HPB-Caves-12: Difference between revisions

All the day long we wandered across rivers and jungles, passing villages and ruins of ancient fortresses, over local-board roads between Nashik and Jabalpur, traveling with the aid of bullock cars, elephants, horses, and very often being carried in ''palks'' (palanquin). At nightfall we put up our tents and slept anywhere. These days offered us an opportunity of seeing that man decidedly can surmount trying and even dangerous conditions of climate, though, perhaps, in a passive way, by mere force of habit. In the afternoons, when we, “white people”, were very nearly fainting with the roasting heat, in spite of thick cork ''topis'' and such shelter as we could procure, and even our native companions had to use more than the usual supplies of muslin round their heads – the Bengali Babu traveled on horseback endless miles, under the vertical rays of the hot sun, bareheaded, protected only by his thick crop of hair. The sun has no influence whatever on Bengali skulls. This people never cover their heads, except on solemn occasions, when a turban is worn only as an accepted ornament, like flowers at a ball, during a durbar<ref>''Durbar'' (Persian: audience, hall, royal court) – a solemn reception. – Ed.</ref>, a wedding or a feast.  

The Bengali babu, holding almost all lower civil and especially clerical posts, fill all railway and telegraph stations, offices, post offices and government offices. Wrapped in their white muslin Rome ''togas'', their legs bare up to the knees, their heads unprotected, they proudly loaf on the platforms of railway stations, or at the entrances of their offices, casting contemptuous glances on the feminine adornments of Marathis with their numerous rings on fingers and toes and huge earrings in the upper part of their right ears. Bengalis, unlike the rest of the Hindus, do not paint sectarian signs on their foreheads and allow themselves just an expensive ''necklace''; but even this is not common. Contrary to all expectations, the Marathis, with all their little effeminate ways, are the bravest tribe of India, gallant and experienced soldiers, a fact which has been demonstrated by centuries of fighting; but Bengal ''has never as yet produced a single soldier out of its sixty-five million inhabitants''. Not a single Bengali is to be found in the native regiments of the British army. This is a strange ''fact'', which we refused to believe at first, but which has been confirmed by many English officers and by Bengalis themselves. But with all this, they are far from being cowardly. Their wealthy classes do lead a somewhat effeminate life, but their ''zemindars'' (landowners) and peasantry are undoubtedly brave. Disarmed by their present Government, the Bengali peasants go out to meet the tiger, which in their country is more ferocious than elsewhere, armed only with a club, as composedly as they used to go with rifle and yataghan.

Many out-of-the-way paths and even more groves which most probably had never before been trodden by a foot of white man, were visited by us during these short days. Gulab-Lal-Sing was absent, but we were accompanied by a trusted servant of his, and the welcome we met with almost everywhere was certainly the result of the magic influence of his name. If the wretched, naked peasants shrank from us and shut their doors at our approach, the Brahmins were as obliging as could be desired.

The sights around Kandesh, on the way to Thalner and Mhau, are very picturesque. But the effect is not entirely due to Nature's beauty. Art has a good deal to do with it, especially in Mussulman cemeteries. Now they are all more or less destroyed and deserted, owing to the increase of the Hindu inhabitants around them, and to the Mussulman princes, once the rightful lords of India, being expelled. Mussulmans of the present day are badly off and have to put up with more humiliations than even the Hindus. But still they have left many memorials behind them, and, amongst others, their cemeteries. The Mussulman fidelity to the dead is a very touching feature of a character of these sons of Prophet. Their devotion to those that are gone is always more demonstrative than their affection for the living members of their families, and almost entirely concentrates itself on their last abodes. In proportion as their notions of paradise are coarse and material, the appearance of their cemeteries is poetical, especially in India. One may pleasantly spend whole hours in these shady, delightful gardens, amongst their white monuments crowned with turbans, covered with roses and jessamine and sheltered with rows of cypresses. We often stopped in such places to sleep and dine. A cemetery near Thalner is especially attractive. Out of several mausoleums in a good state of preservation the most magnificent is the monument of the family of kiladar<ref>''Kiladar'' is town governor. – Ed.</ref>, who was hanged on the city tower by the order of General Hislop in 1818, who by the way, on the same day shot all the soldiers of the surrendered garrison, under the pretext that they were conspiring against him. Besides the monument to that unfortunate hanged kiladar there are four other mausoleums, one of  which is famous throughout India. It is a white marble octagon, covered from top to bottom with carving, the like of which could not be found even in Pere La Chaise<ref>''Pere La Chaise'' is a cemetery in Paris. – Ed.</ref>. A Persian inscription on its base records that it cost 100,000 rupees. By day, bathed in the hot rays of the sun, its tall minaret-like outline looks like a pyramid-shaped block of ice against the blue sky. By night, with the aid of the intense, phosphorescent moonlight proper to India – which puts into raptures all travellers and artists – it is still more dazzling and poetical. The summit looks as if it were covered with freshly fallen snow-crystals. Raising its slender profile above the dark-green background of bushes, it suggests some pure midnight apparition, soaring over this silent abode of destruction and lamenting what will never return...  

Side by side with these cemeteries rise the Hindu ''ghats'', generally by the river bank... There really is something grand in the ritual of burning the dead, – and in the very recent past, the burning of the living also – but only in theory, and not in practice. Witnessing this ceremony the spectator is struck with the deep philosophy underlying the fundamental idea of this custom. In the course of an hour nothing remains of the body but a few handfuls of ashes. A professional Brahmin, a priest of death, scatters these ashes to the winds over a river. The ashes of what once lived and felt, loved and hated, rejoiced and wept, are thus given back again to the four elements: to ''Earth'', which fed it during such a long time and out of which it grew and developed; to ''Fire'', emblem of purity, that has just devoured the body in order that the spirit may be rid of everything impure, and may freely gravitate to the new sphere of posthumous existence, where every sin is a stumbling block on the way to “Moksha,” or infinite bliss; to ''Air'', which he inhaled and through which he lived, and to ''Water'', which purified his physically and spiritually, and is now to receive his ashes into “her ''pure'' bosom…” (Mantra XII.)

Let's walk along the banks of any river, but only late at night, so that to spend the night there and wait for the dawn. In the evening, only the rich or those belonging to the higher castes are buried. It is for them that the sandal-wood fires are lit after sunset; it is for them that mantrams are chanted, and for them that the gods are invoked, but for mere mortals, for poor ''casteless'' people, there is not only a fire, but also a simple prayer: even after death ''Shudra'' unworthy to listen to divine words dictated at the beginning of the world by the four Rishis to Veda Vyasa, the great theologian of Aryavarta. As during his life a Shudra never approaches a temple nearer than seven steps, so even after death he cannot be put on the same level with the “twice-born.”

Brightly burn the fires, extending like a fiery serpent along the river. The dark outlines of strange, wildly-fantastical figures silently move amongst the flames. Sometimes they raise their arms towards the sky, as if in a prayer, sometimes they add fuel to the fires and poke them with long iron pitchforks. The dying flames rise high, creeping and dancing, sputtering with melted human fat and shooting towards the sky whole showers of golden sparks, which are instantly lost in the thick clouds of black smoke. This on the right side of the river; let us now see what is going on on the left...  

No nightingales ever sing for us, either in the neighboring groves, or in our souls. Such event is least of all. But let us stroll along this wall of reddish stone. It will lead us to a fortress once celebrated and drenched with blood, now harmless and half ruined, like others. Flocks of green parrots, startled by our approach, fly from under every cavity of the old wall, their wings shining in the sun like so many flying emeralds. We are on a territory, which is accursed by Englishmen. This is Chandvad, where, during the Sepoy mutiny, the Bhils streamed from their ambuscades like a mighty mountain torrent, and cut several  dozens of throats of their lords, and with the others, Captain Genre. That happened near Shinar, twenty miles [32.19 km] away from Nasik.

''Tatva'', an ancient Hindu book, treating of the geography of the times of King Ashoka (250-300 B.C.), teaches us that the Marathi territory spreads up to the wall of Chandvad city or Chandor, and that the Kandesh country begins on the other side of the river. But English people do not trust ''Tatva'' or any other authority and want us to learn that Kandesh begins right at the foot of Chandor hillocks. Therefore, the above “fortress,” one of the most inaccessible, according to Colonel Wallace, “because of its natural fortifications from the three sides,” the English had to take it in 1804 from the “rebels,” the Marathas, who did not give it up to them, with great difficulty and the same losses. And they would not have never taken it, if it were not the Muslims, sworn enemies of the Marathas, who used to beat them. They revealed finally the secret of a passage under the gates of the fortress to Colonel Wallace. Then, bursting through the passage at night, the English defeated soundly sleeping Marathas, by the fact they then boasted a lot. After a while, in a careless moment of generosity, they returned the fortress to Holkar so as to ''maintain'' English soldiers in it, but the soldiers however ''were not considered at his'' service. Then they repented even in this grace, and in 1818, seeing that Holkar would not give up the fortress without a fight, sent almost the whole army under the command of sir Thomas Hislop, and thus took back the granted.