins, but of inferior quality to the beautiful fabrics of Dacca. In Moulton are manufactured silks which possess a strength of texture and brilliancy of hue that have secured for them a preference in the Indian market. They are woven into shawls and scarfs, which are in great demand, and which the Indian manufacturer in other parts has never been able to rival, either in colour or durability. Carpets are also manufactured in this province, though they do not equal those of Persia. Various articles of calico are made, which still retain their Indian denominations, as khashas, which are manufactured north and east of the Ganges; cloths of nearly the same quality are made near Tanda in Oude. Near Lucknow, on the western frontier of Benares, in the neighbourhood of Allahabad, and also in the province of Balcar, batines are manufactured; sahasas in Orissa, and in the district of Midnapoor; and a similar cloth under the same denomination in the eastern parts of the province of Benares; woven silk and taffeta, both plain and flowered, in the neighbourhood of Moorshedabad; tissues, brocades, and ornamented gauzes, at Benares; plain gauzes for domestic use, in the west and south of Bengal; and at Moulda, Boghipoor, and at several towns in the district of Burdwan, mixed goods of silk and cotton. Sackcloth is manufactured from packthread in many places, especially in the northern provinces, for the clothing of the mountaineers. Cotton is made into canvas in the neighbourhood of Chittagong, Patna, and other places; and blankets everywhere for common use. A coarse cotton cloth dyed red with cheap materials is very generally used, and is chiefly manufactured in the country between the Jumna and the Ganges. Fine and coarse calicoes are dyed with permanent and fugitive colours for common use in the pro-
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1 See Hamilton, vol. ii., p. 20. Hindustan, vince of Benares, the city of Patna, and the neighbourhood of Calcutta. This art appears to have had its origin in India, and to have been there perfected to a degree never surpassed by Europeans. Dimities of various kinds, and damask linen, are made at Dacca, Patna, Tanda, and various other places. In Mysore, near Bangalore, silk is manufactured into different articles of dress, into strong cloths, which men, women, or boys wrap round them, and into turban pieces. These cloths are of a rich fabric, variously figured, and the pattern, if ordered, is elegantly wrought in gold thread. Turbans are made of cotton and silk. Thin white muslins with silk borders ornamented with gold and silver, and plain green muslins with silk borders, are manufactured for female dresses; also striped and chequered muslins; cloth like the khasais of Bengal, for wrapping round the shoulders of men, sometimes with striped or silver borders. Handkerchiefs with red borders, a coarse thick white cotton cloth with red borders, and turbans ornamented with silver and gold thread at the ends, are also made in this district; and the dyeing of cotton cloth, cotton thread, and silk, is carried on by a set of people who act as tailors, cloth-printers, and dyers. Tanneries are established, and manufactories of oil. At Chennapatana there are manufactories of glass-ware and of glass rings, universally worn as bracelets by the women of the Deccan. Steel wire is also made here for the strings of musical instruments. At Vizigapatam, in the Northern Circars, the inhabitants are very expert in carving curious little boxes of ivory and bone. Throughout Southern India manufactories of cotton and silk are generally established. In the Northern Circars the principal part of the East India Company's investment of piece goods was formerly provided. This country, extending about 500 miles along the coast of Coromandel, from the River Kistnah to the borders of Cuttack, has from very early times been the seat of an important and extensive manufacture of cotton piece-goods, of which the description of calicoes known as Madras long cloths and salem pones are the chief, and, with Masulipatnam dyed handkerchiefs, and other kinds of goods for the African and West India trade, have, until lately, been in great demand. Masulipatnam goods have, however, for some years been entirely superseded by the manufactures of Manchester and Glasgow; and in all appearance the Northern Circars will at no distant period of time be deprived of the manufactures of white calicoes also. A great change has indeed been brought about in the manufactures of India by the introduction of British goods, which, in many branches, have supplanted those of the country; the poor Hindu, notwithstanding the low rate at which he works, is thus undersold in his own market by the manufacturers of Manchester and Glasgow; and this competition of British goods nearly ruined the native manufacturers of India, deprived the workmen of employment, and reduced them to great distress; so that the directors remark concerning the Indian trade, that "it exhibits the picture of a commercial revolution, productive of much present suffering to numerous classes in India, and hardly to be paralleled in the history of commerce."
Hindustan, from its great extent, and the diversity of its soil and climate, supplies the materials of an extensive commerce. Its internal trade is great, whilst its rare and precious products are exported to the remotest regions of the world. An extensive commerce takes place between Bengal and the other maritime districts, and the western provinces of Hindustan, consisting in the exportation of grain from the corn districts, in exchange for salt, a great staple; for betel-nut, sugar, raw silk, silk and piece goods. From the native states of Central India Malwah opium is sent down to Bombay for exportation to China. In Bengal the culture and manufacture of opium are conducted under a state monopoly, and the produce is transmitted to Calcutta, where it is disposed of by public sale. The holy city of Benares is a great mart of trade, in which are exchanged the shawls of the north for the diamonds of the south, and for the muslins of Dacca and the eastern provinces; and it has, besides, very considerable silk, cotton, and fine woollen manufactures of its own, the produce of which is exchanged for other commodities. Through the northern provinces of Delhi and Lahore a great trade is carried on between the hill countries and the plains. The inconsiderable town of Hardwar or Haridwara, being a celebrated place of Hindu pilgrimage, is a great commercial emporium, to which multitudes resort for the purposes of trade, as well as from piety. This great annual concourse takes place in the spring, when the produce of the northern and western countries is exchanged for the manufactures of the lower provinces. The principal articles brought here for sale from Kabul, Candahar, Moulton, and the Punjab, are horses, mules, camels; some of these from Balk, Bokhara, and the countries on the northern side of the Hindu Coosh Mountains; a particular species of tobacco, antimony, assafotida, dried fruits, such as apricots, figs, prunes, raisins, almonds, pistachio nuts, and pomegranates; from Cashmere and Amritsir, shawls, dootas, and pattoos; spotted turbans, looking-glasses, toys, with various manufactures in brass and ivory from Jeypoor; shields from Rohilcund, Lucknow, and Silhet; bows and arrows from Moulton and the Doab; rock-salt from Lahore; baffas and piece-goods from Rahn, a large city in the Punjab. The country of Marwar also supplies many camels, and a species of flannel called loo. In exchange are brought from the British provinces Kharwa muslins, mushroo or sarsnet, and woollen cloths, the coarsest of which only find a market. In this fair, Dutch and Venetian coins are current; and some toys of European manufacture were seen exposed to sale by Mr Webb. The northern merchants by whom it is frequently assembled at Amritsir in caravans about the end of February, and pursue their route in an easterly direction through the territories of the protected Seikh powers. Still farther to the N. and W. the provinces of Lahore and Moulton export to the countries to the W. of the Indus, sugar, rice, indigo, wheat, and white cotton cloths, hides, &c. The imports are swords, horses, fruit, lead, and spices; and into all these countries European goods are imported from the lower provinces. The southern provinces export to Bengal, pepper, betel-nut, sandal-wood, and cardamums, teak timber, &c.; whilst they receive in return salt and rice, cotton cloths, and articles of European manufacture.
A very considerable coasting trade is carried on between the different parts of Hindustan. Bengal exports to Madras and the coast of Coromandel, grains of different descriptions, sugar, saltpetre, molasses, ginger, long pepper, oil, silk wrought and unwrought, muslins, spirits, and provisions. The returns are salt, red wood, fine long cloth, izarces, and chintzes. From the Malabar coast the imports are sandalwood, coir rope, pepper, cardamums; and the returns are generally in the annual supplies which Bombay receives from Bengal. From Bombay are brought teak timber, elephant's teeth, lac, &c.
From the reputed wealth and precious produce of India foreign nations were always desirous to participate in its trade. Prior to Alexander's expedition to the East it was scarcely known to the Greeks, nor is it certain that they had ever seen its productions. But we know that these were brought to Rome, especially silk, which so allured the vanity of the Roman ladies that it sold for its weight in
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1 Buchanan's Journey through Mysore, vol. i., 209, 229. 2 See Copy of a Letter from the Secretary to the Court of Directors, to the Secretary of the India Board, dated East India House, 5th September 1828. gold. Other valuable commodities of India, such as calicoes, muslins, aromatics, ivory, diamonds, pearls, and other gems, precious aromatics, the pepper of Malabar, turtle shell, &c., and some dry sugar and indigo, were also imported into Alexandria, the chief emporium of eastern commerce, and were naturally attracted to the great metropolis of the ancient world. This trade was carried on from Myos Hormos, the chief port on the Red Sea, whence, after the conquest of Egypt by the Romans, the annual fleets, sometimes of 120 vessels, set sail, and, under the propitious influence of the S.W. monsoon, boldly stretched across the Indian Ocean for the western coast of Hindustan, which they reached in about forty days; and afterwards extended their voyage round Cape Comorin to the coast of Coromandel and the mouth of the Ganges. The high price received for these eastern luxuries in Rome encouraged the merchants to provide larger vessels, and a band of archers to defend them against the pirates, who then, and until very lately that they were extirpated by British ships of war, infested the western shores of India. The commodities of the East being landed at Myos Hormos, were carried on camels to Coptos, the seat of a flourishing trade, and thence by sea to the Nile, whence they reached Alexandria by water carriage, and were re-shipped to the different ports on the Mediterranean. The produce of India was also brought to Europe by other routes—namely, by the way of Palmyra, then a flourishing city, and thence to Rome and other western countries, through the ports of Syria; or across the Himalaya Mountains to the Oxus, thence to the Caspian, and afterwards to the Black Sea, and finally to its ulterior markets in Europe. But though there was a demand in Europe for the produce of India, there was no demand in India for the produce of Europe; and bullion was the only article that could be sent out in exchange. The annual drain of gold from Rome and its provinces for Indian goods was estimated by Pliny at 500 sesterces, equal to about L400,000. In the convulsions which followed the decline of the Roman empire, the trade of the East was successively engrossed by the Persians and Arabians. The latter, in the year 636, built the city of Bassora, which soon grew into a great commercial mart; and to this place, and to Ormus, long celebrated for its vast riches and its trade, the spiceries and merchandise of India were brought, and distributed through the various ports of the Mediterranean. After the expulsion of the crusaders from Syria and Egypt, Alexandria again became the chief entrepot of eastern produce, whence it was carried to Italy by the Venetians and others, and distributed throughout Europe. But the discovery of a passage to India in 1495 by the Cape of Good Hope changed the course of this trade, which now entirely left the Italians, and was engrossed by the Portuguese for nearly a century without any molestation from European rivals. At length the Dutch and the English became their competitors, and established joint-stock companies, with the exclusive privilege of the eastern trade. But their anticipations of profit were not realized. The great distance of Europe from India, and the want of an equivalent for its produce, precluded any extensive intercourse; the trade accordingly bore a very small proportion to the trade of the country; and being besides cramped by monopolies, it never attained its natural growth. In 1773 the average exports of Britain to India amounted to about L1,489,000 a year; in 1793, on a like average, to about a million a year; and it does not appear that a greater trade was carried on with India from any other part of Europe. The commerce of nations is limited to the surplus produce which they can mutually exchange; and, from the great distance between India and Europe, this surplus produce was long confined to those few articles which, containing a great value in bulk, could bear the expense of a long voyage. The demand was also altogether on the side of Europe, and its trade with India consisted merely in the purchase, with bullion, of a small quantity of precious articles for the consumption of the rich. The progressive improvement of industry in Europe, together with the entire opening of the trade to India and China since the year 1834, has occasioned not only a greater exportation of British goods, but a change also in the nature of the trade. It is not so much the produce of the labour as of the climate and soil of India, which no ingenuity can supply, that is in demand in Britain; and accordingly, whilst the import of Indian manufactures has fallen off, that of the raw material, and many varieties of vegetable produce, has increased. Thus the importation of cotton piece-goods—namely, white calicoes and muslins—which amounted in 1814 to 1,266,608 pieces, had decreased in 1853 to 428,294 pieces; whilst within the same period the importation of cotton wool had increased from 2,850,318 lbs. to 181,360,994 lbs., and the exportation of cotton manufactures in a similar ratio. Even the incomparable muslins of Dacca are in less demand since the introduction of British goods. Thus, in the progress of the trade between India and Europe, the former country, notwithstanding its boasted wealth and superior industry, has taken the lowest place, exporting her rude produce for the manufactures of the richer country. This is the nature of the trade carried on between Britain and America and the countries in the N. of Europe, and is a sure index to the respective progress of the two countries in wealth and improvement. Those countries which cannot manufacture their own rude produce send it to Britain, which abounds in capital, and still more in art and industry; and both countries are benefited, the poorer country exchanging its surplus produce for a supply of manufactures of which it is in want, and the richer country the produce of its overflowing capital, for a supply of the raw material, which its own soil does not afford. This is now the relative condition of Great Britain and India. The former having outstripped the latter country in industry and wealth, sends out a supply of cheaper goods than the native workman can furnish; and so prodigious have been the improvements in machinery, that the raw material of cotton is imported from India, and, being manufactured in Britain, is re-exported and sold at a cheaper rate than it can be made at home, though loaded with the expense of a double voyage across half the globe; and thus it has become an important staple in the trade of Great Britain with the East. A notion was long and successfully propagated by the advocates of the monopoly, that the Hindus, from their poverty and their simple habits, would never become extensive consumers of European goods, and that the demand was amply supplied by the exports of the East India Company. Evidence to this effect was given before the committee of the House of Commons in 1810 by Sir Thomas Munro and other eminent servants of the Company. But such statements have been completely refuted by the rapidly increasing exportation of British goods to India since the complete opening of the trade in 1834. This will appear from the following table:
| Years | Exports | |-------|---------| | 1834 | L2,698,261 | | 1835 | 3,135,410 | | 1836 | 3,830,504 | | 1837 | 3,210,663 | | 1838 | 3,505,930 | | 1839 | 4,288,489 | | 1840 | 6,014,339 | | 1841 | 5,439,564 | | 1842 | 5,354,901 | | 1843 | 6,347,319 |
| Years | Exports | |-------|---------| | | | | 1834 | L7,952,179 | | 1835 | 6,477,143 | | 1836 | 6,429,404 | | 1837 | 5,790,228 | | 1838 | 5,612,110 | | 1839 | 7,678,980 | | 1840 | 8,327,992 | | 1841 | 9,225,729 | | 1842 | 7,235,078 |
1 See Report of Lords' Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, Evidence of W. Chaplin, Esq., p. 179. The goods exported, as they are enumerated by Mr. Rickards in his valuable work on India, consist of all the staple manufactures of Britain. "Woollens and cottons," he mentions, "of every variety and value; manufactured silks; hardware of all descriptions; iron, copper, lead, tin, and spelta, in large quantities; marine and military stores; machinery for various uses; glass-ware of the metal specimens, down to articles of the commonest use; china-ware or porcelain, the same; jewellery of all sorts; gold and silver plate and ornaments; clocks, watches, furniture, carriages, harness, haberdashery, bursery, stationery, books; in short, every article of luxury, comfort, or convenience, which British industry can produce." According also to all the most correct observers of Indian manners, the taste for European fashions, luxuries, and comforts, is rapidly extending among the Hindus. Bishop Heber, in his interesting journal of a tour through India, strongly confirms this fact. "The wealthy natives," he observes, "now all affect to have their houses decorated with Corinthian pillars, and filled with English furniture; they drive the best horses and the most dashing carriages in Calcutta. Many of them speak English fluently, and are tolerably read in English literature; and the children of one of our friends I saw one day dressed in jackets and trousers, with round hats, shoes, and stockings." At Benares he found "English hardware, swords, shields, and spears, from Lucknow and Moughly; and those European luxuries and elegancies, which are daily becoming more popular in India, circulate from hence through Bundelcund, Gorrickpoor, Nepaul, and other tracks which are removed from the main artery of the Ganges."
At Nusseerabad, in the province of Berar, the same traveller mentions that "English cotton cloths, both white and printed, are to be met with commonly in wear among the people of the country, and may, I learned to my surprise, be bought best and cheapest, as well as all kinds of hardware, crockery, writing desks, &c., at Pallee, a large town and celebrated mart in Marwar, on the edge of the desert, several days' journey west of Joudpoor, where, till very lately, no European was ever known to have penetrated."
In short, it appears that British and other European manufacturers, from their quality and cheapness, are everywhere in demand. They penetrate into the remotest districts of Asia; and now that the termination of the East India Company's monopoly, which took place in 1834, has laid open Hindustan to the capital and enterprise of Britain, experience proves that an equal demand for them may be anticipated in that country. We subjoin the following tables, containing a view of the extent and value of the trade of India to all parts of the world. The excess of exports over imports arises from the necessity of making annual remittances to Great Britain to defray the interest of debt, and to meet the expenditure of the home government.
**Imports of Hindustan.**
| Years | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | United Kingdom | Other Countries | Total Merchandise | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | Total | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | Grand Total | |-------|--------|--------|--------|---------------|----------------|------------------|--------|--------|--------|-------|--------|--------|--------|------------| | 1834-35 | 1,999,130 | 503,290 | 1,758,685 | 2,822,221 | 1,578,884 | 4,351,106 | 646,224 | 153,115 | 1,093,029 | 1,893,029 | 2,645,255 | 656,405 | 2,552,369 | 6,154,129 | | 1839-40 | 3,541,691 | 683,307 | 1,206,337 | 4,289,489 | 1,441,747 | 5,831,235 | 1,292,786 | 112,406 | 606,071 | 1,945,264 | 4,568,378 | 795,714 | 2,412,408 | 7,776,591 | | 1844-45 | 5,586,990 | 1,046,594 | 3,773,181 | 7,306,773 | 2,941,888 | 10,254,661 | 1,581,863 | 188,561 | 1,582,441 | 3,722,471 | 7,151,555 | 1,235,465 | 5,755,722 | 14,206,637 | | 1849-50 | 6,582,883 | 1,146,780 | 4,426,009 | 7,155,672 | 3,202,090 | 10,357,762 | 1,769,090 | 220,090 | 1,989,180 | 4,158,370 | 7,304,060 | 1,157,933 | 6,967,578 | 15,375,507 | | 1850-51 | 6,115,201 | 897,223 | 4,545,764 | 1,257,922 | 2,890,756 | 11,558,788 | 1,189,684 | 200,110 | 2,362,214 | 3,811,908 | 7,304,060 | 1,157,933 | 6,967,578 | 15,375,507 | | 1851-52 | 7,067,400 | 906,435 | 4,246,647 | 9,225,720 | 3,013,760 | 12,240,490 | 2,206,470 | 257,288 | 2,448,190 | 5,052,059 | 9,393,877 | 1,203,834 | 6,694,537 | 17,292,549 | | 1852-53 | 4,993,674 | 840,531 | 4,236,655 | 7,235,078 | 2,835,783 | 10,070,861 | 3,393,867 | 576,854 | 2,800,656 | 6,831,377 | 8,387,661 | 1,417,285 | 7,057,191 | 16,404,259 |
**Exports of Hindustan.**
| Years | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | United Kingdom | Other Countries | Total Merchandise | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | Total | Bengal | Madras | Bombay | Grand Total | |-------|--------|--------|--------|---------------|----------------|------------------|--------|--------|--------|-------|--------|--------|--------|------------| | 1834-35 | 4,062,043 | 886,107 | 3,015,268 | 3,054,973 | 4,936,447 | 7,990,420 | 60,554 | 106,377 | 21,608 | 194,740 | 4,158,698 | 992,485 | 3,057,977 | 8,188,161 | | 1839-40 | 6,500,925 | 1,228,467 | 2,833,552 | 5,929,961 | 4,852,739 | 10,862,745 | 200,017 | 127,446 | 143,059 | 470,523 | 7,000,943 | 1,355,914 | 2,976,411 | 11,333,268 | | 1844-45 | 9,822,197 | 1,641,462 | 5,126,552 | 7,940,619 | 9,349,592 | 16,290,212 | 306,543 | 65,083 | 645,243 | 1,106,840 | 10,218,740 | 1,706,516 | 5,771,796 | 17,697,052 | | 1849-50 | 10,148,038 | 1,273,884 | 5,891,276 | 7,026,470 | 10,285,828 | 17,312,299 | 354,205 | 72,637 | 544,400 | 971,244 | 10,902,944 | 1,345,522 | 6,435,776 | 18,683,543 | | 1850-51 | 9,957,527 | 1,666,976 | 6,269,645 | 8,104,016 | 10,060,133 | 18,164,149 | 257,529 | 104,140 | 160,818 | 541,287 | 10,273,248 | 1,434,688 | 1,834,428 | 13,542,364 | | 1851-52 | 10,423,970 | 1,658,604 | 7,356,474 | 7,136,882 | 127,054,617 | 19,570,429 | 250,094 | 210,462 | 430,552 | 878,088 | 1,555,559 | 1,874,576 | 2,090,267 | 5,510,402 | | 1852-53 | 10,635,304 | 2,121,013 | 7,004,404 | 8,425,205 | 12,036,588 | 20,061,893 | 376,375 | 83,282 | 452,473 | 1,055,290 | 11,914,929 | 2,157,995 | 8,146,937 | 21,219,862 |
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1 Rickards' *India*, or facts submitted to illustrate the character and condition of the native inhabitants, vol. i., p. 75. 2 Heber's *Journal*, vol. iii., p. 252. 3 Ibid., vol. i., p. 381. 4 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 448. Hindustan. The following tables contain a view of the trade between Great Britain and Hindustan, and a list of the principal articles exchanged between the two countries, abridged from the parliamentary accounts:
**Account of the Quantities and Declared Value of the principal Articles Exported from Great Britain to India in Three Years, from 1850–51 to 1852–53.**
| ARTICLES | QUANTITIES | VALUE IN STERLING | |----------|------------|-------------------| | | 1850–51 | 1851–52 | 1852–53 | | Apparel | | | | | Books, stationery, &c. | | | | | Cotton twist and yarn | | | | | Piece goods | | | | | Fruits | | | | | Jewellery | | | | | Malt liquor | | | | | Machinery | | | | | Metals, Manufactured | | | | | Copper, cwt. | 118,982 | 44,004 | 24,796 | | Iron | 984,433 | 688,722 | 338,795 | | Lead | | | | | Spelter | 63,303 | 58,758 | 9,070 | | Tin | | | | | Salt | 790,953 | 1,158,983 | 837,946 | | Silken goods | | | | | Spices | 38,251 | 96,863 | 68,626 | | Spirits, gallons | 42,927 | 49,648 | 33,482 | | Tea | | | | | Tobacco, cigars | 516 | 913 | 534 | | Timber | | | | | Woollen goods | 206,966 | 200,435 | 114,794 | | Wines, gallons | 232,455 | 200,658 | 144,761 | | Miscellaneous | 849,886 | 764,204 | 781,817 | | Total Merchandise | 8,327,993 | 9,226,729 | 7,235,678 | | Treasure | 503,029 | 1,041,016 | 2,340,947 | | Total Merchandise and Treasure | 8,831,022 | 10,267,744 | 9,576,625 |
**Account of the principal Imports into Great Britain from India in Three Years, from 1850–51 to 1852–53.**
| ARTICLES | QUANTITIES | VALUE IN STERLING | |----------|------------|-------------------| | | 1850–51 | 1851–52 | 1852–53 | | Coffee, lbs. | 4,209,717 | 6,324,435 | 4,244,845 | | Cotton, raw, lbs. | 141,446,798 | 81,104,223 | 181,260,994 | | Grain, cwt. | 779,809 | 624,167 | 1,157,985 | | Indigo, lbs. | 8,723,343 | 8,193,236 | 6,773,160 | | Ivory, cwt. | 2,753 | 5,149 | 3,375 | | Lac, cwt. | 42,040 | 30,448 | 52,543 | | Pepper, lbs. | 1,332,128 | 1,918,973 | 1,208,945 | | Piece goods, Cotton, pieces | 142,380 | 208,723 | 428,550 | | Silk | 560,484 | 408,904 | 502,947 | | Shawls | 9,075 | 7,496 | 11,211 | | Rum, gallons | 391,151 | 224,463 | 171,984 | | Silk, raw, lbs. | 1,271,249 | 1,437,658 | 1,581,203 | | Saltpetre, cwt. | 282,538 | 254,670 | 330,444 | | Sugar | 1,488,870 | 1,566,651 | 1,356,630 | | Wood, lbs. | 4,492,794 | 7,050,713 | 12,000,999 | | Miscellaneous | | | | | Total Merchandise | | | | | Treasure | | | | | Total Merchandise and Treasure | 8,114,175 | 7,145,940 | 8,557,914 | The British possessions in India are intermixed with the dominions of various native governments, with which political relations varying in nature and degree are maintained. The following table exhibits the relative area and population of the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, and those also of the native states of Hindustan:
### Area and Population of the British Presidencies and the Native States of India.
| British Presidencies | Division | Area in square miles | Population | |----------------------|----------|---------------------|------------| | Lower Provinces | | 119,633 | 37,922,163 | | Sanguir and Nerbudda Territories | | 15,388 | 1,929,492 | | Jabalpur | | 1,873 | 176,997 | | British Mahomedan | | 282 | 37,715 | | Umballah, Lodianah, and Territory lately belonging to Sikh chiefs | | 4,559 | 2,311,909 | | North-west frontier, including Assam, &c. | | 29,900 | 1,180,935 | | Arracan | | 15,164 | 321,522 | | South-west frontier, including Sumbulpore, Chota Naukere, &c. | | 30,589 | 2,627,456 | | Nepaul and Bhutan | | 76,432 | 4,650,000 | | The Punjab and Koonoo Territory | | 78,447 | 9,153,209 | | Tenasserim Province | | 29,168 | 115,431 | | Jhansi | | 2,532 | 200,000 | | The Mahratta States | | 6,500 | Unknown | | North-western Provinces, including Delhi, Agra, Benares, &c. | | 72,052 | 30,271,885 | | Butty Territory, Deynah Dhoun, Kunmon, Gurhwal, &c. | | 13,529 | 600,881 | | Total | | 496,118 | 90,839,050 |
| Regulation Provinces Non-Regulation Districts | | 116,248 | 19,847,905 | | Regulation Provinces Non-Regulation Districts | | 19,444 | 2,454,392 | | Total | | 135,692 | 22,301,697 |
| Regulation Provinces Non-Regulation Districts | | 67,723 | 9,015,634 | | Regulation Provinces Non-Regulation Districts | | 62,242 | 2,053,533 | | Total | | 120,065 | 11,091,067 |
| The Eastern Settlements of Singapore, Prince of Wales Island, and Malacca | | 1,575 | 202,540 | | Native States within the Presidency of Bengal | | 503,554 | 38,259,892 | | Do., within the Presidency of Madras | | 51,502 | 4,752,975 | | Do., within the Presidency of Bombay | | 60,575 | 4,460,370 | | Foreign European Possessions | | 188 | 171,217 | | Portuguese (Goa) | | 1,066 | 313,262 |
| Total of India | | 1,270,635 | 172,410,040 |
A country of such vast extent, under one common appellation, and subdivided by many impassable tracts of mountain and jungle, comprises, as may readily be imagined, numerous races, differing in their origin, in their physical aspect and frame, in their manners, customs, in their respective advances in civilization and pursuits, as well as in their modes of faith and language; and accordingly Bishop Heber, who excels all other writers in the delineation of Indian manners, observes, that “it is a great mistake to suppose that all India is peopled by a single race, or that there is not as great a disparity between the inhabitants of Guzerat, Bengal, the Doab, and the Deccan, both in language, manners, and physiognomy, as between any four nations of Europe;” and in another passage he says, “the inhabitants of the presidencies of Madras and Bombay, and of the Deccan, are as different from the nations I have seen, and from each other, as the French and Portuguese from the Greeks, Germans, and Poles.”
A minute account of the various races and castes, with the still more various subdivisions into which the inhabitants of Hindustan are distinguished, would fill a volume, and would besides be exceedingly tedious. A general description, however, of the most remarkable tribes which compose the mixed population of this extensive country, forms an essential part of its history. The great division of the people is into Hindus and Mohammedans, in the proportion of about seven to one. And these two great classes are distinguished not more by their religion than by their peculiar disposition and character. The Hindu is careful, penurious, and abstemious in his habits; timid, obsequious, and fawning in his manners; chiefly attaining his ends by deceit and cunning, the usual resource of weakness; whilst the Mussulman still retains the haughty and irascible character of a conqueror, and his hostility to the English, which he is at no pains to conceal, like the Hindu, by an obsequious demeanour. He is withal prodigal, luxurious, fond of ease and pleasure, and dissolute to excess in his morals; more courageous and martial, however, with more energy of purpose and elevation of sentiment, and more cultivated, than the Hindu of Bengal. In the population of Bengal these two races may easily be distinguished from each other; and amongst the Mohammedans, the Mogul, the Afghan, and their immediate descendants, may be known amongst the native Mussulmans. The features of the Ben-
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1 Notwithstanding the ravages committed by incessant wars and revolutions, as well as by famine and pestilence, their usual concomitants, India has, from the earliest times, been a densely-peopled country. In different states of society, the law of the increase of mankind will vary according to their relative circumstances and position, and the same or nearly the same principle will be found to apply to those classes who are placed at the opposite extremities of the scale. Amongst the people who are possessed of affluence, or the means of commanding the necessaries and comforts of life, the exercise of moral restraint is unnecessary; amongst those who are reduced to a mere physical subsistence, without the possibility, and consequently without the desire, of improving their condition, it will be disregarded; and hence the same results will follow from causes in their own nature diametrically opposed. It is evident that the great mass of the population have for ages been placed in a situation which excludes all idea of improvement; and religion has lent its powerful aid to obstruct the operation of those natural causes which, in other countries, have served to ameliorate the condition of the people. It may, however, be permitted to hope, that though India always has been, it will not always be, what it now is; that the attention of commerce, and the protection of a vigorous and impartial government, will awaken new ideas in the minds of the people; that security to person and property will give a strong stimulus to industry; that the habitual contact with a higher and more rational form of civilization will serve to mitigate their prejudices, and, in time, to destroy the influence of a debasing superstition; and that, in proportion as their wants are multiplied, their efforts to ameliorate their condition will be increased.
2 Heber's Journal, vol. iii., p. 349. galee distinguish him from the other inhabitants of Hindustan. He is stigmatised as of a cowardly disposition, and, from whatever cause, is not esteemed throughout the country. With these two principal classes are intermingled, in very small proportions, British, Armenians, a peaceable race, and highly honourable in their dealings, Portuguese, and other Christians. The Parsees are numerous in the island of Bombay, where they amount to 114,698; they are descendants of the Guebres or fire-worshippers, are a fine race, being generally engaged in traffic, and distinguished in their dealings by the highest integrity and intelligence. The Jews are numerous in India, and many are to be found in the Bombay army, where they have often behaved bravely. The Asiatic Jews are distinguished by a large Roman nose.
The Mahrattas, a powerful tribe, have been long distinguished in the wars and politics of India. They are chiefly found within the presidency of Bombay and the province of Nagpore, recently lapsed to the British government. They were originally a pastoral and warlike people from the mountains of Berar, who with a host of cavalry invaded and desolated the adjacent provinces with fire and sword, and at length acquired an extensive empire. Minute shades of difference prevail amongst them, but no distinctions of caste; every Mahratta eating with his neighbour, unless, which often happens, he be expelled from his caste. They are not a military caste, as appears from the names of farmer, shepherd, and cowherd, by which their principal tribes are known; and also from their exterior, which marks an origin different from that of the military Rajpoot. They are of a diminutive size, generally badly made, and of a mean look and rapacious disposition; whilst the Rajpoot has both personal grace and dignity. The memorable battle of Paniput, fought in 1761, gave a blow to the Mahratta power, from which it never recovered; and the confederacy was entirely dissolved in 1817, when the peshwa, the great feudal chief of the empire, surrendered to the British, and was by them confined as a state prisoner. The nation derives its name from Mahrat, a province of the Deccan; though it is the opinion of some that the Mahrattas migrated from Persia about 1200 years ago. The Mahratta language is widely spread over India. It is remarkable, that in proceeding northward into Northern and Central India, and into the Rajpoot states, the people far excel in strength and stature the feeble Hindu of the southern provinces, being fully equal in their bodily frame to Europeans. "They despise," says Bishop Heber, "rice and rice eaters, feeding on wheat and barley bread, exhibiting in their appearance, conversation, and habits of life, a grave, proud, and decidedly a martial character, accustomed universally to the use of arms and athletic exercises from their cradles, and preferring very greatly military service to any other means of livelihood." The character of the Rajpoots, the Sikhs, and the Jauts, fully answers to this animated description of a warlike race. The tribe of Jauts or Jats was little known in India till about the year 1700, when they migrated from the banks of the Indus, and became industrious cultivators in the Doab, or the country between the Ganges and the Jumna. During the civil wars which ensued on the death of Aurungzebe, they acquired a large extent of territory, in which they built forts, and accumulated wealth. They were noted plunderers; and it was out of the spoil taken from Aurungzebe's army in its retreat from the Deccan that the fortress of Bhurtpore was erected, in the gallant defence of which against the British they fully sustained the character of brave soldiers. Their claim to the distinction of a military caste has, however, been disputed; and it is said, that though success has emboldened them to assume that honourable title (Khatri), they were originally a low tribe of sudras or labourers. They also affix to their name Singh, a lion, which probably belongs only to the Rajpoots. The Jauts are said by Bishop Heber to be the finest people in bodily advantages and in martial spirit which he had seen in India, and their country one of the most fertile and best cultivated. They have a high character for valour throughout Hindustan; insomuch, adds the writer above quoted, "that when I was passing through Malwah, 'gallantee shows,' like those carried about by the Suvoyards, were exhibited at the fairs and in the towns of that wild district, which displayed, amongst other patriotic and popular scenes, the red coats driven back in dismay from the ramparts, and the victorious Jauts pursuing them sabre in hand." The lower classes of Jauts found in the barren tracts of Ajmere, and in Northern India, are however differently described, being of small stature, ill-looking, and black in complexion, and their condition that of squalid poverty. The Sikhs were originally a religious sect, of which the founder, Nanak, was born A.D. 1419, in the province of Lahore; and the word Sikh, properly Sikh or Siksha, in the old Sanscrit, signifies a disciple or devoted follower. He left two sons, from whom are descended 1400 families, called Shahzadeh, who live at Dera, in the Punjab, highly respected. His successors were spiritual chiefs, until the year 1675, when Guroo Govind, a warrior, succeeded. He converted the Sikhs from religious sectaries into ferocious soldiers; he changed their name from Sikh to Singh, signifying a lion, the title claimed and highly prized by the Rajpoots; and enjoined his followers to cut off their hair, or to shave their beards. The tribe consider this chief to be the founder of their political independence, and Nanak of their religion. The Sikhs acquired power during the convulsions that followed the death of Aurungzebe, and after the invasion of Nadir Shah. They were severely checked by the Mahomedans, and were nearly exterminated by the victorious Afghans after the battle of Paniput in 1761. But their valour still triumphed in the struggle, and led to the acquisition of the Punjab, over which they retained dominion until the death of their ruler Runjeet Singh, soon after which event the country of the "Five Rivers" fell to the British by conquest, and became incorporated with their vast empire of India. In horsemanship the Sikhs are not excelled by any other nation either of Europe or Asia. Colonel Todd, in his great work on Rajasthan, describes the appearance of the Rajpoot cultivators in the valley of Odeypoor, who came to meet him in a body, "as being so striking as to draw forth the spontaneous exclamation from his friend, 'what noble-looking fellows!'" "Their tall and robust figures," he adds, "sharp aquiline features, and flowing beards, with a native dignity of demeanour, though, excepting their chiefs, who wore turbans and scarfs, they were in their usual labouring dresses, immense loose breeches, and turbans, compelled admiration and respect." Their cast of countenance is Hindu, somewhat altered by their long beards; they are active, and more robust than the Mahrattas, owing to better living and a healthier climate; and rival in courage the most renowned tribes of India. They evince in battle the most determined contempt of personal danger, and are easily roused to desperation by prejudice or religion; they act as infantry in foreign armies, and as cavalry at home. Their address is bold and somewhat rough; they speak invariably in a loud bawling tone of voice; and are dissolute in their habits, indulging so freely in spirituous liquors, which their religion allows, though tobacco is prohibited, and in opium and hang, an intoxicating drug, that a Sikh sol-
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1 Indian Recreations, vol. i. p. 20. Hamilton's Description of Hindustan, vol. ii. p. 463. 2 Heber's Journal, vol. iii. p. 309. Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, vol. i. Personal Narrative, p. 667. Hindustan, die is rarely sober after sunset. The Sikhs are allowed to eat the flesh of all animals except the cow. They are strict in their religious observances; and converts, whether Hindu or Mahommedan, must give up all customs which infringe the tenets of Nanak, or the military institutes of Guroo Govind. The military class highly relish the flesh of the jungle hog, of which they compel Mahommedan converts to partake, and also to abstain from circumcision. The Sikh merchant or cultivator, if he be a Singh, is still a soldier in his habits, as he wears arms, and is well trained from his infancy to the use of them. The original followers of Nanak, the Kalasa Sikhs, differ widely from the warrior tribe. They are as plaintive, versatile, and insinuating in their manners as the lower class of Hindus, whom they so much resemble in their dress and appearance as not to be readily distinguished. The descendants of Nanak are a mild, inoffensive race; and the other religious tribes retain their peculiar manners.
The Rajpoots inhabit the Rajpoot states of Mewar or Odeypoor, Marwar or Jodhpur, Bicanere and Kishenagur, Kotab, Boondi, Amber or Jeepoor, Jesselmere, and the Indian desert to the valley of the Indus. They are the children of the sun and the moon; and, in memory of their great ancestor the radiant Surya, or Apollo, many of them wear badges of gilt metal round their necks with the image of a sun and moon on horseback. The lineage of both the solar (Soorya) and lunar (Indu) tribes is given by Colonel Todd, on the authority of the Puranas (sacred books), a copy of which, obtained from the library of the Rana of Odeypoor, he carefully consulted, in the presence of a body of learned pundits. This work contains the valuable results of his learned researches into the antiquities and history of the Rajpoot tribes, which were conducted with all the patience and perseverance that an enthusiastic devotion to the subject can alone inspire; and being guided by philosophy, and the most profound knowledge of oriental literature, have thrown great light on the history and character of the ancient inhabitants of Rajpootana. Vyasu, the Hindu historian, gives fifty-seven princes of the solar line from Menu to Rama; and fifty-eight from the same period of the lunar race, from Buddha, its founder, to Krishna. The establishment of these two grand races in India is fixed by Colonel Todd at about 2956 years before the Christian era. From Rama all the tribes termed Sooryavansa or Race of the Sun, claim their descent, namely, the present princes of Mewar, Jeepoor, Marwar, Bicanere, and their numerous clans; whilst from those of Buddha and Krishna the families of Jesselmere and Cutch, extending over the Indian desert, from the Sutlej to the ocean, deduce their pedigrees. Colonel Todd draws a parallel between them and the ancient Scandinavians and Scythians; and the striking resemblance that appears in the manners, customs, and religious opinions of the two nations, he insists, strongly suggests the idea of a common origin. These ancient tribes were devoted to the god of war; and the Rajpoot, he observes, "delights in blood; his offerings to the god of battles are sanguinary, blood and wine. The cup of libation is the human skull. He loves them because they are emblematic of the deity he worships; and he is taught to believe that Hor loves them, who in war is represented with the skull to drink the foeman's blood, and in peace is the patron of wine and women. With Parbutti on his knee, his eyes rolling from the juice of the p'foot and opium, such is this Bacchanalian divinity of war." "Is this Hinduism," he adds, "acquired in the burning plains of India? Is it not rather a perfect picture of the Scandinavian heroes?" This hypothesis of a common origin Colonel Todd further supports from the Rajpoots slaying the buffalo, hunting the boar and the deer, shooting ducks and wild fowl; from their ancient use of the war-chariot, as appears from the inscriptions and engravings on their monuments; from the order of the birds common amongst them; from their passion for gaming and intoxicating liquors; from their sensual and slothful habits; from their funeral ceremonies, particularly from their immolation of females, a barbarous custom now abolished through the strenuous exertions of the British government. The Rajpoots claiming so splendid a descent are distinguished above all other tribes by rank and pride of birth, and high aristocratic feeling; and hence the origin of a barbarous custom among the chiefs of putting to death their female children as soon as they were born, lest they should contract any base alliance. Others say that this custom was occasioned by the practice amongst the Rajpoot princes of providing splendid dowries for their daughters, by which they were frequently impoverished, and to avoid which they murdered them in infancy. Colonel Todd, the depth of whose researches into the ancient literature of the Hindus appears in his accurate and lively delineation of the national character and manners of the Rajpoots, ascribes to their chiefs a more ancient and chivalrous descent than many of the royal houses of Europe. "From the most remote periods," he observes, "we can trace nothing ignoble, nor any vestige of vassal origin. Reduced in power, circumscribed in territory, compelled to yield much of their splendour and many of the dignities of birth, they have not abandoned an iota of the pride and high bearing arising from a knowledge of their illustrious and regal descent. The poorest Rajpoot of this day," he adds, "retains all the pride of ancestry, often his sole inheritance; he scorns to hold the plough, or to use his lance but on horseback. In these aristocratic ideas he is supported by his reception among his superiors, and the respect paid to him by his inferiors." These honours and gradations of rank are supported by peculiar privileges, each of the superior orders being entitled to a banner, to kettle-drums, preceded by heralds, and silver maces, with peculiar gifts and personal honours in commemoration of some exploit of their ancestors. Armorial bearings are used by the martial Rajpoots; a golden sun on a crimson field adorns the great banner of Mewar; those of the chiefs bear a dagger, whilst others display a fine coloured flag; and the lion rampant in an argent field was the warlike emblem of the now extinct state of Chanderi. The Rajpoots are divided into thirty-six royal races, described by Colonel Todd; to each is attached a bard, who is acquainted with all the peculiarities, religious tenets, and ancient history of the tribe. These are subdivided into an infinite variety of lesser clans, each more or less honourable as they can trace their pure descent from the original and illustrious founders of their race. The character of the Rajpoots, as given by Bishop Heber on the authority of Captain Macdonald, the political resident of the Company in that district, is far from favourable. "The people," he observes, "who are generally oppressed, and have been, till very lately, engaged in incessant war, have the vices of slaves added to those of robbers, with no more regard to truth than the natives of our own provinces, exceeding them in drunkenness, fondness for opium, and sensuality, whilst they have a blood-thirstiness from which the great mass of the Hindus are very far removed. Their courage, however, and the gallant efforts they made to defend their territories against the Maharattas, deserve high praise." They are extremely attached to their respective chiefs, to whom they yield a feudal obedience. The lands are let at low rents, on the condition of military service, every village furnishing its contingent of horsemen on the shortest notice. One of the chiefs who visited the above Hindustan, traveller, and who is said by him to have been a striking specimen of the tribe, is described as "young and handsome, but dirty in his dress, boisterous in his manner, talking with a great deal of gesticulation, many winks, nods, beckonings, and other marks of intelligence; and half drunk." Colonel Todd's work contains an accurate and instructive delineation of the manners and feudal relations amongst the Rajpootana chiefs; of their martial virtues, their romantic fidelity and honour, and their high pride, the parent at once of the noblest deeds and the deepest crimes; with which, according to their enthusiastic annalist, Colonel Todd, their history is stained. Family feuds are frequent amongst them, and last for centuries. They are handed down, as an inheritance, from generation to generation; and thus the debt accumulates with interest, "the deep reversion of delayed revenge," till it is extinguished in the blood of the hostile tribes. Hence murders, burnings, poisonings, mingle in their domestic annals with traits of generosity and romantic valour; and the modern Rajpoots, though they are certainly not improved, differ little in their manners and prejudices from their ancestors.
The Bheels, another predatory tribe, inhabiting the mountains situated near the Nerbudah and the Tuptee rivers, thence extending northward towards Rajpootana, westward towards the province of Gujerat, where they meet the Coolies, and eastward to Gundwana, where they come in contact with the Gonds, two other predatory tribes, are supposed to have been the aborigines of Central India. All these tribes are averse to industry, and subsist by plunder, by hunting, or by cultivation, when all other expedients fail. The Coolies near the sea-coast lived, until lately, by fishing or piracy. The Bheels inhabit the interior; and during the unhappy period of disorder and rapine in India, terminated by the triumph of the British arms in 1817, they had by their inroads laid waste several districts, and were rapidly increasing in power. They were frequently hired by the native chiefs to assist in their desolating wars, as horsemen or as infantry, armed with bows and arrows, and nearly naked. Thieves and savages as they are, Bishop Heber found that the British officers stationed in that district thought them, on the whole, a better race than their conquerors. "Their word," he observes, "is more to be depended on; they are of a franker and livelier character; their women are far better treated, and enjoy more influence; and though they shed blood without scruple in cases of deadly feud, or in the regular way of a foray, they are not vindictive or inhospitable under other circumstances, several British officers having with perfect safety gone hunting and fishing into their country without escort or guide except what these poor savages themselves cheerfully furnished for a little brandy."
The Bheels in the south of Malwah were partly reclaimed by the wise and conciliatory policy of Sir John Malcolm. In the mountainous tracts of the province of Guzerat they were at first harshly treated, and severity only tended to confirm their primitive habits. Subsequently a milder and more enlightened course of policy was pursued by the British government, and the results proved highly satisfactory. "The Bheels," says Captain Graham, "from outcasts have become members of civil society, daily rising in respectability, and forming useful and obedient subjects of the state." The Gonds are a miserable race in Gundwana, occupying the fastnesses of the mountains. They approach nearly to a state of nature, and frequently descend from the mountains, especially during the harvest, to plunder their ancient inheritance in the plains. Having within the last fifty years acquired a taste for salt and sugar, they have begun to cultivate the land, in order to obtain these luxuries. The Gonds bear a striking resemblance to the Hindustan African negro. The Grassias are another race of plunderers who are numerous in Gujerat, the most western province of India. They have or pretend to have ancient claims on the land, many portions of which were either surrendered to them by the proprietors for the secure possession of the remainder; or they received an annual payment in money (toda) in full of all demands, as black-mail was paid in Scotland to the Highland robbers during the disorders of the feudal times. The Grassias seldom levied these claims in person; but, assuming the character of chieftains, they rallied around them a band of adventurers, who levied their grassia claim, and who, under this authority, plundered and laid waste the country. These Grassias are of no sect or caste; they include Hindus and Mahomedans indiscriminately. But, of all these predatory races in Hindustan, the Coolies, who haunt the shores of the great salt marsh called the Rann, near the Gulf of Cutch, are the most untameable. They resist every approach to civilization, and pride themselves upon their mean and filthy dress. The tribes of thieves which are found in India, under the various designations of Grassias, Catties, Bhatties, or wandering outlaws who worship the sun and moon, Coolies, Bheels or Mewassies, Meenas, Buddicks, Cozaucks, and the like, generally wander along the rugged banks of rivers, or among inaccessible mountains. The Bhats are a singular race, who are most numerous in Gujerat. Some are cultivators, others beggars and itinerant bards or traders; whilst a few are contractors for the payment of the public revenue, receiving a small per centage on the amount, or guarantee the observance of private agreements and awards. The Cherons are a sect of Hindus nearly resembling the Bhats in their manners and customs. They are carriers of heavy goods, such as grain and other articles, in which they are also dealers, and possess large droves of cattle for carriage. They are likewise engaged to protect travellers in the wild parts of the country, and take an oath to die by their own hands in the event of those who are under their protection being plundered; and the superstitious thieves of Hindustan are always overawed by this threat of the Cherons, whom they hold in great veneration.
The population of Hindustan contains other tribes or sects, too numerous and diversified to be described in detail, and differing, if not in language, at least in dialect, and in their manners, customs, and occupations. The Phasingars in the south of India, and the Thugs, are professional murderers; the latter are composed of men of all castes, even Brahmins, who, when murders are committed, are frequently the chief directors in the scene. Their practice is to decoy the traveller into the midst of their band, and then, drowning his cries by the noise of pretended revelry, to strangle him by suddenly throwing a noose round his neck, after which the body is cast into a grave previously dug for it. But this tribe, together with the Gwarriahs, who live by stealing children, are fast disappearing under the strict rule of the British. The Brinjarrees and Loodanahs, or carriers of grain, are a singular wandering race, who dwell in tents, and have no home; passing their whole time in transporting grain from one part of the country to another. They move about in large bodies with their wives, children, dogs, and loaded bullocks; and carry arms, with which they stoutly defend themselves against petty thieves. In war they are allowed to pass and repass quietly as neutrals between hostile armies, and to sell supplies of grain to either party. It was from the Brinjarrees that Lord Cornwallis received all the supplies for his army when he advanced against the capital of Mysore in 1799. The Oriams, a singular race, who inhabit Orissa, are dis-
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1 Annals of Rajast'han, vol. i. chap. 3. 2 For a more full account of some of these tribes, see the article on Gujerat, a province in which they abound. Hindustan, distinguished by their feminine appearance, so that they are often mistaken for women. They are timid, dissolute in their manners, and more practised in low cunning than any other people in the East, though they are said to be honest and industrious. The pastoral tribes, the Todawars or Toderies, and the Kotics, inhabit the table-land of Mysore; the first a manly race in features, and of a proud and independent character, strongly resembling the ancient Romans; the second more diminutive, with darker complexions, and less expressive features. They are considered as the aborigines of these highlands. The Toderies are herdsmen, wandering from pasture to pasture, and they and the Kotics always go bare-footed and bare-headed. The Nairs in Malabar form a singular caste, from their peculiar manners and customs. Pretending to be soldiers by birth, they disdain all industry; and are often seen parading up and down fully armed, each man with a firelock, and with at least one if not two sabres, which they more frequently use in secret assassination than in open war. Amongst the Nairs marriage is a mere form, and both sexes indulge in a promiscuous intercourse. The women are married before they are ten years of age; but the husband never cohabits with his wife. He allows her a suitable maintenance, whilst she lives with her brothers, and cohabits indiscriminately with any person of an equal or higher rank. Owing to this irregular intercourse, no Nair knows his own father; and every man considers his sister's children as his heirs.
The Nestorian Christians are numerous in the S. of India, and are a peaceful and industrious race. The Roman Catholics, the descendants of the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and other Europeans or converts to their faith, are sunk in idolatry not much superior to that of the Hindus. The foreign races in India are the mercenary Arabs, who are brave soldiers, ready to fight on any side for good pay; and the Chinese, who are fast increasing in Calcutta; their number, according to the last census of that city, amounting to nearly 1000. Another race has sprung up in India since the country was occupied by the British, who are known by the various names of Europeans, Anglo-Indians, Indo-Britons, half-castes, and the like, but who have now assumed the appellation of East Indians. They are the descendants of Europeans, either British or others, by native mothers, legitimate and illegitimate. They speak the English language, and follow all the European habits, and the Protestant religion. The number residing in Calcutta in 1850 was 4615. These are subject to the law administered by the crown judges in the Queen's court at Calcutta, but beyond the limits of the jurisdiction of this court, East Indians are amenable to the judicial courts, over which the Company's civil servants preside. In these courts the judge has not the power of life and death, but he is competent to sentence to long terms of imprisonment. All capital cases are referred for the disposal of the Nizamut Adalwrit, the highest of the Company's courts in India. East Indians and others not professing the Mohammedan faith, are not tried under the provisions of the Mohammedan criminal law, but under regulations passed by the Government of India, the judge being assisted by assessors or by a jury, but having power to override their opinion. In the year 1793 East Indians were excluded by express enactments from the civil and military service of the Company, and were only eligible to subordinate situations in public offices; though of late years this exclusion was only applied in its rigour to the immediate descendants of European and Indian parents, all others being eligible to civil and military offices. Prior to 1793, the East Indians were freely admitted into the army, and several of them attained to the rank of generals and colonels, and commanded large Hindustan bodies of troops with efficiency and success. Notwithstanding the restrictive law, there were still examples of their admission into the Company's service. Those who are not engaged in the public service follow other professions. Some have acquired high reputation and large fortunes by medical practice. Others are employed as planters, schoolmasters, architects, printers, carvers and gilders, or engaged in commerce. The laws passed in 1833 and 1853 for regulating the Company's affairs, abolish these unjust and illiberal distinctions, and render every class, of whatever caste or religion, eligible to all offices civil and military.
Such are some of the principal tribes who inhabit the low country of Central and Northern India, "whilst the mountains and woods, wherever they occur, show specimens of a race entirely different from all these, and in a state of society scarcely elevated above the savages of New Holland or New Zealand." It is finely observed by Sir John Malcolm in his History of Persia, that, in the conquest of a country, the rocks and the mountains often afford a last asylum to the brave and the free; and accordingly, many of the native tribes in Hindustan, flying from the destroying sword, have thus maintained for ages a savage independence, and all the distinct traces of an original race. The elevated tract in Bengal, reaching from Rajmahal to Burdwan, is inhabited by several tribes of mountaineers, and amongst them the barbarous Santals, who are probably the aborigines of the country; and, from their features, language, civilization, and religion, are obviously of a different stock from those in the plains. Amongst the Paharees, who inhabit this tract, the Hindu institution of castes is unknown; the Hindu deities are equally so; and they have no idols, being nearly in the condition of savages. They subsist by the chase, their arms are bows and arrows, and they are nearly naked. They formerly waged incessant war with the cultivators of the plains, whom they robbed and murdered, and were in their turn hunted by the Mohammedan zemindars like wild beasts. Having been kindly treated and conciliated by the British, they are so far reclaimed from their wild habits, that a battalion of sepoys has been raised from amongst them. The peculiar features of the rude tribes in the eastern hills of Bengal, and the adjacent plains, equally indicate a distinct origin. The Kookies, who live in the mountains to the N.E. of the Chittagong district, have all the peculiar features of a Tartar countenance; the flat nose, the small eyes, and the broad round face. They are stout and muscular, though not tall; and they are hunters and warriors, armed with bows and arrows, clubs and spears. They live in the most inaccessible hills, in a state of constant warfare, and, like all savages, are cruel and vindictive.
The inhabitants of Hindustan rank much lower in the scale of civilization than the nations of Europe. They are far behind them in literature, science, and the arts, and in all the civil institutions of society; and their religion is that of a rude people, consisting in an endless detail of troublesome ceremonies, which are deeply interwoven with the whole system of life. The reason of man, in contemplating the wonders of creation, is directed by the light of nature to one great First Cause; and in the structure of the universe are clearly seen the divine attributes of goodness, wisdom, and almighty power. Accordingly, Brahmin, or God, is declared, in many passages of the Vedas or sacred writings of the Hindus, to be the almighty, infinite, eternal, self-existent being, who sees all things, and is everywhere present; the creator and lord of the universe, its
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1 Bachaman's Journey from Madras, vol. ii., p. 412. 2 Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, on a Petition of certain Christian Inhabitants of Calcutta, &c., presented to the House of Commons on the 4th May last. (21st June 1831.) preserver and its destroyer, who can neither be described nor adequately conceived by the limited faculties of man. But with these simple conceptions of the divine majesty other grosser ideas are combined, and a system of polytheism, accompanied by the most extravagant and obscene fables, and all the disgusting, cruel, and blood-thirsty rites of an abominable idolatry. Whilst Brahm, the Supreme Being, is supposed to remain in holy obscurity, he has distributed respectively to three other deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the power of creating, preserving, and destroying the world. But it does not appear that these deities are strictly confined to their separate functions; Vishnu, the preserver, frequently employing himself in acts of destruction; and Siva, on the other hand, in acts of beneficence. In short, the Hindu creed presents no clear nor determinate ideas. All is vague, inaccurate, and confused. Brahma, the creator, is represented as a golden-coloured figure, with four heads and four arms. Vishnu, the preserver, is represented of a black or blue colour, with four arms, and a club to punish the wicked. The emblems under which he is represented refer to his vindictive character. He has three eyes, to denote the three divisions of time past, present, and future. A crescent in his forehead refers to the measuring of time by the lunar revolutions, as a serpent denotes it by years; and the necklace of skulls which he wears, the extinction of mankind in successive generations. The great ends of his providence are brought about by various incarnations of the Hindu deity. Of these visible appearances, denominated avatars in the Hindu mythology, there are ten, of which nine have already taken place; and although the Hindu account of what took place at these times is a tissue of absurdity, extravagance, and indecency, yet we may trace, under a mass of fable, the Scripture account of the deluge, with various other points of the Christian theology. But the history of the creation from a seed deposited in the waters, which became an egg, from which Brahma the creator was born, is in the highest degree absurd and profane. At the tenth avatar, which is yet to come, Vishnu, as is foretold, will appear on a white horse, with a scimitar blazing like a comet, for the everlasting punishment of the wicked who shall then be on the earth. Each earthly incarnation of the divinity gives rise to a new deity; and there are, besides, innumerable other minor deities, amounting, it is said, to 330 millions. All the great elements of nature are deified by the extravagant superstition of the Hindus; also the firmament of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars; every river, fountain, and stream, is either a deity in itself or has a divinity presiding over it, nothing being done without some supernatural agency; and there are, besides, innumerable myriads of demigods, to whose honour idols are erected and worshipped by all classes with much apparent devotion. Stocks and stones, or a lump of clay smeared over with a little red paint, are converted into a god, and reverenced, by the ignorant Hindu. Any figure, either of brute or man, or any monstrous combination of both, with a multiplicity of heads and hands, mark a Brahminical place of worship. In the lapse of ages, great changes have been introduced into the religious practices of the Hindus; and sectaries have arisen amongst them, each with peculiar objects of adoration and modes of worship. Five great sects worship exclusively a single deity; one recognises the five divinities that are respectively reverenced by the other sects, but they select one object for daily adoration, whilst they perform only occasional rites to the other deities. The Vedas, or the Hindu Scriptures, were revealed before the appearance of Buddha, the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, which is supposed to have taken place in the year 1014 before the Christian era. He appears to have borrowed his theology from the system of Capila, in which the unlawfulness of killing animals is inculcated as an essential point. But the overthrow of the Buddhists did not revive the religious Hindustan system inculcated in the Vedas. The doctrines taught in these sacred books are now mostly obsolete, and in their stead new forms and ceremonies have been instituted, and new orders of devotees. In particular the goddess Kali, the consort of Siva, who delights in blood, has been propitiated by the sacrifice of animals; and the worship of Rama and Krishna, incarnations of Vishnu, and of Siva the destroyer, appears to have been introduced since the persecution of the Buddhists and Jains.
The worshippers of Buddha, though they believe in the incarnation of Vishnu, are regarded as heretical by the Hindus, and have been compelled, by persecution, to fly to other countries. They have now propagated their faith over the greater part of Eastern India, in China, and as far as Japan; also in Thibet and Ceylon. The Jains are another sect of Hindus, who acknowledge only as subordinate deities some, if not all, of the gods of the Brahmans, and the prevailing sects; and assign the highest place to certain deified saints, who, according to their creed, have risen to the dignity of superior gods. They neither address prayers nor perform sacrifices to the sun or the fire; and they reject the authority of the Vedas, as do also the Buddhists. The presence of umbrella-covered pyramids, or semi-globes, and of plain human figures sitting cross-legged, or standing in an attitude of contemplation, point out the temple or excavation of a Buddhist. The twenty-four saintly figures, without the pyramid, indicate a Jain temple.
The sacred books of the Hindus, though they inculcate generally all the moral duties of justice, mercy, and benevolence, yet seem, like every other system of false religion, to give the first place to the ceremonial law; and accordingly the devotion of the Hindus consists in mere outward observances, and is not inconsistent with the most scandalous crimes. Under the Christian system, there can be no piety to God without benevolence to man. But the troublesome ceremonies of the Hindu religion encroach, not only on all moral duties, but on the whole business of life; and confer such a stock of atoning merit that they seem to supersede the weightier matters of the law. The observances which are imposed upon a Brahmin commence when he rises in the morning, and consist in divers ablutions and prayers, in the worship of the rising sun, in the inaudible recitation of the gayatri, or the holiest text of the Vedas, in holy meditation, and in other ceremonies. He has then to perform the five sacraments, which consist in teaching and studying the scriptures, which is the sacrament of the Veda; in offering cakes and water, which is the sacrament of the manes; in an oblation of fire, the sacrament of the deities; in giving rice and other food to living creatures, which is the sacrament of spirits; and in receiving guests with honour, which is the sacrament of men. The whole day would not suffice for the punctual performance of these ceremonies; and they are of necessity abridged, to give time for the proper business of life. In almost all the religious traditions of the world we find traces of the Scripture revelation, however corrupted; and the Hindu system seems to have borrowed, and to have greatly extended, the typical impurities of the Mosaic law. The rules on this subject, pointing out the causes of defilement, and the modes of purification, are numerous, many of them to the last degree absurd and troublesome. The death or the birth of a child renders all the kindred unclean. Any one who touches a dead body, a new-born child, an outcast, &c., is unclean; or a Brahmin who has touched a human bone. The natural functions of the body give occasion to many minute and disgusting regulations; and the modes of purification are equally strange and ridiculous. Of these, bathing is the most rational; the other modes are by stroking a cow, looking at the sun, or having the mouth sprinkled with water. He who is bitten by any animal frequenting Hindustan, a town, or by a mare, a camel, or a bear, is unclean; and he is purified by stopping his breath during one inaudible repetition of the gayatri. Inanimate substances may also be unclean, and the various modes of purifying them rival in absurdity the other extravagances of the Hindu code of religious observances.
The expiation of sin by voluntary penance is another favourite doctrine of the Brahmans, by which they contrive to awe superstitious minds into subjection; and in their estimate of offences, with a view to suitable penances, they subvert all moral distinctions. "Acts naturally indifferent," says the author of Indian Recreations, "are put on the same footing with immorality; eating certain articles of food, drinking certain liquors, or touching certain objects, are declared forfeitures, and are expiated by penance as immoral conduct. Forgetting texts of scripture is classed with perjury; eating things forbidden, with killing a friend; incest and adultery are compared to slaying a bull or a cow; drinking forbidden liquor, to killing a Brahmin. In several instances, actions highly meritorious according to our notions, are put on the same footing with a conduct implying great infamy. Working in mines of any sort, engaging in dykes, bridges, or other great mechanical works, is classed with subsisting by the harlotry of a wife, and preparing charms to destroy the innocent." To these artificial offences, penances are either affixed by the Brahmans, or are voluntarily undertaken by their pious votaries; and these generally consist in fasts, mortifications, watchings, and other bodily privations. "If a Brahmin," says Menu, "have killed a man of the sacerdotal class without malice, he must make a hut in a forest, and dwell in it twelve whole years, subsisting on alms, for the purification of his soul. If the slayer be a king, he may perform sacrifices, with presents of great value; if a person of wealth has committed this offence, he may give all his property to some Brahmin learned in the Veda." In some cases the penances consist in eating what is filthy and disgusting. If a Brahmin kill by design a cat, or an ichneumon, the bird chisha, or a frog, a dog, a lizard, an owl, or a crow, he must perform the ordinary penance required for the death of a Sudra, one of the lowest caste, who are thus no more valued than a cat or a frog. A particular class of devotees, namely, the Fakirs, signalize their piety by enduring the severest tortures, and with a constancy worthy of a better cause. Bishop Heber describes, with his usual force, the appearance of these eastern monks as he entered the holy city of Benares. "Fakirs' houses," he observes, "as they are called, occur at every turn, adorned with idols, and sending forth an unceasing tinkling and strumming of vinas, byyals, and other discordant instruments; while religious mendicants of every Hindu sect, offering every conceivable deformity which chalk, cow-dung, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs, and disgusting and hideous attitudes of penance, can show, literally line the principal streets on both sides. Here," he adds, "I saw repeated instances of that penance of which I heard much in Europe, of men with their legs and arms voluntarily distorted by keeping them in one position, and their bands clenched till the nails grew out at the backs. Their pitiful exclamations as we passed, 'Agha Sahib, Topse Sahib,' the usual names in Hindustan for an European, 'khana ke waste kooch cheez do,' give me something to eat, soon drew from me the few pence I had; but it was a drop of water in the ocean; and the importunities of the rest, as we advanced into the city, were almost drowned in the hubbub which surrounded us."
The tortures which these fanatics endure exceed all belief. A penitent who went through the ceremony of sitting between five fires, is described by Fraser, who witnessed Hindustan the penance at a public festival. Being seated on a quadrangular stage, after the sun began to have considerable power, he stood on one leg gazing steadfastly at its scorching beams, whilst fires large enough, says the traveller, to roast an ox were burning around him, the penitent counting his beads, and occasionally adding fuel to the flames. He stood upright on his head in the midst of these fires for three hours; and then seating himself with his legs across, he remained till the end of the day exposed to the scorching heat of both the sun and the fires. Other cruel and bloody rites are contrived by those devotees, the worshippers of Siva or his consort the goddess Kali. At one of the festivals in honour of this goddess, Bishop Heber, who was present, relates, that one of these self-tormentors had hooks thrust through the muscles of his sides, which he endured without shrinking, and a broad bandage being fastened round his waist to prevent the hooks from being torn through the flesh by the weight of his body, he was fastened to a long pole, and, by means of another pole fixed in the ground, he was swung aloft and whirled round in the air; on a motion being made to take him down, he made signs for them to proceed, a mark of constancy received with shouts of applause by the ignorant multitude. Other devotees were seen going about with small spears thrust through their tongues and arms, or with hot irons pressed against their sides. Bishop Heber saw another of these penitents who was actually half roasting himself by a fire which he had kindled in a hole dug in the ground; another was seen hopping on one foot, having made a vow never to use the other, which was now contracted and shrunk up; and a third had held his hands above his head so long that he had lost the power of bringing them down to his sides. Some are seen buried up to the neck in the ground, or even deeper, with only a small hole for breathing. Some lie on beds of iron spikes, or tear their flesh with whips, or chain themselves for life to the foot of a tree, or remain in a standing posture for years, till their legs swell, and break out into ulcers, and become at last too weak to support them; others exhaust their bodily strength with long fasting, or gaze on the blazing sun, till their eyesight is extinguished. These devotees subsist entirely by charity; and Dr Buchanan mentions a class of them in the south of India, who wander about with bells tied to their legs and arms, in order to give notice of their presence as they approach the villages. They are always naked, and filthy in the extreme, being covered with cow-dung and chalk; and for the tortures which they endure in public they indemnify themselves in private by the utmost license of sensual indulgence. Amongst other observances, the Hindus have always been much given to religious pilgrimages; and their holy places have been generally established near the sea, the sources and junctions of rivers, which are held in peculiar veneration, the tops of remarkable hills, hot springs, caves, waterfalls, or any other place of difficult or dangerous access. A pilgrimage to Gangotri, near the sources of the Ganges, is accounted the great achievement of Hindu piety. To the waters of this river the superstitious Hindu ascribes peculiar sanctity, and devoutly worships it throughout its whole course. But there are particular spots more sacred than others; and so great is the resort of pilgrims, and such their ardour to wash in the sacred stream, that numbers, in the crush and tumult, are hurried into the water and drowned, or trodden to death in the crowd.
It is not doubted that, at a period not very remote, the bloody deities of the Hindus were propitiated with human sacrifices, and some of the rites still in use amongst them
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1 See Tennant's Indian Recreations, vol. i. p. 153. 2 Mill's History of British India, vol. i. p. 353. 3 Heber, vol. i. p. 373. 4 Journey from Madras, through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. i. p. 233. 5 Martin, vol. i. p. 291. Hindustan confirm this suspicion. In some of the native states the Brahmins, in resisting oppressive demands, resort to a contrivance, in which a human victim is really sacrificed. They erect a circular pile of wood, on the top of which they place a cow or an old woman; and if the demand is insisted on, they set fire to the pile, and consume the sacrifice, which is supposed to entail on the oppressor the deepest guilt. Bishop Heber gives, in his narrative, an example of the sacrifice of an old woman, who, in a quarrel which her husband had with his neighbour respecting some land, was thrust into a Mahboult's hut, and there burned, in order that her spirit might haunt the spot, and entail a curse upon the soil. Children were also formerly sacrificed, by throwing them to the sacred sharks of the Ganges, till the practice was forbidden by the British government; and a voluntary sacrifice of themselves by individuals, in honour of the gods, is still reckoned meritorious. At the festival of Juggernaut, the idol is placed on a ponderous machine or chariot, and dragged forward by a crowd of devotees and priests, when numbers of the people, even fathers and mothers, with their children in their arms, throwing themselves in the way of the chariot, and being crushed to death under its ponderous wheels, amidst the fanatical cries of the multitude, are supposed to be conveyed immediately to heaven. Numerous victims of both sexes drown themselves annually at the junction of the sacred streams; many strike off their own heads as a sacrifice to the Ganges, whilst others expiate their sins by casting themselves into the avenging flames. This act of devotion is accompanied by atrocities that are truly shocking, the devotee previously laying open his bowels with the stroke of a sabre, tearing out his liver and giving it to a bystander, conversing all the time with apparent indifference. Many other enormities are practised at the festivals in honour of their gods, which it would be endless and disgusting to detail. The custom of a widow burning herself on the funeral pile of her husband is a noted rite of the Hindu religion, but the practice has been for some time abolished within the British territories, and more recently several of the native princes of India have been also prevailed upon to prohibit the rite of Suttee within their respective dominions. The Hindus in this, as in many other instances, evince a singular indifference about their own lives; which also appears in the frequent instances of suicide amongst them. "Men," says Heber, "and still more women, throw themselves down wells, or drink poison, for apparently the slightest reasons, generally out of some quarrel, and in order that their blood may be at their enemy's door." Obscenities mingle with these bloody rites, and the most indecent figures are portrayed on the chariots used at the temples, many of them large and richly carved. "These," says Dr Buchanan, "representing the amours of the god Krishna, are the most indecent that I have ever seen." Equally indecent representations are carved on the sacred cars fixed at the temples, in which the musicians and dancing girls are all prostitutes to the Brahmins, and turned out to starve when they grow old, unless they have a handsome daughter to support them from the wages of iniquity. The state of morals among the Hindus is such as might be expected from a religion so impure, and from the gross emblems which are used on sacred occasions; their writings and their conversation are shocking to European ears; and even the Hindu women hear without a blush and join in language the most gross and disgusting. They are sensual in all their ideas, and pursue the intercourse of the sexes with little more discrimination than the brute creation. Fidelity to marriage vows is scarcely known amongst them, at least amongst the men.
A superstitious tenderness for the brute creation is a peculiar tenet of the Hindu creed, which prohibits the use of animal food excepting at the great festivals, when the sacrifices of beasts propitiate the bloody deities, and serve the natives for a feast. But the same abstinence from animal food is not general throughout Hindustan. In the north of India it has already been mentioned that it is freely used by the inhabitants; and, according to Dr Buchanan, there are castes in the south of India who eat sheep, goats, hogs, fowls, and fish, though there are others who religiously abstain from these, and from all spirituous liquors. Several animals, as the cow and the monkey, are objects of veneration. Bishop Heber, so often quoted, mentions, that on entering the holy city of Benares, "the sacred bulls devoted to Siva, of every age, tame and familiar as mastiffs, walk lazily up and down the narrow streets, or are seen lying across them, and hardly to be kicked up; any blows, indeed, given them must be of the gentlest kind, or woe be to the profane wretch who braves the prejudices of a fanatic population, in order to make way for the tonjon. Monkeys, sacred to Hanumana, the divine ape, who conquered Ceylon for Rama, are, in some parts of the town, equally numerous, clinging to all the roofs and little projections of the temples, putting their impertinent heads and hands into every fruiterer's or confectioner's shop, and snatching the food from the children at their meals." To such a length is this superstition carried, that they have established an hospital for sick and infirm beasts, and for fleas, lice, and insects, though it does not appear, as reported by some travellers, that they feed these loathsome creatures on the flesh of beggars hired to lodge in the hospital for that purpose. An hospital for animals is to be seen at Broach in Gujarat, which has considerable endowments in land, and in which, are monkeys, peacocks, horses, dogs, cats, and little boxes filled with fleas and lice. This hospital was described to Bishop Heber by the British commercial agent resident at Broach. The funds, however, are said to be alienated by the avaricious Brahmins, and the animals allowed to starve. With all this veneration for animals, they are nowhere more cruelly treated. They are overworked and abused in a manner shocking to a European. "They treat their draft horses," says Bishop Heber, "with a degree of barbarous severity which would turn an English hackney coachman sick;" nor do they show any greater sympathy for human beings, who are allowed to perish before their eyes from hunger or disease. Lepers, according to their base and irrational superstition, are treated as objects of the divine wrath; they are cruelly neglected, and regarded with abhorrence rather than with sympathy.
The transmigration of souls is another favourite tenet of the Brahmin superstition. The souls of good men migrate in the next world into hermits, religious mendicants, Brahmins, demi-gods, genii, or other celebrated intelligences; and the best ascend to the condition of Brahma with four faces. The next gradation allotted to souls filled with passion is into men and not into deities, into cudgel players, boxers, wrestlers, actors, or those of a higher class into the bodies of kings, and the highest become genii, attendants on the superior gods; whilst souls filled with darkness are degraded into the lower animals, such as worms, reptiles, cattle, &c. or into elephants, horses, Sudras (the lowest caste), or into the still more degraded class of men of no caste, or into lions, tigers, &c.; to the highest are allotted the forms of dancers, singers, &c. birds, giants, blood-thirsty savages. Particu-
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1 Tennant, vol. ii. p. 250. 2 Mill's History of British India, vol. i. p. 358. 3 Journey from Madras, through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. ii. p. 237. 4 Journey from Madras, &c. vol. i. p. 262. 5 Ibid. vol. i. p. 246. 6 Heber's Narrative, &c. vol. i. p. 373. Hindustan, lar migrations are assigned as the punishment of certain enormities; but it is useless to pursue the system further into its absurd and disgusting details.
Manners. The religion of Hindustan is so closely interwoven with its customs, manners, and laws, that they can scarcely be described separately. The division of a Hindu community into castes is an institution, not of policy, but of religion, which embraces the whole detail and intercourse of life. There are four original or pure castes, namely, 1st, the Brahmans, or priests; 2d, the Cshatriyas, or military caste; 3d, the Vaisya, or husbandmen; and, 4th, the Sudras, or labourers. Of these the Brahmans are declared to hold the first rank, and to be the lords of all the other classes. A want of due reverence to them, especially by the lowest or the Sudra class, is accounted one of the most atrocious crimes. The laws and manners equally concur to maintain the honour, and all the substantial privileges, of this sacred order. They are exempted from taxation, and from the sanguinary laws which affect the other classes. Neither the life nor property of a Brahmin can be touched, even though he commit the most atrocious crimes; and the whole scope of the Hindu religion is to heap gifts and wealth upon them. "Every offence," says Orme, "is capable of being expiated by largesses to the Brahmans, prescribed by themselves, according to their own measures of avarice and sensuality." The duties of the Brahmans are to meditate on divine things, to read the Vedas, to instruct the young Brahmans, and to perform sacrifices and other religious acts. The Cshatriyas, or the military rank, is next in order to that of the Brahmans. Their duty is to bear arms in defence of the state, and they rank as high above the lower orders as the Brahmans do above them. The Vaisya, the third caste of Hindus, tend cattle, or engage in trade and agriculture. They rank only above the Sudras, from whom, however, they receive the same deference and submission which they give to the higher castes. To the Sudra, or the lowest class, are allotted all the meanest and most servile duties; they are regarded with abhorrence by the other tribes, to whom religion prescribes their most abject submission, as well as every other species of degradation. They are in a manner excluded from the privileges of the social state. They pay a higher rate of interest for money than any of the other classes, they are more cruelly punished for crimes committed against them, whilst an injury to a degraded Sudra is a light and venial offence. They are held to be in a state of slavery, they cannot possess property, and at any time a Brahmin may seize the goods of his Sudra slave. So degraded are they, that under this gloomy, unsocial superstition, a Brahmin cannot lawfully read the Veda in presence of any of them, nor give them spiritual counsel or instruction, under pain of sinking with them into hell. To each of these classes, into which society is divided, are assigned, under the severest penalties, particular and hereditary employments. But the rigid severity of this law is softened by the following exceptions. A Brahmin who cannot find employment in his own spiritual line, may descend to the exercise of military duties, or to tillage and attendance on cattle, or to traffic, only obtaining certain commodities. In like manner, a Cshatriya in distress may have recourse to all inferior employments, though not to the higher duties of the Brahmans. The practice of medicine and other learned professions, of painting and other arts, common labour, menial service, begging, or serving, may be resorted to upon the plea of necessity. A Vaisya may descend to the servile work of a Sudra; and a Sudra may subsist by handicrafts, as joinery, masonry, painting, and writing, by which he may serve the higher classes; or by trade or husbandry. The loss of caste is one of the most serious calamities which can befall a Hindu, and may in fact be compared to the spiritual anathemas of the Catholic church during the dark ages of Europe. If the loss of caste were the penalty of immorality, the fear of it would impose a salutary restraint. But this is far from being the case. The most abandoned Brahmin retains his rank, notwithstanding his crimes; but he will entirely forfeit it and lose all countenance in society by touching impure food, or by some such petty delinquency. To sit down at a meal with one of an inferior caste, would be deemed a monstrous pollution; and a naked Hindu would think himself defiled by the presence of the first monarch of Europe at any of his meals. "While dinner is preparing," says Tennant, "and during eating, a small circle is drawn round the company, which an European, if he pass, infallibly defiles the meal; it is thrown to the dogs, and other victuals provided, though a single one be all the treasure of the family."
Such may be considered as in theory the structure of a Hindu community. But since, in the progress of society, this strict division into classes with distinct employments could not long be maintained, we accordingly find that, by illicit connexions, the pure races are intermixed, and children born who, being of no caste, are therefore impure, and objects of execration to all the other tribes. This impure race, denominated the Burren Sunker, and classified into distinct tribes, have become artisans and hand-craftsmen of every description. From the intermixture of these various races innumerable mixed tribes have sprung, and the pure blood of the four original tribes is scarcely to be found; so that Mr Rickards, in his accurate account of Indian manners, says, "I have never met with a person who could prove himself a genuine Cshatriya, Vaisya, or Sudra; whilst of those who pretend to be of pure descent, Brahmans and other respectable and intelligent Hindus have assured me that they have no right to the distinction; that the genuine tribes above named are extinct, and their descendants in this generation all of mixed blood. If, however, any do now exist, they must be too thinly scattered to affect the general interests of society by their privileges or numbers." "A real Cshatriya prince," he adds, "is not to be found in these days; all the greater princes of India, excepting the peshwa, a Brahmin, are base-born." Nor, amidst this confusion of ranks, has it been possible to adhere to the strict allotment of certain employments to particular castes. The Brahmans no doubt still form a distinct order; their privileges are willingly conceded to them by the superstitious multitude, and the inferior castes have never encroached on their holy functions. But those of the other castes have been confounded. War has not been the exclusive employment of the Cshatriya caste; for the Indian armies are recruited from all denominations and castes. Nor have the Vaisya and the Sudra castes been more successful in the monopoly of their employments; seeing that all the various castes follow their allotted duties, and fill every branch of agriculture, commerce, handicraft, and menial service. But the institution of castes, though it has not been strictly acted upon, being at variance with the fixed order of human society, has nevertheless deeply affected the aspect and structure of the Hindu communities; and whilst it exalts the order of priests, it degrades the lower classes.
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1 Orme On the Government and People of Hindustan, p. 433. 2 See Indian Recreations, vol. i. p. 121. 3 India, or Facts submitted to illustrate the Character and Condition of the Native Inhabitants, &c. By R. Rickards, Esq., vol. i. p. 29. 4 Ibid. p. 30. to the level of the brutes. It is the source of cruel and anti-social prejudices, entirely opposite to those Christian feelings of benevolence by which man is bound to his fellow men; and by which the different orders of society, instead of being harshly separated, are softened and blended, as in the communities of Europe, into one harmonious whole.
Besides these degraded castes, whose condition is little better than that of slaves, numbers of unfortunate persons were until very recently reduced to actual slavery throughout India. All the jaghireddars, zemindars, principal Brahmins, and talookdars employed domestic slaves in their establishment; and in every Mahratta household of consequence they were considered as indispensable. They were also employed in the labours of the field, in the cultivation of rice, and were in the lowest state of degradation, ill-fed and worse clothed, and most wretched in their appearance.
But the British parliament, in legislating in the year 1853 for the better government of India, made it incumbent upon the governor-general in council to take into immediate consideration the means of mitigating the state of slavery, and of ameliorating the condition of slaves; and of extinguishing slavery throughout the territories subject to their jurisdiction so soon as such extinction should be practicable and safe. The result was the passing of a legislative act by the government of India, which, by refusing to recognise the right to property in slaves, and by extending protection to both the persons and property of parties so styled, has substantially put an end to the institution of slavery within the territories under the government of the East India Company. The British Government has also strenuously laboured to procure the abolition of slavery in the native states of India, and its efforts have been generally successful. In Travancore it still exists, and the slaves are described as in the lowest possible state of degradation. Not only are they held by private persons, but some are the property of the government, which derives a small revenue from letting out their services to such cultivators as require them. The British resident has pressed upon the minister the manumission of the children of these slaves; in addition to which the home authorities have suggested the emancipation of the parents also; and the subject of praedial slavery generally, with a view to its entire abolition at an early period, has been recommended to especial attention. In consequence of this pressure a proclamation was issued in 1853, declar-
ing free the children of slaves of the state who may be subsequently born; forbidding the seizure of private slaves in satisfaction of debts; recognising the rights of slaves to possess property and to enjoy the protection of the law; directing the emancipation of slaves connected with property lapsed to the state, and prescribing regulations intended to preserve that unhappy class from oppression. How far these rules will be effective against the opposition of both prince and people remains to be seen; but it is something to have obtained a recognition of the right of slaves to be dealt with as human beings.
The Hindus are by no means a moral people. Notwithstanding the gentleness and feminine softness of their manners and address, they frequently commit the most revolting acts of cruelty. The practice of murdering children for the sake of the silver ornaments in which, by the vanity of their parents, they are attired, is common among them; and the gang-robbers of India are noted for the horrible tortures which they inflict on their unhappy victims, in their eager search after their hidden treasures. "Pestilence, or beasts of prey," says Dr Buchanan, "are gentle in comparison of Hindu robbers." According to the observation of Orme, the politics of Hindustan would afford in a century more frequent examples of sanguinary cruelty than the whole history of Europe since the reign of Charlemagne. "How many princes," observes this writer, "have been stabbed in full durbar" (in open court). "How many have been poisoned in their beds. Chiefs of armies circumvented and cut off at conferences in the field. Favourite courtiers strangled, without previous notice of their crime, or while they thought themselves on the eve of destroying their masters." Murders amongst the Hindus, even by poison, excite no feeling of deep abhorrence, as among the nations of Europe; and the cold-blooded villany of the Hindu is often remarkable. Mr Holwell mentions, that when he sat as judge at Calcutta, he had heard it stated in defence of the most atrocious murders, that it was the Cali age, when men were destined to be wicked. The Hindus, like all the other Asiatics, are great masters of dissimulation; they are cunning and treacherous, addicted to falsehood to a degree that can scarcely be conceived by a more refined and moral people. Perjury in courts of justice is universal, amongst high as well as low, and amongst both the Hindus and Mussulmans, without
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1 See Papers relative to slavery in India; Return to the House of Commons, 6th March 1834; Evidence of Joseph Fenn, nine years a missionary in Travancore; Answers to Questions on Slavery, circulated by the Commissioners for the affairs of India; Evidence of T. H. Baber, Esq., thirty-two years resident in India; of the Hon. Mr J. Harris, principal collector in Canara; and of Mr Wardle, resident in Malabar. The evidence of T. H. Baber discloses a regular and shameful traffic in slaves, carried on by Mr Brown, a servant of the Company, acting under the authority of the Bombay government. "How or whence," he observes, "this oppressive and cruel practice, not only of selling slaves off the estate where born and bred, but actually of separating husbands and wives, parents and children, and thus severing all the nearest and dearest associations and ties of our common nature, originated, it would be difficult to say; but I have no doubt, and never had in my own mind, that it has derived support, if not its origin, from the impolitic measure in 1798, of giving authority to the late Mr Murdoch Brown, while overseer of the Company's plantations in Malabar, from the difficulties he experienced, even with the assistance of the tehsildar (the head native authority) and his peons (armed persons with badges of office), to procure workmen, and of the price of labour being more than he was authorized to give, to purchase indiscriminately as many slaves as he might require to enable him to carry on the works of that plantation; and of actually issuing orders to the European, as well as to the native local authorities, to assist him, and even to restore slaves who had run away and returned to their homes (without any orders to inquire the reason of their absence), and who had been officially ascertained from the surviving slaves themselves, had been actually kidnapped by Mr Murdoch Brown (being police officer), and sent up to North Malabar, to Mr Brown, which person had continued up to 1811, or for a period of twelve years, under this alleged authority, granting liberty to the said government to import slaves and free-born children from Travancore, when, by the merest accident, this nefarious traffic came to public knowledge, and which, after a considerable opposition on the part of the provincial court of circuit, I succeeded in putting a stop to, after having restored to liberty and their country 123 persons who had been stolen, of whom 71 were actually found in Mr Brown's possession." Mr Brown's agent, Assen Ally, acknowledged, that during the time he was at Allepi, at Travancore, in 1810, no less than 400 children had been transported to Malabar. The advocate-general's report alludes to "Mr Baber's perseverance in restoring the kidnapped children, in spite of very extraordinary opposition," and to the "extraordinary support Mr Brown appears to have received in these dealings in stolen children." (Fol. 788.) The still more objectionable practice of realizing the public dues by the seizure and sale of slaves off the land, must have confirmed proprietors in their idea of accounting the slaves their property. Mr Vaughan, collector, Malabar, in a letter dated 20th of July 1819, argues in favour of this inhuman practice, saying, "that the partial measure of declaring them not liable to be sold for arrears of revenue, will be a drop in the ocean; though, why government should give up the right every proprietor enjoys, is a question worthy of consideration." Par. 3, 4, 5, &c.
High-class slaves sold for 250 gold fanams, L.6. 5s.; average price, L.3. 6s.
2 Mill, vol. i. p. 407.
3 Orme's Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, p. 340. Hindustan: the least remorse or shame. The Europeans in the office of judges in India complain of being perplexed by a host of perjurers on each side, swearing in the teeth of one another. They are acute dissemblers in all affairs of interest, and are the sharpest buyers and sellers in the world, maintaining through all their bargains a degree of calmness which no art can penetrate. A want of sympathy with the sufferings of his fellow-creatures is another trait of the Hindu character, and a sure index to the low state of refinement amongst them. They treat their sick and dying with indifference, and in many cases with shocking inhumanity. The sick whose life is despaired of are carried to the banks of the Ganges, and their mouth, nose, and ears are closely stopped up with mud; water is then poured upon them from large vessels, and thus, amidst the agonies of disease and of suffocation, life terminates. The corpse is then burned, if the survivors can pay the expense, and the relatives retire with every appearance of insensibility. The effeminacy of their persons, and their timidity, prevent them from fighting or boxing in their quarrels. But this forbearance seems to proceed from no want of malignity or passion, as, in the event of any misunderstanding between two persons meeting accidentally in the street, they upbraid each other with the foulest epithets, accompanied by the utmost violence of gesticulation.
Mr Rickards, in his valuable work upon India, seems to imagine that European writers have exaggerated the vices of the Hindus, and he exhibits them in a more favourable light. "Having lived," he observes, "twenty-three years in India, and passed much of that time in intimate intercourse with various natives, I have a different opinion of their character to that given in several printed works. I have constantly seen, in their acts and conduct, the practice of the most amiable virtues. I have experienced from many the most grateful attachment. I believe them capable of all the qualities that adorn the human mind; and though I allow many of their imputed faults (where is the individual or nation without them?) I must still ascribe these faults more to the despotisms under which they have so long groaned, and which unhappily we have but slenderly alleviated, than to natural depravity of disposition, or to any institutions peculiar to themselves." No writer ascribes to the Hindus any greater natural depravity than other nations. But certainly their peculiar religion, its indecent and bloody rites, and the laws and usages founded on it, more especially the institution of castes, tend to extinguish in the breast all humane, enlightened, or moral feelings; and though, even amongst the Hindus, exceptions may be found, and the occasional practice of amiable virtues, yet the crimes which are proved to be committed openly and without shame or remorse sufficiently attest the want of morality, intelligence, and every humane and social feeling amongst them, and seem to place them in this respect entirely on a level with the other Asiatic nations. Ignorance is the parent of cruelty and vice, and with the progress of knowledge and of civil institutions certain crimes entirely disappear; and hence their existence amongst the Hindus bespeaks not so much any innate or peculiar depravity, as a low state of civilization, and a state of thraldom to a base superstition and to the dominion of priests, under which the social virtues are blighted in the bud, and selfishness and vice spring up in the congenial soil.
In every nation the condition of the female sex affords a sure index to the state of manners and the progress of civilization. Amongst savages, women are ill treated because they are weak and helpless, and there is no moral restraint on the tyranny of the men. In Hindustan, as over all the East, where polygamy prevails, they are a degraded Hindustan caste, shut up in the harem or the seraglio, and not, as in Europe, the seat of a purer faith and more refined system of manners, the friends, the advisers, and equal companions, of their husbands. And both the laws and manners of the East lead to this unhappy effect. Whilst marriage is enjoined as a religious duty, not to be neglected except for the higher duty of becoming a devotee, the character of women is described in the Hindu books of law as stained with almost every vice. Pride, anger, envy, violence, deceit, falsehood, immoderate desires, infidelity to their husbands, and idleness, are pointed out as their ruling passions; and the treatment they meet with corresponds with those ideas. They are wholly uneducated, excluded from the sacred books, and from all knowledge of expiatory texts, and from any share in the paternal property; and they are held unworthy to eat with their husbands. They are the slaves of their domestic tyrants, and often receive the most barbarous treatment, being beaten and otherwise ill used; but they are not allowed to leave them, whilst the husband, on the other hand, may divorce his wife upon any plausible pretence. Such is the condition of women by the laws of Hindustan, which, we have no reason to believe, are softened in domestic life. Certain it is, that women, as long as they are uneducated, will be in a degraded state. It is only when they cultivate their minds that they can mix with advantage in society, and that, respecting themselves, and respected by others, they can acquire that ascendency to which they are entitled, and give, by the delicacy of their manners, that tone and polish to society which it cannot receive from the other sex.
The ceremonial of marriage is conducted amongst the Hindus with great solemnity and expense. The parties, who are of equal rank, and any other alliance would be accounted infamous, are betrothed during their infancy by their parents, but on a full consideration of their respective rank, skilful genealogists being consulted previously on this important point. These preliminaries being settled, the transaction terminates with an elegant feast; and when the wife comes of age she is conducted to her husband's home, with all due ceremony, and a concluding entertainment; another set of observances take place when she becomes pregnant, when she passes her seventh month, and when she is safely delivered. These festivals amongst the rich are extremely expensive.
The Hindus are ignorant and illiterate. The children of the poor seem to be mostly uneducated. Those in a higher station are taught by the Brahmans to read and write, and to cast accounts, the calculations being performed by pebbles or small shells. The pupil first begins to write upon the sand with his finger, and he afterwards uses palm leaves. After being thus initiated in the rudiments of literature, he enters on the course of his professional study, in which he has no choice, every one following the profession of his father. A student is instructed chiefly in the Vedas, and in the ceremonial of his religion; and his course of discipline in the three Vedas may be continued for thirty-six years, in the house of his preceptor, or for a half or quarter of that time, until he comprehend them. To the state of the student succeeds that of the married man or the housekeeper, when the youth begins to sustain his part in the business of life. He may, however, continue his whole life a pupil, waiting upon and serving his preceptor the Brahmin until his death. By this devotion to him he acquires a title to the highest rewards of religion. Of the common people, a few individuals only are taught to read or write. The great
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1 Orme On the Government and People of Indostan, p. 431. 2 Tennant, Indostan Recreations. 3 Rickards' India, p. 3. Hindustan body of the people remain in ignorance. They can explain nothing of their own religious system, nor of the ceremonies which they attend. This gross and universal ignorance, whilst it is the parent of crime, exposes the Hindus to all the artifices of priestcraft, and of every quack who pretends to skill in any art or science whatever. The unbounded influence of the priests is highly inexpedient, and has in some instances been found dangerous to the public peace. On one memorable occasion, as related by Bishop Heber, this influence became a political engine, which was wielded with great effect, to the alarm of the local government. Among other superstitions of the Hindus, it is well known that they inflict evils on themselves or others, even to the sacrifice of their lives, under the idea that they will be avenged on their enemies. One of these practices is to sit "dhurna," or mourning, in a fixed posture, without food, and exposed to the weather, until the person against whom the religious rite is directed agrees to give redress. It is firmly believed, that if the person dies in this mourning state, his avenging spirit will ever afterwards haunt and torment him whose obstinacy may have occasioned his death. The Hindus resort to this practice in order to enforce payment of a debt, or forgiveness of one; and it is a notion amongst them, that whilst an aggrieved person sits at their door "dhurna," they can neither eat nor undertake any business. Brahmins are even sometimes hired to sit dhurna, and their sacred character is supposed to give a peculiar awe to the ceremony. It was in opposition to an unpopular and heavy tax on houses in the city of Benares, against which they had vainly remonstrated, that the whole population, far and near, resolved to sit "dhurna" till it was repealed. On this occasion the leading Brahmins took their measures with surprising concert and unanimity. Handbills were circulated explaining the causes and necessity of the measures, "calling on all lovers of their country and national creed to join in it, and commanding, under many bitter curses, every person who received it to forward it to his next neighbour. Accordingly," adds Bishop Heber, "it flew over the country like the fiery cross in the Lady of the Lake; and, three days after it was issued, and before government was in the least apprised of the plan, above 300,000 persons, as it is said, deserted their houses, shut up their shops, suspended the labour of their farms, forbore to light fires or dress victuals, many of them even to eat, and sat down with folded arms and drooping heads, like so many sheep, on the plain which surrounds Benares." There was every reason to dread some violent issue to such an extraordinary transaction. The local government, exceedingly perplexed by so strange and vast an assemblage, acted with consummate prudence; and this motley multitude being let alone, gradually dispersed. The rulers of India, thus admonished, were fain to repeal the obnoxious tax. The ignorance of the great body of the Hindus exposes them to impositions of every description. In the medical art, charms, incantations, exorcisms, and the shallowest tricks, are substituted for professional skill; and other impostors, generally Brahmins, practise astrology, and cheat them out of their money by pretended prophecies, from the aspect of the skies. The belief of sorcery and witchcraft is universally prevalent amongst them, and leads, as it formerly did in our own country, to cruel enormities. Persons suspected of witchcraft are the objects of fear and hatred; and their neighbours often assume the right of trying them for this crime, by charms and incantations, such as planting a branch of the sycamore tree in water, with the name of the suspected person, and if it wither within a certain time, the evidence against the accused is considered conclusive.
The Hindu is distinguished by the slenderness and delicacy of his corporeal frame, which is partly the cause of his peculiar timidity. His make, his physiognomy, and his small degree of muscular strength, convey a remarkable idea of effeminacy, especially when contrasted with the robust stature of a European who is making the observation. "The sailor," says Orme, "no sooner lands on the coast, than nature dictates to him the full result of this comparison. He brandishes his stick in sport, and puts fifty Indians to flight in a moment." The Indian, however, greatly surpasses the European in the sensibility of his touch, and in the flexibility of his limbs; and hence, with tools which would scarcely enable the clumsy fingers of the one to make a piece of canvass, he weaves the finest cambrics; and in all feats and contortions of the body, in the art of tumbling, and in juggling tricks, the Hindus excel all other nations. They are also patient of bodily fatigue, and in running or marching will distance more robust competitors. An Indian messenger will travel on foot fifty miles a day for twenty or thirty days without intermission. They are withal remarkable for bodily inertness, and the love of repose. "It is more happy," they say, "to be seated than to walk; it is more happy to sleep than to be awake; but the happiest of all is death." Their amusements are accordingly all of the sedentary kind. A game which resembles chess and draughts, though without either the variety or interest of the former, is one of their favourite amusements; and, like all rude nations, they are passionately fond of gaming, though it is contrary to the Gentoo code; also of feats of agility and legerdemain; and a juggler who erects a stage in any part of the East is sure to draw a crowd of spectators. Buffoonery, story-telling, music, consisting of simple melodies, and dancing, which they enjoy as spectators, complete the catalogue of Hindu amusements. Their extreme fondness for hunting forms an exception to their general indolence; all the different races in India, Europeans, Moguls, and Hindoos, shaking off their natural supineness, are seen to concur in the ardour of the chase. Hawking is also keenly pursued by natives of distinction. Besides falconers, fowlers, and game-keepers, Hindoos of rank employ persons to ensnare wild animals; and the contrivances they resort to are not less ingenious than successful.
Many have given credit to the Hindus for cleanly habits, from their frequent ablutions; but the reverse is the case. A taste for cleanliness is a proof of refinement; it is a sure mark of a highly civilized people; and accordingly it is not to be found in any part of Asia. Almost all the Asiatic cities are distinguished by narrow streets, into which, as there are no police regulations, all sorts of filth are indiscriminately thrown. The Hindus form no exception to this general censure. In all the great towns the streets are filthy. Nor are the Hindoos more cleanly in their persons. Their linen, being dyed, is seldom washed; and, like the Chinese, they frequently allow their robes to drop off with filth before they think of changing them.
A simple and despotic monarchy is the only form of Government which was established under the native princes of Hindustan; and it was a despotism in the true Asiatic sense of the word, under which neither laws nor manners restrained the excesses of absolute power. In the most despotic states of Europe, the authority of the monarch is controlled by the influence of manners, and life and property are perfectly secure. But this was far from being the case in India; the sovereign was supreme arbiter of the lives and properties of all his subjects. Nor was this power allowed to lie dormant; it was frequently enforced in cruel and arbitrary acts; and the annals of India are accordingly stained with the most revolting outrages of abused power. Wealth presented too tempting a prize to lawless violence; and its possessor, if he Hindustan neglected to make large and seasonable presents, was sure to be accused of some pretended crime, thrown into a dungeon, and plundered. "Instead of giving him poison," says Orme, in his just estimate of the people and government of Hindustan, "which would not answer the end proposed, as his treasures are buried, he is beset with spies, who watch his minutest actions, and probably propose to him a commerce with the enemies of the province. If he avoid these snares, a profitable post in the government is proposed to him, which, if he accepts, his ruin is at hand, as the slightest of the villanies practised in every branch of it affords grounds for making him a public criminal. Should he have escaped this too, it remains that some more glaring and desperate measure of iniquitous justice hurry him to destruction." Mr Orme then proceeds to mention the case of a wealthy banking-house, the partners of which were personally known to him, who, having dexterously avoided all the snares laid for their property and life, were at length involved in an accusation by the accident of one of the dead bodies which are continually floating on the Ganges being thrown ashore under the walls of their house, on which it was surrounded by the officers of the civil magistrate, who dragged them to prison as the murderers of a son of Mahommed, and having ordered them to be severely scourged, extorted from them as the price of their liberty a present of 50,000 rupees. Another wealthy individual was forced to give in one present, to the nabob of Bengal, a sum equal to three hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Bishop Heber relates of the Rannee, or princess of Jee-poor, that she murdered a female attendant, a woman of character, and possessed of considerable wealth, who was believed, until that time, to stand high in her mistress's confidence. Eight other women of the Zenana believed themselves marked out for destruction. Another princess, who possessed a jaghire or landed estate near Meerut, frequently ordered the ears or noses of her attendants to be cut off for slight offences; and one of her dancing girls was imprisoned under ground, and starved to death, she herself keeping watch until she heard the last faint moans of her expiring victim. Such enormities present a dreadful picture of Indian despotism, and fully bear out Mr Orme in his contrast between the manners of Europe under the influence of Christianity, and those of Hindustan, under which poisonings, treachery, and assassinations, are daily committed by the votaries of ambition, as are rapes, cruelty, and extortions, by the ministers of justice.
From the great extent of the Mogul empire, the influence of the supreme power was but feebly felt in its distant parts, and the kingdom was accordingly divided into distinct provinces, in which deputies or viceroys, called nabobs, ruled with delegated power. Those provinces were again subdivided into districts, which were committed to the subordinate administration of rajahs. These districts might consist of one town and its territory, or of a thousand towns; and hence the Hindu system of provincial government comprehended different degrees of princely dignity and dominion, according to the extent and value of the lands that were assigned. But all these various rulers, though each was amenable to the one above him, exercised supreme and despotic sway within their own districts. There was also a special rank of princes called subahdars, who ruled in the extremities of the kingdom, in which the rigour of the supreme authority was weakened by distance, with higher rank and greater powers than the rajahs. The Deccan was under the administration of a subahdar, as was also the extensive and distant province of Bengal. The absolute power of the Great Mogul descended without any loss of vigour to all its inferior delegates; and in this manner the whole of the country groaned under the dominion of numerous tyrants. From this extensive delegation of the superior power, it happened, that on the decay of the Mogul empire, the provincial rulers gradually acquired independence, and, in their warfare with each other for dominion, filled the country with rapine and bloodshed. "Hindustan," says Major Rennell, "even under the Moguls, may be considered as a collection of tributary kingdoms, each accustomed to look no farther than its own particular viceroy, and of course ever in a state to rebel, when the imbecility of the emperor, and the ambition of the viceroy, formed a favourable conjuncture;" and accordingly he observes that "rebellions, massacres, and barbarous conquests, make up the history of this fair country, which, to an ordinary observer, seems destined to be the paradise of the world." And to the same purpose Orme remarks: "If the subjects of a despotic power are everywhere miserable, the miseries of the people of Hindustan are multiplied by the incapacity of the power to control the vast extent of its dominion; and thus," he adds, "the contumacy of vicegerents resisting their sovereigns, or battling among themselves, is continually productive of such scenes of bloodshed, and of such deplorable devastations, as no other nation in the universe is subject to."
In the Mogul sovereign was vested the whole administration of the state, the executive as well as the legislative and judicial powers. In his executive duties the law assigned him a council of state, the functions of which generally devolved on some favourite minister. His legislative duties were simple, seeing that religion was the law, and that the sacred ordinances constituted the judicial code, which it would be impiety to alter. The Brahmins being the sole interpreters of the holy books, acted as assessors to the nabob or rajah, or his delegates in the judicial office. The mode of administering justice had an appearance of openness and fairness, and the forms of the court were extremely simple. The seat of justice was exposed in a large area, capable of containing the multitude; and here justice was administered by the duan or judge, in the absence of the nabob; the plaintiff having attracted attention by his importunate clamours, was ordered to be silent, and to advance before the judge, to whom, after having prostrated himself, he told his story in the plainest manner. He visited the judge in private, gave the jar of oil, and his adversary bestowed the hog, which broke it; the friends who had influence interceded, but it was the largest bribe that ultimately gained the cause. The forms of justice were no doubt preserved; witnesses were heard, but browbeaten, and removed if their evidence did not please the judge. "Proofs of writing," says Orme, "are produced; but deemed forgeries and rejected, until the way is cleared for a decision, which becomes totally or partially favourable, in proportion to the methods which have been used to render it such; but still with some attention to the consequences of a judgment which would be of too flagrant iniquity not to produce universal detestation and resentment." In Hindustan, accordingly, the judicial tribunals afforded no refuge to the oppressed; they were rather instruments of tyranny, by which the unhappy people were plundered under the forms of law. Avarice is the reigning vice of Hindustan, and power afforded all public functionaries
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1 Orme On the Government and People of Indostan, p. 450. 2 Heber, vol. ii. p. 278, 279. 3 Rennell, Memoir of a Map of Hindustan, p. xlix. 4 Orme On the Government and People of Indostan, p. 309. Hindustan, the means of its gratification. The havildar, the head of a village, called his habitation the durbar, and plundered of their meal and roots the wretches within his jurisdiction; the zemindar fleeced him of the small pittance of silver which his penurious tyranny had scraped together; the phoosdar, or military commandant of the province, seized on the zemindar's collections, and bribed the nabob's connivance in his villanies by a share of the spoil; the covetous eye of the nabob ranged over his dominions for prey, and employed the plunder of his subjects in bribing or in resisting his superiors. "Subject to such oppressions," says Orme, "property in Hindustan is seldom seen to descend to the third generation." It is not therefore surprising that the Hindus prefer English courts of law to those with which they were cursed while under the rule of their native princes.
Taxation. This important subject will perhaps be more properly considered when we come to treat of the political transactions of the British in India, and of their administration of the revenues of the Mogul empire. In the mean time it may be observed, that those revenues chiefly arose from a tax on the land, imposed by the sovereign, or from a share in its produce, which, according to some, he received as proprietor of the soil. The tax was immediately paid into the imperial treasury by the zemindar, who collected it from a variety of under tenants, holding by peculiar tenures, which will be afterwards more particularly considered. The proportion of the crop claimed by the government varied, according to the fertility of the land, from a sixth to a twelfth part; and being ascertained by the proper officers, it was either paid in kind or in money. Custom-duties were levied on imports by sea, and by land on the transit of goods at the different toll-bars in the country. These were sometimes farmed out by the local authorities. Other taxes are enumerated in the sacred books, on mercantile profits, on which was levied a fifthieth, or even a twentieth part; on the accumulation of property in gold, silver, precious stones, cattle; on the purchases and sales of merchants; and on mechanics and serving-men, who were liable for a contribution of labour at the rate of a day in each month. A trifling poll-tax was imposed on the meeker inhabitants. Exclusive rights of manufacture, and trade in certain articles, such as salt, arrack, betel-nut, and tobacco, were also granted to the inhabitants for an annual payment. The Hindu rulers, however ignorant in other matters, thus appear to have been familiar with all the most approved modes of plundering their subjects; and these failing, they had recourse to open violence. It is mentioned by Mr Rickards, whose views of Indian manners seem to be equally judicious and accurate, that those revenue systems of India never were, "because they never could be, literally enforced, the real practice being to exact and plunder, without any fixed rules, all that could be squeezed out of defenceless subjects." After enumerating the various revenue officers who acted under the sovereign, such as nabobs, dewars, foujedaras, amildars, tehsildars, jaghireddars, zemindars, polygars, talookdars, rajahs, nasks, wadeyars, &c., he adds, "swarms of harpies were thus spread in every direction, even to the mundils and potalis of villages; and despotism established, as it were, in detail, in every corner of the land. Power was here a license to plunder and oppress. The rod of the oppressor was literally omnipresent; neither persons nor property were secure against its persevering and vexatious intrusions. The common transactions of life became objects of punishment or extortion. And no Hindustan other principles being known or dreamt of in India than arbitrary power on the one hand, and abject submission on the other, a state of society was fixed and rooted in the manners, the poverty, and the ignorance of the people, of which no parallel nor resemblance is anywhere to be found in European states."
The laws of the Hindus which apply to property, and Hindu which regulate sales or purchases, loans, transfers, and laws deposits of goods, though they are founded on the principles of justice, are frequently rude, loosely expressed, and such as, along with a corrupt judiciary, must leave every thing to the discretion of the judge. The law fixes the price of commodities, regulates the interest on money, and on the loan of goods, such as grain, fruit, &c.; and, by a peculiar injustice, imposes a greater interest on the servile castes than on the Brahmans and soldiers. The modes of enforcing debts are the same as in all other countries. The creditor may seize upon the property or person of his debtor, whom he may beat or otherwise maltreat, and, if he be of an inferior caste, compel to labour for his profit. He may even confine his wife or children. Another mode of enforcing payment is by sitting dhurna, a ceremony already explained. The laws of inheritance form an important branch of the Hindu code, though it is justly remarked, that "the slavery to which the rights of parent and husband subject the female, abolishes at once all suits of dowers, divorces, jointures, and settlements." On the death of the father, his property is divided amongst his children, who frequently live together, with the elder brother as their head. If they separate, the eldest receives one twentieth more than the others. Science and good conduct are mentioned as grounds of preference, as vice of exclusion; and thus is laid the foundation of endless disputes. In some cases the gross and cruel superstition of the Hindus subverts the principles of justice; the blind, the deaf, the dumb, or those affected with leprosy, or any other incurable disease, being deprived of their share in the paternal inheritance. Children of different castes inherit according to the rank of the mother, and those of concubines receive only half the share of legitimate children. Until the practice was legalized by the British government, the Hindus had no idea of devising by will; nor were any members of the family at liberty to alienate, except in certain particular cases, any part of the common stock.
The criminal code of the Hindus, though no longer in operation except in some few states, governed by Hindu princes, merits a brief notice. The offences of the low-born tribes against the higher receive a full measure of vengeance, whilst the latter are but slightly punished for the injuries which they inflict on their inferiors. It is enacted, that if a Sudra strike a Brahmin with hand or foot, the offending member shall be cut off; if he insult him with his tongue, it shall be slit, or a red-hot iron shall be thrust into his mouth. Murder is punished with death, theft with fine, and the more heinous cases with various degrees of mutilation, with impaling, burning alive, and crucifixion. The multifarious cases of offence which are detailed in the Hindu code, such as throwing ordure, or the refuse of victuals, on another, spitting upon him, &c., are many of them insignificant, and scarcely merit the minute enumeration which is given. The illicit intercourse of the sexes is a complicated subject, into the details of which it is unnecessary to enter. It seems principally directed against the want of chastity in women, which is punished
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1 See Fifth Report of Committee of the House of Commons, 1810, p. 83. 2 India, or Facts submitted to demonstrate the Character and Condition of the Native Inhabitants, by R. Rickards, Esq. p. 255. 3 Orme On the Government and People of Indostan. Hindustan as the most shocking of crimes, by burning on a heated plate of iron; or against the lower tribes, in whom adultery with a Brahmin woman is considered as the climax of human depravity, scarcely to be avenged by any punishment, however dreadful. On the other hand, crimes committed by the higher classes against the lower are very slightly punished; the scale of punishment being in all cases graduated in an inverse ratio to the rank of the offenders.
In architecture, in the fine arts, in painting and music, the Hindus are greatly inferior to the Europeans. The pagodas, the tombs, and other structures, the only remaining specimens of their architecture, are, according to some, more remarkable for the magnitude of their dimensions than for their just proportions or fine taste. "The columns and pillars," says Tennant, "which adorn their immense pagodas, are destitute of any fixed proportions; and the edifices themselves are subjected to no rules of architecture." He afterwards adds, that the celebrated mausoleum at Agra has little to boast of either in simplicity or elegance of design. "The immensity of its size, its costly ornaments, and the minute exactness of its decorations in particular parts, are worthy of notice; but they afford much stronger proofs of the wealth and magnificence of Shah Jehan, than the correctness of its taste." The tombs and religious edifices of Hindustan are, on the other hand, highly commended by Bishop Heber for delicacy, beauty, and taste. The mausoleum at Agra he celebrates as the most splendid building, in its way, that he had seen in India. Humain's tomb at Delhi he also praises as a noble building of granite, inlaid with marble, and in a very chaste and simple style of Gothic architecture; and of the imanbara or cathedral at Lucknow he remarks, "The whole is in a very noble style of eastern Gothic, and, when taken in conjunction with the Roumi Durwaza which adjoins it, I have never seen an architectural view which pleased me more, from its richness and variety, as well as the proportions and general good taste of its principal features."
There seems no doubt, from the splendid structures that are still found in different parts of Hindustan, that architecture and the kindred arts had flourished amongst the Hindus of a remoter age; though it is mentioned by Colonel Todd, that very few good specimens of the art have been executed within the last 700 years. His description, however, of the splendid Jain temples at Ajmeer and other parts, some of them erected long prior to the Christian era, and distinguished alike by chasteness and beauty of design, and by rich and exquisite finishing, must convince the most incredulous, that in these remote times the arts had made great progress in Hindustan. These structures are not merely monuments of labour, but of taste; they evince the perfection of art; and in symmetry, beauty of proportion, unity of design, and splendid ornament, they rival the noblest productions of classical Europe. The history of the people who have raised these structures presents a wide field for antiquarian research, on which Colonel Todd has entered with the brilliant promise of interesting results; and to his learned inquiries and eloquent and poetical descriptions we refer for a further account of those ancient monuments Hindustan of Hindu art.
Of the Hindu paintings the chief merit is brilliancy of colour, rather than taste in the design or liveliness of expression. They imitate most exactly, and are excellent draughtsmen; and they draw specimens of natural history with much neatness and accuracy. "The laborious exactness with which they imitate every feather of a bird," says Tennant, "or the smallest fibre on the leaf of a plant, renders them valuable assistants in this department; but farther than this they cannot advance one step. If your bird is to be placed on a rock or upon the branch of a tree, the draughtsman is at a stand; the object is not before him, and he can supply nothing." Since this period, however, the Hindus have made great advances in the art of painting; and some of their portraits display taste and expression that would not discredit European artists.
The music of the Hindus is rude and inharmonious. They have numerous instruments, but those are preferred which make most noise; the beating of the great drum is reckoned an emblem of sovereign power.
The literature of the Hindus has been generally rated very low by European writers, and has been represented as consisting in long desultory poems, inflated and extravagant in their style, containing, under the idea of a history, a tissue of absurd fables, interspersed with passages or episodes that are tender and passionate, and possess all the sweetness of pastoral poetry. They are said to be totally destitute of historical annals, and their geography is a mass of errors. Nor has their astronomy those claims to antiquity which were at first allowed. Accurate inquiry has proved this science to be in its infancy amongst them. The want of historical records by the Hindus is strongly denied by Colonel Todd, who has himself composed a history of the Rajpoots from native works, which he found in the libraries of their princes, and he asserts that in those depositories of Hindu literature many more works exist, which would reward the researches of the learned. "The works of the native bards," he observes, "afford many valuable data in facts, incidents, religious opinions, and traits of manners." "In the heroic history of Pirthi-raj, by Chund," he adds, "there occur many geographical as well as historical details, in the description of his sovereign's wars, of which the bard was an eye-witness, having been his friend, his herald, his ambassador, and finally discharging the melancholy office of successor to his death, that he might save him from dishonour." The Brahminical accounts of the endowments of temples, of their dilapidation and repairs, supply historical and chronological details; also the legends respecting places of pilgrimage and religious resort. Much historical information lies hid in the controversial records of the Jains; and, says Colonel Todd, "those different records, works of mixed historical and geographical character, which I know to exist, rasas or poetical legends of princes, which are common local puranas, religious comments and traditional couplets, with authorities of less dubious character, namely, inscriptions cut on rocks, coins, copperplate grants, containing charters of immunities, and expressing many singular features of civil government,
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1 The following is his description of this monument of Hindu art—"It stands in a square area of about forty English acres, enclosed by an embattled wall, with octagonal towers at the angles, surmounted by open pavilions, and four very noble gateways of red granite, the principal of which is inlaid with white marble, and has four high marble minarets. The space within is planted with trees, and divided into green alleys, leading to the central building, which is a sort of solid pyramid, surrounded externally with cloisters, galleries, and domes, diminishing gradually in ascending it, till it ends in a square platform of white marble, surrounded by most elaborate lattice-work of the same material, in the centre of which is a small altar tomb, also of white marble, carved with a delicacy and beauty which do full justice to the material, and to the graceful forms of Arabic characters, which form the chief ornament."
2 Heber, vol. ii. p. 65.
3 Annals of Rajputhan, vol. i. chap. xxv. p. 670; chap. xxx. p. 779.
4 Tennant, vol. i. p. 299.
5 For more full details on this subject, the reader is referred to Mill's History of British India, vol. ii. p. 85, &c seqq. Hindustan constitute, as I have already observed, no despicable materials for the historian." Colonel Todd is of opinion that the ancient records of the Hindus are more complete than the early annals of the European states.
Prior to Alexander's expedition into India, which took place 327 years before the Christian era, the Greeks appear to have known little of these eastern countries, except from the confused accounts of travellers; and nothing whatever of the countries beyond the sandy desert of the Indus, which, with its tributary streams, was the limit of Alexander's progress eastward. The men of science who accompanied this warlike prince brought to Europe full and accurate accounts of the countries which he had conquered; and the spirit of inquiry, now awakened amongst the Greeks, was still further gratified by the ample accounts of Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India by Seleucus, and who resided long at Paliobothra, the capital of the Prasi, near the mouth of the Ganges. The Greek writers, drawing their information from those sources, describe the leading features of Indian society and manners, and with an accuracy which stamps authenticity on their narratives. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the particulars of Alexander's expedition, which are fully described in many other works; and from that until the period of the Mahommedan conquest, when the native records commence, there is nearly a complete chasm in the annals of Hindustan. The Hindus had either no records, or these had been destroyed during the intestine commotions which have always prevailed in India. The historical poem, the Mahabarat, is a tissue of extravagant fables. Ferishta's history, written early in the seventeenth century, is supposed to have been collected from Persian authors; and the most valuable part of it begins after the commencement of the Mahommedan conquests. It was about the year 1000 that Hindustan, formerly ruled by a pure Hindu monarchy, fell under the sway of the Mahommedan conquerors, who subdued all the provinces west of the Ganges, and formed them into one great empire. On the fall of this empire, India became one scene of commotion and war, and her finest provinces were laid waste. It was then that the Mahratta empire arose, like a meteor in the political sky, blazing for a while, and soon fading into obscurity; and by its fall paving the way for the ascendency of the British, whose powerful sway now extends from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin. We shall endeavour to sketch the leading and most eventful scenes of that political drama, which has thus terminated in the subjection of all India to one great ruling power.
The Mahommedan powers having subdued Persia and the neighbouring countries, made occasional incursions into India; and, about A.D. 1000, Mahmoud entered Hindustan, in which he effected a permanent establishment. This prince was the grandson of Subuctegi, the ruler of Ghizni, consisting of the tract which composed the kingdom of Bactria after the division of Alexander's empire, namely, the countries lying between Parthia and the Indus, and south of the Oxus. He invaded India twelve several times, massacring in his intolerant rage the Hindus as infidels, and defacing and destroying their temples. "Nothing," observes Major Rennell, with his usual force, "offends our feelings more than the progress of destruction, urged on by religious zeal, as it allows men to suppose themselves agents of the divinity, thereby removing those checks which interfere with the perpetration of ordinary villany, and thus makes conscience a party where she was meant to be a judge." The last invasion of India by Mahmoud was in 1024, and in four years afterwards he died. His dominions comprehended the eastern provinces of Persia, nominally all the Indian provinces westward of the Ganges, to the peninsula of Gujarat, and from the Indus to the mountains of Ajmere. The Punjab, or the tract watered by the Indus, and its five tributary rivers, was all that was subjected to the regular government of the Mahommedans. The rajpoots of Ajmere defended their rugged mountains and close valleys with obstinate valour. The Ghizinin empire was in the year 1158 divided into two; the western portion being seized on by the family of the Garides (so denominated from Gaur or Ghir, a province or city lying beyond the Indian Caucasus), whilst the countries on the Indus were possessed by Chusero or Cusroe, who fixed the seat of his empire at Lahore. The Mahommedans now extended their conquests eastward; and Mahmoud Gorl, in 1194, took the city of Benares, which he abandoned to pillage. He carried his arms to the south of the river Jumna, and took the fortress of Gujorl; he also reduced the eastern frontier of Ajmere. He was succeeded in 1205 by Cuttub, who fixed his capital at Delhi, and founded in Hindustan the dynasty of the Patans or the Afghans, who inhabited the mountainous tract situated between India and Persia. The Emperor Altmush succeeded him in 1210, and extended his conquests over Bengal. In his reign the renowned Ghenghis Khan subdued the western empire of Ghizini; and the Moguls, or the Monguls, his successors, about the year 1242, made frequent irruptions into the north-western provinces of Hindustan. The country was in the mean time a scene of intestine commotion, from the contests of rebellious chiefs aspiring to supreme authority, and from the irruptions of the predatory hill tribes into the plains below. In 1265, about 100,000 of these plunderers were put to the sword, and a line of forts constructed along the foot of the hills. In the mean time, the Patan monarchs of Delhi were prosecuting their conquests eastward, and the Moguls were making incursions into the western provinces; and a considerable number of them under Ferose II., were at length permitted to settle in the country in the year 1292. In 1293 this emperor invaded the Deccan, or the country lying to the south of the Nerbuddah and the Cuttack rivers. He was deposed and murdered by Alla, the governor of Gurrah, who advised the expedition, and who extended his conquests in the Deccan. Cafoor, one of his generals, penetrated into the Carnatic, or the peninsula lying to the south of the Kista river, in 1310. Rebellions breaking out in Tellingana, a principality in the Deccan, it was again subjugated in 1322 and in 1326, in which year Alla died, and the Carnatic was ravaged from sea to sea. Under a succeeding emperor, Mahommed III., the Mahommedans were driven from the Deccan and Bengal, and lost much territory in Gujerat and the Punjab. Ferose III., who succeeded, was more intent on domestic improvement, and in constructing canals, than on foreign conquest. He died in 1388, and Mahommed III. succeeded, during whose minority great confusion ensued; and in 1398 the country was invaded by Tamerlane, who advanced to Delhi, which submitted without a struggle, and was abandoned to the fury of the soldiery, who continued for several days to massacre the defenceless inhabitants. The military irruption of Tamerlane into Hindustan was more for the sake of plunder than of conquest, though it added to the existing anarchy of the country. In 1413 Mahmoud died; and with him ended the Patan dynasty, founded by Cuttub in 1205. A period of great confusion followed, and numerous competitors contended for dominion. This state of anarchy, which came to a height under Ibrahim II. in 1516, paved the way for the conquest of Hindustan by Sultan Baber, a descendant of Tamerlane and of Ghenghis Khan, who reigned over a kingdom composed generally of the provinces situated between the Indus and Sumerand. Being dispossessed of the northern portion of his dominions by the Usbecks, he invaded India, and in 1525 defeated the emperor of Delhi, and conquered the north-eastern provinces of India. He was succeeded, after