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OF CHICGO 



STEPHEN HISLOR 



PIONEEE MISSIONABY & NATURALIST 
IN CENTRAL INDIA 

FKOM 1844 TO 1863 



BY GEOBGE SMITH, C.I. E. 5 LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF 'THE LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY, D.D.,' ETC. ETC. 

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL dEOQRAPHICAL AND 

ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETIES, ETC. 



Kal e^e\^avro Urtyavov, &v5pa Tr\^pi] irlffreus Kal HvetifJLaros 'Aylov 



WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



LONDON 
JOHN MUKKAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET 

1888 

Tlit right of translation is reserved 




UNIVERSITY 
F CHICAG 
LIBRARY 




->' L~. ^ ) -vr 




r - 



V' 1 



TO 

JAMES CAMPBELL WHITE, 

OVERTOUN, 
WHOSE LIFE ILLUSTRATES THE SPIRITUAL LAW 

OF THOMAS CHALMEKS, 

THAT FOREIGN MISSIONS ACT ON HOME MISSIONS NOT BY 
EXHAUSTION BUT BY FERMENTATION 



PEEFACE 

WHEN, in 1863, the Indian telegraph flashed the news of 
the sudden death of Stephen Hislop of Nagpoor, the Rev. 
Dr. John Wilson of Bombay resolved to write his Life. In 
1864 he published, as " only a provisional memorial " of the 
Hero -Missionary and Scientist, an elaborate discourse on 
his death, with a note on the Results of his Geological 
Researches, and a narrative of his last hours written by the 
Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces of India. In 
the absence of a full Memoir I was frequently urged by one 
of the trustees, Major Lawrence Johnston of Culross Abbey, 
to undertake the work. My correspondence with Mr. 
Hislop had been close, in the later years of his life, but 
we were too far apart and too busy to have met each other. 
As the friends who personally knew him were being removed, 
I at last put aside other demands on my little leisure, to 
prepare and write this book. In the twelve months since 
it was begun, death has been busier than ever. Major L. 
Johnston has been suddenly struck down. The Author has 
written under the shadow of the loss of her who was for 
thirty-three years his loving helper and wise critic. If, 
accordingly, the work and the memory of Stephen Hislop 
suffer, I thank God that He has spared me to put the facts, 
at least, on record, for the benefit of the Church of India 



Vlll PREFACE 

and of the young men and women of Christendom, who are 
learning to find in the alliance of Missions and Science a 
career more joyous and fruitful than any other. 

I desire to acknowledge the help of the Rev. Robert 
Hunter, LL.D., F.G.S., Hislop's still surviving colleague, and 
of Professor Duns, D.D., the friend of his youth ; also, the 
kindness of Thomas Nelson, Esq., who furnished three of the 
page Illustrations. 

SBKAMPOEB HOUSE, MERCHISTON, 

EDINBURGH, 6th August 1888. 



ADDENDUM 



On page 266 read following lines under illustration : 

a. Overlying nodular trap. &. Freshwater tertiary. 

c. Underlying trap ; vesicular for some feet under the freshwater deposit, then compact, 
but nodular at the sides. 

d. Highest member of the Sandstone series, which most probably underlies the amygda- 
loid throughout. 

e. Gneiss, into which much of the Sandstone has been transformed. /. Pegmatite. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

EARLY ENVIRONMENT ...... 1 



CHAPTER II 

THE NAGPOOR LAND AND PEOPLES . . . .32 

CHAPTER III 

FOUNDING THE NAGPOOR MISSION . . . .60 

CHAPTER IV 

TOLERATION, BRITISH AND MARATHA A MISSION IN A HINDU 

STATE ....... 101 

CHAPTER V 

THE MARATHA STATE BECOMING A BRITISH PROVINCE . 136 

CHAPTER VI 

THE MUTINY YEAR NAGPOOR SAVED BY THE MISSIONARY . 172 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEE VII 

PAGE 

THE MISSIONARY AMONG THE CHILDREN OF THE HILLS GOND 

ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY . . .211 



CHAPTER VIII 

AN ANGLO-INDIAN NATURALIST . . . .246 

CHAPTEE IX 

A SCOTS MISSIONARY ON SICK LEAVE . . . 278 

CHAPTEE X 

A REFORMER OF THE CIVIL ADMINISTRATION . . 306 

CHAPTEE XI 

" GOD TOOK HIM " . . . . . . 333 



APPENDIX 

I. THE CASE OF NATHA SINGH, SIKH CONVERT TO CHRIST 363 

II. A MODEL MISSIONARY ADDRESS .... 369 

INDEX ....... 379 



ILLUSTBATIONS 

STEPHEN HISLOP AT TWENTY-SEVEN . . Frontispiece 

His BIRTHPLACE IN DUNS . . .To face page 2 

MAP OF THE CENTRAL PROVINCES AND BERAR . 34 

STEPHEN HISLOP'S MISSION BUNGALOW . . . Page 61 

MARATHA PEASANTS, CENTRAL INDIA . . To face page 81 

PALANQUIN TRAVELLING (AS IT WAS) IN INDIA . 94 

EEV. BABA PANDURANG AND HIS WIFE . . . Page 156 

THE HISLOP MISSIONARY COLLEGE . . To face page 160 

THE GONDS OF CENTRAL INDIA . . . ,,221 
SITABALDI HILL ...... Page 266 

NATIVE CHRISTIAN MISSION HOUSE . . To face page 322 
BHANDARA MISSION HALL .... Page 326 



WHAT are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil ; 

Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines 

For all the heat o' the day, till it declines, 

And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. 

God did anoint thee with His odorous oil, 

To wrestle, not to reign ; and He assigns 

All thy tears over, like pure crystallines, 

For younger fellow- workers of the soil 

To wear for amulets. So others shall 

Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand, 

From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer, 

And God's grace 'fructify through thee to all. i 

The least flower, with a brimming cup may stand, ^ 

And share its dew-drop with another near." 

E. B. BROWNING. 



STEPHEN HISLOP 

CHAPTEK I 

EARLY ENVIRONMENT 

Stephen Hislop's career Birtli and family Duns Berwickshire Missionaries 
from Cuthbert to John Wilson Thomas Boston and modern missions 
M'Crie, Cunningham, Fairbairn Hislop's parents, minister, and teachers 
Nature his schoolmaster The anld shoemaker Recollections by Pro- 
fessor Duns Boyhood and youth At Edinburgh and Glasgow Universi- 
ties The evangelical movement Teacher and tutor Dr. Duncan of 
Ruthwell and its manse Scientific attractions of Corncockle Muir and 
Lochar Moss Hislop's spiritual autobiography Engagement to Miss 
Erasma Hull What made him first think of going to India Refuses 
other temptations Formally offers himself and is accepted Ship- 
wrecked off St. Andrews His portrait Married From Olney to 
Bombay Another storm "God has some work for us at Nagpoor." 

IN the twenty years from 1844 to 1863 Stephen Hislop 
founded and built up, in Nagpoor in the Central Provinces of 
India, the Christian Mission and the College which bears his 
name. He was the first to explore the geology, to describe 
the natural history, and to reveal the mineral wealth of that 
region as large as Italy of hills and forests, rivers and 
plains waving with grain and cotton. While giving his life 
chiefly to the Marathas and the Tamil and Telugu-speak- 
ing peoples who meet in the centre of India, he reduced to 
writing the language and folk-lore of its aboriginal Gond 
tribes. He nearly perished in the attempt to reform the 

B 



2 STEPHEN HISLOP 1817 

abuses of the Hindu state ; when it became a British province 
he was the means of cleansing its early administration of 
corruption. To his influence with its grateful people, and 
especially with its educated Mohammedans, was due the 
warning which, in the Mutiny of 1857, saved Nagpoor and 
all India to the south. Suddenly, at nightfall, in the ob- 
scure waters of a hill-torrent, after a day of professional toil 
and arclieological research, this devoted Scottish missionary 
and savant, when in the perfection of his powers, fell a 
martyr to his love for Christ and to his disinterested 
labours for the peoples of India, like Bishop Cotton three 
years after. 

Stephen Hislop was born in the old Berwickshire capital, 
Duns, on the 8th September 1817. He was the youngest of 
the six children of Stephen Hislop and Margaret Thom- 
son, who had been married twelve years before in the border 
town of Coldstream, some miles to the south, and had soon 
after settled in a substantial house near the quaint square of 
Duns. His two brothers, Alexander the eldest, and Kobert, 
two years older than himself, in their time gained a Scottish 
reputation. The former was educated for the ministry of the 
Church of Scotland. He was a ripe classical scholar, was 
deeply read in Biblical archaeology and prophetic exposition, 
and he became a minister of the Free Church of Scotland in the 
town of Arbroath. Robert was an enthusiastic entomologist; 
as the head of the Training College in Glasgow, and 
afterwards of Blair Lodge Academy, he wielded an in- 
fluence akin to that of Arnold at Rugby. He was the con- 
stant companion of the younger Stephen's boyhood, and the 
correspondent of his whole Indian life. 

No man known to biographical literature has more 
notably than Stephen Hislop reproduced in character and 
career, the historical, physical, and spiritual influences of his 
birth. Duns was just the place, of all places in the world, 




HIS BIRTHPLACE IN DUNS 

(Second house on (he right). 



To face -page 2. 



1817 DUNS AS A TRAINING PLACE 3 

for the production and training of the future apostle of 
Christianity and Science. The second quarter of the nine- 
teenth century was just the time, in Scotland at least, to 
feed with robust evangelical food the man who was to take 
the finest method of evangelicalism, the educational evangel- 
ising of the civilised peoples of Asia, and apply it for the 
first time to the twelve millions of the Central Provinces of 
India. 

Duns stands no longer on the Dun, law or hill, on 
the grassy summit of which the Britons and then the 
Eomans fortified themselves, and from which, using the old 
works, Lesley and his forty thousand stalwart covenanting 
ploughmen looked down on Charles I. on the plain above 
Berwick town. Nor is there any human trace of Duns the 
second on the western slopes of the hill, which the Hays 
bought up and swept away to the present site, when they 
made the grounds around Duns Castle worthy of the noblest 
residence in the county. Trees alone are pointed to as 
having there shaded the rude home of the great schoolman 
who made his country famous all over middle-age Europe as 
founder of the Scotists ; and the hardly less simple manse in 
which the scholarly biographer of John Knox and the Cove- 
nant first saw the light. The modern town to the south of 
the Dun, clustering around its square and stretching eastward 
in pleasant villas and gardens past the railway station 
towards the North Sea, is a cosy centre of rural influences 
and associations. But for the young, on weekly holiday and in 
the summer evening leisure, the charm of Duns lies in its sur- 
roundings, its Whiteadder and Langton Burn, its hill and 
lake and castle grounds, its woods and grassy slopes, its 
walks and their wealth of natural objects. All the glories of 
the Scots and English border, of scenery, tradition and 
science, are concentrated or represented around this substan- 
tial and well-satisfied town which has never had so many 



4 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1817 

as three thousand inhabitants. In truth this is an ideal 
home for naturalists; and to several has it given birth, 
though to none so far -travelled and much -achieving as 
Stephen Hislop. 

Nor is Duns less the natural training school of the 
Christian missionary. The neighbourhood bristles with 
memories of apostolic labours, no less than of border forays 
and historic events from Eobert the Bruce to Flodden Field 
and Cromwell. It formed the northern part of the great 
mission field of Northumbria, through which the Scots 
followers of Columba of lona converted and civilised the 
Angles, right down to Lindisfarne and Whitby, Durham and 
York. A few miles east of Duns is St. Abb's Head, which 
for ever commemorates the zeal of the woman-missionary, 
^Ebba, half-sister of the king who founded the twin settle- 
ment of Coldingharn. On the Lammermuirs to the north- 
west, and by the banks of the Leader, the young shepherd, 
Cuthbert, heard the angel voices which summoned him to the 
heavenly calling, at Old Melrose, Eipon and Lindisfarne, and 
have resulted in the best of all media3val biographies, by 
Baeda. Whatever view we take of the teaching of John 
Scot of Duns, a portrait of whom hangs in the modern town 
hall, the great nominalist belonged to the Franciscans, the 
most missionary of the orders, and his writings gave an 
extraordinary impulse to European thought; although his 
followers showed a spirit which led their opponents and 
Tyndale to scorn them as " Dunce's disciples, and lyke draffe 
called Scotistes." Yet John Duns was the earliest native of 
Scotland to gain a lasting fame in letters. 1 

From this region came Alexander and Michael Shields 
" of Haughhead in the Merse," who may be pronounced the 
first foreign missionaries from Scotland, since they went forth 
to Darien, in 1699, to preach to the unhappy colonists and 

1 John Hill Burton's History of Scotland, vol. iii. 



1817 THOMAS BOSTON AND HIS TEACHING 5 

" contribute to the conversion of the Pagan Natives ; " and 
" they never returned." 

But the man born in Duns, who was of all others the 
predecessor of Stephen Hislop was Thomas Boston, from 
whom, as an evangelical saint, one of its churches is named. 
It is significant of the growing critical fairness at least of the 
thought of the present day that, at the same time, but inde- 
pendently, the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews have recently 
vindicated the scholarship and the saintliness of this modest 
Scottish minister. Boston marks, not only in Scotland, but 
in the whole United Kingdom, the first transition of the 
churches from a dead and false orthodoxy to a living and 
missionary Christianity. When about the year 1700, he 
who in his boyhood had seen the fate of Eenwick, the last 
of the martyrs, found Edward Fisher's Marrow of Modern 
Divinity in a cottage, and rescued it from obscurity, he 
began what the Wesleys under Fuller and William Carey 
followed up in England, with splendid results, many years 
afterwards. The condemnation of the book by the "mode- 
rate" majority of the General Assembly, and its vindication 
made it the centre of the battle, lasting over a century, in 
Scotland, from which the Church issued truly evangelical 
and therefore missionary. The Marrow thus expresses the 
truth which is the corner-stone of Christendom : " God the 
Father, moved with His free love to mankind lost, hath 
made a deed of gift and grant unto them all, that whosoever 
of them shall believe in this His Son, shall not perish, but 
have eternal life. And hence it was that Jesus Christ Him- 
self said unto His disciples, ' Go and preach the Gospel to 
every creature under heaven'; that is, Go and tell every 
man without exception that here is good news, Christ is dead 
for him, and if he will take Him and accept of His righteous- 
ness he shall have Him." Boston's friends, the two Erskines, 
seceded from the Church of Scotland which condemned this 



6 STEPHEN HISLOP 1817 

teaching in those days, and the Secession Church was the 
first to send a missionary to Africa Peter Greig. Boston's 
son and successor as minister of Ettrick seceded at a later 
date on the same great principle, and formed with two others 
that Relief Church, from the heart of which came Stephen 
Hislop, the legitimate spiritual representative of his fellow- 
townsman, Thomas Boston, in happier times, but after a still 
bigger secession. 

Other men of local mark, of whom Hislop knew and was 
proud, were the cultured Thomas M'Crie, to whose powers 
Sir Walter Scott and the University of Edinburgh bore un- 
willing testimony in intolerant times ; William Cunningham, 
who rose to be the Edinburgh Principal of the Free Church 
of Scotland, and to influence many generations of preachers ; 
and Principal Fairbairn, a ripe scholar, who held a similar 
position in Glasgow. But to him the most interesting of all 
must have been John Wilson of Bombay, who ultimately 
sent him to India. Wilson, too, was a Berwickshire man 
from Lauder, which is but a seven miles' walk from Duns. 
When Hislop was a student, John Wilson had risen to the 
height of his early reputation ; and his letters, as published 
by the Church, were nowhere more eagerly read than all 
along the border counties which had sent so many great men 
to the far East. Wilson came home bringing with him the 
first convert from Parseeism to Christ, Dhanjibhai Nauroji, 
in good time to cast his mantle over Hislop, and send him 
far from the quiet joys of the Merse, Lammermuir, and 
Lauderdale to the peoples of USTagpoor. 

Such were the more potent external influences into the 
midst of which young Stephen Hislop was born in the bright 
autumn time of the year 1817. But powerful as are history 
and nature, the accumulated influences of generations and 
the genius of a place, these may be defeated or abused unless 
they are directed by the home. Here, too, the boy was most 



1825 HIS HOME 7 

fortunate. The home was humble, thrifty, and sufficiently 
shut in within itself, while removed from poverty and all the 
meanness or coarseness which too often accompany the hard- 
ships of the poor. The father, who named his youngest boy 
after himself, was one of a firm of three masons or builders, 
who employed others while working with their own hands. 
To him some of the best farm -mansions and steadings in 
the border land are due. He and the house-mother were of 
the stamp described in the Gospel, and met with in every 
generation of the common people in Scotland since they 
worked out for themselves the reformation in Church and 
State, "righteous before God, walking in all the command- 
ments and ordinances of the Lord blameless," but self-distrust- 
ful and reserved. 

The father was an elder of the Relief Church before its 
junction with that of the first Secession as the United 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland. From the beginning of 
the century till 1838 the Eev. John Ealston had been his 
minister and the principal preacher in the town. From him, 
next to his parents, young Stephen, as boy and student, seems 
to have learned that gravity of behaviour and knowledge 
which, without effacing the man in him or destroying a 
certain native humour which he showed, made him a de- 
fender of the faith alike against a corrupt Christianity and 
heathenism. From this religious training-school in family 
and congregation, he passed through the Universities of 
Glasgow and Edinburgh, their great preachers and refining 
culture, to the Church of Scotland, only to leave it in 1843 
with Chalmers and the evangelical majority, whom the 
civil courts and Parliament drove out, to the sorrow of this 
generation. 

Stephen Hislop's schooling was just enough to develop 
the boy's powers without crushing or straining them. As the 
youngest son he was not meant to seek one of the learned 



8 STEPHEN HISLOP 1827 

professions. From Dickson's adventure school he passed to 
that of Thomas Sheriff, famous in the town as a teacher of 
arithmetic. There he learned two arts of signal value to 
him as reforming missionary and pioneering naturalist the 
statistical and the usefully artistic. He became an observer 
and a recorder of his observations in that cellar-like cottage 
where, when the boys rushed in, they fell into a muddy 
hollow in the centre, the portion at either wall alone being- 
paved for the master and the classes to stand steady. From 
this school, with which most of the town boys were content, 
he passed on to the parish school, then presided over by an 
accomplished Latin scholar, of the type which the all-level- 
ling code has now made almost extinct. Mercer left his 
classical mark on the boy, as on his brothers before him. 
In due time he became an assistant -master there. The 
school, recently changed into the hall of the parish church, 
stands nigh the place where Boston's sight of an open grave 
and mouldering humanity led him to plan his great work on 
Human Nature in its Fourfold State. 

Nature was the youth's chief schoolmaster, besides his 
parents, minister, and teachers. Every holiday, every leisure 
hour, was given to the observation of the country around 
his home. When alone, which was frequent, a book was his 
companion. When fishing, the book was not absent ; but his 
favourite companion was his elder brother Eobert. When 
bent on insect-hunting or fossil-collecting, he had with him 
the most intimate of all his friends, now Professor Duns of 
the New College, Edinburgh. There still survives in Duns 
David Paterson, shoemaker, entomologist, and numismatist, 
who traces to the fishing and the walks along Langton Burn 
the formation of those tastes which have made him one of 
the class of self-taught naturalists whom Dr. Smiles delights 
to photograph for us. This "auld shoemaker," with the 
head of Jacob Boehrne and but one enemy in all the world 



1827 HIS PAEENTS 9 

poverty, which restricts his library and collections, tells how 
on a fishing excursion, when Eobert had hooked a fine trout 
and Stephen was prone studying the beetles, the trout fell 
back into the stream just above the swirl of the mill, Pater- 
son, a boy in a pinafore, rushed in to catch it, and Stephen 
plunged in after him and with exceeding difficulty rescued 
him from drowning. But Dr. Duns himself draws this 
authoritative picture of Stephen's boyhood and youth : 

"No more suggestive characterisation of the boy could 
have been given than in the Berwickshire doric of one, when 
told that Hislop was about to leave Scotland for mission work 
in India, 'Steephie, frae a bairn, was unco' auld-farrand, 
and aye sae guid.' As a child and boy he ever looked wiser 
than his years. Perhaps the full roundish face broader 
than common across the somewhat high cheek bones the 
prominent eyebrows, partially-sunken eyes, and deep lines 
slanting from the outer edges of the nostrils to the corners of 
the mouth, went far to account for the ' auld-farrand ' look. 
Were it so or not, the disposition indicated by the good 
Scottish phrase was very characteristic, and his surroundings 
and upbringing could not fail to deepen it. The child of one 
of those households, still so numerous in rural districts of 
Scotland, in which religious principle and general intelligence 
are equally conspicuous, his training was on corresponding 
lines. His parents were much more reserved than is com- 
monly the case with the class to which they belonged. His 
father was a tall, almost soldierly-looking man, and singularly 
intelligent, but after work hours he was seldom seen among 
his fellows. In all the relations of business he was not only 
of quiet demeanour, quick to discern, slow to offer advice, 
but companionable and genial also ; ready in conversation 
with strokes of humour, which made neighbours smile but 
never caused pain. His mother had many acquaintances 
but few friends. In the small shop which she tended, while 



10 STEPHEN HISLOP 1831 

her husband was at his work or superintending his workmen, 
she met many of her neighbours; but though the family 
sitting-room opened by a door directly into the shop, seldom 
a customer's foot passed that threshold. Quick-minded, well 
informed, a lover of ' good books,' careful sometimes to 
narrowness, and persistently diligent and industrious, she 
lived for her sons, of whom she had high hopes. She had 
often a dry, caustic way of remark in her intercourse with 
them, which her youngest son, at least, used to dread. When 
leaving him one evening he said, ' When will you be here in 
the morning ? ' ' At five,' was my answer. ' That will do,' 
replied Stephen. ' Oh yes ! ' his mother dryly remarked, 
'our Stephen's a grand riser at night.' He was never an 
' early bird.' Though ever on the very best terms with their 
neighbours, the household dwelt very much apart. Stephen 
very seldom took part in the amusements of boys about his 
own age. On one noted occasion he did so, to the great 
astonishment of his fellows and even of the town's folk. 
Annually at 'Pasterns' E'en' time (Shrove Tuesday) a game 
of hand-ball was played, the married men against the un- 
married. The year before he entered college, Stephen threw 
himself into the match with an impetuosity which led 
wondering onlookers to exclaim, ' Is it possible ? Is that 
Steephie Hislop?' I note this for the sake of a remark he 
made to me when it was afterwards referred to. He had 
corne out of the fray a good deal mauled and with a torn 
coat. 

" When he spoke even of trivial incidents, a little outside 
of common occurrences, his favourite phrase was, 'What a 
providence ! ' On one such occasion he was met by the 
unkind, ungenerous, but unreflecting question, 'Was your 
fasterns' e'en fight a providence ? ' Looking hurt, he remarked 
very seriously, ' It was permitted.' Now this was not a mere 
borrowed habit of speech. It was the expression of one who 



1831 HIS BOYHOOD 11 

lived under the sense of God's personal presence, and the 
ever actively influential belief that ' man's goings are of the 
Lord.' The two words ' early piety ' well indicate the dis- 
position underlying the habit. His, too, was the rare experi- 
ence, to keep with him, lively and fresh, the simple faith of 
childhood throughout his mature years. The influence of 
this for good on his religious character, amidst the question- 
ings, intellectual hesitancies, and doubts of student life, was 
great. 

' There will be seen 

That which we hold through faith, not shown by proof, 
But in itself intelligibly plain, 
E'en as the truth that man at first believes.' 

DANTE, Par., c. ii. 43. 

" The time at home, not devoted to the preparation of 
school lessons, was chiefly occupied with drawing and paint- 
ing, of which he was very fond copying woodcuts, sketching 
and colouring botanical specimens which had been gathered 
in his walks. I have examples of his work which show how 
successfully he had cultivated both the habit of the eye and 
the habit of the hand. Out of doors there were the strolls 
with his brother Eobert, or other companion, though 'oftenest 
solitarily, to Todlaw, Langton Loan, the ' Verter ' by Gruel- 
dykes, returning by Cheeklaw, the ' Staneyrnoor,' as far as 
the Oxendean Eoad, or along the road to Manderstone. As 
years passed and school studies advanced, the summer morn- 
ings, from five to eight o'clock, and the Saturday half-holiday, 
were given to longer walks, taking with us a Latin or Greek 
book, or a Greek New Testament. Hislop was more than 
two years in advance of me, and was most helpful to me in 
solving difficulties, as his brother Eobert had been to him. 
A favourite seat for reading was on the branches of an old 
alder tree, which overhung our much -loved stream the 
Verter, near Puttomnill. But the mornings were not all 



12 STEPHEN HISLOP 1831 

devoted to study. 'Guddling' in the banks, or under the 
stones for trouts, or watching the circling of a small water- 
beetle (G-yrinus), or the apparent toil of another insect, the 
water -clearer (Geris), or examining the frog -spawn in its 
various stages in ' Blinkum Ditch/ or visiting Duns Law by 
the near ' cut ' through George Johnstone's field, for the ever- 
attractive view from the top the Eildon Hills, the Cheviots, 
Hume and Twisel Castles, the valley of the Tweed, the 
garden-like fields of the Merse lying between the Tweed and 
the outliers of the Lammermuirs had all their characteristic 
charms for us in these bright summer mornings. On Saturday 
afternoons we went farther afield. More - than once at late- 
summer, passing 'Polwart on the Green,' of which Allan 
Eamsay sung, we ' did ' Greenlaw Moor to hunt the adder-fly 
(JEshna varia) and the demoiselle (Galopteryx virgo). The 
adder itself (Pelias lerus) was sought and found near Cockburn 
Law, on the northern slope of which stand the still grand ruins 
of so-called 'Pictish' Edinshall, often visited, returning by 
Ellemford to get a specimen of copper ore from the d&bris 
of the once-worked mines. Then there were excursions to 
Dirrington Law to gather the berries of the ' rapperdandy ' 
(Arbutus uva-ursi}, or to Shawnabank for the intermediate 
winter-green (Pyrola media), or to Simprin, Boston's first 
charge, for the lesser winter-green (P. minor). The provision 
for the way in these rambles was simple enough, but to tired 
wanderers sweet and satisfying a lump of coarse wheaten 
" scone," or of coarser barley bread, the waters of the clear 
stream, and in their seasons, the rasp, the bramble, the haw, 
the dog-hepe, and even occasionally, but with a wry mouth, 
the scrog-apple. There was a peculiarity in these excursions 
which perhaps impressed both of us. We would often walk 
for half an hour or more without exchanging a word. Indeed, 
sometimes our return home was almost in silence. This was 
not the effect of fatigue, for frequently at the time we would 



1832 LIKE BUNYAN'S " VERY GRAVE PERSON " 13 

have been ready to walk double the distance. Though I 
would not care to attempt to define it, or to differentiate the 
elements that make up the mood, I think I can now under- 
stand it. Perhaps Bryant's lines touch the edge of the 
explanation, though there are thoughts underlying it of 
deeper interest to the Christian student (John i. 3). 

' To him who in the love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for Ms gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, e'er he is aware.' 

" This companionship was interrupted for a time when 
Stephen went to the university, which he did two or three 
years before me. When I joined him in Edinburgh our 
walks were resumed. Saturday afternoons were often spent 
among the fresh-water limestones of Burdiehouse, whence we 
invariably returned loaded with fossil plants and the remains 
of Rliizodus, most, if not all, of which are now preserved in 
the New College Museum, forming a rich and interesting col- 
lection. The religious and intellectual features of his boyhood 
were as strongly marked in his college career transparent 
truthfulness, devoutness, moral strength and Christian manli- 
ness. I have known few who could so well bear to be looked 
at in the light of Bunyan's graphic sketch : ' Christian saw the 
picture of a very grave person hang up against the wall, and 
this was the fashion of it : It had eyes lifted up to heaven, 
the best of books in his hand, the law of truth was written 
upon its lips, the world was behind his back, and it stood as 
if it pleaded with men.' " 

Having learned all that Duns could teach him and having 
come out first in mathematics, Latin and Greek, Stephen 



14 STEPHEN HISLOP 1834 

Hislop entered the University of Edinburgh in his seventeenth 
year. In these subjects and in Moral Philosophy, and Hebrew 
afterwards, he carried off some of the highest honours. His 
four years of study in the Arts Faculty covered the dullest 
period of that University, which Carlyle has satirised. He 
just missed the first session of the teaching of Sir William 
Hamilton, which introduced a new era in the history ol 
philosophy and of the college. If he caught some enthusiasm 
from the spirit, more physical than ethical, of " Christopher 
North," in 1837, and stood high in the regard of his pro- 
fessors, that was almost all for which he had to thank the 
Arts Faculty of Edinburgh in those days of darkness just 
before the dawn. The degree in Arts was' then given not on 
examination, but after canvassing the senatus, and Hislop 
was not one of those who cared to do that. His real gain lay 
in the scientific training which he received in the classes of 
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. That, added to his 
powers and habits of observation, made him the expert and 
authoritative naturalist which he soon became. He was to 
prove a worthy disciple of the school of Physics which 
Hutton and Playfair, Leslie, Edward Forbes, and Jameson 
had even then rendered illustrious. 

The Faculty of Divinity had been redeemed from the 
scandalous inefficiency which had long prevailed, by the 
appointment of Thomas Chalmers and David Welsh some 
years before, but the first year's students did not come under 
their teaching. Accordingly, after a year as tutor in Butter- 
dean, and then in Mouswald Manse, Hislop entered on the 
study of divinity in Glasgow University under Professor 
Stevenson MacGill. His brother Eobert, in the same city, 
had already become known as an educationist. So many 
of the divinity students in Scotland supported themselves 
as schoolmasters and private tutors, that a system prevailed 
by which they might attend six " partial," or two full and 



1834 AT COLLEGE 15 

three " partial " sessions, instead of four full sessions of five 
months a year, from November to March. Stephen Hislop's 
first three sessions at Glasgow were " partial." But when he 
returned to Edinburgh University, and came under the spell 
of Chalmers and Welsh, he gave up his whole soul to the 
study. What they did for him at College was enlarged and 
practically applied in the preaching of Dr. James Buchanan, 
then in the High Kirk. Not only the Church, but the 
whole land was seething with the evangelical fervour 
which, having gradually gained the majority in the General 
Assembly, resulted in the heroic sacrifices by that majority 
which formed the Church of Scotland, Free, in 1843. Hislop 
and the divinity students lived and debated, resolved and 
suffered like their seniors during the white heat of the Third 
Keformation. He came out of college, adding to his scientific 
method and devotion the love of truth, the willingness to 
sacrifice everything for it, the consecration to Christ, and 
Christ alone, as Head of the Church and King of the peoples 
given to Him by the Father, which made him the great mis- 
sionary he became. 

As a student he could not enter into such little corporate 
life of the university as was then possible in Scotland. His 
friends were few and select. Next to Eobert, his brother, and 
John Duns, in intimacy came Fletcher N. Menzies, now sec- 
retary of the Highland Society, whose loving letters he care- 
fully preserved, and James Hardy, now the learned and 
enthusiastic secretary of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, 
the first of its kind in the country. When tutor at Butter- 
dean, he spent all his leisure with Hardy in the study of the 
physical features of the district and coast, so interesting to 
naturalists, from St. Abb's Head north to Dunbar. Here 
Hugh Miller revelled when he could steal away from his news- 
paper not then daily. Hislop and Hardy lodged together 
in 13 Hill Place, Edinburgh, during the winter session of the 



16 STEPHEN HISLOP 1842 

University. When separated in summer, Hislop helped his 
friend with specimens collected by himself or obtained from 
his other associates, one of whom had been in Greenland and 
had come back stored with minerals collected in a cruise 
among the whale-fishing islands. He also procured for Hardy 
from Wick a Priimcla scotica. His letters to Hardy in 
these years, chiefly on natural history, would fill a volume. 
When in Dumfries-shire, Hislop began to work earnestly at 
fossil -collecting. Hugh Miller's Old Red Sandstone was 
appearing in the Witness newspaper, and Hislop sent the 
articles on to Hardy, drawing the fossils from the plates in 
a style which led his friend to pronounce them beautiful 
works of art, and himself to lament, on his furlough from 
India, that he could not then do the like, or reach that 
minute accuracy. William Stevenson, too, was another of 
the young local naturalists who worked with Hislop. 

The development of his character was completed like that 
of so many of his countrymen, by the necessity laid upon him 
to support himself on leaving school. As the youngest of 
three brothers prepared for a learned profession, he rejoiced 
to accept this. Scholarships or bursaries were then few in a 
land where the muses were cultivated on a little oatmeal. As 
a tutor in the summer, and a schoolmaster in the winter in 
the city, he lived and paid his college fees and books. So in 
the same district and university, Thomas Carlyle, Edward 
Irving, and John Wilson of Bombay had done before him. 
When tutor in Mouswald, he soon made the acquaintance 
of the neighbouring minister, the then famous Dr. Henry 
Duncan of Euthwell, who sent him up to Edinburgh at the 
beginning of the school term, with this letter to Mr. Craig, 
his brother-in-law : 

" EUTHWELL MANSE, 3d October 1842. I write at present chiefly 
to request yonr good offices in favour of a young man whose excellent 
character has interested me deeply in his favour, and who has gone to 



1842 TUTOR AND TEACHER 17 

Edinburgh to attend the Divinity Hall this winter, but with limited 
resources, and dependent mainly for support on private teaching. His 
name is Hislop ; he is from Dunse, but has been tutor for some time 
in the family of the minister of Mouswald where I got acquainted with 
him. He was formerly in the family of Sir A. Wallace of Lochryan, 
where he was highly acceptable, and has had a good deal of experience 
in teaching. His abilities are superior to the common run, and he is 
most conscientious, modest, and industrious. It would give me sincere 
pleasure to be in any way of use to him, and I by this post send him a 
letter of introduction to you, hoping that through your acquaintance with 
some of the teachers in the Academy and others, you may be able to 
procure some private teaching for him. I can assure you he will do 
credit to any recommendation you may give him." 

The letter was sent on to Mr. A. W. Carmicliael, and 
thereafter, when residing in Edinburgh, Hislop became one of 
the masters of Mr. Broughton's school in the Newington 
suburb. Long after, amid the heats of Southern India, the 
Eev. E. B. Blyth, who had been one of his boys, and received 
a life-long impulse from him, recalled these days " at college, 
at the missionary society, and when you taught in Mr. 
Broughton's school, amid what we Newington boys used to 
call ' the avenue.' " In Galloway, Hislop spent more than one 
summer as tutor in the family of Sir John A. Wallace, Loch- 
ryan House, Stranraer, who represented through the female 
line the old Craigie baronetcy of 1669. He endeared himself 
to the three boys, whose mind and character lie did so much 
to form, that he won their parents' life -long gratitude. 
When the boys had any request to make, he insisted on their 
stating it in verse. He influenced them so that, though in- 
tended for Sandhurst, two of them studied afterwards at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, and took tlieir degree. It is told 
of the third that he set sail three times for Australia, and was 
three times wrecked, whereupon lie settled quietly at Eliyncl, 
Dunfermline, where he recently passed away. With his 
pupils, as with Ms Duns and college companions, Hislop from 
the first showed that power of fascinating others for the highest 

c 



18 STEPHEN HISLOP 1842 

ends, which is essential to leaders of men, and attracted to 
him the natives of India, Mohammedan and Hindu. 

The man who influenced him most in these formative 
years was Duncan of Euthwell. In spite of his Memoir by 
his son, and the brighter sketch by his son-in-law, who 
resembled him, the Rev. James Dodds of Dunbar, justice has 
hardly been done to this ornament of Scotland and its church, 
as man, minister, scholar, and savant. Euthwell Manse, 
created by him such a paradise that an old secession minister 
said to its mistress, " Mem, when ye dee and gang to heaven 
ye will think ye have never been oot o't," had long been the 
centre of all the culture and higher life of that corner of 
Scotland. There as a daughter of the manse she had received 
Robert Burns when he sought health in the parish, describing 
himself as " a poor plucked pigeon," envious of the humble 
manse ploughman ; and when the blind was pulled down to 
keep the sun from his face he sadly said, " Let the sun shine in 
upon us, my dear young lady, he has riot long to shine for me." l 
There David Brewster, the Malcolms and Diroms of India, 
Chalmers and Andrew Thomson, Jameson and Buckland the 
geologists, found a holiday with the father of Savings Banks, 
who could talk better than any of them on their own subject. 
There Dr. Henry Duncan became the centre of all the 
promising youths of the Border from Annan to Berwick ; for 
Hogg and Leyden, Irving and M'Cheyne, Henry Grey and 
Horatius Bonar, sat at his feet and caught his spirit. 

Such a man drew Stephen Hislop to himself ; he honoured 
him with close personal intimacy half the year, and with a 
remarkable correspondence during the college session. In 
1841 the student anticipated the experienced journalist and 
author, in a critique of an Arminian work by a Mr. Osborne, 
intended evidently for the Dumfries Courier, which the 

1 Personal 'Reminiscences and Biographical Sketches, by the late Rev. 
James Dodds, Dunbar, 1887. 



1842 INFLUENCE OP DUNCAN OF RUTIIWELL 19 

minister had founded and was editing. In two long letters 
Dr. Duncan expresses his delight with the criticism, but 
points out how certain crude and narrow representations of 
the orthodox doctrine should be avoided as not justified by 
Scripture nor held by Calvin. In 1842 we find these glimpses 
of the early working of the Savings Bank, and of the young 
Eobert M f Cheyne during a famous visit, which resulted in 
the conversion of his cousins : 

"RUTHWELL MANSE, 22d September 1842. ... I enclose an 
order on the British Linen Company for eleven pounds, the amount of 
your deposit in the Parish Bank, independent of interest. I do not 
recollect that you said the interest was to be placed at my disposal, 
and I think you cannot well afford to be so liberal. I will not, how- 
ever, balk your kind intentions, but will apply the amount in such a 
way as I think you would approve of. It is about 2s. 6d. If you 
find any difficulty in getting money for the inclosed order in Glasgow 
(British Linen Company branch), let me know, and I will get you a 
regular letter of credit from the branch in Dumfries. You would 
readily get it in Edinburgh. 

" I rejoice with you in the remarkable change which has taken 
place in the minds of the Misses Dickson, although I fear that their 
views are still dark. Robert M'Cheyne was the instrument ; but two 
of them had begun to take an interest in spiritual things before his 
arrival. They are all three gone to Dundee, where I hope their views 
will be expanded and their minds obtain the lively but calm and 
consistent feelings of a settled believer in the Saviour of sinners. As 
to the parochial machinery in operation here, we have nothing to boast 
of. There is the form, but I grieve to say little of the power the 
body without the soul. I trust we have your prayers that life 
may be awakened ' beneath the ribs of death.' It is sad to have been 
nearly half a century labouring in the vineyard and to have produced 
so little fruit. It is true that unless God gives the increase the 
minister plants and labours in vain. But had the labourer done 
his duty there must have been more produce, for the promise is 
express. 

" I am delighted to hear of the change produced in Cairnryan. I 
trust your visit there will be edifying both to yourself and your old 
friends. ..." 



20 STEPHEN HISLOP 1842 

Again 

" Mr. M'Cheyne is to preside at a prayer meeting in the church, 
here to-morrow. Can you come to tea and remain to pray ? Mr. 
Grey will be here." 

During his four years' summer residence in Dumfries- 
shire and Wigtownshire, Hislop was in the very heart of 
scientific attractions, archreological and geological, of which 
he took full advantage, thus developing his Duns experience 
and applying his college training. Two events of era-making 
importance happened. Dr. Duncan discovered and recon- 
structed in the manse garden, the Bunic pillar of Kutlrwell ; 
and he brought to light the fossil footprints in the New Eed 
Sandstone. We shall see Stephen Hislop making very similar 
discoveries, and startling men of science by their novelty and 
value in the Central Provinces of India ; becoming in truth a 
martyr to science as well as to his missionary zeal in the 
last day of his earthly life. His two most favourite haunts 
were the famous quarry of Corncockle-Muir fifteen miles from 
Kuthwell, which had converted to new views Buckland, Sedg- 
wick, and Murchison and Lochar Moss, the botany of which 
he explored. 

When still tutor in Mouswald, in 1841, Hislop met for 
the first time the young lady who became his wife and fellow- 
worker in India. Erasma Hull came from the inner circle 
of the old evangelical school of last century. Her grand- 
father was the Eev. Erasmus Middleton, who was Eomaine's 
curate, preceded Leigh Eichmond as rector of Turvey, and 
was Toplady's friend. Her father was the son of Whitefield's 
friend, whom he commended to John Newton when appointed 
to Olney, saying, " I am sure my good old friend, Mr. Hull, 
will join with you." It was from Olney, with such memories, 
and those of Cowper, Carey, and Sutcliff on the dissenting 
side, that Stephen Hislop took his wife in due time. In his 
early letters to her, immediately after their engagement, he 



1842 HIS SPIIUTUAL HISTORY 21 

reveals himself with a frank humility which savours of John 
Bunyan and William Carey: 

"EDINBURGH, 38 CUMBERLAND STREET, Wth December 1842. 
... So long as I was in Duns I had no clear view of Christianity. 
My parents kept me very strictly from the influence of evil com- 
panions ; and by their own example they taught me to have a regard 
to the duties of religion. But they did not explain to my comprehension 
the great doctrine of justification by faith alone ; whether it was their 
fault or mine I know not. I rather suspect it was mine, for I have 
every reason to believe that they themselves had embraced the truth, 
and were sanctified through its instrumentality. But whatever was 
the cause, it is true that till the period of my intercourse with Alex- 
ander I had not built my hope on the tried foundation. I now attained 
to a more correct perception of the gospel system ; but I cannot affirm 
that at this time I was converted. During the session, of which I 
spent part with J. Symons, I had many things to try me, and I think 
they did me good. J. Symons's death tended to impress me. ... I 
have had occasion since more than once to recognise the leadings of 
Providence in ordering my steps. Shortly after my settlement at 
Lochryan the revival at Kilsyth took place. I had been acquainted 
with Mr. Burns, the young preacher who was officiating, when the 
Spirit was so abundantly poured out, and the recollection of his 
heavenly- mi ndedness, which was deeply imprinted on my mind, 
caused me to take a lively interest in the work ; and I think, though 
at a distance from the scene of such a plentiful shower, yet some drops 
of the divine influence descended upon my soul. My aversion to mix 
among the inhabitants of the surrounding district, which I felt strongly 
at first, now gave way ; and on Sabbaths and at intervals of leisure on 
week days I endeavoured to set before them the things that relate to 
their eternal peace. My endeavours, being seconded by the Wallaces, 
and well received by those who were the objects of them, encouraged 
me to persevere with the work, when I was at last separated from them. 
And as these labours were the effect of a greater zeal in me, so by a 
reflex influence they became the means of increasing this cause, and 
making me more desirous of promoting the honour of Christ. Often 
while teaching in the Sabbath school, or exhorting at the prayer or 
missionary meeting, or finally Avhile conversing with the sick and 
dying, or with those who had been lately bereaved, have I felt my own 
faith strengthened, and my love to our heavenly Father enkindled into 
a holy flame. When I removed to Mouswald I tried to set the same 



22 STEPHEN HISLOP 1842 

machinery agoing there. ... It was to Dr. and Mrs. Duncan of Bufch- 
well that I was principally indebted for the blessing of religions inter- 
course. I will not speedily forget the pleasure I used to derive from 
their conversation. Often did I walk between their honse and Monswald 
Manse about ten o'clock in the evening, musing all the while on the 
subjects relating to experimental religion, which had been talked of 
during the previous part of the evening. It was this which made me 
like the Duncans, and express to you the esteem I entertained for 
them. You are aware I had not the same opportunities of holding 
intercourse with you at that time, and therefore you will excuse me if 
I seem to give them the preference in this respect. That I have not 
since that time held similar or still dearer intercourse with you, I 
confess, is my own fault. But I hope that now I shall be enabled to 
amend it. 

" I have thus given you a short account of .my past history, both 
external and internal. Short though it is, however, it has left me 
little time to refer, according to my intention, to my present religious 
state. I am sorry to say it is very bad indeed. There have been 
seasons in my life when I have felt as if I were living near to God, 
when my soul was filled with a holy fervour, and my love for Jesus 
was stronger than all other emotions. But alas ! it is not so with me 
now. The cares of this world have rendered me cold ; even the studies 
in which I am engaged are engrossing my attention to the exclusion 
of thoughts connected with my own spiritual condition. Some might 
think it strange that studies in theology should have this effect. But 
so it is in my case ; and I doubt not you understand how it happens. 
There is one obvious cause, which I must confess has been working in 
me ; that is, the shameful neglect of secret prayer since I came to 
Edinburgh. How can I expect that my studies and my other occupa- 
tions should not turn my heart from God if they are not sanctified by 
the instrumentality of prayer ? How can I look for prosperity to my 
soul if I do not use the means which the Almighty has Himself 
appointed for procuring all the blessings we require ? My dear 
E., I hope you have derived greater benefit from your approach 
to the Lord's table on this occasion than I did when I last partook of 
the Supper. Instead of becoming better then I am afraid I became 
worse. At least I have felt a considerable increase of coldness ever 
since. May God forgive my sin ! The worst feature in my character 
is that I do not sufficiently comprehend the depths of my iniquity. 
And hence I have never in good earnest set about the work of 
repentance. I have frequently thought, when I reflected on this, that 



1843 WHY HE BECOMES A MISSIONARY 23 

I am still in an unregenerate state. I do not recollect a time when I 
experienced in my soul such a feeling of sin as is generally styled 
conviction. And this alone might cast a doubt on the safety of my 
present condition. But when to this is added a habitual callousness 
in regard to the numbers and heinous nature of my transgressions a 
callousness, which so far from having become less of late, has been 
greatly increased could I but realise the dangerous condition in which 
I am placed, I might well tremble and be dismayed." 

Stephen Hislop thus traced his conversion to William 
Burns, afterwards the first Presbyterian missionary to China. 
Was he himself to become a missionary ? As he approached 
the close of his divinity studies, in the throes of the great 
disruption of the old Church of Scotland, many competed for 
the services of one who stood in the front rank of the young 
men. The Blair Lodge public school, of which his brother, 
Robert afterwards became the head, tempted him to become 
a master and chaplain. Dr. Henry Duncan, in more than 
one pathetically flattering letter, implored him to become his 
assistant and successor, and so lighten labours which soon 
after carried off the old saint when in the act of preaching. 
One of the best livings in the " residuary " church, as it 
was called after May 1843, was at his command. To all he 
turned a deaf ear. While waiting for the Free Presbytery of 
Edinburgh's licence to preach the Gospel, in July 1843 he 
became Secretary of the Ladies Society for Female Education 
in India, founded by the Bombay officer, Major Jameson, a 
few years before. He so worked for that society, that it 
proposed to send him out, when married, as a missionary to 
Bombay, charged with the special duty of continuing the 
work of Margaret Wilson, which had led to its foundation. 
Still, not unwilling, he waited. Dr. John Wilson, accompanied 
by the first convert from Parseeism, was on his way home, 
was indeed in London, and reached Edinburgh on 4th 
November 1843. These letters written to Miss Hull in that 
momentous year, show how he became a missionary : 



24 STEPHEN HISLOP 1843 

" 2Qth January 1843. This morning at our University Mission- 
ary Association, we had a very interesting address from Eev. Dr. 
Stevenson of Bombay. He told us of the need of missionaries in India, 
and of the qualifications requisite in them. One qualification is a turn 
for languages, which I think I possess ; but the most essential of all 
requisites in one who would do this work of the evangelist faithfully 
is personal piety a singleness of heart and aim increased devotedness 
to Christ and His cause. In this respect I frankly acknowledge to you 
I fall vastly short ; and though I am deficient in courage and the taste 
for business it is in regard for spirituality of feeling that I am aware the 
greatest defect exists. When I think of this, and when I reflect that 
nothing but an elevated piety implanted by the Spirit of God will carry 
a missionary through his arduous labours, I begin to conclude that I 
should not take even into consideration the question whether in any 
circumstances I ought to be a missionary. This, however, ought not 
to be the conclusion. I should rather be stirred up to more earnest 
prayer for the gift of the Spirit, that I may be spiritually fitted at least 
for any department of the Lord's vineyard, to which he may appear to 
send me." 

"EDINBURGH, 12th October 1843. . . . Dr. Duff has given in 
his adherence to the Free Church in most explicit terms. A letter 
from him was received here yesterday morning, and was read before the 
Presbytery in the afternoon. This is a most joyful event to all Free 
Presbyterians. It is a most striking testimony to the truth of our 
principles : wherever godly men out of the country have examined 
them, they have most unequivocally expressed their concurrence in 
them, and their sympathy with those who hold them. 

" To-day we had a meeting of the sub-committee of our Society. I 
read a report of my tours, which was unanimously approved of. This 
week I have been engaged in transcribing the minutes of all the meet- 
ings which have been held since the disruption of the Church and our 
Association. They are now collected in a book, and everything I hope 
will henceforth go on in a business-like manner. 

" I have had frequent meetings with Dr. Wilson and the Parsee. 
I expect the latter to breakfast with me to-morrow morning. . . ." 

"EDINBURGH, 50 CUMBERLAND STREET, 6th November 1843. . . 
You ask me, what made me first think of going to India. The plead- 
ings of men engaged in foreign labour, which I used to read long ago, 
convinced me that Christians at home are too little disposed to go abroad 



1843 WHY HE GOES TO INDIA 25 

at the bidding of their Master. I did not at the time consider myself 
qualified to become a missionary ; neither did I feel any great enthus- 
iasm to devote myself to the work at some subsequent period ; but I 
was persuaded in my understanding that the aversion among young 
men to a missionary's life, which was very prevalent, was wrong. 
When I thought first of India, I would not take it upon me to say, but 
I think it was after reading a little work of Dr. Duffs entitled Mis- 
sions the Chief End of the Church. My knowledge of Dr. Wilson, and my 
sympathy with his tastes and habits had a certain influence in inclin- 
ing my thoughts towards Bombay as a scene of labour. But I Lad 
no serious intention of leaving Scotland, until the arrival of Dr. Wil- 
son and my intercourse with him. Then I felt as if I could not edify 
a congregation at home, and that God had marked out India as my 
only sphere of usefulness. My difficulty in speaking, and my difficulty 
in composition were certainly the most weighty reasons with me in 
deciding on my inability to edify a British audience ; but you will per- 
ceive from what I have said above, that other reasons, and these ante- 
cedent, had contributed their share of influence in making me think 
of a missionary life in India. While I thought I would not be able 
to preach, I considered that I might be qualified to teach both the 
Bible and some branch of science, for which I confess I have a liking. 
" This last circumstance is to be taken into account ; for in order 
to the success of the missions, it is necessary that our Institution at 
Bombay should have the superiority even in science over other seminaries 
which teach science without religion. Our Christianity is recommended 
to the natives by our secular knowledge. It is for the latter they 
come ; and if they cannot get it good at a religious seminary, they 
would never think of preferring such an institution to another semin- 
ary, when it is given good and unadulterated, as they would think, 
with piety. Teaching would be my principal occupation. I might 
preach occasionally in a foreign language, when I had acquired it, 
once a fortnight during Sabbath, and have a sort of prayer meeting 
during the week but not more frequently. I would prefer being 
under the Church, not under the Female Society. ... I do not know 
whether my offer, if made to the Church, would be accepted. I rather 
suppose Alexander prejudiced Dr. Wilson against me, and he will have 
the principal duty to discharge in fixing with individuals. A.'s rea- 
sons were, that he thought I was not a good teacher, and that if I would 
take care, I might improve as a preacher. If the Church accepted of 
my services, of course I could not go out till summer till after my 
college session was completed, and I received licence and induction. 



26 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

" In regard to the salary I had never once thought till this morning. 
I had contented myself with the belief that the Church would not allow 
me to starve, and that if I got a bare maintenance it would satisfy me. 
Dr. Wilson has left town this morning ; but I have asked Dhunjebhoy 
what the missionaries of the Free Church are to get. He says he be- 
lieves only 150 this year, but that it is hoped they will receive .200 
or 250 hereafter. When the missionaries in India were in connec- 
tion with the Establishment they were in the habit of receiving nearly 
500. What a noble sacrifice they have made ! I am not concerned 
about the funds. God will provide. Yesterday there was a collection 
in all the city churches for India. They produced much more than 
ever they did before the disruption. Candlish collected 210 ; Dr. 
Gordon, 130 ; Mr. Bruce, 87, etc. The passage of missionaries is 
paid for them you are aware, and outfit too, I believe. 

" Dhanji is sitting with me just now, and he assures me that India 
is not so prejudicial to Europeans, as is commonly supposed, if proper 
precautions are used. This I am persuaded of. But I trust we shall 
be ready to respond to the call of God, whether it be to go or to stay. 
We are not to confer with flesh and blood, if there is a clear case of 
duty. . . ." 

On 20th January 1844, lie formally offered himself to 
the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church of Scot- 
land, through the Eev. Dr. Gordon, to go to India as a 
missionary, with this result, as written to Miss Hull : 

"EDINBURGH, 2 5th January 1844. . . . Dr. Gordon communicated 
the fact to the members of committee, among whom were James Buchanan 
and Henry Grey. They all concurred in approving of the offer, or 
rather the candidate, and considered it would be unnecessary to name 
a day for an examination, as is generally done. They proposed that 
no final deliverance should be come to on the matter for a month, 
when it is more than probable that I shall receive formal intimation 
of its acceptance. Meanwhile they have no doubt as to the propriety 
of sending me abroad. The question with them is not whether but 
whither I am to go. Dr. Wilson says, the feeling among the members 
of committee seemed to be that I should be appointed to Nagpoor as 
the person who had offered for it was discovered to be unqualified for 
such an important station. But if I am to go, they will, of course, 
consult me as to the particular locality I would prefer, whether Nag- 
poor or Bombay. Since learning these steps, I have endeavoured to 



1844 HIS FIRST DEADLY PERIL 27 

acquaint myself with the circumstances of Nagpoor. . . . The eleva- 
tion of the plain is about 1200 feet, which makes it cooler in the hot 
season than Bombay. And on this account it is reckoned on the 
whole healthier and more agreeable to a European than many localities 
in India. These are all favourable enough circumstances ; but still I 
cannot conceal from myself, and I do not wish to conceal from you, 
the fact that the foundation of a mission, and the watching over it in 
its infant state, would be much more arduous duties than I would be 
called to discharge as superintendent of Female Schools at Bombay. 
At the same time, I may inform you that we would not be called to 
enter on the performance of them all at once and alone. Dr. Wilson 
proposes that I should first take up my residence at Poona a nice re- 
tired station among the hills, where there are Presbyterian Missionaries 
already ; and there study the language for a year ; by that time he 
himself would (D. V.) have returned to India, and he would accompany 
us to N. and aid us in commencing our operations. . . . To-morrow I 
have to read my sermon to Chalmers, which I have never yet got off 
my hands." 

He was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Free Pres- 
bytery of Edinburgh. Meanwhile lie was in constant com- 
munication with the friend of his boyhood, Dr. Duns, then 
minister at Torphichen. He desired to renew, once at least, 
their Greek reading " Bring your Epictetus with you," and 
to have one more " botanical, entomological, and geological 
excursion." He visited his brother Alexander at Arbroath, 
and he was returning from Dundee in the Windsor Castle 
steamer, when the wreck occurred, which he thus describes 
in a letter to his sister Janet, Mrs. Wilson, at Duns : 

"OLNEY, 25th October 1844. . . . The day I embarked was a 
Tuesday, the same day as the Queen did. After having seen her 
Majesty's embarkation, we sailed from Dundee at 5 o'clock in the 
evening, in the suite of the Eoyal yacht. Many of my fellow-passen- 
gers, elated with the gaiety of the scene which they had previously 
witnessed, no sooner found themselves afloat, than they gave them- 
selves up to music and dancing, and to all manner of foolish 
merriment. . . . Then the giddy throng went down into the cabin 
to partake of refreshment. ... I remained where I was, feeling that 
it was good to be there. They had not been long down below 



28 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

when suddenly there was a momentary confusion amongst the men 
in the forecastle, and immediately after, a tremendous crash which 
sent everything on deck out of its place. The dinner-party in the 
cabin, where the shock was more severe, came rushing upstairs to 
ascertain the cause : and in looking from the stern, where I had been 
seated, to the bowsprit, towards which all were hastening, I perceived 
that we had struck against a rock about three miles off the coast of 
Fife, about St. Andrews. When it was learned that the water was 
pouring in at the leak, and that everything threatened speedy death, 
the scene on board was dreadful. There, on that sinking vessel, were 
assembled men, women, and children, to the number of about 250. 
Few had hope before God, into whose awful presence they expected 
soon to be ushered. What had then become of the mirth of the 
worldlings ? Alas ! it had given way to terror and despair. Where 
was then the god whom they had been lately serving. Alas ! Satan 
was near enough, but it was not to save them not to administer to 
them support in the hour of trial. Under his influence many were 
imprecating curses on the captain of the vessel, whom they charged 
with the crime of their murder : but none were offering up prayers to 
God through the mediation of His Son. In this extremity I was 
enabled to continue with little interruption the same train of sweet 
and elevating reflection as my mind had been pursuing before the 
catastrophe ; and it seemed as if it had been seiit for the express pur- 
pose of preparing me for immediate entrance into heaven. Occasionally 
an aged Secession minister (Mr. Hogg of Haddington) and myself 
endeavoured to drop a word of instruction into the minds of our dis- 
tracted fellow-passengers. We pointed them to Christ, the Saviour of 
even the chief of sinners. But Satan seemed to hold them fast. . . . 
After sailing as best the vessel could for about twenty minutes from 
the time of the first shock, we struck again on a rock. But here I am 
called to magnify the wonder-working power of the Almighty. 

" Previous to our second collision we were just on the point of sink- 
ing. The vessel was becoming perfectly unmanageable, though there 
was little wind. It was lurching fearfully from side to side, owing to 
the motion of the water in the hold and cabin, and sometimes the fore- 
castle rose so high as to threaten to send us stern downwards to the 
bottom. The water, too, was extinguishing the fires, and preventing 
the engine from working. It was just when the engine had entirely 
ceased to move the paddles, that we came upon the rock before referred 
to. In consequence of the cessation of the engine the vessel came 
upon it so gently as to receive no further injury ; and yet in conse- 



1844 HIS POKTEAIT 29 

quence of the impulse with which it was still carried forward from the 
recent working of the engine, it advanced so far on the reef, for it was 
a sunken rock, as to stick fast upon it. How evident is the finger of 
God in all this ! And so it is in what remains to be told. The por- 
tion of the reef on which we were moored, we found, as well as the 
darkness would permit, to be a cleft with a wall on either side. Then 
the wind was from the west, and the tide was ebbing. All these cir- 
cumstances were in our favour. Had the wind been from the east we 
could not have lived a moment among the breakers, which in that case 
would have been raised. As it was, the vessel was allowed to remain 
where it had, as it were, come to anchor. . . . Now was the time for 
attempting a landing with boats. The cry was for boats. But only 
one frail bark could be produced, and that furnished with only one oar, 
and capable of holding not more than six people at a time. One boat 
for 250 passengers ! However, in about two hours we all were landed 
in some way or other. I did not get out by a boat at all. Along with a 
few others, who were left to the last, I let myself down by a rope from 
about the bowsprit, and so gained the rock on which the vessel was 
fixed, and which was now left dry ; and by leaping from rock to rock 
over the pools which the receding tide had left, I at last reached the 
shore. 

"You may imagine my feelings at this time. I could appro- 
priate the language of David at the beginning of Ps. xl. in a double 
sense. He had rescued me from temporal death ; and at the same time 
He had given me to understand, as I had never done before, that my 
confidence was placed on Christ the Eock of Ages. What a blessing is 
this ! How gracious, then, was the dispensation, by means of which it 
was conferred. And how seasonable was it. God knows that dangers 
and trials are before me : and therefore He gave me a foretaste of what 
I am to expect, and along with this intimation He taught me in what 
quarter to apply that I may find peace and safety in the most trying- 
situation in which I may be placed : Ps. xlvi. and Ps. Ixii. . . ." 

At this time one of tlie best of the Scottish school of 
artists, the late D. 0. Hill, E.S.A., was engaged on his great 
picture of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, in which 
Thomas Chalmers and five or six hundred members of the 
General Assembly are seen signing the deed by which they 
gave up their all and protested against that invasion of the 
spiritual rights of the people, for which a subsequent Act of 



30 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

Parliament has vainly striven to atone. In his charming 
little retreat on the Calton Hill, the artist, assisted by Mr. 
Adamson, his working photographer, used to make the 
sketches required to assist him in producing so many por- 
traits on the canvas. Among the young men and ministers 
often to be found there, was Stephen Hislop. Photography 
was then in its infancy, and Mr. D. 0. Hill produced the 
calotypes, as they were called, in which the dark shadows are 
lighted up by the reddish colour, and the result is generally a 
rugged but powerful likeness. From D. 0. Hill's calotype 
we have reproduced the portrait l of Stephen Hislop as he 
bade farewell to Scotland at the age of twenty-seven. He 
was then, and indeed always, as described by a contemporary 
journal, " a tall, bony Scotsman," with a rough-hewn, rugged 
look, like young Thomas Carlyle, but features different from 
his in all save the power and far-seeing ideality which they 
revealed. He had remarkably small hands for a man of his 
size, and hence his frequently exquisite drawings. He had 
piercing eyesight which, directed by his trained powers of 
observation, helped him as a naturalist., especially in fossil 
conchology and botany. 

After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Hislop visited Olney, 
where he had much conversation with Eev. Dr. Schmidt, the 
former colleague of Ehenius in South India. For the new mis- 
sionaries, as for Dr. Duff in 1829 and many others since, Sir 
John Pirie, a Duns man, secured a passage, in the steamer 
which left Southampton for Bombay on 3d November 1844. 
To all the usual duties attending the setting apart of a young 
missionary Hislop had added those of assisting Eev. Dr. Welsh 
in organising the noble theological library of the New College, 
then numbering 20,000, and now 40,000 volumes, and of 
copying the Greek, Latin, and German extracts for the 
History of the Church which that scholar was about to pub- 

1 Frontispiece. 



1844 LANDS AT BOMBAY 31 

lish. But it was not till he had passed through an almost 
disastrous storm off the coast of Portugal, that he found the 
quiet rest and meditative leisure by which a voyage to the 
East generally restores the over-tasked traveller for new and 
delightful toil in the service of Him who never sends a mes- 
senger on his own charges. 

In the midst of the storm, his concern was for one dear 
to him, to whom he thus wrote from Gibraltar : " Would that 
I could impart to you that peace of soul of which your com- 
munication regrets the absence. I assure you, two nights 
ago when we were tossed on the billows of the wide Atlantic, 
without the hope of ever again reaching dry land, your con- 
dition pressed very heavily on my mind. I prayed that God 
might prolong my life that I might have an opportunity just 
another opportunity, if it were no more of recommending to 
you with all earnestness and fidelity an implicit and un- 
wavering adherence to that faith which we in common 
possess. Oh ! moderate your attachment to entomology, and 
cultivate a closer walk with God ! . . . When death seemed 
imminent, I was enabled to commend you to God, though 
still I prayed for prolongation of life that I might write to 
you again and spend many years to the glory of God among 
the heathen. Our prayers were heard." 

"13th December 1844. Landed at Bombay in a boat 
which had brought off Messrs. Nesbit, M. Mitchell, and Lan- 
caster. We received a very hearty welcome from them. 
Glad we were to exchange the Victoria for Mr. Nesbit's 
hospitable mansion. Our lives have been prolonged for the 
glory of God. He has some work for us, it would appear, at 
Nagpoor." 



OHAPTEE II 

THE NAGPOOR LAND AND PEOPLES 

The Highlands of Central India Last to be conquered The northern wall 
of South India Ethnic meeting-place Gonds as influenced by Eajpoots 
and Mussulmans The four Maratha houses The Bhoslas of Nagpoor 
Kaghoji III., the last of the race The first pioneer mission to Central 
India Colonel Moxon, Dr. Carey's nephew His letters Sir Donald 
M'Leod and his conversion His seven missionaries to the Gonds Fate 
near Amarkantak hill of the second pioneer mission Sir William Hill 
His wife's endowment of Stephen Hislop's mission, and her death Dr. 
Wilson of Bombay and the Free Church of Scotland accept the endow- 
ment Sir Donald M'Leod's annual gift Hislop's ordination described 
Dr. Wilson's ordination charge to the missionary The twelve phases 
of the missionary ideal Appeal to Christians to evangelise Hislop's 
survey of Bombay Journey to Nagpoor by Elura, Ajanta, and Berar 
Robert Nesbit's character of Hislop. 

WHEN, in 1845, Stephen Hislop entered the Maratha State 
of Nagpoor, and first surveyed the rich plateaux and highland 
forests of its aboriginal Gonds, the land had been for thirty 
years under British influence tempering Maratha misrule. 
But no ray of light, from divine revelation or material science, 
had reached its long oppressed people. Christian missionaries 
there were, though few in number, in the cities of the two 
coasts, in the long peaceful south, and here and there in the 
great Hindu centres of the Indo-Gangetic valley. But no 
mission had dared to penetrate a great Native State under its 
own law or lawlessness, till now. If intolerance still obstructs 
the lawful progress of the Canada missionaries in the neigh- 
bouring State of Indore, what must have been the prospect 
in Nagpoor forty -five years ago ? Central India, before 



1845 THE TWO INDIAS 33 

Hislop, was almost as unknown a quantity in the counsels of 
soldiers and administrators, men of science and missionaries 
alike, as Central Africa before Livingstone. " Unexplored " 
on the maps of both marked the ignorance and stimulated 
the curiosity of the rulers and philanthropists from the 
west. In the twenty years of his missionary career Hislop 
saw the corrupt State of the Bhosla Eaja give way, in 1853, 
to the transition province of Nagpoor under a commission of 
British officers ; and that, in 1861, to the enlightened, ex- 
tended and progressive administration of the Central Pro- 
vinces, as they now are, under a Chief Commissioner. The 
70,000 square miles of the effete Eaja, with a population of 
three and a half millions as he first found them to be, he 
lived to see enlarged into 113,000, with nearly twelve millions. 
Nagpoor was not much greater than England in size ; the 
Central Provinces are as large as Italy. 

Nagpoor, in the wider sense of the word, was the last 
part of the peninsula of India to submit to an invader, Mo- 
hammedan or Hindu, and that not till the Maratha robbers 
overran its plains little more than a century ago. The waves 
of Hindu-Aryan settlers as they rolled south to Ceylon in 
the epic age, from Solomon to Homer, passed by on either 
side the gloomy forests and the central ridges and table- 
lands, to which the blacker aborigines were driven, being 
described as worse than wild beasts. There are two Indias, 
physical and ethnic, the northern, Aryan, or Himalayan, 
with the Indo-Gangetic valley at its base, which we call the 
Hindu land, or Hindustan ; and the southern, Dravidian, or 
Dekhan, where the original Turanian peoples have held their 
own against their conquerors, and in the extreme south 
have already yielded a rich harvest to the Christian 
Church. 

The Central Provinces, of which ISTagpoor city is the 
capital, form the northern wall of this Dravidian India. Their 

D 



34 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

hills and plains are to the Dekhan what the Himalaya are 
to Hindustan. In their uplands all the great peninsular 
rivers rise, a few rolling westward like the Tapti and Narbada, 
the nobler streams descending eastward into the Bay of 
Bengal, like the Mahanadi and Godavari. If we approach 
from the north we rise out of the Indo-Gangetic valley into 
a new land differing in many respects from that we have 
left, by a series of terraces divided from each other by these 
mighty rivers and fertile plains. Eesting on (1) the 
Vindhya plateau, we have the "middle land " of the Aryan 
Hindus behind us, and the Narbada river at our feet. We 
descend into (2) its plain dominated by Jabalpoor, the 
northern capital of the provinces, and rise to the main 
table-land of (3) the Satpoora plateau which, from an eleva- 
tion of 2000 feet, sends up peaks with sanitaria above the 
fever limit of the tropics. Then, continuing south, we 
reach (4) the great Nagpoor plain, with its well-watered rice- 
fields lying between the Wardha and Waenganga feeders of 
the Godavari which form it, and between the present main 
line of railway from Bombay to Calcutta and the Nag-poor 
branch, which is being continued by a shorter route to 
the eastern metropolis to supersede the former for rapid 
through traffic. In the plains are the enriching coal and 
iron fields which Hislop did much to reveal. Eastward, but 
dipping below the plateau, is (5) the Chatteesgarh plain, " the 
land of threshing floors," whose surplus grain the advancing 
railway carries to famine - threatened peoples, and whose 
tribes and tongues he more than any other man brought 
within the ken of civilisation. Truly a noble land, beautiful, 
as well as teeming with resources, to which Captain J. Forsy th, 
in his delightful book The Highlands of Central India, has for 
the first time clone justice, when, with the woodman's axe, 
sportsman's rifle, and a heart full of sympathy with the 
simple people, he explored its forests and settled its land 



1845 THE MARATHA STATES 35 

revenue, only to be cut down by its malarious fever at the 
early age of thirty-three. 

In the course of generations a province so physically 
formed and situated must become the meeting-place of races, 
languages and customs. The aboriginal Gonds alone offered 
a tempting field to the civiliser and the student, but it was 
not till Ilislop came that their language was reduced to 
writing. Their history is for ever impressed on the country 
in the name .ZV^poor, which marks the serpent-worship of 
these JVfl^bansi or serpent-descended chiefs. As the Moham- 
medan invaders of the eleventh century pressed the Hindu 
Eajpoots south, these introduced into the central plateaux 
of the Satpooras the higher civilisation, the architectural 
ruins of which still excite the wonder of the explorer. By 
the time these immigrants came to be absorbed by the more 
numerous Gonds, the Mohammedan wave had rolled up to 
and around them, and Akbar made his consolidating hand 
felt among them. The prospering Gond-Eajpoot families 
which had not been Brahmanised now fell under Islam, 
leaving the pure demon-worshipping savages to denser forests 
and higher valleys. The Christian Church, in apathetic ignor- 
ance, allowed the two debasing cults to do unchecked what 
it was not to awake to for a century at least ; just as it had 
done when the young Arab Mohammed saw its corruptions 
and wove out of them and out of Judaism the Suras of 
the Koran. 

When, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the 
Mussulman power itself broke up in India, and chaos seemed 
to be at hand, one at least of the old Gond dynasties became 
strong again for a time. But as the years rolled on the 
Marathas and the British came face to face as rivals for the 
supremacy in India. The great Sivaji's rapidly-formed and 
loosely-constructed empire came to be represented by four 
successors, who parcelled out Western and Central India. 



36 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

The Gaikwar of Baroda, Sindia, and Holkar still exist as 
feudatories whom we saved from the wreck of empire. The 
fourth, the Bhoslas of Nagpoor, strong enough at one time 
to hold Orissa and threaten Calcutta itself till we bought 
them off, were not so wise, and Hislop saw the last of the 
dynasty die, an exhausted debauchee without a successor. 

This was the character of the Hindu State into which he 
came, and in the darkness and difficulties of which he worked 
during the first eight years of his Indian experience. A century 
before his arrival the peasant-born Eaghoji Bliosla, at the 
head of robber bands of Marathas, had made himself master 
of the land right across India from Ajanta to the Bay of 
Bengal, between the rivers Narbada and Godavari. Making 
the Goncl city, ISTagpoor, his capital he at first ruled in the 
name of the Gond sovereign, like other mayors of the palace. 
For half a century he and his son Madhoji governed as well as 
the best feudal soldiers of the East have ever done, that is, 
they protected the revenue-paying cultivators from whom 
they had sprung, and they kept their officers in terror by a 
system of espionage and cruelty. But the young Eaghoji II. 
foolishly came into conflict with Wellesley at the battle of 
Assye, and after other disasters he signed away Orissa and 
nearly half his territory to the East India Company. His 
imbecile successor was murdered by a cousin, Apa Saheb, 
who, after agreeing to subsidise a British force and keep up a 
contingent of 5000 cavalry and infantry, suddenly attacked 
the Resident on Sitabaldi Hill, was repulsed by an act of 
daring bravery, ceded more territory in lieu of the subsidy 
and contingent, and finally fled. 

Eaghoji III., a grandson of the second of that name, 
became Eaja under a Eesident till 1826, when he came of 
age. That Eesident, succeeding men like Colebrooke and 
Mountstuart Elphinstone, was the distinguished Richard 
Jenkins, a student of William Carey's, whose Report on the 



1845 THE RAJA OF NAGPOOR 37 

Territories of the Rajali of Nagpore in 1826 is a famous and 
was a rare document till reprinted forty years after. This 
chief was treated with great consideration by Lord William 
Bentinck and his immediate successors, whose object it was 
to make him powerful and contented that he might not be 
tempted to break the peace of India. During his minority 
our officers had, as usual, protected the people by a settle- 
ment of the land revenue, and by agreements with the Goncl 
tributaries. These arrangements he bound himself to con- 
tinue, and he furthermore agreed to this Article III., which 
is almost unique in the treaties and engagements made with 
our feudatories, though it only expresses the spirit of all these 
engagements more plainly : " If, which God forbid, gross and 
systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule, should here- 
after at any time prevail, in neglect of repeated advice and 
remonstrance, seriously endangering the public tranquillity, 
and placing in jeopardy the stability of the resources whence 
his Highness discharges his obligations to the Honourable 
Company, the British Government reserves to itself the right 
of reappointing its own officers to the management of such 
district or districts of the ISTagpore territory in his Highness's 
name, and for so long a period as it may deem necessary, the 
surplus receipts, after defraying expenses, to be paid into the 
Raja's treasury." Eaghoji III., on the whole, observed this 
condition till he died at the end of 1853 without a son or an 
adopted child. Then Lord Dalhousie incorporated with the 
East India Company's territories, the State " which had in 
1818 been forfeited by the treachery and hostility of Apa 
Saheb, had been declared to belong to the British Govern- 
ment by right of conquest, had been conferred by free gift 
on Eaghoji, his heirs and successors, by the treaty of 1826, 
and had now lapsed to the British Government by default of 
heirs." A strange light will be cast on all this by the 
events of Stephen Hislop's career. 



38 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

Even when Central India was overrun by Maratka 
armies and Pindari brigands, and wken the State of Nagpoor 
was the scene of oppression and duplicity before the treaty, 
an attempt was made and quietly continued for years to tell 
the Hindus and Gonds the good news of God. So early as 
1810 Lieutenant, afterwards Colonel, Moxon took pity on 
the people. When in charge of the Eaja's troops in the 
eastern district of Ckatteesgark, and afterwards as commandant 
of the Eesident's Body Guard at the capital, he regularly 
addressed the Arab and Afghan troopers and sepoys as well 
as the Marathi-spealdng peasantry on Jesus Christ as the 
only Saviour of sinners. Hearing that Dr. Carey had been 
for some time preparing a Marathi translation of the Scriptures, 
he thus wrote to Serampore when applying for portions at 
least of the work : 

" 7th November 1810. The present Kaja appears to be of a quiet 
and peaceable disposition, and might tolerate a new religion. The 
brother of the Eaja and his son Apa Saheb, who is considered as the 
heir-apparent, are much more attached to Brahmanisni. The Raja's 
kingdom is every year overrun by the Pindaris, who plunder it with 
impunity. The Gonds, the ancient inhabitants of the country, are 
quite a distinct people, and live mostly in the hills and jungles. 
Their mode of life is similar to all hill people. They appear to be 
much given to drinking, as indeed are also the Marathas. They have 
a language of their own." 

" 5th January 1811. The Hindustani New Testament has proved 
a great blessing, and is listened to with great attention by the several 
poor Christians. Besides this I have begun to read it to the Jemadar 
of our escort, also to a Musalman priest, who lives 011 a hill (Sitabaldi) 
not far from my bungalow. An old Brahman Pundit also attends.' 

By March 1811 the Maratha New Testament was ready, 
and, in ignorance of Colonel Moxon's action, Mr. Chamberlain, 
Carey's colleague, whose station was nearest to Central India, 
urged that they should begin to evangelise it. To complete 
the providential chain of circumstances Colonel Moxon made 



1845 PIONEEK MISSIONS IN NAGPOOR 39 

the long and toilsome journey in those days from Nagpoor to 
Serampore to consult personally with Carey. There, in 1812, 
he joined the church as a Baptist ; was married to Miss 
Hobson, Carey's niece, as Sir Henry Havelock in similar 
circumstances afterwards was married to Dr. Marshman's 
daughter, and returned to his post with a collection of 
Marathi, Hindustani, and Hindi Scriptures, and a native 
catechist, Earn Mohun. For some years they prayed and 
worked, by preaching and teaching and Bible distribution, 
amid the confusion and excitement which ended in Apa 
Saheb's attack on Sitabaldi. Nagpoor, wrote Dr. Carey, 
when reviewing the year 1817, "at which one person has 
been baptized, has been in a state of alarm for some time on 
account of the Pindaris, or predatory hordes who have long 
been the terror of this part of India ; and in these two 
months past the attack of the Raja of Nagpoor on the British 
Eesident and the escort stationed there, has rendered that 
part quite the seat of war. The Lord has preserved our 
much-valued friend Moxon with his family, however, in a 
way that demands our warmest gratitude. It is probable 
that after peace and tranquillity have been restored there will 
be a fairer field opened for missionary labour than before." 
One Gond, Pykoo, helped the convert to make the first trans- 
lation of the Gospels into that language, but it does not seem 
to have been published. 

When Colonel Moxon and his wife retired and the Seram- 
pore Mission ceased, they kept up daily intercession for the 
people of Central India, and especially for the two districts 
in which they had begun the work, Chatteesgarh and Nag- 
poor. In both they saw and rejoiced at the answer, when 
two officials took up the weapons they had wielded so long, the 
Scottish civil servant of the East India Company, Sir Donald 
M'Leod, in the former, and the English military officer, Sir 
William Hill, in the latter. The result of the faithful con- 



40 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

tendings of the three from 1810, with a break of a few years, 
to 1845, was the arrival of Stephen Hislop and the foundation 
of the present Central India Mission of the Free Church of 
Scotland. Hislop, whose first step had been to trace out the 
action of these early pioneers, thus wrote : 

" I saw two letters from Colonel W. Moxon, at Barnstaple, in 
England, addressed to Mr. Henry Anton, assistant in the Revenue 
Department, Bombay, the one letter dated 26th December 1846, 
the other 10th December 1847. In the former lie says : ' My dear wife 
and myself take great delight in hearing of the blessed increase of the 
kingdom of Christ in India, especially in the parts where you are con- 
nected. The good news you have informed me of at Nagpoor, and in a 
former letter of the German Mission to Karanjia, near Amarkantak, I 
feel very thankful to you for, as I am assured the Lord has most 
graciously answered my oft-repeated prayers for Nagpoor and Chattees- 
ghar, where I lived so happily for many years in much enjoyment of 
the grace of God in my soul. Your account of the two Tamil men at 
Kamthi and the firm way they acted amidst persecution, also the noble 
confession of the Desai of Sisavo, who gave up his landed property, 
etc., for Christ, gave us much delight. If there is joy in heaven over 
one sinner that repenteth, surely we ought to rejoice here below; for 
we, poor sinners, are more deeply interested than the angels in heaven. 
I will ever pray, " Good Lord, send now prosperity." I like very 
much what your friend Mr. Clarkson the missionary writes, that he 
had excluded from communion all who adhered to their caste, for while 
such were allowed to remain every evil and lack of discipline would 
have been the consequence of it. I could wish to be with you again 
assisting in the Lord's vineyard around you ; but my age, sixty-seven, 
and nay increasing infirmity of deafness would render me quite 
incapable of it. The Lord has given me other work in which I may 
serve Him as a priest unto God by continual prayer in the spirit for 
the coming of His kingdom.' " 

Donald M'Leod, of the M'Leods of Assynt, was born at Cal- 
cutta of a Huguenot mother, when his father was adding lustre 
to the Bengal Engineers. After a happy childhood with "Aunt 
Kitty " at Geanies, and busy days at the Edinburgh High 
School and at the Putney School, where Lord Canning was his 
companion, he went out to India with John Lawrence, his life- 



1845 SIR DONALD M'LEOD 41 

long comrade. At Monghyr, though a Presbyterian, he came 
under the influence of the man who led Henry Havelock to 
Christ, the Eev. A. Leslie, and like Moxon he joined the 
Baptist Church. " I have now been freed from despondency 
and gloominess of spirits to which, for the five previous 
years, I was continually a martyr," he wrote. For the next 
forty years till, on retiring from the Lieutenant-Governor- 
ship of the Panjab, he was killed on the underground railway 
in London, when hurrying to preside at a missionary meeting 
he lived only to do good. He gave his all to India. One of 
his Hindu clerks he sent to Dr. Duff's college, where, under the 
teaching there and M'Leod's example, he became Christ's and 
did good service as the Eev. Behari Lai Singh of the Presbyter- 
ian Church of England's Mission. " If all Christians were like 
Sir Donald M'Leod there would be no Hindus or Mohamme- 
dans," said another of his native subordinates. "There 
were two ferishtas (angels) among the English in the Panjab, 
Sir Donald M'Leod and Eeynell Taylor," was the saying. 

When sent by Lord William Bentinck to the northern 
districts of the Central Provinces he explored the glorious 
highlands of the Satpoora range, and his sympathies flowed 
out to their simple and untutored Gonds. Whether at 
Jabalpoor or Seoni he did not cease to care for all the natives, 
and especially for their highest interests. He visited Cal- 
cutta chiefly "to make known our claims to the religious world 
there, and to invite attention to the urgency of our wants ; 
for, insulated as we are among native states it is surely the 
more incumbent on us to kindle that spark which may shine 
forth as a light to lighten the Gentiles." He saw in the 
more rapid evangelisation of the casteless aborigines of 
India the means of securing nuclei, around which the weaker 
Hindu proselytes who have to sacrifice so much might 
gather for strength, as the foundations of the one Church of 
India are being laid. So he determined himself to create 



42 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

and support missons to the Gonds and Kols, from Sagar 
district, which for this reason he refused to leave for a higher 
appointment, through Belasptfre and Chatteesgarh to Chutia 
Nagpoor, by which very route the main line of railway from 
Bombay to Calcutta is now being made. " I have almost got 
a promise that two or more German missionaries sent out by 
the Basel Society, and whom the Eussians have compelled to 
quit Tabreez, will be sent here." They failed him, and he 
applied to the late Pastor Gossner of Berlin, who, after 
expulsion from Bavaria because he had ceased to be a priest 
in the Church of Borne, and from Russia, became from Berlin 
the evangelical reformer who revived the foreign missionary 
spirit of Franke and the Pietists in the fatherland. 

In 1841 Gossner sent to Donald M'Leod, then at Jabal- 
poor, a missionary band of five artisans and peasants with an 
apothecary, at the head of whom he placed the experienced 
Eev, J. Loesch, who had been a Basel Missionary in South 
India. The seven, some of them with wives and children, 
explored Gondwana right up the great Narbada river to its 
source in the "waters of immortality," Amarkautak hill, 
3500 feet high, the centre of Goncl reverence and Hindu 
pilgrimage. At Karanjia village, sixteen miles to the west 
of the hill which now belongs to the native State of Eewah, 
and in the British district of Belaspore where Moxon had 
toiled and prayed so long, though in ignorance of that fact, 
Donald M'Leod's Mission pitched their tents and began 
their farm settlement on the Moravian plan which had at 
the first tempted Carey. All was full of promise ; the people 
were kind, the authorities were fair, the land was fertile, the 
climate was almost European. The water supply only was 
bad. But it is not so that the foundations at least of a 
tropical mission are laid, to grow up into a temple of the 
living God and assimilate all around. Cholera swept away 
all the inexperienced Germans save two, who were too weak to 



1845 SIR WILLIAM HILL 43 

bury their dead, and could hardly persuade the panic-stricken 
Gonds to do it. The mind of one of the survivors gave way. 
For both a home was found with Stephen Hislop at Kamthi, 
where William Bartels and James Lechler soon passed away 
amid the love of brethren. Pastor Gossner sent out the good 
Ziemann who laboured long at Ghazipore at Sir Donald's 
expense ; and many other missionaries who have brought 
thousands of the allied Kol tribe in the north-east into the 
kingdom of the Christ. 

Such were the pioneer missions of Colonel Moxon and 
Sir Donald M'Leod, from Serampore and from Germany, in 
the heart of India. .The first had one baptized convert ; the 
second did not exist long enough for the mastery of the 
language ; but who shall say that they were in vain ? It is 
not so that critics of the operations of war reason when a 
vast province like Upper Burma is first annexed, then slowly 
subjugated after a terrific loss of our best blood and treasure, 
then gradually civilised and trained through centuries for 
self-government. The Gazette showers honours on the 
survivors of the subjugation ; and the journals justify the 
new financial burdens which it lays on the empire. And it 
is well, whether as in Asia the missionary follows the soldier 
of civilisation, or as in South and East Africa he sees the 
soldier and the teacher pass in after him. When Stephen 
Hislop came to found a mission on right lines he could no 
more trace the results of his predecessors' labours than Carey 
could in Bengal. But they both rejoiced to believe that, 
without these missionaries before the dawn, and the prayer and 
sacrifice of the officers who yearned that they might have 
worthy successors, their own success would have been neither 
possible nor so immediate. 

Sir William Hill was worthy to be ranked with Moxon 
and M'Leod. The youngest son of the Honourable Daniel 
Hill of Antigua, he went out to Madras as a Company's 



44 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

cadet in 1821, a thoughtless boy of sixteen. He passed 
unscathed through the fever and the fighting of the first 
war in Burma, when Judson was pent up in the vilest 
prison of Ava. On one occasion he was isolated at the head 
of 400 European and a few native soldiers in the town of 
Pegu, and surrounded by a Burman force to the number of 
8000. Four times he sallied forth and drove off his assailants, 
and he held the place till he was relieved. After a visit 
home, and marriage, Captain Hill and his young wife were 
stationed at Kamthi, the British cantonment and large town 
nine miles north-east of Nagpoor, where there has long been 
a first -class brigade command under Madras. The young 
couple gave themselves up to the amusements of a large 
military community, showing no sympathy with the few 
who were of Moxon's set there and at Sitabaldi and Nagpoor. 
Mrs. Hill fell sick, and learned to see the realities of existence 
as they are when the veil of self and sense is drawn aside for 
a little. The visits of a lady friend led her to the light of 
Christ. Eecovering, she began at once to care for her own 
native servants, and to influence the young officers around. 
When nursing one of the latter in a cholera epidemic, and 
pointing him to the Lord, the Giver of life, she was seized 
with the same ruthless and still mysterious disease. Her 
weakened body gave way to it, but not before she had laid 
upon her husband the duty of devoting her fortune to the 
establishment of a Christian Mission to the people of Kamthi 
and Nagpoor. She sleeps at Jalna. 

William Hill first gave himself to the Master, rejoicing in 
Whom his wife had died, and then proceeded to discharge her 
trust. He visited many stations, he corresponded with the 
Church Missionary Society of his own communion, he surveyed 
the spirit and the work of the various missions already in India. 
Then, in 1842, he wrote to Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, though 
a Presbyterian, promising him, as the man he reverenced 



1845 FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND'S MISSION 45 

most of all, a sum which he himself had increased to 2500, 
in the three per cent consols, as the endowment of a Nagpoor 
Mission. Dr. Wilson, who had just returned from introducing 
the Irish missionaries to their new field in Kathiawar, gladly 
reported the offer to the foreign secretary of the Church of 
Scotland, and urged its acceptance. But in the Scottish 
struggles of 1842-43, the offer passed unnoticed. The Church 
of Scotland majority set themselves free from the interference 
of Parliament, which it strove to undo when too late. Dr. 
Wilson was himself in Scotland, charged by Captain Hill to 
repeat the offer and to secure a missionary. Within a month 
after his arrival in Edinburgh, and after eloquently advo- 
cating the mission in the Glasgow Assembly, on the 29th 
November 1843, the India Mission Committee of the Free 
Church of Scotland Eev. Eobert Gordon, D.D., convener 
passed this resolution : 

"The Committee proceeded to take into their consideration the 
memorial addressed to the Church by Dr. Wilson, before the disrup- 
tion, respecting the establishment of a mission to Nagpoor, in Central 
India, and several communications which had lately been received 
from India on the same subject ; and considering the great importance 
of commencing missionary operations in that quarter the renewed 
offer to this Church, by the gentleman with whom the proposal origi- 
nated, of .2500 stock, 011 the condition of the speedy establishment 
of a mission there the growing liberality of the members of this 
Church in the cause of missions, evinced by the late congregational 
collections the interest very generally expressed throughout the 
country respecting the district of Nagpoor the prospect of co-opera- 
tion, in connection with the proposed mission, of the missions already 
formed in the three presidencies of India and the hope of obtaining 
local pecuniary assistance to the mission at Nagpoor, and special con- 
tributions in this country towards its foundation they unanimously 
resolve, in dependence on divine grace, and what appear to them to 
be the evident leadings of divine providence, to take immediate steps 
towards the establishment of the proposed mission, by looking out for 
a duly qualified missionary. And with a view to the particular in- 
formation of the General Assembly of the Free Church, and of the 



46 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

Christian public, as to the undertaking, and to secure their appro- 
bation and assistance, they request Dr. Wilson to prepare a memorial 
on the subject for general circulation." 

On 22d May 1844 ; Dr. Gordon reported to the next 
General Assembly that the result of the first appeal to the 
friends of Christian Missions was such as to encourage the 
Free Church not only to continue its foreign operations on 
the old scale, but to enter new fields. It was unanimously 
resolved that, considering the munificent offer reported by 
Dr. Wilson for Nagpoor, and "the lively interest in the 
missionary cause which had been manifested by the con- 
gregations and friends of the Free Church, they were not 
warranted to decline the offer, and would have painfully 
disappointed the Christian public if they had." The Assembly 
then united in a prayer of thanksgiving to God for His mar- 
vellous kindness to the Church and Missions, and thereafter 
agreed to take over a second new mission that of the Glasgow 
Missionary Association in Kafraria. 

On this Sir William Hill transferred the sum origin- 
ally offered, with interest raising it to 2674 : 15 : 2, writing 
thus to Dr. Wilson : " Now is my mind at ease respecting 
the final appropriation of this money. I thank the Lord 
that from the time He put into my heart to place the money 
at your disposal for a mission in these parts, I have had 
much peace of mind. I was assured that the desire came 
from God, and His grace has supported me throughout, and 
enables me to say, 'All things are of Thee, Lord, and of 
Thine own have I given Thee.' " Sir Donald M'Leod also 
gave Dr. Wilson this pledge of his support : " The amount 
which I shall be able to remit to Nagpoor will usually exceed, 
and will never fall short of one hundred rupees per mensem 
(D.V.) while I remain in India. There is no object connected 
with the service of the Lord in this country which I have 
more at heart, or indeed so much at heart, as contributing to 



1844 SOLEMN PKESBYTERIAN ORDINATION 47 

support and extend the institutions of the Free Church in this 
country, of late so severely tried and so greatly straitened." 
Urging that Church to occupy Agra, the capital of the neigh- 
bouring North-western Provinces, he added : "You would find 
a large amount of Christian benevolence aroused, to which at 
present you have no adequate means of penetrating." 

William Hill, Donald M'Leod, John Wilson, and Stephen 
Hislop were worthy of each other. It was fitting that the 
Eev. Dr. Wilson should preside at Hislop's ordination by the 
Free Presbytery of Edinburgh. The place was the great 
brick church hastily and temporarily run up for the Eev. 
Dr. Candlish, on the noblest unoccupied site in Edinburgh, 
on the Castle Terrace, where the college and synod buildings 
of the United Presbyterian Church now stand. Of all the 
ritual of the Presbyterian Church which history has 
made so severely solemn, but which need never be without 
the divinest dignity and most artistic reverence the service 
of the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, as described 
by St. Paul, is the most impressive. Having preached from the 
record of the call of the first missionary to Europe "After 
he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go 
into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called 
us for to preach the gospel unto (lit.' to evangelise ') them," Acts 
xvi. 10 the experienced but still young apostle of Western 
India left the pulpit, and stood surrounded by the many min- 
isters of the Presbytery, with Stephen Hislop kneeling before 
him in their midst. While he and all the brethren laid their 
hands on or towards the bowed head, he offered up to God 
the prayer of ordination, invoking the Holy Spirit to descend 
upon and dwell in the man who had just before given his 
audible assent to the great doctrines of Christianity, and 
had signed his name to the Westminster Confession of Faith, 
and spiritual and freshly-historical documents of the Free 
Church of Scotland. The act of ordination closed with the 



48 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

presiding minister and brethren, and lay elders also at tliis 
stage, giving the young missionary the right hand of fellow- 
ship. Then, returning to the pulpit, Dr. Wilson delivered to 
him an ordination charge, and thereafter addressed the people, 
closing the whole service with praise, and the threefold bene- 
diction revealed to the first missionary after Abraham, as he 
led the Israel of Jehovah from, the darkness of Egypt to the 
possession of the land of promise. 

The ordination charge was the outcome of John Wilson's 
sixteen years' experience as the most successful missionary in 
Western and Central India. It described and enforced the 
ideal which in his twenty years' career thereafter so pre- 
maturely cut short Stephen Hislop did as much to realise as 
Wilson himself. The charge links together the two men, older 
and younger, who in all respects, save the greater fluency of 
utterance which marked the elder, were alike, in pure self- 
consecration to Christ ; in love for the natives of India, and 
especially the Maratha Hindus and oppressed jungle tribes ; 
in literary scholarship and culture ; in such devotion to the 
physical sciences as a conscience tender in duty to the call to 
evangelise in season and out of season allowed them to show. 
From, that September afternoon, in the mellow glories of an 
Edinburgh autumn, lighting up the Castle rock above and 
gardens below with a wealth of almost tropical colour, some 
of the sentences echo down to us of the next generation after 
nigh half a century, and to the generations yet to come. 

THE WOEK OF AN INDIAN MISSIONARY: AN 
ORDINATION CHARGE. 

" MY DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER You have been solemnly set 
apart to the ministry of Christ by prayer and the laying on of the 
hands of the Presbytery ; and it now devolves upon me, as in pro- 
vidence the organ of the Presbytery on this occasion, to direct your 
attention for a little, with all humility and consciousness of personal 
unworthiness, to the peculiar circumstances in which you are called by 



1844 JOHN WILSON'S CHARGE TO HISLOP 49 

divine providence to maintain the Christian profession, and to exercise 
the Christian ministry. . . . 

" My dear brother, fidelity and exertion are required of you. You 
have henceforth to maintain your Christian profession, and to exercise 
your ministry in circumstances of peculiar trial and difficulty. In a 
few short days you must cut asunder the most tender of those ties 
which bind you to this the land of your nativity, the land of your 
fathers' graves, the land most hallowed in your affections for its gospel 
privileges and enjoyments, and its sufferings in the cause of Christ. 
You must bid a long, and possibly a final, adieu to your kindred and 
friends whom you have endearingly known in the flesh and will ever 
love in the spirit, to those who have hitherto been your companions in 
the Christian course, by Avhose instructions you have been edified and 
comforted, and by whose example you had hoped to be guided and 
encouraged. You must go down upon the great waters, and through 
their waves and billows and over the sandy and burning desert, you 
must be carried to the great country which has been chosen as the 
scene of your labours. There you will find yourself at once among 
people of a strange countenance, and strange tongue, and, what is more 
trying still, of a strange heart j and removed, at the same time, in a 
great degree from Christian society, sympathy, and assistance. The 
burning heat of a tropical sun may consume your strength, and enfeeble 
your exertions, and superinduce premature lassitude, and beget and 
nourish indolence and various distempers both of mind and body. 
Beholding the abominable idolatries and cruel and deadly superstitions 
of the heathen, you will desire to open your lips, and at once to cry 
aloud in their hearing, pleading the claims of Jehovah, against whom 
they have revolted, and proclaiming that message of grace of which 
you are the bearer ; but, lo, your tongue is silent and your lips are 
sealed. Your righteous soul is vexed from day to day with their 
unrighteous deeds ; but you are not even able to ply them with the 
remonstrance of a faithful Lot. In order to remove your incapacity, 
you try to catch and imitate their words, but you find yourself in a 
Babel. You select a few individuals, who have made some progress in 
education, and you proceed to address them in your own tongue ; but 
you find that from the poverty of their knowledge of it they do not 
understand you when discoursing on the only theme which excites 
your interest as capable of benefiting their souls. You sit down 
deliberately to the study of the native languages ; but you are be- 
wildered by their novel structure, harsh pronunciation, and com- 
plicated grammar, and you find demands made upon your application 

E 



50 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1844 

and patience such as have never before been demanded of you. You 
give lessons in English, to the youth willing to learn ; but years pass 
away before you observe in your pupils a tolerable proficiency. You 
make inquiry into the native religions, and you find them vast and 
gigantic systems of iniquity, instead of the feeble and fugitive conceits 
which you have imagined them to be. At last, in the good pro- 
vidence of God, you commence your labours ; and actuated principally 
by curiosity, the people gather around you, perhaps, asking one another, 
What will this babbler say ? A few of them are seemingly aroused by 
your discourse, but their excitement does not settle down in holy 
impression, and the moment after they have been sitting apparently 
devout hearers, you see them prostrating themselves before the shrine 
of a false god, or dancing round an image, literally mad on their idols. 
You open a school and instruct the young ; but while you are busy 
with them there, the parents and the Gooroo are busy at home pervert- 
ing those truths which you deliver, and striving assiduously, and alas 
successfully, to close the door of the young heart against their admit- 
tance. You sow the seed with a liberal hand ; but it falls by the 
wayside, on the shallow soil, or among the thorny and choking bushes. 
A blade here and there at last makes its appearance ; but you tremble 
lest the pestilential blasts from the marshes of heathenism should 
destroy its vitality or stop its growth. Travailing, as it were, in birth 
till you behold your children in the faith, you seem, when they are 
before you, to be weighed down with parental cares and anxieties. 
You found a native church ; but it remains long in an infantile state, 
and but feebly does the word of God sound forth from it throughout 
the province in which you dwell. The partial success which you have 
experienced in your labours is offensive to some of your own country- 
men, who like not to be disturbed in their own carelessness, and to 
have around them the work and Spirit of God witnessing against 
them. It hurts the pride of native caste and family, arouses the fury 
of priestly zeal, and forms the subject of anxious deliberation in Pan- 
chayats, and Sabhas, and Sanhedrims, and other conclaves of darkness. 
The little success which you experience is no sooner reported to the 
Christian world, than, instead of calling forth mere thankfulness to 
God, it leads to proud congratulation in the church, and intoxicates the 
steadiest friends of the missionary cause. Instead of crying aloud in 
your behalf in prayer, they sing the song of victory and triumph. 
They dream that the armies of the aliens are flying before you as the 
champion of the truth, and that Satan himself is about to abandon his 
throne on your potent challenge ; while you feel as if you were about 



1844 TWELVE PHASES OF THE MISSIONAEY IDEAL 51 

to be overwhelmed by the foe, and the arch-enemy of souls laughed to 
scorn the whole band of Christian warriors. You are about to faint in 
the day of battle ; and your companions, cut down by the climate, or 
the arduous nature of the conflict, fall at your side." 

From both missionaries, as from St. Paul and his com- 
panions when they entered Europe in obedience to the heavenly 
vision, the future was lovingly hidden ; but what a meaning 
these passages seem to have now as we read them over the 
Indian graves of the speaker and the hearer ! There is the 
same pathos in the ordination of every true missionary every 
year, whether the ritual be that of presbytery or of bishop. 
Dr. Wilson then gave the following " hints, the results of my 
own experience and inquiry and observation in India," which 
we may call the twelve phases of the missionary ideal : 

"(1.) There, where so many barriers, erected by caste and custom, 
almost totally isolate large masses of the people from a reciprocal 
influence, an extensive and varied ministration is specially incumbent 
on the messengers of the churches commissioned to labour for its 
moral regeneration. . . . You will minister both publicly and privately, 
by conversation, discussion, and preaching, and teaching, and lecturing, 
and writing, to all classes of the natives. 

"(2.) You must devote yourself to the study of the vernacular 
languages of the people. These languages are the readiest key to their 
hearts. . . . They will ' keep the more silence ' when you speak to 
them in their own language, even though they should be partially 
acquainted with yours. . . . Even the teacher of English, however 
zealous and able, labours under a disadvantage when he cannot exhibit 
the meaning of its vocables and sentences by translation into the 
language of his pupils. . . . 

" (3.) With the study of the language, conjoin that of the manners, 
customs, and habits of the people of India. . . . The knowledge you thus 
derive will be found to be of immense advantage, as suggesting the 
least offensive and most engaging deportment and address, and the 
readiest methods of forming and maintaining an acquaintance with 
those whose welfare you seek. Eemember Him who became all things 
to all men that He might save some. 

"(4.) Of not less importance and demanding perhaps still more 
application, is the study of the native religions, embracing, if possible, 



52 STEPHEN HISLOP 1844 

that of the Sanskrit and other dead languages, in which their sacred 
books are written ; and to attend to which languages, it is a powerful 
motive, that they enter more largely into the composition of the 
different vernacular languages than Latin into our own mother tongue. 
I advise you to study the native religions, not that you may set your- 
self, in the course of your labours, to the hopeless exercise of lopping 
off every twig and branch of the Upas tree of error, which sheds its 
baneful influence throughout the length and breadth of the land ; but 
that you may clearly distinguish between the branches and stump, and 
apply the axe to the very root of the tree. . . . Using aright the test 
of truth, you may discover what ingredients of a pure patriarchal 
faith 011 which, like Paul at Athens, when he quoted the monu- 
mental inscriptions and poems of the Greeks, you may commence your 
discourse and conduct your argument with something like an appeal 
to admitted principles are still to be found in the compounds of 
heathenism, and capable of being so separated from it, as to give you 
an opportunity of directing their attention to the great source from 
which they have been derived. . . . 

" (5.) However comprehensive and extensive your ministry may be, 
it ought to be conducted on the principles of Christian prudence, and 
as far as possible agreeably to such a system as in the main may promise 
the greatest amount of good. You ought so to dispose of the leaven, 
that it may most speedily and powerfully affect the mass. . . . 

" (6.) Direct your attention to the Christian and general instruction 
and education of the young, with a direct reference to the work both of 
enlightenment and of conversion. . . . 

" (7.) If ' to the poor the gospel is to be preached,' by education in 
India, there must be schools taught through the medium of the native 
languages. This is a position from which no advocate of Christian 
missions can ever be dislodged. We can give our testimony as to the 
benefits which the vernacular schools which have been instituted, 
confer upon the people. Though conducted under serious disadvan- 
tages, most commonly by unconverted teachers, under the superin- 
tendence of, and with regular visits and spiritual instruction by, 
missionaries and their native assistants they accomplish much good, 
in giving the parents a suitable demonstration of the interest which is 
taken by missionaries in their real welfare, in neutralising or mitigating 
the domestic tuition in heathenism, and communicating that knowledge 
of the Scriptures of truth which are used in them and of the first 
principles of our holy faith. . . . 

" (8.) Seminaries of a vastly higher character are not only desirable 



1844 TWELVE PHASES OF THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 53 

but necessary in India, if we would wish to see the work of the Lord 
prosper. We must give not only such an education as will be received 
by the poor, but such an education as will be prized by the rich and 
middle classes of society, embracing instruction in all those branches 
of science and literature, which they wish their youth to study, and 
for proficiency in which alone, they are willing to place their youth 
under our charge, even at the risk of their conversion through that 
religious instruction which they know we also impart. . . . The 
secular must never be allowed to predominate over, but ever be held in 
subordination to, the spiritual. . . . And you must not overlook the 
education of the daughters of India. . . . 

"(9.) You will procure the elements of a Sabbath or week-clay 
congregation, small it may be in point of numbers at first, but of 
immense importance as the commencement of that regular assembling 
of the people for public worship. But you must carry the gospel 
without, as well as proclaim its glorious truths to those who will come 
to listen within. . . . By all classes of religious teachers in India, 
instruction is usually delivered under the open firmament of heaven, 
in private houses, or in temporary tabernacles, . . . and the missionary 
is acknowledged to be merely in the way of his duty when lie follows 
a similar practice. . . . 

"(10.) You will doubtless see it to be your duty, as soon as 
audiences can be procured, to deliver such courses of public lectures on 
the Avorks and ways of God in creation and providence, on literature, 
and science, and history, and on the claims and purport of the different 
systems of religion professing to be revelations from God. . . . 

"(11.) You will zealously lend your services in the great work of 
the circulation of the sacred Scriptures and religious booJcs and tracts in 
India. . . . 

" (12.) The converts will demand of you constant instruction, watchful- 
ness, guidance, and Jcindness ; as early as possible they should be formed 
into a regular Christian church. ... I recommend to your attention 
an admirable little work, entitled, Thoughts on Propagating Christianity 
more effectually among the Heathen, by Dr. Marshman, one of the greatest 
of Indian missionaries. Our highly honoured and esteemed brother, 
Dr. Duff, has most eloquently and fully unfolded his views of the 
economics of Christian missions ; and with his works you are already 
familiar. From our missionary biography much may be learned, and 
much encouragement derived. . . . 

" In the name of this Presbytery, and that of all the Mends 
by whom we are now surrounded, and of the whole Church whose 



54 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

messenger you are honoured to be, as well as for myself, I affectionately 
and earnestly bid you God speed." 

Then, addressing the congregation on the self-sacrifice of 
the founders of the Mission, Dr. Wilson thus appealed to 
all true Christians: "Do these and others like-minded with 
them, exceed their duty and their privilege ? No ; they are 
wise for time and eternity. They are seeking and finding 
the greatest luxury which a man can enjoy, that of doing 
good to the souls of men now and yet to be born. When 
they are far removed from the gold, and glory, and honour of 
this world, to rest from their labours, their works shall follow 
them. They will have their reward of grace; and as the 
generations of Hindus, one after another, are removed likewise 
from this earthly scene, they will find many from among 
them to the accession of their own joy, and the praise of the 
Eedeemer enter heaven, as saved through those very opera- 
tions which they have originated and supported, and take 
their place with that great multitude which no man can 
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, 
who, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed 
with white robes and palms in their hands, cry with a loud 
voice, saying, Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the 
throne, and to the Lamb. Do you not desire to share in the 
satisfaction and peace which they now enjoy, and in the 
glorious prospect which is before them ? " 

With such a charge in his memory Hislop surveyed the 
varied peoples of Bombay city, and studied the organisation 
of what is now the Wilson Missionary College, which was 
filling again after the panic caused by the baptism of Narayan 
Sheshadri. The Presbytery of Bombay appointed Eev. Dr. 
M. Mitchell to accompany him and his wife to Nagpoor, a 
journey of 600 miles, in those days tedious in time but full 
of ever new surprise and delight to the observant missionary 
and naturalist. Having passed from Bombay proper, after an 



1845 FEOM BOMBAY TO NAGPOOlt 55 

inspection of the American mission at Ahmednagar, into 
the State of Haidarabad, he made his first study of the 
Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical sculptured caves of Elura, 
in the Kailas of which Dr. Wilson had preached Christ 
thirteen years before. At Ajanta, a little farther on, in 
the neighbourhood of which the wounded of Wellington's 
army were received after the battle of Assye, he saw 
Buddhism alone in its splendour, in some thirty caves with 
fresco paintings which cover the eight centuries of Gautama 
Buddha's supremacy in India. As Brahmanism had stamped 
out Buddhism so did Assye mark, in 1803, the destruction 
of the confederacy of Marathas based on Brahmanism, which 
laid all India finally at the feet of the race charged above 
all others to be the servant of Christ. Descending the pass 
in the range which divides Jalna and the plateau of the 
Dekhan from, the valley of the Tapti, the missionary party 
marched slowly eastward through Berar, then oppressed by 
native rule, now the cotton garden of British India. They 
preached as they went the glad tidings of the Kingdom, 
heard for the first time by the villagers and townsfolk. 
Hislop had his "well-qualified pundit," and every hour in- 
creased his stock of Maratha vocables and idioms ; but he 
must have learned more from the practised tongue and 
accurate scholarship of Dr. Murray Mitchell. 

"NAGPOOR, 26th April 1845. 

" MY DEAREST EGBERT . . . We advanced at an easy pace mov- 
ing or halting just as it suited ourselves, and, what was the best 
of all, we had reason to believe that our heavenly Father was with us, 
guiding, and protecting us. It is, indeed, the greatest of all comforts 
to be able to realise this, for though whether at home or abroad we feel 
ourselves secure under the shield of an everlasting love, I think I have 
been enabled to feel more my dependence on God since I left Britain ; 
and though I often forget the hand that sustains me, still there are 
seasons when I enjoy very sweet communion with my gracious 
Preserver and Eedeemer. Oh, it is delightful to enter far into the 
holy of holies, and to have power with God in prayer to know that 



56 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

we are standing alone with Jehovah, and that yet there is an Advocate 
and High Priest, bearing our nature who, in the upper sanctu- 
ary, is carrying on the work of intercession for us. Eobert, are you 
cold in devotion ? Are the Scriptures seldom read with pleasure ? 
Are you attending to everything else more than to the one thing need- 
ful ? I trust, my dear brother, this is not now the case. I trust that 
the period of bondage, when you served God with reserve and through 
fear, has given place to the cheerful and devoted obedience of a loving 
son. I cannot say I have attained to this complete enlargement, but 
I should be rejoiced to hear that you have, as I have, been made fully 
sensible of the undesirableness of continuing in a state of slavish terror. 
What a delightful thing it would be for me to join your family circle, 
and to perceive that spiritual religion was habitual with you as daily 
food, and that edifying conversation was as natural as worldly dis- 
course. If we ever have the happiness to meet, as I earnestly pray 
we shall yet, with God's permission, would not you like that it should 
be as sons of God brethren in the Lord, visibly reflecting our 
Father's image ? Well, if in God's providence, we are not allowed to 
see each other in the flesh and, oh, how many are the warnings we 
get of our mortality let us be resigned, and let it be our chief aim to 
be preparing for joining the General Assembly and Church of the first- 
born, where we may meet as members of God's heavenly family, and 
enjoy communion with one another and the Lamb in the midst of the 
throne. When that clay arrives may we see all around us whom God 
has given us ! 

"At Poona we stayed over the Sabbath and preached. James 
Mitchell there is a very simple diligent missionary. There we 
engaged a palanquin for Erasma with thirteen bearers the expense, all 
the distance from that to this (550 miles), being 8. There also I bought 
a horse for .20, which, with the daily food and the hire of a hostler, was 
the amount of my expenditure. Mr. M. Mitchell was also on horseback. 
We had a numerous retinue of servants eight or nine besides the 
palanquin men. We had also eight camels with their attendants. We 
carried our beds and tables, chairs and cooking utensils, which were in 
daily request. We travelled about twenty miles each day, excepting 
Sabbaths ten miles in the morning and ten in the evening. During 
the first half of the road we had travellers' bungalows to rest in during 
the heat of the day and sleep in at nights ; but during the last half 
we had to buy two tents one large for us, and a smaller for the 
servants which we carried about with us and erected under the shade 
of a tree. In the morning we generally set out before dawn and 



1845 A MISSIONARY MARCH 57 

travelled for two hours after sunrise, i.e. till 8 A.M. In the middle of 
the day no European, whose constitution is not thoroughly acclimated, 
dares to venture out. The sun's rays are so powerful that they give 
him a headache in the course of half a minute. In the evening we 
started generally between four and five, when the heat begins to lessen 
in the cold season. (In the hot season, however, the heat of the day 
continues till 10 r.M.) As part of every journey was in the dark, we 
always had a torch-bearer, who went before the palld, and showed us 
riders the stones and the holes in the path. You may imagine that we 
took it very leisurely. The roads at the beginning were pretty good, like 
a dusty parish road in Scotland without hedges or walls. The country 
was generally upland hill ridges. But the greater part of the way was 
by a track, which one bullock-cart had followed after another without 
much regard to eligibility, though sometimes it happened that each 
cart had chosen a track for itself and left us doubtful which one we 
ought to select. The whole route was through a bare country, devoid 
of long grass or much foliage. Sometimes, however, it was fertile 
enough, producing extensive fields of cotton, which grows in a deep 
black soil. The cotton is a low growing shrub, consisting of little 
more than two switches branching from each other. Occasionally the 
road lay through jungle, which is very much like a copse plantation, but 
always containing some beautiful trees one with scarlet papilionace- 
ous blossoms is very magnificent ; its name, I think, is Butea. 
Leguminose trees were most frequent (on the coast it is the palm 
tribe that flourishes). Acacias, tamarinds, etc., were abundant. On the 
road we saw wild boars, monkeys, antelopes, peacocks, and paroquets 
innumerable ; no tigers or cobras ; scorpions are very frequent. They 
drop down, as do also lizards, from between the ceiling and roof of the 
house, and creep along the carpet of a room. 

" We went some marches to see the caves of Elura and Ajanta, 
which are very remarkable works of art. The former are more exten- 
sive, consisting of excavations made perhaps at different times by 
Brahmans, Buddhists, and Jainas. The Brahmans and Buddhists 
follow two different systems of religion; the Jainas are reckoned 
an offshoot of the Buddhists. The temple caves are certainly very 
imposing, very dismal, most of them in ruins and the abode of large 
bats. At Ajanta the excavations are exclusively by Buddhists, who 
have covered the ceiling and walls with fresco work, representing the 
customs of the people, and too often seems fitted to minister to the lust 
of the age. The whole that I saw gave me a great insight into the 
mythology of the people, but there was much to disgust and to excite 



58 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

compassion. The Hindu temples, whether above or under ground, are 
very dark, meet emblem of the nature of their superstition and the 
state of the worshippers. We were nearly six weeks on our march. 

" The first place we settled at was at Sitabaldi, which is about three 
miles on the Bombay side of the native city of Nagpoor. Sitabaldi 
is the station of some European artillery and a regiment of native 
infantry. Here the Resident, or political agent of the H.E.I.C., 
has fixed his quarters, and hence he maintains a regular intercourse 
with the Eaja's court. The friend with whom we took up our abode 
is Dr. Eyre, a brother of Mrs. Montague Stanley, whom I visited at 
Rothesay. He is a naturally sagacious man, and of deep experience 
in Christian life. There are few characters you can conceive more 
consistent than his. In India we frequently meet with the matured 
saint. It makes us feel our inexperience. In the house of this sincere 
disciple we spent several weeks, and it was there that all the plans for 
the future conduct of the Mission were laid. Captain Hill, who lives 
at Kainthi, ten miles on the Calcutta side of Nagpoor, with whom I 
am now living, joined us at Sitabaldi, while we were seeking divine 
direction in our deliberations. He is a sweet Christian, not so able 
as Dr. Eyre, but fully more bland and benevolent. Erasma and I 
like him very much. He has been a believer only about four years 
his wife, now deceased, having been in Christ before him by about a 
year. It was his wife's fortune, and at her request that he devoted 
the sum for the establishment of a Mission here. 

" One of the first things determined on was to fix the head- 
quarters of the Mission, which was settled in favour of Sitabaldi. 
At the same time operations are to be commenced at Kamthi, 
which is a large military cantonment, with a population of two 
or three thousand soldiers, native and European. The Queen's regi- 
ment which is lying there at present is the Scots Fusiliers, many of 
whom are my countrymen. They would fain have me to preach to 
them, but as my usual residence will be at Sitabaldi, I prefer 
preaching to the Europeans immediately around me. At the same 
time I hold a prayer meeting in Kamthi once a week, and visit the 
military hospitals, which occupies a whole day. I have a prayer meeting 
also at Sitabaldi besides preaching twice on Sabbaths. Of my hearers 
there are generally the half officers, the half men. My personal ac- 
quaintance with the latter class is not very extensive, as, with the 
exception of the hospitals, I have not many opportunities of mixing 
with them. I am necessarily brought into closer contact with the 
former class, for they are the only society I can have in private. 



1845 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF HISLOP'S CHARACTER 59 

Besides Eyre and Hill we have two pious officers at Sitabaldi, one of 
whom is just leaving for England. At Kamthi besides Hill there are 
Major Wynch (a brother of Lady Sale's) and Captain Penny, who are 
both, especially the latter, eminent Christians. There are others, true 
disciples, but younger in years and experience. ..." 

His three weeks' residence in Bombay had, all uncon- 
consciously to himself, left behind it this impression of his 
character on Eobert Nesbit, the greatest of Marathi scholars, 
and most saintly of men, little given to eulogy: "In the 
selection of Mr. Hislop you have indeed enjoyed the guidance 
and blessing of the great Head of the Church. His estab- 
lished piety, his enlightened zeal, his calm and steady pur- 
pose and patience, his sweet disposition and temper, his 
powerful intellect, and his habits of substantial thought and 
strict reasoning, mark him out as peculiarly fitted, not only 
for missionary work in general, but for commencing and 
carrying on the operations of an untried sphere." Is this to 
be justified in the coming years ? It is one of the many illus- 
trations which marked his whole life from his boyhood, that 
this quiet lover of silence and keen observer possessed the 
power, given only to ruling spirits, of raising all who came 
under his influence. He lived in the Spirit, he walked in 
the Spirit, while he never ceased to be himself; and hence 
there rayed out from him an influence which drew men to his 
Master. 



CHAPTEE III 

FOUNDING THE NAGPOOR MISSION 

Joy of Sir William Hill Christian officers form a Mission Board The ver- 
nacular languages Hislop's spiritual equipment The Kalanki dissenters 
Hinduism and Islam Natural history letter to his brother Kamthi 
school First Scottish communion service Conversion of an officer 
Opposition of the episcopal chaplain and others Hislop's defence 
Institution founded in Nagpoor Taking the bull by the horns First 
Tamil converts First fruit of the Eastern Marathas Rev. Dr. Hunter 
arrives as colleagiic Tour ninety miles south to Chanda The cotton 
and coal fields of Central India Ignorance a barrier in the way of 
Christianity First Telugu baptism Story of Kotlingam, the carpenter's 
son First girls' school in Nagpoor The second Ferumal and his 
family Hislop in the prospect of death from hydrophobia Journey to 
Madras in the hot season Standard of baptism Historic discovery of 
tertiary fossils Educational missions truly evangelising Return by 
Calcutta and Jabalpoor to Nagpoor. 

WHEN, on the 13th February 1845, Stephen Hislop and 
his wife settled at Sitabaldi, the civil station a mile and a 
half to the west of the great city of Nagpoor, Sir William 
Hill hurried in to welcome them from Kamthi, the military 
station, ten miles away, on the north-east side of the city. 
" The ardent desire of our hearts/' wrote that officer, " has in 
the Lord's good time now come to pass, and we are called 
upon to render thanks to our God for having given ear to 
our supplications ; as on this blessed occasion the times of 
refreshing have come from the presence of the Lord upon us, 
and upon this part of the heathen land in which we dwell." 
The first step was to form the officers mentioned in Mr. Hislop's 
letter Major Wynch, Captain Hill, Captain Penny, and Dr. 



1845 



THE MISSION BUNGALOW 



61 



Eyre into a financial board to organise and manage, with 
the missionary, the secular affairs of the new settlement. 
The Christian residents at Sitabaldi and Kamthi subscribed 
240 a year for the mission, and in consideration of the 
English services to be conducted on Sunday and Wednesday 
evening. The "warm-hearted" Scottish soldiers, grateful 
for the ministrations of one who virtually became their chap- 
lain, and delighted to visit them when in hospital, volun- 




STEPIIEN IIISLOP'S MISSION BUNGALOW. 



teered their offerings to the mission. Sir Donald M'Leod 
gave his promised aid on account of the two German evan- 
gelists, now increased to three by a new arrival, who acted 
as catechists and preachers to the natives, until a native 
Christian agency could be called and trained. In a short 
time Mr. Hislop secured a bungalow at the foot of Sitabaldi 
Bock, facing the city, and that continued to be the mission- 
house all his time, after which it was acquired by the rail- 
way from Bombay. 



62 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

The first practical question which faced the infant mission 
was that of the vernacular languages. Which was to be first 
mastered? In this meeting-place of the races of northern 
and eastern, western and peninsular India there was a Babel 
of tongues. Apart from the lingua franca of Oordoo or 
Hindustani, common to all India since the Mohammedan 
invasion, and from the official Persian in which the business 
of the courts was carried on till liislop got that abuse 
reformed, there were four great languages spoken by the four 
chief elements of the population. Marathi had spread west- 
ward with the conquering race, and promised to become the 
predominant Hindu tongue. Hence Hislop had begun to 
learn it in Bombay, and did not cease until he mastered its 
most obscure idioms. Gondi was the tongue of the aborigines 
in the uplands ; from his first tour he devoted him- 
self to its study, reduced it to writing, and prepared what 
would have been a notable work on its folk-lore, had he lived 
to complete the work, which Sir Eichard Temple edited after 
his death. These two were the right and left hands of his 
direct ministry to the natives. Less important to the ISTag- 
poor mission then, and diminishing in value every year since, 
were Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi. The two first the ex- 
quisitely soft tongues of south India were spoken chiefly 
by the Madras troops and servants, who formed the largest 
proportion of the 50,000 inhabitants of Kamthi. The last, 
the most extensively spoken of all the Hindu languages, 
is the speech of the Gangetic districts to the north of 
Nagpoor. His knowledge of Marathi gave Mr. Hislop as 
much experience of Hindi also as his duties demanded. But 
from the first, and all through his career, this variety of 
languages, of families so different as the Aryan Marathi and 
Hindi, and the Dravidian Tamil, Telugu, and Gondi, increased 
the toil and the difficulties of the missionaries. 

The spiritual equipment with which the young missionary 



1845 MIGHT IN PRAYER THE SECRET OF SUCCESS G3 

entered on his apostolate may be imagined from this letter to 
Professor Duns, the friend to whom he had always laid bare 
his soul as to no other. He writes after seven months' 
experience of India : 

"SiTABALDi, IQth July 1845. . . . When I think of all that the 
Becleemer has done for sinners, I do feel astonished that I should 
remain insensible to the amount of His love. And when I reflect on 
the freeness of His salvation, and on my own career of carelessness 
and ingratitude, there is nothing on which I can place any confidence 
save His finished and meritorious work. My only resource is, as a 
condemned, helpless, hopeless sinner, to flee into the city of refuge. 
But what I had to complain of was that while I saw my need of a 
Saviour, and was, as I trust, relying on Him, my faith was little else 
than an inoperative principle. It is true I had begun to feel the evil 
of sin and the purifying influence of the Gospel a little more than I 
had done before ; but your letter, when it arrived, at once pointed out 
the cause of all the previous coldness and indifference, and the source 
of the then felt deficiency in love and zeal, in ascribing them to a 
neglect of secret communion with God. Yes, my dear friend, I will 
confess to you that herein I was very unmindful, I was a comparative 
stranger to my closet, and lived far away from God, to whom I con- 
sidered myself brought nigh by the blood of reconciliation. Nothing 
could be more infatuated, nothing could more clearly show the corrup- 
tion of the human heart or the success of Satan's temptations, but I 
hope I am now enabled to perceive my error, and to detect the 
desperate deceitfulness of the old man and the old serpent. I am 
convinced there is nothing equal to that earnest and continued 
wrestling with God as a means of obtaining blessings from the Most 
High. Without it, though we may draw out a miserable existence, 
there is no spiritual health, 110 soul prosperity ; but with it we are 
honourable as sons of the King of Heaven, as princes having power 
to prevail with God. And if we prevail with God, we shall also 
prevail with men. Might in prayer is indeed the true secret of 
ministerial success. 

"In this country we feel the peculiar helplessness of human 
instrumentality. We come in contact with Hindus prepossessed with 
the superstition of ages ; with Mussulmans filled with contempt for 
every form of belief but their own ; and with Christians who have 
learned to look upon all religions as alike. A minister of the gospel 



64 ' STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

here, who feels the responsibility of his office, would have reason still 
more than at home to give himself up to despair, did he not know 
that God through Christ can render him sufficient for all things. 
This is his consolation : As thy day is, so shall thy strength be. 
Oh, for greater faith to appropriate the promise of God to myself. 
Then I should have access to all the divine fulness of grace. There is 
no want 'in Him no want of gifts, and no want of willingness to give. 
The want is in ourselves a want of room to receive. We think our- 
selves full enough already ; we are straitened in our desires. My 
dear friend, when you have nearness of approach to the mercy seat, 
do not forget the case of one, who is placed in one of the arduous 
posts of the battlefield, but who feels himself little qualified to make 
head against the formidable host that opposes him. The very idea of 
living in the neighbourhood of a city without a single Christian 
inhabitant is almost overwhelming. But when I enter within its 
walls, and pass through its streets, I am still more forcibly taught the 
dreadful alienation of the human heart from God. Nagpoor is indeed 
a place of darkness, and full of the habitations of cruelty. In that 
part of it near the Eaja's palace, you might hear of criminals beaten 
and starved to death ; in another quarter, while you would encounter 
herds of lazy oxen suffered to wander about at large, which it is 
accounted a work of the greatest merit to feed, you might perceive the 
body of a human being allowed by his fellow-citizens his proud and 
callous-hearted fellow-citizens to lie where the soul had left it, lest 
some pollution should be contracted in the attempt to remove it. 
There is much need of the prayers of all God's people in behalf of this 
land, and much need of all your efforts to enlighten your congregations 
on their duty to the heathen. I know that we cannot be too earnest ; 
for oh, it is a great work. It is sad to think that there is not a single 
herald of the Cross within 400 miles of this station an extent of 
country 800 miles broad, and upwards of that in length, without a 
solitary missionary to tell the perishing population of the mercy of 
God and the love of the Saviour. And yet it is encouraging to know 
that the work of enlightenment and conversion must go on, for it is of 
God. Before His almighty power the strongholds of Satan will be 
overthrown a system of error, the growth of centuries, will be 
uprooted. 

" Even now Hinduism is not flourishing. So long as the heart is 
unchanged there will always, it is true, be enough of aversion to the 
truth j but God, by past convulsions of states, and by the present 
silent process of diffusing knowledge, which have both contributed to 



1845 A NEW SECT 65 

the subversion of Bralimanical influence, seems to be preparing the 
way for the introduction of His own glorious gospel. The change 
which has been effected in this State since I came here is very sur- 
prising. In the metropolis upwards of 2000 families, dissatisfied 
with the superstitions of their forefathers, have within the last few 
months forsaken the temples a,nd their idol-worship and adopted a 
purer faith. What their creed really is it is difficult to say, and, 
indeed, the whole affair is wrapt in mystery ; but doubtless it is an 
important movement one in which I take a very lively interest. It 
reminds me of the reformation that is at present going on in Germany, 
which seems to have been as little looked for eighteen months ago. 
One of our German brethren here comes from the district where the 
new secession from the ranks of Eomanism has taken place, and cer- 
tainly he was much astonished to hear of the event. I was in like 
manner surprised to learn about the rise of the Kalankis in our own 
neighbourhood (such is the name of the Hindu reformers), and not the 
least wonderful circumstance connected with it is that they principally 
consist of Brahmans. It grieves me to feel that I have no access to 
them. One reason is that I do not sufficiently know their language 
yet ; but, even though I had acquired a perfect knowledge of it, there 
is another cause which prevents my having any intercourse with them. 
Though they are so numerous in the city, yet ask any of the people 
whom you meet about the new sect and they plead entire ignorance. 
The Kalankis conceal their opinions as much as they can through fear 
of the Eaja, and their neighbours do not like to speak on the subject 
lest they should be suspected of heresy also. I trust that the spirit of 
inquiry will spread more and more, and become more decided ; and who 
knows but that the Lord may have much people in the city of Nagpoor. 
" Till recently I have conducted divine service to the Europeans 
twice a clay on Sabbaths since I came here. I am now giving more 
of my attention to the native languages, the proper study of which 
is inconsistent with the preparation of two discourses in a week. 
I, however, continue my prayer meetings, of which I have two 
during the week, as also my visits to the military hospitals, 
which I hope are profitable to all concerned. There is much need of 
an increase of our instrumentality at this station. The German 
brethren, of whom there are three associated with me, are not like 
one of my countrymen, they are uneducated young men, simple 
and inexperienced as children in the ways of the world, and do not 
command in the eyes of either the natives or the British the same 
respect as a. Scotsman or Englishman. . . ." 

F 



66 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1845 

At the very outset this new sect filled him with a 
hope destined never to be realised any more than was 
Duff's regarding the similar Kharfcabhojas of Bengal. A 
Mohammedan of the nearest Bombay district, Khandesh, 
had begun to propagate a modified Islam. To the 
Hindus he represented it as the close of the iron age for 
which they longed, and the opening of the golden age of the 
Kalki, Kalanki, or white horse, on which the tenth and last 
avatara of Vishnu is to appear with a drawn sword, blazing 
like a comet, for the destruction of evil and restoration of 
purity. A great many families in Nagpoor and its neigh- 
bourhood, chiefly of the Brahmanical and other high castes, 
soon embraced Kalankism. In their secret assemblies 
they were in the habit of showing their contempt for 
Brahmanism by trampling on their sacred string, and 
making a cow of jaggery, 1 which they ignominiously demo- 
lished with their shoes. The Eaja, hearing of these hereti- 
cal meetings, sent to disperse the innovators who, on being- 
detected, were put out of caste. The number thus ex- 
pelled was so great, that His Highness was anxious to heal 
the breach by the readmission to their former privileges of 
all the Kalankis who were willing to petition for it. The 
up&dhya of the royal family, who is generally recognised as 
the head of the Brahmans of the district, was ordered to 
restore all such by purification, The purification ended, the 
court Brahmans were desired by the Eaja to celebrate the 
happy event by a dinner, of which the lapsed and their 
restorers alike partook. This measure gave much umbrage 
to those Brahmans, who were independent of kingly influ- 
ence ; they congregated in great crowds, and decreed, that all 
the Kalankis were still out of caste, and that all who had 
eaten with any of them were, by that very act,, outcastes too. 

1 Date sugar, and the same word, both being forms of Sanskrit Sarkara. 
See Colonel Ynle's invaluable Glossary, 1886. 



1845 THE VAEIED ORIGIN OF MODERN HINDUISM 67 

Now commenced an internal war, which raged most fiercely 
for some time. The Baja threatened that he would prevent 
the stubborn part of the priests from exercising their vocation 
in his city, and they declared that they would bring down 
the curse of their gods upon his royal head. The Eaja was 
at length forced to yield, his court Brahmans were obliged 
to make an atonement for their offence, the bigoted section 
triumphed, and the Kalanlds were left in their outcaste state 
neither Mussulmans nor Hindus. 

The "unconquerable preserver," Vishnu, however, in his 
nine manifestations, is far less the popular Hindu god of 
Nagpoor, than the destroying and bestial Shiva. Of these 
two phases of idolatry, wrote Hislop, the worship of the 
obscene linga is vastly the more degrading. There is another 
very common object of adoration at Nagpoor, which shows, 
in whatever light it may be viewed, the firm grasp which 
Satan has got over the poor Hindus the Naga or Cobra. 
And in the villages bordering on the jungles there is a deity 
that receives more honour than all others the Wagha or 
Tiger. In his first preaching tour, his attention was arrested 
by some pieces of wood, which were sheltered under roofs of 
straw at each end of the villages. At first sight, they appeared 
to be stools with four legs awkwardly spread out to make them 
stand; but they had rudely carved heads with gaping mouths 
intended to represent tigers. They were the tutelary gods of 
their respective villages, to protect them from the ravages of 
wild beasts. 

These facts showed Hislop what, in the neighbouring pro- 
vince of Berar Sir Alfred Lyall discovered and philosophised 
upon long after, that the religion which, under the name of 
Hinduism, has covered all India, is not a uniform system, 
but that, as it has been altered in successive ages by contact 
with different nations, so it has diverse aspects in different dis- 
tricts. Nay, in the same district, it presents the appearance 



68 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

of a complex system, framed out of various elements. It was 
not the Mussulmans who were the first to leave an impression 
on the religion of India. Long before the Mussulmans crossed 
the Indus, a process of change had been going on, to adjust it 
to the habits of those who are now classed under the general 
name of Hindus. At Nagpoor we may still trace a distinction 
between the gods of the Sudras and the divinities of the 
Brahmans; A Brahman professes to despise many of the 
deities that are special favourites among the cultivators, and 
his contempt for them falls little short of the feeling with 
which a cultivator would regard an idol of the conquered 
Gonds. So apparent, even at the present clay, is the varied 
origin of modern Hinduism. So far from having been always 
from the remotest antiquity the same unchanged, and as some 
would have us believe, unchangeable system, it is in fact a 
heterogeneous compound, formed and adapted as the circum- 
stances of time and place required. Moulded and reduced to 
something like uniformity it has indeed been under the plastic 
hand of the Brahmans, who have employed their power and 
art in constituting themselves its proud head : still it is no 
better than the image of gold and silver, and brass and iron 
and clay, which, during so many ages, claimed the homage of 
the nations of Western Asia and Europe; and before the little 
stone, which is yet destined to fill the whole earth, it shall 
be broken to pieces. 

The Kalanki excitement so stirred up the people that two 
of the German catechists, when preaching in the city, were 
assaulted as in some way connected with the reforms. The 
third, Mr. Bartels, was in charge of the Tamil-speaking people 
in Kamthi. In the midst of his organising work and exact- 
ing daily duties, the missionary did not cease to be the 
naturalist. He wrote thus to his brother Robert : 

"SiTABALDi, 12th July 1845. . . . We had entered on our 
house the last time I wrote you. It is a nice enough abode. You 



1845 INDIA'S CHARMS FOR THE ENTOMOLOGIST 69 

would scarcely expect such, a one in the centre of India. It would be 
a new thing to have scorpions as part of your domestic establishment, 
to find perhaps one or two a clay careering over the carpet with their 
tails up, ready to insert them in anything that comes in their way. 
And it would be a novelty to live in the neighbourhood of serpents, to 
find a cobra as near your door as the ' sethers ' were said to approach 
the abbey ' Ketreat ' ; to hear the jackals howling about at night, and 
to know that there are hyenas in your immediate vicinity, and tigers 
in the jungles at a distance. But with these exceptions and the influ- 
ence of the climate, which certainly makes Europeans very languid, 
Indian life is very delightful. Sitting between the open door and the 
lamp burning on the table in the evening, I get enough of insects without 
requiring to seek for them. Winged ants, beetles, grasshoppers, and 
moths all buzz and leap about my ears, and entangle themselves in my 
hair, or disport themselves round the light till they perish. I have 
been doing my best to preserve a few for you. I even employed a boy 
to collect butterflies, but my success has been small. I have got a box 
to keep my captures from the ravages of ants, but it is impossible to 
preserve them. I have had the most beautiful butterflies eaten away 
in a night with nothing but the wings left. I had got four kinds of 
mantis, but not one of them survives, except a specimen I got to-day. 
How long it may be ' to the fore ' I cannot tell. I hope to fall upon 
some better mode of ^securing them ; but you know I have not much 
time for these things. It is a small kind of brown ant that is so des- 
tructive to animal matter. But, as you know, we have the white 
species in India, which delights in nothing so much as vegetable tissue 
made into paper. It is lamentable to fall upon a book that has fallen 
a prey to their mandibles. However valuable before, it is rendered 
perfectly useless. This I ought to have included among the miseries 
of India. 

" But as an entomologist you would be in your element among 
the ants. There is a black species very large. This is the season 
for all sorts of insects moving abroad the time of the growth of 
trees and the springing of herbs. The rains have commenced. At 
first they came down with tremendous violence, and produced almost 
an immediate change on the face of nature. We shared also in the 
benefit. It was felt to be very refreshing. Before we had been very 
weak ; the days were hot and the nights oppressive. We went to bed 
thirsty and awoke parched ; we arose from our couch in the morning 
and felt a desire immediately to throw ourselves down 011 a sofa. Still 
we kept our health. When the monsoon came, our bodies became very 



70 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

elastic and vigorous. After the first shower had fallen, I went out to 
climb a hill that lies behind our house, and to water the shooting roots 
of the plants. But the rainy season is the most dangerous. Europeans 
are apt to expose themselves too much, and there are more deaths during 
the monsoon than any other part of the year. September is reckoned 
an unhealthy month. In October the cold dry weather commences. 
We have great cause of thankfulness to our gracious God that we have 
been free from sickness, with very slight exceptions, since we came to 
this country. Both of us, and especially Erasma, were weak during the 
hot seasons, but we have never been really ill. Neither of us has been 
a day confined to our room since our arrival here. Yesterday I had 
an attack during the night, but I am now quite better. The only 
place where I am afraid I shall feel a constitutional weakness is in my 
liver, which never troubled me in Europe, but has made itself felt 
within the last month. Hepatitis is extremely common here." 

By October of that year a native teacher from Dr. Wilson's 
Institution at Bombay arrived, and Mr. Hislop removed to 
Kamtlii for a time to open the mission school there. He 
began it with fifty-nine pupils, a few the children of English 
soldiers and Eurasians, some native Christians from Madras, 
but the majority Hindus and Mussulmans. Tamil was the 
vernacular of the natives, but all were taught English 
likewise, and above all the English Bible. "At present we 
have no vernacular schools, as at other stations, from which 
to draft the more promising youths for our English institu- 
tion ; but, if the Lord will, we hope to be able to enlarge our 
operations to that extent by-and-bye." 

A Scottish sergeant of artillery named Liddell was found 
qualified in character and in education as so many of the 
old East India Company's men were under the double-army 
system to take charge of the mission there when Mr. Hislop 
was at Sitabaldi and Nagpoor city. The local board bought 
him out for Es. 400, and gave him a salary of 60 JSTagpoor 
rupees a month. "I shall never consider myself fully re- 
lieved from Kamthi," wrote Hislop to the committee at home, 
" until I can welcome the arrival of an additional labourer 



1845 A YOUNG OFFICER TRANSFORMED 71 

sent out by the Church. I hope to hear from you soon 
in answer to our application for a teacher or an ordained 
missionary." As unofficial chaplain to the Presbyterians and 
evangelical members of the Church of England at Kamthi, 
his work had been heavy. The case of the young officer 
described in the following letter is typical of many in which 
his personal influence and loving faithfulness to the Master 
all unconsciously drew both his own countrymen and the 
natives to Christ : 



I, 26th December 1845. . . . Since I came over here, besides 
preaching to Tamil Christians through an interpreter, I have had 
divine service on Sabbath for the Presbyterian soldiers in the artillery 
schoolroom, the use of which has been kindly granted by Colonel 
Wynch for that purpose, as well as for our weekly prayer-meetings. 
On the last Sabbath of November the Lord's Supper was administered 
in this cantonment, for the first time, according to the Presbyterian 
form. About thirty disciples encompassed the table of the Lord, all 
meeting in spirit, as I trust, with the Master of the feast. The day 
selected was in anticipation of the march of the Scots Fusiliers, who 
were under orders to proceed to the North- West Provinces of Bengal, 
to be in readiness in the event of hostilities being commenced in the 
Panjab. A small but devoted band of that corps joined in renewing 
their sacramental engagements of fidelity to the Captain of their salva- 
tion, according to the simple rites of their fatherland, from which they 
have been separated for many a long year. Great was their joy at 
being favoured with the opportunity, and I have reason to believe that 
they felt it to be a season of refreshing and strengthening for the toil- 
some and perhaps perilous expedition on which they have now gone. 
I trust that those of the communicants who have remained behind 
can also look back with pleasure to the table spread in the wilderness, 
and are enabled to go on their pilgrimage rejoicing. 

" One guest I welcomed with peculiar delight. He is a young 
officer in a native regiment. He had accompanied a friend 011 a shoot- 
ing excursion, when the latter contracted the disease of which he died. 
The young man felt concerned about his friend when lying in a sick- 
bed, and oftener than once had I in his hearing, and sometimes to 
himself directly, an occasion of making known the things that relate 
to the eternal peace of men. At first I found him strongly averse to 



72 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1846 

the message of the Gospel, for he was in love with sin j but, as the 
progress of his friend's disease became alarming, and more especially 
on being exhorted by him to prepare for death, his mind became 
seriously convinced of sin, and he was led to cry out, ' What shall I 
do to be saved ? ' He was in this state when the remains of his young 
friend were committed to the grave, I hope in the expectation of a 
blessed resurrection. At this time I saw him often, and gave him 
Baxter's Gall and James's Anxious Inquirer to read. In a day or two 
after he sent me a donation, and also became a regular subscriber to 
the mission. The subsequent week he came to our church on Sabbath 
evening ; and then on the following Wednesday he attended the 
prayer meeting ; and lastly, within three weeks of my first having seen 
him in the chamber of sickness, or in less than a fortnight after the 
arrow of conviction had entered his soul, he sat down with our little 
congregation to celebrate the dying love of his Redeemer, who, he 
then could say, was all his salvation and all his desire. I never, 
except in a single other instance, saw a change so decided in so short 
a time a change from daring blasphemy, to deep reverence for God 
from utter disregard of the ordinances of God's worship, to a diligent 
seeking for His presence both in public and private from open pro- 
fligacy and vice, to the sincere love and practice of holiness ; and this 
in spite of the ridicule of all his companions, with only one exception, 
and notwithstanding of temptations manifold, which a Christian at 
home scarcely knows. ' Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, 
saith the Lord.' Since the time I first knew him as a Christian, he 
has been fast increasing in every good word and work. His spiritual 
growth has been as rapid as the vegetation of these tropical climes. 
How it should stimulate those who were in Christ before him, to see 
one who has been engrafted into the vine within the last two months, 
not only covered with the blossoms of a fair profession, but already 
beginning to bear the ripe fruit of holiness ! In conversation with 
him I feel myself very much rebuked for my want of faith, and grati- 
tude, and love. When will the first fruit from the heathen here be 
gathered in ? . . . " 

As military stations in the interior of India were at that 
time, it was impossible that the advent of a preacher so 
thoroughly in earnest as Hislop should not arouse opposition. 
While all the evangelical officers, of whatever church, 
joyfully gathered round him, the rest could not conceal 



1846 AMONG THE BRITISH SOLDIERS 73 

their dislike to him and his message. The " Puseyite " chap- 
lain, as the term then was, headed an attempt to silence him, 
or at least to keep him out of the hospital, where his visits 
were valued by the sick and dying of all classes. His 
preaching was jealously watched. Although he was the 
more careful to avoid the most distant allusion to any 
individual or church, and declared only the great principles of 
the Gospel, he was reported to the Brigadier as charged with 
violent hostility to the doctrine and ceremonies of the Church 
of England, and as teaching sedition and heresy to the Euro- 
pean soldiers. A demand was made that he should submit 
a sermon, which had been so misrepresented, to the Bishop 
of Madras for his authoritative decision as to its orthodoxy. 

All that the military authority could be induced to yield to 
excessive pressure was, to send a caution to the missionary 
who was giving his gratuitous services to such of the troops 
as chose to attend in the mission school-room to take care 
when visiting hospital not to interfere with soldiers of other 
denominations than his own. No instance of such inter- 
ference was stated. " I have often indeed," wrote Hislop to 
his brother Eobert, " visited the cots of Episcopalians and 
even Eomanists, who have expressed a desire to see me; 
and when the Fusiliers were in Kamthi I had a class of 
convalescents every week, usually numbering about twenty, 
which consisted of men of all Protestant denominations who 
chose to attend it. In speaking to this class I often had 
much comfort, for I believe in more than one instance the 
Spirit of the Lord was present to heal the diseased soul. 
But never have I, in so far as I am aware, spoken either to 
Eomanists or English Churchmen who have given any 
evidence of a disinclination to hear me. I regret the present 
opposition exceedingly, because of its bearing upon my use- 
fulness in the European hospitals, which I have always found 
a most interesting field of labour. Now I am in a measure 



74 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1846 

shut out from them, and deprived of an opportunity of speak- 
ing to men who, when brought by the fear of death to think 
of their spiritual condition, often wish to hear something 
more than the mummeries of a Popish priest or the formal 
prayers of an English clergyman. But amid all these trials, 
and amid all the misrepresentations which are unscrupulously 
circulated regarding me, it is a great consolation to have the 
answer of a good conscience toward God and men ; to receive 
the approbation of all, though but a few compared with the 
opposite class, who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity; 
and especially to be assured that there is One who rules over 
the tumults of the people, and after they have served the good 
purpose for which they are designed, can say to them, ' Peace, 
be still.' I am aware I need the discipline ; and if it tends 
in any degree to increase in me a lively zeal for the truth of 
God's Word, and a tender compassion for those who are 
bitterly opposed to it, it will not have been sent in vain." 

Having organised the mission in Kamthi, Hislop joyfully 
returned to his Marathi studies at Sitabaldi, and to his 
Maratha work in the city of Nagpoor, which he termed " the 
high places of the field." He saw that the vast and almost 
purely Hindu population of the capital, and not a military 
station, must be the centre of his principal Christian institu- 
tion from which the light would, as in the early days of the 
Church, radiate out to the country around. When inspecting 
Dr. Wilson's Institution in Bombay, he had resolved not to rest 
until a propaganda of the same kind, such as Duff had first 
founded at Calcutta and John Anderson also had opened in 
Madras, was created for the people of Central India. 

Again, on his way through Ahmednagar, while admiring 
the work of the American missionaries there, he saw that the 
absence of such an embryo college, alike for the educated 
natives and the native Christian families, weakened all 
their operations. He had been restive under the too chap- 



1846 FOUNDATION OF THE HISLOP COLLEGE 75 

Iain-like work at Kamthi, till lie could fairly plant his spiritual 
mine in the heart of Nagpoor of all India. But at last on the 
2cl day of May 1846, in the chief street, in the Shukarwari 
quarter of the city, he founded the school which he and his 
successors have developed into one of the four great Christian 
colleges of his Church, and the only efficient educational 
institution of the Central Provinces, now known by his 
own name of the Hislop College. He thus reported the 
event : 

" On the 2d of May (1846) with much fear and trembling, 
but yet looking to the Head of the Church, who disposeth 
all things for the advancement of his cause, I opened a school 
in the native city of Nagpoor. God seemed to have prepared 
the way, for while I was doubting about the possibility of 
getting a house without the consent of the Raja, I met with 
a person who was anxious to let a house, which he had 
just finished with the view of converting it into a shop. 
Without much ado I took possession of the intended shop, 
and commenced operations with about thirty boys. They 
have now increased to seventy, some of whom are young 
men who come to learn English. The majority of the pupils, 
however, are reading Marathi, and, indeed, we were obliged to 
begin at the alphabet with one and all of them. Having 
now obtained a partial knowledge of the language, I com- 
municate the religious instruction ; while Sakharam, who 
has removed to Nagpoor from Kamthi, has charge of the 
secular department. The step we have taken is a most im- 
portant one, and such it is considered by the great men 
connected with the court, who exhibit not a little surprise 
and jealousy of our infant institution. I pray that it may 
be really important in its beneficial results that it may be 
said of one and another of the pupils, that this soul was born 
and trained for heaven there." " You have taken the bull 
by the horns," said the not very friendly Resident, alluding 



76 STEPHEN HISLOP 1846 

to the public prominence of the school in the same street as 
the Eaja's palace. 

In another month the longing, toiling missionary rejoiced 
over his first converts. Like the majority of those referred 
to in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles they were humble, 
and, by the " mighty " and " noble " of the world, despised ; 
but both illustrated the power of the consistent lives and 
Christ-like influence of Anglo-Indian laymen over their 
servants. Mr. Hislop thus reports the two cases : 

"SiTABALDi, 1 2th June 1846. On 4th curt., at our weekly 
prayer meeting in Kamtlii, I enjoyed the privilege of admitting two 
natives into the Christian Church by the ordinance of baptism. Their 
names are Monkhali and Virasawamy, both Tamil people. They 
had both heard something of Christianity before the mission was 
established. The first-named had been servant to a surgeon shortly 
before I came, and while his master was staying in the house of my 
dear friend, Dr. Eyre, he was favoured with opportunities of hearing 
the Scriptures explained. When I arrived at Nagpoor, he entered my 
service. From the first he commended himself to me by his amiable 
and docile disposition, and the faithful discharge of his household 
duties. It was not known till the time I was residing in Kamthi, that 
he felt in his heart that there was something more needed for his sal- 
vation than mere amiableness of temper and decency of conduct. 
About six months ago, while I was preaching, as usual on the Sabbath, 
through a Tamil interpreter to the native Christians, the truth came 
home to Monkhali ; he was pricked to the heart, as he himself says, 
by a consciousness of guilt, and he was impressed with the necessity of 
at once receiving Christ as his Saviour. The passage of God's Word 
which was specially blessed to the conviction and conversion of his 
soul, was the history of Noah. To the state of the antediluvian world 
he found a counterpart in the condition of this country, and of his 
own heart ; for the certainty of coming judgment he felt a response in 
his own conscience ; in the preparation of the ark, he discovered the 
greatness of God's love for the salvation of perishing sinners, and at 
the same time the danger of refusing to listen to the preaching of 
righteousness, and betake himself to Christ without delay. At this 
period he was much with God in prayer. Often did I see him when 
he thought he was alone in the presence of his Maker, pouring forth 
his heart in humble confession and earnest supplication. His petitions, 



1846 THE TWO FIRST CONVEETS 77 

I believe, were heard, and lie now enjoys a serenity of mind which I 
regard as the peace of God that passeth all understanding. 

"The other candidate for baptism, Virasawamy, or Virapa, as 
lie is more frequently called, has for some years been acquainted with 
Christianity. Having been taught in his youth to read, an advantage 
which Monkhali, I am sorry to say, does not as yet possess, he was in 
the habit of perusing any book that might come in his way. Amongst 
others he got a Tamil tract, entitled " The Blind Way," which shows, 
by extracts from Hindu writings themselves, the folly of idolatry. 
When light through this means began to break in on his mind, he 
used to go to the temples and knock off some small chips of the idols, 
and carry them away, thus proving to himself most convincingly that 
those were no gods that could not resist such indignities ; that they 
could not be his saviours when they could not save themselves. Some 
time after this, he entered the service of Colonel Wynch, in whose 
family his acquaintance with divine truth was more and more en- 
larged, by means of books lent him to read. Feeling a desire to 
learn more, he came to our place of worship in Kamthi, and although 
he cannot, like the other, refer to any particular part of the Bible 
which entered his heart, he felt his soul melted by the free invitations 
of mercy which were addressed to him from Sabbath to Sabbath. The 
first time I heard of his anxiety for Christian baptism was from his 
parents, who came to me and besought me not to baptize their son. 
They then presented a petition to Colonel Wynch, praying him to 
prevent the administration of the ordinance, and for Virapa to marry 
a heathen girl, whom they had selected for him. Failing in their 
attempts, they tried all the means in their power to persuade their son 
to give up his intentions, and to enter into their plans ; but he was en- 
abled to resist all their arguments, and to overcome the temptation they 
had set before him. Monkhali has suffered still more than Virapa at 
the hands of his relations, who are bigoted heathens. The feelings of 
both have been greatly harassed by their intercourse with their aged 
parents, and though they have not had the bonds of caste to break as 
well as the ties of natural affection, still the trial of their sincerity has 
been severe indeed. They have been the objects of much reproach, 
but they have borne it all patiently ; and in the genuine spirit of the 
Gospel they continue to support their respective families, who are in 
a state of dependence upon them. Both catechumens continued under 
probation for some months after expressing their wish for admission 
into the Church, and it was only when I believed they were already 
Christians in heart, that I proceeded to administer to them the sign 



78 STEPHEN HISLOP 1846 

and seal of their profession. They are still, however, exposed to 
many temptations and hardships, and greatly need the intercession of 
God's people at home." 

The third convert was the most remarkable of the three, 
Yadoji, a Maratha farmer of mature age. His father had died 
headman (paid) of Vishnoor, on the Wardha, a village seventy 
miles away ; the boy had been cruelly ousted from all his 
rights when only ten years of age and without a protector. 
He grew up among the villagers as an ordinary cultivator, 
but exercising a patriarchal influence clue .alike to his 
descent and his personal character. Tor years he sought help 
from the idols in vain, and first became convinced of their 
folly by a low-caste preacher from Berar. When making a 
purchase in a shop in Nagpoor, he saw among the merchant's 
papers a book that was strange to his eyes. Inquiring what 
it was about, he was told, " Only about the religion of those 
people the Europeans ; you may have it if you like." It was 
a Marathi translation of a twopenny English primer for child- 
ren with words on Jesus Christ. As he read it from day to clay, 
his heart was deeply affected. At night, in dreams, he thought 
he saw the Saviour crucified for sinners. He felt he had at last 
found the true way to peace and a prosperity such as he had 
not conceived when he asked the idols to restore to him his 
ancestral property. Hislop, when on his first missionary 
tour, met with the truth-seeker in the month of April, before 
the baptism of his Tamil converts, but could not publicly 
baptize him till the 25th July 1847. He had abandoned 
idolatry, he observed the Sabbath day, he had even refused 
to lead his fellow villagers in their festivals. But he had to 
learn that caste observances also must be given up. He even 
preached Christ to his caste-fellows. Twice he promised to 
visit ISTagpoor for baptism, and twice his courage failed him. 
At last, leaving wile and niece at home, he stated his deter- 
mination to be baptized, even if it should be before a thousand 



1846 A COLLEAGUE SENT OUT 79 

people; declaring his sense of the love which God had shown 
him through the instrumentality of the Mission. So, before 
the English and Tamil Christians of Kamthi, after the story 
had been told to the rejoicing worshippers, the Marathi bap- 
tismal service was conducted for the first time in Central 
India, and interpreted to the Europeans. Yacloji witnessed a 
good confession, and all his life thereafter had " great peace 
of mind and joy in the Holy Ghost." In the evening he 
publicly threw away caste by eating with his English fellow- 
disciples. " In the conversion and baptism of Yadoji, the first 
stone has been laid of our Marathi church." 

The work in the three mission centres was increasing so 
fast on all its sides, vernacular preaching, Anglo-vernacular 
teaching, English preaching and hospital visitation, that Mr. 
Ilislop longed for a colleague to be sent from Scotland. He 
had suffered from more than one attack of fever, due to walk- 
ing too much in the heat of the day, and the German side of 
the Mission had practically come to an end. At last he was 
gladdened by the news that Eobert Hunter, the ablest student 
in Aberdeen, had been ordained for Nagpoor. Under the 
persuasive appeals of Dr. Duff, when on his first visit to that 
city after the events of 1843, two brothers obeyed the call to 
preach Christ to the peoples of India, first Eobert, and then 
Thomas, Hunter. Thomas was sent out by the Established 
Church of Scotland to the Panjab, where at the important 
city of Sialkot, near the Kashmeer border, he founded the 
most spiritually fruitful of its missions, and, with wife and 
child, became a martyr for Christ in the Mutiny of 1857. 
Robert, the elder, joined Mr. Hislop towards the close of 
March 184*7, and worked by his side for eight years, till ill 
health drove him to Scotland. In all respects, as saint and 
scholar, preacher and teacher, observer and naturalist, Dr. 
Eobert Hunter was worthy of the companionship and friend- 
ship of Stephen Hislop, in whose house he lived. He still 



80 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

survives to work for the Master in Essex, and is known to 
literature and science as Eobert Hunter, LL.D., F.G-.S., author 
of the Encyclopaedic Dictionary. 

When the cold season of 1847-48 came round, and his 
colleague had mastered the rudiments of Marathi, Mr. Hislop 
planned his second missionary tour. Taking with them 
Yadoji, as their Timothy, the two spent a month in marching 
south to the beautifully-placed town of Chanda, through the 
Wardha and Chanda districts. We shall see hereafter the 
results of this tour through the central land of the old Goncl 
dynasty and the great coalfields of Central India, now opened 
up by railways, in the harvest reaped for ethnology and geo- 
logy. The three evangelists, with servants to pitch the tent, 
cook the meals and carry the Scriptures for distribution 
or sale, left Sitabaldi before sunrise on the 15th December. 
A five hours' walk brought them to the first of the large 
villages in which the people of India, since the Aryan settle- 
ment, have congregated for safety, at once from wild beasts 
and men, and for such a common social life as caste renders 
possible. In two clays they reached Takalghat, having crossed 
the very stream in which, fifteen years after, Hislop was to 
close his career. Following the line of the future railway to 
Bombay, they next preached at the town of Sindhi, since a 
considerable station. Striking due south through Mandagaon 
and other places whose Maratha names denote the number or 
character of the hamlets that have united into large villages, 
on the 21st December they reached the since famous cotton 
mart of Central India, the great town of Hinganghat. Its 
thousand inhabitants heard of Christ in their own tongue for 
the first time. Christmas night saw them in Warora, now 
the coal centre of the rich Wardha valley, as Hinganghat is 
its cotton centre. Past glittering lakes which the old Gonds 
had formed by damming up the small valleys, over the lower 
spans of hills clothed with fine forests of teak ; right clown the 




MARATHA PEASANTS, CENTRAL INDIA. 



81. 



1848 MISSION TOUR TO CHANDA 81 

Chanda plateau with its iron ores, stream gold, old mines of 
diamonds and rubies, and three thousand millions of tons 
of coal most valuable of all which he was to be the first 
to reveal to the world Hislop and his fellows, after a slow 
inarch of fourteen days, reached the Chanda capital, with its 
old Gond walls, citadel, monoliths, and royal tombs. On 
their return, they preached in the villages not previously 
visited. In the walk of four weeks they traversed a hundred 
and eighty miles. The spiritual record of the tour has a 
special value, in so far as it reveals Hislop's mode of work- 
ing; and for the first time lights up the darkness of a region 
which cotton and coal combined promise to make the most 
prosperous in the heart of India : 

"NAGPOOR, 10th February 1848. . . . The villages in this part 
of the country are placed in general at a distance of four or six miles 
from each other. The larger ones we made our starting and halting 
points, and the intermediate ones, which were of less importance, we 
contrived to visit either in going or returning, so that scarcely one 
place, where an immortal soul was to be found, was passed by. At 
the towns we generally spent one or two days. The place of concourse 
was the spot to which we repaired whether it was a temple, the town- 
hall, or the market-place ; and there, sometimes with a book, and 
sometimes without one, we instructed those who were willing to learn, 
both hearing and answering questions. To those who had the ability 
and the desire to learn, we gave tracts and portions of the Word 
of God. 

" The measure of intelligence which we met with in different places 
was very various. If it were a town which we visited we found a 
considerable degree of acuteness and education ; if it were a small 
village, very probably not a single inhabitant could either read or 
understand what they might hear on the subject of religion. Chikri, 
a village containing about 200 souls, was of this latter sort. Not 
one of the people who had been born in it knew one letter of their 
alphabet from another ; and so dull were their understandings that 
they could not comprehend the simplest statement of divine truth. 
When, on inquiry, I found that they had not been able to follow me 
in my remarks, I thought it might be through my own fault : perhaps 
my accent was peculiar, or my language was not sufficiently colloquial, 

G 



82 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

or my mode of treating the subject was unnatural. I therefore soon 
gave way to Yadoji, who always took part in the work ; but though 
his pronunciation and style and ideas were just such as might suit the 
inhabitants of a village, still they did not perceive the scope of what 
was said. In fact, they were well-nigh strangers to reflection. Almost 
unconscious of sin, they could not see the use of forgiveness : wholly 
occupied with the concerns of this world, they thought not of another 
after death : engrossed with procuring a provision for their bodies, 
their souls had fallen into such a state that in intellect and morals 
they scarcely surpassed the bullocks they are accustomed to drive. 
Never before had I adequately felt the blessing of education never 
before had I sufficiently estimated the magnitude of brutish ignorance 
as a barrier in the way of Christianity. People in such a degraded 
condition require to be elevated to the rank of thinking men before 
you can appeal to them, and charge them to judge what you say. They 
need not be told that they have a conscience, whose dictates are to be 
attended to amid the calls of worldly business, and the clamours of 
bodily appetites, before they can understand the need and value of the 
gospel, which proclaims salvation to perishing sinners. But in very 
few of the villages did we find any means of instruction. Most of 
them are without a school of any description. Hinduism does not 
contemplate the education of the masses. And of those who, by their 
.own efforts, acquire the power of reading, it prohibits all from perusing 
the Vedas, its acknowledged treasury of wisdom, unless they belong to 
the favoured classes, for whose aggrandisement the system was devised, 
and is still maintained. The few words of adoration, addressed to the 
sun, which are found in the Vedas, and repeated by Brahmans, under 
the name of the Gayatri, 1 are declared to be an unfailing means of bliss 
to those who use them ; and yet an acquaintance with these is forbidden 
the poor Sudra on pain of damnation. 

"At Hinganghat, a manufacturing town, with a population of 1 2,000, 
the Lord was pleased to grant us a wide field of usefulness. On the 
first morning of our labours there we were content with a station on the 
outskirts of the town, where we preached to comparatively a small 
company. The news, however, of our mission soon spread among the 
whole inhabitants, and little boys were going about the streets speak- 
ing of the God and Saviour of the Europeans. It being known that 

1 ' ' May we receive the glorious brightness of this, the generator, of tlie 
God who shall prosper our works," So Benfey translates the invocation of 
the Sun (wife of Brahma), which it is the duty of every Brahman to repeat 
mentally morning and evening. 



1848 PKEACHING TO THE PEOPLE 83 

we had books to give away to those who could read, there was a great 
demand for them the whole day. From breakfast time till evening I 
could do nothing but sit outside of our tent, and preach and distribute 
tracts and Gospels. Among the recipients was the Patel, who invited 
us to the Kacheri to address the people. At the time appointed a 
deputation was sent to escort us to the hall of Andiana, where we 
found everything ready for our reception about 300 of the inhabitants 
assembled in expectation of our coming, and some police officers (peons) 
to keep order among the crowd. They all displayed an intelligent 
interest in what was said. The visit was repeated next morning. 
During the whole period of our stay at this place the gospel from our 
lips might have access to about 1000 people, and by means of books 
it might reach as many more. 

" At Sindhi, another considerable town, we also had the pleasure of 
speaking to many souls, and distributing many tracts. The first day 
which we spent there was a Sabbath. "We spoke to the people in the 
Bazaar in the morning, and promised a visit in the evening. On our 
appearing at the place agreed on we could scarcely find room to stand. 
It was a holiday the last and great day of a fast called the Moharanij 
held in commemoration of the death of Husain, the son of Ali, the 
cousin of the Arabian impostor. For some time previous much semi- 
barbarous ingenuity is expended in preparing slenderly constructed 
edifices of bamboo, paper, tinsel, mica, etc:, resembling Chinese towers, 
but which are meant, I suppose, to represent tombs. On the last 
day all are brought out, and after being carried about amid much 
music and uproar, they are consigned to a river or tank, the usual 
grave of such Indian pageants, whether Hindu or Mussulman. The 
Moharam is not, properly speaking, a holiday of the Hindus ; neither 
in its rites is it an essential part of the religion of Mussulmans. It 
seems to be the joint product of the two nations brought into contact. 
Springing from an event in the history of the idolatry-hating Moham- 
medans, it has yet assumed an appearance resembling the ceremonies 
of the superstitious Hindus ; and in its present form it furnishes a 
convenient opportunity for the devotee of false gods and the followers 
of the false prophet meeting on common ground. And such was our 
experience on the Sabbath evening in question. The whole town, 
young and old, high caste and low caste, Hindus and Mussulmans, 
were out of doors, and crowded together in the market-place. Eising 
from the dense mass of human beings might be seen rows of tabuts, 
as they are called, ready to be marshalled in one line of procession, 
and conveyed to the river. Scarcely expecting, amid the excitement, 



84 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1848 

to meet with one disposed to attend to the concerns of his soul, we went 
a little aside from the general tumult that our voice might be heard. 
To our surprise we found an audience, chiefly composed of those who 
had been present in the early part of the day, willing to listen, who re- 
mained beside us unmoved till the twilight, although in the meantime the 
procession passed along the street in which we had taken up our position. 
" Still it would be disingenuous to conceal my belief that much of 
the interest evidenced by the people was the result of novelty. We 
were the first Christian ministers who had traversed the district, and 
it was but natural that the strangeness of the message should attract 
many within hearing, who had no other desire in listening to us than 
to relieve the dull monotony of Indian life. The truth of this we 
discovered on returning home ; for although we always found the 
largest audiences where they had been largest before, yet we could 
not fail to notice, on comparing a town or village with itself, that the 
number of hearers diminished as their familiarity with the gospel 
increased. Neither can we rightly regard the general acquiescence 
which was expressed in the excellence of the Christian way of salva- 
tion as a decided token of good. It appears to me that this kind of 
approval is most readily given, when the person who pronounces it 
does not perceive the practical bearing of that which he commends. 
If he felt the direct application of it to his heart, from what we know 
of the natural man, we might expect from him the most determined 
resistance rather than an unhesitating concurrence. And hence I 
conceive that, although the popularity with which the gospel was 
received at Hinganghat and Sindhi is much to be preferred to the 
ignorant stupor with which it had to struggle at Chikri, or the worldly 
indifference with which it was treated at Bandak ; yet even at the 
best it shows that its practical tendency and personal application are 
not so well understood as at the Presidency seats, where the heathen 
are stirred up to the most determined hostility, and are vainly endeav- 
ouring to crush the truth, which they see must ere long overthrow 
their whole system of superstition. The only instance of practical 
consequences following on the dissemination of the word came to our 
knowledge on revisiting a place named Mandagaon, where we had 
met with an open door in speaking, and had distributed a good many 
tracts. One of these had fallen into the hands of a gardener, who 
learned from it the sinfulness and absurdity of idolatry. Immediately 
acting on his conviction, he threw all his gods that were of clay into 
the river, and his wooden images he laid aside with the view of cleav- 
ing them, when necessary, into firewood. 



1848 



MORE CONVERTS 85 



"Our recent experience has had the effect of bringing vividly 
before us the great amount of labour which must be bestowed on this 
land before we can hope to see it converted to God. What need of 
preachers to convey the glad tidings of salvation to the poor Hindus, 
before they go down to the regions of woe ! What need of teachers 
to instruct the rising generation in the towns and villages in the very 
first elements of moral and spiritual knowledge ! What need of efforts, 
on the part of Christians at home, to supply both old and young with 
the means of enlightenment and grace ! And what need of the Holy 
Spirit that all our feeble instrumentality may be blessed to the 
regeneration of India and the world ! 

" On our journey Mr. Hunter and I were much pleased with the 
Christian prudence and devotedness of our new brother Yadoji. His 
heart was evidently much enlarged, and his feelings drawn forth by 
the work in which he was engaged. Since returning he has proceeded 
on a tour by himself to visit the villages in the immediate neighbour- 
hood. And I am glad to say that the work of the Lord was going on 
here when we were absent." 

This was seen in the baptism of two young men at 
Kamthi on the 26th March 1848. Apaya was the first of 
the Telugu-speaking people, who inhabit North Madras, to 
join the mission. Well educated in his own literature, 
and of high intelligence, he was twenty-two years of age and 
in charge of the school building. There he met with Mrs. 
Sherwood's adaptation of Bunyan's book to the people of the 
East, under the title of The Indian Pilgrim. For the first 
time he heard of One who gives rest to the weary. The 
first book of Scripture which he read was " Exodus," and the 
study of the ten words of the Law there made him feel the 
burden of his sins. He at once sought baptism. Alarmed, his 
mother in the distant capital of Haidarabad summoned him 
to see her, and on his promising to do so after he had put on 
Christ, she sent the family gooroo or priest to reason with 
him. Apaya began to declare the sinfulness of all to this 
man whom he left enraged that he, a Brahman, should be 
called a sinner. The other was a Tamil convert, Perumal, 
a farmer's son from Conjeveram, who had first become 



86 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1848 

acquainted with Christianity from a copy of Schwartz's 
Dialogues in Tamil He lived in Kamthi, with a cousin 
who treated him with violence when he resolved on seeking 
baptism. He fled to the protection of the missionaries, his 
cousin relented, and Hindu and Christian continued to live 
in the same house. The next convert was a Eurasian, the 
most disreputable character in the cantonment. Notorious for 
cock-fighting, beating his wife, and abusing his neighbours, 
he one day entered the mission church. The truth convicted 
him and drove him to Christ. Two months after, Eamasawmi, 
a Tamil, twenty-three years of age, who had when a boy first 
heard of Christ in the Wesleyan school at Bangalore, was 
baptized by Mr. Hunter. 

The next case of Kotlingam, the son of a carpenter at 
Masulipatam on the Bay of Bengal, reveals the inner life of 
the Hindu family. Removing with his widowed mother and 
sister to ISTagpoor, he met with a native Christian employed 
in the arsenal. Under his teaching Kotlingam experienced 
such a consciousness of guilt that he thus afterwards de- 
scribed it : "I felt I had sinned with my hands, my feet, my 
eyes, my mouth with every member of my body and every 
faculty of my soul." He ceased to work on Sunday, he 
joined his friend in family worship. In an access of con- 
viction he tore the sacred thread from his shoulder, and 
supped with the family. He visited the missionaries for 
fuller instruction. The news spread in the ordnance lines. 
" Next day," wrote Mr. Hislop, " his female relatives came 
with a complaint to our house more like the fabled furies 
than women connected with him as mother and sister. It 
was difficult to catch all that passed ; for ever and anon the 
younger, not content to allow her rage to find expression in 
the words of the elder, would break in, and with the view of 
enforcing would drown what was said. But the substance 
was this : ' Here is my son. When he was an infant I 



1848 THE HINDU MOTHER 87 

nursed him, when he was sick I paid peculiar honour to the 
gods to make him well. Then daily did I wash the idols ; 
with my own hands I swept all round the temples ; and I 
begged through the bazaars, that I might present a liberal and 
acceptable votive offering. And, when he got better, I spent 
much money on him to teach him to read and write ; and 
did I grudge the twenty-seven rupees which it required to 
invest him with the sacred thread ? He is not like one of 
your Pariahs; he is of honourable origin. There is the 
Brahman caste, and the goldsmith caste, and the carpenter 
caste all worthy of respect in this land. And yet my son, 
after all I have done for him, will leave his caste, and become 
a Christian. For two days past he has been doing no work. 
He can think and speak of nothing but Christ. Surely he is 
mad. Who will give me food ? Who will put tulsi leaves in 
water and lay them on my mouth after I am dead. Oh, I 
cannot live ! We shall destroy ourselves.' Sometimes the 
frantic women would say, ' We will eat opium.' At another 
time they would declare, ' We will throw ourselves down a 
well ; ' but as if this were not supposed to be an end suffi- 
ciently disgraceful for the surviving son, again they would 
add, ' We will go and hang ourselves, and then all men will 
point at this unnatural child with the finger of scorn, and 
say, " There goes a man who became a Christian, and caused 
his mother and family to hang themselves." ' It was in vain 
then to think of convincing them of their sin and certain 
misery, if the} 7 - fulfilled their threat. To all our arguments 
their only reply was 'Never mind about heaven or hell. We 
cannot tell what will be hereafter. What is present we know.' 
How dark are the prospects of heathenism for the future ! 
Where are its comforts to cheer the heart, or its grace to 
modify the passions in the present state of trial ? 

" The son heard all ; but he had made his choice. He 
desired to escape the wrath to come ; and, though painful to 



88 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

his natural feelings, he would rather disobey his mother than 
incur the displeasure of the Most High. He therefore 
plainly told all present, that he had broken his caste, because 
he considered it to be wrong ; and although he would 
endeavour to act the part of a dutiful son, and support his 
family as before, he could no longer delay soliciting ad- 
mission into the Christian Church. ' In that case,' said his 
mother, ' you need not conie near my house, but go among 
the Pariahs if you are so infatuated.' Many were the 
attempts Kotlingam made on the following Saturday to soothe 
the minds of Ms distracted relations ; but they would not so 
much as see him. Next day, Sabbath, 19th November, he 
was baptized at Kamthi in presence of the European con- 
gregation that regularly assembles there for divine service. 
At his own request his original name, which is associated 
with all that is base in Hindu worship, was changed for that 
of Jacob. 

" Since that time he has met with few annoyances, except 
that he was once called by his mother before the commissary 
of ordnance on a charge of refusing to support her. Jacob 
easily made it appear that he could follow no other course 
than that which was imputed to him as a fault. He showed 
that all his wood had been taken from him, all his tools 
yea, all his clothes. ' But if,' said he, ' my mother will allow 
me to have the use of these, I will support her as before.' 
The mother, on being appealed to, replied that she would 
allow him to have nothing, and the case was accordingly 
dismissed." 

Not less significant than the action of the Tamil car- 
penter's mother was that of the first eastern Maratha evan- 
gelist's family, on his death. Yadoji went to visit his native 
village, in the hope of inducing his Hindu wife to return 
with him to Nagpoor. On the way he caught fever in heavy 
rain, and arrived at his ancestral home dying, to find it 



1848 DEATH OF THE FIRST MAEATHA CONVERT 89 

shut against him. He was obliged to make his bed in his 
sickness with the cattle. But all his discomforts and pains 
he bore with exemplary resignation. Though he was alone 
among idolaters, he continued to testify for Christ. " It was 
but little, however, of what dropped from his lips, that 
we could collect from their accounts," wrote Mr. Hislop. 
"The only thing which seemed to have impressed their 
memories, and which all repeated without variation, was 
the commandment which he gave concerning his corpse. 
' I am a disciple of Jesus Christ/ he said the day before his 
death, ' therefore burn not my body, as if I were a heathen, 
but lay it without any ceremonies in the earth, from which 
I trust it shall be raised in glory to meet my Lord.' Yet 
his relatives, in utter disregard of his instructions, com- 
mitted it to the flames, and cast the ashes into the Wardha. 
We intend to erect a simple stone near the village, to call the 
attention of the inhabitants, as well as of the passers-by, to 
the example of Yadoji. His memory will long live in our 
hearts, associated with all that is holy and lovely in the 
Christian character. He was distinguished for the childlike 
simplicity of his faith, the habitual joyfulness of his dis- 
position, and the fervency of his spirit in prayer. Every 
event that happened, however apparently unimportant, was 
carried directly to the ear of his Heavenly Father. His 
daily life was, as it were, one constant petition ; for no 
sooner had he made known his request to God, than he began 
to look up expecting a gracious answer. When we bear in 
mind the advanced age (sixty years) at which he was called 
to a belief of the truth, and the remarkable extent to which 
he was delivered from the prevailing infirmities of his country- 
men, we have great reason to admire the grace of God which 
accomplished the change." 

In three months another Maratha, of the same Hindu 
caste and Christ -like spirit, Shrawan, was added to the 



90 STEPHEN HISLOP 1849 

Mission, and took the place of Yadoji as evangelist. Sir 
William Hill had gone home on furlough ; Major Woodward, 
commanding the 32d Madras Native Infantry, and Captain 
J. Whitlock of the 8th Madras Light Cavalry, joined the 
local Mission Board. The year 1849 witnessed the opening 
of the first girls' school in the city of Nagpoor. " The 
undertaking was a bold one and was commenced not without 
much hesitation ; but it has succeeded fully better than we 
had ventured to hope." Such is the ardent evangelist's de- 
scription of the beginning of what has proved to be one of 
the most successful woman's missions in the East. "We 
hired the veranda of a house not far from our boys' school 
and began. All who had promised to send their daughters 
stood aloof when the day for action came, with the exception 
of one. . . . The number has now risen to twelve caste girls, 
and we are inclined to trust that the existence of the school 
is at least beyond immediate peril. We might have had 
more pupils had we consented to offer them any pecuniary 
inducement to come." 

We may close the record of the early converts of the Nag- 
poor Mission with the case of Perumal the second, who died 
unbaptized ; while Perumal the first, desiring to conform to 
some of his old heathen practices, joined the Eoman Catholics 
who practise such conformity. The second Perumal, son of a 
family of great respectability in the Telugu country, heard a 
Telugu address on the claims of Christ, in Kamthi bazaar. He 
joined the mob in beating the young Madras catechist, Samuel, 
who spoke. Samuel's gentle persistency so prevailed that 
during a subsequent attack on him, Perumal boldly declared he 
could not believe in a religion which used violence, and took 
the speaker to his own house. There his wife and children 
also heard the truth, and he himself became a candidate for 
baptism. Before he could be thus admitted to the Church 
he was seized with a fatal sickness. When dying he regretted 



1848 AGAIN IN DEADLY PERIL 91 

that he had not been baptized, but added, " I have been bap- 
tized in spirit, which is the chief thing," and then exhorted 
his wife and children to give themselves to Christ. His last 
request was made to his Hindu relatives, to be buried as a 
Christian. "Perumal was followed to the grave by a pro- 
cession of heathens, among whom were to be seen some 
Brahmans ; while, hovering at a distance with his face dis- 
guised might be observed the most sincere mourner of all, 
his spiritual counsellor and friend, Samuel." The widow, 
who had insisted on the Christian burial, resolved to seek a 
Christian home for herself and her children, so soon as the 
two months of mourning for the dead were over. But, mean- 
while, one child of seven died repeating the catechism and 
using the Lord's Prayer as the father had taught him. The 
widow also died, when about to set up her own house, and 
was buried as a Christian. But she died before she could 
entrust the two surviving orphans to the Mission, and they 
were claimed by the maternal grandfather for Hinduism. So, 
ever since it was first proclaimed in India, and to the present 
hour, does the teaching of Christ work in the hearts and 
families and communities of men, calling all and revealing the 
thoughts of many, accepted at first by few, but ever working- 
out the end and the promises of Him Whose inheritance is the 
heathen, Whose possession is the uttermost parts of the earth. 
From his abundant sowing and reaping we are called to 
look again into the inner sanctuary of Stephen Hislop's soul, 
in the prospect of the most affrighting of all forms of death. 
He thus writes to his brother Eobert : 

"NAGPOOR, IZthJune 1848. . . . I have been laid aside from active 
exertion by a bite which I have received from a mad dog. On the 
morning of 1 8th as I was walking to the school in the city, a dog came 
on to the road just a little before me, and advanced towards me. As I 
had not the slightest apprehension of its real character, I took no notice 
of it, and allowed it to pass quite close to my leg. As soon as it had got 
behind my back, it made a dart at my right leg, which it took between 



92 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

its jaws, leaving the marks of its tipper teeth near the shin bone, and 
of the under ones in the calf. One of the tusks made a pretty deep 
wound in the flesh near the shin. I looked behind as soon as ever I 
felt the bite, and saw the dog pursue its sullen course towards a 
buffalo, which it mangled severely, and then continuing in the same 
direction, it attacked another dog. On looking at my trousers, which 
were made of white cotton, and therefore not a very good protection 
against the saliva of the animal, I found they were all torn from the 
knee downwards. Seeing no time was to be lost I ran home as fast as 
I could, the distance of about a mile. Without delay I got into my 
buggy and drove up to the Eegimental Hospital. There I found an 
apothecary, who did not like well to act in the absence of the surgeon. 
However, he washed the wound and applied caustic to it. The surgeon 
arrived about quarter past 7 A.M., which was 1|- hours after the 
accident happened, and he contented himself by cauterising again. 
He did not cut the part out as I expected, and as two of his pro- 
fessional brethren in Kamthi, whom I consulted three days after, 
would have done if they had been in his circumstances. However, 
at the time I asked their advice, they thought it too late to have 
recourse to excision, so I am applying poultices to it, which is all that 
can be done now. And I am endeavouring to look unto the Lord, Who 
wounds and heals, Who kills and makes alive according to His sovereign, 
wise, and holy pleasure. What may be the issue I do not know. If 
the Lord have any more work for me to do here, He can and He will 
preserve me for it ; but I may have the sentence of death in me, and 
the solemn circumstances in which I am placed ought to lead me to 
put no confidence in the flesh, but to trust in God, and to seek more 
earnestly His gracious countenance, His holy image, and His ever- 
lasting glory. How thankful ought I to be for this renewed warning ; 
how grateful for the interval of leisure He is now affording me for 
setting my heart and house in order. If these advantages be employed for 
taking a nearer view of eternal things, the consequences will be to the 
praise of God and my own best happiness, whatever may be the result of 
my present affliction. If it should terminate in my decease, I leave 
my beloved wife and child with confidence to my Heavenly Father, 
and under Him to an earthly brother, who has always been my com- 
panion here below, and whom I desire to meet in the land of promise 
above. 

" Oh, Robert, give diligence to make your calling and election 
sure. This object is worth all your pains, and in comparison with it 
every other pursuit on earth is trifling and vain. I have had more 



1850 



LEAVES FOR MADRAS 93 



than one warning of human frailty since the date of my last letter to 
you. I think it is since that, that Samuel, a native Christian baptized 
at Chicacol on the coast north from Madras, was taken ill. He came 
to our house a few months ago, partly to act as a servant, but chiefly 
to prosecute the study of English at our school in the city. About 
four weeks ago he accompanied me to Kamthi, where I was to preach 
as usual. He returned home with me on Monday, when he began to 
complain of pain in his bowels. However, little seemed to be the 
matter with him till Wednesday evening, when he was seized with 
violent spasms. These threw his body into the most fearful con- 
tortions, and brought on lockjaw. But it was beautiful to see him in 
the midst of all his bodily troubles and in the apparent prospect of 
approaching dissolution, enjoying the most perfect composure and even 
joy in his soul. His only concern was about his parents and brother 
and sisters, who are heathens. To them he addressed many a serious 
exhortation, as well as he could, through his closed teeth, warning 
them to flee from the wrath to come, and to lay hold on Jesus, who 
was all his support in the hour of present agony and apprehended 
death. It pleased the Lord, however, not to cut him off. He got relief 
after two days, and was so far recovered as to be able to walk about. 
This was a cause of great joy to his family, who really love him, for he 
is a most amiable lad." 

Exhortations to faith poured in upon the suffering mis- 
sionary, and much prayer went up for him. 

The older mission of his Church at Madras having been 
weakened by the absence in Scotland of the Eev. John 
Anderson, its founder, and the Eev. P. Eajahgopaul, its 
first convert, Mr. Hislop was summoned thither, especially 
to strengthen the educational side, and train the five divinity 
students. His own work needed him. Mr. Hunter would 
be left alone, and the season of the year was the hottest for 
a traveller through the scorching winds of the Dekhan to the 
coast of South India. But he loyally obeyed the call, and 
was absent for thirteen months. Because of the uncer- 
tainty of the steamer's movements, he did not take the route 
by Masulipatam, where Eobert Noble and he, kindred spirits, 
would have met. On the evening of 15th April 1850, Mr. 



94 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

and Mrs, Hislop, and their two young children, left Sita- 
baldi, in palanquins, for Secunderabad, the principal military 
station of the Nizam of Haidarabad's capital ; where, after a 
journey of rather less than a week, they were welcomed by 
Dr. J. B. Fleming, and other Christian officers, some of whom 
were their grateful correspondents. A Christian mission 
has only recently been sent to the quarter of a million 
Arabs and other Mohammedans of that once disturbed but 
now peaceful city. His letters to Mr. Hunter give us 
glimpses of the Nizam's country some forty years ago. 

" 20th April 1850. "We arrived at Wan at sunrise. At this first 
of the Nizam's villages we spent some time in breakfasting, and speak- 
ing to the people, who were acquainted with our visit to Wardha. 
Though accompanied by the Daffadar, who showed us much kindness 
while in his district, we soon found that the posting arrangements on 
this side of the Wardha were very inferior to those on the other ; and 
when the Daffadar left us, the bearers, who had perhaps been dragged 
from their villages and their nets for very hard work, showed symptoms 
of indolence, and one or two even ran away. . . . By such hindrances 
we necessarily lost a good many hours on the journey, within the 
Nizam's dominions. I was told at Wan that the Telugu began to be 
spoken slightly even at that village, and so increased, till it decidedly 
preponderated. . . . After that, for two stages, we had a preponderance 
of Marathas, which delighted me much - } but on inquiry I found that 
they had been brought south. . . . 

" This is a very interesting place for the botanist and the geologist. 
Often did I wish that I had been able to travel more slowly, in order 
to examine its many natural curiosities, among which there were 
fossils, shells, as well as many flowering trees, which I had never 
before observed. There was no thick underwood, so far as I could 
perceive, but perhaps it may have been burnt. The trees are not very 
lofty or close, and most of them were either naked, or beginning to 
put forth their leaf or flower buds. My Maratha bearers, before 
leaving me, said they were sure I had never travelled on the Madras 
road before, as they had never known an instance of a sahib being 
able to converse with them in their own language. Nirmal is at the 
southern extremity of the jungle of that name, and is a strong looking 
town with gates, and a post-office. We arrived at Nirmal at 2 A.M. 



111 




3 

Q 



P" 

J 
? 



1850 THE NIZAM'S MISRULE 95 

of Friday, and at sunrise crossed the Godavari in our palanquins, 
placed on bamboo baskets of a round shape covered with leather, and 
strewed with sticks at the bottom to keep the passengers from the 
water, which oozes through very plentifully and lodges under their 
feet. I was delighted with the noble grandeur of the majestic stream, 
which must have run very deep, though its breadth was diversified in 
many places, both by rocks and sand-banks, pretty islets that were 
covered with shrubs. Among the plants on the banks I observed a 
willow, which may have been the same with the "Wardha one, but I 
cannot be sure. There was a slender plant, growing about three feet 
high, which, at the distance I saw it, struck me as resembling asparagus, 
or Iwppuris, or salicorma, but I do not believe that it was any one of 
these. South of the Godavari the principal features in the landscape 
were huge masses of round granite rock, rising in clumps, and encircled 
generally by foliage, which at a distance might be mistaken for a 
village of mud houses slightly elevated, and enclosed among trees. 
About a mile south we heard of a robbery which had been committed 
the night before, and had caused alarm among our bearers. In the 
encounter two of the travellers were killed by the robbers, and another 
mortally wounded, but the depredators did not make off with their 
booty without the loss of two men. . . . What a sad state of lawless- 
ness the Nizam's country must be in. The very first glimpse at the 
surface shows clearly enough the neglect of agriculture. . . . 

" Major Woodfall told me that there had been a German missionary 
from Eajamahendri surveying the mission-field round Haidarabad. He 
had had an interview with the Eesident, who assured him that if there 
were a mission in actual operation, and blest by the conversion of any 
individual, that individual, provided he were of anything like a reason- 
able . . . , would receive British protection against all the power of the 
Nizam. ... It is thought a little abatement must be made from the 
satisfactoriness of the pledge, on the ground of General Frazer's known 
politeness. ..." 

From Haidarabad the Hislops inarched slowly south to 
Nellore, the Telugu station of his Church, reaching it in 
time for the Company's doctor there to save the life of one 
of their little girls. There the Scottish missionary, whose 
standard of knowledge and experience required by catechu- 
mens before baptism was very different, met with Mr. Heyer, 
of the American Lutheran Mission. " I am inclined to think 



96 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

that too low a standard of qualification is required for those 
whom he baptizes, when they can repeat the Decalogue, the 
Lord's Prayer, and the Creed. However, I trust the Lord is 
with his simple-minded servant, and let us pray that the 
movement will increase in depth, reach upward to the higher 
castes, and spread wider and wider till it covers the surround- 
ing country." The prayer was answered a quarter of a cen- 
tury after, when the terrible famine of 18 7 6 was followed by 
the adhesion of thousands to the missionaries who gave their 
lives for the dying population. 

..." On the road I hud occasionally a little time to look at the 
vegetable productions of the country. I could mark the difference in 
the flora as the country was rocky or sandy, inland or near the sea. 
There were many plants entirely new to me, but I have not time to 
describe them. The country on the banks of the Krishna, and a little 
south of it, presented a variety in its geological features, differing from 
the uniform granite, to which we had been previously accustomed, in 
exhibiting horizontal layers of an argillaceous limestone of a bluish 
pea-green colour, which is used for writing in a pencil form on black 
boards. Before we came to Ongole, the crystalline rocks had resumed 
their predominance. Bold hills appeared, reminding us of the lower 
mountains of our native Caledonia. But there was one noticeable 
peculiarity, viz., that the hills N.W. of Ongole do not form a con- 
tinuous chain, but rise up from the plain in detached broad-based 
cones. Between each eminence there must at the least have been a 
mile of plain, that stretched up to the very foot of the hill without 
any appearance of a slope. The only instance of a chain of hills 
which I remarked was near the Pulicat lake, running north and 
south parallel to the coast. At Nellore for the first time I came on 
the laterite, which is a coarse red-coloured igneous rock, with vesicular 
vacuities like a ' smiddy dander.' You are aware that it is soft, easily 
cut into shape, and used for building. . . ." 

A week's study of the older mission at Madras filled him 
with satisfaction. In his long letters to his solitary colleague 
at ISTagpoor he is critical as well as eulogistic, eager to learn 
from the experience of others, but loyal to his own Marathas. 
" The ISTagpoor scholars have more knowledge, and they have 



1850 GEEAT GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY 97 

had their minds better exercised," he writes confidentially in 
one letter. He taught Scripture and Science from half-past 11 
to 5 daily, He had a struggle to introduce natural history, and 
especially geology, into the curriculum of the Institution ; but 
he carried his point as he always did. He rejoiced in the 
native converts, and he sent useful gifts to his own sons in 
the faith, with solemn messages to them and to the inquirers 
whom he had left behind. "I think," he wrote to Mr. 
Hunter, " we ought to have some time set apart for united 
prayer on behalf of our own ISTagpoor Sabbath morning, 
between 7 and 8." " My heart is with you in your work." 

On 5th October he wrote an urgent letter to Mr. Hunter 
to despatch to him " Captain Brown's little thin blue cloth- 
boarded book on Fossil Conchology. The occasion of my 
wishing to consult it is that I have lately fallen in with a bed 
of clay here that evidently belongs to the Tertiary formation, 
containing many shells whose genera, and, if possible, species 
also, I desire to determine. . . . We have just gone into a 
house of our own. It is not very good, but it possesses 
this advantage that it is within a stone's throw of the 
fossils." This discovery stimulated him to give keener 
attention to the rocks at Nagpoor, after his return thither, 
with results which attracted the notice of geologists 
throughout the world. To the Christian public as well 
as educated natives of the great city of the south, Sir 
Henry Pottinger being then Governor, Mr. Hislop delivered 
more than one lecture. At a meeting held every Monday 
evening for religious conference and worship, and at the Bible 
and Tract Societies, he made the acquaintance of all the 
missionaries. His opinion on the higher Christian education 
has authoritative value, as coming from one who was a ver- 
nacular evangelist as well as a practical teacher, and whose 
whole career shows him to have been the most honest and 
unprejudiced of observers. He thus wrote to his Church : 

ii 



98 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

"MADRAS, 10th July 1850. . . . Some men are still so blind 
to the experience of tlie past, as even at this late period to predict 
failure and disappointment to all such modes of evangelisation, on the 
ground that they do not come up to their idea of preaching the gospel. 
Now, to me it appears, on the contrary, that our brethren here take a 
most thorough mode of preaching the gospel. The distinguishing 
excellence of the system of education which they pursue, is the pro- 
minence which is given to the exposition and enforcing of the Scriptures. 
The truth of God is inculcated on crowds of intelligent listeners, from 
day to day, and from hour to hour ; the invitations of mercy are given 
forth continually in their hearing, and pressed on their acceptance with 
great seriousness and fervour. In my estimation, the daily business of 
the Institution realises more than anything else I have seen since the 
conception of a constant series of religious exercises. There is in 
general an outward appearance of propriety among the pupils there 
is a manifest earnestness on the part of the Christian teachers and 
the whole of the duties are blended with much heartfelt prayer to the 
Most High for His enriching blessing, without which all human exer- 
tion is in vain. When we compare the classes that are assembled in 
these solemnising circumstances, with the fluctuating groups that gather 
round a missionary in the streets or the bazaars, we may easily per- 
ceive the advantage which the servant of Christ, when he preaches in 
a school rather than in the open air, gains in the sustained attention 
with which his words are received by minds trained to think, and as 
yet unengrossed by the cares of the world, as contrasted with intellects 
unaccustomed to reflect, or dealing only in idle speculations alien alike 
to the language and the spirit of the gospel. And not a slight advan- 
tage is it, as every one may judge, that in the school-room there are 
the same individuals, on which to work not only for an hour at a time, 
but from day to day, so that misapprehensions can be removed truths 
fixed can be followed up impressions made can be deepened, and all 
may be exhorted to fly from the wrath to come, by an unhesitating and 
entire surrender of themselves to the Saviour. 

" But though we should see little immediate effect from such efforts 
in the way of accessions to the Church, yet I am persuaded that the 
progress thereby made is most sure, and the results in the end will be 
most extensive. We cannot say, from personal observation, what will 
be the character and conduct of the youths who have enjoyed all the 
benefits of the Institution here, when they grow up to be men and 
fathers of families ; for the Institution has not been in existence long 
enough to allow an induction being made on that point. The 



1850 EVANGELISING BY EDUCATION 99 

instructions of mission-schools may not be attended, in the present 
generation, by many marked results in the way of men forsak- 
ing caste for Christ, though even in this respect how much has 
the Lord done, compared with all the money which the Church 
has expended ? But I am persuaded that they are preparing the 
way for a great moral revolution in a future age, and that no dis- 
tant one. It is obvious, that among those who are now learning under 
a mission, there will be few who, when they come to be parents, will 
have the blindness and the cruelty to cast their offspring into chains, 
as Moodookrishna's father did, simply because they wish to leave 
Hinduism for the faith of Jesus. The next generation will no doubt 
see a great improvement in this respect, and cases of baptism will then 
not be so rare. Of course, without the Spirit's teaching, all accessions 
to the Christian Church are worse than useless ; but if He works with 
the labours of His servants, it is easy to see how the "Word may have free 
course and be glorified in this land, where at present the obstacles to its 
progress are so many and so great. ..." 

As the year drew to a close Mr. Hislop was alarmed by 
reports, "becoming ever more definite, that there was a pro- 
posal to abolish the Nagpoor Mission, to keep him at Madras 
and to send Mr. Hunter to strengthen the Bombay staff. 
The urgency of Mr. Anderson, combined with the want of 
organisation in Edinburgh, seems to have suggested such a 
policy. Dr. Duff rushed home, and soon removed the finan- 
cial difficulty ; but Mr. Anderson returned to Madras re- 
solved that Mr. Hislop should remain there. The protests of 
Sir William Hill and the two Nagpoor missionaries, backed 
by the large-hearted counsels of Dr. Duff, happily prevailed. 
On 1st April he wrote to his lonely and overworked colleague 
that he had that day received the express warrant of the 
Church to return. " Now the path is plain before our feet, 
and we can commence our journey back to Nagpoor with the 
same feeling of duty, and the same trust in the aid and pro- 
tection of the Most High, as when we left you. Thanks 
unfeigned to the Lord for this remarkable instance of divine 
interposition. Long had I been painfully exercised in refer- 



100 STEPHEN I1ISLOP 1851 

ence to this matter. I felt that I could see no way but just 
to call on God to undertake for us. May we not now say 
that our extremity was God's opportunity? I would look 
upon this result as a token for good, and would go on my 
way toward Nagpoor rejoicing ; and if He spare me to reach 
you in safety, I hope He will condescend to employ me as 
an instrument in spreading the light of the Gospel into some 
dark corners of Central India." 

Mr. Hislop returned to Nagpoor in the hot season of 1851 
by Calcutta where Mr. Mackail would fain have kept him 
as his successor in the Scottish congregation by the Ganges 
Valley and Jabalpoor. He entered on a second period of 
seven years' toil for the people of Central India; rejoicing 
that the mission he had founded was not to be sacrificed. 



CHAPTEE IV 

TOLERATION, BRITISH AND MARATHA A MISSION IN 

A HINDU STATE 

Hislop's courageous independence Toleration in Travankor In Kathiawar 
Peculiarities of Nagpoor State Lord Dalliousie Colonel Durand the 
only worthy Resident Orders of 1833 disregarded Native opinion forced 
Hislop to act Anticipates the Government policy since 1857 The Holi 
saturnalia and the British Resident The Dasara festival and the Assist- 
ant British Resident Hislop demands that the scandal cease, as in Tra- 
vankor His impartiality and good temper Baba Pandurang's persecution 
Raja's Brahmanical Council sentence him to indefinite imprisonment 
for breaking caste Lord Dalhousie's attitude to Missions Hislop's letter 
on the case Science and Missions His thirty-first birthday He appeals 
to the public conscience Decision of the Friend of India Dr. Duff's 
help Baba's fall and restoration Hislop's review of the principles 
involved The Chief Queen and Lulloo Bai Sir Henry Durand tempor- 
arily Resident His defence of Christian education Letter to Lord Ellen- 
borough The tide has turned Right to sell tracts secured Mr. Mansel, 
the new Resident Last of the idolatry abuses Last liberty of conscience 
case Ganu Lingapa. 

THE founding of a Christian Mission in a Native State, and 
that a Maratha kingdom, so far removed from the influence 
of public opinion as the unexplored centre of India in the 
year 1845, was an act which demanded just such courageous 
independence as Stephen Hislop was known to possess. It 
was, in some sense, a special providence that such a man 
should be sent to a hitherto unknown region which, so long 
as it was a Hindu state, was guarded by the English Politi- 
cal Eesident as a close preserve, and when it became ordinary 
British territory, was allowed by an incompetent Commissioner 
to remain a corrupt and conservative province. To his bold 



102 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

fidelity to the principles of toleration in the former case, and 
to his fearless determination that the purity and honour of 
British justice should be vindicated in the latter, does the 
empire owe the peace and prosperity of the most successful of 
its recently formed provincial administrations, next to Burma 
that of the Central Provinces of India. 

This was not the first instance of Christian missionaries 
settling in a feudatory Hindu kingdom. In the far south, 
Travankor, the most Brahmanical and caste-bound of all 
states, had long been the scene of flourishing Christian 
churches, Kestorian, Anglican, and English Nonconformist. 
But Travankor was as weak during the Haidar Ali and Tipoo 
devastations as the Maratha powers had been strong. We 
kept it in existence and nursed its little strength. During 
a long minority, our famous Resident, the Scottish General 
Munro, became its terrestrial providence, giving it laws, 
courts, and a civil administration in which the large Christian 
communities were fairly represented. His reforms purified 
every department except those of idolatry and caste, the latter 
of which it was reserved for Sir Charles Trevelyan, when 
Governor of Madras, to modify so far as it oppressed the 
lower !Nair race and outraged the modesty of their women. 
In the Kathiawar States, Dr. John Wilson of Bombay had 
induced the Irish Presbyterian Church to set up a mission 
four years before he sent out Hislop to Nagpoor, The same 
toleration which a Christian Eesident had made easy in 
Travankor was from the first enforced in the far north of 
Bombay, for Sir J. P. Willoughby was chief secretary to its 
government, which officially announced that it would offer no 
objection to the Rev. Dr. Glasgow and J. Kerr proceeding to 
and residing in the principalities of Kathiawar, so long as 
they conducted themselves according to the principles set 
forth by Dr. Wilson. Having his Master's commission, that 
missionary statesman had declared that he would have entered 



1851 NAGPOOIl STATE DIFFICULT TO WIN 103 

Kathiawar even without the good-will of its English rulers, 
but none the less did he value a good understanding with the 
authorities. 

Its isolation and its recent Maratha history made Nagpoor 
a much more difficult position to carry for Christ and peace- 
fully to hold. The memory of Apa Saheb's rebellion hung 
over it like a nightmare. The fortress of Sitabaldi and the 
vast camp of Kamthi still testified to apprehensions of politi- 
cal danger. The feudatory king, Eaghoji III., was indeed weak 
enough, but he was a fanatical and debauched Hindu with the 
same Maratha dreams which, in 1857, Nona Dhoondopunt did 
so much to make a reality. Above all, there was not a strong 
Eesident. The paramount British power was busy elsewhere, 
was absorbed in the great game in Central Asia which issued 
in the first Afghan disasters, and then was busied in the vain 
attempt to prop up a succession of Sikh Praetorians in the 
Panjab after Ranjeet Singh. The soldier-politicals of the 
stamp of Richard Jenkins, the great civilians of the standing 
of Colebrooke, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, and even the young 
Donald M'Leod had passed away or had been drafted to the 
Satlej and the north-west frontier. From Lord William 
Bentinck's time to Lord Canning's, Nagpoor was abandoned to 
inferior Residents. The great Lord Dalhousie had become 
Governor-General about the time Hislop went out ; but for 
him Central India had little interest, and he left it to others. 
His cousin, Captain Ramsay, was Assistant-Resident ; Colonel 
Speirs was Resident at Sitabaldi. There was indeed one 
man who, had he been appointed permanent Resident, instead 
of being sent to stop a gap for a few months, might, with 
Hislop, have anticipated the prosperity of the Central Pro- 
vinces by ten years Colonel Durand. But, as a military 
statesman who had been the friend and secretary of Lord 
Ellenborough, he was out of favour with the Bengal clique 
of civilians, and justice was not to be done to him till his 



104 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

schoolfellow, Lord Canning, came to make him Foreign Sec- 
retary ; and Lord Mayo, all too late, to send him to guard the 
gate of the empire as Lieutenant- Governor of the Panjab. 

The first abuse which forced itself on Hislop's attention, 
in his daily intercourse with the Hindus of Nagpoor city and 
district, was the connection of the British Government and 
Christian officials with their religion. In its ordinary terri- 
tories, subject to Parliament and the Queen, the East India 
Company had been ordered in 1833 by the Board of Control, 
under Lord Glenelg, to leave " our native subjects " entirely to 
themselves " in all matters relating to their temples, their wor- 
ship, their festivals, their religious practices, their ceremonial 
observances." For some years the Company's officials dis- 
regarded the order, which it had taken the remonstrances of 
the Christian public of Great Britain forty years from Carey's 
time to obtain ; and Christian petitions from India itself had 
again to be sent to Parliament. But not even a pretence was 
made of applying the order to the Christian officials and 
British troops attached to the courts of Hindu, Buddhist, and 
Mohammedan sovereigns. It was tacitly assumed that the 
people of Native States are not " our native subjects " in a 
sense which helped to cause the Mutiny of 1857, and which 
Lord Canning swept away with the happiest results ever 
since, in the loyalty of the third of India which is feudatory. 
Even long after the Mutiny, Viceroys so strong and clear- 
sighted as Lord Lawrence himself refused the urgent request 
of Chief Commissioners so wise as Sir Arthur Phayre, to be 
spared the humiliation of making the slavish prostration 
called kotow l to the King of Upper Burma as to a divinity, 
and of walking unbooted and squatting like a hound before 
the late Mzam of Haidarabad. Public opinion has at last 
stopped all that disgrace. 

When, in the schools and streets, the Hindus asked Mr. 

1 Literally "knock-head," from the Chinese. 



1850 BRITISH OFFICERS AND HINDU IDOLATRY 105 

Hislop and his colleague why they disapproved of the Holi 
saturnalia which the Eesident attended ; and of the Dasara 
festival, in which both he and the British troops took part every 
year, what could they answer ? Thus Hislop put it in an 
address to the Christian and educated people of Madras city 
during his sojourn there : " It is painful, after all that has 
been done to sever the British Government from its partici- 
pation in idolatry, to be obliged to show that the work is yet 
incomplete. Gladly would I escape from this disagreeable 
duty ; but it is forced upon me. As a missionary in Central 
India, I cannot avoid it. I cannot see idolatry encouraged 
by the British Government at Nagpoor, or hear of the coun- 
tenance which is lent to it at other Maratha courts, without 
raising my voice against the dangerous and sinful compliance, 
and endeavouring to enlist all God's people in a warfare 
against it. But there is another and a more literal sense in 
which I cannot avoid this duty. -The inhabitants of Nagpoor 
lay it upon me. They are continually asking my colleague 
and myself about the connection of the British with their 
religion. The question is submitted to our consideration in 
the school, it is thrust on our notice in the streets. We 
cannot escape from the injury which it inflicts on our opera- 
tions, we cannot help entertaining it as a subject of most 
anxious thought. The pupils, whom we teach, bring it before 
our minds for explanation; the Brahmans, with whom we 
have to contend, cast it in our teeth in argument. If we pass 
it by without an answer, it is believed that no reply can be 
given ; and the young inquirer is staggered, and the grey- 
headed bigot gains a triumph. Or if we venture on a solution 
of the difficulty, what answer can we return ? Either we 
must defend our countrymen at the expense of Christianity, 
or we must support Christianity to the shame of our country- 
men. Either we must say that the religion of the Saviour 
admits of countenance being given to idolatrous and degrad- 



106 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

ing rites, or we must maintain that they who do such things 
are not the true followers of the pure and holy Jesus. If we 
do the former, we condemn ourselves, as missionaries, for 
seeking to propagate the gospel to the exclusion of a system 
with which it can readily stand on common ground or if we 
do the latter, we condemn the British Government in India, 
we condemn the Resident and all in authority at JSTagpoor, 
who undeniably are guilty of acts inconsistent with the plain 
requirements of God's Word. Now our principles do not lead 
us willingly to choose either of these alternatives. To revile 
the gospel we will not cannot do ; to expose the errors of 
the powers that be, is a sad necessity, to which we feel a great 
reluctance. I appeal to the Christians in Madras, Bombay, 
and Calcutta, to whom our Mission is bound by dearer ties 
than those of either troops, or language, or government. I 
appeal through the Christians of India to the Lord's people at 
home, and I call upon all to raise their solemn protest at this 
time against the sanction which is still in many forms given 
by the British Government to Hinduism. Silence at this 
emergency will be construed into approbation. To free their 
own souls then from guilt in this matter, and to speed forward 
the day when truth and righteousness shall reign in every 
part of India and the world, let all who are on the Lord's side 
lay their sentiments on this subject before our rulers not 
doubting that when they are entreated to abstain from idols, 
yea, from the very appearance of evil, conscience will witness 
within them to the reasonableness and the rectitude of what 
is asked." 

To appreciate at once the speaker's foresight and 
courageous love of truth, this must be read in the light of the 
events then only seven years distant; and of the public 
declarations of John Lawrence, Herbert Edwardes, and Donald 
M'Leod, as to the causes and lessons of the Mutiny, endorsed 
by the Premier and Secretary of State in 1862, when Lord 



1850 THE HOLI CARNIVAL 107 

Palmerston and Lord Halifax officially said, " It is not only 
our duty, but it is our interest to promote the diffusion of 
Christianity, as far as possible, through the whole length and 
breadth of India." 

Twice a year the British Government identified itself 
with the most repulsive ceremonials of Hinduism at the court 
of the Kaja of Nagpoor. The Holi is in India the Carnival of 
the Latin races of Europe, and the All Fool's Day of children 
on 1st April. It marks the vernal equinox, the beginning of 
the Hindu new year, when nature seems to revive. Then 
spring was thought to wed the earth to love, so that the birds 
paired, the grass budded, the trees began to put on their 
leaves. In India the Holi is identified with generative 
ideas, and therefore marked by obscene practices ; while it is 
considered especially favourable to children, their increase 
and preservation. In Bengal the juvenile Krishna with his 
amours is the object of worship ; in Southern India it is 
Kama, the god of desire ; in Central and Northern India, it 
is Holi, a female hobgoblin who devours little children. All 
classes, save the educated who keep the house and strictly 
shelter their women, give themselves up to the saturnalia. 
Where the police are not under English orders and there is 
no interference, a bonfire is made of articles of all kinds 
snatched from their owners, and the cruel swinging-hooks 
are set up. Intoxication and indecency are the order of the 
day. The revellers squirt a red liquid, or throw balls of red 
powder over each other and the passers-by, made of the root 
of the Curcuma Zerumbet, or of the wood of the Caesalpina 
sappan ; where these are wanting yellow turmeric is used. 

Now, "on the 2d of March" 1850, stated Mr. Hislop to 
the Madras public, " being the last and one of the great days 
of the feast, the Eesident, accompanied by his Assistant and 
some other officers, and attended by the escort, usual in 
official visits, repaired to the palace. What he witnessed or 



108 STEPHEN HISLOP 1350 

did there, it is not for me to conjecture. It is to be hoped, 
that he would have too much respect for himself to submit 
to be bespattered before the Natives with the colour, which 
is used as part of the ceremonies of the day, and which a 
former Eesident not long ago received on his person. But 
it is right that the British people should know that their 
character, as a nation, has been stained before the heathen, and 
that their name has been associated with idolatry of the most 
degraded kind, by their Eepresentative, who in his public 
capacity, according to yearly custom, honoured the Holi with 
his presence, I am not aware whether there is any express 
order from the Supreme Government requiring the Eesident's 
attendance at the palace on the occasion now noticed : but 
there is one, I understand, in regard to the Dasara, to the 
connection of the British with which I crave your attention. 
" On the last day of the Holi it is the Eesident and his 
establishment only that directly identify themselves with 
Hinduism. But on the Dasara the Brigadier and his Staff 
join the political authorities ; and a detachment of troops, 
Madras troops too, European and Native, with music and 
artillery, is called out to increase the pomp. The order 
calling out the military was so worded some years ago, I 
believe, as to make them assist at the Dasara. But the lan- 
guage of the order is now more guarded. It is simply to 
salute the Eaja on his leaving the palace. This seems at 
first sight to be a very lawful object. Surely there is noth- 
ing in the Bible to forbid this. If we were to look at the 
order alone if we were not to take into account the circum- 
stances in which it is given, the mode in which it is carried 
into execution, and the effect which its execution has upon 
the Native community we could not, and would not, utter a 
syllable against it. But this is a practical matter. A friend 
once writing to me on this subject reasoned with me in sub- 
stance thus : What is the use of your troubling yourself 



1850 THE DASARA IDOL FESTIVAL 109 

with the inferences of your own mind, or the universal im- 
pression of the Natives around you? Eead the words of 
the order, they are plain enough ; and instead of fastening 
on the British Government, before the Christian Churches, 
the charge of encouraging idolatry, go to the Natives, and 
acquit that Government before them of any intention to 
countenance their religion. 

" This advice, even if it were sound, could not possibly be 
followed. How could we find an opportunity, amidst the noise 
and turmoil of the greatest Hindu festival in Central India, of 
reaching the ears of the thousands and tens of thousands 
the overwhelming multitudes of idolaters from all parts of 
the State, that witness the annual appearance of the Eesident 
and British troops on the Dasara ? Or how could we hope 
to follow them, when the vast assemblage is dispersed to 
their distant districts and remote villages, and reason them 
out of the belief that the British, on the occasion referred too, 
do really sanction their idolatry ? Far more promising an under- 
taking is it, I trust, for us to raise our voice to the British 
Government, and desire it to take the most suitable steps for 
convincing the Natives of its wish to have no connection 
whatever with heathenism. But the advice is as unsound as 
it is impracticable. In spite of all the remonstrances which 
we might put forth on the Dasara itself, and in spite of all 
the diligence which we might employ throughout the year 
in combating the views of the Natives nay, though we 
should do nothing else from year to year, but endeavour to 
clear the British Government in the minds of the Hindus 
from all participation with their festivals, still, so long as the 
present practice is kept up by the British authorities, all our 
arguments would be utterly powerless. In our reasonings 
we could anticipate only ignominious defeat. The merest 
child in Nagpoor could point with his finger to the presence 
of the British, and appealing to the universal impression of 



110 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

the Native spectators, could overturn our most laboured 
statements. 

" For what is the present position of the British Govern- 
ment towards the natives of Central India on the Dasara, 
and what is the view which the latter naturally and legiti- 
mately take of it ? Once a year, and only once a year, they 
see detachments of British troops, accompanied by music and 
artillery, enter their territories for the purpose of saluting 
their king. Once a year, and only once a year, they see the 
Eesident and his subordinates the Brigadier of the Subsidiary 
Force and his staff, and a great many other officers coming 
by an unusual road which leads them past the vicinity of 
the spot selected by the Eaja for his idolatry, and instead of 
going to the palace to salute His Highness there, as the 
words of the order would prepare us to expect, taking up a 
position near a bridge between the palace and the chosen 
scene of heathen worship, where along with the troops they 
await the Eaja's approach. On His Highness with his train 
of followers mounted on elephants coming up, the Eesident 
and his party, also seated on elephants, exchange salutations 
with him, and the British guns and musketry discharge their 
volleys. The procession moves forward; and when the 
Eesident and his party reach the place where their path 
separates from that of the Eaja, they return to Sitabaldi, and 
His Highness after going a little distance farther arrives 
at the sacred tree, and begins to adore it. Such are the 
leading circumstances of the part which the British take 
before the natives on the occasion of the Dasara ; and it is 
from these circumstances, without any knowledge of our orders 
or intentions, that the latter are left to draw their conclusion. 

" Now, what is the inference which they necessarily draw 
from the premisses ? They know very well, that on no other 
day than their chief annual festival is similar honour paid to 
their Eaja. He would indeed be received with a salute 



1850 NATIVE OPINION FORGES HISLOP TO PROTEST 111 

any day that lie might choose to enter either of the British 
cantonments. But to be received as a king, when he pays a 
visit to one of our military stations, is a very different thing 
from having troops sent, most of them upwards of ten miles, 
out of their quarters into his dominions, for the purpose of 
saluting him when he goes forth on an errand of idolatry. 
Again, the Eesident with his escort might pay the Eaja a 
visit of ceremony within his territories any day that might 
be agreed on ; and this the Natives could not possibly regard 
as any countenance given to their religion, provided it were 
not a day of stated annual recurrence like the Holi, and 
associated in their minds with heathenism : but such a visit, 
both in regard to the occasion and the nature of the pomp, 
is not to be compared with the display on the Dasara. On 
no other day than this, I repeat, do the people of Nagpoor 
see both Kesident and artillerymen within their country to do 
honour to their prince. The Raja may leave his palace at 
the head of his nobles to hunt he may leave his palace to 
visit his provinces or review his army, or to do any other 
exclusively secular acts, common to him with other royal 
personages ; but on these occasions the British, unless he 
pass through their cantonments, take no notice whatever of 
his movements. It is only when he leaves his palace to 
worship a tree an action not peculiarly royal, and certainly 
in no sense secular, that the Head of the Political Depart- 
ment and the Head of the Military, with an imposing array of 
subordinates and music and guns, proceed into his dominions 
to offer him all possible honour. When Hindus see these 
things and reflect upon them, when they see the Dasara 
alone selected for paying the Eaja such marked distinction, 
what inference can they draw from the facts of the case but 
this, that the British Government in the choice of the day 
has a regard to the heathen rights with which that day is in 
their minds inseparably connected ? 



112 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

" But the evil consequences of the present practice stop not 
here. . . . How is it possible for Europeans, high in office and 
with all the prestige of the British name, to be expected to 
show themselves in state amid the crowd assembled on a 
festival, without increasing the density of that crowd and 
prolonging the existence of that festival ? It is a fact that at 
Baroda, the capital of the Gaikwar, when the Eesident and the 
Native Prince were not on friendly terms, for two successive 
years there was no royal honour publicly paid to Ganpati. 
And why ? Because the Eesident on these two occasions 
refused to appear on the idol's feast day, as he had been 
accustomed to do. Now, it is not meant to assert that, if the 
British were everywhere permanently to refuse to appear on 
festivals, their observance would immediately be discontinued 
throughout India. But doubtless such a step would materially 
diminish their importance, and contribute to hasten their dis- 
use. And surely it is not too much to expect of a Christian 
Government that, instead of allowing its representatives at 
Gwalior, at Indore, and at Baroda, as well as at Nagpoor, to 
appear on festivals, by which their pomp is greatly aug- 
mented, larger crowds are drawn out to witness the 
proceedings, and the sympathies of the uneducated masses 
are called forth towards a false religion, it should direct all 
its officers in their official capacity studiously to avoid the 
very semblance of encouraging idolatry in any form. 

" What took place in Travankor in 1848 ? In that year a 
European officer of the ISTair Brigade, that is, the Eaja's own 
troops, felt aggrieved at being required in the ordinary 
course of his duty to attend His Highness on the celebration 
of an idolatrous ceremony, and he appealed to the commandant 
on the subject. On the case being referred to the Eaja, he 
at once stated that he would gladly dispense with the 
attendance of the European officers of the Nair Brigade at 
all Hindu ceremonies in future, and that care should be taken 



1846 HIS FAIRNESS 113 

to obviate, by previous arrangements, all cause for any 
similar representation. Why should the European officers 
under a Christian Government not enjoy the same immunity 
as those under a heathen prince ? Or why should the 
British Government not make the same arrangement for its 
servants with all the Hindu Eajas, which one Eaja was so 
ready to concede to the Christian officers in his service, 
without even a suggestion from the paramount power ? " 

Mr. Hislop had chosen the Dasara festival of 30th Sep- 
tember 1846, as that on which publicly to raise this question 
through the Bombay Telegraph. Captain G. Earn say the 
Assistant Eesident replied ; under the name of " Ginger," 
one of his friends followed on the same side. The con- 
troversial correspondence continued into the next year, when 
it gave place to the case of Baba Pandurang, in which the 
whole principles of the toleration of Christianity by a feu- 
datory Hindu sovereign, and by the Eesident representing 
the British Government, were involved. In neither case, nor 
in any of the discussions forced upon him by facts and duty, 
did Mr. Hislop show personal feeling, or the temper of a 
prejudiced observer seeking only the triumph which ulti- 
mately came about. He retained the respect of the officials 
whose public conduct, in the absence of all other criticism, he 
submitted to the judgment of the European community in 
India and at home. In the very address in which he exposed 
the British connection with idolatry in Nagpoor, he said : 
" In a country where the political authority of the British, 
both by treaty and in act, is so paramount, we naturally look 
for an improvement in the social condition of the people. 
And we are not disappointed. To the praise of the Com- 
pany's influence let it be said, that the territories of the 
ISTagpoor Eaja are in a much better state, than those of other 
native princes not so much under British control. It is 
pleasing to see the contrast which meets the eye as you cross 

I 



114 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1848 

the Wardha, and pass from the lawless and neglected districts 
of the Nizam to the peaceful villages, and the well cultivated 
fields on the Nagpoor side of the river. Still slavery exists 
in Central India," 

The mission school in the city of Nagpoor was becoming 
a power in the heart of the Maratha community, when the 
Brahmans took alarm, Two years after its foundation, their 
young men eagerly sought instruction, including the English 
Bible, daily ; twenty lads were studying English, and ninety 
Marathi. The girls' Marathi school was attended by two 
sisters of the principal wife of the Eaja. Two sons of 
the Tamil converts at Sitabaldi had from the first been 
educated side by side with the Brahmanical boys ; but their 
presence as casteless offered a good excuse for priestly intol- 
erance. Certain new students demanded that all " pariahs " 
should be expelled. The missionaries, of course, refused to ac- 
knowledge caste in any form, either by attacking it or pander- 
ing to it. The Christian school was as open to all as the 
highway, or the railway a few years after. The Brahmanical 
leaders in the city issued a decree that none of their caste 
should attend the school. They were, at that early time, 
obeyed for the moment, precisely as the priestly sanhedrim 
had been in Calcutta, in Bombay, and in Madras in similar 
circumstances. But there was one exception. Baba Pandur- 
ang, nearly fifteen years of age, had become a Christian 
under the missionaries' teaching, though he had not declared 
himself. He returned to the school, the only Brahman there, 
and he persisted in his attendance till his father cast him 
out without food or shelter. This forced the young catechu- 
men to an open decision, he sought the protection of the 
mission house on British territory. There he received both 
food and shelter " in a manner consistent with the rules of 
his Brahmanical caste." Mr. Hislop sent for his father and 
gave him every facility for persuading the son, short of vio- 



1848 THE CASE OF BABA PANDUEANG 115 

lence. The lad stood firm and asked for baptism into 
Christ. 

In ordinary British territory the courts would have been 
open, and a decision would have been given after evidence 
and pleading on both sides, and after an examination as to 
the " discretion " of the convert who was under sixteen years 
of age. This had happened in the latest case of the kind, in 
Madras. In India, as in England, procedure and decisions had 
varied according to the temper of the judge, but in every 
case there had been publicity of trial and discussion. The 
Mission and the convert were now to discover what it was 
to work in a Native State, where the representative of the 
British Government was out of sympathy with the principles 
of Christian toleration, while officially attending the saturnalia 
of the Holi and Dasara idol festivals. Having failed to per- 
suade or coerce his son's conscience, the father complained 
to the Eaja. The Eaja applied to the acting Eesident to 
procure the surrender of the youth. On the Eesident's first 
demand, Mr. Hislop remonstrated that Baba Pandurang would 
in all probability be ill-treated if forcibly given up. The 
Eesident repeated his demand, alleging the Eaja's right 
under treaty to have his " discontented subjects " given up, 
but promised to interpose for his protection. On this the 
young confessor was taken before the Brahmanical and other 
dignitaries of the city, as described by Mr. Hunter j 1 having 
testified for Christ, he was imprisoned by the Eaja's govern- 
ment. No definite term was fixed, and some of the natives 
expected that he would be confined for life, or until alter- 
nate cruelty and sensual temptation, as in other cases, led 
him to cease for the time his Christian profession. 

Mr. Hislop's next step was to appeal to the Company's 
Government of India, and ultimately to the Court of Direc- 

1 History of the Missions of the Free Church of Scotland in India and 
Africa, by the Eev. Robert Hunter, M.A. 1873. 



116 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

tors. Lord Dalhousie had not been many months Governor- 
General, and he was already in the midst of the troubles at 
Mooltan and the preparations for the second Sikh war. 
There is no evidence that the case of Baba Pandurang ever 
came before him ; Dr. Duff, who watched it in Calcutta, was 
of opinion that it never did. The just and fearless ruler 1 
who gladly sanctioned the public baptism, by a government 
chaplain, of the Sikh Maharaja who was younger than Baba 
Pandurang, and who anticipated all official efforts for the ameli- 
oration of the condition of women in India by supporting the 
Bethune School till the day of his death, could not have been 
personally indifferent to the principles involved in the young 
Brahman's case, in the absence of a public tribunal. But no 
answer came, and meanwhile, almost daily, did accounts 
reach the missionary of the inhuman pressure brought 
to bear on the still testifying young confessor. How long 
would a lad of fifteen hold out? Could more courageous 

1 Sir Charles Bernard lias supplied this Note. " Somewhere about 1852, 
a certain well-to-do Coorg, a landholder, was converted to Christianity. The 
leading Coorgs (aboriginal landholders of the Coorg province) were much ex- 
cited; they had gatherings, and they threatened insurrection xinless the 
Christian Coorg was removed from the country or deprived of his land. The 
Coorg authorities reported upon the matter, and proposals were made to the 
Government of India, that the Christian Coorg should be indiiced or made 
to give up his ancestral holding, and to migrate from his home. In this way, 
it was suggested, risk of insurrection would be avoided. 

"Lord Dalhousie, before whom the papers came, minuted to the effect 
that the English Government was a Christian Government, and that it would 
ill become us to lay disabilities on, or to punish a British subject for, embrac- 
ing Christianity. He gave orders that, come what might, the Christian 
Coorg was not to be turned out of his land on the ground of his Christianity. 
Those orders went to Coorg through the Commissioner of Mysore. Seven or 
eight months afterwards Colonel Cubbon reported that the Coorgs had accepted 
the orders of the Government of India as decisive, that all excitement on the 
matter had subsided, and that the Christian Coorg was living on his lands, none 
making him afraid. Lord Dalhousie circulated Colonel Cubbon's report to 
his colleagues in the Council for information, with some such remark as the 
following : 

" It is a maxim of religion to do what is right, to fear God and to have no 
other fear ; but the truth of it, and the wisdom of it, are constantly proved in 
politics as well as in morals." 



1848 THE STORY OF BABA PANDUKANG 117 

consistency be expected for ever from a young and as yet 
unbaptized convert, of Hindu training and physique, albeit 
a Brahman and a Maratha, than from the experienced born 
Christian ? Was the case to be hushed up by what looked 
like a conspiracy of bureaucratic silence, while the victim 
was quivering ? Christ Himself was being persecuted afresh 
in the person of His " little one " ? Denied even a hearing, 
as he thought, by Raja, Resident, and the Paramount Power 
alike, Stephen Hislop appealed to the public conscience of 
all classes and creeds. One of his letters to his brother 
Eobert introduces the case from his point of view, and closes 
with another unconscious revelation of the saintly longings 
of the heart of the young apostle of thirty-one : 

"NAGPOOK, Itli September 1848. . . . The boy's name is Baba 
Panclurang. He lias attended school almost ever since the one at Nagpoor 
was established. However, lately he was taken away on account of 
the panic which prevailed in the city regarding the admission of low 
caste children as pupils. Baba himself was above such narrow-minded 
and superstitious prejudices, and therefore the time of his absence from 
school was spent in misery. After some weeks of this torture he 
resolved to disregard his father's wish and return to school, so great was 
his love of knowledge, especially the kind of knowledge he acquired 
from the mission ! As a reward for his praiseworthy desire he was 
turned out of doors the first evening when he went home for his 
supper. That evening he had to sup with us. But the father being 
afraid lest he should break caste if he continued to take food under 
our roof, endeavoured to make up the peace with him next day by 
promising to allow him to go to school if he would return home. The 
poor boy consented, but found the promise was not intended to be 
kept, and there was nothing to be expected but the severest punishment 
if he attempted to prosecute his studies. After suffering much at the 
hands of both his parents he again took refuge with us, and declared it 
to be his wish to live with us and be a Christian. He now not only 
ate in our house, but also partook of our food, and sat at table with us 
during his repasts, both of which were acts inconsistent with the main- 
tenance of his Brahmanical caste. His residence under our roof was 
of a very pleasing nature both to him and us. From all that we then 
saw of him we had every reason to believe that he was sincerely con- 



118 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

vinced of the truth of Christianity, and of his duty to embrace and 
follow Christ with all his heart. But Satan was envious of our 
pleasure and his profit. He stirred up the father to procure an order 
through the Raja from the British Resident for Baba's surrender. 

" I remonstrated and appealed to Calcutta, but in vain. Baba was 
given up, and he was forthwith thrown into prison for the crime of break- 
ing caste and professing his faith in Jesus. The argument which may 
have weighed with the British authorities in inducing them to act as 
they did is perhaps Baba's age, which is not much more than fourteen 
years. This would be enough to free him from his parents' jurisdic- 
tion according to British law, but I suppose a youth does not attain 
the privilege of acting for himself among Hindus until the age of 
sixteen. Possibly as he is the subject of a Hindu prince this principle 
was acted on in his case. However, this was not the reason assigned 
by Captain Ramsay. He referred to a treaty which would warrant 
him following the same course in regard to a man of sixty years of 
age. That treaty, however, has been modified by subsequent engage- 
ments, and instead of the Raja being absolute in the government of 
his subjects, as he was recognised to be by the treaty adduced, he is now 
limited by the advice of the Resident, who can interfere in the 
administration of justice and all other matters, internal as well as 
external, and besides see that his representations are attended to. The 
British have the perfect right to prevent the Raja doing wrong to Baba 
Pandurang if they like. That the poor boy has been allowed to lie 
in jail for about two months now while a British political functionary 
living on the spot is fully aware of the fact, and has about 6000 
soldiers at his beck to put a stop to the grievous injustice if he chose, 
only shows how utterly indifferent the British Government in India is 
to Christianity nay, what a guilt it incurs in actually giving up a 
young disciple of Christ to be persecuted for his religion by a Raja who 
is wholly under British control. If at the time of despatching the 
memorial I had known the stipulations of recent treaties there might 
have been introduced arguments stronger than those employed argu- 
ments which would have covered the British Government with shame 
in the estimation of all thinking men. 

" I have sent the whole circumstances of the case for publication 
in India. This under God seems to open up the only prospect of 
deliverance for dear Baba from his protracted captivity. Think of the 
situation of the poor lad : Associated with thieves, etc., who have no 
sympathy with him, as with all their dishonesty they do not consider 
they have done anything in violation of their religion, continually 



1848 REVIEWS HIS SPIRITUAL HISTORY 119 

exposed to the arts of designing Brahmans who, whether they approach 
him in the guise of friends or the garb of avowed enemies, are in 
either case opposed to his real welfare, debarred from all intercourse 
with Christian friends, deprived of his accustomed intellectual studies, 
and especially of the perusal of that Word which might be his com- 
fort in his affliction ! I trust, however, that the Lord, who cannot 
be shut out from any place, is with him ; and if the Lord is his 
portion what else need he want ? Hitherto, so far as I can learn, he 
has given his testimony for Christ, and as to-morrow will be the end 
of the seventh week of his imprisonment I would fain hope that by 
his patience and fortitude he may weary out the hostility of his 
enemies. Though he should make something like a compliance in 
order to escape from captivity it would be no marvel, for he is 
3iaturally of a delicate bodily frame and an amiable mental disposition 
that would more readily yield than resist. If this supposition should 
be realised, I will still cling to the belief that by God's grace, and the 
admonitions of the Word and the mission, he might be recovered and 
restored. Dear R, it is an anxious time. Strange questions often 
arise in my mind in these circumstances about the perseverance of 
saints. Pray for Baba and the mission. . . . 

"I was gratified by the receipt of your letter with its enclosure 
from my old friend. Sorry that in the latter there is no room for a 
word about Christ. He was always reserved in his manner, and he 
may still be so on the subject of religion, though he may know it 
by experience. But if his heart were as full of piety as of entomology, 
would there not be a more proportionate external manifestation of 
each 1 Too often is it seen that geology or some other secular science 
completely overlies the knowledge of salvation. 

"8th September. My birthday. Already have thirty -one years 
rolled over my head. Serious thought ! Oh, how little do I know 
of the Scriptures ! How little do I feel of the grace of God ! How 
little have I done for Christ ! How far have I been from fulfilling my 
duty as a creature ! from walking worthy of my vocation as a Chris- 
tian, and from labouring in season and oiit of season as a minister, 
especially a missionary whose office is the most arduous and respon- 
sible of any. My conscience condemns me, and God the Omniscient 
and the Most Holy condemns me also. Let this, then, be my 
resource there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ 
Jesus, and as I come in Christ to God anew for His mercy, may I 
seek at the same time more grace, that henceforth I may not walk 
after the flesh but after the spirit. My dearest Kobert, I hope you 



120 STEPHEN HISLOP 1848 

know somewhat the value of religion, and although you may not feel 
much comfort, yet you still hold on in a dependence on Christ's 
righteousness and Christ's strength, hoping that you will yet see the 
light of God's countenance here on earth, and see the Saviour face to 
face in the world to come. Eemember me with all the love of a 
brother, and Erasma with all the affection of a sister, to your dear 
wife and the members of our family at Arbroath and Duns. Alexan- 
der's appeal at the latter place was very touching. Do you think I 
will ever see niy native town again to tell the inhabitants of the dark 
heathen lands, which are the abodes of horrid cruelty? I wish to 
leave that matter to God, and not to be greatly anxious about it. I 
feel a strong attachment to Nagpoor. This controversy connected with 
Baba has sometimes suggested the thought that there is no door open 
for us here if all inquirers are to be given up to the Kaja. The idea 
of leaving sends a pang through my heart. Your very affectionate 

" STEPHEN." 

The convert Brahman was delivered up by Mr. Hislop on 
the 22d July; not till September did lie appeal from the 
silent Paramount Power to the public conscience through the 
press, which conscience so worked that in due time toleration 
triumphed over the most absolute government, Hindu and 
British. The Friend of India weekly newspaper proved to 
be true to its name and its history since Carey and Joshua 
Marshman had first published it as a monthly magazine. 
The editor, Mr. John Marshman, being on his annual holiday 
in the worst month of the Bengal year, which precedes the 
cool season of October to March, Dr. Duff had agreed to 
supply an article every week. On the 12th October 1848 ac- 
cordingly there appeared a leader headed "The Nagpoor Case." 
In three columns the journal stated the facts on both sides ; 
in other three it discussed the principles involved with a 
calm impartiality, but unmistakable firmness, which practi- 
cally settled the whole matter. The article thus concluded : 
" Eemembering how slowly, and after what fearful struggles 
even the most enlightened of the nations of Europe came 
to comprehend aright and consistently act upon the principles 



1848 THE PRESS INTERFERES 121 

of toleration in matters of opinion, religion, and conscience, 
we ought to be antecedently prepared to make the utmost 
allowance for the native princes and durbars of India. But 
while the British Government ought to exercise much 
patience and forbearance towards them, it is plainly its 
imperative duty not to compromise its own high character, 
nor to prove unfaithful to its own ennobling principles. As 
the constituted guardian of all the grandest interests of our 
common humanity in the east, it is its sublime vocation to 
spread the shield of protection over the oppressed, and to 
blunt the edge of the sword in the hands of the oppressor ; 
to mitigate the severities of tyrannical rule, and to initiate 
alike prince and subjects into the elevating lessons of civil 
and religious liberty. And whenever .example, instruction 
or counsel may fail in the case of really or nominally inde- 
pendent allies, it must at once consult its dignity and its 
duty by standing wholly aloof, and peremptorily refusing 
to connive at, far less participate in, the guilt of the most 
obnoxious of all conceivable acts of oppression even that 
of attempting in matters of faith, and through the coarse 
instrumentality of pains and penalties, to enforce the con- 
science of which the great Creator alone is the sovereign 
Lord." 

The Bengal HurJcam, which Sir John Kaye was editing 
about that time, took the same view, and a controversy arose 
in the newspapers with the best results. Hislop wrote in his 
own name to the Serampore weekly paper stating that the 
support of the Eaja by the Government of India, which left 
at his mercy for so long a time a poor delicate youth " whose 
only fault was that he had the courage to profess what he 
sincerely believed," must be due to defective information. 
" In order to enable you to judge of the Eaja's disposition I 
may mention that about a year ago, on his discovering that 
a servant employed in his palace was in the habit of reading 



122 STEPHEN HISLOP 1849 

tracts received from the mission, he took them from the 
young man and, tearing them in pieces in a great rage, 
threatened " that he would break his legs and confine him 
in a dungeon till he died." After correspondence on both 
sides, the Friend of India Mr. John Marshman this time 
summed up the case thus : " While we consider it a matter 
of Christian duty to give loth the statements which have 
been sent to us, our warmest sympathies are with the sacred 
cause in which Mr. Hislop is engaged, and nothing will give 
us greater satisfaction than to learn that all animosities have 
subsided, and that he and his colleagues are enabled to 
pursue their labours without impediment." 

Meanwhile, to procure the liberation of the victim of 
Brahmanical intolerance and British indifference, the mission- 
aries pledged themselves not to receive him so long as he 
was under sixteen years of age. But for two and a half 
months after that pledge had been given, or for a hundred and 
ten days in all, Baba Pandurang was kept in prison night 
and clay, side by side with " a murderer before his trial, 
adulterers after their trial, and many such like characters." 
He had been incarcerated by order of the Eaja's upadhya or 
sanhedrim for the crime of breaking caste and refusing to be 
restored. He yielded at last to three and a half months of 
such treatment, and was allowed to live in the veranda of 
his father's house as an outcast, after he had been again 
before the upadliya. In March 1849 he began to steal to 
school, dreading alike his father and the Eaja's punishment. 
"Such," wrote Hislop on 6th June, "is the termination 
of the course of policy which has been followed by Europeans 
and Marathas towards this unhappy youth. It is a policy 
which, so far from losing any of its revolting features in our 
eyes by the completeness of its success, is on that account 
all the more worthy of cordial indignation. If it had been 
followed towards an established Christian, whom the Spirit 



1849 FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD 123 

of God enabled to triumph over every form of opposition, 
the pertinacity with which it was persisted in would not 
have moved us so much." But Baba Pandurang was as 
truly Christ's as Simon Peter in the dark hours between 
the feet -washing at the Supper and the cock-crowing of 
the crucifixion morn. Satan had desired to have both that 
he might sift them as wheat ; but of the penitent Brahman 
as of the Apostle who wrote such a letter to the saints of the 
dispersion were the divine words true, " I have prayed for 
thee that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted 
strengthen thy brethren." The persecuted Brahman boy 
became for several years the preacher of Christ. 

This proved to be the last of those notorious cases of 
intolerance and persecution which marked the earlier years 
of the history of the Christian Church of India. Since that 
time an individual judge may have done injustice, like him 
who, at the bidding of faction, both imprisoned a Church of 
England missionary, and scoffingly sent back to Hinduism 
for a time a Bengali convert. So uncertain, however, is the 
law not only in the British courts, 1 but in Native States, and 
so variable may be the character and actions of the political 
officials who guide these States, that Hislop's review of the 
principles involved should be put on record. This is the 
more necessary when even at the present day the highest of 
the political officers of the Government of India has striven 
to crush a mission in Holkar's State, and has publicly given 
this advice to the Marathas : " Cherish and observe your 
ancient and noble religion, cherish and observe strictly 
your rules of caste, which missionaries and philanthropists 
tell you is a bad thing, but which is in reality the mortar 
which holds together the building of Indian society. If you 

1 See Appendix I. for the most recent case, of the Sikh, Natha Singh, in 
which section 363 of the Indian Penal Code was applied by the Assistant- 
Commissioner of Sialkot to secure toleration. 



124 STEPHEN HISLOP 1849 

take it away nothing will be left but ruins." Truly an un- 
conscious prophecy of the Caiaphas kind ! Against that we 
may set the modern toleration even of Mohammedan Haid- 
arabad, where the late Sir Salar Jung gave the Free Church 
of Scotland, represented by a Brahman missionary, lands for 
its converts ; of Hindu and Mohammedan Eajpootana, where 
the most ancient dynasties on earth vie with each other in 
welcoming the Scottish missionaries whom Dr. Wilson first 
introduced ; and of the Sikh Kaparthala, the princely repre- 
sentative of which rode first of the feudatories of India in the 
jubilee procession of the Queen-Empress, and the princess by 
his side was the daughter of one of Dr. Duffs ordained 
converts ! 

That a just Eesident will always secure toleration even in 
the State of an unjust Eaja, and that for a time a Eesident 
may fall lower than the most intolerant feudatory prince, is the 
lesson of Mr. Hislop's review of the case of Baba Pandurang : 
"In affording a refuge on British soil to that Brahman 
youth, who wished to become a Christian, we conceived we 
were acting only on the recognised practice of Britain, which 
opens her territories to all refugees ; and, if they have been 
guilty of no moral offence according to the laws of their 
adopted country, shields them from tyranny of every kind. 
Now the British law had just previously been declared by the 
Supreme Court of Madras to be, that if a youth is aggrieved 
by his parents he may, on showing that he is possessed of 
the requisite discretion, choose a guardian for himself. And 
to me it appears that this decision is one of the utmost 
importance to the interests of justice, both theoretically and 
practically. Theoretically, it stands to reason, that if a youth 
be responsible to God for his creed and conduct before the 
legal age for managing his worldly affairs, he should be per- 
mitted to believe and act as the will of the Most High seems 
to him to require. It may be said that this privilege of 



1849 THE PRINCIPLES OF TOLERATION 125 

independent judgment should be exercised under the parental 
roof. If it be possible, by all means, let it be so. But who, 
that knows anything of the views or spirit of Hindu parents, 
will reckon toleration among their virtues ? And so long as 
native society remains as it is so long as superstitious bigotry 
will tyrannise over enlightened conscience so long also as 
the pestilential atmosphere of heathenism tends to destroy 
the first symptoms of spiritual life, there ought to be that 
relief given to the youthful inquirer after Christianity, which 
the provisions of British law as interpreted in Madras afford. 
And practically the test of discretion is the only one which 
can be applied to such cases. When a pupil of a Mission 
school is brought into court, because he wishes to follow 
Christianity, how melancholy is the exhibition of fraud and 
falsehood regarding his age ! Witness conspires with witness 
to attest the youth's minority, and the horoscope, to which he 
can have no access from the time suspicion is awakened 
against him, is falsified to confirm the testimony. In these 
circumstances, is it not a satisfaction of the highest sort to 
a judge's mind, to set aside all the lying evidence of the 
witnesses as unnecessary, and, by an examination of the 
youth on the spot, proceed to ascertain for himself, in a way 
that cannot be mistaken, his fitness to be entrusted in re- 
ligious matters with the liberty of self-control ? 

" Our ideas of the sacredness of the rights of conscience 
on British soil were not sustained by the acting Eesident. 
He referred to a treaty of 1816, in which the Eaja's absolute 
authority over his subjects in his own territories was acknow- 
ledged, and in which it was stipulated that all discontented 
fugitives should be given up to his jurisdiction. Strange, 
that a youth, anxious about the salvation of his soul, should 
have been ranked in the same category with criminals and 
political offenders : but stranger still, that this old treaty 
should have been considered by the acting Eesident as never 



126 STEPHEN HISLOP 1849 

having been altered by subsequent engagements. Why, this 
was the treaty which was made before the commencement of 
the war, that laid the kingdom of Kagpoor prostrate at the 
feet of the British Government a war that ended in the 
deposition of the reigning monarch, and in the appointment 
of a British commission to rule over the country in the name 
of the young prince whom we elevated to the throne. This 
was the treaty which was modified by those of 1826 and 
1829, in which it was provided that the Kaja now come of 
age, instead of being absolute over his people within his own 
country, or having unlimited power to bring them back when 
they fled beyond its boundary, should himself be ruled by the 
advice of the Eesident in every important matter, whether in 
the internal or external management of his dominions. How- 
ever, the order of the acting Eesident was complied with, and 
the boy was given up to the Kaja, who kept him in prison for 
upwards of three months and a half for having expressed 
his desire to be a Christian. We forwarded to Calcutta a 
memorial on the subject, in which we acquainted the Supreme 
Government with the fact of the imprisonment. It was in 
vain. The acting Eesident's measures were approved of. 
Now if they had been only the measures of the acting 
Eesident, they would not have been of so much consequence. 
A succeeding Eesident might disallow the policy of his prede- 
cessor. But when that policy becomes by adoption the policy 
of the Supreme Government itself, it is a precedent for all 
succeeding Eesidents to follow, and therefore it concerns us to 
see clearly what its real nature is. 

" What are the principles, then, which it involves ? First, 
that all discontented subjects meaning thereby, amongst other 
classes of evil doers, all converts to Christianity, old or young 
who seek protection to their consciences on British soil, are 
on the demand of their heathen Prince to be surrendered to 
his absolute authority. And it is, moreover, implied, that if 



1849 RESPONSIBILITY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT 127 

any one shall be convicted in that Eaja's court of the crime 
of having judged for himself in religious matters, he shall 
suffer any amount of imprisonment that His Highness may be 
pleased to appoint, even though the punishment be brought 
to the notice of the British Government, and it have the 
power of interfering for the suppression of injustice within 
the Eaja's dominions. Now, if these are the principles which 
henceforth are to be acted on at Nagpoor and that they have 
been sanctioned by the highest authority in India, no one can 
warrantably deny what room, I would ask, is there for our 
Mission amongst the Marathi-speaking population, for whose 
benefit mainly it was intended ? As often as a subject of 
the Eaja is touched by divine truth, and attempts to join 
himself to the Church of Christ at Sitabaldi, immediately on 
a representation from His Highness he must be apprehended 
by peons, carried before the British Eesident, and by him sent 
to Kagpoor to be condemned to a lingering confinement, or 
any other punishment, at the sovereign pleasure of the 
Maratha ruler. At this rate, just in proportion as God 
blesses us, will the British authorities thwart and obstruct 
us. Is the British Government prepared to take on itself 
such a serious responsibility ? Are the Churches of the living 
God willing that a Mission, which was established under 
manifest tokens of the Lord's own guidance, the only 
one for some hundreds of miles on every side, shall have 
its converts snatched from it, and its operations im- 
peded and frustrated by a Christian Government? If 
this is the treatment to which our Mission is to be sub- 
jected, what better line of policy can be expected to be 
followed towards any Mission, that may hereafter be estab- 
lished in a Native State ? " 

The Mutiny of 1857 answered that, although even Lord 
Canning's Government gagged by law the Friend of India for 
expressing a hope that when the next centenary comes round 



128 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

seventy years hence all the feudatory sovereigns of India may 
be Christian. But in ISTagpoor, at least, neither Resident nor 
Raja ever again tried intolerance or persecution of any faith 
only of women. The Raja's principal queen pined in the 
Zanana for light, for knowledge, for at least the power to read, 
which some of the noblest of the Maratha women had enjoyed. 
It was in vain ; so she sent her sister Lulloo Bai, still too young 
to be shut up, to Mrs. Hislop's school, that the girl might 
repeat in the palace all she was taught. Her cousin accom- 
panied her, but the Brahmanical upadhya was powerful even 
against the royal Zanana, and the girls were soon with- 
drawn. 

An acting Resident of a very different stamp from some 
of his predecessors came temporarily to Nagpoor from Bhopal, 
where he had made himself beloved, Henry Durand. On his 
return from Madras in 1851, Stephen Hislop found him there. 
The two men at once drew to each other. Most significant 
of friendly intercourse and almost daily courtesies is the 
bundle of " chits," or short notes, which we find in the Hislop 
papers, relating to books, newspapers by the mail, public 
events at home and matters of local interest. Where one 
predecessor had declared only that he would not oppose 
the opening of a Christian mission in JSTagpoor, and another 
had complained of the boldness with which this had been 
done in the capital, and another had handed over a convert 
to the tender mercies of a royal Maratha gaoler, Colonel 
Durand visited the schools, profited by the English services, 
delighted in the cultured society of the missionaries. He 
even publicly presided at the closing examination of the 
Mission schools in December 1851, when he inspected 345 
boys and 48 girls of whom 35 were learning English in 
three Nagpoor and two Sitabaldi schools, apart from those 
in Kamthi. Even from the professedly " faint outline " of the 
Resident's address to the youths, as given in the local news- 



1851 SIE HENRY DU11AND 129 

paper, we can imagine the changes wrought by Hislop and 
his colleague alike in their teaching and in. their contending 
for the light. Alluding to the greatness of England and 
her high position among nations, he pointed to the sacred 
Scriptures as the true means whereby her eminence had been 
gained. The Boole he emphatically declared to be the founda- 
tion of her power and usefulness. He commended the Eaja 
for offering no obstruction to the establishment of a school in 
the heart of the city, and wished the Mission all success. He 
bore testimony, after personal inspection, to the excellent 
working of the system of education under the unwearied 
superintendence of Messrs. Hunter and Hislop. The local 
reporter adds with significant quaintness : "The meeting 
opened and closed with prayer, a custom which, however 
appropriate to all honest undertakings, was peculiarly appli- 
cable on the occasion in question." 

What Durand witnessed then of the reforms effected in a 
Native State by Christian education, following what he knew 
of his friend Dr. Duffs earlier success in Bengal, seems to 
have led him to send a remarkable letter to his old chief, 
Lord Ellenborough, to which current controversies in and 
regarding India give a powerful meaning : 



May 1853. ... 1 am anxious on one point, for your enemies 
have already sought to damage your position as leader of Indian reform 
by taking as a weapon against you the question of education. Ketro- 
gression 011 that particular is impracticable, but query whether there 
really be the least cause for apprehension because Calcutta baboos and 
their children murder Milton and Sliakespear. 

" In the far future a storm may be descried, but it is one during 
the raging of which our temporal supremacy will be indispensable to 
confine the conflict to the weapons of argument and persuasion, and 
to preclude or put down physical force polemics. The conflict will 
come between light and darkness, truth and error, but not yet for a 
long time, so far as one may judge by the progress of the truth in its 
invasion of the territory of error. When the conflict comes it will be 
long and arduous, but not, I should think, so long as it lasted, un- 

K 



130 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

favourable to our rule. When the truth shall be dominant the Asiatic 
will change his character, but not till then, which is far centuries off. 
Unless the Spirit of God act with the energy of the first century of our 
era we run greater danger from undertaking too many things at once, 
and extending empire faster than our House of Commons is prepared 
to supply troops. One word from your lordship in favour of sound, 
practical Christian education, would do much good." 

Durand so used his brief influence with the Raja that 
His Highness promised to grant sites for buildings suited for 
the Christian schools if the Mission raised funds to erect 
them, in place of the miserable rooms which called forth the 
Resident's emphatic condemnation. Mr. Hislop's Church at 
home sent Colonel Durand a formal letter of thanks for his 
testimony to " the value of our Institutions in their religious 
and scientific bearings (the latter being viewed by us as 
strictly allied to the former), and for placing these in a pro- 
per light before the Raja." Durand had used this language 
in his address, which time is doing much to verify " One 
and twenty years ago a friend of mine, Dr. Duff, landed in 
Calcutta and started such an Institution as I see in embryo 
here. It grew rapidly into a most noble establishment, and 
has sent into the world many able men. Why should not 
this Institution honourably rival that one, expand into as noble 
proportions, and produce as great and gratifying results, or 
even greater ? " 

Truly, the tide had turned, but there was to be one more 
conflict. Samuel Hardy, the Madrasi evangelist who had 
helped Perumal to Christ, was selling tracts in the villages 
when he was surrounded and conducted between two armed 
men to the Mission house at his own request. Find- 
ing that he had promised to go with them to the palace 
the missionaries accompanied him, and on refusing to take 
off their boots, because they showed the European sign of 
respect by uncovering the head, they were quietly ushered 
into the court of the Vakeel. Before him and all the palace 



1852 ME. HANSEL THE NEW RESIDENT 131 

dignitaries, Hislop, writes his colleague, pleaded for liberty of 
conscience with such consummate skill that Samuel was set 
free, and liberty to sell tracts all over the State was formally 
conceded. Both parties duly reported the facts to the British 
authorities. 

Mr. Mansel, a well-known civilian of the old school, who 
had given way to Sir E. Montgomery as a colleague of Henry 
and John Lawrence in the Panjab, succeeded as Eesident of 
Nagpoor State in 1852. He began his administration in the 
spirit of Colonel Durand, so far as to subscribe Es. 200 
annually to the Mission schools in the character of " a well- 
wisher of the secular scope and results of all educational 
establishments in India/' He inspected the Institution in 
Nagpoor city on 21st May 1852, examining the classes in 
Marathi and English, and he presided at the examination at 
the close of the session. Pie showed such energy at the first 
in attempting to reform abuses in the Eaja's Government, that 
Mr. Hislop was encouraged to represent to him the still 
existing scandals of the British connection with idolatry. 
The agitation in England caused by the East India Company's 
application to Parliament for that charter of 1853, which 
proved to be its last, had begun. Hislop had written, 
" We do not expect to see a termination put to the annual 
encouragement given to idolatry here, unless the holy influence 
of Christians at home be brought to bear on the British 
Government and the Court of Directors for this end." The 
directors were working the press with the object of convincing 
the public that such abuses had ceased, and they were pre- 
paring official documents for the next session of Parliament 
for the same end. Accordingly Mr. Mansel was not reluctant 
to take up a question locally which had proved a stone of 
stumbling to his predecessors. The friendliness which he 
had from the first .shown to Hislop, because of their joint 
interest in geological investigations, was thus strengthened 



132 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1852 

for the highest ends. The inquiry began with a formal 
circular to the Mission, asking for detailed instances of 
abuses due to the British support of idolatry. We have no 
copy of the reply, but its nature may be gathered from this 
letter to Mr. Robert Hislop : 

"NAGPOOR, HthNovemberl852. . . . I wrote to Mr. Mausel against 
the inscription of an idol's name at the commencement of official docu- 
ments in Maratlii ; against the use of Ganges water in the administra- 
tion of oaths to natives, and the reported annual payment to a heathen 
temple from the Kesidency Treasury. I concluded with some remarks 
on the Dasara and Holi. I am happy to say that the correspondence, 
instead of exciting a storm of indignation as might have been appre- 
hended, has done good. The first two abuses are to be abolished, the 
existence of the third is doubted, which is the same as its being discon- 
tinued, and the Holi and Dasara are defended by weak arguments, 
but still arguments that imply a good will to the Mission. The way 
in which the case is put is this. I cannot myself abolish these 
practices, and while they continue I use them for the purpose of 
acquiring an influence over the Kaja's mind, which I can turn to 
account even for the benefit of the Mission should it require any- 
thing more from the Kesident than perfect neutrality. Such was 
the substance of Mr. M.'s reasoning, which was accompanied by his 
half-yearly subscription of about ,10 to our schools. In thanking 
him for his liberality, I observed that I rejoiced that by treaty he was 
invested with so much influence within the Kaja's dominions. 

" Since then we have been invited to a grand entertainment at the 
Palace, which took place on 8th inst. It is the first thing of the kind 
at which I have been, though I was once asked to a Eeview display of 
the Kaja's, but not at the Palace. On this recent occasion there were 
about eighty or ninety British officers present, and one Komish bishop 
and three priests. When I saw them there I thought there would be 
some collision about the asking of a blessing, for you must know Mr. 
Mansel is a Romanist. However, there was no difficulty. I was 
alone called on. The entertainment was a strange one for a Hindu 
to give, as the bill of fare included beef, which is an abomination to 
the follower of the Shastras. But there was the Kaja though not 
eating, for caste will not allow him to eat with Europeans, still counte- 
nancing the unclean viands with his presence. Wine, etc., is also a 
prohibited article among Hindus ; but there was no lack, and it is 



1853 CASE OF GANU LINGAPA 133 

said that the Eaja approves of a glass of brandy in secret very regularly. 
The sort of drawing-room was splendidly furnished with a solid silver 
table and chairs. If my dearest E. had been able to go, she would 
have seen the jewels on the four Eanis or queens, which by all accounts 
are superb. I was introduced to His Highness by the Eesident, but 
like all the rest had no opportunity of conversing with him. How- 
ever, I had a long talk with the Eaja's nearest relation, and with two 
young men, one of whom, if there be any successor, will likely become 
king on the Eaja's death. There was something very Eastern in the 
number of lights and fountains with which the palace was surrounded. 
But it is lamentable to think how low are the tastes of Oriental 
monarchs. I saw there was a dancing girl exhibiting before the Eaja 
at one part of the evening's proceedings, though not where I was. You 
may judge of the intellectual advancement of the nobility when I tell 
you that one of His Highness's relatives has just been appointed to an 
office similar to that of Lord Chancellor. He can neither read nor 
write in his own language. . . ." 

Direct British rule was soon to bring all such abuses to 
an end, but there was to be one more conflict to end in the 
vindication, by the Maratha sovereign himself, of liberty of 
conscience. Ganu Lingapa, a Telugu from the south, whose 
people had settled among the Marathas of Nagpoor, had long- 
been impressed under the missionaries' teaching with a feel- 
ing of his sins and the truth of Christianity. On the 29th 
July 1853 he sought admission into the Christian Church. 
He was seventeen years of age. The father, wrote Hislop to 
his brother, "follows the same honourable occupation of 
builder as did our own." 

"NAGPOOR, 25th August 1853. . . . Eemembering the unsatis- 
factory position in which affairs had been left between the Mission and 
the political authorities by the case of Baba Pandurang, we in the 
early part of that day consulted the Eesident as to the policy which 
he and the Eaja would follow. Mr. Mansel was too liberal to hold the 
opinion that all Christian converts of whatever age should be given up 
to the Eaja to be punished as ' discontented subjects,' and was inclined 
to hold and to recommend to His Highness that youths on attaining 
the age- of sixteen should be free to act in religious matters as they 



134 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1853 

chose. He promised to confer with the Kaja on the point, and we 
hoped that in that quarter things were in a proper train. Ganu came 
according to his appointment, and expressed his desire for baptism. 
We would not, however, allow him to break his caste as a preparatory 
step to entering the Christian fold until he had gone through the 
ordeal of an interview with his father. We sent for the latter, and 
for about two hours he remained in conversation with his son, endeav- 
ouring to induce him to return home with him to heathenism, but in 
vain. When he found that his arguments failed, he laid hold on 
Ganu, and attempted to carry him off by force. As his single 
physical strength was not sufficient for this he left our house to bring 
a reinforcement of his caste people. In the evening a party of fifty 
karagirs (builders) arrived, and tried to break into our house. In three 
hours after dark they kept up a tumult in our verandah, when Mr. 
Mansel, to whom I had sent a note informing him of our apprehensions 
of violence, caused them to be dispersed. He considered it enough, 
however, that next day though living on British soil we should be 
placed under the protection of the native Government, whose vakeel or 
ambassador was charged with the duty of keeping the Nagpoor people 
quiet. 

" In this the Resident committed a sad mistake, as he should have 
known that no dependence was to be placed in a native Government 
when the interests of heathenism were concerned. Next morning 
droves of people were seen coming from the city to our bungalow, till 
at last they amounted to 400. For a time they were respectful ; 
but seeing no peon on the spot to check rioting, they began to shout 
and threaten, and in the end they made a determined attack upon us, 
smashing the panes of glass and forcing in the doors. Ganu, whose 
mind had been kept for hour upon hour on the rack, became greatly 
afraid, and what with the tears of his relatives who threatened to kill 
themselves, and the noise of others who menaced his life, he lost heart 
and gave himself up to the mob, who carried him off to the city. 
Had he not escaped from our house at the time he did I did not think our 
own lives would have been safe, as without a single constable or magis- 
trate to protect us, our little band of native Christians, who to the 
number of a dozen made a brave defence, were wholly in the hands 
of the infuriated crowd. Ganu has since continued in the city, sad in 
spirit because he does not believe in Hinduism, though he is not will- 
ing now to renew his request for baptism." 

" 22c October. . . . I regret to say Ganu is still among the heathen. 
T\vo ringleaders, who were British subjects under the Resident's own 



1853 UNBAPTIZED CHRISTIANS IN INDIA 135 

jurisdiction, have been condemned to an imprisonment of two and six 
months respectively, while other two, who were under military 
authority, have been tried by court-martial this week, and will 
certainly be punished, though the particular penalty has not yet been 
published. While in regard to the rioters from the city, who were 
subjects of the Eaja, His Highness has agreed to bear all the blame 
for them, and as an acknowledgment of the remissness of his govern- 
ment on the day of the tumult, and compensation for the injury done 
by his people to the mission, he has paid the sum of 1000 Nagpoor 
rupees about .85. Yesterday his ambassador waited on us with the 
money. The interview was calculated, I hope, to subserve the good 
of the mission. Mr. Mansel meant it to support its dignity, and we 
employed it as an occasion for explaining to the representatives of his 
Maratha majesty the doctrines of the Christian faith." 

Ganu remained an imbaptized Christian for two or three 
years when, in a secret interview with. Mr. Hislop, he declared 
his unabated desire "to follow Christ." Before lie could 
testify by baptism Ms fidelity to the Master he was removed 
by cholera. Meanwhile the Eaja himself was suddenly called 
away. The difficult time of transition from Maratha to 
British administration was to bring care and even hurt to 
Hislop. But in an eight years' struggle he had won for his 
own and all future converts, in the Central Provinces of 
India, freedom to worship God. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MARATHA STATE BECOMING A BRITISH PROVINCE 

How a Hindu Raja dies What his family and people think Hislop's 
account Effect in Anglo-Indian circles Lord Dalhousie attacked by paid 
agitators His answer in the Parliamentary Blue Book Collapse of the 
opposition Attempt of Palace place-holders to keep the state property 
Government sells it to pension the Ranees Incapacity of the officiating 
commissioner Hislop beaten nearly to death by a mob who mistake him 
for an official "In perils by the heathen, in perils in the city" His 
own narrative Mai-administration by the new commission Generous use 
of compensation given to him for assault His character of Robert Nesbit 
Entomological pursuits General and Mrs. Colin Mackenzie at Elich- 
poor Berar becomes British Bal Dewa first fruit of the mission there 
Hislop's influence on English officers Baptism of three converts and 
two women Fearing and Valiant for the Truth Dr. Hunter returns to 
Scotland Appeal for Nagpoor Institution building Dr. Duff's visit 
Eloquent plea for development of the mission Hislop and his family on 
tour Coal discovery The Gonds Growing kindliness of the people of 
all classes. 

TOWARDS the close of the year 1853 Nagpoor became ordi- 
nary British territory for the second time. Baghoji Bhosla 
III. died on the llth December, unexpectedly and without 
a natural heir, but after frequent solicitation to adopt 
a boy on the part of the British Eesident, who was person- 
ally anxious to see the Maratha State continued. In a few 
hours all that was left in this world of the feudatory 
sovereign, whom the Marquis of Hastings had set up, in the 
dream never yet fulfilled in any case that he would rule 
the millions of the people wisely, was a handful of ashes, to 
be mingled with the sacred waters of the Godavari. No 



1854 DEATH OF THE LAST RAJA OF NAGPOOR 137 

one mourned for the dead man, with whose body twenty 
thousand rupees' worth of jewels had perished. His hand 
had been heavy on all but the ministers of his pleasures and 
exactions. They lamented, intrigued, and plotted to retain 
some vestige at least of their power, and some hope of future 
gains. Brahman priests united for the hoiir with Moham- 
medan parasites, and both offered their services to the ladies 
of the Zanana, whom the deceased had alternately neglected 
and outraged. Among the six Ranees there was one vener- 
able woman, the Dowager Bald Bai, who had all the ability 
of the best women of her race, but that had always been 
directed to the most reactionary ends, and she was already 
seventy-five years of age. The elder Rani of the dead man, 
though young, was still less fitted to be regent, even had she 
not been childless, for she was a mere creature of the hareem. 
He left four other childless widows, of whom the same may 
be said, save that two of them had sought deliverance from 
the indescribable misery of their lot by attempting to attend 
Mrs. Hislop's mission school. There was a widow of the 
rebel Apa Saheb, and there were the other nameless ladies, 
slaves, and sexless creatures, who make the polygamous 
collections of Hindu and Mohammedan nobles, even to this 
clay, a union of Canaanite Sodom and Hellenic Corinth. 

"NAGPOOR, 3d January 1854. . . . The most important news I 
have to communicate is the death of the Eaja of Nagpoor, which took 
place on llth December last. He was not supposed to be in any 
danger until within a few hours of his decease. He had no medical 
attendant except a Mussulman boy of about fifteen years of age, who 
was physician to the Court because his father was so before him. He 
left no son of his own, had adopted none, and died without signifying 
any wish as to what should be done on his death. The Eesident 
hastened to the palace as soon as he learned that His Highness was 
seriously ill, but found him either dead or unconscious. 

" Intelligence of the event was immediately despatched to the 
Governor -General, who, however, happened to be in Burma at the 



138 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

time. This will delay the receipt of any reply for about a month. 
Speculations are very abundant as to the disposal of the country. It 
is entirely in the power of the British, and will be dealt with just as 
they think fit. Some suppose that it will not be annexed till the death 
of an old dowager queen named Baka Bai, who is now about seventy- 
five years of age. In that case it will be governed by a commission 
from the first. Of course the natives in the city, who depend for sub- 
sistence a good deal on the presence of royalty, would prefer that a 
Hindu king should be appointed. The two nearest-of-kin are Eshwant 
Kao and Apa Saheb. Eshwant Kao, who is nearer than the other, is 
not a favourite in the city, though he is an acquaintance of mine, and 
frequently visits at our house. 

"Apa Saheb has been nominated by Baka Bai to act the part of chief 
mourner in the Eaja's funeral rites. The corpse of His Highness was 
burned a few hours after he expired, and along with it there were com- 
mitted to the flames all the jewels he was in the habit of wearing gold, 
pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones. The value was estimated 
at Es. 70,000, but I believe Ks. 20,000 more nearly correct. Some 
days after his death the planet Venus was seen to shine while the sun 
was high in the heavens. The city people in general thought it was a 
new star set in the firmaments as the abode of the late king's soul. 
Some, however, thought it was a very unlucky sign. 

"On the 30th December we had our usual annual examination of 
the city schools. The Resident was not able in consequence of multi- 
plicity of business to preside, though I daresay after the case of Ganu 
he was glad to be absent. Colonel Cotton took the chair. There 
was an average attendance of Europeans. But the principal feature 
was the increased interest evinced in our operations by some of the 
leading men in Nagpoor. Eshwant Eao was one of those present. 
Another was a fakeer, who rides about the streets on a stick for a horse 
like a child. He passes for a man of no ordinary holiness among both 
Mussulmans and Hindus. The Eaja till the day of his death was in 
the habit of allowing him a monthly salary on the supposition that 
through his ghostly influence he would be blessed with a son and heir. 
It is thus that the poor children of darkness are deceived. 

" I am concerned about Eshwant Eao, as about three weeks ago 
he was bitten by a mad dog, and allowed the wound to remain without 
any application save an abundance of charms. I did not hear of the 
occurrence till three days after it had taken place. On the fourth day 
I persuaded him to have it cauterised, but the benefit of such a remedy 
must be very problematical after such a delay. A horse that was 



1854 THE PAID ADVOCATES OF THE STATE 139 

bitten at the same time is already dead. Those calamities are very 
frequent in this land. A month ago three men died that were bitten 
by the same rabid jackal that had entered their village from the 
jungle." 

The news of the Nagpoor Eaja's death excited no little 
discussion in Anglo-Indian circles, both in India and in 
London during the months of silence kept by the Govern- 
ment of India until the Court of Directors and Board of 
Control could sanction its proposal, whatever that might turn 
out to be. The best English journals in India pronounced 
most clearly against the policy of again tempting failure at 
the expense of four millions of our native subjects, by a 
second time handing them over to the tender mercies of 
a Maratha stranger. For there was no lineal or adopted 
heir. The only possible successors named were two youths, 
of whom the best that could be said by their self-interested 
supporters was this the first, aged eighteen, was the son of 
a daughter of a sister of the adoptive father of the late Raja, 
amiable and sickly; the second lad was a son of a son of a 
sister of the adoptive grandfather, dissipated and violent. 
The leading journal in India which, as such, had given but 
half-hearted and reluctant support to Mr. Hislop in his fight 
for toleration, now did him full justice in its answer to the 
plea that, however bad a new native ruler might turn out to 
be, the British Eesident would control him. " The Eesident 
may become, under the provisions of the treaty, the in- 
strument, willingly or unwillingly, of wrong. When the 
first inquirer went to the Nagpoor missionaries the Eaja de- 
manded his restoration as ' a discontented subject/ obtained 
it through the Kesident, and imprisoned him. That is not a 
fact to be forgotten, even if Captain Eamsay were right in 
his construction of the treaty. It showed at least the animus 
of the Native Court. It is the same in Oudh." 

The Brahmans and Mussulmans of the palace lost not an 



140 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

hour in fighting for their threatened position. A century's 
experience had taught the corrupt classes in every State the 
incorruptibility of the Indian civil service, indeed, with a very 
few exceptions, after the Nabob era, which, before the Eeform 
Bill, demoralised English political life. But there has always 
been a class of agents ready to take a brief from India and to 
advocate any claims whatever in the press and in public as- 
semblies, not as paid lawyers or agitators, but professing to 
be disinterested patriots and even statesmen. Misled by 
such the British public and Parliament have sometimes com- 
pelled the Government of the day to sacrifice the dearest 
interests of millions of our Indian subjects to the appetite 
for money and lust of pleasure of an adopted stranger or 
pensioner. It is the glory of Henry Fawcett that he was at 
once the greatest and the purest of Indian reformers the 
most righteous adviser of the princes, and the most intelli- 
gent sympathiser with the peoples of India. But there was 
no Henry Fawcett in Parliament in 1854, and for a little 
the Nagpoor case fell low into the hands and purses of the 
class of advocates of whom we hope to see no more. 

Lord Dalhousie's mouth was shut officially for eight 
months as his private journals are still unhappily locked 
up for other twenty-three years until Parliament published 
the ISTagpoor Blue Book. Then the paid, though apparently 
disinterested, opposition to his policy suddenly collapsed, in 
the face of facts and arguments which could not be resisted. 
That opposition had the one merit of compelling the Governor- 
General to publish to the world the truth regarding the 
character and the rule of Eaghoji Bhosla III., which the council 
had kept back during his absence in the Panjab,to the detriment 
of Mr. Hislop and the principles for which he contended at 
last so triumphantly. It was thus that Lord Dalhousie met 
the self-interested argument for the perpetuation of a native 
cabinet in Nagpoor, when he resolved not to repeat there 



1854 LORD DALHOUSIE CARES FOR THE PEOPLE 141 

the mistake made by Lord Hastings when they set up 
Eaghoji after Apa Saheb's rebellion, and that made by Lord 
Hardinge in the Panjab after the first Sikh war, which had 
led to all the anarchy and bloodshed just brought to a close 
by the results of the second. 

"On three several occasions, and in different parts of 
India, at Mysore, at Satara, at Nagpoor, the British Govern- 
ment during the last half century has tried the experiment 
of setting up a native sovereign over territories it had gained 
in war. Each experiment has signally failed. 

" We set up a Eaja at Mysore, and we have long since 
been obliged to assume direct management of the country, 
and to take out of the Eaja's hands the power which he was 
found unfit to wield. 

" We set up a Eaja at Satara, and twenty years afterwards 
we were obliged to dethrone and to exile him. 

" We set up a Eaja at Nagpoor. We afforded him every 
advantage a native prince could command. His boyhood 
was trained under our own auspices ; an able and respected 
princess was his guardian and the regent of his State. For 
ten years, while he was yet a youth, we governed his country 
for him. We handed it over to him, with an excellent 
system of administration in full and practised operation, 
with a disciplined and well-paid army, with a full treasury 
and a contented people. Yet, after little more than twenty 
years, this prince, descending to the tomb, has left behind 
him a character whose record is disgraceful to him alike as a 
sovereign and as a man. So favoured and so aided, he has, 
nevertheless, lived and died a seller of justice, a miser, a 
drunkard, and a debauchee. 

" What guarantee can the British Government now find 
for itself, or offer to the people of ISTagpoor, that another 
successor will not imitate and emulate this bad example? 
And if that should be the case, what justification could the 



142 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

Government of India hereafter plead for having neglected to 
exercise the power which it possessed to avert for ever from 
the people of Nagpoor so probable and so grievous an evil ? " 
The annexation of Nagpoor by lapse was in the interests 
of the ladies of the royal Zanana and their dependants as 
much as in that of the four millions of peasantry and shop- 
keepers and their children to this hour. They were for the 
first time set free from the misery of their relation to the 
late Eaja and his corrupt advisers, who had since made 
them their victims ; and they were guaranteed most liberal 
stipends, which are paid to this day. The state jewels and 
royal property, which had belonged to the Government of India 
after Apa Saheb, and had been again entrusted to Eaghoji so 
long as he ruled, were all disposed of for their benefit to 
meet these stipends, so far as it would go. The palace 
vultures, who had expected to pounce on the state jewels 
and other property, after a fashion which would have left 
little for the defenceless ladies of the Zanana, cried aloud 
through the native press and their paid agents in England, 
of " wholesale confiscations " and " sacrifice of personal pro- 
perty," till it seemed as if the case of the Princesses of 
Nagpoor would rival Sheridan's charge as to the Begums of 
Oudh. But what were the facts ? The officiating Com- 
missioner, who was now Captain Elliot, reported to the 
Government that the treasury contained property in money 
and jewels to the value of 750,000, and asked for instructions 
as to its disposal. He was told that the British Government 
waived all right to this property ; to allot to the Eanees 
(" and their slaves "), jewels, furniture, and personal property 
suitable to their rank ; and to realise the remainder for the 
benefit of the Bhosla family. Should the money prove in- 
sufficient, it engaged to make good what might be required 
to guarantee adequate stipends. The result was that it 
granted 30,000 a year in all to the ladies and their depend- 



1854 RIOT IN NAGPOOE 143 

ants, a result which put them in a better position than they 
had ever enjoyed. 

But the disappointed knot of priestly place-holders and 
menials found a vent for their rage. To their evil counsels 
and support was chiefly due the fact that the Rehoboam 
they had led to his early ruin could have no successor. 
They suffered justly when they fell with him, but they 
resolved not to fall without a stroke. They found their 
opportunity in the insouciance and incapacity of the British 
officials to whom, for the next six years, the new province 
was left under the pressure of events of such magnitude as 
the Mutiny of 1857, and the reorganisation of Northern India. 
Though well aware of the discontent of the palace retainers 
and their followers, the Commissioner took no extra- 
ordinary precautions to secure the public peace during the 
removal of the state property to the British Residency. It 
was allowed to become known that the transfer would be 
made on the llth October 1854. At sunrise the plotters 
had gathered the city mob around the palace, armed with 
swords, bludgeons, and stones. The first official to arrive 
was a Mohammedan subordinate, who was dragged from his 
palankeen and left bleeding to death. Captain Crichton, 
the Assistant Commissioner, who followed, had an escort of 
only twenty-five native troopers, and the party was soon 
enclosed by the rioters, so that it was with difficulty that a 
message was sent to the Commissioner, who at once des- 
patched the 10th Madras Native Infantry from Sitabaldi, 
and asked the Brigadier-General to order out a large force 
from Kamthi. The 10th Madras Native Infantry easily dis- 
persed the crowd, and there was no further trouble at the 
palace. The senior Rani denied all knowledge of the plot, 
and disavowed all participation in the acts of the rioters. 
The moving spirit was said to be Eshwant Rao, one of the 
two pretenders already mentioned, and he was put in hold. 



144 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

But the effect of the officiating Commissioner's weakness 
did not end with the posting of the Madras sepoys at the 
palace, and a larger infantry force around his own official 
residence and treasury. On the same morning, at the same 
early hour of sunrise, Stephen Hislop, the Scottish mission- 
ary, was visiting and inspecting his branch schools in the city. 
When passing from one to another through a quarter where 
he was not personally known, some of the rioters came 
upon him. Believing that he was one of the English officials 
they attacked him with mud, closed in around him with 
bludgeons, and when he silently attempted to make his way 
to his next school, looking in vain for a friendly face or open 
door, they pelted him with stones, as they shrieked at him 
" Take the jewels ; take the jewels." The Bombay Times, 
then the ablest journal in Western India, edited by the 
accomplished Dr. Buist, thus describes the scene : " Weak- 
ened from the loss of blood he fell to the ground, when the 
inhuman wretches, notwithstanding they saw him covered 
with blood, continued to assault him, and would in all 
probability have murdered him, but for the providential 
interposition of an old scholar, who told them that Mr. 
Hislop was a missionary and in no way connected with the 
Commissioner. The mob almost immediately desisted, and 
some even evinced compunction for what they had done, 
helping to lift Mr. Hislop from the ground. His pupil then 
conducted him to the house of a Maratha officer, who sent 
him in a palankeen under an escort of sepoys to the mission- 
house, where he arrived so covered with dust and blood that 
all that could be discovered was that he was a human 
being." 

Mr. Hunter, his colleague, who with Mrs. Hislop received 
the sufferer, thus describes him : " The aspect he presented 
when carried home none who witnessed it will ever forget. 
On his head were ten deep gashes, while all over his body 



1854 " IN DEATHS OFT " 145 

were bruises ; and the white dress he had worn was every- 
where so saturated with blood that it was only from a small 
part beneath the knee that its original colour could be 
inferred. The native doctor, called in to shave the head of 
the expiring sufferer, fainted at the sight, and it required 
European nerve to do what was requisite in the case. Had 
he not naturally possessed a strong constitution it is im- 
possible that he could have survived." 

For the third time to be followed by a fourth and then 
by a fifth and fatal event Stephen Hislop was face to face 
with God. Like the first Christian missionary he might, in 
his degree, have described himself as " in deaths oft. ... In 
journey ings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, 
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in 
the sea. . . . Besides those things that are without, that 
which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches." 
His marvellous vitality so far prevailed that in twelve days 
he was able thus to tell the story from his own point of view 
to his brother Eobert. But he overtaxed his strength, and 
for two months longer he was kept to his couch by an 
effusion on the knee unobserved at the time he wrote : 

"KA.GPOOR, 23fZ October 1854. . . . You are aware that the 
British have annexed Nagpoor. Most of the people concerned in the 
measure are glad that it has taken place. The cultivators, who are 
scattered over the rural districts, to a man rejoice ; but nobles, priests, 
and the dependants on the palace, who are crowded in the city, coin- 
plain. However, all submitted to the annexation. But following 
necessarily from this step is another, viz. the claiming of the 
property of the Native Government. Of this the most precious 
portion are the jewels that successive Eajas had hoarded. The 
jewels had once been captured by our countrymen in war, and 
restored about the time our mission was established. And yet the 
relicts of the Maratha power took it into their head to claim them as 
private property, and they contrived to embue some of the lower 
classes of the city with the same view. On Wednesday llth inst., 

L 



146 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

therefore, when the British authorities determined to commence their 
removal, with a view of despatching them to Calcutta, a mob collected 
about the palace to maltreat those who were to carry the resolution 
into effect. Jamal-u-deen, a Mussulman in the service of our Govern- 
ment, first experienced their resentment, and Captain Crichton 
was the next to be attacked. The former was beaten with staves 
(a great indignity) and cut on the head with stones, while his 
palankeen was smashed to pieces ; the latter, having a good many 
peons (policemen) to defend him, was enabled to retreat with only a 
few slight blows. It was my turn that day to pass through a con- 
siderable part of the city to examine branch schools. I looked into 
one, but finding a native Christian engaged in teaching Christianity to 
the pupils I went on to another. By the way I addressed a company 
of oilmen, who were seated on the ground holding a pancheyat (a court 
held by themselves for settling any matter that may arise in their 
caste, especially if it involved ceremonial defilement). They were just 
agreeing on their decision, which was to be, as the manner of oilmen 
generally is, that the offender should be fined in a certain amount of 
spirits for the regalement of all the caste men. I spent some time in 
remonstrating with them on the evil of their custom, to which they 
unanimously assented, though I fear their practice would not in the 
least be altered. Arrived at another school, I addressed the whole, 
young and old, along with some parents who were in the habit of 
assembling, on the fall of man and the prevalence of sin. From this 
school I was to visit a house, in which we propose to establish another 
branch ; and my course necessarily led me past the palace. 

" When I came near it, about 9 A.M., the events recorded above had 
already taken place, and the mob was stopping up the street ready for 
further mischief. As I entered them they opened a path for me, but ere 
long they closed in behind, and mistaking me for Captain Crichton (for 
they belonged to the rascally part of the community, with whom we have 
nothing to do) they began to pelt me. Unattended and unarmed as I 
was, and there being no policeman or sepoy to afford me help, or to 
apprehend my assailants, I had nothing left but to flee. The quarter 
of the city to which I fled was that to which I was going that in 
which as yet we have no school, and where consequently we are 
unknown. I sought refuge in two or three houses, but in vain. The 
doors were closed against me, or I was driven by the inmates back 
into the street. I was now given up to the fury of my adversaries, 
who were, however, animated by no personal dislike to me or religious 
excitement, but by political resentment. My hat, as you know it often 



1854 DELIVERED FliOM DESTRUCTION 147 

does, fell off at an early stage of my flight, and there was I in the 
midst of hundreds with a bare head and a defenceless body, the mark 
of sticks and stones. Blows were showered upon me from all sides, 
while I kept up my struggle to pass through them, and I did advance 
till my assailants had diminished to about fifty ; but at last, exhausted 
through loss of blood, I fell down near the door of the major of the 
Eaja's old army. 

" Here I was surrounded by my bloodthirsty pursuers, who 
were proceeding to take away my life ; but God, who saves in 
the greatest extremities, threw in my way two old pupils, who with 
difficulty recognising me in my wounded state, exerted themselves for 
my preservation. By their arguments and the force they mustered 
from the neighbourhood they put an end to the murderous work, and 
conveyed me in safety into the major's house, whence I was brought 
home in a palankeen, with ten deep gashes on my head, hardly able 
to lift either arm, beaten all over the body, and with my clothes dyed 
in gore. My head Was shaved ; wounds dressed ; it was found no bones 
were broken ; and now, by the blessing of God, though only twelve 
days have elapsed, I am nearly altogether better. Under our Heavenly 
Father much is to be ascribed to temperate habits. In the case of 
ordinary men, who take a glass of beer or wine in a day, the recovery 
would not have been so rapid, for fever and inflammation would have 
been sure to supervene. But as I never drink anything stronger than 
water my skin never became hot j the application of water outwardly 
to the wounds prevented even suppuration, and the healing process 
has been little short of miraculous. Four doctors have seen me during 
my illness, and all agreed in saying, ' Now you will experience the 
benefits of your total abstinence.' To God be the praise, I have 
indeed much to thank Him for. Once I was nearly drowned in the 
Blackadder when at Mercer's school ; again I was wrecked and nearly 
lost off the coast of Fife ; a third time I was in danger of death from 
the bite of a mad dog here ; and now this month, had it not been for 
the Lord who was on my side, I should have been swallowed up quick, 
when men like wild beasts rose up against me. I am thankful to say 
that death seemed to have lost its sting on the three last occasions. 

" Captain Elliot, who is acting as Chief Commissioner here, behaved 
very ill on the Wednesday on which I was attacked. He gave us no 
warning that the jewels were to be taken away that day, and he took 
no precautions to preserve the peace of the city. Ignorant of the 
feeling of the people, he seems to have thought that he had just to ask 
the jewels and they would forthwith be given tip. Hence not a com- 



148 STEPHEN HISLOP 1855 

pany- of soldiers was sent into Nagpoor that morning ; but when the 
excitement did arise he passed from the extreme of presumption to the 
extreme of pusillanimity ; for in a short time he had about two thousand 
men, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, on the march to set things to 
right. In my official letter to him, narrating the particulars of the 
attack on me, I have given him a bit of my mind on the arrange- 
ments made. I am sorry to say that our new local British rulers 
are in general men animated by no high principle whatever." 

On Mr. Hislop's recovery, after a relapse due to his 
preaching in Kamthi too soon, he made depositions before 
the magistrate as to the events of the llth October. But no 
effort was made by the new Commissioner to discover the 
ringleaders in the riot and nearly fatal assault, although it 
was evident that Mr. Hislop had suffered in the place of the 
officials. The native head clerk of the new district of 
Nagpoor was reported to Captain Elliot by his immediate 
superior, who had detected him in taking a bribe, but the 
only result was the suspension of the criminal for a few days, 
and the showing of dislike to the officer who had reported 
him. We shall see how the continuance and extension of 
this forced Lord Canning to reform the first British adminis- 
tration. Soon a proclamation appeared in the city abolishing 
the Marathi vernacular of the majority of the people as the 
language of the public courts and documents. After a delay 
of six months, during which nothing had been heard of the 
proceedings in the assault case, Mr. Hislop wrote to the 
magistrate hinting at an appeal, but that official had gone 
out tiger -hunting, though it was a court day. Mr. Plow- 
den arrived as Commissioner in the month of June 1855, 
and not till 7th September thereafter was the report on 
the assault sent to Mr. Hislop, who at once replied to the 
" partisan arguments " of that document. The case terminated 
on 29th October, more than a year after the deadly assault 
had occurred. Under the advice of friends, and with reference 
to the fact that not one of his assailants, though evidence 



1855 HIS CHARACTER OF ROBERT NESBIT 149 

was given against them, had been apprehended, Mr. Hislop 
thought it right to accept of damages to which he was 
declared entitled. When called upon to name the amount, 
he mentioned Es. 1500 (less than 150), which was just Es. 
500 more than Mr. Mansel, when Eesident, thought him en- 
titled to for the assault made in 1855 on the mission house. 
Bhawauba, the young man by whose providential interference 
he had been rescued, should have been rewarded, but his 
claims were overlooked. Mr. Hislop therefore divided the 
money thus : Es. 600 to the mission funds, as salary during 
the time he was disabled for duty ; Es. 500 to his rescuer ; 
and Es. 400 to the physician. His own comment on the 
whole case we find in this letter to his brother Eobert, along 
with references to the death of the Eev. Eobert Nesbit, the 
most lovable and scholarly senior missionary of the Free 
Church of Scotland in Bombay, following that of John 
Anderson of Madras : 

"NAGPOOR, *ltli August 1855. The last mail must have conveyed 
to you the mournful intelligence of Eobert Nesbit's death. His 
removal is an irreparable loss to our West of India Mission, and a 
heavy blow to the cause of evangelisation throughout Maharashtra. 
He was the best Marathi scholar, and the best preacher in that language 
in all the Bombay Presidency ; and most diligently and successfully did 
he use his attainments for the glory of God in the conversion of souls. 
His qualifications as a teacher you have often heard. Naturally 
amiable and interesting, he won the affections of all his students, and 
inspired them with a love of the studies which he taught. But it is 
chiefly in his character of a modest, humble, spiritual Christian that 
Robert Nesbit attracted the admiration of all God's people in Western 
India. The Mission at Bombay is now greatly reduced. Dr. Wilson 
is at present the only European agent in that large city, where the 
hostility to Christianity is much more active than at Madras. I hope 
the Church at home will speedily send brethren to his relief. 

"Amid my increased labours I gratefully acknowledge the 
divine support. Physically I am able to undertake the work, and 
spiritually I feel comforted in it. We had an interesting visit from 
Mr. Charles Elliot, a Deputy Commissioner, who expressed himself 



150 STEPHEN IIISLOr 1850 

very warmly in favour of our operations. He is from Boxburghshire, 
I think from Wolflee. Poor Captain Elliot, wlio lias behaved so ill, is 
very sick, and I fear very miserable in mind. He is going to leave for 
Europe, if his strength will permit, but his departure will occasion no 
regret whatever either among Europeans or natives. Major Spence, 
who has sympathised with him in his hostility to the Mission, and 
who, as Deputy Commissioner of this district, has earned the distrust of 
most people, has been quickened into motion in the case of my assault 
by a query from Mr. Plowden. Yesterday, in consequence, he com- 
pleted what would be called the precognition into the circumstances of 
the assault, with the view of ascertaining who should be apprehended 
for their share in it. Had it not been for Mr. Plowden, it would appear, 
he did not intend to find out who were guilty. And even now he has 
collected no evidence of his own, but simply gone over what my col- 
league gave him nine months ago. You may be thankful that you live 
in a country where such despotism and injustice cannot be practised. 
It will be difficult now to convict, as much evidence has been lost. For 
instance, I cannot easily identify a man that I saw three-quarters of 
a year ago, and how many witnesses may have died within the same 
period. 

" Your last letter noticed the receipt of the beetles. I am glad you 
are pleased. I did not expect an entomologist to be satisfied. But I 
hope to contribute more, but they will not differ much from those 
already sent as that is the character of our Coleoptera fauna. We 
have not much wood around us, except in Nagpoor city, which is a 
good deal hidden by trees. On all sides but one the country^ is very 
bare of timber trap nodules being in the ascendant. A friend of 
mine, Dr. Rawes, will get you some water-beetles ; and I must employ a 
servant to beat what bushes we have. Mr. Hunter, amongst other con- 
tributions, sent a Curculio, which he wishes to be returned to him. I 
think it is the largest specimen of that order. Many thanks for the 
Catalogue of Scottish Coleoptera. . . ." 

Among the distinguished officers who early came under 
the influence of Stephen Hislop, and helped his mission, was 
Colin Mackenzie. That Afghan hero and captive, while still 
a captain, was, in 1850, selected by Lord Dalhousie for the 
command of the Elichpoor Division as Brigadier of the 1st 
class. With his accomplished young wife, who still survives, 
he joined his command in the hot season of 1850, and soon 



1850 GENERAL COLIN MACKENZIE 151 

opened up Oliikalda plateau, which has recently become the 
Satpoora hill station of Central India, some twenty miles to 
the north-west. There he more than once received the His- 
lops and Mr. Hunter, after they had first made his acquaint- 
ance at Elichpoor during a cold-weather tour to the west. 
In Stephen Hislop and Colin Mackenzie there was the same 
fearless devotion to duty, the same unshrinking loyalty to 
Christ, the same evangelical experience of revelation and be- 
lief in its Pauline teaching, which in coarser natures might 
have approached fanaticism, but in them was broadened by 
the instincts and manners of the cultured gentleman. How 
they drew to each other, and how they helped each other's 
faith and service their loving correspondence shows. 

Mackenzie, in the wilder days of his youth, had twice 
been stationed at ISTagpoor. He had hunted the tigers of the 
Satpoora range ; he had even then bewailed the misrule of 
the Maratha prince, to whom Lord William Bentinck had 
practically abandoned four millions of human beings. His 
conversion to Christ and his marvellous exploits in the first 
Afghan war l had directed his splendid courage and ability 
to the highest of all ends while sanctifying the lower, when 
from Elichpoor he beheld the still more horrible oppression 
of the Nizam of Haidarabad, which he was powerless to quell, 
for which indeed, as Brigadier, he seemed to be in an in- 
direct sense responsible. His representation of the state of 
Berar, made confidentially to the friendly Governor-General, 
only called forth this reply, on 12th September 1852, " As 
for taking the country, I hope it will not be taken in my 
time, at least treaties can't be torn up like old newspapers, 
you know." But as the months went on the Nizam became 
more hopelessly corrupt in his person and mal-administra- 
tion. He was so insolvent that the heavy arrears of pay to 

1 Storms and SuiisMne of a Soldier's Life : Lieut. -General Colin Mackenzie, 
C.S., 1825-1881. Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1884. 



152 STEPHEN HISLOP 1853 

the military contingent, by which he had been relieved from 
the unlimited obligation of service in time of war, could not 
be discharged, and he assigned to the British Government the 
six districts of East and West Berar to meet the 320,000 
annually due, as well as past debts. Having foreseen this, 
Mackenzie had so wisely laid his plans that he took over the 
fertile cotton valley, the cultivators of which had long cried 
for British rule, " without losing a rupee of revenue or spill- 
ing a drop of blood," as the Governor-General described it. 
We thus entered, in 1853, on the "permanent possession and 
administration " of the valley of Berar, subject only to the 
payment of the surplus revenue to the Haidarabad prince. 
The bargain has been most profitable for him, as well as ad- 
vantageous to the people for whom both he and we in India 
exist. When the death of the Eaja of Nagpoor soon after 
occurred, direct British rule with all its blessings, material 
and moral, was thus carried right across the hitherto un- 
known and barbarous regions of Central India, from Bombay 
to Bengal and North Madras. 

The Nagpoor Mission was too weak to spread out from its 
centre, at that time, over Berar, but by tours and personal 
influence Hislop continued to sow the seed, which he first 
began to scatter there in 1845, and Dr. Hunter established 
a system of colportage till the Brahman preacher, Narayan 
Sheshadri, D.D., established the native mission of his Church 
in Amraoti, the capital, under Eev. Sidoba Misal. The first 
fruit was found early in 1853, in the conversion and baptism 
of Bal Dewa Singh, an orphaned Eajpoot, whom Colin Mac- 
kenzie had brought from Agra and placed in the mission 
school at Nagpoor. With him was baptized Virapa, son of a 
Lingayet priest of Shiva, His elder brother had to flee from 
Kamthi because of the intolerance of the Native State, was 
baptized by the London missionaries at Chikakol, near the 
east coast at Ganjam, and, as Samuel, became a successful 



1855 HIS WORK FOE EUROPEANS 153 

missionary to the day of his death a few years ago. Samuel's 
gentle and persistent influence first led his father to forsake 
the obscene temple, filthy image and life of mendicant dis- 
honesty, and put on Christ publicly by baptism ; and then 
guided the younger brother Virapa to the same joy. A third 
convert was baptized at the same time, Lakshmera, who, under 
the same influence of Samuel, became the Onesimus of the 
Kamthi church. In the same week of these baptisms, in 
November 1853, Hislop learned that two of the most pro- 
mising of his Nagpoor boys, who had gone to the Medical 
College at Madras, had been baptized there. 

On the removal of the Brigadier's command to Bolarum, 
the last service in which the Colin Mackenzies took part at 
Elichpoor was to sit down at the Lord's Table with the con- 
vert, Bal Dewa, whom they had helped to lead out from 
Hinduism. Mr. Hunter arrived there with two converts, 
Captain F and Bal Dewa, and the little band remem- 
bered His death till He come, as the saints of the Christian 
dispersion, scattered over the wilds of India and the colonies 
of our vast empire, so often do to the quickening of their 
faith and hope and joy. The adopted daughter of the 
Mackenzies was for some time a dweller under the roof of 
the Hislops, and there she too found Christ. Few mission- 
aries have been so remarkably used by the Spirit of God for 
the spiritual good of Europeans., besides natives, as the Scottish 
Hislop, and the German Hebich in Madras. In a letter to 
Hislop from Bolarum, dated 23d July 1855, the closing para- 
graph of which was not dictated as usual but written with 
his own mutilated hand, Colin Mackenzie thus delicately 
insinuates the way for one of his many generous deeds. " It 
is possible that either dear Mrs. Hislop or some of your dear 
bairns may be obliged to go home, or you may lack some 
little matters to make you more comfortable. I know not 
how that may be, but pray do not grieve a brother and 



154 STEPHEN HISLOP 1853 

sister in Christ by refusing the small tribute of love which 
I enclose. Helen and I feel assured you will not mortify 
us in our natural wish to be of a little use to those whom 
we look on as much more than blood relations. May God 
protect, prosper, and bless you in all things." 

In the same fruitful year, 1853, three other Hindus ap- 
peared together in the Sitabaldi church and renounced the 
idols for Christ. Pahud Sing, a Eajpoot, was, for a time, one 
of that useful class of non-Christian teachers of the verna- 
cular in mission schools who are generally secret Christians. 
Timid by temperament, he received courage to acknowledge 
Christ before men only when he was forty years of age. He 
thus broke forth in prayer before the waters of baptism 
fell on his up-turned countenance, glowing with a holy 
consecration : 

" infinitely merciful and Almighty God ! Thou art the Lord of 
the whole world, and upholdest all things seen and unseen. In Thine 
exceeding great mercy Thou art calling me into Thy holy church. 
Deeply sensible of the obligation, I return Thee thanks. Father ! 
give me help, that whatever persecutions may assail me, I may not, 
even in the least degree, fall away from Thee. Put Thy Spirit into 
the heart of my wife, that she may not waver in mind. God ! Thy 
power is boundless ; Thou canst give knowledge to those who are 
utterly devoid of understanding ; therefore, supremely gracious 
Father ! receive her into Thy holy church. infinitely compassionate 
God ! Thou art my Father ; besides Thee I have none else in this 
world. I come to Thee as a suppliant : do Thou keep me from all 
kinds of shame ; and to Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three in 
one God, be glory and honour. Amen." 

For the thirty-five years since, this Mr. Fearing of the 
Nagpoor church has been quietly valiant for the truth as an 
evangelist, and even to old age he testified to it by his ripe 
saintliness. Eamswami, who accompanied Mr. Hislop to 
Madras, had vacillated much under his mother's curses. 
But even when an inquirer he had been the means of 



1853 BABA PANDUKANG'S CONFESSION 155 

strengthening the faith of Baba Pandurang who, now nine- 
teen years of age, confessing his want of firmness under the 
persecution by the Raja, said : 

" When I was in this state God opened my heart to look into the 
Scriptures, and when I looked, I found such verses as this : ' Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no 
money : come ye, buy, and eat ; yea, come, buy wine and milk with- 
out money and without price.' When I thought upon such passages, 
I found that when God is willing to call me to His kingdom, why 
should then I delay any more ? and also Christ who loved the world, 
has told us all, saying, ' Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and 
learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.' 
I was led to see that it was better for me to avoid sins and become a 
follower of Christ, than to perish ; for it is written, ' The wages of 
sin is death.' For this cause and others, God gave me a mind to re- 
pent of my sins, and follow Christ entirely without any hesitation. 

" Such was my state, when God, who is ever good, brought me into 
close acquaintance with Kamswami, whom I found much concerned 
about his soul, and when we began to speak much together, we re- 
solved to follow Christ with sincerity. We now prayed together to 
God, asking His help that we may acknowledge Christ as the Saviour. 
So the Almighty enlightened our minds in the love of Christ, and 
believing that our hearts are toward Him, and that He has taken away 
our sins, we came forward to ask for baptism and to confess Christ 
openly before all people, that they may think that Christ is the 
Saviour of the world, and that they who believe in Christ with their 
whole heart will not perish, but have eternal life. May God bless us, 
and carry His work through us into effect, and may He bring forth 
good fruits by us. Amen." 

Like all Hindu children, Baba Pandurang had been be- 
trothed in infancy or, as Hindu law and the British courts 
consider it, married to a girl whom he had not seen, and 
whose family had long renounced him. That accomplished 
and impartial jurist, Sir Henry Maine, whose death is a 
loss to English scholarship, had not then provided a 
legal remedy. Believing himself to be unmarried, as he 



156 



STEPHEN HISLOP 



1856 



practically and morally was, Baba found his first actual wife 
in Mrs. Mitchell's school at Poona, only to lose her by death 
on their way to Nagpoor ; she was buried at Jalna, beside 
the grave of Mrs. Hill, the founder of the Mission. In time 
the betrothed Maratha girl, when she became old enough to 
understand her position, threw in her lot with her now Chris- 






R13V. BABA PANDURANQ AND HIS WIFE. 




tian husband, and he was licensed by the Presbytery of 
Bombay as a preacher of the Gospel. In 1856 two women 
were added to the church at Kamthi, Talloma, wife of a 
convert, who desired to be called Euth on sharing the faith 
of her husband, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law, and Baka 
Bai, the aged mother of Shrawan. 

By this time Mr. Hislop was alone. Mr. Hunter, had been 
ordered home in ill health. The Mission, in its three centres, 



1856 VISIT OF DK. DUFF 157 

had so extended that four missionaries such as now conduct 
it were required ; but for some years the work was left to 
the founder, as at the beginning. His wonderful strength, 
enthusiasm, and versatility, proved equal to the strain for a 
time. But though thus deprived of men, the mission could 
no longer remain without buildings large enough to accommo- 
date the youths who crowded to its teaching, especially in 
the city of Nagpoor. Mr. Hunter, who arrived in Scotland 
in July 1855, charged himself with the duty of raising money 
for an Institution, to become in time worthy of the Church 
and the God-given policy which had raised the Christian 
Colleges of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. Colonel 
Durand, when acting Eesident, had publicly described the 
two best of the Nagpoor schools native houses as " from 
the heat and want of ventilation, places that cannot but 
be most unhealthy at any season of the year, and in the 
hot weather and rains, killing work for Messrs. Hislop and 
Hunter." Five years had passed, the room had become 
still more crowded, and Mr. Hunter had been invalided, when 
another expert visited Nagpoor and described the schools as 
"low, confined, unhealthy, neither fit to shelter from the 
drenching rain nor scorching sun." 

That was the Rev. Dr. Duff. He was on his way back 
to Calcutta by Bombay and Nagpoor, after reorganising the 
missionary system of his Church in Scotland, by establishing 
congregational missionary associations to stir up each com- 
municant and intelligent child to pray and give for the 
missions. He saw the new provinces of Berar and Nagpoor, 
and he met Stephen Hislop for the first time, though they 
had often corresponded. His keen eye took in at once the 
position of the province and conditions of the Mission. 
His eloquent pen described the whole, and sketched the 
founding and growth of the mission in a long report which 
was published by the General Assembly of 1856. How 



158 STEPHEN HISLOP 1856 

Hislop must have rejoiced in his enthusiastic appreciation of 
the difficulties and needs of the Mission, which he had been 
representing almost in vain for ten years. Duff's appeal 
went straight to the practical point which Mr. Hunter had 
gone home to urge build a central institution. " No time 
is to be lost one of the brethren has already been compelled 
to retire from the field in broken health, and the whole 
mission now hangs on the shoulders of the other, Mr. Hislop. 
But though through God's blessing he is still strong, he has 
work in hand which, in such a climate, would require super- 
human strength to hold on with impunity. I would implore 
the Free Church of Scotland not to allow the health, perhaps 
the life, of another invaluable labourer to be needlessly 
sacrificed." Even at that time there were 675 youths in the 
schools. The annexation of Nagpoor had given an impetus 
to the demand for English- educated natives of probity and 
intelligence. The Marathi students were reading the Bible 
from Galatians to Hebrews, with the Psalms ; the first three 
books of Euclid and Natural Philosophy, and Hill's Lectures 
on Divinity for the Christians. In Nagpoor city alone the 
nucleus of the Maratha Church was twenty-two converts, of 
whom seven were women, besides fourteen children. Duff 
appealed for more than a building ; he challenged his Church 
to develop Hislop's work into the same central and indepen- 
dent position as his own, and John Wilson's and John Ander- 
son's. His description is still correct : 

" Northward, the nearest mission is a small one, recently estab- 
lished at Jabalpoor, in the great Narbada valley, distant nearly 
200 miles, and across two chains of hills clothed with wild forests, the 
haunt of the tiger and his feline associates. Westward, the nearest is 
at Ahmednagar, distant 350 miles. Southward, the nearest is at 
Masulipatam, on the Bay of Bengal, at least as distant as the last. 
Eastward, the nearest is at Midnapoor, distant 600 miles. And while 
the people of the province must continue to look, as in times past, to 
their own capital, as the chief source of influence to them, multitudes 



1856 DE. DUFF ON HISLOP'S LABOURS 159 

more in the surrounding districts, from similarity of language, manners, 
and habits, are led to do the same ; and now more than ever, from its 
having become the seat of administrative government to the paramount 
power in India. Here, then, is a grand centre for evangelising opera- 
tions, not only worthy of being maintained, but of being strengthened 
more. 

" Already has much and effective labour been bestowed upon it. 
Initial difficulties have been cleared away ; native antipathies have 
been softened and native prejudices conciliated ; doors of usefulness 
have been opened up, and a firm footing for Christianising measures 
obtained ; the ' powers that be,' dropping all old hostilities, now pro- 
fess themselves friendly to our mission ; native rule, with its bigotries, 
uncertainties, and antagonisms, being now at an end, there is the 
amplest security for purse, and property, and liberty of conscience, 
under the inviolable oegis of British power ; English and vernacular 
schools have been established, attended by hundreds of heathen youths, 
and even the hoary mountain barrier in the way of female enlighten- 
ment has been fairly broken in upon ; our missionaries have obtained 
such favour in the eyes of the Christian British residents that they 
contribute about two hundred pounds annually to the support of these 
schools, and as these advance and bear more ripened fruits, this con- 
tribution may yet be greatly increased. Through a succession of pro- 
vidential arrangements, the mission has got possession of two handsome 
and substantial edifices for a chapel and school the one at Kamthi, the 
other at Sitabaldi and seems to be thus moored to these shores, and 
the gospel has been widely proclaimed throughout the city and sur- 
rounding districts. Already, through the quickening influence of 
God's Spirit, have been realised some striking conversions to God, so 
that Christianity has begun fairly to strike its roots indigenously into 
the soil ; the nuclei of two native churches have now been formed, 
around which souls severed from heathenism may rally till they grow 
into self-sustaining strength ; and lastly what ought to weigh not a 
little with our people at home the Free Church mission has obtained a 
complete pre-occupancy of the whole city of Nagpoor and its dependent 
kingdom or provinces ; it is the only mission from any evangelical 
Church that has ever been planted there ; and if only and timeously 
strengthened so as to do more towards overtaking the land, the whole 
brought through God's blessing on its agency to bask in the sun- 
shine of the Sun of Eighteousness may one day be exclusively its 
own ! or rather His, whom the adoring hosts above do continually 
hail as the ' Lamb slain, and worthy to receive power, and riches, 



160 STEPHEN HISLOP 1856 

and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. 
Amen/ " 

At Kamthi Dr. Duff preached what Hislop described as a 
" deeply impressive " discourse, from the words " Herein is 
love." At Sitabaldi he addressed the Christian residents on 
the state of religion in Europe and America, concluding with 
a solemn appeal to all regarding the Mission and their own 
spiritual condition. " His visit/' wrote Hislop to Mr. Hunter, 
" was quite a refreshment. His humility and his zeal for the 
cause of the Lord have endeared him to our hearts ; while his 
public appearances have exalted our previously high estimate 
of the gifts and graces which have been bestowed upon him." 
From Jabalpoor Duff wrote to Hislop that the state of 
the Mission was pregnant with encouragement and promise. 
"You have been privileged to commence a great work at 
Nagpoor, which it were suicidal for our Church to arrest or 
resile from." 

Dr. Tweedie, convener and secretary of the Church's 
Mission in Edinburgh, issued Mr. Hunter's appeal for 1200 
to build the Nagpoor Institution, quoting Dr. Duffs sugges- 
tion that some one member might give the whole, and thus 
rear "a lasting monument in the heart of IsTagpoor, in 
Central India." Such a member was found in Miss Mary 
Barclay, 7 Carlton Terrace, Edinburgh, who gave that sum 
or half the cost of what now bears the name of the Hislop 
Missionary College, showing on its pediment an inscription, 
of which the closing words are, "CHKIST, the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life." 

Like John Wilson of Bombay, Stephen Hislop, from the 
first, spent a month of every cold season, in December and 
January, in missionary tours to preach and teach Christ, 
to circulate the Scriptures among the peasantry, artisans, 
and petty shopkeepers of the villages, bazaars, and fairs. We 
have already recorded his first long tour to Chanda. In the 



1854 TOUR IN WARDHA DISTRICT 161 

following account lie generalises his experiences in January 
1854, chiefly in the Wardha district : 

"My route lay to the south in the direction of no 
European station, where, in fact, Europeans had seldom or 
ever been seen, and the voice of the missionary had never 
before been heard. Accompanied by my dear family and 
Baba Pandurang, I passed on by easy stages, sometimes 
through jungle, and at other times through a cultivated 
country. One afternoon our encampment was invaded by 
two leopards, that came within a few yards of our children, 
but the Lord suffered them not to do us any harm. It is a 
melancholy reflection, that though our mission has been 
established now nearly nine years, and though for the last 
seven, with two necessary exceptions, something has been 
attempted every vacation directly for the good of the rural 
districts, yet there are to this day many routes radiating 
from Nagpoor all as new to the footsteps of the Christian 
evangelist, as that I lately took. 

"In the larger villages, however, even of these routes, 
from the communication which is kept up with the capital, 
the influence of our city schools is not unfelt. In such 
places I did not need to announce the object of my visit. 
The cases of Baba Pandurang and Ganu Lingapa were widely 
known, and with these was diffused some acquaintance with 
the Saviour and with the tendency of Christianity. At 
Girar, a village about forty miles from Nagpoor, where the 
Mussulmans have a famous shrine, I asked a man connected 
with the establishment, who had given us some information 
regarding it, some particulars about himself. He replied, ' I 
am of Lingapa caste.' This man had not been in Nagpoor 
for several years. At Segaum, about thirty miles farther 
distant, while I was endeavouring to impress on my hearers 
the duty of giving up all for Christ, one of the audience, as 
an illustration, brought forward the conduct of a young 

M 



162 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

Brahman, who, he said, had been tempted by the Raja with 
the offer of a lucrative appointment if he would not forsake 
idolatry, but who boldly professed his belief in Christianity, 
although imprisonment was the consequence, He and the 
rest of the assembly were agreeably surprised when the 
example adduced was stated to be sitting among them in the 
person of Baba ; and they listened with special attention to 
the gospel from his lips. 

" By the way we saw, what we had frequently had occa- 
sion to observe before, the readiness with which the interested 
advocates of superstition availed themselves of the conduct 
of Europeans to support their false pretensions. At a village, 
the inhabitants of which seemed to be in abject distress, I was 
addressing a crowd, when a fakeer came up with all the 
insignia of his mendicancy. I remonstrated with my hearers, 
that although they were so poor as not to be able to buy the 
smallest tract, yet they were willing to encourage such lazy 
vagrants as the one then before them. Their answer was, 
'What can we do ? We know we have no protection against 
such characters. If we refuse they will curse us ; they will 
lay their blood on our heads, or cause us to blush by their 
indecencies.' To this charge the fakeer had no reply, save 
that his ancestors for several generations had followed the 
same profession, and that Europeans in Kamthi bestowed on 
him alms. To the same purport was a statement volunteered 
by an Agarwala or adherent of the Sikh religion, who is 
settled in Girar, viz., that the British support the temple of 
Jagannath, in consequence of the god having appeared to 
them, and by a wonderful display of his power compelled 
them to do him honour. It is thus that our religion and 
government are dragged in triumph after the wheels of the 
idol car ! 

" The most absurd miracles find easy credence with a 
people who have long been given up to delusions to believe a 



1854 GEOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF ISLAM 163 

lie. Girar, above referred to, is supposed to have been the 
scene of one of these. Several hundred years ago there is 
said to have lived on the top of the hill near which the town 
is built, a Mussulman. named Sheik Fareed, renowned for his 
holy austerities. With the freedom which belongs to his 
privileged class, he is reported to have addressed a merchant 
who was passing by with bullocks laden with nutmegs, betel- 
nuts, etc., and to have demanded some of his wares. The 
merchant refused, alleging that his bullocks were laden only 
with stones. ' Stones let them be,' said the enraged mendi- 
cant ; and stones very soon did the poor distressed bullocks 
find them become. The merchant no less distressed on 
seeing the loss he had sustained, returned to Fareed and 
humbly entreated him to withdraw his curse, and restore his 
property to its former value. The saint ordered him to throw 
out the petrified fruits, to fill his sacks with leaves, and 
begone. These he had not gone far till he found all converted 
into gold and silver coins. Unhappily for the truth of this 
story, it can be proved that Sheik Fareed lived and died in 
the Panjab, and that the existing memorials of the miracle, 
which are scattered up and down the plain of Girar, are not 
real organic remains, but mere nodules that have escaped out 
of a clayey deposit in the neighbourhood. Yet on the 
strength of this imposture there has been erected an extensive 
establishment of fakeers, to whom all classes, high and low, 
Hindus and Mussulmans, from every part of the state, 
repair. Baba Pandurang's father made a vow to Fareed on 
behalf of his son while he was an infant, and a lock of hair 
was allowed to grow on Baba's head till both parent and 
child could go to Girar and pay the vow. On the occasion a 
sum of money was presented at the shrine of the deceased 
saint, another sum to the fakeer who acted as master of 
ceremonies, and a third to the drum. There was also brought 
a meat-offering to the saint, consisting of bread mixed with 



164 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

sugar and butter, which was afterwards distributed among 
the fishes and tortoises with which the tank of the establish- 
ment swarms ; but a fourth sum required to be given for 
permission to make the distribution. According to the 
avidity with which these tenants of the pool came to be fed 
is the invisible guardian of the place supposed to be pleased 
with the worshippers. This part of the proceedings being 
accomplished to their wish, the deluded votaries were directed 
to walk several times round the tank, and on their departure 
to carry with them some of the duck-weed which mantles the 
water, which they were taught to believe was a marvellous 
kind of poppy-seed, and a remedy for numerous evils. With 
what different feelings did Baba pay his second visit to Girar! 
The contrast was well fitted to draw forth his commiseration 
for the hundreds of his countrymen who daily flock to that 
scene of deception. In such a state of society the miracles of 
the New Testament may be accepted, but they fail to impress 
minds which look upon them as common, and embrace every 
legend without examination." 

At the end of 1854, on the 20th December, Mr. Hislop 
and his family and colleague set out, with tents, on what was 
perhaps the most important and fruitful of the tours of which 
he has preserved a detailed record, to the hill country and 
Gond centre of Chindwara district, to the north of Nagpoor. 
The road, or track as it was then, ascends from the Zeraghat l 
or lowlands of the Nagpoor plain to the Balaghat or highlands 
of the Satpoora range. From these the Kanhan river of 
Kamthi comes down in ravines and valleys, where it forms 
strips of verdure and waters mango groves, in which the 
villages nestle. In the bed of its Pench affluent, which rises 
on the plateau of the Mothoor sanitarium to the north, Hislop 
had discovered seams of coal two years before. 

1 For detailed description and maps see The /Student's Geography of India, 
Political and Physical (John Murray). 



1854 TOUR IN THE LAND OF THE GONDS 165 

" %5th. Started at 5| A.M. for Ramakona, where we arrived at 10 
A.M., the intermediate villages being Hawra on the north bank of the 
Jum 2 miles. Khair, 3 miles, a hamlet of 5 houses, where there were 
great complaints of past oppression in regard to forced labour, and 
where I met a Brahman, the patel of Paratpur, who would have 
bought a tract had he been able to get a pice on loan in all the place. 
Kajalwani, 3 miles; the Kanhan and Kamakona, 2 miles, in all 10 
miles. Here met a chaprassi of the Nagpoor Post Office in charge of 
upwards of 20 runners from Ramtek, etc., whom he was going to 
station on the roads. Kamakona is under a Brahman patel, who is 
rejoiced at the recent change of Government which prevents all forced 
labour. Tried to preach to the post-runners, but found it very diffi- 
cult. Afterwards went to see a Shankar Acharya, who was making a 
tour for the collection of money, accompanied by a large retinue. He 
was 011 his way to Chindwara, whence he intended to proceed to 
Chatteesgarh, and then return home. The discussion commenced by my 
asking the guru with what object he was travelling. He replied, to 
confirm the people in their practices. What practices ? I asked. He 
answered bathing, repeating the gayatri, etc. What is the use of 
bathing ? To take away sins. But this he afterwards retracted, and 
admitted that by the application of water to the body only bodily 
pollution could be removed. There is another kind of snan, however, 
he added, among us Brahmans, viz., that which is performed in the 
evening called Basma-snan, consisting of the application of ashes to the 
body, which is a certain means of purifying the soul. This statement 
also he withdrew, and took his stand on the efficiency of knowledge, 
which is to the soul what bathing is to the body. Worship is of 
nine kinds (nawvidha bhakti as it is in the Gita), e.g., 1st, That 
Brahmans should bathe and repeat the gayatri ; 2d, Shutting their eyes, 
should meditate before an idol and thus bring the god's form into the 
mind ; 3d, And if any one come at midday he should be reckoned god 
and worshipped ; 4th, That beasts and birds should be fed, etc. The 
third kind was chosen for comment by asking if a thief were to come 
is he to be treated as a god ? Yes, because in every heart god resides. 
If a thief has stolen, then is god the author of the theft ? No, he is 
far from evil-doers. You have well said, for He dwells in His people 
as a friend, but He hates the heart defiled by sin. I then asked if any 
one kept the commandments of God ? A few. I then put it to him 
if he did it, or ever met with a man who did it ? He confessed for 
himself that he was unable, and had never found one that was able. 
Then all we who are seated in this room are sinners, and how can we 



166 STEPHEN HISLOP 1854 

be forgiven and saved 1 By keeping God's commandments. But this 
is the very thing that we have not been able to do in times past, and 
how can we be able in the time to come 1 When he felt the difficulty 
he tried to get out of it by saying that there was no difference between 
sin and righteousness. But you yourself had admitted that God is 
angry with sinners, and if your hypothesis is correct He is angry 
without a cause. When he could propose no way of deliverance from 
sin, I unfolded the Gospel plan of redemption, to which he listened 
and apparently assented. 

"26th. Started from Nawtal at 6| A.M., and reached Talaw on 
the tableland, a distance of 4 J miles, at 9 A.M. The Shankar Acharya 
whom I met yesterday passed. In his suite there was a led cow 
which as soon as it saw our encampment came and lay down beside us, 
and scarcely could it be got away with all the efforts that could be used. 
They lifted it up and tried to let it down on its feet, but it endeavoured 
to keep its legs sloping so that they might not touch the ground. At 
first the guru told his servants to beat it and get it on, but on being 
reminded that in his view it was a goddess, he told them to desist. 
He informed me that in the Mhat to which he belonged there were 
about 500 Brahmans. At Talaw there are two temples built to 
Shiwa Lumtrip by Dharmaji Bhosla. At Tara I heard a loud noise 
in the village, arising from our cook having dishonestly helped himself 
to sugar-cane. I reached the scene of the disturbance just in time to 
see Virapa deal a heavy blow with the butt end of a musket on the 
breast of a poor young villager. The lad was comforted by receiving 
a rupee. How sad if our visit to this place for the promulgation of 
the gospel of peace and salvation had been accompanied by the loss of 
life! 

"27/i. Bade farewell to Tara. Passed Tansara, as I found that 
none of the people understood Marathi, except the Kotwal, a Mahar. 
In this respect the village resembled Tara, only there almost the 
whole people were Gonds, while here the patel and 3 other families 
were Rajpoots. Three miles farther on arrived at Mohokheda, a large 
town of 1200 houses. The tahsildar, as he was called, was a Marathi 
Brahman, and there were a good many others of the inhabitants who 
used the same language. I had a large and attentive congregation in 
the court. In the audience was one of the followers of the travelling 
guru. His success in Mohokheda, however, was small up to the time 
that we left the village, as no one had yet sent him anything to eat, 
although it was well known that he had arrived. In this respect the 
neglected religious teacher drew a painful contrast between himself 



1854 TOUR IN GOND-LAND COAL 167 

and Lakshman, who had raised about a rupee by the sale of 30 tracts. 
Lakshman truthfully replied that he gave the money's worth for the 
money, while the guru's object was simply to enrich himself and his 
order. My hearer helped the cause of Christ by admitting that 
his superior was not able to defend his position at Kamakona. 
Passed Sarat, 1|- miles ; Sohagpur, l|- miles; Eajara, a village of the 
Gond Eaja with a monolith, 1 mile ; Badnur, 1-| miles ; and 2 miles 
farther on came to Pownar at 1 P.M., and encamped for the night. 
It was evident at Mohokheda that Marathi was an imported language, 
as all the Koonbis and Telis, of the latter of whom there is a great 
number all over this part of the country, spoke Hindustani. Sohagpoor 
was the only place at which it was admitted that Marathi was the 
predominant language, being spoken by Koonbis and Malis. At Kajara 
the people understood Marathi, and one of them could speak it, but 
he confessed that himself and the majority of his co-villagers used 
Hindustani among themselves. So also at Badnur. At Pownar a 
crowd who assembled stated that Marathi was seldom or ever heard 
among them. The people here were very kind, and would take nothing 
for the sugar-cane which they gave us. Here I saw a wheel in opera- 
tion for pressing out the sweet juice, the vat into which it is received, 
and the furnace over which it is boiled into goor. 

" 28th. Left Pownar at 6| A.M. Drew the Gawali short pillar 
on the S. side of the village, and examined the two on the N. side. 
At Patpara, 5 miles N. of Pownar, drew the pillars on the S. side of 
the village, which are in better preservation than any hitherto met 
with, though all are of trap. On approaching Umret, which is 6 miles 
from Patpara, we found the Kamavishdar had sent out men to 
improve the roads. Reached our encamping ground about 11 A.M. 
Mr. Hunter preached in the evening in the Kacheri. People attentive. 
Stated no objections till Baba spoke. Nearly 90 books sold, chiefly 
Balbodh First Books, perhaps in consequence of the preference given 
to that character by Captain Chesney, the Deputy-Commissioner. No 
school in the village, but the parents among the Marathi Brahmans 
teach their children at home. The Kamavishdar is a Parbhu, the 
other officials Marathi Brahmans. The Kotwal, a Mahar, speaks 
Marathi better than any other language. But at Barra Barkoi, to 
which we went on 29th, we found the inhabitants to consist of Gonds 
and Dheds, the latter not being able to speak Marathi. 

" 29th. Started for the coal-field between C. and B. Barkoi at 6 
A.M., passing on the way Nangalwadi, 2 miles ; Tawari, ^ mile ; 
Chota Barkoi, 2^ miles, and the stream that passes through the coal 



168 STEPHEN HISLOP 1855 

strata, on the N. bank of which stands Barra Barkoi, \ mile. Ke- 
turned to the tent at Umret at 5| P.M. Captain Chesney had kindly 
forwarded letters and supplies early in the morning. 

" 30th, Saturday. Acknowledged Captain Chesney's attention. 
Left my dear family at Umret and went on to Jamei. . . . 

" 3Ist. Sabbath spent at Jamei. About noon preached in a 
wretched hovel of a court-house, and made some inquiries about the 
religion of the Gonds. At our encamping ground, on the N. of the 
village, there was a samadh, with a small niche on the top of it for a 
lamp, and various sculptures on each of the four sides, the figure of an 
elephant being particularly good. It seems to be of the same age as 
the Gawali columns, one of which stands in an adjoining field to the 
E. On the S. of the village, under a mhowa and tamarind tree, are 
two flat upright stones, one with a Gawali man holding a chain, and 
another bearing a figure of Hanuman. 

"1855. Monday, New Year's Day. Hoar frost seen in a field 1 
mile N. of Jamei ; ^ mile farther passed under a tree a figure of the 
Nag, or, as it is called here, Nang Dewa. The commencement of the 
ghat may be about If miles N.W. of Jamei Junur, a plain of idols, 
without inhabitants, about ^ mile up the ghat, with tall mango trees 
(wild ?) around. Here is another column. Saw a Nilghai (deer) on the 
top of the ghat. . . . Inquired about the Gondi, and found the words 
they afforded me to tally almost invariably with the table of vocables 
furnished by Voysey. Observed that Koitors have good foreheads and 
distended nostrils. In this last feature Alop Singh agreed with them. 
On the north of Gt. Bilawar, J mile after crossing the Karpada stream, 
on the west of the road are two rows of pillars under the shadow of a 
large pipal tree one row with 8 pillars on the west, and the eastern 
row with 6 standing and one fallen. Besides these, two larger pillars 
are embraced and partly enclosed by the tree, and another with an 
archer is broken. Near these ancient remains is a modern idol sur- 
rounded by very excellent specimens of rock crystal. From Bilawar 
to Mothoor is a distance of 4 miles, through very long grass, in many 
places 7 feet. Conversed about the Gonds with Dewasa, a Koitor, 
whose family has resided in the same village for many generations. 
There is everywhere an unwillingness in a husband to mention the 
name of his own wife, though not of any other person's. 

" 2d January. Left Mothoor at sunrise, and after walking about 2 
miles, reached Mothoor Dewa, at a shed erected on the brink of the north 
descent of the Mothoor hills, whence there is obtained a most imposing 
view of the Mahadewa Hills on the north, with the intervening valley 



1855 AMONG THE GONDS 169 

of jungle lying at our feet. Here there is a small Boodh of white 
marble, with head and arms broken, and inscription like the little one 

1 have seen from Muktagiri, but illegible. Around this respectable work 
of art were rude figures of horsemen with swords in bas-relief, which 
afterwards were said to be the work of the Moasis. Before these the 
pilgrims to Mahadewa, who go by Gorak, as they return give jharti, 
emptying their jholana of its contents. Immediately on leaving this 
we commenced the descent, which in many places is exceedingly steep, 
and may be about three miles long. When down we came to an 
uninhabited house, surrounded by a little cultivation, belonging 
to the village of Jhot in the plain, which is 7 miles from Mothoor, 
situated on the N.W. bank of the Sher stream. Here I made inquiries 
at the Moasis, who extend from this north over the plain and beyond 
Pachmari, about their language and religion, and Baba preached. 
After dinner, proceeded in the afternoon to Bhawan, 8 miles and thence 

2 to Nandakheda, at the foot of Jattapahad, where we arrived about 
7 P.M., the full moon shining from above the bold hills. 

" 3d January. Left Nandaklieda at 8|- A.M. to ascend to Mahadewa 
Cave, and returned at 2 P.M. Vira had retired with the tent to the junc- 
tion of the Palaspari with the Denwa, and thither I went, passing five 
square pillars whose figures I had not time to examine. Mr. Hunter 1 , 
who had been botanising at the foot of Jattapahad, followed after an 
hour. I found Vira had got a few fossils, but the thunder and rain, 
which soon after commenced, prevented us from carrying on the search 
on that occasion. The fresh mark of a strong tiger's claw was observed 
on the sand of the Palaspari stream a few yards from our tent, and we 
could see from the door a black bear come down to drink the water 
of the Denwa. Vira went after it with a gun, but could not fall in 
with it. 

" 4th. Comparatively unsuccessful in our search for organic 
remains. Not far from the south bank of the Katta we arrived at 
7 P.M. in the midst of a very heavy dew, which is said to fall in 
that part of the country from Kartik to Phalgoon (month). 

" 5th. Some of our village porters had fled during the night, 
and a message required to be sent to a neighbouring village for help. 
At 7 1- A.M. set out for Gorak, 4 miles, to reach which we required to 
climb half of a ghat, but not nearly so difficult as any part of the 
Mothoor one. Gorak is under a Gond Thakoor named Jugkaj, who is 
also over three or four neighbouring villages. He regards the Gond 
Raja of Dewagad or Nagpoor as his chief, his forefather having received 
the jaghire from one of that family. In his boyhood Jugkaj had 



170 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

learned to read Hindi under Lai Saheb, the Gond Thakoor of Auriya, 
near Mothoor, the only one of the race known to be able to read ; but 
though now not more than twenty-eight years of age, he has forgotten 
it. He seemed an amiable youth ; equipped with an axe for cutting 
down branches, and his waist hung round with ropes for his match- 
lock, which was carried by an attendant, he appeared rather warlike. 
He, his friend of Auriya, and the Thakoor of Barda, employ among 
them Hindu law agents to represent them at Chindwara. So Mendar 
Singh of Pachmarhi employs a Brahman as his Karkoon. Captain 
Chesney informs me that of all the Thakoors connected with Chindwara 
district there are only two or three who are not in debt. Their 
law agents impose on their simplicity. Captain Chesney also men- 
tioned that there are some people who come into his court who swear 
only by the dog. Who they were he could not at the moment tell. 
Conversed at Gorak with a Badiya cultivator about his race. They 
speak Hindi, but in many of their religious practices resemble Gonds. 
After leaving Gorak fifteen minutes, we mounted the remainder of the 
ascent, which carried us gradually up between two hills to the top of 
the table-land. Taking the whole ascent into consideration, the route 
by Gorak is greatly to be preferred to that by Mothoor. . . . 

"6th. Mr. Hunter and I set out for Umret and Chindwara. 
Children apparently much improved by their residence on the table- 
land. Received news of the Battle of Inkerman, and Friend of India 
with an article on the official language of Nagpoor." 

The tour in January and February, 1856, lay through the 
highlands and forests, and among the Gonds of the Balaghat 
district, towards Lanji. In January 1857, Mr. Hislop and 
his family chose the route west-north-west through the hilly 
part of the Nagpoor district, towards the uplands of Berar. 
Occasionally we find in his very full journal of this tour such 
an entry as this : " Jan. 15th. This day was devoted to the 
examination of the hills in the neighbourhood, and the col- 
lection of Tertiary fossils." Again, " Came to a knoll covered 
with a Druidical circle, which I recollected having climbed 
on a previous journey. . . . Crossed the Kadak with its bed 
of tessellated trap. A formless idol, most probably Masoba, 
standing under an anjan (Pentaptera) tree ; on the winged 
front of the tree I found several small black beetles, greatly 



1857 KINDLINESS OF THE PEOPLE 171 

resembling the insects found at Dr. Eawes' bungalow at 
Suradi." But the steady work of the ever-observant mission- 
ary, as he made his daily march of from twelve to twenty 
miles, climbing or walking, was to talk to all he met on 
the way to peace, and when his tent was pitched for the 
evening, to preach the glad tidings of the kingdom, and 
next morning to confer with the officials and Brahmans on 
sin and salvation, using their local knowledge and his own 
learning as occasions to lift them to higher things. He found 
the people of all classes, even Mussulman fakeers, but espe- 
cially the Hindus and Gonds, more kindly than ever before. 

In truth he was now known far and wide as a holy and 
learned man, who taught the people because he loved them. 
When climbing a hill, every watercourse of which was dried 
up, he was faint for water, and applied to two peasants who, 
with the wife of one of them, were threshing pulse. " They 
readily parted with some of their precious fluid, and, more- 
over, offered some of the pulse. I was very much impressed 
with the kindness of the rural population, whose feelings of 
hospitality would fain have broken through the restraints 
even of caste. One readily gave his lota (brass jug), observ- 
ing that it could easily be cleansed from defilement by simply 
washing it." Another, at the next halting-place, presented 
abundance of his sugar-cane to the travellers, while the 
headman gave his veranda for a preaching place, which 
was crowded, and offered the preacher betel-nut. The people, 
their foreign rulers and teachers alike, were ignorant of the 
gathering storm. 



CHAPTEE VI 

THE MUTINY YEAR NAGPOOR SAVED BY THE MISSIONARY 

The Mutiny of 1857 Mussulman and Maratha Civilians and military men 
in Nagpoor The Chapatee cakes Hislop's opinion His Mussulman 
friend, Feiz Buksh, reveals to him the plot He reports it to Mr. Ellis 
"Women and children take refuge in Sitabaldi Fort Major Johnston's 
command Future bearing of the Mutiny on Christian Missions Hislop 
suffers greatly from fever Massacre of Rev. Thomas Hunter and his 
family at Sialkot Resignation and letter of Rev. Robert Hunter Stephen 
Hislop's journal in the Mutiny months of 1857 Hailstorm, the Holi, 
execution of traitors Movable columns Mission work restricted by 
the military Day of humiliation and prayer Sepoy inqiiirers The 
Lingayets Ramtek Hindu excitement and portents Mr. Plowden's 
examination of the Mission schools Major L. Johnston's narrative 
Captain W. L. Chapman's testimony to Hislop's service Hislop's final 
opinion on the Miitiny His non-Christian native friends Resists the 
doctors no longer Welcomes Rev. J. Gr. Cooper Baptizes seven con- 
verts. 

THE discontent of the pensioned representatives of the Mo- 
hammedan and Maratha rivals, whom events had compelled 
us to supersede in the mal-administration of the country, 
found in the caste panic, caused by the greased cartridges, 
the occasion which led to the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 in 
Northern and Central India. From the Calcutta suburb of 
Dum Dum and Barrackpore to Berhampore and Meerut, 
right up the Ganges and Jumna valleys, the wild epidemic 
silently spread. The carelessness of the English character 
and the incapacity of two or three military officers in the 
highest command, allowed the mutinous and murderous 
Bengal native army to find a refuge and a centre of support 



1857 THE SEPOY MUTINY 173 

in the old Mussulman capital of Delhi, where the Great 
Mogul still exercised titular influence. The Maratha and 
Mohammedan plotters, represented by Nana Dhoondopunt of 
Cawnpore, and Azeemoolla Khan who had returned from 
Europe with a report of our early disasters in the Crimean 
War, could not have desired any course more favourable to 
their design had they deliberately planned it. 

Nor was our Indian empire ever less prepared for the 
struggle. The British garrison had been reduced to just half 
its strength at this hour by the withdrawal of regiments for 
the Crimean and Persian campaigns, in spite of the remon- 
strances of the Marquis of Dalhousie. The three large 
mercenary armies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras were de- 
moralised by a military system which at once pampered and 
provoked their prejudices, while it left them in control of the 
most vital strategic points and fortresses in the country, and 
of a powerful artillery. The irregular levies of the newly- 
conquered Panjab alone, thanks to Dalhousie, Edwardes, 
and the Lawrences, were a reliable fighting force, and from 
the far north they helped to save the empire. In the centre 
and on the south, the Madras sepoys were no better disci- 
plined than their more warlike fellows of Hindustan; but 
their family system the wives and children who marched 
and lived with them kept them still. Add to all this the 
inexperience and weakness of the central Government, which 
kept itself isolated in Calcutta. Lord Canning, the new 
Governor-General, had as his council the least satisfactory 
set of advisers that had ever paralysed a personally brave 
and responsible ruler, since Lord Auckland had been used as 
the tool of the first Afghan war. If Calcutta was the centre, 
as it is, of our imperial interests in Southern Asia, the empire 
was saved, and was re-conquered from the extremities by 
John Lawrence and Herbert Edwardes, Mcolson and Baird 
Smith, at Peshawur and Delhi ; by Lord Elphinstone, Durand, 



174 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

and Hugh Eose at Satara and Bombay, Indore and Jhansi ; by 
Stephen Hislop and those whom he first awoke to the danger, 
at Nagpoor and Haidarabad. 

The story of the " Mohammedan conspiracy, formed with 
Maratha collusion" at ISTagpoor, as Sir Eichard Temple 
authoritatively describes it, 1 has never yet been told. Only 
now, in the detailed journal of Stephen Hislop and diary of 
Major Lawrence Johnston are all the facts before us. 
The Parliamentary papers and official enclosures to secret 
letters from India, record accurately enough whatever the 
local authorities at Nagpoor chose to report to Calcutta at 
the time; and on these the elaborate work of Kaye and 
Colonel Malleson, and the admirable History of the Indian 
Mutiny, by T. E. E. Holmes, 2 are based. But Nagpoor was not 
then fortunate in its officials, while prejudice ran high between 
the civilians and military men there. Mr. George Plowden, 
a Bengal civilian, who had the reputation of being able and 
who was known to be constitutionally lazy, was the Com- 
missioner, through whom alone all communications could pass. 
Mr. E. Ellis, a Madras civilian, was both able and active, but 
he was new to the people, and the Deputy-Commissioner of 
only one district, though that was Nagpoor. There was no 
public opinion outside of the officials, no means of reaching or 
influencing native opinion except Hislop, no newspaper press 
worth the name. JSTagpoor was isolated on every side except 
on the open west by the branch railway to the Bombay main 
line, and soon it came to be cut off altogether from any but 
the slowest and most uncertain communication with the rest 
of India. Even had the new Province been more favour- 
ably situated or better known, what attention could it expect 
or did it deserve from a Government beset like Lord Can- 
ning's? Bengal itself, Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, were all 

1 Men and Events of My Time in India, p. 112, (John Murray) 1882. 

2 Second Edition, 1885 (W. H. Allen & Co.) 



1857 THE PLOT REVEALED TO HIM 175 

of more account, and yet, such was the small number of 
British troops and faithful mercenaries, even these had to 
bide their time till John Lawrence could take Delhi. 

In a letter to his Church in Scotland, dated 23d July 
1857, which was not published at the time, Mr. Hislop began 
by reviewing the events thus briefly noted in his Journal 
" 10th May. Mutiny occurred at Meerut ; on llth at Delhi." 
He stated that the mutinous spirit which, for the past three 
months had been rampant in the north of India, was at first 
exhibited by Hindu sepoys, who were possessed by a caste 
antipathy to the use of certain cartridges which, however, 
they had not been actually required to use. Since the 
commencement of the outbreak the movement had more and 
more become a Mussulman one. It seemed then likely that 
the Mohammedans had taken advantage of the religious pre- 
judices of the Hindus to regain, if possible, their former 
position. Chapatees, or white wheaten cakes, had been 
silently distributed from hand to hand over many parts of 
the country. As that mysterious transaction was managed 
in the Province of Nagpoor, it was accompanied by the an- 
nouncement that the bread was given by order of Government, 
leaving the recipients to indulge their wonted jealousy of any 
interference with their food. The cJiapatees were circulated 
in Nagpoor in the month of March, and about the same time, 
reported Hislop, the conspiracy for the overthrow of the 
British power in the Province was formed. 

The 14th of June, a Sunday, was the day on which the 
Government of India expected the Barrackpore sepoys 
to march upon the capital. The Calcutta authorities so 
took up the available carriage, planted artillery at the Mo- 
hammedan Madrissa or college, and advised the Christian 
ministers to be brief in their services, as to cause a panic. 
The actual date of the centenary of Plassey was the 23d of 
June, on or before which a very general rumour, in the form 



176 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

of a prophecy, asserted that the British raj was to come to an 
end. Hislop wrote of Nagpoor "The 16th of June was, I 
believe, fixed for the insurrection here, as in several other 
parts of India. Nagpoor, to speak after the manner of men, 
contained the elements both of safety and danger of safety, 
in Kamthi being occupied by Madras troops, principally 
native, but including a small proportion of European artil- 
lery ; of danger, in Taldi, a suburb of Sitabaldi, being a station 
for an irregular native force, formed on the model of Bengal. 
The Irregular Cavalry recruited in the Province were almost 
all Mussulmans ; the Irregular Infantry drawn from Northern 
India were chiefly high -caste Hindus. The risk, from the 
personnel of our Sitabaldi Force, was increased by the cir- 
cumstance that all our nearest cantonments were occupied 
by military of the same description, Eajpoot and Brahman 
sepoys at Jabalpoor, and Mussulman cavalry in Berar. 

" But we had little idea of our real situation. Sitabaldi 
Fort had been allowed to fall well-nigh into ruin, and only a 
short time before a proposition had been made to have it 
altogether dismantled. Our excellent friend Captain Lawrence 
Johnston of the 26th Madras Native Infantry, perceiving the 
importance of the position, on 12th June persuaded the autho- 
rities to have it put in repair. That night I was enabled 
to appreciate the foresight implied in the advice. Feiz 
Buksh, an old Mussulman gentleman with whom I have 
been acquainted since the year of my arrival in India, under 
shelter of the darkness stole from the city with his son, a 
former pupil of the Mission, to urge me immediately to send 
my wife and family to Bombay, as in four days more the 
people of Nagpoor intended to join the military, and massacre 
all the Christians in the place. 

"Here, however, we see the hand of God employed to 
precipitate and disconcert their designs. The Irregular 
Cavalry, who were the leaders in the plot, in order the more 



1857 THE MUTINY AT NAGPOOR 177 

effectually to blind the authorities, volunteered to proceed 
against the mutinous regiments of Bengal. On Saturday 
morning (13th June) as I was communicating to Mr. Ellis, 
our Deputy Commissioner, the information which I had 
received the previous evening from Feiz Buksh, Mr. Plowden, 
the Chief Commissioner, was on his way to thank the Irregular 
Cavalry for the zeal and loyalty which they had recently 
expressed ; and to direct a squadron of them to be in readiness 
that evening to join a field force that was on the point of 
marching from Kamthi against Jabalpoor. The cavalry, 
with every mark of cordiality, replied that if the Madras 
troops were allowed to start that day, the required detach- 
ment from them would overtake them the day after. Now it 
was felt that no time must be lost in striking the blow. If 
the squadron were not prepared to march next day, the 
mutinous spirit which animated the whole regiment would 
be discovered and punished before help could be obtained 
from the city. Whether then should they fall upon the 
Christians while they were assembled early next morning for 
the worship of God in the episcopal church, or that very 
Saturday night kill them in their beds ? For a time they 
hesitated, but thinking perhaps, all too truly, that the former 
alternative would apply to only a small portion of the 
European community, the latter was the course they resolved 
to pursue. 

" Though on the preceding night I was the only European 
that was aware of their intention to rise at all, yet on the 
evening of the 13th I was as ignorant as others of their 
determination to do so within a few hours. I therefore pro- 
ceeded as usual to Kamthi with the view of conducting 
divine service there next morning (Sabbath), Meanwhile 
the conspirators had agreed that on the ascent of fire-balloons 
the Irregular Cavalry from Takli, and armed men from 
Nagpoor, should meet half-way in a garden near our house 

N 



178 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

called the Moti Bagli. From that rendezvous strong bands 
were to be distributed to various parts of the station, some to 
murder the sleeping inhabitants at midnight, and others to 
seize the fort held by Captain Johnston and a small body of 
Madras sepoys, the command of which would have given 
them the control of the powder magazine within the walls, 
and of the arsenal and treasury, with their vast stores of arms 
and money at the foot of the hill. By 10 P.M. 400 of the fiercest 
Mussulmans from the city were lurking in the garden, 
expecting further reinforcements, and especially the arrival 
of the Irregular Cavalry. These at the same hour were in 
their saddles prepared to set out for the place of meeting, and 
only awaited the return of their emissary from the lines of 
the Irregular Infantry, on whose adhesion they calculated at 
the first announcement of their purpose. 

" Here, however, we have again to mark the interposition 
of the Most High. The havildar (native sergeant) on duty 
was one of a very few Madras men who had been drafted 
into the corps among the high-caste Hindus from the north ; 
and to him the sentry led the cavalry's agent, who was 
forthwith put in prison. The alarm was given to the 
European officers. The families were roused from their 
beds, and before the hour of midnight all had fled to 
Kamthi, or sought refuge in the neighbouring fort. The 
cavalry, seeing the plot was found out, dismounted and 
pretended to be fast asleep ; but the city people still kept 
their position in the garden. Scarcely had my dear wife 
and three children made their way to the hill, when a 
messenger from these blood-thirsty men came to reconnoitre 
our house; but finding that the prey had escaped, he is 
supposed to have returned and with others to have advised 
their retreat. 

" Most remarkable was the fear which the Lord put into 
the hearts of the enemy. Had they gone forward in the 



1857 GOD SAVES NAGPOOll 179 

execution of their design, even after it was discovered, there 
is every reason to apprehend that it would have succeeded, 
The handful of Christians in Sitabaldi could never have 
resisted their attack ; and once seen in energetic action they 
would have been joined by their numerous sympathisers in 
the Irregular Infantry, and by hosts of desperate characters 
from the city eager for plunder. Triumphant in Sitabaldi, 
and in possession of treasury, magazine, and arsenal, their 
march to Kamthi would have been the signal for mutiny to 
many of their co-religionists there, with whom they had been 
in correspondence ; and conspicuous as has been the loyalty 
of the Madras Native Infantry, it would have tried even their 
constancy to rally round their officers and the European 
artillery in support of the Government. I need not say that 
at all the stations throughout the Province the mutiny and 
revolt at the capital, if successful, would have found numerous 
imitators. That all these calamities have been graciously 
warded off, and that you have still a Mission at Nagpoor, is 
to be attributed not to the wisdom or power of man, biit to 
the sovereign mercy of our God, who has preserved us while 
many of our countrymen, not more unfavourably situated than 
we, have been cruelly butchered. 

" At the same time it is only due to our authorities to 
state that, since they learned the danger, their measures have 
been distinguished by great promptness and judgment. On 
Sabbath morning after dawn a strong force from Kamthi was 
in Sitabaldi to overawe the mutineers, the troops which had 
been despatched towards Jabalpoor were recalled, and as 
the daily investigations advanced the ringleaders in the wicked 
scheme were seized and punished; while the whole of the native 
population were disarmed. Nor were the meritorious for- 
gotten. The men who aided in apprehending the emissary of 
the cavalry were promoted in the regiment, and my friend 
Feiz Buksh was rewarded with the office of kotwal (chief 



180 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

magistrate) in Nagpoor, where lie has been of eminent service 
in seeking out and arresting traitors. 

" Your late war in Europe was exactly forty years after 
the termination of that which preceded it. The same period 
had elapsed between our flight to Sitabaldi Hill and the last 
occasion on which that summit had been used by our country- 
men as a place of refuge and defence. For the first three 
weeks of our residence within the fort my visits to the city 
were suspended ; but since then the work of the Mission has 
been prosecuted as usual. While cut off from my labours 
among the heathen I had the more time to bestow on the 
professing Christians who were my fellow refugees. I had 
thus access to some whom my voice seldom reaches, and I 
felt it to be a solemn thing to preach the gospel to hearers 
who, like myself, had been doomed to death, but had been 
saved that thenceforth they might give more earnest heed to 
the things which concern their everlasting peace. May the 
warning and the deliverance be improved by us all ! 

" Though it may be premature to offer an opinion on the 
future bearing upon Missions of the judgments that are now 
abroad on this land, yet it cannot be unprofitable to look 
back on some of their causes. These are to be sought for in 
connection with the native troops; and as I live on the 
borders of the Bengal and Madras armies, and at a station 
where we have representatives of both, I may be permitted to 
point out the difference between them, which is sufficient to 
account for the north of India being a scene of confusion and 
bloodshed, and the south the abode of order and peace. 

" The great distinction between the two Presidencies is in 
the policy followed towards caste in their armies. The Bengal 
Government has in this respect actually guided its proceed- 
ings by the rules of Hinduism, while that of Madras has 
looked more to the principles of common justice. Military 
service is a source of livelihood to a considerable portion of 



1857 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BENGAL AND MADRAS ARMIES 181 

the natives of India. This employment in the south is thrown 
open to all who possess physical fitness for it, but in the 
north the paramount qualification for regiments of the line is 
ceremonial; and without exception none are admitted who 
cannot prove the purity of their birth according to the super- 
stitious standard of Hinduism. Hence the ranks of the 
Irregular Infantry are filled chiefly by Brahmans and Eajpoots, 
while low -caste Hindus, and Christians, who are reckoned 
the lowest of the low, were excluded. So jealous is the 
exclusion that it extends to the military hospitals. Native 
dressers from Madras may belong to any caste or religious 
persuasion, but a native Christian is ineligible for the corres- 
ponding office in Bengal ; and little more than a year ago I 
was told by a Hindu originally chosen for his birth-purity, 
but who while acting as native doctor to the Irregular 
Infantry here frequently expressed his belief in Christianity, 
that he durst not act on his convictions, as the penalty of the 
step would be the loss of his situation. It was not so that a 
Mussulman Government dealt by the religion which itself 
professed. The followers of the false prophet were never 
guilty of such temporising expedients. They asserted the 
principle that an adherent of Islam in India, regardless of 
birth -purity or impurity, was entitled to at least equal 
privileges with the people whom they had conquered, and 
if any of the latter embraced their faith they did not on 
that account esteem them as worse than before. 

" In this course of conduct we see the origin of the single 
exception, which, as I have hinted above, the Bengal Govern- 
ment sanctions in its army. The only class of men, who 
notwithstanding Brahmanical scruples to the contrary, are 
enlisted with high -caste Hindus are Mussulmans, who, if 
possible, are even more opposed to the British rule than the 
others. When false religions are thus fostered, and God's 
truth branded with official disapprobation, is it wonderful 



182 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

that the rules of the Shastras and Koran should come to be 
more regarded than the articles of war? Need it surprise us, 
that the native officer should be looked up to by the sepoy 
rather than his European superior, or that a Brahman in the 
ranks should have more influence in a corps than the colonel 
at its head ? We trace the connection between the crime 
and the punishment, when we see the heart of a parent 
broken by the undutiful behaviour of his over -indulged 
child; and can we be chargeable with misinterpreting God's 
righteous dealings, when adopting the same principle we 
ascribe the present calamities inflicted by the Bengal army 
principally to the encouragements which have been afforded 
by the Government to its heathenish and fanatical organisa- 
tion ? Oh, what a saving of treasure to the Honourable Com- 
pany's exchequer, and, what is still more to be valued, what 
a preservation of the precious lives of our countrymen and 
countrywomen, would there have been had there been some 
Christians in the ranks of the Bengal native regiments, and 
fewer high-caste Hindus and bigoted Mussulmans ! 

"I thankfully acknowledge that Indian rulers now are 
very different from what they were years ago. Every year 
lately has witnessed the introduction of government measures 
for the real welfare of all classes of the people. Some of 
these may have contributed to arouse the demon, which, 
knowing that it has but a short time, has gone forth to lay 
waste the fertile plains of the Ganges. But this evil spirit 
was the creation of unholy influences that were at work in 
past generations, and have not, as I have endeavoured to 
show, even yet ceased altogether to operate in this land. 
They seem not to be wholly unknown in favoured Britain 
itself, if we may judge from the report of Lord Ellenborough's 
speech in the House of Peers on the first intelligence of the 
Meerut tragedy. Doubtless, as he is represented to have 
said, if the Europeans were driven from India at present, 



1857 CAUSES OF THE MUTINY 183 

there would not be left a dozen of sincere converts to the 
gospel ; for all would be massacred, even as British Christians 
here were well-nigh being. In this sense the statement of 
his Lordship is strictly true ; but in any other it is a libel 
on the character of a numerous and increasing body of 
Christian disciples, of which its author will, I trust, live to 
be ashamed." 

" NAGPOOR, 28th September 1857. 

" I delayed for some weeks writing to you regarding our 
most merciful deliverance with the desire of making my 
account more accurate. I am not surprised at the many con- 
flicting statements that appear at home on the subject of our 
mutiny in general, when I reflect how difficult it is to under- 
stand aright what passes at a particular locality. In the 
diversity of opinion which prevails, one thing seems now to 
be almost universally admitted among residents in the East, 
and that is that cartridges had little or no share in bringing 
about the revolt of the Bengal army. I am the more con- 
vinced of this inasmuch as, though the wheaten cakes, which 
are believed to have emanated from the instigators of the 
mutiny, did not reach the south of this Province till the 
month of March, they had made their appearance on our 
northern frontier in the middle of January, which was some 
days before any report was made on the murmurs at Dum- 
Dum, or the disaffection at Barrackpore. My own view of the 
origin of the disturbances is, that the Mohammedans have for 
some time past been animated by more than their usual 
hostility to the British Government, and that they have 
worked on the prejudices of the native soldiery, whenever 
there was an opportunity ; while the Bengal army, whose 
organisation is eminently favourable to the development of 
insubordination, feeling that they possessed strength, deter- 
mined to exercise it for the subversion of authority, in the 



184 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

hope of obtaining power and wealth by the change. Of 
course the instigators of the mutiny were ready to join when- 
ever the sepoys made a commencement; and the longer the 
insurrection continues the more of this non-military element 
mixes in it, and even Hindu nobles, sighing for liberty to 
practise more grievous wrong, were drawn into it. 

" In the plot that was discovered here in June scarcely the 
name of a Hindu was implicated ; but if another wave of 
the rising tide were to pass over us, it would not be matter 
of astonishment to find some of the Kajpoot zemindars in the 
east of the Province carried away with it. A large force is 
now hovering on our northern border, against which the 
column that had been pushed forward from this is very 
inadequate ; but we trust that the Lord who has spared us 
hitherto will also ward off this new danger. 

" I shall not write more at present, as I am not fit for 
much exertion. In the last two months I have suffered 
greatly from fever, which has returned three successive times, 
as soon as I returned to my work. Had it not been for the 
aid of our dear converts, the operations of the mission would 
have been well-nigh at a stand. We need help, as I feel 
that my strength is not what it was before the murderous 
assault made on me three years ago. I was prepared to hear 
of the esteem which my beloved colleague had gained, and 
the important aid he had afforded to the cause of missions at 
home. I hope he may be long spared to labour in the same 
cause at Nagpoor. Alas ! how soon was the promising career 
of his brother cut short." 

In an earlier letter, dated 19th June, which the Witness 
published, Stephen Hislop had told the facts, though not so 
fully, but with the same modest reticence as to his own 
action. Long before this time he had become known to all 
the city and country around as fearless, just and upright, a 
friend of the natives, and a foe to the abuses of his own 



1857 THE MASSACRE AT SIALKOT 185 

countrymen, while trusted and admired by the best of these. 
His influence with Feiz Buksh alone, under God, saved Nag- 
poor. It was like all his career that he should go to Kamthi 
to do his duty at such a time. He writes " I have been 
busy in advising with Mr. Ellis, visiting the European 
hospital and preaching to my fellow refugees in the Fort. The 
commandant of the garrison is our excellent friend, Captain 
Johnston, a member of our church, whose zeal and ability have 
tended greatly to assure the families under his protection. But 
it is to God our thanks are due, for we have been preserved, 
while many of our countrymen, not more unfavourably 
situated than we, have been cruelly massacred." 

As he wrote these words and the closing sentence of the 
former letter he thought with anguish of the murder at 
Sialkot, Panjab, of the Eev. Thomas Hunter of the Established 
Church of Scotland's Mission, his wife and infant child, as 
they were fleeing in their buggy to the fort. The fatal ball 
which passed through the face of the missionary entered the 
neck of his wife, and a gaol warder then cut both to pieces, 
and their boy, with a sword. Eobert Hunter, Hislop's 
beloved colleague, was on furlough in Scotland. He had 
been the means of attracting to a missionary career in the 
East, the brother who had thus perished, and he felt respon- 
sible for his life.- While submitting to the will of God, he 
felt that it was his duty to resign. The letter in which he 
informed his Church of this forms . one of the most pathetic 
pages of the literature of the sepoy mutiny and war, which, 
with its blood and tears, at once obscures and glorifies the 
annals of our empire. 

"As it could not for a moment be doubted that this afflictive 
visitation was sent in infinite wisdom and love, I trust I was enabled, 
from the first, submissively to acquiesce in the Divine appointment, 
though it not merely brought with it much immediate grief, but made 
an ominous change in all my prospects for the future. It was not 



186 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

that the wish had arisen to shrink from encountering danger, or that 
my interest in the evangelisation of India had come to an end : on 
the contrary, I was conscious of a determination, in the Divine strength, 
still to face any perils to which duty might call, while my desire for the 
conversion of the heathen world was not diminished in the slightest 
degree. But I felt that, with my peculiarities of mental constitution, 
I could not hope again to be an effective labourer in the East. Nearly 
every object I beheld would call up the scene of the murder, and it 
would be in the last degree harrowing to my feelings to listen to 
panegyrics on the rebel party, by whom so many of those dearest to 
me had been barbarously murdered. If exposed to these influences 
there was imminent risk, either that I should be driven to an abate- 
ment of that strong love for the heathen, without which a missionary 
is useless, or that in the effort to resist this temptation, my mind would 
sink into a hopelessly morbid state. Could it have been assumed 
that the call of duty still summoned me to the East, it would have 
been a distrust of Divine grace to suppose that strength would not be 
afforded ; but, believing the effects produced on my mind, by the 
terrible bereavement, to be such as wholly to disqualify me for 
labouring effectively in India, I viewed this as a providential intima- 
tion that my work there was over, and should have regarded it as 
presumption and not faith to go forward. There was thus no course 
open to me but the very painful one of resigning my office as a 
missionary. This was done after mature and prayerful deliberation, 
about a week after the sad intelligence was received, for until my 
responsibility as a missionary had ceased, and my salary been resigned, 
I could not with good conscience go into the lengthened seclusion 
then so urgently required." 

Hislop thus lovingly reasoned with his friend : 
" When the first swell of emotion in your heart has sub- 
sided, I trust that you will see your way to return to Nag- 
poor. You ask me to consider how I would have acted had 
I, on my return from Kamthi on 13th June, found my dear 
wife and family massacred. I must say the sight of such a 
catastrophe would have made me turn away from this place 
with something akin to loathing. But if I understand my 
own heart, my absence would have been only for a time, or 
if permanent, I would have sought some other station in 



1857 . HIS COLLEAGUE'S RESIGNATION 187 

Maharashtra, where my acquaintance with the vernacular 
and my Indian experience would not be thrown away. Were 
you to return to Nagpoor, your memory would be free from 
the vividness of the actual spectacle of death, and your resi- 
dence here would be the same to you as a change to Bombay 
would in the case supposed have been to me, If the cause 
I now indicate be indeed the path of duty, you know Who 
has said, ' As your day is, so shall your strength be.' Arm 
your mind with the encouragement quoted in your third 
letter in the Witness, ' Why art thou cast down, my soul, 
and why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope thou in God.' 
Yes, your Almighty, ever Gracious Father, will prove to you 
an all-sufficient Friend. Here is the Christian's unspeakable 
advantage above all who lean upon mere nature's frail sup- 
port. And yet there are many worldly men who have lost 
their dearest relatives in this mutiny continuing in India, 
and bearing up under their accumulated woes, simply for 
worldly ends. In this, as in all other things, let us seek to 
adorn the doctrine of our God and Saviour. 

" The Lord's people here, without any exception, believe 
that, had you returned to Nagpoor, you would have met with 
nothing in your outward circumstances materially to impede 
your usefulness, nothing which the grace of God would not 
have enabled you to surmount. And in the eyes of worldly men 
never does the Christian spirit shine forth with greater lustre 
than in times of trial, when there is need of the patience of 
the saints, and the fortitude which is to be added to faith. 
It is marvellous how the Lord deals with us. Before I re- 
ceived your letter announcing your resignation, I was reduced 
to extreme weakness by repeated attacks of fever, and I was 
beginning to fear that I should not be able to continue at 
my post any longer ! But when the necessity of remaining 
became inevitable, my recovery commenced, and now I am 
permitted to carry on my usual duties. 



188 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

<f The work hereafter will, I trust, not be much more diffi- 
cult than it has been hitherto. The people may be more 
unwilling hearers, and had they the opportunity they might 
be more bitter and united opponents. But Mussulman intol- 
erance and Hindu caste have been staked in the cause of the 
mutineers, and when the cause is lost their influence is ipso 
facto impaired. There will, I think, henceforth be less defer- 
ence shown to the prejudices of the natives by the Govern- 
ment and the European community at large. I am only 
afraid that among the latter there will be greater indifference 
to any scheme devised for the good of the native population." 

Writing again on 29th December 185*7, Hislop refers to 
his colleague's resignation : " Of course I agree with Dr. 
Tweedie in believing that you have erred ; but I am inclined 
to think the error has arisen more from the sensibility of 
your nervous system than from a want of light in the judg- 
ment. Every person who knows you will acquit you of any 
fault in the moral perception. Dr. Heude considers you 
quite right not to return." 

The invaluable Reports on the Land Revenue Settlement 
of the various districts of the Central Provinces, and Sir 
Charles Grant's G-azetteer based upon them, do justice 
to the researches of Hislop in physical science, and to his 
papers on their mineral resources; but this is all that is 
recorded of his far greater service in the Mutiny at a time 
when he was the only one of " the Scotch Church mission- 
aries." Mr. A. B. Koss, the settlement officer, who had been 
Assistant Commissioner under Mr. Ellis in 1857, reports : 
" Secret nightly meetings in the city had been discovered by 
Mr. Ellis ; and the Scotch Church missionaries, who had 
schools and some influence in the city, had given warning 
that the public mind was much disturbed." The journal of 
Mr. Hislop and narrative of Major Johnston will show further 
how the Christian missionary and Christian officer energised 



1857 HIS JOURNAL IN THE MUTINY 189 

in those days. We are still too near the events of '57 to 
estimate them in their proper proportion. The time will come 
when every contemporary record of suffering and triumph 
will be precious in the sight of the historian. The war of the 
Mutiny has been recorded, the tale of its sorrows and heroism 
has yet to be told. 

MR. HISLOP'S JOURNAL IN THE MUTINY MONTHS OF 1857. 

" Wth March. In the evening of this day the Holi fires were lighted, 
and by the remnant of the royal family a sheep with its legs tied was 
burnt alive as usual in the Chandni Chouk. Was reminded of the 
cruelty practised also at the Moharam on this poor animal. Last 
Moharam, the butler of Mr. Bell, who is over the sirdars in the city, 
obtained extensive presents from these sirdars, and in his character of 
tiger tore with his iron claws, ate part of the liver, and drank the 
blood, it is said, of five or six sheep until he was ready to vomit. He 
was not dismissed by his master. Two or three clays before the Holi, 
heard of the cock-fighting that is carried 011 before the young Gond 
Eaja, who is a ward of the Government under the care of Mr. Bell. 

" About this time Captain Holland was nearly killed by a tiger in 
the neighbourhood of Paldi, five miles east of Nagpoor. 

" About 20th, Vira, who had gone to Mangali, observed the distri- 
bution of chapatees (wheaten cakes) in Jamni and Talegaum, villages in 
that neighbourhood. Five were sent to every village, for which a pice 
was charged. 

"Saturday, 9th May. Captain Lawrence Johnston of 26th Madras 
Native Infantry came out on detachment duty for a week, during 
which he always slept on the hill. He supports a school for boys and 
another for girls by taking photographs. The weather, while he was 
here, was unfavourable to his benevolent relaxation. 

" 10th. Mutiny occurred at Meerut ; on llth at Delhi. 

" l7i/i. A report had been spread abroad that the city was to be 
burned down to-day, which caused many to remain by their property 
with vessels of water. Some houses ^uere burned. In the Kaja's time 
at the commencement of the dry and dangerous season, the Mahars 
and other parties dwelling in Lakud-Ganj who were interested in the 
destruction of houses, among whom may be included the retailers of 
charcoal, used to be put in prison. 



190 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1857 

" 21 si. This afternoon it was reported to the authorities that the 
bodies of two sepoys who were travelling on leave from Aurangabad 
to their homes in Hindustan were discovered, they having been poisoned 
on the margin of the tank during the night by a Thug companion for 
the sake of their money. The guilt could not be brought home. 

" 27th. At 1|- P.M. a storm of thunder and heavy rain, and 
again a heavy shower in the evening. There had been some lighter 
showers for a week preceding. 

" mil June. A thunderstorm killed a dhobi and his bullock in the 
city. After it had ceased, I spoke to the Tamil Church assembled in our 
house of the " Covert from the tempest," the lightning-rod on which the 
fire of God's wrath descended that we might be safe, and the calm sun- 
shine of God's gracious countenance after the thunder-clouds of con- 
viction have rolled away. 

" 9th. Meeting of Financial Board in the morning. Present, 
Colonel Boileau, Majors Gunom and Arrow, and myself. The accounts 
were given over to Major Arrow, but a few days after, owing to his 
increased duties in connection with the mutiny in the Irregular Cavalry 
under his command, he returned the books. . . . 

" Thursday, 9th July. At 6.40 A.M., execution, on the Hill, of 
Mohudin Husein, Eisaldar. 

"Friday, 12th. Captain Johnston returns to command the Fort 
of Sitabaldi Hill. In consequence of representations on the state of the 
fort which he made to the Adjutant-General in Kamthi at the end of 
his first tour of duty, he was now empowered, in conjunction with 
Major Bell of the Ordnance Department, to effect some repairs, which 
were most opportune. In the evening after nightfall, Feiz Buksh with 
his youngest son came to our house to warn me immediately to send 
off my wife and children to Bombay, as a plot had been formed in the 
city along with the military to murder, in four days after, all the Euro- 
peans in the place. Some European artillery leave Kamthi for Jabal- 
poor. 

" I3th, at 6 A.M. Communicated in a note to Mr. Ellis, Deputy 
Commissioner, Feiz Buksh's information, and then went to school. 
At the same time Mr. Plowden went to Takli to compliment the Ir- 
regular Cavalry for their willingness to go to Jabalpoor. A squadron 
ordered to leave that night. They asked for delay till next day. At 
2 P.M. Mr. Ellis, in our house, had an interview with Feiz Buksh. 
32d Eegiment Madras Native Infantry leave Kamthi for north. 
At night the cavalry mutiny. On 14th, squadron leaves for 
north. 



1857 HIS JOURNAL IN THE MUTINY 191 

"16th. Execution on the hill of one of the sowars of the Mulki 
Police, who is said to have been busy on night of 13th June, even after 
the Risala had lost heart, in endeavouring to stir up or rally his 
Mussulman accomplices. 

" 18th. A movable column, under the command of Colonel Millar, 
left Kamthi en route for Shiwani, but in reality for service in the Sagar 
and Narbada territories. 

"19th. At 6 A.M. resumed worship at Kamthi, Mr. Chapman 
having the two previous Sabbaths conducted service for me, while I 
have since 21st June had a meeting with the Horse Artillery in the 
Residency compound. 

" 26th. At 5 P.M. resumed worship in our Mission Church in 
Sitabaldi, having since 14th June had meetings on the platform on 
Sitabaldi Hill, on Sabbath evenings and for the most part on Thurs- 
day evenings. Was not at Kamthi on account of rain. Captain Touch 
conducted service. 

" 27 'th. At 3 P.M. a regular attack of fever, preceded by shivering, 
having had premonitory symptoms two days before. Just before the 
attack, had a conversation with two men of 32d Madras Native 
Infantry and a Mussulman on the affairs of their soul. One of the 
32d is a havildar named Venkana, the other a sepoy named Etirajulu, 
both of the Brahman caste. 

"29th. 6^ A.M. The execution, on the Hill, of Walayat Mia, who 
was married some years ago with considerable eclat of fireworks, etc., 
to the second of the last Raja's Mussulman! daughters. It is reported 
that he promised a rupee to every man who would fight only one hour 
on the night of 13th June. His body Avas not buried like those of the 
mutineers of the Risala on the Hill outside of the walls of the Fort, 
but was brought down on a cot in charge of Feiz Buksh, the city 
kotwal, for interment on the left bank of the Nalla, which flows 
between the Lai Bag and the hospital. There it was laid among 
quicklime, and a guard placed over the grave. This night, towards 
morning of 30th, a false alarm, which sent our family up to the 
Hill. . . . 

"4th August. The fever left me by the blessing of God. Feel 
extremely weak. 

" 5th. Apaya, in visiting the Commissioner's compound for the sale 
of books, was accosted by a sowar of the 4th Light Cavalry, who asked 
one to be shown to him, which he took with him into his tent. On 
this a Jamadar called Apaya to him and forbade him to distribute such 
books among his men. The colporteur replied that he forced none to 



192 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

receive them. When Apaya was going away he was again summoned 
by the Jamadar, who said he would carry him before the Adjutant. 
But Apaya declined to appear before that officer, stating that if he 
had anything to say he might communicate it to him through his 
superior in the Mission. Thus when the Spirit was working, Satan 
began to counterwork. These proceedings were not reported to me. 

" 6th. Lieutenant Morris, adjutant of the cavalry, called in the 
name of Colonel Cumberledge to request that books might not be cir- 
culated at this time. I pleaded that, although it was not expedient to 
stir the minds of Colonel Cumberledge's own Mussulman sowars, yet it 
was not necessary that the work among Hindu sepoys should be sus- 
pended, in which connection I referred to the two men of the 32d who 
welcomed Apaya and his books. Mr. Morris having consulted with 
Colonel Cumberledge, returned with the message that the circulation of 
tracts must be stopped among all the military under his command, 
which at present includes all the native soldiers in and about Sita- 
baldi. I promised, of course, to comply. He had not long gone, when 
Captain Munley of the 32d, who is acting staff-officer here under 
Colonel Cumberledge, came in a conciliatory strain, hoping that nothing 
would be done to stir up the flame of discontent here, as it might 
spread no one could tell how far south. He asked the names of the 
two men in the 32cl, as he thought it might be necessary to send them 
immediately over to Kamthi. I hoped nothing would be done so as 
to make them think that they had been visited with censure for the 
simple act of inquiring after Christ. 

" 7th. At midday the two men of 32d came to our house, having 
received no order to depart ; but they came to bid us farewell for a 
time, as their whole detachment in natural course was to return to 
Kamthi next day. They seemed to be filled with peace, and I gave 
them some directions how they ought to act towards their families. 

" Heard the sad tidings of the massacre at Sialkot on 9th (?) ult. of 
Eev. Thomas and Mrs. Hunter, with their child. This will be a severe 
affliction to my beloved colleague and his parents. . . . 

"13th. At 6.10 A.M. execution, on the Hill, of Foujdar Khan, 
acting drill naik of the Takli Horse Battery, for having offered, as 
stated in the Madras Atlienceum, to make over the guns to the insur- 
gents. Before his death he abused all Europeans. 

" 14i/i. Execution, on the Hill, of Kaclar Ali Nawab at 7 A.M. He 
admitted that the city conspirators met at his house for deliberation. 
The plot, he said, was formed a good while ago in connection with 
people at Lucknow, Maulavis being the media. Said in Madras 



1857 HIS JOURNAL IN THE MUTINY 193 

Athenasum to have been 64 (?) years of age, to have weighed 17 stone, 
and worth Es. 24,000,000. 

"20th. At 1|- P.M. symptoms of fever were again felt, which in- 
creased till at 2^ P.M. Eegular ague commenced and lasted for three 
hours, when about four hours of the hot stage followed. A similar 
attack at the same time two days after. . . . 

" 27/i. At 6jjr execution, on Hill, of Saiad Nazur Husein, Jama- 
dar of Irregular Cavalry, who had been apprehended along with the 
three first hanged, but kept till now to obtain additional proof. 

" 30th. The night of the display of the Taboots. 

" 31 si. The day on which they were carried to be thrown into the 
water. The Moharam has passed off with unusual quietness. But 
great precautions were taken, e.g. the prohibition of sticks and clubs 
being carried, to prevent any outbreak. 

" Tuesday, 1st September. Kesumed duties in Nagpoor school. 

" 3d. Went with family into Kamthi, to preach there next day. 

" 4th, Fridaij. Preached from Amos iii. 6, Day set apart for 
humiliation and prayer in connection with the present troubles in 
Northern India. To the appointment of such a day Mr. Plowden had 
early given his consent ; but the naming of a day was delayed by my 
fever. In the meantime the Bishop of Madras sent up instructions to 
the chaplains to observe Thursday, 20th August ; but his communica- 
tion came too late, and Friday, 28th August, was substituted. This, 
however, was changed, as it was thought the Artillerymen could not 
be permitted to leave their lines to join in worship during the Muha- 
ram. Even on the 4th September, however, they were absent, as it 
appears the European soldiers had been on the 20th August, the day 
of prayer in Madras. There seemed to be very little reason for the 
excessive strictness in Kamthi. The collection in our Kamthi English 
Church was for the relief of widows and orphans of the European 
soldiers who fell in suppressing the rebellion in Northern India, and 
amounted to Es. 32, 6 As., including Es. 7 from Conductor Whit well. 
The collection made by the Native Christians was Es. 8, 14 As. 

" Preached in the evening in Sitabaldi, where our European col- 
lection was Es. 57^, and the Native one Es. 28|. . . . 

" 6th. After morning service left Captain Johnston, with whom 
we had been staying. ... In the course of the clay had a visit from 
the havildar and sepoy with another sepoy of the 32d Eegiment, 
Madras Native Infantry. The two old inquirers seemed to be going on 
well, though the havildar was rather inaccessible while in Kamthi. A 
visit also from the daughter of Sicandar, the Eomanist Native doctor, who 

O 



194 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

has long practised in Nagpoor. She was returning from the Komish 
Chapel in Sitabaldi, where she had been along with a Mussulman atten- 
dant and boy. I asked her to what circumstances I was indebted for the 
visit. She replied it was from no quarrelling with her priests, but 
from a doubt regarding the truth of Popery. The doubt originated in 
reading a Hindustani book, which I had given her brother, and which 
she had read. She disapproved, she said, of pictures and images, which 
received homage though they were the works of men's hands. The 
priests, she added, had been very anxious for her to become a nun, 
which she declined, especially while her aged father was alive and 
needed her services. She informed me that there were a great many 
rather wealthy Native Eomanists of mixed Portuguese descent (or con- 
verts of Akbar's Jesuits ?), like herself, about Bhopal and Agra. 

" llth. Babaji, the Kabir-panthi, came to converse about embrac- 
ing Christianity. He seems to look on the step as more necessary than 
he used to do. 

" 12th. At 6 in the morning there was a thick fog all round on 
the plain. This is only the second occurrence of such a phenomenon 
within the last twelve years at Nagpoor. . . . 

" 1 7th. Wrote to Mr. Ellis about the prevalence in the city of a 
report assuming two forms ; one that had it had been tom-tomed in the 
city that all who are too poor to lay in a supply of provisions for a 
year should leave ; the other, that a proclamation had been made in a 
similar way more sweeping still, requiring all rich and poor to send off 
their wives and children to the villages. Mr. Ellis thought that it was 
scarcely expedient to issue a real proclamation to counteract the mis- 
chievous effects of this imaginary one. 

" IQth. Eeceived an offer from Major Snow of 86 specimens of 
different kinds of wood from the district of Chindwara. 

" 20th. Major Arrow conducted service in the evening in our 
church here. I not able to do so either here or at Kamthi. 

"21st. Wrote to Mr. Plowden (in consequence of Major Snow's 
offer) regarding the ultimate establishment of a Museum here. 

" 22d. Mr. Plowden, agreeably to my letter, requested Colonel 
Boileau in communication with me to provide temporary accommoda- 
tion for Major Snow's specimens. A letter from Dr. Jerdon at Kamthi 
stating that he with 4th Madras Light Cavalry would leave next 
day, and consigning to me the disposal of his land shells. . . . 

" 2*7th } about 4|- P.M. Being the ninth day of the feast of Devi 
or the Doorga Pooja, Major Spence and Captain Bell went together on 
an elephant in the sawari of the queen's adopted son to the Nag River, 



1857 HIS JOUENAL IN THE MUTINY 195 

where the youth alighted and worshipped the weapons and horses taken 
thither. The former are sprinkled and the latter led through the 
river, both being thus held to be bathed. One principal sword is 
selected for all, which is adorned half-way up the blade with a sectarial 
mark, uncooked rice is thrown on it, and betel leaf, flowers, and sweet- 
meats are presented to it. The same is done to one of the horses. 
These ceremonies being gone through by Janoji, formerly Apa Saheb, 
under the guidance of an upadhya, the two Europeans who had re- 
mained on their elephant returned to Sitabaldi. While the Marathi 
procession was returning, it is said a sheep was slain and the horses 
led over its body through the blood. It is on the Dasara that the 
buffalo is slain. 

"28th, Monday. The Dasara. The two gentlemen above men- 
tioned along with Mr. Ellis, who has been succeeded in the charge of 
the district by Major Spence, and has been appointed a sort of judicial 
commissioner, went out this day to meet the procession of the adopted 
son, as he was going to the spot where the tree was wont to be wor- 
shipped in the Raja's time, but which has never been visited for that 
purpose since the annexation. On the two parties meeting, they went 
to a platform where " the usual civilities of betel and flower wreaths 
were offered," to use the words of Mr. Ellis, who says his only motive 
for going was to pay respect to Baka Bai, who is pleased with the 
attention ; but there were no idolatrous ceremonies performed while 
he was present, and he believes it to be perfectly understood that the 
visit was a simple act of courtesy towards the Baka Bai and her 
adopted son Janoji. 

" 3d, Saturday. At full moon this month, as the orb was rising in 
the east, the rays of the setting sun, after spanning the arch of the 
heavens in very marked lines, converged exactly on the lunar disc. 

" 4th. This day set apart for humiliation and prayer throughout 
India by the Governor-General. Observed in Kamthi in the morning, 
and Sitabaldi in the evening. I observed in the newspapers that 
several Christian churches in Calcutta, displeased with the arrange- 
ment, chose Monday 28th ult. in preference, that day being a holiday 
in the Government offices. 

" 1 *7th. Saw the compound of Mr. Koss, magistrate in Kamthi, 
partially lighted up in connection with the Dewali. Brigadier Prior's 
house was not this year; but last year it was brilliantly illuminated. 

"18th. At Kamthi in the morning. The communion was ad- 
ministered. . . . 

" 19th. Gunner Napier, a native of Glasgow and a former hearer 



196 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

of Dr. King's at the U.P. Greyfriars' Church, called to explain his 
state of mind. He had been impressed with the sermon of the pre- 
vious evening, as well as by what he had heard some weeks before on 
Sitabaldi Hill ; and he now came to express his desire to follow Christ. 
May the Lord enable him to carry out this resolution ! 

" This evening, for the first time, the guard of Native Infantry, 
which has been placed at the corner of our compound since the Mutiny, 
dispensed with, the picket of Light Cavalry having been taken off some 
weeks before. 

"21st. Heard that Sayad Ibrahim had been some time before 
banished from the province and gone to Warangal. According to 
Lieutenant Milman, he was believed by Mr. Ellis to have been em- 
ployed to seduce the Karnthi force. Jamal-ud-deen and Haji Gulani 
Kasul, though considered to be implicated, had also been released for 
want of proof. 

" 22d Cold weather commenced. 

" 1st November. Being full moon, chief day of the jatra at Eam- 
tek, and the smaller meeting at Sakardar. The gathering at the 
former place was only about a third of what it used to be, the dis- 
turbances in the north being unfavourable. 

"6th. Evening at 7, a supper in our verandah to the Native 
Christians, at which, besides our friends the Chapmans, there were 
present 26 males and 20 females in all, 46 guests old and young. 

" *lth. This morning at Kamthi sat for my portrait (photograph 
on glass) to Captain Johnston. 

" 8th. Evening at Sitabaldi. The sacrament was dispensed before 
our usual service. ... At tea after service ; the English-speaking 
converts were present, along with Major Arrow, and some edifying 
discourse was held. 

"9th. For the last fortnight or more there has been unusual 
excitement among the Hindus in the city, most of whom seem to sym- 
pathise with Nana Saheb and Baiza Bai, either of whom they would 
be glad to welcome to Nagpoor at the head of a hostile army. Few 
yet believe in the capture of Delhi. 

" 1 5th. Morning at Kamthi; baptized Ganga, ayah in Brigadier 
Prior's family, who took the name of Mary in remembrance of her 
lately-deceased mistress. 

" 20th. Was told in the city to-day that word had come from Girl 
(Tripati ? as I believe), that the door of the temple of Balaji there 
had shut of its own accord, the god not having time to receive the 
worship of his votaries in consequence of having gone to the north fo 



1857 HIS JOUENAL IN THE MUTINY 197 

India to assist the rebels. Occasionally the door of the temple is shut 
by order of Government, because Balaji, or Venkatesh, as he is also 
called, in his character of patel of certain villages, gets into arrears of 
rent, which the above coercion induces him to pay up through the 
priests of the temple, I suppose. 

" 30th. The Calcutta road, 30 miles W. of Sambhalpoor, known 
to be stopped from the non-arrival of the dak, which I believed was 
plundered. The Calcutta road, via Mirzapoor, had been closed for a 
month or two previous, owing to the anarchy prevailing in the Sagar 
territory. 

" Thursday, 1st December. Apaya left for Nasada and Nirmah to 
sell books. Vira followed on the 3d intending to go to Chinnoor, in 
accordance with the arrangement made with Mr. E. Arthington, junior, 
of Leeds. 

" 7th, Monday morning. Half of the Eisala and the whole of the 
Native Artillery from Takli under the command respectively of Captain 
Wood and Lieutenant Playfair, and in medical charge of Dr. Wyndowe, 
marched for Eaepoor to assist in quelling the disturbance near 
Sambhalpoor. The policy of returning arms to the cavalry, which 
had been directed at a parade aj few mornings before by Mr. Plowden, 
and of employing them and the suspected Golandaz on active service, 
is loudly condemned in Kamthi. I believe the re-arming was 
authorised by Government. 

" 19th. In the morning crossed the Kanhan river to the quarries 
in company with Captains Johnston, Eoberts, and Touch. In the even- 
ing an exhibition of the lantern for Europeans, artillery sergeants, etc., 
gratis, the higher classes, to the number of 30, at E. 1 each. Bhaga- 
want Eaw, patel of Bagaun, with some others from his village, was 
present. The exhibition on both of these occasions was satisfactory. 

"27f7fc. Morning at Kamthi church. Colonel Hill has arrived 
to take charge of the commissariat department. . . . 

"29#i. Examination of Sitabaldi and Nagpoor schools at noon. 
. . . Mr. Plowden, in his speech to the pupils at the close, told them 
they owed much to their kind benefactor, who had laboured in the 
city for their welfare through good and bad report. Some wished 
native education to retrograde ; he only desired to see a new element 
introduced into it God's Word, which, from what he had witnessed 
to-day, he was convinced might be introduced with perfect safety. 
We must be more open in our profession of Christianity before the 
people of this country, etc. The number of pupils was 



198 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

ENGLISH Boys Girls 

Present. On roll. Present. On roll. 

Shukarwari 28 32 55 

Sitabaldi 31 34 

59 66 
MABATHI 

Shukarwari 70 85 

Aditawari 45 70 

Budhwari 72 90 

Pewate 45 76 

Hansapuri 105 124 

Mangalwari 85 110 

Gulganj 49 87 
New Shukarwari 

Girl's School 8 16 

Total 530 708 13 21 

"Thursday, 3lst December. At 6 A.M. started for Hingna. Six 
miles from Sitabaldi, on right margin of road, a large heap of stones 
with masoba at the top. The vermilioned stone in the centre, which 
was evidently regarded as chief, was an irregular piece of tertiary 
apparently unfossiliferous. On the north outskirts are stone circles. 
Was asked by one of the people the meaning of all the alarming 
rumours. 

" 5th January 1858. At Satephool, where formerly I had preached 
to the people, all the villages gathered to hear. The patel, a Maratha 
named Bhagachiba, who had formed part of my former audience, at 
once asked me who Jesus Christ was. It was very pleasant to spend 
an hour, not in wrangling with disingenuous disputants about their 
false gods, but laying before him and his people the character and work 
of the Saviour, and our great need as sinners of His atonement. The 
patel admitted that all the Hindu modes of deliverance were in- 
sufficient, and that we needed the righteousness of Christ to save us 
from deserved wrath. He asked how worship ought to be conducted. 
Whereupon I offered up a short prayer, in which he seemed to join. 
There was an offer of hospitality, which I gratefully declined. The 
patel hoped that the English Government would drive back the rebels 
on the north of the Narbacla. He loved the present regime under 
which he 'was favoured with peace and justice. .He knew too well 
what it was to be invaded and plundered and tortured by swarms from 



1857 MAJOR JOHNSTON'S MUTINY NARRATIVE 199 

Northern India (the Pindarees). He accompanied me to the outside of 
the village, meeting on the road Maroti's temple. He expressed a hope 
that the time might come when it would be deserted. He had heard of 
the discovery of fossils, e.g. shells and leaves in stones." 

Kamthi was a station of the Madras Army at which were 
four of its infantry regiments, of these only one was trusted. 
The presence of their families kept the men from outrageous 
mutiny, but the expense of their marriages and family life, 
the heavy indebtedness of the majority, and the frequent long 
and costly marches made many dislike a service which was 
often hereditary. The 36th Madras Native Infantry had 
openly mutinied on its march from the Ganjam coast to 
Kamthi, which it reached a few weeks before the outburst at 
Meerut. 

MAJOR L. JOHNSTON'S NARRATIVE. 

"On the 10th June 1857, the Adjutant-General asked me to go 
out to Sitabaldi and take the command of the place. . . . There 
were twenty tons of powder in the two magazines in the fort ; and the 
arsenal about 300 yards below was full of powder and warlike stores 
of every kind, which had been brought from Sagar when the Bengal 
troops relieved the Madras. . . . The fort was about 200 yards long 
and 80 broad, it had eighteen guns mounted and weather boxes 
behind them, which had been left there and renewed since 1812, when 
we first took it. At this time there was only a guard of eight men 
in the fort, and one sentry over the guard, the rest of the men were in 
a barrack about 150 yards from the fort. . . . The whole military 
stores in the arsenal, the powder magazines and treasury, containing 
at that time fourteen lacs of rupees, depended on the vigilance of one 
sentry. The fort was in such a dilapidated state that any one could 
have walked into it at any spot and without being seen. In Kamthi 
cantonment nine miles off, there were only about twelve rounds of 
cartridges per man, and the artillery had only a few rounds per gun. 

" When I took the command I sent thirty men to the arsenal and 
made the other seventy sleep in the fort, and made all other necessary 
arrangements in case I should be attacked. I found out a great many 
suspicious circumstances, all which I duly reported by a camel post 
which was established between the Adjutant-General and myself, and 



200 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

thereby reports interchanged twice a-day. I applied for forty European 
artillerymen, and said if I got them I would hold the fort against all 
that could be brought against me ; the reply was not a European 
could be spared, if I was attacked I was to hold out. ... I had 
just gone to bed at 9|- P.M., when I was told a lady with a sick 
man and a number of children were at the gate. I found it 
was Mrs. Macgrath of the 1st Kegimeiit Madras Native Infantry, 
with her husband who was prostrate, and a lot of children. She 
told me to get my men under arms at once, as the whole of the 
Irregular Force at Nagpoor (one field Battery, 800 Cavalry and 800 
Irregular Infantry) with the whole of the men in Nagpoor, were 
marching to attack my post. I instantly loaded the eighteen guns 
and stationed three men with a lighted port fire over each gun, with 
orders to fire away as fast as they could, as they would by doing so 
keep the foe from coming to close quarters, and give the alarm to the 
garrison at Kamthi. . . . 

" It came out at the court-martial held on four native officers a few 
days after the outbreak, that, on a fire balloon being sent up from 
the palace between eleven and twelve, the Irregular Force and 
a thousand of the townspeople were to attack my force, and after 
slaughtering every one in the place the Irregular Cavalry were 
to gallop into Kamthi, surround the church, where all the 
Europeans would be assembled for morning worship, and slaughter 
them all ; they would then be joined by the native regiments in 
Kamthi of this they had been assured and thus form a nucleus 
of an army. A guard of twenty -five sowars from the Native 
Irregular Cavalry had been told off to take up a position between 
Nagpoor and Kamthi to cut off any that might have escaped the 
butchery at Sitabaldi ; mounted couriers were stationed every six 
miles between Nagpoor and Mirzopoor, and between Nagpoor and 
Secunderabad to give instant intelligence of the fall of Nagpoor. I 
had been in the habit of spending the day with the Hislops, and going 
up to the fort at night by a bye-path, to sleep there. That night the 
rebels had placed a guard to cut me off ; not making my appearance as 
usual, one of them came to Mr. Hislop's house and told one of his 
servants if she did not at once tell where I was he would slay her ; she 
said, ' He has not been here to-day.' Three days after the outbreak 
four native officers, guarded by European officers, were handed over to 
me as prisoners. ... I put leg-irons on them. The following day their 
commanding officer came and told me the Commissioner was furious at 
me for disgracing these men by putting them in irons ; he will now be 



1857 MUTINY FOILED AT NAGPOOR 201 

compelled to try them by court-martial. Next day three of them 
were so tried, and ordered to be hanged. 

" At this time a council of war was held at Kamthi, as to whether 
the cantonment of Kamthi should be evacuated, and the whole force 
concentrated at Sitabaldi. ... It was supposed that either Holkar 
or Sindia, or both, would march down and attack us. To be prepared 
for the worst, it was decided that stores of every kind for an army of 
10,000 men should be laid up in the fort, and firewood and forage for 
cattle and horses outside the fort, and tanks of water built of sufficient 
capacity to last for three months. The tanks were built and filled, and 
I had to receive and store up every conceivable requisite for a siege. 
If an enemy had appeared, I am afraid he would have had a bad 
time of it. ... One morning the whole force at Sitabaldi was 
ordered to parade under the guns of the fort. The Irregular Cavalry 
was there and then disarmed, the arms and saddles taken from them. 
I was ordered, if there was any attempt at resistance, to pour grape into 
them, and prevent as many as possible from escaping. . . . The 
Commissioner's coachman had disappeared two days before the outbreak; 
it was discovered the rebels had taken him away and kept him under 
the influence of opiates, so that he should not be available if required. 
At the first alarm he was sought for, but could not be found. Mr. 
Plow den in consequence drove his carriage himself into Kamthi to the 
Brigadier's house, and was the first to give the alarm. Brigadier Prior 
told me this himself, and said it was some time before he could 
explain what had happened ; he had the ladies removed from the 
carriage, and gave the necessary orders for a force to start at once for 
Sitabaldi. . . . On the first alarm I sent a guard down to the 
Mission House to bring up Mrs. Hislop and family, Mr. Hislop 
having gone to Kamthi for services there the following day. 

"On Friday night, 12th June, a Mussulman from the city came to 
Mr. Hislop and warned him to be off with his family as great events 
were about to take place. He replied, ' You know me too well to suppose 
that I would do anything of the kind without knowing the reason.' 
He then told the rebels' plans to Mr. Hislop, who took him at once to 
Mr. Robert Ellis. . . . 

" On the march up of my regiment from Russellkonda to 
Nagpoor, on passing Chanda I said to the officers around me, 
' If coal is to be found anywhere in India it is sure to be found 
here. ' They asked why I said so, I replied, ' I come from a 
a coal district, and here are all the same features.' On arrival at 
Kamthi I mentioned this to Mr. Hislop, who said, -You are quite 



202 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

right, I found coal there three years ago, and sent specimens of it up 
to Government. About eight years after this another individual 
found coal there, and got large rewards. Mr. Hislop afterwards 
showed me thin seams of coal in the bed of the river at Kamthi, 
he had no doubt the seams would thicken as they got down. 
A number of officers eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity 
of getting instruction from Mr. Hislop in geological and botanical 
pursuits. No one could be in his society without feeling that it was 
good for them to be there, and their intercourse with him almost 
always ended in their conversion." 

Mr. Hislop's correspondence with Dr. Wilson in Bombay 
was close during these troublous times. On the 27th May 
the latter wrote to him : " How formidable is the military 
insurrection ! What a mercy it is that the population of the 
country is quiet ! How remarkable it is that the Christian 
missions are not implicated in the movement ! I hope that 
the Government will not succumb to caste, which it has 
pampered too long. The tabooing of the army, and shutting 
it out from Christianising and liberalising influences, is bring- 
ing its own punishment. The lenity of the punishment of 
the mutineers at Bolarum last year is occurring to many." 
On the 25th November Dr. Wilson again wrote : " We keep an 
anxious eye on Nagpoor on your account." When the first 
anniversary of the great deliverance was at hand we find 
Hislop writing thus to his brother on 12th June 1858 : 
"To-morrow will be the anniversary of our deliverance from the 
sword of the Mussulman. Should we not ever bear in mind 
that merciful event, so as to increase the gratitude of our 
hearts, and the testimony of our lives ? " 

Towards the end of 1857 the Hislops bade farewell to 
Captain W. D. Chapman and Ms family, with whom they had 
much friendly and spiritual intercourse when stationed at 
Kamthi. Captain Chapman, who still survives, bears this 
testimony to the influence of Hislop as a man and a Christian 
teacher; and in particular to the service which he was enabled 



1857 INTERCOURSE WITH ENGLISH OFFICERS 203 

to do to his countrymen and the empire on the night of the 
13th June 1857 : 

" One of our earliest friendships, and certainly one of the most 
intimate and helpful, was formed with Mr. Hislop and his dear 
wife, who resided within a drive of Kamthi. Like many Scots- 
men his manner was reserved. He was not a man of many words, 
but when he did speak his words were weighty, and no one could fail 
to be impressed with the sterling reality and downright honesty of 
purpose of our dear friend's whole life. Perhaps one of the most 
conspicuous traits in his character was that he was 'clothed with 
humility.' At the time which I refer to the ministry in the Church of 
England was not, in my judgment, to edification, and I became a regu- 
lar attendant at the services held in the Free Church Mission-room. 
Very delightful was the teaching of our friend. To this day I remem- 
ber with pleasure a series of sermons he preached on Psalm ex., and 
though I regretted (as an English Churchman) the loss of our beauti- 
ful Liturgy, I felt that I was amply repaid by the reiteration of sound 
doctrine and earnest practical teaching which fell from his lips. 

"It was our privilege to receive him from time to time on 
Saturday evenings, so that he might be fresh for the Sunday morning 
ministrations. My dear wife happened to observe on one occasion, 
from the length of the candles when Mr. Hislop retired to his room, 
and their exceedingly diminished proportions when they were brought 
out of his room on the following morning, that he had consumed a 
large proportion of the midnight oil ; and knowing how wearied he 
often was at the end of the week, she determined, upon the next occa- 
sion of his visit, to supply the candlesticks with but short fragments. 
This was done. In the morning, Mr. Hislop acknowledged to hav- 
ing had a thoroughly refreshing sleep, and I cannot recall that the 
sermon suffered in consequence. So, when, upon a future occasion, he 
was again our guest, fag ends of candles were once more found on the 
writing table in his bed-room. That night the baby was restless, and 
in the small hours of the morning my wife went into the nursery, and 
passing Mr. Hislop's room observed light shining under the door. 
Next morning particular inquiries were made as to how he had slept. 
He was far too truthful a man to evade the question, and so replied, 
' Thank you, I did not get to bed till somewhat late for I had my 
sermon to write.' ' But how could you write your sermon in the 
dark,' said she, ' for I only gave you very short pieces of candle on 
purpose that you might go to bed early.' ' I found that out,' replied 



204 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

Mr. Hislop, ' the last time I was here, so I brought my own candles 
with me.' We had a good laugh over the joke, and told him that his 
determined Scottish pertinacity was too much for us, and that he 
should have his own way in the future. His enthusiasm in his 
ministerial calling was thoroughly characteristic of the man. Very 
different from Dr. Duff, whom I have seen enter the pulpit decently 
attired in his Geneva gown, and after a few sentences finding that it 
impeded the action of his arms and the flow of his oratory, with an 
impatient 'Tut, tut,' clutch at the offending garment on this side 
and on that and toss it down on to the floor of the pulpit, Mr. 
Hislop was quiet not impassioned j slow not impulsive, but his was 
the determined dogged perseverance of a holy enthusiasm in the fulfil- 
ment of duty for the sake of the Master, and the undying souls of the 
millions around him, which nothing could turn aside. While allowing 
nothing to interfere with the one object of his life, that of telling ' it 
out among the heathen that the Lord is King,' he was much 
interested and deeply versed in scientific subjects. He could speak 
' Of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall.' He was a Geologist and a 
Conchologist as well as a Botanist. I doubt not but that this, his great 
general information, made him an exceedingly popular teacher among 
his more intelligent scholars and converts ; and surely he would find 
" sermons in stones books in the running brooks," and texts in 
everything by which to lead his hearers to look from the God of 
Nature to the revelation of Himself as the God of Grace, as He is 
manifested in His most holy Word." 

" In the Nagpoor Commission there was a professed infidel at the 
time of which I am writing. He was a kind-hearted man, and not 
unfrequently, coming across poor little waifs and strays who were 
fatherless and motherless, he would take charge of them, and make 
them over to be adopted by the Free Church Mission himself meet- 
ing the necessary expenses. Mr. Hislop remarked upon the incon- 
sistency of his conduct, when he replied that, albeit he was not a 
believer in the Bible, he was quite sure his little orphans would be 
better cared for in the Mission, and under Mr. Hislop's wing, than 
anywhere else. 

" It always struck me as a very remarkable testimony to the love 
and honour in which Mr. Hislop was held by the unconverted natives, 
that at the time of the intended Mutiny at Nagpoor, he should have 
been the first man, and, so far as I know, the only man who received 
any intimation of the proposed rising. The man, although he had 



1858 THE PEOPLE DUKING THE MUTINY 205 

not accepted Christ, could not bear that his old friend and his son's 
kind good teacher should be foully . murdered. What a conclusive 
answer this one fact is to the all-prevailing cry of the time that the 
Mutiny was caused by the injudicious efforts of the missionaries to 
convert the Hindus and Mohammedans to Christianity." 

Feiz Buksh was one of a class of unbaptized Christian 
students and friends to whom, through Mr. Hislop, the 
authorities and military in 185*7 were indebted for loyal aid. 
Risaldar Sheik Ismail, who became native head of the 
Intelligence Department with General Whitlock's column, 
never publicly confessed Christ, but Hislop used to say of 
him that he trusted him more than any avowed convert, and 
that the soldier knew the Bible better than any native he had 
influenced. Another of his friends was the Parsee millionnaire, 
Kharsetjee, uncle of the present philanthropic Sir Dinshaw 
Manockjee Petit. He was the contractor who by his supplies 
enabled our troops to scour Central India after Tantia Topi, 
and to restore order over its wide expanse. Major L. Johnston 
raised a corps of 1100 Sebundies, or irregulars, from the 
Kamthi bazaars, and sent half of them with that column, 
thus converting doubtful characters into interested and 
intelligent sappers. Some of the best of these were 
Christians. 

The tour which Mr. Hislop completed at the beginning of 
1858, south to Haidarabad frontier, led him to these conclusions : 
" The minds of the people were less unsettled by the dis- 
orders which prevail on our northern frontier than might have 
been anticipated. True, Mussulmans and Brahmans are dis- 
contented with the British rule the former on account of the 
loss of their political power, and the latter by reason of the 
anticipated departure of their religious authority ; but the 
great body of the agricultural inhabitants have few interests in 
common with them. The cultivators have too vivid a recol- 
lection of the days of the Pindarees to desire another invasion 



206 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

from beyond the Narbada, with all its concomitants of 
torture, plunder, fire, and sword. More than once was I 
invited to partake of the frugal fare which their houses 
afforded ; and when the cakes were exhausted or thought to 
be too old for a gentleman to eat, a fresh supply has been 
provided between the period of my commencing and finishing 
my discourse. This was done not merely as a fawning com- 
pliment to a European, whose favour it was thought expedient 
to secure, but out of real kindness of heart, because it was late 
in the forenoon and I was believed to require something to eat, 
"At Vela, which is a stronghold of Brahmans, I met several 
who are devoted to the study of astronomy. Speaking of 
idolatry, I remarked that even their own books acknowledged 
that it was a system fit only for the ignorant, while the 
spiritual worship of God was the way of wisdom ; but one 
of the evils of the system was, that so far from having a 
tendency to elevate its followers from the state of spiritual 
ignorance of which it was the indication, it deprived them of 
the worldly knowledge which their forefathers possessed. 
' Which of you, for example,' I inquired, ' could write a book 
on the solar system like ancient astronomers ? " This led to 
a conversation on the discrepancy on this subject between 
the old treatises written by men who are admitted to have 
been uninspired, and the Purans, which are believed to be a 
revelation from heaven. This discrepancy the most learned 
in the audience were obliged to acknowledge they could not 
reconcile ; and on being called on to state which they regarded 
as the most correct, they were under the necessity of pre- 
ferring the human to the pseudo-divine view. It was easy 
to point out the consequences of this admission ; for if their 
Purans err on such a simple thing as the relative distances of 
the sun and moon, which may be discovered any time an 
eclipse takes place, what trust is to be put in their statements 
on the important questions regarding God and salvation. 



1858 FINAL OPINION ON THE MUTINY 207 

" A similar reception awaited Vira at Clienoor, one of the 
towns selected by Mr. Arthington for special effort. Here, 
when the books were spread out for inspection, several 
Brahmans began to examine them with eagerness, until a 
Eohilla (Mussulman from Northern India) interposed with 
the remark ' What ! Is it possible that you Brahmans are 
taking these books into your hands ? They are made of 
leather, not of paper.' Vira assured them they were of 
paper. ' You are a liar,' said the Eohilla ; ' they are of leather, 
as the English are now making cartridges of leather.' In 
this man's conduct we have just an epitome of the chief 
cause of the Indian mutiny. The plot was a Mohammedan 
one, formed long before the outbreak of rebellion at Meerut, 
the murmurs of disloyalty at Barrackpore, or even the 
whispers of disaffection at Dum Dum ; and the design was to 
take advantage of anything that might arise, and to invent 
stories though nothing should occur, for the purpose of work- 
ing on the prejudices of the native population, and especially 
the formidable army of Bengal sepoys. How this policy 
succeeded in Hindustan is too well known ; and now it was 
acted on with results somewhat similar in a town of the 
Deccan. The head official of Chenoor ordered Vira instantly 
to depart on pain of being beaten." 

When sending home his report to the General Assembly 
of 1858, he thus called to remembrance the important events 
with which it had been and ever will be associated : 

" At this station in June we were on the very brink of destruc- 
tion ; but the Lord, as by a miracle of mercy, delivered us. And 
here it was that our gracious God rolled back the tide of rebellion and 
suffered it not to overflow the South of India. Had the fidelity of 
our Madras sepoys been tried by an enemy already triumphant over 
the European residents of Sitabaldi, it is not hazarding too much 
to say that it would not have been able to stand the test. And 
on the fall of Nagpoor into the hands of the insurgents, and the 
defection of this outpost of the Madras Native Army, who could 



208 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

have calculated on the peace of Haidarabad or the Southern Presi- 
dency ? 

"Notwithstanding the evil designs of cruel men our work has 
suffered no serious interruption. With the exception of three weeks 
of vacation, which were due in June at any rate, the schools were 
carried on after the contemplated measure as regularly as before ; and, 
except when prevented by illness, my visits to the city throughout the 
last year were as frequent as during any former one. During the same 
period, although there has been only one adult baptized, yet there has 
been much spiritual inquiry among the native population, indeed more 
than I have ever seen since I came to India." 

Mr. Hislop had bent the bow too long, had withstood the 
physicians too obstinately, but where was he to look for 
relief ? Instead of welcoming a third missionary, he had lost 
the help of his only colleague, and that a man perfectly suited 
to him and the work. The letters from home brought echoes 
of the old days and glimpses of the old scenes on which in 
exile memory lingers with a fond longing. His wife had 
been as enduring and silently abundant in labours as himself, 
but that could not last much longer. Their boy had been 
early sent to Scotland to school, and their three girls ought 
to have been out of the tropics long before. He thus wrote 
to his brother : 

"NAGPOOR, 12th October 1857. ... I received your brief chit 
from Duns, around which you and our dear boy were enjoying your- 
selves. I could still enter with a good deal of youthful ardour into 
those rambles over old scenes which you describe, though I fear my 
bodily strength after a thirteen years' residence in the East would not 
be equal to yours. ... 

"We were grieved to receive from Mr. Hunter the intelligence of 
his having formally tendered his resignation of his office as a missionary, 
in consequence of the tidings which had just reached him of his 
brother's lamented death at Sialkot. This is a great blow to me and 
to the Mission, and I hope he may yet be led to change his resolution. 
In the freshness of his grief I do not wonder that he felt something 
like an aversion to return to India ; but when he has had time calmly to 
reflect on the whole circumstances of the case, I trust he will see there 



1857 ADAM WHITE, THE MARTYR MISSIONARY 209 

has nothing happened in God's providence to warrant the step he has 
too hastily taken. Never does the Christian spirit shine forth with 
greater lustre than in times of trial, when there is need of the patience 
of the saints and the fortitude which is to be added to faith. ... I 
can do all things and suffer all things through Christ strengthening 
me, is the language of the true believer. 

" I do not know what arrangements will be made for aiding this 
station should my dear colleague not return ; but I have no doubt 
that everything will be done to afford me speedy help. It is 
providential that I have been raised up from my late sickness 
at this juncture, and I trust that I may be permitted to labour 
another year without any great interruption. I feel I need a change 
ere long, and many a time has our medical attendant recom- 
mended it. 

" There are not wanting encouragements in the work. I have 
mentioned two men belonging to the 32d Madras Native Infantry. 
They are still going on well, and I hope to see them leave all things 
for the Saviour. Two days ago I had a visit from a lad in the city, 
formerly at one of our schools there, but now engaged in selling butter. 
He seems to have a sincere desire to follow Christ, but he has not a 
great amount of knowledge. 

"Now that Delhi is taken and Lucknow relieved, and so many 
reinforcements arriving, we need not fear many fresh disasters. All 
here is quiet. But fighting goes on near Jabalpoor, 160 miles to the 
north of us. 

"... As soon as you returned to Blair Lodge after the holidays 
you must have discovered some fossil insects. Do they not exceed in 
interest your recent ones ? The Saxifrage has been duly received 
with many thanks." 

Madras went to the rescue of Nagpoor, as Hislop 
had helped Madras, giving up the Eev. J. G. Cooper 
and his wife, to take charge. From Bombay the Eev. 
Adam White was sent, and did good service ; soon after, 
however, he joined the Baptist Church, and opened a mission 
on his own account at Poorandhar, south of Poona. The 
Eev. Eichard Stothert, who had been sent out from Scotland 
to strengthen the Bombay staff, took his place at Kagpoor. 
White's career was short and glorious, like that of other sons 

p 



210 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

whom Aberdeen, in its University and Free Church of Scot- 
land's College, has trained to die as well as live for the dark 
races of mankind. Four years after he was ministering, night 
and day, to a mass of Hindu pilgrims, whom cholera in its 
worst epidemic form had seized at the town of Saswad, when 
he fell a victim to the disease. " He has given up his life, 
as he gave up his all, to the great cause of India's regenera- 
tion," wrote the daily journals of Bombay. "Not slain by 
fanatics, nor cut off by those who are supposed to hate a 
missionary, but a martyr to his own self-devoted love to the 
bodies and souls of the natives of India, Adam White, the 
pure and the single-eyed, has passed away to his rest." His 
widow, and then the Free Church of Scotland, entered into 
the inheritance he left them by establishing a Mission at 
Saswad. 

Mr. Hislop's last act, before leaving Nagpoor, in Septem- 
ber 1858, was the joyful duty of baptizing seven converts, 
one of them Baba Pandurang's Hindu wife. Before we follow 
the wearied evangelist to his native land, we must gather in 
the fruits of his toil for the Gonds and for Science, as 
missionary, ethnologist, archaeologist, and naturalist. 



CHAPTEK VII 

THE MISSIONARY AMONG THE CHILDREN OF THE HILLS 
GOND ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY 

Prae-Aryan peoples of India Misunderstood and oppressed Lord Dalhousie 
does justice to the Santals Christian Church slow at first to do its 
duty Aboriginals mixed and pure First uniform census Hislop's 
researches result in essay on the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Pro- 
vinces His vocabulary of thirteen unwritten dialects Writes down the 
Lay of Lingo Estimate of his labours by Sir R. Temple By land revenue 
officials By Colonel Dalton By Dr. John Wilson The name Gond 
The twelve and a half classes Characteristics of the Gonds generally 
Their dialects of Tamil rather than Telugu origin The Kurs and K61s 
proved to have affinities with the nortli-east tribes of Assam, Burma, and 
Malacca The five songs of the Gonds Parallel with Hiawatha legend 
"Argument" of the Lay of Lingo The coming of Lingo the Holy 
The giant and his seven daughters The settlement of the Gonds and the 
passing of Lingo The whole a picture of the Western Gonds The True 
Incarnation preached by missionaries to the Gonds since Hislop Takal- 
ghat, its mounds and stone circles Hislop's excavations in 1847 and 
1863 Those of Meadows Taylor and Sir George Yule in Haidarabad 
State Colonel Forbes Leslie's book Latest view as to Prehistoric men 
by Professor Prestwich Hislop's pioneer discoveries. 

THE prae-Hindus of India have an interest of their own 
which Stephen Hislop was, with Bishop Caldwell farther 
south, one of the earliest to apprehend on its practical 
or civilising as well as scholarly side. All the teaching both 
of language and archaeology comes to this, that the Aborigines 
of India are northmen of the Scythian stem. Turanians of 
the same original stock as the Finns who went northwards, 
carrying with them the demon-worship of their Shamanite 
ancestors, they seem to have descended on the plains of 



212 STEPHEN HISLOP 1799 

India in successive waves, following each other at long inter- 
vals of time. When the Aryan or Indo-European migration 
set in, it found these Turanian peoples in possession of the 
south of India from which it was beaten back, but it drove 
the black serpent races in the centre up into the hills. With 
its marvellous and sacerdotal elasticity Brahmanism assimi- 
lated to itself and so formed modern Hinduism the cults 
of the Turanians and Sudras, but it has been more deteriorated 
by these than it has ever been able to elevate them. 

Hislop's researches enabled him to trace and distinctly 
mark off two at least of these great migratory hordes from the 
plains of Asiatic Scythia. First, probably, came the Dravid- 
ians, meaning "southerns," by the same north-west route 
along which Hindu and Mohammedan followed them, dropping 
near Sindh the Brahui tribe as they rolled on, and stopping only 
at Cape Comorin. Then, secondly, there came the Kolarians 
by a north-east route down as far as the hills of Chutia 
Nagpoor, till they met and crossed their elder Dravidian kins- 
men. The Gonds are the purest and most numerous repre- 
sentatives of the Dravidian aborigines untouched by any 
other faith than their own ; the Kols and Santals are the best 
known representatives of the Kolarians, from whom thousands 
have been recently won to Christianity. 

One unhappy fact is true of all these indigenous races ; 
they have been misunderstood and oppressed by each succes- 
sive invader of India Hindu, Mohammedan, and English. 
They have been hunted or abandoned to death, and only the 
wild jungle has given them a refuge along with the beasts 
of prey. Hindu mythology and history, such as it is, is 
full of denunciation, scorn, fear of the little, black, 
simple, truthful, and drink -loving peoples, who, hav- 
ing reached a comparatively high state of civilisation, 
were robbed and thrust back into the nomadic and almost 
bestial liabits from which we are only now weaning them. 



1855 THE OPPEESSED ABORIGINAL TRIBES 213 

With the exception of two or three young officials, like Brown 
and Augustus Cleveland, the English Government of India 
ignored the existence of hill tribes, while unconsciously arm- 
ing the Hindus and their own native subordinates with the 
weapons of law, police, and excise, to deceive and ruin 
them. When the oppression became so keen that life was 
impossible, the tribes would rise, and " a little war " would 
follow, in which half a generation of their young men would 
be shot down, and the survivors would be shut in to their hills 
still more straitly. At last, in 1855, the time came for 
political justice. The Santals, some two hundred miles to 
the north of Calcutta, rose in insurrection. Having put it 
down, and having an officer like the late Sir George Yule to 
put in charge of them as a civilian, the Marquis of Dalhousie 
decreed that their children should be educated by the Christian 
missionaries, half the expense to be borne by the Government. 
One of the last acts of the expiring Court of Directors of the 
East India Company was, under a panic caused by the 
Mutiny of 1857, to censure the arrangement. But, in 1860, 
the Queen's Government repeated the policy, as one of true 
neutrality, genuine humanity, and political duty, with the 
best results ever since. 

Though before the Government in attempting to atone 
to the non- Aryan peoples of India for centuries of oppression 
and years of neglect, the Christian Churches were slow to 
enter on what has proved to be their most immediately fruit- 
ful field. In South India, indeed, the Lutheran, Anglican, 
and Nonconformist missionaries early laid the foundation of 
the great churches and communities of Tinnevelli and 
Travankor among the Dravidian demonolaters. But in 
North-east India little was really done for the Kolarian 
tribes till the Santal insurrection of 1855, although Carey had 
written as he passed through them in 1799, " I long to stay 
here and tell those social and untutored heathen the good 



214 STEPHEN HISLOP 1881 

news from heaven. I have a strong persuasion that the 
doctrine of a dying Saviour would, under the Holy Spirit's 
influence, melt their hearts." In Central India nothing could 
be done till Hislop reduced to writing the language of the 
Gonds, revealed their folk-lore, and year by year preached 
Christ among them in their obscurest haunts. 

The vastness of the problem with which he was the first 
practically to grapple may be imagined from the fact that the 
aboriginal population of India, mixed and pure, has been 
estimated by officials at eighty millions, or nearly one-third 
of the whole inhabitants. This number is doubtless within 
the truth if it includes all of prae- Aryan descent who have 
been drawn into Hinduism or driven into Mohammedanism. 
But if we confine our attention to the pure non- Aryans, whom 
it is still possible, and whom it is our duty to rescue for 
Christian civilisation and loyal service to the British Govern- 
ment, then the number is not a twelfth of that esti- 
mate. 

When on the 17th February 1881 the first uniform census 
of all India, except Kashmeer, was taken, the " Aboriginals " 
were returned at about six and a half millions in number, 
against one hundred and eighty- eight millions of Hindus, 
fifty millions of Mohammedans, three and a half millions of 
Buddhists, and nearly two millions of Christians. The 
natural growth of the population and the extension of our 
rule over Upper Burma have made the total population of 
the empire of British India this year about two hundred and 
seventy millions. The officials charged with the enumeration 
of 1881 prominently repeat that the Aboriginals number 
more and the Hindus less than these returns, because of the 
ignorance of the former and the desire of the enumerators 
who belonged to the latter to favour their own religion. Of 
this, at least, we may be sure that there were in Hislop's 
time, and are still, at least six and a half millions of the 



1881 CENSUS OF THE GONDS 215 

aboriginal tribes who, not having been converted to Christ- 
ianity, or to a Hindu belief, or to Islam, retain, if they have 
any religion at all, the primitive cult of their forefathers, 
adoring nature under the various forms or images they have 
chosen to select as representing deity. Since the early efforts 
of Sir Donald M'Leod and the Gossner missionaries among 
the north-eastern Kolarians, and Hislop's pioneering efforts 
among the south-western Gond family, thousands have been 
drawn into the Christian Church. 

Hislop's heart yearned, and he laboured incessantly to 
save the Gonds from that Hinduism to which, but for 
Christian missions, they must inevitably be attracted. It is 
still a fact of powerful significance for Christendom, as it 
was for him, that so many millions of simple nature or 
demon-worshippers are untouched by the fossilising influ- 
ence of the Brahmanical and Puranic systems. Of these six 
and a half millions one fourth are in the Central Provinces 
and Central India. The Scottish missionary, as the result of 
his annual wanderings among them, to preach the gospel of 
the Kingdom, reduced to writing the language of the 
1,079,565 who returned themselves as Gonds. When asked 
for the first time by the enumerators, as to their religion, 
their ages, and whether their friends were married, they fre- 
quently burst into laughter, thinking such questions quite 
absurd. Widowers especially were among their objects of 
merriment. The rumours spread by fear or ill -designing 
Hindus, that recruits were wanted for the Afghan War, or 
wives for the English soldiers, or even that new taxes were 
to be imposed, had no effect on these simple and truthful 
children of nature. They were amused, they were not sus- 
picious. The health and freedom alike from vice and crime, 
which the Gonds enjoy owing to their open-air life in the 
hills and forests, are marked by the fact that the proportion of 
males in every 10,000 of both sexes was found to be so high 



216 STEPHEN HISLOP 1866 

for an oriental people as 4976 in ordinary to 4989 in 
feudatory territory ; or practically there was no disparity. 

By incessant correspondence with officials, as well as his 
own personal studies and tours, Hislop so mastered the Gond 
and other hill races in the course of ten years, that he 
wrote his first draft of an essay on all the aboriginal tribes of 
the Eagpoor country, their languages, folk-lore, customs, art, 
and architectural remains, and took the work with him, in 
manuscript, to Scotland. There he amplified and improved 
it by further research, and correspondence with experts who 
had retired from service or were familiar with the ethnologi- 
cal and archaeological questions involved in the inquiry. On 
his return to India, when Lord Canning constituted the Chief 
Commissionership of the Central Provinces, under Sir Eichard 
Temple, Mr. Hislop enlarged his design so as to include the 
whole of the new Province ; and he amplified his knowledge 
of the Gonds in particular by a study of those of Mandla, to 
the north. He accordingly made the Gond portion of the 
earlier essay the basis of (1) a new treatise on the Gonds, 
which was nearly completed at the time of his sudden re- 
moval. He had prepared (2) a vocabulary of these eleven 
unwritten dialects of the aboriginal tribes Gondi, Gayeti, 
Eutluk, Naikude, Kolami, Madi or Maria, Madlia, Kuri or 
Muasi, Keikadi, Bhatrain, and Parja, to which he added the 
allied Telugu and Tamil. He had taken down, chiefly from 
a Gond pardhan or priest -bard who recited them (3) the 
songs which form the Lay of Lingo, their prophet-founder, a 
rude epic of 997 Gondi lines, ranging from the creation of 
the world and the Gonds to the institution of the rites of 
marriage by Lingo. These were edited and published in 
1866 by Sir Eichard Temple, the Chief Commissioner, under 
the title of Papers Relating to the Aboriginal Tribes of the 
Central Provinces, left in MSS. l>y the late Reverend Stephen 
Hislop, Missionary of the Free Church of Scotland at Nagpoor. 



1866 HIS PAPERS ON THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES 217 

The editor introduced the Papers by a preface, which 
characterised their author as " a gentleman distinguished for 
all the virtues and qualities becoming his sacred profession, 
and for attainments in scholarship and practical science. . . . 
During years of labour in the service of the Mission he 
diligently and perseveringly inquired, not only into the 
physical resources of the country, but also into the languages, 
the manners, the religions, the histories, and the antiquities 
of the people. He investigated much regarding the 
aboriginal tribes, and especially the Gond people. ... In the 
cold season of each year he made tours by marching in the 
interior of the districts, and thus saw much of and heard 
much from the people in their homes, their villages, their 
fields, and their forests. He was generally accompanied by 
educated natives connected with the Mission, who helped him 
in securing full and correct answers to all queries. These 
were native catechists and preachers, either stationed in or 
moving about the country and especially in Chindwara, the 
heart of the Gond region who recorded and transmitted 
facts to him. He was acquainted with various European 
officers and gentlemen who resided among or otherwise came 
in contact with these tribes, and who supplied him with in- 
formation. He made use of all these several advantages with 
patience, assiduity, and research. He tested and verified the 
information thus accumulated by extensive study of the 
works of other authors on the aboriginal races of India and 
of other countries. ... To the elucidation of the character of 
the tribes he devoted so much of his heavily-taxed time and 
thought." He is further described by the Chief Commissioner 
as revered and beloved by all who knew him, as respected 
by all scientific persons interested in the practical advance- 
ment of India, and as cherished in memory by the natives, 
for whose moral and lasting welfare he laboured so long. 

The conclusions of Mr. Hislop on the language, customs, 



218 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

and character of the millions of Gonds in the Central Pro- 
vinces were verified and accepted as authoritative by the ex- 
perts who, as deputy commissioners, land-settlement officials, 
and forest conservators, were reorganising the whole adminis- 
tration. The land-revenue settlement Eeports of Mr. W. 
Eamsay on Chindwara district, Mr. H. Kivett Carnac on 
Wardha, Mr. J. W. Chisholm on Belaspoor, and others, fre- 
quently acknowledge indebtedness to him. Sir Charles Grant 
in his Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, quotes Mr. Hislop at 
length as his final authority. Colonel Dalton, in his magnifi- 
cent large quarto on the Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, illus- 
trated by lithograph portraits copied from photographs, which 
Sir George Campbell published when Lieutenant- Governor, 
takes full advantage of Mr. Hislop's researches as to the 
western Gonds, while criticising them on the points in which 
their results differ from his own on the aborigines of Bengal 
to the East. 

Love for the people, the daily sacrifice of his life for their 
highest good, gave Stephen Hislop a motive in all his 
scientific researches, as it inspired David Livingstone in his 
weary tramping over tropical Africa, which the keenest devo- 
tion to physical research for its own sake can never create. 
Dr. John Wilson of Bombay, than whom there was no better 
judge, realised this when he thus wrote of him : " Mr. Hislop 
conducted the most minute inquiries not only into the topo- 
graphy of the whole of the Nagpoor province, but into the 
social and religious state of its varied tribes and tongues, 
including those in the most depressed condition. This was 
work specially worthy of a pioneer missionary. In the re- 
searches which he conducted in connection with it he ever 
manifested a spirit of pure benevolence and humanity, striv- 
ing particularly to remove all injurious misunderstandings 
and misrepresentations. . . . He thus replied to an inquiry 
which I had addressed to him relative to a horrible charge 



1858 THE FRIEND OF OPPRESSED AND DEPRESSED 219 

long brought against one of the older tribes of a district be- 
longing to Nagpoor : * I cannot delay my reply to your ques- 
tion regarding the reputed cannibalism of the aborigines east 
of Amarkantak. I had observed the account given by 
Lieutenant Prendergast (in Alexander's East India, Magazine, 
1831), and, as it has influenced the statements of many writers 
since, I had intended, whenever I put together all my notes 
on our jungle tribes, to prove its inaccuracy ; but I must 
now content myself by giving a very decided denial of its 
truth. Lieutenant Prendergast never witnessed an instance 
of cannibalism in the Binjewars, or Bunder wars, as he writes 
the name; his whole proof is vague rumour. The reports 
of the savage cruelty of the forest tribes generally originate 
in the hate of the higher castes contiguous, and some 
Europeans have only to credit these reports without inquiry, 
to keep these tribes exterior to the pale of their benevolence. 
Well is it that the herald of the Cross presents himself as 
the friend of both the oppressed and depressed.' " 

The name Gond or Gund interchangeable with Kond 
or Kund, which denotes the aborigines of Orissa, who used 
to sacrifice human victims known as Merias is from the 
Telugu word for a mountain, and may be taken to mean 
" hill-men." The Gonds are found in the old division which 
the Mohammedans called Gondwana, from the Vindhya 
range south to the Godavari river. The word in the form 
applied by the people to themselves has the same meaning ; 
it is Koi-tor the Gond par excellence, from Koi, " a hill," 
equivalent to the Persian Koli and Telugu Konda. Follow- 
ing the Hindu example the Gonds classify themselves in 
twelve and a half castes, of which the first four are Koitors, 
and the last half is an inferior offshoot of the fifth. The 
classes are named Raj Gond, Eaghuwal, Dadave and Katulya, 
Padal, Dholi, Ojhyal, Thotyal, Koilabhutal, Koikopal, Koiam, 
Maclyal, and the lower Padal. The first of these receive their 



220 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

name from the fact that most of the families that have 
attained to royal power have sprung from them; they are 
widely spread over Nagpoor and Berar. They and the two 
next are generally cultivators ; they eat with each other but 
do not intermarry. The Katulya is formed of those of the 
pure Koitors who have begun to conform to Hinduism, and 
even to Islam. One of them, the Eaja of Deogarh, adopted 
Islam when on a visit to Aurangzib at Delhi, although few 
Gonds made the change at that time, in spite of pressure, 
compared with the Bheels. That Mohammedan Eaja's 
descendants marry into pure Gond families, and one of 
them is the head and judge of the Nagpoor Gonds. The 
Padal class supply the bards, who sing and play, reciting the 
genealogies and exploits of the richer Gonds. The Dholis 
are so called from the drum which they play at marriages ; 
they are the goat-herds and accoucheurs of both Hindus and 
Gonds. The Ojhyal are wandering fowlers and bards ; their 
wives tattoo the arms of Hindu women. 1 The Thotyal 
devote themselves to the service of Mata, the smallpox 
goddess, dreaded by Hindus and Gonds alike ; they make 
baskets, and their women sell simples and profess to cure the 
sick. The Koilabhutal supply dancing girls, and the 
Koikopal keep cows. The Madya are the wildest ; every 
man goes about with a battle-axe, the only dress of the 
women is a bunch of leafy twigs fastened by a string round 

1 The marks are believed to go with, them to heaven when their clothes 
cannot. They tattoo by first making the forms of a peacock, an antelope, 
and a dagger, with juice of Biwali and lamp-black, with four needles on 
the back of the thighs and legs. The operation is painful, and the patient 
is held down. When settlement officer of Nimar, the late Captain Forsyth 
used to hear dreadful screeches issuing from the villages, which his attend- 
ants attributed to some young Gondian being operated upon with the tattoo- 
ing needle. It is done when the girl becomes marriageable. He adds that 
the morality of both sexes before marriage is open to comment ; and some of 
the tribes adopt the precaution of shutting up all the marriageable young 
men at night in a bothy by themselves. Infidelity in the married state is, 
however, said to be very rare. 



r 




HlLDllilU.ua.. 



THE GONDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



To face page 221. 



1858 HOW THE GONDS LIVE 221 

the waist. The Koiams follow the old Turanian practice of 
carrying off the bride apparently by force. 

The general characteristics of the Gonds are thus stated 
by Mr. Hislop : 

"Personal appearance. They are about the middle size of natives, 
with features rather ugly, though among those living in Hindu villages 
I have seen a considerable approximation to the Hindu type of coun- 
tenance. They have been said to possess curly hair ; but this is a 
mistake. 

" Dress. The men seldom wear more than a piece of cloth around 
their waists (dhoti} and a small kerchief about their heads. The more 
civilised, in addition, throw a loose cloth over the upper part of their 
body. The women, besides a lower garment, which is tucked up so as 
to expose their thighs and legs, wear a sddi (cloth), which passes like a 
broad sash over the back, and is somewhat more spread out in front 
upon the chest. The men are fond of silver or brass chains round 
their ears and a narrow bangle at their wrists. The women tie up 
their hair into a knot behind, which, in the Bhandara district, they 
adorn with a profusion of red thread. Their ears above and below are 
decked with a variety of rings and pendants : chains of silver are sus- 
pended from their necks ; big brass bangles, named sinum, enclose 
their wrists ; and the backs of their thighs and legs are tattooed down 
to their ankles, on which they wear plated ornaments (kharging). 

11 Living. They make two meals a day; their breakfast consist- 
ing generally of gruel, and their supper of some boiled coarse grain, 
with pulse and vegetables. Occasionally this routine is varied, when 
the chase or a religious festival has provided them with the flesh of 
deer, hog, goat, or fowls. 1 . . . When residing in the midst of a Hindu 
population, the Gonds inhabit mud houses ; in the jungles the houses 
are of wattle and daub, with thatched roofs. The internal arrange- 
ments are of the simplest kind, comprising two apartments, separated 
from each other by a row of tall baskets, in which they store up their 
grain. Adjoining the house is a shed for buffaloes ; and both house 
and shed are protected from wild beasts by a bambu fence. The 
villages are situated on table-lands, they seldom number more than ten 
houses, and more frequently contain only three or four. But, however 

1 At Nagpoor women at 9^ A.M. eat millet, bread, and dal (pea). Men eat 
at noon when released from work, and sup at 9 P.M. on vegetables. Husband 
and wife do not dine together. 



222 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

small the village may "be, one house in it is sure to be the abode of a 
distiller of arrack. ... In their own wilds the men increase their 
family's subsistence by hunting, in which their chief reliance is on 
their matchlocks, though in some of the more remote parts they kill 
their game with arrows, which most shoot in the common mode, but 
others in a sitting posture, their feet bending the bow, and both hands 
pulling the string. When they go out on such expeditions, and fre- 
quently at other times, they carry a small axe and knife for lopping 
off the branches that might obstruct their path. 

" Religion. Though the Gond pantheon includes somewhere about 
fifteen gods, yet I have never obtained from one individual the names 
of more than seven deities. These were Badu Dewa (the great god), 
who in other districts is called Budhal Pen (the old god), Matiya (devil 
or whirlwind), Sale, Gangara (little bells), or more properly Gagara, 
Palo, Gadawa, and Kham. Besides these I have heard at various 
times, the names of Kodo Pen, Pharsi Pen, and Bangaram ; and the Rev. 
J. Phillips, who visited the Gonds at Amarkantak, mentions Hardal as 
the principal object of veneration there. 

"What are the characters or offices of these deities, whose very 
names are so imperfectly known by their worshippers, it is vain to 
inquire from any native authority. It appears [to me that Budhal 
Pen is the same as Bura Pen, the chief god among the Konds. Per- 
haps Hardal may be the synonym near the source of the Narbada. 
Matiya, I would suppose, is a name for the god of smallpox, who is 
also one of the Kond divinities, and may be identical with Bangaram, 
afterwards to be mentioned. Sale may probably be the god who 
presides over cattle-pens (Salo). Kuriya may denote the deity who 
takes care of the tribe (KM), or, as it is frequently mispronounced (Kur). 
Kattarpar may correspond with the Katti Pen of the Konds, i.e. the 
god of ravines. Kodo Pen may signify the god who is believed to 
bless crops of grain, of which Kodo (Paspulum frumentaceum) among 
Gonds is one of the chief. The name of Pharsi Pen, who is repre- 
sented by a small iron spear -head, may possibly be formed from 
Barchi, which in Hindi denotes a spear, on which hypothesis this 
deity would be the equivalent of the Kond Loha Pen, the iron god, or 
god of war. 

" In the south of Bhandara district the traveller frequently meets 
with squared pieces of wood, each with a rude figure carved in front, 
set up somewhat close to each other. These represent Bangaram 
Bungara Bai, or Devi, who is said to have one sister and five brothers 
the sister being styled Danteshwari, a name of Kali, and four out of 



1858 THE KELIGION OF THE GONDS 223 

the five brothers being known as Gantaram, Champaram, and Naikaram, 
and Potlinga. These are all deemed to possess the power of sending 
disease and death upon men. The name of Bungara occurs among 
the Kols of Chaibasa, where he is regarded as the god of fever, and is 
associated with Gohem, Cliondu, Negra, and Dichali, who are con- 
sidered, respectively, the gods of cholera, the itch, indigestion, and 
death. It has always appeared to me a question deserving more 
attention than it has yet received, how far the deities who preside 
over disease, or are held to be malevolent, are to be looked on as belong- 
ing to the Hindus or to the aborigines. Kali in her terrible aspect is 
certainly much more worshipped in Gondwana and the forest tracts 
to the east and south of it, than in any other part of India. As the 
goddess of smallpox she has attributed to her the characteristics of 
various aboriginal deities, and it is worthy of remark, that the parties 
who conduct the worship at her shrines, even on behalf of Hindus, 
may be either Gonds, fishermen, or members of certain other low 
castes. The sacrifices, too, in which she delights would well agree 
with the hypothesis of the aboriginal derivation of the main features 
of her character. At Chanda and Lanji, in the province of Nagpoor, 
there are temples dedicated to her honour, in which human victims 
have been offered almost within the memory of the present genera- 
tion. The victim was taken to the temple after sunset and shut up 
within its dismal walls. In the morning, when the door was opened, 
he was found dead, much to the glory of the great goddess, who had 
shown her power by coming during the night and sucking his blood. 
No doubt there must have been some of her servants hid in the fane, 
whose business it was to prepare for her the horrid banquet. At 
Dantewada in Bastar, situated about sixty miles south-west of Jagdal- 
poor, near the junction of the Sankani and Dankani, tributaries of the 
Indrawati in Bastar, there is a famous shrine of Kali, under the 
name of Daiiteshwari. Here many a human head has been presented 
on her altar. About thirty years ago, it is said that upwards of 
twenty-five full-grown men were immolated on a single occasion by a 
late Raja of Bastar. Since then numerous complaints have reached 
the authorities at Nagpoor of the practice having been continued, 
though it is to be hoped that, with the annexation of the country, 
it has entirely and for ever ceased. The same bloody rite in the 
worship of Kali, as we learn from Major Macpherson, prevailed 
among the immediate predecessors of the present hill Rajas of Orissa. 

" Whether Bhima, who by Hindus is esteemed one of their greatest 
heroes, is to be regarded as borrowed from that nation or lent to 



224 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

them, it is difficult to say. One thing is certain that, under the 
name of Bhim Pen, or Bhimsen, his worship is spread over all 
parts of the country, from Berar to the extreme east of Bastar, 
and that among the rudest of the tribe. He is generally adored 
under the form of an unshapely stone covered with vermilion, or of 
two pieces of wood standing from three to four feet in length above 
the ground, like those set up in connection with Bangaram's worship. 
But, in addition to the deities generally acknowledged, there are many 
others who receive reverence in particular localities. It is the custom 
of the Gonds to propitiate, for at least one year, the spirits of their 
departed friends, even though they have been men of no note. But 
when an individual has been in any way distinguished, if, for ex- 
ample, he has founded a village, or been its headman or priest, then 
he is treated as a god for years, or it may be generations, and a small 
shrine of earth is erected to his memory, at which sacrifices are 
annually offered. 

" It has been stated that the Gonds have no idols. It is true they 
have no images in their dwellings, but at the scene of their religious 
ceremonies in the jungle there are for the most part some objects set 
up, either iron rods, stones, pieces of wood, or little knobs of mud, to 
represent their deities. Among these, when there is a number to- 
gether, the representation of the ' great god ' usually occupies the chief 
place. Though one of their deities is styled the ' great god,' yet they 
hold that this chief of their divinities is to be distinguished from the 
Invisible Creator and Preserver of the world, to whom, in imitation 
of the Hindu agricultural population, they give the name of Bhagawan. 
According to this view their 'great god' is only the first of their 
inferior gods, who are all looked on as a sort of media of communica- 
tion in various departments between God and man, though, as is the 
case in every form of polytheism, the near, or visible inferior, receives 
more attention than the unseen Supreme. 

" Worship. The Creator is occasionally adored in their houses by 
offering prayers, and by burning sugar (gul) and clarified butter in the 
fire. The public worship of these forest tribes seems to be connected 
with their crops. In places, where rice is produced, there are three 
great days, when they leave their villages, and proceed to worship 
under the shade of a Saj or Ein tree (Pentaptcra, tomentosct) 1st, the 
day when rice begins to be sown ; 2d, when the new rice is ready ; 
and 3d, when the Mhowa tree comes into flower. In the wilder 
villages, near the Mahadewa Hills, Kodo Pen is worshipped at a small 
heap of stones by every new-comer, through the oldest resident, with 



1858 GOND MARRIAGE AND BURIAL RITES 225 

fowls, eggs, grain, and a few copper coins, which become the property 
of the officiating priest. Bhimsen, who is there regarded as the god 
of rain, has a festival of four or. five days' duration held in his honour 
at the end of the monsoon, when two poles about twenty feet high, and 
five feet apart, are set up with a rope attached to the top, by means of 
which the boys of the village climb up and then slide down the pole. 
The same offerings are presented to this god as to Kodo Pen, with the 
exception of the money. 

"Birth. A woman remains apart for thirteen days. On the fifth 
day after the birth the female neighbours are feasted : on the twelfth 
the male friends are similarly entertained : and on the thirteenth the 
purification is ended by giving a dinner to both parties. The child is 
named a month or two later. 

" Marriage. The expediency of a marriage is occasionally deter- 
mined by omens. A vessel is filled with water, into which is gently 
dropped a grain of rice or wheat, in the name of the respective parties, 
at opposite sides of the vessel. If these approach each other the union 
will be a happy one, and the marriage day is fixed. Another way of 
settling the question is to consult some man with a reputation for 
sanctity, who sits and rolls his head till he appears furious, when, 
under supposed inspiration, he gives the answer. But frequently the 
matter is determined by personal negotiation between the fathers, who 
call in some neutral parties to name the sum that should be paid for 
the bride. This obligation is discharged on the day of the betrothal, 
along with a present of such things as are necessary for feasting the 
friends assembled at the bride's father's house on that occasion. On 
the day fixed for the commencement of the marriage ceremonies the 
bridegroom and his father go to the father-in-law's house with 
presents, which contribute again to the entertainment of the guests. 
Next day an arbour is constructed at the bridegroom's house, to which 
the bride is taken, and a dinner is provided. The clay following, the 
two young people, after running round the pole seven times, retire to 
the arbour and have their feet washed. Pice (copper coins) are waved 
round their heads, and given to the musicians, when the ceremonies 
are concluded by a feast. 

" Funeral rites. The relatives of a deceased person are unclean for 
a day. The ceremonial impurity is removed by bathing. Some time 
after the occurrence of a death a sort of low square mound is raised 
over the remains l of the deceased, at the corners of which are erected 

1 They are buried at Kolitmara naked, as unmarried Kooroos are burned 
naked, with face upwards, and leaf of Rui (Galotropis gigantea) or Palas tree, 

Q 



226 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

wooden posts, around which thread is wound, and a stone is set up in 
the centre. Here offerings are presented, as in the jungle worship of 
their deities, of rice and other grains, eggs, fowls, or sheep. On one 
occasion, after the establishment of the Maratha government in Gond- 
wana, a cow was sacrificed to the manes of a Goncl ; but this having 
come to the hearing of the authorities, the relatives were publicly 
whipped, and all were interdicted from such an act again. To persons 
of more than usual reputation for sanctity, offerings continue to be 
presented annually for many years after their decease. In the district 
of Bhandara large collections of rude earthenware, in the shape of 
horses, may be seen, which have accumulated from year to year at the 
tombs of such men. 

" Priesthood. There is scarcely an institution among the Gonds that 
may properly be called priesthood ; marriage, and such like cere- 
monies, being for the most part performed by some aged relative. 
There are, however, some men who, from supposed superior powers, or 
in consequence of their hereditary connection with a sacred spot, are 
held to be entitled to take the lead in worship. These men are named 
Bhumuks, Pujaris, etc. About the Mahadewa Hills the higher Pard- 
hans act as Pujaris, and the lower as rude musicians : the Koitors 
seem to look down upon both offices as somewhat menial. But in 
other districts the last mentioned class appear rather to take the lead 
as holy men, and many of them make use of their supposed sacred 
character to impose on their simpler neighbours. They profess to 
be able to call tigers from jungles, to seize them by the ears, and 
control their voracity by whispering to them a command not to come 
near their villages. Or they pretend to know a particular kind of 
root, by burying which they can prevent the beasts of the forests from 
devouring men or cattle. With the same view, they lay on the path- 
way small models of bedsteads, etc., which are believed to act as 
charms to stop their advance. They are supposed to have the power 
of detecting sorcery, 1 which is greatly dreaded, and, like the gipsies 
in Europe, they are consulted by their more civilised neighbours on 
the fortunes of the future, which they read in the lines of their appli- 
cant's hand. 

The Gditi Gonds call themselves also Koitors, and are as much 
Gonds in language and everything else as those who are known by no 

in. the jungle, the head south and the feet north. Sometimes they burn 
the house of the deceased and desert it. 

1 In Pondakol magicians are burned : three were so treated at Pipulpanka 
in 1834-35. Calcutta Review, vol. v., p. 53. 



1858 THE KOLS DIFFER FROM THE GONDS 227 

other name. Their chief peculiarity, which I have not found among 
common Gonds, though it may exist even among them, is to have in 
each village a separate tenement set apart for the occupancy of un- 
married men during the night. This they call a gotalghar (empty bed 
house). In some villages there is a like provision made for the un- 
married Gaiti women. When the Gditis have returned in the evening 
from their work in the jungle, where they are very industrious in 
cultivation and cutting timber, all the families go to their respective 
houses for their supper ; after which the young men retire to their 
common dwelling, where, around a blazing fire, they dance for an 
hour or two, each having a small drum suspended in front from his 
waist, which he beats as he moves about, while the young women sit 
at no great distance accompanying the performance with a song. 

Mr. Hislop established the identity of the Kurs or Kills 
with the Kols of the north-eastern stock, but up to his time 
confounded with the Gonds. The Kurs are found on the 
Mahadewa Hills, and westward in the forests on the Tapti 
and ISTarbada, until they come into contact with the Bheels. 
On the Mahadewa Hills, where they have been much in- 
fluenced by the Hindus, they prefer the name of Muasi, 
probably derived from the Mhowa tree. Their food is of the 
most meagre kind. Though they have no objection to 
animal food, yet a considerable portion of their diet consists 
of a gruel made from the pounded kernels of mangoes and 
flowers of the Mhowa tree. They adore the sun and moon, 
rude representations of which they carve on wooden pillars. 1 
After reaping their crops they sacrifice to Sultan Sakada, 
whom they suppose to have been some king among them in 
former times. Like Jacob of old, a Kur bridegroom, in 
the absence of the money demanded for his bride, comes 
under an obligation so serve his father-in-law for a certain 
number of years. The marriage ceremonial, which, like that 

1 According to Mr. Bullock, wooden pillars, with horse, sun, and moon, 
are set up before the house of married people. The Scythian origin of Kurs 
and of Gonds might perhaps be inferred from Kodo Pen, and earthen horses, 
which are offered instead of living sacrifice. Gonds do not use horses or 
ponies much. 



228 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

of the Gonds, includes the tying of garments together and 
the running round a pole or Mhowa tree, concludes on the 
third day with a feast and dance ; during which the newly- 
married pair are carried about for some time on the backs of 
two of the company. In some cases the dead are burned ; 
but, for the most part, they are interred with their head 
towards the south. Near their villages they have a place 
appointed for burials, where, after having offered a goat to 
the manes of the deceased, they set up a rude representation 
of him in wood about two feet above the ground. 

The eleven vocabularies which Mr. Hislop collected from 
the dialects of the aboriginal tribes of Central India show the 
closest similarity, among these, of the subdivisions of Gonds, 
and prove their derivation from the distant Tamil rather than 
from the neighbouring Telugu branch of the Dravidian lan- 
guages. The Kolam and Naikude Gond dialects and that of 
the wandering Keikadi tribe bear traces of the modifying 
influence of the Telugu, but are also at their roots of Tamil 
origin. The affinities of the Kur and K61 tongues are found 
at the foot of the north-east Himalayas, and still more 
among the Mons of Pegu, and the Benwas, described by 
Captain Newbold, inhabiting the mountainous regions of the 
Malayan peninsula. Thus the word for water in the lan- 
guage of the Kurs and Kols is dd ; among the Bodos, Cacharis, 
and Kookis in the north-east of India, is doi, di, tui ; among 
the Karens and Mons in Burma, is ti and dat ; and among 
the Benwas of Malacca, di. Again, the word for eye among 
the Kurs and Kols med or met is among the Kookis and 
Mikurs in north-eastern India, met and meJc; among the 
Karens and Mons, me and mot ; and among the Benwas, med. 
The first three numerals, which among the Kurs and Kols 
are mid, bdrd, dpid, are among the Mons, mue, bd, and pdi. 
May we not conclude then, wrote Hislop, that while the 
stream of Dravidian population, as evidenced by the Brahuis 



1858 HIS ELEVEN ABORIGINAL VOCABULARIES 229 

in Baloochistan, entered India by the north-west, that of the 
K61 family seems to have found admission by the north-east ; 
and as the one flowed south towards Cape Comorin, and the 
other in the same direction towards Cape Eomania, a part of 
each appears to have met and crossed in Central India ? 

Mr. Hislop was cut off before he could prepare a grammar 
of the Gondi language. Among his papers Sir Eichard 
Temple found a printed copy of the narrative of a second visit 
to the Gonds of the Narbada territory by the Eev. J". G. Driberg 
and the Eev. H. J. Harrison in 1849, to which was appended a 
grammar and vocabulary of their language. Doubtless he in- 
tended to compare, or may have actually compared, that vocabu- 
lary with his manuscripts. But there is no record of such 
comparison to be found. The comparison has since been made 
and possesses much interest, inasmuch as the Gonds whom 
Mr. Driberg met were those inhabiting the outskirts of the 
IsTarbada valley to the north of, or on the northern face of 
the Satpoora, or Pachmari, or Mahadewa Hills ; whereas the 
Gonds whom Mr. Hislop met were those dwelling to the 
south of the range, and separated by mountain barriers from 
their northern brethren. Some words given in one vocabu- 
lary are not found in the other ; but, on the whole, that by 
Mr. Hislop is much the more complete and copious of the 
two. 

If to the student of philology and ethnology the Gond 
vocabularies and treatise of Stephen Hislop have a peculiar 
value, which every attempt to Christianise and civilise the 
million of simple aborigines reveals, his rendering of their 
five Songs of Lingo, which make up one Edda, is the earliest 
and most interesting contribution to the Folk-lore of India. 
It has a double interest from what an expert like the late 
Captain Forsyth considered to be its singular resemblance in 
many respects to the legend of Hiawatha, the prophet of the 
Eed Indians of North America. Mr. Schoolcraft took that 



230 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

tradition down, in its Iroquois form, from the mouth of an 
Onondaga chief, just as Hislop wrote and translated the 
Lingo ballads from the lips of the Gond pardhan or bard- 
priest at ISTagpoor. Longfellow, in The Song of Hiawatha, 
has glorified the Iroquois and other traditions of the golden 
age of a noble race whom the Christianity of Christ reached 
almost too late to save them from the Christianity of a 
corrupt Christendom. To bring out the parallelism, Captain 
Forsyth has turned the literal, and therefore scientific, version 
of Hislop into a paraphrase in the metre and style of Long- 
fellow. The scene of the creation of the Gonds by the 
invisible God, who is represented even in India by no idol, 
is the snowy peak of Dhawalagiri, the third loftiest of the 
main Himalayas, towering above Nepal; the action of the 
poem is transferred from their settlement to "the midst of 
twelve hills in the glens of seven hills," which describes the 
Satpoora ravines and plains. The scene of the incarnation 
of the Ojibway prophet lies on the southern shore of Lake 
Superior, in the region between the Pictured Eocks and the 
Grand Sable. 

The legend of Lingo is undoubtedly of purely Gond or 
Dravidian origin, coloured in the course of its oral trans- 
mission from generation to generation of pardhan bards, by 
priestly self-seeking and Hindu influence. We find common 
to the Mongolian races, according to D'Herbelot, the story 
of a hero who delivered their progenitors from a cave in an 
iron-bound valley, and to that cave the ruler goes every year 
to offer grateful sacrifice. The argument of the legend 
of Lingo, the "wolf" of Kachikopa Lohagad, or "the iron 
valley in the red hill" as in the version reduced to writ- 
ing from the Gond Homer of Nagpoor, is this : The land 
of the Gonds had become a solitude, over which there 
brooded silence so utter that there was not a crow even 
when " caw " was heard, nor a bird even when " chirp " was 



1858 THE LEGEND OF LINGO 231 

heard, nor a tiger even when " raghum " was roared. Par- 
watee, the " mountaineer " daughter of the Himalayas, had 
loved the Gonds and besought her husband, Mahadewa (Siva), 
for them. He performed tap to win merit from the creator 
of gods and men, when from a boil on his hand there sprang 
the god Kalia Addo, and from his hand, after like devotion, 
sixteen daughters came. Thrown into water, which dried 
up, these became sixteen sorts of earth, from which " twelve 
threshing-floors of Gondi gods were born," or the pure Gonds. 
They crowded the jungle, they ate all animals, and they did 
not wash, till the smell forced Mahadewa to shut them up in 
a cave. Tour brothers escaped to tell Parwatee, who for six 
months gave the invisible God no peace, by her devotion, till 
he declared, " I will make the Gonds visible." 

So he caused Lingo to be produced from a flower, and 
fed on honey that dropped from a fig tree, At nine years of 
age the miraculous boy met the four Goncl brothers in the 
forest. He taught them to clear the woodlands for their 
broadcast cultivation. They killed the deer but had no fire 
to roast the flesh. So Lingo sent them, to the giant Eikad, 
who had an old wife and seven daughters. As they slept, the 
youngest brother stole the fire but dropped it on the giant, 
who gave chase. But Lingo came with his lute, another 
Orpheus, and so played that the old giant and his wife 
danced with delight and gave up their seven daughters to 
the four Gonds of the forest. As a saint he refused their 
advances to himself, and, like Potiphar's wife, they accused 
him to their husbands, who slew him and played at marbles 
with his eyeballs. God, however, restored Lingo to life ; 
after Hercules -like labours he obtained the release of the 
Gonds shut up in the cave, he settled them in the Satpoora 
forests as an orderly community, and he set the most vener- 
able over them as their first pardlian, who performed the 
rites of marriage as at the present day. He taught them the 



232 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

joyous gospel of hospitality and singing, drinking and 
dancing. Dame, the tortoise, had saved them on his broad 
back from Puse, the alligator, who would have destroyed 
them in the flooded river, and he charged them never to 
forget the promise to be faithful to Dame. 

"Then they all made salutation. Lingo said, 'Oh, brethren, look 

yonder towards the gods.' 

All looked behind, but Lingo vanished and went to the gods 
While they were looking behind, they said : ' Where is our Lingo 

gone ? ' " 

We shall quote the second and fourth of the Lays, which 
describe what the Arthurian poets would call " The Coming " 
and " The Passing of Lingo." The name is purely Gond, and 
to it the people affix sometimes JBhdn or " the devotee," and 
sometimes Parittr or " the saint." 



THE COMING OF LINGO THE HOLY. 

(Hislop's Literal Version.) 

" Then care fell to Bhagawan (god). There was a tree : 

It was blossoming. Then said he, One of its flowers shall conceive. 

By God's doing clouds and winds were loosed. A cloud like 

A fan arose : thunder roared and lightning flashed ; 

The flower burst, clouds opened and darkness fell ; the day was hid. 

A heap of turmeric fell at the fourth watch of the night. 

In the morning, when clouds resounded with thunder, the flower 

opened 
And burst, and Lingo was born, and he sprang and fell into the heap 

of turmeric. 

Then the clouds cleared, and at the dawn Lingo began to cry. 
Thereat, care fell upon God ; the (face of Lingo) began to dry amidst 

the powder. 

But by God's doing there was a Ficus tree, on which was honey 
The honey burst, and a small drop fell into his mouth. 
Thus the juice continued to fall, and his mouth began to suck. 
It was noon, and wind blew, when Lingo began to grow. 
He leapt into a swing, and began to swing when day was set. 



1858 



THE COMING OF LINGO 



233 



Lingo arose with haste, and sat in a cradle swinging. 

Lingo was a perfect man : water may be stained, but he had no stain 

whatever. 

There was a diamond on his navel and sandal-wood mark on his fore- 
head. He was a divine Saint. He became two years old. 
He played in turmeric, and slept in a swing. Thus days rolled away, 
He became nine years old ; he was ordered not to eat anything from 

off the jungle trees or thickets. 
Lingo, in his mind, said, Here is no person to be seen ; man does not 

appear, neither are there any animals ; 
There appears none like me ; I will go where I can see some one like 

myself. 

Having said so, one day he arose and went on straight. 
He ascended a needle-like hill ; there he saw a Mundita tree ; 
Below was a tree named Kidsadita : it blossomed. 
He went thither, and having seen flowers he smelled them. 
He went a little beyond, upon a precipitous hill, and climbed a tree. 
Then he looked around and saw smoke arising from Kachikopa 

Lohagad. 

What is this ? said he ; I must go and see it. 
He ascended, and saw the smoke. The four brothers quickly brought 

their game, and began to roast it ; they began to eat it raw or 

cooked. 
In the meantime Lingo went there. They saw him and stood up ; he 

stood also ; 
Neither spoke to the other. The four then began to say within 

themselves, 
We are four brothers, and he will be the fifth brother. Let us call 

him." 

The episode of the Giant and his Seven Daughters may 
be told most briefly in the paraphrase of Forsyth, although 
he admits that he turns the quiet humour that lurks in Mr. 
Hislop's literal translation into burlesque : 



" Then said Lingo, ' Search ye, 

Brethren, 

For a firebox in your waistbelts.' 
Flints and steel they forthwith 

brought out, 
Struck a spark among the tinder, 



But the tinder would not burn. 
Thus the whole night long they 

tried it, 

Tried in vain until the morning, 
When they flung away the tinder. 
And to Lingo said, ' Brother, 



234 



STEPHEN HISLOP 



1858 



You're a prophet, can you tell us 
Why we cannot light this tinder?' 
Answered Lingo, ' Three coss on- 
ward 

Lives the Giant Eikad Gowree, 
He the very dreadful Monster, 
He the terrible Devourer. 
In his field a fire is smoking ; 
Thither go and fetch a firebrand.' 
Then the Brothers went a little, 
Went a very little, onwards ; 
Thence returned, and said to 

Lingo 

'Nowhere saw we Eikad Gow- 
ree, 
Nowhere have we found this 

Giant.' 

Then said Lingo, ' Lo my arrow, 
By its pathway see ye follow.' 
Then he fitted to his bowstring 
Shaft of bulrush straight and 

slender ; 

Shot it through the forest thickets, 
Shot it cleaving through the 

branches, 
Shot it shearing all the grass 

down ; 

Cut a pathway straight and easy ; 
Fell it right into the fireplace 
Of the Giant Eikad Gowree ; 
Fell, and glanced it from the fire- 
place, 

Glanced, and sped into the door- 
way 

Of the wigwam of the Giant ; 
Fell before the seven daughters, 
Seven very nice young women, 
Daughters fair of Eikad Gowree. 
Then those seven nice young 

women 
Took the arrow and concealed it. 



For they oft had asked the old 

man, 
Asked him when they would be 

married ; 

And he always answered gruffly, 
'When I choose that you be 

married 
Good and well, if not you won't 

be.' 

And they thought this was an 
omen. 

Now the Brothers, greatly fear- 
ing 

Lest they all should eaten up be, 
Counsel taking, sent the youngest, 
Sent Ahkeseral the youngest, 
To prospect the Giant's quarters. 
By that pathway straight and 

easy 

Went this very young Ahkeseral ; 
Saw the Giant's smoke ascending ; 
Coming nearer saw the Giant. 
Saw him, like a shapeless tree 

trunk, 

Sleeping by the fire and snoring 
By the fire of mighty tree stems, 
Stems of Mhowa, stems of Anjan, 
Stems of Sapid, stems of Tekta ; 
Blazing red, its glow reflected 
From that form huge and shape- 
less 

Of the Giant Eikad Gowree, 
Of that very dreadful Eakshis, 
Of that terrible Devourer. 
Then his knees began to quake all, 
O'er his body came cold shudders, 
Leapt his liver to his throat all, 
Leapt the liver of Ahkeseral. 
But he crept up to the fireplace, 
Crept and snatched a blazing fire- 
brand, 



1858 



THE SECOND LAY OF LINGO 



235 



Blazing brand of Tamaditd. 
Groaned the Giant, fled Ahkeseral, 
Dropped the firebrand and a spark 

flew, 

Flew and lighted on the Giant, 
On his shapeless hip it lighted. 
Raised a blister like a saucer ; 
Started up the Giant swearing ; 
Also feeling very hungry, 
Feeling very much like eating. 
Saw that very young Ahkeseral, 
Plump and luscious as a cucum- 
ber, 

Saw him running and ran after, 
Ean and shouted loud behind 
him. 

But in vain he followed after. 
For the very young Ahkeseral, 
Speeding swiftly through the for- 
est, 
Shortly vanished and was seen 

not. 

And the Giant, much disgusted, 
Then returned to his fireside. 
And Ahkeseral, returning, 
Told his greatly trembling bro- 
thers 

Of that very dreadful Giant. 
But the very valiant Lingo 
Said, ' Repose ye here a little, 
I will go and see this monster 
That so much has discomposed 
you.' 

At the crossing of a river, 
In that straight and easy pathway, 
Lingo saw the stick Waduda 
Floating down upon the current. 
Saw he too a bottle-gourd tree, 
Saw it growing by the river ; 
Pulled a bottle-gourd from off it, 
Fished Waduda from the river, 



Stuck the one into the other, 

Plucked two hairs wherewith to 
string it, 

Made a bow and keys eleven, 

Played a tune or two, and found he 

Had a passable guitar. 

Pleased was Lingo, and proceeded 

To the field of Rikad Gowree ; 

Rikad Gowree lying snoring 

By the fireside, mouth wide gap- 
ing, 

Tushes horrible displaying, 

Lying loglike with his eyes shut. 
Close by grew the tree called 
Peepul, 

Peepul tall with spreading 
branches. 

Quickly Lingo clambered up it, 

Climbed aloft into its branches ; 

Sat and heard the morning cock 
crow, 

Thought this Giant soon would 
waken. 

Then he took his banjo Jantur, 

Struck a note that sounded 
sweetly, 

Played a hundred tunes upon it. 

Like a song its music sounded ; 

At its sound the trees were 
silent ; 

Stood the mighty hills enraptured. 

Entered then that strain of music 

In the ears of Rikad Gowree, 

Quickly woke him from his slum- 
ber; 

Rubbed his eyes and looked about 
him ; 

Looked in thickets, looked in 
hollows, 

Looked in tree -tops; nothing 
finding, 



236 



STEPHEN HISLOP 



1858 



Wondered where on earth it came 
from, 

Came that strain of heavenly 
music, 

Like the warbling of the Main a. 

Back returning to his fireside, 

Sat down, stood up, sat down, 
stood up ; 

Listened, wondered at the music ; 

Jumped and danced he to the 
music, 

Sung and danced he to the music j 

Rolled and tumbled by the fire- 
side 

To the warbling of the music. 
Soon at daybreak his old wo- 
man 

Heard that strain of heavenly 
music ; 

Came she wondering to the fire- 
side, 

Saw her old man wildly danc- 
ing 

Hands outstretching, feet uplifting, 

Head back reeling, dancing, tum- 
bling, 

To that strain of heavenly music. 

Saw and wondered, saw and called 
out 

'Ancient husband, foolish old 
man ! ' 

Looked he at her, nothing said 
he, 

Danced and tumbled to the music, 

Said she, listening to that music, 

'I must dance too.' Then she 
opened 

Loose the border of her garment, 

Danced and tumbled to the music, 
Then said Lingo, ' Lo my Jan- 
tur! 



To thy strain of heavenly music 
Dance this old man and his wo- 
man ; 

All my Koitor thus I teach will, 
Thus in rows to sing and dance 

all, 

At the feasting of the G6nd Gods 
At the feast of the Dewali, 
At the feast of Biidhal Pena, 
At the feast of Jungo Reytal, 
At the feast of Pharsa Pena 
Salutation to the Gods all 
From this various tuneful Jantur ! ' 
Then he ceased the wondrous 

music ; 
Hailed the old man from the 

tree-top, 

Saying c Uncle, Rikad Gowree, 
See your nephew, on this tree- 
top!' 

Then the Giant, looking up- 
wards, 

Saw our Lingo on the tree-top ; 
Called him down, shook hands, 

and said that 

He was very glad to see him. 
Asked him in and made him sit 

down; 
Kang and called for pipes and 

coffee ; 

Apologised for having thought of 
Making breakfast of Ahkeseral 
Thanked our Lingo very kindly 
For his offer of the livers 
Of those sixteen scores of Rohees ; 
In return proposed to give him 
All those seven nice young wo- 
men, 
With their eyes bound, will they 

nill they, 
To be wedded to the Brothers. 



1858 



THE SETTLEMENT OF THE GONDS 



237 



And those seven nice young 

women 
When they heard about the young. 

men, 
Of those young men faint and 

fasting 

Waiting fireless by the Eohees, 
Forthwith packed they up their 

wardrobes, 
On their heads they took their 

beds up, 

Back to Lingo gave his arrow 
Arrow of the truthful omen 
Saying good-bye to their parent, 
Followed Lingo to the forest, 
To that forest-shade primeval. 
Keached those young men by the 

Eohees, 

Made a fire, and had some lun- 
cheon 

Of the livers of the Eohees. 
Then the Brothers 'gan to 

squabble 

O'er those seven nice young wo- 
men. 



Holy Lingo, virtuous very, 
Quite refusing to be wedded, 
Somewhat easier made the pro- 
blem ; 
And he soon arranged it this 

wise 

That the eldest of the Brethren 
Each should take two nice young 

women, 

While the very young Ahkeseral 
Should be fitted with the odd one. 

Then returning from the forest 
By the valley Kachikopa", 
To the Eed Hills Lohagada", 
Holy Lingo joined the Brothers 
To those seven nice young women, 
To the daughters of the Giant. 
Water brought and poured it o'er 

them, 
Bowers of branches raised around 

them, 
Garlands gay he threw about 

them, 

Mark of Turmeric applied he 
And declared them duly wedded." 



THE SETTLEMENT OF THE GONDS, AND PASSING OF LINGO. 



" Then they rose and followed 

Lingo, 

Followed onwards to the forest, 
From the mountain Dhawalgiri ; 
Followed on till night de- 
scended, 

And before them saw a river, 
Dark and swollen with the 

torrent 

Bursting down from Dhawalgiri, 
From the snows of Dhawalgiri. 
On that river nothing saw they, 



Boat nor raft, to waft them 

over. 

Nothing saw they in the torrent 
But the Alligator Fuse*, 
And the Eiver-Turtle Dame* 
Playing, rolling, in the water. 
Then our Lingo called them to 

him, 
Called them brother, called 

them mother ; 
Bound with oaths to bear them 

over. 



238 



STEPHEN HISLOP 



1858 



And the Alligator Pusd, 
Looming long upon the water, 
Bore the G6nds into the torrent, 
Through the black and roaring 

water : 

And the River-Turtle Dame" 
With our Lingo followed after. 
Soon the faithless Alligator, 
In the deep and roaring water, 
Slipping from below his cargo, 
Left them floundering in the 

water. 
Then our Lingo stretched his 

hand out, 
Fished them out upon the 

Turtle ; 

Faithful Damd bore them on- 
ward 
O'er that black and roaring 

torrent, 

Bore them on across the river. 
And the Sixteen vowed to 

cherish 
Name of Dame" with them 

ever, 
Who had borne them safe and 

hurtless 
O'er that dark and foaming 

river. 

Then they travelled through 

the forest, 

Over mountain, over valley, 
To the Glens of Seven Moun- 
tains, 
To the Twelve Hills in the 

Valleys. 
There remained with Holy 

Lingo. 

He, the very wise and prudent, 
Taught to clear the forest 

thickets, 



Taught to rear the stately 
millet, 

Taught to yoke the sturdy oxen, 

Taught to build the roomy 
waggon, 

Kaised a city, raised Narbumi ; 

City fenced in from the forest. 

Made a market in Narbumi. 

Rich and prosperous grew Nar- 
bumi 

So they flourished and re- 
mained. 

Then our Lingo called them 
round him, 

Ranged them all in rows beside 
him, 

Spake in this wise 'Hear, 
Brethren ! 

Nothing know ye of your 
fathers, 

Of your mothers, of your 
brothers, 

Whom to laugh with, whom to 
marry ; 

Meet it is not ye should be so 

Like the creatures of the forest.' 
Then he chose them from 
each other, 

Chose and named their tribes 
distinctive ; 

Chose the first and said, ' Man- 
wajja.' 

Thus began the tribe Manwajja. 

By the hand took Dahakwali, 

Bard he called him ' Dahak- 
wali.' 

Koilabtital named another, 

And another Koikobiital 

Koikobutal wild and tameless. 

Thus he named them as he 
chose them, 



1858 



THE PASSING OF LINGO 



239 



Till the Sixteen Scores were 

numbered, 
Till the Tribes had all been 

chosen. 
Next among them chose the 

eldest, 

Chose an old man hoary-headed, 
Chose and called his name 

< Pardhana/ 
Priest and Messenger he called 

him. 
Called and sent him on a 

message 

To the Eed hills Lohagada, 
The Iron Valley, Kachikopa ; 
To those Brothers four he sent 

him, 
Sent to ask them for their 

daughters 

To be wedded to his Koitor 
Thus the Tribes our Lingo 

mated. 

Thus they grew and multiplied. 
Then he chose them into houses, 
Into families of seven, 
Of six, of four, he chose them. 

And he said, ' Koitor 

listen ! 
Nowhere Gods of Gonds are 

worshipped ; 

Let us make us Gods and wor- 
ship.' 

Then made Ghagara the Bell- 
God, 
Made and gave he to Manwajja, 



Brought the Wild Bull's Tail 

and named it 
Chawardeo ; brought the War 

God- 
God of Iron, Phdrsa Pena ; 
Manko Eeytal, Jango Reytdl 
Thus their tribal Gods he 

fashioned. 
Taught them how to raise their 

altars ; 

Taught to offer sacrifices 
Hoary goats, white cocks a year 

old, 
Virgin cows, and juice of 

mhowa ; 
Taught to praise with voice and 

psalter, 
Twang of Jantur, sound of 

drumming 

Drum of Beejasal resounding 
Dancing, singing, by the altars, 

Thus he taught them. Holy 

Lingo 
And his last words then he 

uttered 
'Keep your promise to the 

Turtle, 

To the Kiver-Turtle Da"me ; 
To the Gods I now am going.' 
Then he melted from their 

vision ; 
And they strained their eyes to 

see him. 
But he vanished, and was seen 

not." 



The whole poem is a picture of the present beliefs and 
life of the Western Gonds of Central India. All they can 
tell of their fathers is that they were mountain-born, with 
the Himalaya nymph Parwatee for their goddess, that dread 



240 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

wife of Siva, whom as the black Kali the Hindus adopted 
into their pantheon that they might drag in them also as 
worshippers. Hence the forty thousand pilgrims whom, 
when he first mapped the land, Hislop found, and who may 
be seen every year towards the end of February, at Shiva's 
shrine in the cave in the Mahadewa Hills, where the tiger 
alone now seizes the human victims such as used to be 
slaughtered before the obscene emblem. All they can tell 
of themselves, unconsciously enough, is that the Satpoora 
range is their home, where their songs show us how they 
settle in the forests and open a weekly bazaar in central 
hamlets which they call Narbumi, where they sell the rice 
and then the millet (Jowari) Lingo taught them to sow. 
First they cut down trees, and burn them for ashes, which 
fertilises the ground, and makes it yield, from seed sown 
without ploughing or other agricultural operation. As they 
advance they begin to cultivate with bullocks and ploughs ; 
and then, as their villages improve, they use carts to carry 
grain to market, and especially to convey the wild fruits and 
other produce of the jungles. These several stages of pro- 
gress are visible to this day among the Gonds. 

The revealing of this primitive million of people to 
literature and science was begun by Mr. Hislop as a Christian 
missionary. Mr. Stothert established a school among them at 
his own expense ; afterwards, supported by Mrs. Mure Macredie 
of Perceton, Ayrshire, Baba Pandurang made Chindwara his 
headquarters, teaching them to read the Word of God. Hislop 
ever used the dim legend of the incarnation, described as 

" A perfect man, 
Stainless all and pure was Lingo," 

to attract them to Him who was holy, harmless, undefiled, 
and separate from sinners. St. Paul had quoted their own 
poet -prophets to proud Athenian and filthy Cretan. But 



186(5 MISSIONS TO THE GONDS 241 

others were to enter into Hislop's labours after the regeneration 
of the truthful Gonds. In 1866, armed with his predecessor's 
writings, the Eev. James Dawson reopened the mission 
to the Gonds at Chindwara, and gave the people the three 
first Gospels and the Book of Genesis in their own language, 
before he too was removed by death, and the mission was 
made over to the Swedish Society. In 1879 the Church 
Missionary Society took possession of the Goncl country to 
the east, from Mandla as a centre to the old Gossner station 
near Amarkantak, and found their first convert in a Gond 
ascetic, who has not ceased to be reverenced by his country- 
men when he leads them to the true incarnation. Already the 
first generation have learned to read and eagerly purchase 
Bible portions and literature. For those who cannot read 
the exhibition of Bible scenes and characters by the lantern 
supplies a vivid education, crowds hurrying from distant 
villages and sitting far into the night to hear in their own 
tongue the revelation of divine love, purity, and strength in 
Jesus Christ, who makes the poorest and the vilest a new 
creation. The Gonds have not yet entered the Kingdom 
in thousands, like the Kols and Santals since the Mutiny, 
but since Hislop's day too few missionaries have sought to 
evangelise them. 

Was there a still earlier race, Scythian, Celtic, or what- 
ever it may be called, which settled in North- Western and 
Central India before even the Gonds who were its latest 
wave ? Did these earlier nomads, or the Dravidians, thirty 
millions of whose descendants now cover the hills of Central 
and South India, pile up the monoliths and dolmens, raise 
the cairns and barrows, form for their dead the cromlechs and 
kistvaens, which, as they cover large districts of the jungle 
lands of India, are precisely similar to the prehistoric 
remains of Brittany, Northurnbria, and Scotland ? As at once 
an ethnologist and geologist this question forced itself on 

R 



242 STEPHEN HISLOP 1850 

Stephen Hislop when he stumbled on such erections in his 
missionary and scientific tours. His experience of them 
began so early as 1847; it was after a day largely spent in 
studying them that he was cut off in 1863, before he could 
record the conclusions of his seventeen years' research. 

Takalghat is a prettily -wooded rural village in the dis- 
trict of Nagpoor, twenty miles south of the city. There, 
in December 1847, the missionary tents were pitched 
for the first time. In the brief Indian twilight Hislop's 
practised eye at once noted the old mounds around the 
comparatively new village, and especially marked a circle ol 
unhewn stones of the rudest type. But it was not till the 
tour of 1849-50 that it was found there are ninety such 
circles, single and double, spreading over an area of four 
square miles. The Eaja at ISTagpoor had given permission 
for excavations to be made among the circles, but the village 
headman disbelieved this and refused to supply paid labour. 
The missionaries and native Christians, accordingly, them- 
selves took spades and carried out the digging. In the 
centre of the largest circle, at a depth of three feet from the 
surface, there was found "an iron vessel like a frying-pan, 
with a handle on either side, which had rusted off and was 
lying detached. The bottom of the vessel was covered with 
little pieces of earthenware neatly fitted to each other, pos- 
sibly designed to protect human ashes, of which, however, 
there were only doubtful traces beneath." Such is the de- 
scription given by Mr. Hunter. Fragments of pottery and 
flint arrow-heads were also found. When Nagpoor State 
became a British province, the Chief Commissioner invited 
Hislop to guide him in a careful study of the stone circles, 
and several were marked off for excavation on the next day, 
the missionary's last as it proved. They superintended the 
digging and carefully arranged the various articles of iron 
and pottery that were exhumed by natives working under an 



1850 PKE-HISTOEIC STONE MONUMENTS 243 

European. Hislop came to the conclusion that all the circles 
and tumuli were the burial places and tombs of what must 
have been a large population, for in each circle at least one 
person or perhaps several had been interred, some bodies 
having been burned, some buried. Standing on the highest 
mound from which the various rows and cross rows of the 
stone circles were seen extending over the plain, Stephen 
Hislop descanted on the character, habits, and institutions of 
the people who had raised or arranged the so-called Druidical 1 
circles. 

By following the old high road which passes through 
Takalghat from ISTagpoor, we reach Haidarabad city, and 
then, to the south-east, the grim capital of the Hindu State 
of Shorapoor, which, on its confiscation for treason, we pre- 
sented to the Mzam. When administering that state, 
Captain Meadows Taylor, in 1850, was told by the natives 
of certain " Mori-munni," the Kanarese name for the houses 
of the Mories, described as a dwarf race of great strength 
who had dwelt there in very remote ages. He found, half a 
mile from the village of Eajankolloor, two large groups of 
cromlechs and cairns on rocky land sloping gently to the 
south. He surveyed the groups, opened some of the cairns 
and cists, drew the whole to scale, and submitted the results 
to the Royal Irish Academy, in whose Transactions for 1865 
they will be found, along with the record of an examination of 
the Northumbrian cairns on Twizell Moor, which are exactly 
similar in construction and contents. These results, with 
the clear illustrations, may be taken as true of Takalghat 
also, except that skulls and headless skeletons believed to 
show traces of human sacrifice, were not found by Hislop. 

Sir George Yule, when Eesident at Haidarabad afterwards, 

1 Tn his Hibbevt Lectures on Celtic Heathendom (1888) Professor Rhys 
marks the latest advance of critical inquiry in the anti-Druidical direction, 
and skilfully tracks the Celtic Hiawatha through the many forms in which 
the national culture hero appears. 



244 STEPHEN HISLOP 1865 

opened several cairns there, and at Andola, ISTarkailpali, and 
elsewhere, revealing similar remains, with bones of horses, 
cattle, and dogs. Indeed, at a much earlier period, his 
accomplished brother, Colonel Yule, E.E., discussed, in the 
Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal, the stone erections of the 
Kasias of Assam, of which the first to give an account was 
Mr. H. Walters, who visited Cherra in 1828. In 1847 Cap- 
tain H. Congreve and Kev. W. Taylor contributed two re- 
markable papers to the Madras Journal of Literature and 
Science on the abundant pre-historic stones of the ISTeelgiri 
hills, especially at Achenni, three miles east of Kotagiri. Dr. 
Buist, an authority equally on Scottish and Indian archaeology, 
observed that two torques or silver collars found in the 
tumulus of Norres Law, in the south of Fife, are in shape, 
size, and appearance identical with those worn by children 
in Bombay, except that they open in front instead of behind. 1 
The discovery on the Jabalpoor line of railway, in 1860, of 
the flint arrow-heads called celts, which the English peasant, 
believes to be elf-arrows and the Indian ryot sets up as gods 
under every green tree, led him to the same conclusion 2 as 
Hislop and Caldwell, 3 that the aborigines of India and the 
Tamil and Telugu peoples were unquestionably demonolaters 
or Shamanites, like the majority of the ancient Scythian tribes 
of Upper Asia. To complete the inquiry, reference should 
be made to the full and able work on The Early Races of 
Scotland and their Monuments,* by Lieutenant- Colonel Forbes 
Leslie, which generalises with scientific caution and skill 
the facts known up to 1865 regarding these prehistoric 
remains in all parts of the Indian Peninsula, Western 
Europe, and the intermediate countries of Asia and Africa. 

1 See article by the late Dr. Norman Chevers, in the Calcutta Review, 
vol. xxvi. (1856), on the Arian Race. 

2 See Friend of India for 5th July 1860. 

3 Caldwell's Dravidian Comparative Grammar. 

4 Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas, 1865. 



1888 THE EAELY RACES OF MAN 245 

The latest view of the anthropological and geological data 
is that of Professor Prestwich, which he describes as a pre- 
liminary attempt not to define with precision, but rather to 
reduce to narrower limits, the Glacial, Palaeolithic, and 
Neolithic periods. 1 On all sides, Pleistocene Geology, His- 
torical research, and Old Testament exegesis, are yet in their 
early stages. All, and especially the last, have, singly and 
combined, made splendid contributions to ascertained truth, 
and are stimulating the study of divine revelation. They 
have won their early triumphs even since Hislop's time. How 
much he might have contributed to these, had he been spared 
till now, may be imagined from his discoveries as the pioneer 
geologist and naturalist of Central India. 

1 In vol. ii. (Clarendon Press, 1888) of his Geology, Physical and Strati- 
graphical, the Oxford Professor of Geology writes: "Palaeolithic Man in 
North-Western Europe disappeared with the valley gravels. With the allu- 
vial and peat beds Neolithic Man appeared after an unascertained, but clearly 
not very long interval, geologically speaking. In Europe we are unable to 
carry his presence beyond a period of from 2000 to 3000 years B.C. But 
already in Egypt and in parts of Asia it is proved that civilised com- 
munities and large States flourished before 4000 B.C. Civilised man must 
therefore have had a far higher antiquity in those countries, and probably in 
Southern Asia, than these 4000 to 5000 years ; so that, comparing Europe 
and Asia, it is possible that the two periods may have overlapped, and that 
while Man had advanced and flourished in a civilised state in the East, he 
may in the West have been in one of his later Palaeolithic stages." 



CHAPTEK VIII 

AN ANGLO-INDIAN NATURALIST 

Hislop as an Indian geologist Victor Jacquemont Captain Newbold 
Hislop first the missionary, then the naturalist Geology to him what 
Botany was to Carey Rev. Robert Hunter a like-minded naturalist 
Their evening walk in 1851 and its results The first fossil harvest 
despatched to the Geological Society of London Entomology A 
naturalist's letters A geological lecture and a military ball Recent 
upheaval of Indian chains of mountains The tertiary shells of Madras 
Hislop's numerous papers published by learned societies Summary of 
his geological labours by Rupert Jones Hislop's geological 7nap of 
Western Gondwana His memoir on the geology of Nagpoor State Sir 
Richard Owen and Mr. W. T. Blanford on his discoveries Professor 
Hanghton names two new minerals Hislopite and Hunterite Hislop's 
mineralogical account of them Importance to the State of his study of 
soils The Regur or black soil His name for ever associated with the 
Gondwana system Picture of India in the age of the Mesozoic sand- 
stones Of the vast tertiary outbursts of trap Hislop's Natural History 
journals His correspondence with distinguished contemporary natural- 
ists Tribute to him by Mr. T. G. Medlicott and Dr. Oldham. 

As aii Indian geologist Hislop had only one predecessor, 
Victor Jacquemont, and one contemporary so far as original 
research is concerned, Captain Newbold. He was generous, 
as always, to the memory of Voysey and Malcolmson. A 
sketch by Mr. James Calder, in the Asiatic Researches for 
1833, usefully summarises the little that was known at that 
time of the granite and gneiss of the Peninsular and Hima- 
layan areas and of the overlying trap of Central and Western 
India ; but is necessarily silent as to the sedimentary forma- 
tions since described. Dr. Carter's summary brought the 
knowledge of the subject down to the time, 1851, when Lord 



1856 VICTOR JACQUEMONT 247 

Dalhousie called into existence the Geological Survey of 
India under the late Dr. Oldham. It was not till 1856 
that that accurate scholar organised the systematic explora- 
tion of the districts mapped by the Trigonometrical Survey, 
which has borne rich fruit for science and industry. The 
discoveries of Hislop, assisted afterwards by his inseparable 
colleague for a time, began in 1845 with almost the first 
walks which he took around Sitabaldi rock and outside 
Kamthi cantonment ; and with the tour which, at the 
close of 1847, the missionaries made south to Chanda. The 
researches were extended from the JSTagpoor district over 
the Gondwana system and the tertiary deposits associated 
with trap rock, laying bare numerous new species of plants, 
animals, and even minerals, and for the first time revealing 
the geological history and physical geography of Central India. 
We linger for a moment at the now empty grave of 
Victor Jacquemont in the deserted cemetery at Bombay, 
whence his admiring countrymen have lately transferred his 
dust to their own land. Born in 1801, the favourite disciple 
of Cuvier and companion of Prosper Merime'e, the young 
Frenchman was sent out in 1828 to India as travelling 
naturalist to the Paris Museum of Natural History. He 
won the regard of Lord and Lady William Bentinck and the 
leading Anglo-Indians of the clay ; he fascinated even Ran- 
jeet Singh, who offered to make him governor of Kashmeer. 
He examined much of the North- Western Himalaya, and 
so gave himself to an exploration of the geology of Bombay 
and Salsette, that he perished after a brief and bright Indian 
career of three and a half years. His letters, written to his 
family and friends during his travels, and published in 
English under the title of A Journey in India, form most 
charming volumes. Mr. P. G. Hamerton does him only 
justice when he writes 1 that Victor Jacquemont "had all 
1 Modern Frenchmen, Five Biographies, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, 1878. 



248 STEPHEN HISLOP 1830 

the courages the courage of the nerves which can retain 
perfect self-possession in danger; moral courage, which is 
not to be cowed by the ostentation of splendour and power ; 
and the courage of the intellect, which will not be deterred 
by toil, and looks truth straight in the face." If " truth " be 
read in its highest meaning which, as one of the school 
of Destutt de Tracy, his father's friend, Victor Jacquemont 
did not recognise could any character better describe 
Stephen Hislop ? 

Writing to M. Elie de Beaumont in 1830 Jacquemont 
made merry over the amateur geologists of Bengal. " Geo- 
logy is there very much in fashion. It is a science much 
cultivated in order to learn how to give a scientific name to 
the stones found on the road during a change of residence of 
garrison, and picked up and placed in the palanquin. If 
Mr. Pent! and has found in Peru any mountains higher than 
the Himalaya I would not advise him to come to India. 
Your beautiful work on the relative periods of the elevation 
of mountains will be considered a personal insult by the 
geologists of Calcutta, their wives, their children, and their 
children's dolls. At Bombay I shall take good care not to 
say that I am a friend of yours." Captain ISTewbold, of the 
Madras Army, was the first to redeem the Anglo-Indians 
from this reproach. From his position as Assistant Eesident 
at Karnool he personally explored the various formations of 
southern India, and described them with an accuracy to 
which the experts of the Geological Society, writing thirty- 
five years after, take only one exception an error in the 
classification of the Gondwana system, which that officer had 
not visited. But that is the series of rocks which Hislop 
was at the same time exploring in detail. His journals, note- 
books, maps, and drawings by his own hand, form a collection 
of scientific materials which went to enrich the Transactions 
of the Geological, Asiatic, and other learned societies, and the 



1845 SCIENCE AND MISSIONS 249 

results of which have become a part of the sciences of geo- 
logy, conchology, zoology, and botany. 

Yet he was ever the missionary first, the naturalist after and 
along with the pursuit of his high calling. All through his cor- 
respondence there maybe seen traces of the jealousy with which 
the evangelist, who desired to be, like his Master, ever about 
the Father's business, watched the tendency of his nature 
and his training towards a scientific study of what he called 
" the unintelligent works of God." Writing from Madras to 
his colleague, who had been ordered to seek rest from over- 
work in a rural tour, but evangelised none the less, he says : 
" I hope you have enjoyed your excursion, and that, under 
God, it has contributed to your restoration to health, and 
though not immediately yet indirectly and ultimately to the 
spiritual advantage of the poor Hindus. Did you get any 
large freshwater shells, of which Vira can tell you, and 
which, he said, come from about Bhandara ? They seemed 
to be a species of ampullaria. I hope soon to hear all par- 
ticulars both about the people and about the unintelligent 
works of God." 

Long after, Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, remarking that 
geology was to Hislop what botany had been to the venerable 
Dr. Carey, asked if their expenditure of talent and opportunity 
of action was justifiable in the case of a missionary, whose 
main business is with man needing the salvation of God. " This 
question, Mr. Hislop told me, he had often seriously put to 
himself, answering it in the affirmative. The study of the 
works of God, in their own measure, he found to be refresh- 
ing to his own mind, exhausted by other occupations, and 
nutritive of his own piety, feeling, as he must have done, 
that what is worthy of God to create is worthy of man to 
behold. For his ability and acquirements in natural history, 
he felt himself responsible, as for the other talents committed 
to his charge. In their use he found he could exercise a 



250 STEPHEN HISLOP 1845 

beneficial influence on all his fellow-students of nature with 
whom lie was privileged to associate and communicate. The 
results of his researches he found to be subservient to truth, 
and consequently glorifying to the God of truth. Some of 
them he used to explode local pretensions and superstitions 
of an injurious character." 

By his wide culture, in a degree second only to the 
impelling power of his high calling, Hislop was further saved 
from the narrowness which marks exclusive scientists, especi- 
ally when they become specialists or devote their life to a 
study which can be entirely detached from that of human 
nature in the region of religion or history or politics. What 
Mr. Hamerton remarks of Jacquemont in this respect is in 
a nobler degree true of Hislop, in so far as the latter did not 
shut out the highest pursuit of all, both showed a fine curi- 
osity of the purest kind about everything, and an openness on 
every side. Unconsciously Hislop attracted to himself, and 
in many cases won for his Master, the inquiring and intelli- 
gent officials of the East India services, who met him at first on 
common ground as naturalists, and were drawn by him irresist- 
ibly to the knowledge of Him whom to know is life eternal. 

At first the young missionary began his Indian career by 
suspiciously discouraging not only his own naturalist ten- 
dencies but those of his entomological brother and corre- 
spondent. Towards the end of his first year's experience of 
India we find him writing to his brother : " I send you a 
sketch of a Brahman who acted as our pundit. ... I have no 
time to draw now else I would endeavour to send you some- 
thing worth your acceptance. Had I not greater, nobler, and 
more urgent work in hand I would make for you a drawing 
of everything that is strange in the appearance of the 
country, in objects of natural history, or in the arts, manners, 
and customs of the various classes of the native community. 
I have the inclination, but I trust I have a stronger desire 



1851 AN EVENING WALK AND ITS RESULTS 251 

ever to glorify God by seeking the eternal welfare of perish- 
ing souls. What an undertaking for a weak man to be 
permitted to set his hand to. It requires, as it deserves, all 
his energies. I have, without spending time, collected a few 
insects for you. But not being a professed entomologist I 
would feel it unbecoming to carry about with me the neces- 
sary apparatus for catching them in a good state of preserva- 
tion, and hence many of the specimens are deficient in legs, 
antennae, etc., not to say that the wings of the lepidoptera 
have been rubbed and even torn. I send you a snake's skin 
as it fell from the ceiling of a neighbour's house." 

The discovery of Tertiary fossil shells in Madras, already 
recorded, led Mr. Hislop, on his return to Nagpoor, to devote 
his little leisure and his regular tours to the systematic ob- 
servation and record of geological phenomena. In this he 
was encouraged by Mr. Hunter, who also, up to 1851, had 
found his purely missionary duties too exacting. The latter 
had, when a student, held an appointment in Bermuda, then 
under the government of Sir William Eeid, whose name is 
associated with the discovery of the law of storms. There, 
for two years, with sympathy and scientific aid from Sir 
Richard Owen, Sir William Hooker, and Sir William Eeid, he 
had pursued natural history researches. On his appointment to 
Nagpoor Professor Owen had furnished him with a list of zoo- 
logical desiderata which Central India might supply. But the 
missionaries were too sorely taxed in the three stations of 
Nagpoor, Kamthi, and Sitabaldi, and in Madras, to allow a 
moment's leisure even for the sake of health. Then the 
physician interfered, ordering Mr. Hunter to walk in the cool 
of the evening and to resume his observations as a naturalist, 
so as to give interest to his walks. One day, soon after Mr. 
Hislop's return from Madras, he asked his colleague to 
accompany him. " I am too busy," was the reply, but soon 
Mr. Hunter was overtaken, with the remark, "After all, I 



252 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

will go with you." It was on that walk that Hislop made 
the discovery which he thus describes : 

"NAGPOOR, 26th August 1851. . . . Mr. Hunter and I go to one 
or other of our schools every week day twice, with the exception of 
Saturday, when we take the afternoon to ourselves. Lately we have 
been devoting this unemployed portion of our time to walking. One 
Saturday afternoon, about three weeks ago, when we were rambling 
over a hill in the neighbourhood, we came upon a stone with fossils 
which we easily traced to its original site. The rock, of which it had 
formed a part, we ascertained to be a freshwater marly sandstone, 
embedded between trap rocks above and below. The fossils it con- 
tained were such as might be expected in such a deposit, viz., Physa, 
Lymnea, Paludina, etc. But, besides these freshwater shells, it en- 
closed the teeth and bones of animals, and above it were found 
fragments of silicified wood. One large trunk was standing in an 
erect position, but whether it occupied the place where it had grown 
I cannot tell, as we must go another day and lay it bare with a pick- 
axe and crowbar before we can determine the point. The formation 
which I have thus briefly referred to has been found in other parts of 
India, and described by Dr. Malcolmson in the London Geological 
Society's Transactions; but he did not find anything so decidedly 
osseous as to enable scientific men to pronounce on the mammalia that 
might be existing at that epoch. The fruit of our investigations will 
cast light on this subject. The formation is held to be equivalent to 
the Eocene of Europe. It is of no great extent in thickness. At most 
it is not above ten feet ; and the upper layer, which is the only 
fossiliferous one and is generally separated from the rest by a sheet of 
amygdaloid, is only about six inches thick. The extent of the de- 
posit over the country is, I think, considerable. I imagine it will be. 
discovered in many localities between this and Bombay, which you 
may know is a region of trap. Don't suppose that I am given to 
geology or any natural science, though I like them. I feel it would 
be wrong to spend much time in the pursuit of mere worldly know- 
ledge, when my work is to carry the word of eternal life to perishing 
souls. Mr. Hunter thought me very indifferent about botany and 
everything else when he came. Now he also has lost almost all his 
enthusiasm about those things, and we study natural history once a 
week chiefly as a means of taking exercise. I am sorry to say that 
symptoms of weakness in his lungs still appear occasionally, and, 
therefore, he is anxious for walking." 



1852 THE GREAT DISCOVERY 253 

He trained, as a collector, a faithful convert, Virapa, who 
superintended the labours of natives less skilled than himself, 
and who was sent frequently to distant places rich in fossils. 
Seven months later we find the first harvest thus described, 
after a reference to Mr. Mansel, then the political Eesident, 
in letters, the first to his brother, the second to Dr. Duns. 

"NAGPOOR, 26th March 1852. . . . Geology has been useful 
in getting up a friendly feeling between us, as I have on hand a large 
collection of interesting fossils, which it is the Kesident's business to 
transmit free of expense to the Government Museum in Madras. The 
formations here, as I may have told you before, besides igneous rocks, 
e.g. granite, gneiss, and trap, are palaeozoic, chiefly sandstone of the coal 
epoch, and Eocene tertiary, the latter being only about one or two feet 
thick with trap below and above. In the tertiary it is that we have 
discovered bones of quadrupeds, teeth, fish scales, elytra of beetles, 
dicotyledonous leaves and wood-grasses, reeds, palms, and some inter- 
esting fruits, one of which is very like a mulberry. In the palaeozoic 
we have met with no animal exuviae, but plenty stems of trees some- 
what like the lepidodendron, calamites, etc. There is a new stem, 
which is called Vertebraria. A species of it has been found in India 
before, but I question whether it is known in Britain except by 
Professor Eoyle's description. The fronds, which were found first, 
are however still the most beautiful objects. I have a slab of sand- 
stone 2 ft. x 1| ft., which is just one imposing mass of petrifying 
impressions of glossopteris, one leaf going the whole length of the stem 
like a tall scolopendrium of modern times, and others lying beside it 
and across it. The only difference between the glossopteris and the 
scolopendrium is in the minute venation of the frond and the disposi- 
tion of the fructification. In the latter it is linear, in the former in 
circles arranged in a row. I hope you are interested ! After long 
hesitation I have determined to collect beetles for you, moved by the 
appeal in your last letter. I have killed and bottled one. The kill- 
ing is the scandal, especially in this country where all life is reckoned 
the same. ..." 

"NAGPOOR, 10th April 1852. . . . Since our return to Central 
India I have stumbled on a discovery connected with the geological 
formation of this district, which has afforded us appropriate relaxation 
and conveyed much innocent pleasure. It may seem strange to men- 



254 STEPHEN HISLOP 1853 

tion this in a missionary narrative ; however the discovery is by no 
means remotely allied to the main subject of this letter, as it has 
tended greatly to dispel prejudices that had been taken up against us 
by some, and even to enlist the goodwill of our present chief political 
authority in behalf of our operations. You ask for illustrations from 
India. When I send a box full of fossils to the Geological Society of 
London, and, as I trust, a package also for the collection of Natural 
History belonging to the Free Church New College, I may have an 
opportunity of sending one or two specimens to your address in return 
for the ruler made out of the Verter old alder tree, which you have 
kindly designed for me. . . ." 

"NAGPOOR, IQth January 1853. . . . To-day we send off our 
collection of minerals and fossils to London. These are intended to go 
round by the Cape, and will not reach their destination for six months. 
A small parcel as a sort of precursor we despatched a week ago by a 
more expeditious way, containing the choicest of the organic remains, 
which may arrive in London simultaneously with this. We send 
them to the care of J. C. Moore, Esq., Younger of Corswall, whom I 
knew in Wigtonshire, and who is now one of the secretaries to the 
Geological Society. He is a nephew of the celebrated Sir John. I 
may say, without the least vanity, that the two assortments taken to- 
gether, next to those from the Tertiary of the Siwalik Hills and the 
Chalk of Pondicherry, constitute the finest ever sent home from India. 
Mr. Hunter and I have figured most of them, and when we return 
from the country, whither we are going in a few hours, we mean, D.V., 
to sit to a description of them, which may be delivered in London 
about the same time as the box forwarded via the Cape." 



To the Eev. Eobert Hunter. 

"KAMTHI, 1st April 1853. 

" MY DEAR BROTHER The other day being dull in the afternoon 
I went across the river and found a fine Pecopteris not merely with 
pinnulse complete but with very fair pinnae, also a Ctjclopteris. The 
fossil riches are most abundant if they were only exposed." 

" KAMTHI, *ltli April 1853. . . . Your impression of the structure 
altogether corresponds with iny own, the only point which I wished 
established by your more perfect vision and more retentive memory 



1853 CORRESPONDENCE ON GEOLOGY 255 

being the existence of the fine parallel line between the obvious ones 
that branched from the midrib. The Tcvniopteris is very abundant 
here, but I have got no good specimen, as the workmen are not going 
on with the quarry which produces all the varieties. I just keep a 
coolie for the purpose of picking up any fragment he can find. Some- 
times he brings in a small piece with a bit of a fern leaf on it, that 
makes me wish for more. Yesterday he brought a fragment that con- 
tained one or two seed-vessels with seeds arranged as in our so-named 
mulberry, only not in sixes, but in eights or nines. They do not lie 
together, as if they had at any time formed a compound fruit. There 
is one stalk connected apparently with the species of seed-vessels now 
referred to that seems to have borne either flowers or calices as if in a 
raceme. But it is little and will not bear description. There is one 
seed-vessel a different kind very distinct. You would suppose it has 
had an involucre. I am glad to hear you are picking up some of the 
tertiary. "We need some nowadays. ... I would be obliged to you to 
copy out of Mantell's Pictorial Atlas what relates to the change of 
melons and cucumbers into fossils on Mount Carmel, as I should like 
to send it on to Bombay as illustration of Gidad." 



To Kobert Hislop. 

"NAGPOOR, 8th May 1857. . . . I read your poetical description 
of the opening spring with much pleasure, not unmixed perhaps with 
a little pain from the contrast of our own circumstances at the time of 
the perusal. While our imagination was occupied with the sprouting 
of the tender blade, and the caw of the callow young crows, we were 
in the midst of parched verdure, and surrounded by birds panting with 
the furnace-like heat. This kind of weather we may expect till the 
middle of next month, when the floods of the monsoon usually descend, 
and in a few days transform the landscape into a scene of joy. So 
may it ere long be with the people ! May the Spirit be poured out 
from on high, and convert this dry and barren land into a pleasant and 
fruitful garden of the Lord ! 

" We have had some trials in the Mission of late. Satan seems to 
have been envious of our prosperity, and has led one of our recent con- 
verts into open sin, while he has introduced dissensions among some of 
the remainder. In these circumstances the anxiety falling upon the 
missionary is very great, and the hindrance to the work is still more 
to be deplored. There has been much smallpox around us this year, 



256 STEPHEN HISLOP 1857 

and many children have died of it ; but it has not been permitted to 
come nigh us. Vaccination seems to be no preventive of its attack in 
this country, though it may render it somewhat less fatal. 

" I was not able to mix beetles and shells, as I had intended, in a 
small wafer-box that I transmitted lately to London by post. The 
coleoptera I hope to be able to despatch by next mail, which will be in 
a fortnight. I have got a large Longicorn similar to the largest formerly 
sent to you : but of course I will not be able to include it among the 
others, which are suited for transmission by their minuteness. Two 
of the best belong to two species of Cassida. The more common kinds, 
among which there must be many repetitions of former years, have 
been forwarded in sand in a tin box addressed to the care of T. Kupert 
Jones, Esq., Somerset House, London. . . . 

" I was lately asked to deliver a lecture or two in Kamthi on 
Geology, and consented. However, the desire for instruction was feeble 
in the cantonment, and it would appear the European community 
could not be got together without the inducement of a dance as an 
afterpiece. The arrangement was concealed from me ; and when I 
found that the first lecture, which was attended by all the fashionables 
of the place, was followed up by such an incongruity I declined to 
proceed. From this you may judge of the intellectual state of the 
majority of our countrymen and countrywomen. It must seem strange 
to you that people should be so fond of dancing as to practise it in a 
room where the atmosphere is 90 or so. . . ." 

"NAGPOOR, 24th July 1857. ... By last mail I despatched to 
you a few insects recent and ancient. The former are for your collec- 
tion the latter for your inspection and report, and ultimately for the 
Geological Society's Museum. The existing species I daresay are not 
very rare. I packed them in cotton to lighten the parcel, which the 
stony specimens were apt to render too heavy. I hope the experiment 
answered not amiss and the tarsi were not inextricably entangled in 
the fibrous material. One of the antennae of the big Longicorn was 
broken before packing, but all the joints of it were sent. The fossil 
species, before this reaches you, I daresay you will have admired. I 
wish to obtain your opinion of their affinities and description of the 
specimens. If you could get the Rev. P. Brodie's work on the Insects 
of the English Lias, I have no doubt you would find some of their con- 
geners. Could you not send some copies of the principal objects 
figured in that publication ? If I could procure a little more stone 
from Kota, the locality from which those I have sent came, I have no 
doubt I could in a day or two make as splendid a collection as Mr. 



1858 A NATURALIST'S CORRESPONDENCE 257 

Brodie, of coleoptera, ortlioptera, neuroptera, etc. Allow me to guess 
at the two I have sent. The elytron has belonged to the Elateridse, 
and the wing-cover to the Blattidse. Of what a magnificent cockroach 
the latter must have formed part, with its deep chestnut brown patches, 
now represented by the dark stains. One of our common house cock- 
roaches is variegated thus. Could you, from a book, send me some 
information about our smaller and commoner house Blatta ? 

" We are still allowed to live in quiet, and although Delhi has not 
yet been taken according to our last accounts, yet the state of matters 
in India is improving. But oh, what a bloody fiery trial it has passed 
through. With our love to you all. . . . 

"NAGPOOK, 14/i May 1858. ... I enclose pieces of Paludina 
Benyalensis encrusted with Hislopia lacustris. They are from the tank 
on the west side of the city of Nagpoor the only locality where this 
new genus has as yet been discovered, though I have little doubt that 
search will only require to be made for it, to find it over all India and 
probably in the regions beyond. If it were not found to be so dis- 
persed, to what a strange speculation would its limited occurrence give 
rise ? What do you think of the blind beetles of North America ? . . . 
What have you done with the fossil insects which I sent to you for the 
Geological Society 1 They will require to be forwarded to their 
destination, as they are not properly mine to dispose of, but were 
received from Dr. Jerdon, one of our most distinguished naturalists, a 
native of Jedburgh or its neighbourhood. Fossils of my own recently 
acquired I do not intend to present to the Geological Society in the 
meantime, as those formerly given have not yet been described. If I 
had made them rarer they would probably have been more valued ; 
and had I kept the best specimens instead of transmitting them to 
London I might have been able to describe most of them myself. 

"I have not sent you Dr. Eawes's Longicorns yet, hoping there 
may be an opportunity of some of our own household being the 
bearers of them to you ere long. What sort of water-beetles do you 
particularly want ? If you would sketch them I could employ some 
person to hunt for them during the approaching rains. I hope to hear 
something soon from Brodie's book, according to your promise. . . . 
One great objection to the Vestiges is that it is evidently the work of a 
man who has not distinguished himself by his original investigations. 

"I do not think that the 250 you mention can be all mine; 
but when you favour me with a statement of my afiairs I shall be able 
to understand the matter better. In the meantime you are welcome 
to the use of anything that you consider mine. . . . Does Stephen 

S 



258 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

exhibit any symptoms of an inward work 1 This is his birthday, dear 
boy. His sisters are Avriting to him. His mamma and I entreat the 
Lord for him. Could you send out a paper photograph of him ? I 
think Erasma and our three daughters must leave India about the end 
of this year." 

The lecture which Mr. Hislop was deluded into attempt- 
ing to deliver to the " society " of Karnthi, as preliminary to 
a dance, was not the first which he had publicly given in 
India on geology. Before leaving Madras he addressed the 
educated young men of the city " on the goodness of God as 
seen in the effects produced by the action of heat on the 
present condition of the earth." The lecture was published, 
and it would be difficult to find so perfect a statement of 
dynamical geology, as it was in 1851, applied after the manner 
of the Bridgewater Treatises. The speaker's own original 
observations were modestly used, and justice was done to the 
latest researches of M. Elie de Beaumont on the elevation of 
mountain chains, and of Darwin on the Andes. The accurate 
and widely-drawn facts, the clear arrangement, and the elo- 
quent exposition and application of scientific principles in 
that lecture, intensify the regret that the writer did not live 
to enjoy the ripe leisure which would have allowed him to 
produce a readable and authoritative treatise on the geology 
and physiography of at least Peninsular India. The follow- 
ing passage is at once an illustration of his style of exposition 
and a statement of facts and scientific deductions, following 
a description of the heat agency by which the crystalline 
rocks were poured forth, and islands, continents, and moun- 
tain ranges were elevated : 

" In tracing the course of crystalline rocks upward among 
the stratified rocks, we meet precisely with those phenomena 
which we might naturally have anticipated. Before their 
heat sandstone has been vitrified chalk has been crystallised 
dark-coloured limestone has been turned into the purest 



1851 THE ACTION OF HEAT ON THE EARTH 259 

marble and coal, having lost its bitumen, has been converted 
into anthracite. By marking how high, in the series of stra- 
tified rocks, the influence of any particular eruption had 
extended, M. Elie de Beaumont was enabled to determine at 
what geological period it had taken place, and to draw up a 
comparative view of the ages of the various mountain chains 
in Europe. The principle of arrangement on which he pro- 
ceeded was to class together all those systems that coincide 
in their general direction, and that have disturbed the same 
stratified rocks. If we find, for example, certain strata, that 
must once have been deposited horizontally, lying on the 
sides of a mountain in an inclined position, and if we find 
above these strata certain other deposits that retain their 
horizontal position, and merely touch the mountain with their 
edges, then it is obvious that that uplifted mass must have 
been protruded at a date subsequent to the deposition of the 
lower strata, and previous to the formation of the higher. 
Now, as the relative ages of the stratified rocks are pretty 
correctly known, they become the means of fixing the period 
of the upheaval, when the mountain was formed. In this 
way it is ascertained that several of the peaks in Westmore- 
land in England, Shetland in Scotland, and some of the 
German ranges, have been formed at the same distant epoch, 
because they all run in a north-east direction and have dis- 
turbed the same ancient strata the Silurian. In like manner, 
it is discovered that the main chain of the Alps the highest 
mountains in Europe, are of the same recent age as the 
Himalaya the highest mountains in Asia and the world : 
for it is remarkable that both these celebrated ranges run in 
the same easterly direction and have affected similar tertiary 
strata. And about the same time as the granite and schistose 
rocks of the Himalaya were elevated so far above the surface, 
rocks of the same nature made their appearance on the eastern 
and western coast of Peninsular India, while a great part of 



260 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

the Bombay Presidency, extending over an area of 200,000 
square miles, was covered by one sheet of trap. 

" Thus are we enabled to estimate the age, in reference to 
other rocks, of the hills of greenstone, and the granitic family, 
which occur in our neighbourhood. They are among the 
newest of all the mountains that are to be found in the world. 
Although it appears likely that the chief upheaval of all these 
Indian chains has been nearly contemporaneous, viz., about 
the end of the tertiary epoch, yet this supposition is not 
inconsistent with the belief that there have been slight and 
partial elevations since, the traces of which will be best seen 
on the coast. . . . There are sufficient data to prove that the 
whole ground under our feet to a considerable distance north 
and south, and it may be to near the base of the neighbour- 
ing hills, is strewed at the depth in some places of ten, in 
others of sixteen or twenty feet, with marine shells. The 
chunam, with which our houses are built and adorned, is 
made, as you are aware, from these fossils. The different 
species in my possession, collected from two pits at Vepery, 
and from one to the south and another to the north of 
Madras, are very numerous; but although there are some 
among them which I have not yet been able to match from 
the present beach, yet I am convinced they will be found to 
be all identical with the recent inhabitants of the deep. It- 
is maintained by some, and I believe with truth, that the sea 
at present is fast gaining upon the Coromandel coast ; but 
you will perceive that it is also true that the land has gained 
upon the sea ; and though the event may not have taken 
place within the historical period, the analogy of the South 
American coast leads us to the conviction that it has occurred 
since the deposition of the latest tertiary strata in India, and 
since the elevation of the mountain masses which have been 
protruded through these strata." 

The first contribution from Mr. Hislop's pen to the learned 



1853 HIS GEOLOGICAL WORK SUMMARISED 261 

societies was appropriately made through Dr. John Wilson 
to the Bombay branch of the Eoyal Asiatic Society. In its 
Journal for July and August 1853, there appeared his article 
on the "Geology of the Nagpoor State." For the same 
Society he afterwards wrote, " On the age of the coal strata 
in Western Bengal and Central India." At the request of 
Dr. Carter, who had edited a volume of the Geological Papers 
on Western India, Mr. Hislop contributed his last paper to 
that Society's Journal, entitled, " Kemarks on the Geology of 
JSTagpoor," in which he brought down to 1861 the results of 
his researches during eight years more, availing himself of 
the contemporary criticisms of Dr. Oldham, his close corre- 
spondent. But his most important work was given to the 
scientific world of Europe through the Geological Society of 
London. To that his rarest, freshest, and most numerous 
fossils were sent, to be reported on in due time by such 
specialists as Owen, Bunbury, Huxley, and Rupert Jones. 
The last thus authoritatively and briefly summarised all his 
geological work at the close of his career : 

" In 1853 the Rev. S. Hislop and his then colleague, the 
Rev. E. Hunter, observed that the tablets of reddish sand- 
stone that served the native school-children for ' slates ' bore 
fossil remains of plants ; and tracing the stones to the quarry 
from which they were obtained, they discovered abundant 
vegetable fossils ; and, collecting them with care, they sent a 
large series of specimens to the Geological Society of London, 
most of which have been since described (in 1861) by Sir C. 
Bunbury, in the Society's Journal. They also made a careful 
examination of the geological characters of the vicinity of 
Nagpoor, collected all the information they could from 
memoirs and notices by early labourers in Indian geology, 
and sent a large collection of tertiary plant-remains, shells, 
insects, fishes, and bones, as well as rock -specimens and 
minerals, from the Nag-poor territory to the Geological 



262 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

Society. Before long, in 1854, Messrs. Hislop and Hunter 
communicated to that Society a memoir, giving their views 
as to the geological structure of that country, and an abstract 
was published in the tenth volume of the Geological Society's 
Quarterly Journal, and the memoir, in full, appeared in the 
eleventh volume, with a geological map of the western part 
of the Nagpoor territory by the authors. Amendments of 
the map were subsequently communicated by Mr. Hislop ; 
and in 1855 he sent home a short notice on the Umret Coal- 
field, lying north of Nagpoor, and related by synchronism to 
the plant-beds of the latter district, as well as to the Burdwan 
and other coals of Bengal. Having come to England in 
1859, Mr. Hislop undertook the description of the Tertiary 
shells that he and Mr. Hunter had formerly sent home, as 
well as others that he now brought, both from the vicinity of 
Nagpoor and from Eajamahendri ; and the results of this labour 
of love appeared as a memoir in the Journal of the G-eological 
Society, vol. xvi., illustrated with six plates, chiefly from his 
own drawings. The fossil insects and Cypridse of Nagpoor 
were at the same time described by his friends A. Murray, 
F.E.S.E., and Kupert Jones, F.G.S. 

"Eeturning to India early in 1861, he wrote a succinct 
account of his views of the age and relationship of the red 
sandstones, coal, and other beds of Central India, on board 
the steamer, and communicated it to the Geological Society 
as a companion paper to Sir C. Bunbury's memoir on the 
fossil plants of Nagpoor and Mangali, both appearing in the 
seventeenth volume of the Society's Journal. Later in the 
same year an extract from one of his letters appeared in the 
same journal (vol. xviii.) on the age of the Kota limestone, 
which lies on sandstone containing plant-remains, and equi- 
valent to that near Nagpoor. 

" The results of the geological labours are of much im- 
portance in the natural history of Central India, and, indeed, 



1863 AN IDEAL NATURALIST 263 

throw light on the age of the coal-series of Bengal also. The 
great fern-leaves, stems of trees, and other plant-remains from 
near Nagpoor ; the plants and reptiles, fishes and Estherise 
from Mangali ; the Ceratodi from Maledi ; the fishes and 
other fossils from Kota, as well as the manifold fossil forms 
from the Tertiary beds of the Dekhan, all help, or will help, 
in indicating the relative ages of the Indian strata, and put- 
ting them in geological order, adding knowledge for the 
scientific geologist, and, thereby, guidance for the practical 
man. 

"The earnestness and clearness of his work, whether in 
the field or at home, were equalled by Mr. Hislop's desire to 
be just to fellow-labourers and earlier observers, and by his 
modest avoidance of notoriety as a geologist and naturalist. 
With his equally enlightened colleague he had gleaned much 
in the JSTagpoor field of natural history, and when, after the 
Indian rebellion (during which a friendly native warned him 
in time to save Nagpoor from the threatened evil), he lost his 
colleague retiring with broken health he still gave all the 
leisure that he conscientiously could spare from his more im- 
portant duties to collecting and observing, his periodical tours 
of inspection and instruction affording almost his only oppor- 
tunities. A faithful native, Virapa, served him as a collector, 
being occasionally sent to considerable distances for fossils. 
At one of Virapa's last visits to Maledi he discovered a valu- 
able series of reptilian bones and teeth. 

" As helps in studying the fossil forms of life in India, 
Mr. Hislop lost no opportunity of collecting and observing 
recent animals and plants of kinds similar to the extinct, and 
these he freely communicated to naturalists in India and 
England. Some small bivalve Crustacea collected by him 
from the ponds and streams of Nagpoor have been described 
by Dr. Baird, and allied fossil forms from Nagpoor and Man- 
gali by Mr. Eupert Jones." 



264 STEPHEN HISLOP 1853 

Mr. Hislop's Memoir on the Geology of Nagpoor in 1854 
is remarkable, among other features, for the coloured geolo- 
gical map of the western part of the territory which, with 
infinite toil, having walked almost every foot of the ground, 
he drew on the scale of twenty miles to an inch. Mr. 
G. B. Greenough had not then exhibited his geological map of 
India to the British Association, and incorporated Hislop's in 
the wider area. Maps of the Trigonometrical Survey were 
not then available as a basis, and Eushton's political map of 
1842 was used, with a sketch by Mr. Sankey of the northern 
formations. From the junction with the great Godavari 
of the Pranhita river, containing the united waters of the 
Wardha and the "Waenganga, Hislop's map, drawn in 1853, 
shows us the coal-fields north by Chanda and the "Wardha 
valley to the Satpooras, by the valley of the Kanhan and the 
Pench to Barkoi and the Mahadewa range. It is to him the 
State owes the first scientific discovery of what may be 
called the coal-fields of the Godavari and its affluents, cover- 
ing at least 12,000 square miles, and now being opened up 
by railways south to Haidarabad, north towards Jabalpoor, 
and east to Bengal. 

Having carefully done justice to preceding observers, and 
noticed the discovery in 1842 in the Kamthi sandstone 
quarries by Lieutenant Monro of H. M.'s 39th Eegiment, of the 
impressions of ferns, Mr. Hislop thus tells his own story : 

" In 1845 I procured a few fossils of the same kind from the 
Kamthi sandstone, and two years subsequently my esteemed colleague 
the Eev. R Hunter and myself fell in with them in the contemporaneous 
strata of Chanda, eighty miles south of Nagpoor. None of these 
specimens, however, were preserved, nor was anything further done by 
us or by others to understand the palaeontology of this part of India 
until June 1851, when, walking with my fellow -labourer in the 
neighbourhood of our residence, two or three Physas, in a deposit 
enclosed in a trap hill about a mile west of Sitabaldi, and two miles 
in the same direction from Nagpoor, forced themselves on my notice- 



1851 TELLS HIS OWN STORY 265 

They were at once referred to the fossils which Voysey and Malcolm- 
son had discovered in a similar situation, and the deposit in which 
they occur was identified with .the freshwater formation that they 
had traced in several parts of the Nizam's territory, and at Chikni and 
Hinghanghat in this State. In a _few days after, at the same spot, I 
found the first bone, and Mr. Hunter the first tooth ; and, after a week 
or two, on Takli Plain, about two and a half miles N.W. of Nagpoor, I 
met with the first Fruit and Entomostracan. About the same time, from 
observing the traces of ancient vegetation on the soft clayey sandstone, 
used in the absence of chalk for whitening the writing-boards in our 
Mission schools, I was led to make inquiries about the locality from 
which it was brought, which ended in the discovery of Glossopteris and 
Phyllotheca and some seeds or seed-vessels at Bokhara, six miles north 
of Nagpoor. Ere long we were joined by our friend Captain Wap- 
share, Judge Advocate of the Nagpoor Subsidiary Force, who added 
many valuable vegetable remains to our collection ; and it is to his 
able and generous efforts that we owe, among other rare acquisitions, 
the first .palm and the first mulberry -like fruits. From the red shale 
of Korhadi, seven miles north of Nagpoor, I procured tracks of Anne- 
lids, and more recently, in combination with them, the footmarks of 
some Reptile ; and towards the end of the year, in company with 
Lieutenant Sankey of the Madras Engineers, I visited Silewada, twelve 
miles north of Nagpoor, where the sandstone yielded a profusion of rich 
and most beautiful specimens of Glossopteris, and whence have since 
been obtained a variety of Exogenous stems, several species of Phyllotheca, 
and an interesting specimen, contributed by Mr. Hunter, of an allied 
genus, which by Lindley and Hutton is reckoned an Egidsetum, and by 
Bmibury probably an Asterophyllites. 

" A Mission tour, undertaken about the same time, conducted my 
colleague and myself past the freshwater formation at Pahadsingha, 
forty miles W.N.W. of Nagpoor, in which was detected an abundance 
of fish -scales, dispersed through the stone. On our return, Mr. 
Hunter, among the seeds and fruits of Takli, discovered the first speci- 
men and the greater part of our fossil Goleoptera ; while we received 
an accession to our collection of shells from Dr. J. Miller, then of the 
10th Regiment M.N.I., who, while on an excursion with Dr. Fitz- 
gerald, had found the freshwater formation at Butara near Mach- 
haghoda, eighty miles north of Nagpoor, and also from Mr. Sankey, 
who had fallen in with it at Pilkapahad, twenty-five miles to the 
north-west. The latter-named officer, after discovering in the Kamthi 
quarries the first Vertebraria, a fine species of Phyllotheca, a long 



266 STEPHEN HISLOP 1851 

endogenous leaf, and an abundant kind of seed, all of which he liber- 
ally handed over to us, proceeded along with Dr. Jerdon, the Indian 
ornithologist, in the direction of Butara and the Mahadewa Hills, 
whence they returned with several new fossils belonging to our 
Eastern Coal-formation, and excellent specimens of the shells pre- 
viously collected by Dr. Miller, agreeing in general with those of 
this neighbourhood. In a portion of the Butara rock which they 
kindly gave me, I was struck with the appearance of a diminutive 
creature, which proved to be a second genus of the JEntomostraca. 
Ere the first anniversary of the discovery of our earliest Physa had 
come round, several other localities had been ascertained for both the 
freshwater and sandstone fossils, and observations had been made on 
the remains of quadrupeds and shells embedded in comparatively 
recent deposits. Since that, on our annual Mission tours we have 
become acquainted with a productive site for sandstone organisms at 
Mangali, sixty miles south of Nagpoor, which has afforded a few 
unusual vegetable remains, a species of Estheria, scales and jaws 
of Fish, and the entire head of a Saurian ; we have passed through 
districts abounding in laterite and iron-ore, and have increased our 
knowledge of the geological structure of the country generally. 

" It is obvious that the palaeontology of this district, contrary to the 
common idea of Indian formations, is both varied and important ; but, 







even in a lithological point of view, there are few tracts of equal 
extent that are worthy of more attention, and of all the portions of 
that interesting area, there is none for interest that can be compared 
with the vicinity of Nagpoor, its centre at once political, historical, 
and geological. We have only to take a few steps from our house and 
we reach the summit of Sitabaldi Hill, the scene of as heroic a con- 
flict as ever our countrymen gained in the East. The spot on which 
we stand consists of nodular trap. At the distance of a few yards 
from our feet, just under the brow of the hill, is a narrow stripe 
of green or yellow calcareous indurated clay, which, on close inspection, 
is found to contain a number of decaying casts of freshwater shells. 
Under this we perceive a bluish-green friable rock, which hardens 
first into a tough amygdaloid, and then, a little above the level of the 
plain, down to which it is scarped by the quarrymen, into a compact 



1851 GEOLOGY OP THE NAGPOOE EEGION 267 

greenstone. Cropping out from under the foot of the hill may be 
seen a bed of soft variegated sandstone, and then, according as we look 
east or west, the prevailing rock covering the plain beyond is either 
gneiss or trap. 

" But let us extend the prospect to the horizon. As we stand with 
our faces to the north, the first glance that we cast on the distant 
hills shows that there is a marked difference among them. Behind 
us, on our left and in front, we follow a long sweep of flattened 
summits, with here and there a valley to break the uniformity ; but 
no sooner do we look towards the right than we descry a series of 
round-topped hills rising up at intervals in massive strength. These 
flattened summits are the tops of trap-hills, which stretch, in the form 
we see, from our present position, to the coast of the Arabian Sea ; and 
these massive eminences are granitic hills which rise up in the manner 
that meets our eye, at various distances from each other, from the 
place where we stand to the Bay of Bengal. The intermediate hills 
and plains, which in front fill up the foreground, are formed of the 
dolomite and shale of Korhadi, and the sandstone of the basins of the 
Kanhan and Kolar. 

" From our elevated station we are thus enabled to command a 
prospect of twenty miles in every direction, and the formations that 
we can trace within that range make up an exact miniature of the geo- 
logy of our whole area. Nay, were we to go down the hill and walk 
around its base, in the descent and circuit, which might all be accom- 
plished in twenty minutes, we should meet with almost every rock 
that is to be found between Bombay and Kattak. 

" The geology of our area must at one time have been extremely 
simple. Its principal feature was then sandstone, associated with shale 
and limestone. But now other two formations are discovered on the 
arena, and these seem on the surface as if they had been two huge ice- 
bergs, which approached each other in frightful collision, crushing 
the sandstone between them, and allowing the fragments to slide out 
at either end, and scattering them here and there over their own bulk. 
Or, to speak in language more precise, the sandstone formation, which 
once occupied the whole space that we have chosen for description, is 
now covered up by trap on the west, and broken up by granite on the 
east, leaving only a small diagonal stripe running through the centre, 
which, after being interrupted at the north-west and south-east, in- 
creases in these directions to a broad expanse, while a few detached 
portions, formerly continuous with it, appear in the body of the trap 
and granite. It is the juxtaposition of trap, sandstone, and granite 



268 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

in this neighbourhood which invests the geology of Nagpoor with 
special importance, and which, when investigated by competent 
observers, may shed a flood of light some future day upon Indian 
geology in general." 

Justice is done to much of the geological work of Mr. 
Hislop by Mr. W. T. Blanford, F.R.S., in his discussion of 
the Gondwana formations in the official Manual of the Geo- 
logy of India (1879). Professor Owen's description, in the 
Geological Journal, of the Brachy&ps laticeps sent home by 
Mr. Hislop, attracted the attention of scientific Europe, so 
that Mr. Blanford writes, "The quarries of Mangali (sixty 
miles south of Nagpoor) have become well known by name 
to Indian geologists and even to those of other countries, 
from having furnished to Mr. Hislop the first Labyrintho- 
dont amphibian fossil detected in India." In the Philosophical 
Magazine for January 1862, conducted by Sir David Brewster, 
Professor Tyndall, and others, there appeared a mineralogical 
description of a series of rocks collected near Nagpoor by 
Messrs. Hislop and Hunter, and sent by Mr. Rupert Jones to 
Professor Haughton, F.R.S., of the University of Dublin, for 
report as a mineralogist. One of the rocks he pronounced " a 
very remarkable mineral " a combination of calc-spar and 
glauconite, of a brilliant grass -green, so penetrating each 
other as to constitute a beautiful example of mineralogical 
law. " I propose to give the name of Hislopite to the remark- 
able combination," wrote that savant. Another new mineral 
species, a white felspath of fatty lustre, he proposed to call 
Hunterite. Mr. Hislop wrote thus of these minerals in his 
paper of 1860 on the Tertiary Deposits Associated with Trap- 
rock in the East Indies : 

" In the trap at the Takli Artillery Lines, which encloses pieces of 
the clayey fossiliferous deposit, there are also contained masses of ' calc- 
spar curiously striated, the lines of growth not being perpendicular to 
the optic axis, but formed by planes parallel to one of the edges 
of the obtuse trihedral angle of the rhombohedron, and intercept- 



1860 HIS STUDY OF SOILS 269 

ing equal portions on the other two edges of that angle.' The cloleritic 
lava, which is quarried from Sitabaldi Hill, is in some places marked 
with belts that may be traced continuously for many yards, consisting 
of cavities 'lined with obsidian in a thin glazed pellicle, and occa- 
sionally filled up with tabular crystals of calc-spar.' In the trap on 
the south escarpment of the hill there was discovered a rhomboidal 
piece of a green mineral, which Professor Haughton proposes calling 
Hisloyiite, being in his opinion worthy of distinction as a new species, 
from the remarkable combination in it of calcareous matter, which gives 
the outward form to the whole crystal, with a grass-green siliceous 
skeleton of glauconite, which 011 analysis he finds to be a hydrated ter- 
silicate of protoxide of iron. 

" From a vein of pegmatite in gneiss a few hundred yards east of 
my house a fragment was broken off, which, besides the usual com- 
ponents of quartz and felspar, contained a ' white felspathic mineral of 
fatty lustre, softer than felspar, but gritty under the agate pestle.' To 
this mineral Professor Haughton has given the name of Huntcrite. 
Neglecting the lime and magnesia in it, which are inconsiderable, it is 
found to consist 'of five atoms of a hydrated tersilicate of alumina 
combined with one atom of a hyaline silica of admitted composition.' " 

A very great and immediate practical service which Mr. 
Hislop's geological observations did to the people and Govern- 
ment of India, lay in his study of soils. The greater por- 
tion of the land revenue of India, exceeding twenty millions 
sterling a year, is raised by a system of settlements or assess- 
ments, revised every generation, after careful survey by 
British civil servants with a staff of native subordinates. If 
these periodical leases, unfortunately not yet made permanent 
on corn-rents, are not to injure the peasant-proprietors, each 
with three to five acres, and sap the political stability of our 
Indian empire, the question of soils must be well understood 
by the officials. In the Central Provinces they consulted Mr. 
Hislop before the regular land settlements began to be made. 
He had for the first time revealed the origin of the famous 
black cotton or millet soil of central and southern India, 
known by the Telugu name of (rcgadci) Eegur. Its fertility 
is so great that some plains are said to have produced for two 



270 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

thousand years without manure, fallow or irrigation, crops 
of jawari or cholam (Holcus sorghum], and of bajri or cumbu 
(Holcus spica). Hislop found out its secret to be the impreg- 
nation of certain argillaceous formations with organic matter, 
and probably covered at one time with luxuriant forest. His 
mastery of Marathi and converse with the peasantry gave 
him a practical experience of soils no less valuable than his 
scientific knowledge. 

The Gondwana system of sandstones and shales, with 
which Stephen Hislop's name is for ever associated, re- 
presents the marine older and middle Mesozoic, and pro- 
bably the upper Palaeozoic, formations of other countries. 
For the first time organic remains appear in the peninsula, 
at that era forming part of a vast continent, which, 
before the Himalaya were elevated to the north of it, 
stretched from Madagascar and South Africa to Malaysia 
and Australia. Then came the marine Cretaceous deposits 
of South India and up to the Karbada valley, with which 
Hislop did not come into contact. And thereafter, or while 
the upper Cretaceous beds were being deposited from the 
Western Narbada region to the south coast of Arabia, there 
occurred the most extensive and gigantic series of basaltic 
lava eruptions and overflows in the history of the prepara- 
tion of the world for man. Even now, after ages of denuda- 
tion, these grand masses of bedded traps cover an area, of 
200,000 square miles. The railway traveller from Bombay 
to ISTagpoor, 519 miles, leaves these volcanic traps only as he 
approaches Hislop's old mission-house; they extend from 
Sind south-eastwards to far Amarkantak hill. They give to 
"Western and Central India the scenery and vegetation which 
consist in flat-topped hills, with terraced sides, separating 
undulating plains on which long grass takes the place of 
trees, and all is bleak and desolate till the rainy season 
brings verdure and beauty. Peninsular India is in truth a 



1860 INDIA BEING PREPARED FOR MAN 271 

plateau of black basalt, which denudation has made habitable 
by teeming millions, who live upon its millets, export its wheat, 
and clothe themselves and half the world with its cotton. 

Hislop's ten years' study of the Mesozoic sandstones and 
Tertiary traps enabled him, with the vividness of a severely 
inductive imagination, to picture Peninsular India for us in 
these two periods. 

"Central India was covered by a large body of fresh 
water, which stretched southward into the Peninsula, and 
eastward into Bengal, while on the north and west it 
communicated by some narrow channel with the sea. 
On the shores of this lake earthworms crawled, and small 
reptiles (frogs) crept over the soft mud. In its pools sported 
flocks of little Entomostracans, resembling the modern 
JEstheria, mingled with which were Ganoid fishes and Laby- 
rinthodonts. The streams which fed it brought down into 
its bed the debris of the plutonic and metamorphic rocks 
which then constituted the greater part of the dry land, and 
which were covered with an abundant vegetation of Ferns, 
most of them distinguished by the entireness of their fronds. 
Low-growing plants with grooved and jointed stems inhabited 
the marshes; and Conifers and other Dicotyledonous trees, 
with Palms, raised their heads aloft. Meanwhile plutonic 
action was going on, and strata, as they were formed, were 
shattered and reconstructed into a breccia; and finally an 
extensive outburst of granite elevated the bed of the lake 
and left it dry land. The sea now flowed at Pondicheri 
and Trichinopoli, depositing the cretaceous strata which aro 
found there. 

"At the end of this epoch Central India suffered a 
depression and was again covered by a vast lake, communi- 
cating with the sea, not towards Cutch as before, but in the 
neighbourhood of Eajamahendri, to which the salt water had 
now advanced. When the lake had during its appointed 



272 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

time furnished an abode to its peculiar living creatures and 
plants, it was invaded by an immense outpouring of trap, 
which filled up its bed, and left Western and a great part of 
Central India a dreary waste of lava. But these basaltic 
steppes were ere long broken up. A second eruption of trap, 
not now coming to the surface, but forcing a passage for 
itself under the newer lacustrine strata, lifted up the super- 
incumbent mass in ranges of flat-topped hills. Since then, 
to the east, water has swept over the plutonic and sandstone 
rocks, and laid down quantities of transported materials 
impregnated with iron, and some time after there were 
deposited in the west a conglomerate, imbedding bones of 
huge mammals, and above it a stratum of brown clay, which 
immediately preceded the superficial deposits of the black 
and red soils." 

The brilliant scientific results at which he arrived, and 
the numerous and unique collections of objects of Natural 
History which he made, were, like all work of permanent 
value and suggestiveness, the fruit of enthusiastic toil, and 
were possible only by a jealous husbanding of his time. His 
note and commonplace books, written in an almost micro- 
scopic but legible hand, record every scientific incident of his 
tours, and block out the materials of his published papers. 
They might even now be given to the world as the model 
apparatus of a naturalist. They are illustrated by drawings. of 
the minutest shells and fossils, made and coloured in a style 
on which the engraver could not and did not improve. The 
ardent student of Nature seems to have read all that ap- 
peared on his favourite subjects, and to have been patiently 
accumulating materials for a Geology of all India. At a 
time and in a country where ordinary maps did not exist he 
patiently made his own, and he trained Virapa and his other 
native collectors, like himself, to pace the distances which 
they traversed, and note the villages through which they 



1860 HELPS GOVERNMENT AND OTHER NATURALISTS 273 

passed, that every locality of interest might be easily recog- 
nised. The Government referred to him for correction and 
to fill up the blanks in Greenough's Geological Map of India. 
The Madras Government asked his co-operation in an official 
attempt to describe, at that comparatively early time, the 
Geology of India south of the Vindhya range. With zeal he set 
himself to meet demands, the wisdom of which he recognised 
and indeed had been the first to prompt, applying to the task 
his little leisure and much correspondence with local officers 
who trusted him, as well as the services of his native 
helpers. 

Though circumstances led him to give his strength to 
Geology, which demands a knowledge of all the physical 
sciences, Hislop's special taste was always for Botany, and 
he gave particular attention to Zoology. His Journals re- 
cord, in separate departments, his observations under these 
branches of inquiry. Like Carey, he enters the native names 
of the botanical specimens, and illustrates his technical 
descriptions by drawings. His zoological records are minute, 
varied, and occasionally amusing, in connection with the life 
and superstitions of the natives. His brother Eobert's 
demands led him to give attention to Entomology. He 
achieved a reputation as a conchologist which became em- 
barrassing. One collector told another of his skill and big- 
heartedness, until demands for exchanges came upon him 
from all parts of the world, from Australia, Italy, and Great 
Britain. When Sir William Denison, E.E., became Governor 
of Madras, His Excellency began to address to him from 
Guindy many letters, from which it appears that the Gover- 
nor of the quietest of our Indian Provinces delighted to 
spend his days in arranging, naming, and bartering his shelly 
treasures. 

Even more interesting, to the scientific reader, than the 
journals are Hislop's letters to contemporay Naturalists, and 

T 



274 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

their still more voluminous correspondence with him. The 
drafts of the former are only in a few cases preserved among 
them one to Hugh Miller in 1853 ; the communications of the 
latter form four thin volumes. His generous and prompt 
gifts of fossils to the principal public collections of objects of 
Natural History in India, England, and Scotland at once 
brought down upon him, with overwhelming force of both 
gratitude and hope for the future, their learned and acquisi- 
tive curators. First in importance came the Geological 
Society of London, which he asked to report on the char- 
acter and value of the treasures he sent to them, especially 
on the at first disputed question of the geological age to 
which these belonged. This was done through his old school- 
fellow Mr. J. C. Moore, one of the secretaries; it brought 
him the life-long friendship of Mr. T. Rupert Jones, and it 
secured the grateful intercourse of Sir Charles Bunbury, 
Bart. "How can anything about fossils interest you in 
these dreadful times ? " writes the second of these to him in 
the height of the Mutiny campaigns. "Dr. Robert Brown 
has expressed his admiration of all. Dr. Falconer frequently 
comes and wishes they were well described and published. 
His experience in both vegetables and animals will be at our 
service when the work is advanced, as also the aid of both 
Professor Owen and Dr. Hooker. The reptilian sabre-shaped 
tooth from Takli, and other teeth, created a lively interest 
in Mr. Owen and Dr. Falconer. Your recent shells from 
ISTagpoor are much coveted by my conchological friends, but I 
strictly keep them all in hand, promising some of the dupli- 
cates to those who help us in describing the fossil shells. 
Messrs. Oldham and Medlicott are just leaving for the East ; 
they have carefully examined all the sandstone flora. Pro- 
fessor Morris is now at work on Oldham's Bengal fossil 
plants, and will compare the Nagpoor series at the same 
time. I have just received from North Africa further speci- 



1860 INTEECOUESE WITH OTHEE NATUEALISTS 275 

mens illustrative of the same world-girding jurassico-triassic 

flora." 

The contributions to the Bombay and Bengal Asiatic 
societies led to a long correspondence with Dr. Carter, Dr. 
Leith, and Mr. A. Grote ; on the Madras side, with Sir Walter 
Elliot, Dr. G. Balfour, and Colonel Haig, E.E. Professor 
Allrnan was effusive in the expression of his thankfulness 
for the collection of fossils and shells which Hislop sent to 
his own University of Edinburgh. We may be sure that 
Professor Duns of the New College there was not forgotten. 
At the time when Dr. Duff passed through Nagpoor Mr. 
Hislop was visited also by Adolph Schlagintweit, one of 
the three brothers, disciples of Alexander von Humboldt, 
whom the influence of the Prince Consort led the Court of 
Directors to send out on what they called "a scientific 
mission to India and high Asia." The results of their 
magnetic survey have not proved so valuable as was hoped, 
and for these one of the brothers sacrificed his life in 
Turkestan. Both Adolph and Hermann were admiring 
correspondents of Stephen Hislop. But if Germany had 
done nothing more than give to India another correspondent 
of his, Sir Dietrich Brandis, who organised its forest depart- 
ment, that land of learning would have done well. 

The letters of Dr. Oldham, while director of the Geologi- 
cal Survey of India, and of his accomplished staff of surveyors, 
are especially full and frank in their expressions of indebted- 
ness to the Scottish missionary who, after all, could give to 
their subject only the little leisure of a brief life spent in 
the most absorbing of all pursuits, of which the first Christian 
apostle exclaimed : " Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is 
unto me if I preach not the gospel ! " When acknowledg- 
ing specimens of reptilian teeth, Oldham expressed his delight 
at the assurance that Hislop looked forward to a return to 
India after furlough. " Our ranks of geologists are too thin 



276 STEPHEN HISLOP 1859 

in this distant land to spare easily one of our leaders. I 
trust you will add much still to your valuable discoveries ! " 
In March 1859 the Calcutta Review published forty pages of 
an article on " Geology in India/' in which Dr. Oldham, the 
writer, thus did justice publicly to the scientific work of the 
two missionaries : 

" We turn with pleasure to some of the most valuable contributions 
to the Geology of India which have appeared during the last ten years, 
namely, the labours of the Eev. Messrs. Hislop and Hunter in the district 
of Nagpooi 1 . These gentlemen, busily and devotedly engaged in conduct- 
ing a large and important missionary establishment, to which were 
attached valuable schools requiring constant superintendence and care, 
have yet found time, snatched at intervals from their more pressing 
duties, to bring together and combine into most excellent descriptive 
papers, the detached observations they were enabled to make during 
their annual tours, visiting their out- stations, and marching from 
village to village proclaiming to the benighted inhabitants the glorious 
tidings of that Gospel whose ministers they were. Few districts 
have received more able illustrations, even from professional geologists, 
than has the vicinity of Nagpoor from these zealous missionaries. Mr. 
Hislop has continued his labours, and since he has been deprived of 
the aid of his fellow-worker, has found time to discuss in some valu- 
able papers the more theoretical questions of the geological age of the 
rocks he had before described. We would point to these most import- 
ant communications as almost the only instances within the period to 
which we have limited ourselves, of local contributions from permanent 
residents to the geology of their immediate neighbourhood. Mr. 
Hislop's own experience, so clearly told in his brief history of the 
successive stages of his geological discoveries, shows how slowly, liow 
gradually, evidence after evidence accumulated ; how one season yielded 
one fact, the succeeding season another, until after years of untiring and 
unbroken application, he was at last able to think that sufficient material 
had been brought together to justify his reasoning on the whole, and 
attempting to bring all into one co-ordination or system. We know 
of no brighter instance of the value of early training and habits of 
observation than we find in these papers." 

Dr. Oldharn having sent on from Hislop a letter to his 
chief surveyor, Mr. J. G. Medlicott, the latter replied from 



1860 THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA 277 

Simla, " I am right glad to find you once more pen in hand. 
My knowledge of the rocks newer than the Mahadewas is based 
on a very hasty and incomplete examination, whereas yours 
is the result of years of brilliantly successful research. . . . 
How glad I should be were I able to go down to Nagpoor 
and work out under your guidance and with your assistance 
these physical questions." Again, when sending him his 
Eeport on the Narbada district, Mr. J. G-. Medlicott wrote, 
" As a Geological Surveyor I take the opportunity of thanking 
you as a Geologist, for all the pleasure and instruction I have 
derived from your labours." 



CHAPTER IX 

A SCOTS MISSIONARY ON SICK LEAVE 

Fourteen years of happy toil Ordered on two years' sick leave by the 
physician Unwilling to go Death of two Maratha women, Baka Bai 
the poor Christian, and Baka Bai the Hindu Queen At Bombay, Suez, 
and Malta The exile home again His lecture to divinity students 
Correspondence with Dr. Hunter, chiefly scientific The Geological 
Society of London Forming missionary associations Burning address 
to the Free Synod of Glasgow and Ayr The Liverpool conference on 
Christian missions Sir Herbert Edwardes and Sir Donald M'Leod 
Lord Shaftesbury on neutrality Hislop's chivalrous defence of John 
Anderson His account of the sale of Bible literature to natives Ex- 
plains the race differences between the aboriginal and Hindu-Buddhist 
peoples The revival of religion among the fisher -folk of Craig or Ferryden 
The influence of spiritual operations on the body Keflex action of 
foreign and home missions illustrated by Hislop He addresses the 
General Assembly of 1860 Farewells to children and friends By Paris 
and Marseilles to Bombay and Nagpoor Correspondence, spiritual and 
scientific, with Dr. Hunter Resumes mission work and scientific recrea- 
tion in the perfection of his powers. 

FOR fourteen years, or about twice the period of service which 
now entitles British officials and most missionaries to fur- 
lough, Stephen Hislop had toiled in the plains of India. For 
all but eight of these, when he had rejoiced in the companion- 
ship and help of Bobert Hunter, a like-minded worker in all 
things, he had been alone. His annual tour, for a month 
every cold season, had been refreshing indeed to his spirit, 
but had proved to be only a busier time, if possible, than his 
regular service, a time in which from sunrise to sunset 
Marathi and Gond preaching alternated with scientific 
research, and both were accompanied by the circulation and 



1859 FOURTEEN YEARS ON THE PLAINS OF INDIA 279 

sale of Bible and Christian vernacular literature. These were 
not the days when Anglo-Indians, of all pursuits, considered 
it as necessary to spend part of the hot season in Simla 
or Mussourie, Naini-Tal or Darjeeling, the Neelgiri or Maha- 
bleshwar hills, as the prosperous classes in Great Britain do 
to spend two months in the highlands or at the seaside. 

He had practically discovered what has been described as 
one of the greenest, softest, and most lovely of sanitaria 
that exist in India, the Pachmarhi plateau, at a height of 
3538 feet, embosomed in the Mahadewa hills, but that was for 
others not for himself sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves. 
When called away to help Madras he and his family had to 
make the tedious journey twice in the most scorching heats 
of May ; and for half of his time of absence he had the misery 
of knowing that some of his own brethren were eager to kill 
the mission he had founded that they might secure his 
strength for their own. Twice had he been brought to the 
gates of death by threatened hydrophobia and the mistaken 
assaults of the mob of Nagpoor. Fever had again and again 
followed the exposure to sun and rain, rendered inevitable by 
the incidents of the Mutiny year, and his being compelled 
to do the work of three missionaries. Only the assistance 
of officers, some of whom he himself had led to Christ as 
in one way Andrew led Philip, and in another Stephen led 
Paul made it possible for him to keep up two English 
services a week in Sitabaldi and Kamthi, while developing 
the native mission there, and in the great city of Nagpoor. 
His official and private correspondence betrays no irritation, 
no murmuring on his own account. All his life from boy- 
hood he had learned to observe and to interpret the provi- 
dence of God towards himself and others. Only once did 
expressions of indignation escape him, in the fulness of his 
correspondence with Mr. Hunter, when he first fully learned 
that it had ever been proposed to sacrifice Nagpoor for 



280 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

Madras. All his zeal and all his faith flowed out in appeals 
of the manliest kind, that the mission staff for the threefold 
mission he had founded should consist of at least three 
Scottish missionaries. His death as in the case of Livingstone 
for Africa, was needed to lead his country and the Church 
to send first three, and now six Scottish preachers in the 
vernacular, and teachers of truth in its western forms, to 
the Central Provinces of India. 

On the arrival of the Eev. J. G-. and Mrs. Cooper from 
Madras, Dr. Heude saw that it would be possible at last to 
compel Mr. Hislop to apply for sick leave instead of merely 
sending his wife and three daughters home. In a note dated 
10th August 1858 which accompanied the sick certificate 
ordering him to leave India for two years, the physician 
assigned these reasons : " (1) Your prolonged residence here. 
(2) You have frequently suffered from fever, also from bowel 
complaint, latterly from obstinate boils and other indications 
of failing health. (3) Your duties have been, and are, onerous, 
have been faithfully discharged, and have entitled you to 
rest from labour, and to a temporary sojourn in Europe." 
The certificate he sent to his Church, but not the letter, pro- 
nouncing it " painful " to himself that he should be forced to 
face the possibility of absence from the mission. He thus 
wrote to his brother Robert : 

"NAGPOOR, 13th August 1858. I did not expect that I should be 
under the necessity of visiting Europe this year. However, all my 
friends, both medical and Christian, have united in urging me to take 
that step ; and now I begin myself to feel that it is the Lord's will that 
I should accompany my dear family, having the same need of the 
change as they. ... I forward to Dr. Tweedie a sick certificate from 
my usual medical attendant. Dr. Heude. ... At the same time I have 
expressed my unwillingness to proceed further unless additional help 
can be provided for this station. It will be painful for me to leave 
the work even then, though it will be a consolation to think that I am 
with my beloved wife and children, and have the prospect ere long, by 
God's blessing, of seeing you all again ; but not even these considera- 



1858 A NATIVE CHRISTIAN AND A MAEATHA DEATH-BED 281 

tions could induce me to forsake Nagpoor if I saw it was to be left 
without assistance. In these circumstances I cannot announce very 
positively my movements ; but. very probably you may have a visit 
from us all before the end of the year. . . ." 

When, on the 8fch September 1858, he completed his 
fortieth year, he specially noted in his journal the death, that 
day, of two old Marathi women of the same name, Baka Bai. 
The one, aged seventy-eight, was the mother of the convert 
Shrawan, a native Christian ; her body he laid in the grave 
in the assured hope of her union to Him who is the 
Eesurrection and the Life. The other, aged eighty -four, 
was a queen, the widow of Kaghoji. II., who fought with 
Wellington at Argaum. The contrast, as unconsciously 
revealed in this narrative of the last hours of the aged queen, 
suggests the whole gulf fixed between the life and the hope 
with which Hinduism in its many forms embitters millions 
of Asiatics, and the present experience and future destiny 
offered to those by Him who says, " Because I live ye shall 
live also." 

"This do wager -princess, since the period of her hus- 
band's death, has exercised an important influence on the 
affairs of Central India. During the reign of the last native 
ruler, who was adopted by her, she possessed all the authority 
usually accorded in the East to the queen-mother. At the 
annexation of her country, though she had always previously 
been reckoned hostile to the British, she was shrewd enough 
to perceive that her interest lay in not violently opposing 
that measure. After exhausting all peaceful measures to 
resist the policy of Lord Dalhousie she consented, along with 
the queens of his late Highness, and a young man who was 
adopted to perform his funeral ceremonies, to receive a pen- 
sion from the British government. The large share which 
was paid in Baka Bai's name, it is supposed, has now died with 
her. The deceased was much respected by the Hindu coin- 



282 STEPHEN HISLOP 1858 

munity, as she was known to be a conscientious adherent of the 
faith of her forefathers. She was in the habit of daily feasting 
and worshipping Brahmans, and drinking the water which had 
been consecrated by their great toes. The day before her death 
while she was insensible, an order was issued by some of the 
inmates of the palace on her behalf to distribute some cows 
among Brahmans. Accordingly, five of these sacred animals 
were brought into her sick chamber, and to the tail of each 
successively the poor woman's hands were applied, the priest 
meanwhile holding it by the head, and ready to lead it away 
together with a handsome donation in rupees. It is believed 
that the invalid at the moment of death is thus dragged into 
heaven at the tail of the cow under the superintendence of 
the holy Brahman. On the same day that these gifts were 
bestowed, Baka Bai herself, after reason had returned, called 
for a cow, and falling at its feet as far as her now fast failing 
strength would permit, offered it grass, which she invited it 
to eat under the venerated name of Mother." 

Accompanied by Major Lawrence Johnston, and in the 
weary bullock-carts soon to be banished by the railway, the 
missionary and his family slowly made their way from Sita- 
baldi to Poona, after solemn and joyful sacramental services. 
At Kamthi, all the native converts joined the godly officers, 
soldiers, and their wives in remembering His death till He 
come to each one of us and to the world, and both there 
and at Sitabaldi several native and English presented their 
children for baptism. Not in Anglican cathedral or abbey ; 
not in any church consecrated only by the Spirit of the 
Christ of John iv., when the disciples pass to each other the 
bread and the cup, or a minister is ordained by the laying on 
of the hands of the Presbytery, have we so felt the presence 
of the Crucified as when sitting at the Lord's Table with 
Carey's converts in Serampore, or with the poor Chambars 
(skinners) in their first service after the siege of Delhi, when 



1858 HOME AT LAST 283 

in hymn and prayer and scripture, English alternating with 
Bengali or Hindi, we have realised how all are one in Christ 
Jesus. 

After a fortnight with Dr. John Wilson in Bombay, 
during which he confirmed the converts and missionaries 
of all the churches, preached to the Free Scottish and 
Maratha congregations, held much converse with Dr. Carter 
on their geological researches, addressed the Asiatic Society 
on a collection of fossils from Nagpoor, and visited the 
Brahmanical Caves of Elephanta with Dr. Wilson, Colonels 
Shortrede, Birdwood, and Jameson, Mr. Hislop and his family 
sailed in the Ganges on the 25th November. He notes in his 
journal that rain fell in the Eed Sea on the 6th December. 
At Suez by a minute he lost the train for Cairo, on the rail- 
way opened fifteen days before; having visited the cliffs 
north of Jibel Atakah, which he found to be farther off than he 
had expected. He was courteously invited to join a special 
train ordered by an Egyptian official, along with two American 
naval officers, who had been examining the locality of the 
passage of the Israelites, and had arrived at the same con- 
clusion as their countryman Eobinson, that it was up near 
Suez. 1 

At the cliffs Hislop saw a cream-coloured and reddish- 
spotted snake, " which I take to be the fiery flying serpent 
that bit the Israelites on the opposite coast." At Malta five 
hours were spent with the Eev. George Wisely, who for forty 
years has ministered to the Presbyterian troops, sailors, and 
Scottish residents in that island. The day before Christmas 
the Hislop family were hospitably received in Melbourne 
Square, Kensington. Leaving the children there for a time 
Hislop and his wife hurried to Olney, to Duns, to Blair 

1 Five years before, on his first voyage to India, and again on the opening 
of the Canal, the present writer spent some time in a careful examination of 
the head of the Gnlf of Suez and the country to the north for some distance, 
and formed the same opinion. 



284 STEPHEN HISLOP 1859 

Lodge, Polmont, and to Arbroath, enjoying with their kins- 
folk, and in the revisiting of scenes which remain the same 
though the exile's eye colours them with the memories of 
youth, a pleasure which for intensity and purity is not sur- 
passed on earth. Old Indian friends fell next to be visited. 
General and Mrs. Alcock at Bath ; children at Cheltenham, 
whose longing parents were in the East ; the Chapmans at 
Tilbury, where they embarked with troops for Calcutta ; 
his nephews at Cambridge, students of Caius, where he 
worshipped in Simeon's Church, and dined in the Common 
Hall; and cousins at Wooley Park, near Wakefield. In 
London he was much consulted by the good Henry Carre 
Tucker, who had brought to the birth the Christian Vernacu- 
lar Education Society, most valuable and catholic of agencies, 
as a memorial of the Mutiny. He reached Edinburgh only 
on the 18th May 1859, where he addressed the evening 
meeting of the Ladies Society for Female Education in India. 
The next day he took his seat in the General Assembly of 
the Free Church of Scotland, as a commissioner from the 
Presbytery of Bombay. 

Hislop's first year at home was spent in comparative rest 
and in social intercourse, varied by the half -work on his 
books and studies, without which the true student's holiday 
would be miserable indeed, and by occasional public 
addresses. For the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science, which met at Aberdeen in September 1859, he 
prepared a paper on the Gonds. When in London he was 
much in the rooms of the Geological Society, where some of 
the most precious of the treasures he had sent home still 
awaited the decision of specialists. When in Edinburgh in 
autumn, he characteristically threw himself into the evan- 
gelising work of the Eev. Dr. J. H. Wilson, in Fountainbridge, 
the lowest moral level of the city, into which so soon as the 
Gospel has raised from it the drunken and the depraved, 



1859 ADDRESS TO THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH 285 

others seem to fall. It was when on his way to the church 
there, one Sabbath morning, that Hislop ever either in peril 
himself or rescuing others saw a child in the canal, while 
two others stood by helplessly exclaiming " Eh, Johnnie ; 
eh, Johnnie!" Hislop pulled out the drowning Johnnie 
Mitchell and took him to his mother. 

The Students' Missionary Associations of the Divinity 
Colleges of the Free Church of Scotland, and those of the 
Scottish Universities, which meet every week during the 
winter session from November to April, invite the ablest 
missionaries to address them. We have fortunately the MS. 
which formed the basis of Mr. Hislop's lecture to the hundred 
and twenty young theologians of the New College, Edin- 
burgh, of which Chalmers, Welsh, and W. Cunningham used 
to be the ornaments. We publish it in the appendix l as a 
model for others, and as an example of the lucid arrangement 
and simplicity of his style, in a form of literature too little 
cultivated by missionaries. 

The correspondence with Mr. Hunter was unrestrained 
notwithstanding their frequent personal intercourse. We 
reproduce the scientific passages chiefly : 

"BLAIR LODGE, FALKIRK, 13th June 1859. My visit to London 
seems to have stirred up the Geological Society. Bunbnry is in haste 
to describe the Jurassic plant remains. I wish he had offered for 
something else, as they were the part on which I was thinking of 
beginning. To-day I have received copies of Professor Houghton's 
paper on the two new minerals. I can make no remarks on it as I 
have not read it yet. Narayan Vithal was baptized on the day I had 
expected, and was going on well according to last accounts. This is 
cause of gratitude." 

" LONDON, W., 14/i March 1859. I have the pleasure of forward- 
ing you the insects of the Eocene. One of the best, consisting of two 
very distinct elytra together, which had been picked up by Dr. Eawes, 
is I am sorry to say lost. I hope all the others are safe. I am glad 

1 See Appendix II. 



286 STEPHEN HISLOP 1859 

to hear that Mr. Murray has consented to report upon them, as you 
could not have found one more competent to the work. But what of 
Professor Balfour ? It is the tertiary vegetable remains that have most 
difficulty in meeting with a describer worthy of them. ... I am happy 
to say that the last elytra have been recovered after burning in the 
fire for three hours. They are here enclosed, and not much injured. 
When does Mr. Murray expect to finish the beetles ?" 

"EDINBURGH, 4th October. I regret that I saw little of you 
towards the end of your stay in Aberdeen. I did not go out much, 
having still my paper unfinished, till Saturday when I read it. It was 
listened to attentively, but the subject of it was not likely to interest 
newspaper reporters, and you need not expect to see a reference to 
it in the public prints. I left Aberdeen on Saturday afternoon, and 
went to Arbroath, where I preached on the following clay. ... I wish 
to show you the article in the Calcutta Review 011 Indian Geology. 
Have you got Newbold On Malacca ? Should you have it, I would thank 
you for a sight of the volume that treats of an aboriginal tribe named 
the Benuas. Might I ask also for a perusal of what Dr. Stevenson has 
written in the Eoyal Asiatic Society's Journal on the ante-Brahniani- 
cal worship of the Hindus. . . . 

" I suppose you have been much interested by your visit to your 
old college friend (Eev. Hugh Mitchell, now Rev. Dr. Mitchell of 
Craig) to whom I would beg to send my kind regards and congratula- 
tions on his important discoveries. Perhaps you may be bringing 
south a few fishes of the old world that you may have fallen in with 
in your explorations ; I should like much to see them, and, if they are 
not very scarce, get one too." 

"EDINBURGH, 7th December 1859. ... I have received the 
drawings of the Intertrappean shells, which Oldham promised, along 
with lithographs of some of his Eajmahal plant remains. Among the 
former he names a good many Achatinoe, in which I do not believe, 
as they are obviously the same as our Limntea. He multiplies species 
among the Paludinse. The only ones which have not been obtained 
at Nagpoor are what he calls Bulimus Deucalion and Cycles 
(Pisidium) Hislopiana. The former I do not understand ; the latter 
I have found as a cast from the Haidarabad territory, though I have 
not described it. The Rajmahal Flora is pretty, but it seems to me 
that one of our Tseniopteris (the large broad one) from the blocks of 
Kamthi is like one of his. This gives rise to the inquiry, Are the 
blocks of that locality embedded in the upper sandstone from different 
formations ? . . ." 



1860 CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. HUNTER 287 

"OLNEY, NEWPORT PAGNELL, 31si August 1860. . . . The 
cropa are as late as in the south of Scotland. They are good, but God 
has been withholding the weather for gathering them in rather cut- 
ting them down, to teach us our helplessness and our entire dependence 
upon Him. May we not also see in the present position of affairs 
marks of the Divine displeasure on account of our many provocations ? 
We surely need to be humbled, and brought to the Lord in deep 
contrition. The state of religion here is very unsatisfactory. In 
former days Olney was highly favoured in regard to gospel privileges. 
In it or around there lived and laboured such men as Cowper, John 
Newton, Thomas Scott, Sutcliff the Baptist minister, the friend of 
Carey and Andrew Fuller. But now in the Episcopal Church the 
gold has become dim. Baptismal regeneration is the doctrine of the 
pulpit, and formalism is the worship of the people. Error is creeping 
into the Dissenting bodies, and there seems to be no power in their 
system of church polity to drive it out. . . . 

" I have received letters from Carter and Oldham. The former 
has been sadly prostrated by fever, and proposes leaving India for 
good in October. He says Dr. Leith has discovered footprints of 
another frog on the Bombay shales. At the meeting of the Asiatic 
Society he ingeniously dipped the feet of various living frogs in ink, 
and caused them to leap over paper, by which he determined the size 
of the Batrachiaii that had travelled over the ancient mud. He thus 
demonstrated that it must have been larger than Eana pusilla, and 
similar to one of which a bone had been found, as mentioned in 
Carter's Geological Papers of West India, p. 129, note. Dr. Carter has 
obtained an addition to his fossil Foraminifers from the Khelat Valley, 
and increased his knowledge of the geology of the Persian Gulf. . . . 
Olclham's letter is chiefly a defence of what he has recently clone. In 
reference to my having supposed the Ceratodus bed tertiary from its 
mineral characters, he says that so far is this supposition from being dis- 
creditable to me, that it is precisely what any one wishing to arrive at 
truth would put forward prominently as an instance of the caution 
required in admitting that sort of evidence. He forgets it is one thing 
to publish a mistake corrected by myself, and another thing for a 
second party, who had corrected it, to drag it forward. 

" He states that he was totally unaware of the fact that I had been 
the first to call Schlagintweit's attention to the occurrence of Physrc 
in the Eajamahendri beds. He ought to have known that this occur- 
rence there was published before Schlagintweit's visit to India. There 
is one point on which he expresses regret, viz. that I have changed his 



288 STEPHEN HISLOP I860 

names given to the two shells described from the Narbada. These 
along with many others are printed in the Eeport on that district. I 
did not advert to these names standing in that publication, which is 
just about to appear if it is not already out of the press. The great 
majority of them should be superseded and consigned to well-merited 
oblivion. I do not regret, for he had no business to name things 
which had been found so long before at Nagpoor, more especially after 
stating in his report that it was premature to enter on the Palaeontology 
of the Intertrappean Formation ; but if I had thought of his unavailing 
irritation regarding so many species, I should not have given him an 
opportunity of complaining of hard treatment regarding the two above 
referred to. 

"I have had one or two letters from Mr. Benson, Sankey's father- 
in-law, at Cheltenham. He speaks of fresh discoveries by one of his 
sons stationed at Quilon. He was inclined to think that the shell 
which I have named Yalvata multicarinata is allied to bithinia Marz- 
inata. The latter shell I have found abundantly in the pools at 
Nagpoor, but though ribbed and decussated like the fossil shell, yet in 
regard to the form of its umbilicus it is very different. The Bithinia 
has a mere rima, whereas the fossil has the true valvate perforation. 
Being in London lately I had almost called on Dr. H. Falconer, but 
my time would not permit. However, I wrote to him and received 
from him a very friendly reply, with Colonel Twemlow's notes on his 
discoveries of pachydermatous bones at Paithan on the Godavari, and a 
drawing of the locality. I have since sent him sketches of the bones 
from Phizdura, which were lost. I hope he will be able to form some 
conjecture as to what they were. While in London I met at Somerset 
House with a M. Gaudin from Switzerland, a friend of Heer's. He 
had heard of our tertiary plants, and was interested in them. He said 
Heer would be happy to describe them. . . ." 

Towards the close of 1859 Mr. Hislop had recovered 
strength, and from December for the next ten months before 
his return to India, he gave himself to the continuance of 
Dr. Duff's work of founding a missionary association in every 
congregation of his Church. In the great Synod of Glasgow 
and Ayr, covering the south-west of Scotland, in the neigh- 
bouring Synod of Dumfries, and throughout Forfarshire, he 
was instant in addressing presbyteries and visiting congrega- 
tions. Probably never since the evangelical revival began 



1860 ADDRESS TO THE SYNOD OF GLASGOW AND AYR 289 

with foreign missions in 1830 had the missionary fire burned 
so low in Scotland as at this time. The Mutiny, following 
Dr. Duff's organising crusade, had given an impulse which 
raised the income from Free Church of Scotland sources at 
home, for foreign missions to men and women, to 20,000. 
In 1859-60, the next year, the amount fell to 17,000. It 
now stands, from the same home sources alone, at 50,000 a 
year. The ardent missionary who had returned from fourteen 
years of toil to plead with his countrymen to send out more 
evangelists to India, at least to Nagpoor which they had 
starved, was introduced to the largest synod in the country by 
one whose duty it was to reproach his brethren, because one 
representative congregation of 400 members gave at the rate 
of 1 Jd. a year from each communicant to foreign missions, 
while it spent 600 on other objects. Hislop's heart burned 
within him, and he spoke with the natural eloquence born 
of a righteous and sad passion, when he said : 

" When the news of the Indian revolt reached this land, 
you are aware, sir, how deep and general was the interest 
which it excited. Leading statesmen and leading journals 
began to condemn the unchristian policy pursued towards our 
Eastern possessions ; and the Churches seemed fairly awak- 
ened to a sense of their duty. When this intelligence was 
brought back to India, the heart of many a missionary was 
comforted in his trials he was cheered by the hope that 
justice was at last to be done to that land. . . . Eulers and 
journals have returned to their old policy, and many of the 
Churches have fallen back into their previous lethargy. It 
is true some of the missionary societies in the south have 
increased their agency in India, and our United Presbyterian 
brethren have commenced a mission there ; but I regret to 
say that our own Church has not added a single missionary 
to its former number, and though the contributions for mis- 
sions considerably rose the first year of the revolt, yet there 

u 



290 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

was a considerable fall last year, and a still greater this year. 
. . . That outbreak was intended to punish us for past neglect, 
and it might have terminated in our expulsion from the land ; 
but instead of that God, after having shown us how easily he 
might deprive us of our hold of India, has given it back to 
us in more favourable circumstances than before. The dis- 
turbances, instead of hindering the progress of the Gospel, 
have been overruled for its furtherance. In the neighbour- 
hood of Meerut, where they first broke out, tracts were left 
in a village, and many of the inhabitants have been baptized. 
In a Sikh regiment, which found some Christian publications 
among the plunder of Delhi, there has sprung up a great 
desire for spiritual instruction, and many of the Sepoys have 
been added to the Church. Around Delhi hundreds, chiefly 
of the lower classes, are ready to embrace Christianity. . . . 

" If, then, the lessons of God's providence lead us to take 
a livelier interest in the spiritual welfare of India, it will be 
well ; but if not, then I fear we may be visited with chastise- 
ments still more severe than we have yet suffered. India 
once fell under the power of the Mohammedans, but they 
had not the Gospel to give, and it was torn from their grasp. 
Then the whole coast was occupied by the ships and forts of 
the Portuguese ; but they had not the pure Word of God to 
furnish to the natives, and their connection with the country 
has almost ceased. France, about a century ago, disputed 
with us the sovereignty of that empire ; but Trance, whether 
Popish or infidel, could not fulfil the trust that it would 
impose on her, and it was committed to Christian Protestant 
Britain. And if Christian Protestant Britain will not rise up 
to the discharge of its responsibility if our Churches will 
not improve the merciful day of their visitation, there is 
great reason to fear that our hold of India, like that of the 
nations which have preceded us, will come to an end, and the 
inheritance be given to another people that shall bring forth 



1860 AT THE LIVERPOOL CONFERENCE 291 

the fruits of righteousness. I have not referred to Africa, 
but the wants of our missions there are very clamant. Let 
all our ministers then and all our people put it seriously to 
themselves, whether their efforts in this cause are propor- 
tioned to their ability proportioned to the claims which India 
and heathendom have on their Christian sympathy and, 
above all, proportioned to the obligations under which they 
lie to that Saviour whose command it was to go into all the 
world and preach the Gospel to every creature." 

This " lukewarmness of the Churches in respect of Our 
Grand Commission " roused representative men in Liverpool 
and in Scotland, chiefly laymen like the Earl of Shaftesbury, 
to summon a Conference on Christian Missions, which Henry 
Carre Tucker, aided by the now venerable G. D. Cullen, 
organised in that city in March 1860. The philanthropic 
Earl, then in the vigour of his powers though verging on 
sixty years of age, never did better service than when he 
presided over the thousands who crowded the Philharmonic 
Hall. Of the hundred and twenty-five members, the three 
most remarkable, as time has proved, were Sir Herbert 
Edwardes, fresh from his triumphs at Mooltan and Peshawur, 
and still in the mid-time of a career which has captivated 
John Buskin ; Sir Donald M'Leod, who was then Judicial 
Commissioner in the Panjab ; and Stephen Hislop. The first 
carried away the grave assembly more than once by the 
torrent of an eloquence which was always based on common- 
sense and fired by divine grace. To the second and third, 
who had begun the work among the Gonds of Central India, 
silence was golden. Donald M'Leod broke it in the presence 
of the Eajpoot minister, the Eev. Behari Lai Singh, whom he 
had sent to Dr. Duff, only to advocate that we should no 
longer exclude the bulk of the people from the management 
of their own affairs, in the Church above all, but also in the 
State. Stephen Hislop read no paper, but four times he was 



292 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

moved to contribute his ripe experience to the discussions. 
Lord Shaftesbuiy summed up the whole practical difficulty 
when he said of India, as to which the terror of the Mutiny 
had led statesmen like Lord Palmerston to declare that only 
the Christianising of the people would save our empire, and 
then had recoiled into Government neutrality : " Recollect 
that Government neutrality will shortly become national 
neutrality, and that Government sin will shortly become 
national sin. Neutrality is a word you may read in the 
dictionary, and neutrality is a thing you may find in the 
grammar, but neutrality in the moral life of a man is a thing 
that cannot have existence. Neutrality in religion is im- 
possible. ... If a man believes, he is bound, by every con- 
sideration of heaven and earth, with all his soul, with all his 
heart, with all his mind, to labour that the Word of the 
Lord may have free course and be glorified." 

Hislop's first remark in the Conference was a chivalrous 
defence of the Eev. John Anderson, who was not familiar 
with the native languages even at the end of his life, but, 
notwithstanding, " had laboured quite as successfully as most 
missionaries in India." While he held that every missionary 
should learn the language in the first year, he would not 
assert that it would be an essential qualification for every 
man and in all circumstances, nor say that some missionaries 
could not be useful without it. On the subject of the best 
means of exciting and maintaining a missionary spirit, he 
advocated the formation of an association in every congre- 
gation " for the reception of missionary intelligence, for the 
giving of contributions, and for engaging in united prayer." 
His own forming of such an organisation in a congregation 
of Forfar fisher-folk had been marked by a remarkable out- 
pouring of God's Spirit, as we shall see. The poor fishermen, 
who had only recently themselves tasted of the grace of 
God, had entered into this grand work of diffusing over 



1860 ON BIBLE LITERATURE AND THE NATIVE CHURCH 293 

the whole world the salvation which they had thus ex- 
perienced. 

Mr. Hislop and Mr. Hunter had introduced into Central 
India a system of Bible colportage, under which Christian 
literature was sold to and consequently prized by native 
readers all over the country. He showed how they had 
followed it up for about thirteen years, and found it attended 
with the best results. They now sold as many tracts as ever 
they could have given away gratuitously, and they had 
always the gratification of knowing that the tracts were 
prized, and preserved, and read, with an interest that could 
not be inspired in any other way. He thought the Christian 
Vernacular Education Society would be a blessing to the 
people. At Nagpoor they could not complain of the Govern- 
ment education, for there was none to complain of. There 
had not been an attempt of the smallest kind made by the 
Government to enlighten the natives. It is sad to think that 
the paucity of readers is so very great. There are five dis- 
tricts into which the province is divided ; and in the most 
cultivated of these perhaps the proportion of readers to non- 
readers is about one to two hundred ; but in other districts, 
where the hill tribes reside, the proportion is far less. It 
may be one to six or eight hundred. Only one reader to 
eight hundred people ! It is the plan of the Vernacular 
Education Society that, when a native teacher is trained, he 
is sent forth to establish a school, which shall be supported 
by the fees of the pupils. Here, however, arises a serious 
practical difficulty ; for it is exactly where the educational 
destitution is greatest that the demand for learning, and, 
consequently, the willingness to support a teacher, is least. 
"I should rejoice if our Church could increase her agency, and 
do more to supply the distressing want of Christian instruc- 
tion that exists at ISTagpoor." 

A discussion on the importance of training the native 



29-1 STEPHEN 1IISLOP 1860 

clmrclies to be self-supporting, led Mr. Hislop to draw atten- 
tion to the difference of national character between the 
Hindu or Buddhist and the Aboriginal races. Whatever 
the Hindus might become after they had surmounted the 
evil effects of systems, under which they had been crushed 
for centuries, at present they are a dependent, feeble, and 
deceitful race, while the hill tribes are manly, energetic, 
and truthful. Even in Burma, to which M'Leod had re- 
ferred, the experience of their American Baptist brethren had 
by no means been uniform. Among the Karens they had 
found a people, as it were, prepared of the Lord. Not only 
were these mountaineers, by their traditions and freedom 
from priestly institutions, placed in circumstances favourable 
for the reception of the truth, but, after they had embraced 
it, by the remarkable energy of their character, directed by 
God's grace, they were fitted for communicating it far and 
wide over their native hills. But among the Burmese, in 
the plains, it was well known there had been no such general 
willingness to receive the gospel no such exemplary zeal in 
diffusing it ; and if this had been the case with Buddhists, 
who were unfettered by caste, was it wonderful that it should 
have been so with Hindus, whose individuality and inde- 
pendence had been will -nigh annihilated by the working 
of that iniquitous system ? He would rejoice to see native 
Christians in India gradually accustomed to independent 
action. Since 1860 his own and other Churches had made 
great progress in this direction, which the Church Council 
system of virtual presbytery now encourages in the Anglican 
Native Church. 

The allusion to the fisher-folk of Forfarshire was called 
forth by a remarkable revival of religion in the Free Church 
of Scotland's congregation at Craig, or Ferryden, on the shore 
of the mouth of the Esk, opposite to Montrose, previous to 
and during Mr. Hislop's missionary visit. The minister, who 



1860 THE SPIRITUAL .REVIVAL OF 1859-00 295 

succeeded the brother of Sir David Brewster in the charge, 
was, and is still, the Rev. Hugh Mitchell, LL.D., who had 
been at the Aberdeen meeting of the British Association with 
Mr. Hislop and Mr. Hunter. He is a Geologist of deservedly 
high reputation. On returning to Ferryden Manse, he found 
that the facts of a spiritual revival in Ulster were being dis- 
cussed 'by the more godly among the people, who were stirred 
up to seek for a similar outpouring of the Spirit of God on 
themselves and their neighbours. Some remarkable conver- 
sions followed, and a general anxiety about spiritual things 
was diffused. In November 1859, Mr. Grant of Arndilly 
delivered an address to the people, under which, for the first 
time, several cases of prostration occurred. Dr. Hugh 
Mitchell and others held a service every night for upwards 
of a week, when illness caused his temporary removal, and 
his place was taken by a succession of ministers. To Mr. 
Hislop was assigned the duty of supplying the services 
during February 1860, seeing that he had previously arranged 
to visit the congregation in order to form in it a quarterly 
missionary association. Dr. Hugh Mitchell, who by that 
time was convalescent, wrote to him : " I can conceive of no 
more appropriate and happy part of the revival." 

Mr. Hislop at once set himself to master the facts of the 
spiritual movement and the bodily manifestations, by visiting 
from house to house in the parish and the neighbouring 
hamlets and islands, by dealing with cases which had 
occurred before his arrival and during bis evangelising, and 
by incessant preaching in public and private. As at once a 
master in spiritual experience free from all fanaticism, and a 
truth-seeker and cautious observer accustomed to the methods 
and the evidence of Natural Science, he was more competent 
to report on such a movement and to guide it than perhaps 
any who have written on such revivals. His conclusions 
were emphatically those of such writers as Samuel Euther- 



296 STEPHEN IIISLOP I860 

ford, 1 Jonathan Edwards, Dr. John Erskine, 2 and Sir Henry 
MoncreifP, Ersldne's biographer. Dr. John Erskine, eldest 
son of John Erskine of Carnock, was the model minister 
and gentleman commended by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Man- 
nering. He witnessed the revival of 1742 when a student in 
divinity, and his equally judicious biographer pronounces his 
pamphlet a temperate and well-merited rebuke of those who 
attempted to explain away the work of the Spirit of God, by 
ascribing it to mere physical excitement or wild fanaticism. 
This is Hislop's report of what he found on taking charge of 
Ferryden for a month. His daily letters to his wife in Edin- 
burgh show that he had personally studied every individual 
case of visions and physical prostrations. Of the former he 
wrote to his wife : " Like you, I do not like the visions ; but 
they are nervous, not Satanic. No doubt much is due to 
weakness of body and nervous excitability. And when the 
attacks are so frequent, I think they are far from desirable. 
The prostrations are not to be classed with the visions :" 3 

"The sensation experienced on these occasions was described to 
me by some as a weight at the heart, and by others as a mountain of 
darkness before their eyes, which came nearer and nearer them until 
it knocked them over. Generally, a few days at the furthest after the 
prostration, relief was obtained by believing in the Saviour, and the 
cases of conversion have been tested by the subsequent walk, which, so 
far as I am aware, is altogether according to the gospel. More re- 
cently bodily manifestations have disappeared and the work is entirely 
spiritual. Young and old have been made the subjects of grace. One 
day as I was walking along a street in Ferryden, visiting several of 
the houses, a boy not more than seven years of age looked up in my 
face, and in a very gentle tone said that his mother would be glad to 

1 On The Real Influence of Spiritual Operations on the Body, prefixed to 
his Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist. 

2 On The Signs of the Times. See also Robe's Narrative of the Revival of 
Religion at Kilsyth, Cambuslang, and other places, in 1742, with Essay by 
Dr. Robert Buchanan (Collins, 1840), and Dr. D. Macfarlan's Revivals of the 
Eighteenth Century, with Sermons by George Whiten" eld. 

3 See also his sermon on Temptations of the Awakened and Converted. 
Montrose, 1860. 



1860 SPIRITUAL OPERATIONS AND THE BODY 297 

see me. I followed him to his house, but on entering found that 
though his mother was quite glad to see me, the invitation proceeded 
from himself, and not from her. He wished to have some conversa- 
tion with the minister about Jesus, whom he loves and recommends 
to his little companions. A girl one evening listened to a discourse 
on the cleansing of the leper, who approached Christ with the words, 
' Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean.' Matt. viii. 2. The 
minister pointed out that there was no uncertainty about the Saviour's 
willingness to cleanse the soul. The girl went home and was enabled 
that night to lay hold on Jesus ; and next day speaking of her exercise 
of mind the previous evening, she remarked, ' I took the if out of it 
sitting by my granny's fireside.' 

"A young woman was brought under anxiety of soul when 
listening to a sermon on the Canaanitish woman and her daughter. 
When she heard of the deep humility which marked those ap- 
plicants to our Lord ; their counting themselves as dogs, and their 
readiness to pick up the crumbs which fell from the children's 
table, she said within herself, ' I have long been wishing to be 
good, but I never made myself as low as that yet.' Soon after 
that she accompanied some friends to a distance to an evening 
service. As she took her seat in the church she lifted up a prayer to 
God that He would have mercy on her that night, and enable her to 
drive Satan from her so that she might see Jesus as her Saviour. The 
preacher, before he gave out his text, addressed his congregation in 
a few earnest remarks. ' Sinner, sinner, sinner,' said he, ' art thou 
prepared to meet thy Judge should He call thee away this night?' 
She inwardly replied, No, she felt herself a condemned criminal at 
God's tribunal, and then the church seemed to be filled with darkness. 
From that time she was absorbed in her own meditations, so that she 
did not hear the text, or catch a word of the discourse. But before 
the congregation dismissed that passage of Scripture rose to her mind 
'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' She 
believed, and immediately the church was in a blaze of light. On 
the way home her companions observed that she was happy ; but 
she said nothing of the change that had come over her, as she wished 
to be sure of its reality first. But when she reached her house she 
could contain herself no longer, and burst out ' Oh ! mother, I have 
got a gift this night Avhich all the world cannot give or take away.' 
The father, who had gone to bed, called to her to take care lest she 
should go mad, but now both father and mother and brother are 
rejoicing with her in Jesus. 



298 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

" The following is the case of a young man. He found peace one 
evening at church. Keturning home, he with a companion, who 
had shared in the blessing, called at the house of an acquaintance 
who had long been a Christian. Seizing him with one hand and 
lifting up the other to heaven, ( Oh ! the new Jerusalem ! ' said 
he ; ' Oh ! the blessedness of singing with saints and angels. Oh, I 
am happy, happy. How much of my time have I spent in dancing 
and other vain pleasures ? But now all these things are gone gone 
for ever.' It was not long after this memorable night that this lad 
formed part of a boat's crew that proceeded about sixteen miles from 
the coast to fish. While they were about this distance from land 
it was the duty of the young man's uncle to hold the sail. As he was 
so engaged, the Spirit of God visited his soul with such an overpower- 
ing influence, that he could not remain longer at his post ; but calling 
for a neighbour to take his place, he lay down on the bottom of the 
boat. And now the nephew, who had obtained enlargement so shortly 
before began to sing to him some of the sweet songs of Zion. The 
second that he selected was the 40th Psalm, which was so greatly 
delighted in by the Ulster converts. He had not finished the second 
verse before his uncle's soul was filled with joy : and all the boat's 
crew joined in the new song, which the Lord had put into his mouth ; 
and there was nothing but the voice of melody to be heard all the way 
from that spot until they set foot on land. ' That/ said the nephew to 
me, ' was the happiest day I ever spent on earth.' But that very night, 
to keep him humble, a messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him. 
His soul was filled with great darkness and doubt for the space of 
an hour. When the temptation came on, his mother went to the 
Christian friend at whose house her son had called on the night of his 
conversion ; but before he could come to the young man's assistance 
the cloud had passed away, and the light of his Father's countenance 
had again begun to shine into his soul. On this occasion the mother 
remarked that Satan had gone to the dancing room, and finding her 
son out of his accustomed place had come upon him with all his might, 
if haply he might again bring him under his sway and the dominion 
of old habits. But God's grace was stronger than all the devil's 
assaults ; and the young man continues steadfast unto this day. 

" Now take the case of an old man. There was a fisherman, who up 
to a few months ago had led a very ungodly life. He was notorious for 
his drunkenness and profanity, and of all men seemed the least likely 
to come under the power of the gospel. One night after I had 
addressed a prayer meeting he was observed to be deeply affected, and 



1860 PHYSICAL EXCITEMENT AND SPIRITUAL SELF-SACRIFICE 299 

when I spoke to him at its close the tears were trickling down his 
wrinkled cheeks. He was still groaning under the burden of his sins 
when I left him. Three days afterwards I returned to the village, 
and meanwhile the old man had obtained relief by reading the closing 
verses of 1 John i. I found him overflowing with joy, and it Avas 
very touching to hear this man now upwards of seventy years of age 
speaking of himself as only two clays old. The work still goes on. 
The last day that I was in the village of Ferryden I learned that two 
women had found the Saviour that morning ; one Mrs. Baxter, the 
mother of a family, calmly resting on Jesus as her only hope, followed 
by her daughter Jean ; and the other a young woman, Helen West, 
scarcely able to repress her exultation. A Christian man, Eobert 
Curll, that day seeing the great joy possessed by the latter made it a sub- 
ject of prayer that he might share in the blessing. Next day while he was 
fishing his desire was granted, and his soul was filled with holy gladness. 
Thus does God prove himself to be the hearer and answerer of prayer." 

To the permanence of the change wrought in the pictur- 
esque fishing village and its neighbourhood in 1859-60 the 
present writer can bear indirect testimony. Twenty -two 
years after, he visited it in ignorance of all this, and in the 
interest of foreign missions. The whole adult male popula- 
tion were about to sail, towards midnight, for the fishing in 
the North Sea, which so often strews their rugged coasts with 
wrecks, and sacrifices themselves. In all the experience 
of many years and meetings he has never seen a gathering 
more inspiriting, devout, enthusiastic. The immediate result 
was the adding of 104 to the roll of communicants in Novem- 
ber 1859, and of 40 in June 1860, so that 430 men and 
women were members of that one congregation out of a gross 
population in the parish of 1930 souls, old and young, adherents 
of the Established as well as of the Free Church of Scotland. 
The part taken by the apostle of Central India, during his 
sick leave, in evangelising an. obscure fishing village of Scot- 
land, and guiding its new-found spiritual life away from 
physical excitement to spiritual self-sacrifice for others, is 
another of the many illustrations of the reflex influence of 



300 STEPHEN I-IISLOP I860 

Foreign and Home Missions. The modern missionary enter- 
prise began in the Kilsyth and Cambuslang revivals of 1*742, 
parallel with the Moravian movement in Germany, the 
Marrow awakening of Boston, and the secessions from the 
Old Church of Scotland. 

The ministers and people who received new light at 
Cambuslang formed the first " Concert of Prayer that God's 
Kingdom may come," and after two years' experience of its 
blessedness invited their brethren in New England to join 
them, whence the appeal of Jonathan Edwards which helped 
William Carey at Moulton. A century after, at the same 
place Kilsyth, the next revival consecrated for the China 
Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England its founder, 
William C. Burns, M.A., who became the means of sending 
out Hislop himself to India. And to this day Ferryden 
bears fruit for the foreign fields from the seed which Hislop 
there sowed. And not only Ferryden. In the little hamlet 
of Usan, to the south, he knew that he had been the means 
of bringing fourteen souls to Christ. When he left these 
places the people followed him with their blessings, and his 
temporary successor, the Eev. W. B. Alexander, continued to 
report for months the good work of God. 

From scenes like these Stephen Hislop went to the 
Liverpool Missionary Conference, and then to the General 
Assembly in Edinburgh. Principal Cunningham was the 
retiring, and Dr. Eobert Buchanan the new, Moderator. The 
latter descanted on the movement which had been " stirring 
to their inmost depths multitudes of people in our own land," 
as one which had been subjected to a closer and more search- 
ing scrutiny than any other recorded. Mr. Hislop again 
represented Bombay Presbytery, with Dr. Hugh Miller of 
Shandon as elder. The only other missionaries present were 
the Eev. Behari Lai Singh, from Bengal, and the Eev. James 
Laing, from Burnshill, Kafraria. Colonel Shortrede, of the 



1860 ADDRESS TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 301 

Bombay Service, having told of his first introduction to the 
Scottish Mission there thirty-seven years before, and its his- 
tory since, and having reproached Scotland for apathy since the 
Mutiny, Mr. Hislop took up the tale of Nagpoor in 1857 : 
" The province contains nearly five millions of souls ; and 
for this vast population only two missionaries have been set 
apart ; in other words, there will be years when, from sick- 
ness and the like causes, there will be only one. In three 
years, between the departure of one beloved brother, whose 
resignation I never cease to regret, and the arrival of an- 
other, who has been carrying on the work with great devoted- 
ness, I was alone with the care of English churches and 
native churches, instructing the young in schools, and the 
adults in bazaars and villages. Gladly would we do more in 
the way of village preaching ; but how can we do so unless 
the headquarters of the mission be strengthened ? We long 
to do something for the Gonds. Their language requires to 
be reduced to shape ; books have to be written in it, and 
the Bible translated into it ; but how can all this be attempted 
when our hands are more than full already ? And yet these 
hill tribes, distinguished for their natural- truthfulness and 
independence, without caste, without venerated sacred 
works, without a tyrannical priesthood, and almost without 
idols, afford a very promising field for missionary exertion. 
They are allied to the people of Chutia Nagpoor, among 
whom the Gospel has been greatly blessed, and are similar 
to the Karens, of whom so many thousands have been 
admitted into the Christian Church. But to the five millions 
of Nagpoor we must add the nine millions of Haidarabad, 
and the six millions of other contiguous districts, all without 
a single European missionary from any Church, and we have 
an aggregate of twenty millions, for whom the whole provision 
made by Christians of every denomination is two European 
missionaries. Two European missionaries for twenty millions 



302 STEPHEN HISLOP 1860 

of perishing souls ! Do we not blush to think of it ? The 
late troubles were sent to teach us a lesson of greater faith- 
fulness. Have we learned it ? All the English societies have 
increased their agency. Has the Free Church increased hers ? 
Nay, is it not a fact, sir, that we have fewer missionaries 
now than before the revolt ? And yet never was India so 
prepared to receive Christian truth as it is at this present 
moment. The disturbances have been overruled so as to 
humble Mussulman pride, and relax the rigour of Hindu 
caste; and now in the North of India we hear of more 
inquirers after Christ than ever before. ... If the Church 
of our fathers, reanimated with the faith, and zeal, and 
liberality of 1843, shall go forth to fight the battles of the 
Lord, and assail the strongholds of sin and Satan at home 
and abroad, she will find fulfilled in her blessed experience 
the promise of her Divine King, ' Them that honour me, I 
will honour.' " 

The next six months passed away, only too rapidly as it 
seemed, in forming missionary associations and visiting his 
kindred and his wife's at Olney. Leaving their daughters at 
Arbroath, on 14th November 1860 the missionary father and 
mother turned eastward. To Mr. Hunter he wrote from time 
to time : 

"LONDON, 29th November 1860. 

" MY DEAR BROTHER We never left more comfortably than we 
did on the evening of Wednesdcay, in so far as packing was concerned. 
But there was many a pang in parting from dear friends, whom we 
may never see again. I pray the Lord may guide and bless you 
wherever you are, though I still cling to the hope that you may see 
it to be the path of duty to return to the East. Early on Saturday 
morning we propose starting for Folkestone on our way to Paris, 
where we hope to spend Sabbath and part of Monday. The steamer 
sails from Marseilles on the evening of Wednesday the 5th. . . . 
Eupert says Professor Phillips has not been in town for some months, 
and consequently has not -seen the slab. There seems to be no inten- 
tion of sending it to Oxford. K thinks that the Xylobius of Burdie- 



1861 RETURNS TO NAGPOOR 303 

house is new, and that you ought to give a description of it. Hugh 
Mitchell has sent a paper to the Geological Society on the old Bed of 
his vicinity. I find it is out of. my power in the meantime to write 
anything about the sandstone of Nagpoor, though I wish to say a few 
words. And now, commending you to God and the Word of His 
grace, I am, yours very affectionately, S. HISLOP." 

"NAGPOOR, 6th March 1861. ... At Bombay we stayed with 
Dr. Wilson, who seems to be as active as ever in his varied occupa- 
tions. He stands much in need of help, for the only other ordained 
European at the station is not able to do much. The Free Church in 
the evenings is very well filled. At Poona we lived with Dr. M. 
Mitchell, under whom, in conjunction with Mr. Gardner, the Institu- 
tion is outwardly very prosperous. Mr. White's society also we 
enjoyed. He works most harmoniously with the Free Church 
brethren. He preaches in the villages in the plains, joining his 
family once a week. He is not connected with any society. At 
Seroor we found Mr. and Mrs. Bisset. Mr. and Mrs. Ballantme and 
Miss Farrar seem to be identified with Ahmednagar. They are most 
excellent people. . . . The railway carries us still no farther than 
Poona. From that we travelled in a bullock -cart, changing bullocks 
all the way here. We arrived at our old abode on 30th January, 
having left Poona on the 10th. We were accompanied by a Mr. Ker, 
a grandson of Claudius Buchanan, who is likely to be emploj^ed as 
a railway engineer. His cart was twice upset by the way ; but we 
escaped all such catastrophes until we were entering Sitabaldi village, 
where we met Mr. Stothert on horseback. Our village bullocks, 
frightened at the unusual sound of cantering, started oft', and threw 
us into a prickly hedge. Most merciful preservation, for had they run 
on another yard they would have dragged us over a bridge. Baba, 
Bamswami, Khempuri (the lad who stayed for a few days with David 
Anand in our compound), and another, had met us at Gumganni ; and 
they helped us to put the cart again on its wheels, and we walked 
through Sitabaldi to oiir bungalow. We found the native church pros- 
perous. . . . Our new school (now Hislop College) on the bund of the 
Tank is not nearly finished yet, and I have to attend to it. Our English 
services are better attended than formerly, owing to the presence of the 
91st Begiment in Kamthi and a considerable increase in the population 
of Sitabaldi. Mr. Stothert has got on very well with the language. 

" On the voyage out I wrote something for the Geological Society 
on the age of the Nagpoor sandstone and coal. I have since read a 



304 STEPHEN HISLOP 1861 

report by Oldham, who argues for a much greater antiquity. I have 
begun to doubt, on the ground that some of the fossils in the Kamthi 
blocks may be of one age, and others of another. What has Professor 
Balfour done ? " 

"NAGPOOR, 21st August 1861. I was glad to receive your letter 
from Corsock. ... I hope the bud is now expanding into the fruit 
of holiness. It will interest us much here to learn what the Lord is 
doing among you in Galloway. It seems as if the interest in vital 
religion were still on the increase at home. From Ferryden I had a 
letter by last mail. Some that had made a profession at the com- 
mencement of the work had become cold, but these are exceptional 
cases, while new additions were being made to the Church of such as 
shall be saved. Here we have few signs of spiritual life. Our coun- 
trymen in Sitabaldi are not so opposed to the truth as they were three 
years ago, when we were surrounded by a strong body of infidels. 
Though Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) E. K. Elliot is Commissioner, 
and Major Spence, Judicial Commissioner ; and Major Snow, Deputy 
Commissioner, yet we have some friends among the Europeans of the 
station. . . . We have got a flourishing Sabbath School also here, 
which is attended both by European and native children. . . . Mr. 
Stothert has made excellent progress in the languages, of which he is 
learning three at once Marathi, Urdu, and Sanskrit. He has also 
the charge of the English school, but it is not prospering at present. 
. . . Yesterday I was favoured by Rupert with a proof-sheet of my 
paper which is to appear in the August number of the Geological 
Society's Journal. My remarks would have been spared, had it not 
been that I wished to stir up Bunbury. They had the desired effect. 
Otherwise they are imperfect, written as they were on board the 
steamer without books, and especially without having seen Oldham's 
vol. ii. part 2. If I had had a sight of that publication previously I 
would have written a little more intelligently, and placed the coal not 
higher than the Trias. Blanford has been examining the Raniganj 
Basin, and he finds there three distinct groups of rocks overlying each 
other unconformably : 1. Panchet group, including upper, 500 feet ; 
lower Panchets, 1500 feet. 2. Damuda group, comprehending Rani- 
ganj series, 5000 feet; Ironstones, 15 00 feet; and Lower Damuclas, 
2000 feet. 3. Talchir group, 800 feet. The last, which are the 
lowest, agree in age with those in Orissa, which contain probably the 
same as our Korhadi shale. All the Damuda rocks, I suppose, embed 
Glossopteris, but the upper or Raniganj series exhibit a peculiar plant, 
which Oldham reckons a Schizoneura. The lower Panchets are 



1861 ENTERS ON HIS SECOND PERIOD OF TOIL 305 

remarkable for their reptilian remains (Labyrinthodonts and Dicnyo- 
donts and Estheria) which is believed to be identical with our Mangali 
one. So that this discovery gives. a clue to the position of the Mangali 
red sandstone. If you read Medlicott's paper on the Narbada Terri- 
tory, you would see that he was grouping the rocks that lie above the 
before mentioned. Besides the Mahadewas (an imbedded sandstone) 
he makes a group of Lametas, which are evidently the ' bridge ' and 
allied strata. I had been inclined to think the ' bridge ' the soft 
state of the ' iron-banded,' but a recent visit to Kamthi quarries led 
me to form the idea that the ' bridge ' of a purple colour there lies 
unconformably above the Mahadewas. It appeared to me that the 
former was filling up a hollow of the latter. I therefore intend sub- 
mitting to Indian geologists the propriety of giving up the present 
nomenclature of Lameta and Intertrappean, for both names proceed 
on an erroneous conception that these two are distinct formations, 
whereas I consider them to be the same, the same shells being in the 
Intertrappean, and there being no break in the stratification from 
the top of the subtrappean to the Mahadewas. For this group, in- 
cluding (1) the Intertrappean zone of deposit on oiir trap escarpments, 
(2) purple and green of Takli, and (3) the bridge, I would suggest the 
name of Takli. What think you of my boldness ? " 

On 31st January 1861, when Stephen Hislop, in the 
strength which is born of the joy of the Lord, entered on his 
second period of missionary labour and scientific recreation, 
he was in his forty-fourth year. Restored in health, abound- 
ing in elastic energy, full of hope, spiritually most vigorous, 
all round he was in the perfection of his powers. He had, 
however, less than three years to live. Into that brief 
portion he crowded the achievements of a lifetime as effect- 
ually as if he had been told divinely the measure of his days. 
He had learned to live day by day. Of him more than of 
any spiritual worker the lines were true : 

" In secret love the Master 

To each one whispers low, 
' I am at hand, work faster, 
Behold the sunset glow ! ' 
And each one smileth sweet 
Who hears the Master's feet." 
X 



CHAPTER X 

A REFORMER OF THE CIVIL ADMINISTRATION 

From Bombay to Nagpoor The Salt Lake of Lonar Hislop's work as a 
Reformer of the Civil Administration The Non-Regulation Provinces 
His opinion of Mr. Plowden, who consults him as to Education Plowden's 
successor worse still The Friend of India takes up the question, informed 
by Hislop Its relation to the Government of India Decree constituting 
the Central Provinces Sir Richard Temple appointed Chief Commis- 
sioner His opinion of Stephen Hislop Reforms and prosperity come 
at last The first Anmial Administration Report Hislop's satisfaction 
Geological correspondence The new Land Settlement Growth of the 
Central Provinces in a Generation Moral progress as tested by excise 
and schools Hislop would make Haidarabad a Mission offshoot Tour 
west to Berar Letter to Rev. Dr. W. Hanna Immediate fruit of nine- 
teen years' labour Point to which his Mission has now grown Educa- 
tional Missions Last letter to his brother Last of the inhuman prac- 
tices abolished "Visit of Bishop Cotton Hislop's last missionary act to 
open new schools. 

STEPHEN HISLOP returned to India still a young man, 
and therefore without such honours from his own Uni- 
versity as are too often reserved for extreme old age. 
On the day after Christmas, 1860, he and his wife were wel- 
comed by Dr. John Wilson at the pier of Bombay, and driven 
off to the ever hospitable "cliff" on Malabar Hill. There 
were found many other guests the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Eobson, 
on their way to Rajpootana ; Mr. and Mrs. Young from Surat, 
with several children, homeward bound ; and the Eev. Mr. 
and Mrs. Wallace. The three great Presbyterian Missions of 
Scotland and Ireland were thus represented. The universal 
Concert for Prayer in the first week of 1861 kept him there 



861 THE NON-REGULATION SYSTEM 307 

at Poona, Seroor, and Ahmednagar. Some newly-discovered 
Buddhist caves detained him at Aurangabad, and divine ser- 
vice at Jalna. When marching through Berar he turned 
aside to see the salt lake of Lonar, forty miles north-east of 
Jalna, where also are temples of monoliths which the natives 
believe to have been raised in one night by demons who forced 
Hemar Pant, the Cornelius Agrippa of the Dekhan, to find 
work for them. The lake is an isolated circular hollow, about 
a mile in diameter, from 300 to 400 feet deep, and without an 
outlet. Its salts are used by the people for dyeing and wash- 
ing. Its origin is ascribed to volcanic explosion long after 
the epoch of the Dekhan trap. On the 31st January he re- 
sumed his missionary duties with renewed enthusiasm and 
success, as the few brief years hurried on. 

He was used by God, unconsciously on his part, to reform 
the whole civil administration, and to bring into existence 
the Chief Commissionership of the Central Provinces of India 
under officials of high personal character and splendid energy. 

When the Marquis of Dalhousie added a third to the 
empire of British India, in the eight years of his administra- 
tion, he kept the new territories free from the legal complexity 
of the East India Company's Eegulations. The vast Provinces 
of the Panjab, Lower Burma, Ouclh, Berar, and Nagpoor he 
and his Council declared to be " ISTon-Kegulation," on a system 
first devised by Sir Henry Durand in Tenasserim. Short 
codes of law and procedure were administered by military and 
civil officers, according to conscience, until our new and war- 
like subjects could be disarmed and taught the blessings of 
personal rule by Christian gentlemen. The Company's re- 
gulations were inelastic and dilatory enough for the old pro- 
vinces which had been under our sway since Lord Cornwall! s ; 
these laws were the direct cause of rebellion in the few districts 
where the military mutiny merged into that more serious 
form. Our experience of the Non-Eegulation system enabled 



308 STEPHEN HISLOP 1861 

that great jurist, Sir Henry Maine, to elaborate the Codes of 
Law and Procedure for all India, which now work with 
singular perfection, save where the land assessment is too 
heavy and the law of debt is mercilessly applied. 

It is evident that the Non-Eegulation system requires able 
men for its righteous application, and wise control on the part 
of the Chief and Judicial Commissioners. Otherwise it may 
become an unmitigated curse. Now Lord Dalhousie chose out 
of all India the ablest officials, military men like Sir Henry 
Lawrence and civilians like Sir John Lawrence, and their 
staff, for the Panjab, and so saved India in 1857, and made 
the civilisation of that Province the greatest triumph of the 
English rule of subject races in all history. He repeated the 
experiment in Burma and Oudh under Sir Arthur Phayre 
and Sir Eobert Montgomery. But he left Nagpoor and 
Berar to men who were not fit for the more important frontier 
provinces conquered in war or annexed for terrible misrule 
to men of whom Mansel and Plowden were the best, and the 
rest are characterised in what follows. It is enough to say 
that, so far as these administrators were concerned, Nagpoor 
was in a worse state than when a Maratha kingdom under the 
firm hand of Sir Eichard Jenkins. 

From Captain G. Eamsay to Colonel E. K. Elliot, Stephen 
Hislop had no hostility to the men. He found that he could do 
most good by privately influencing them, save when he had to 
call in public opinion to sever the British Government from 
idolatry and intolerance. Writing in November 1856 to his 
brother, after Lord Dalhousie had called on the Nagpoor and 
all other authorities to report on the application of the Com- 
pany's Education Despatch of 1854 to the schools of the 
Province, he mentions that Mr. Plowden had consulted him as 
to a reply. That admirable Despatch, as developed by Lord 
Eipon's Commission, and by Lord Dufferin's official declara- 
tion on the last day of 1887, that the establishment of more 



1856 HIS PLANS OF GOVERNMENT EDUCATION FOR NAGPOOIl 309 

Christian schools and colleges is earnestly desired, provided 
that " Government were to establish as few schools of their 
own as possible, but to encourage by grants a sound secular 
course of training, though it were combined, as in the case of 
a Mission school, with Christianity. This I endeavoured to 
apply to the circumstances of the JSTagpoor territory in a 
sketch which Mr. Plowden asked me to draw out. The next 
subject was the language that ought to be used in the courts 
of justice throughout the Province. When Captain Elliot 
was acting Commissioner, he referred it to the Deputy Com- 
missioners under him what language they would wish to 
employ in their several districts. None of them knew 
Marathi, and of course being unwilling to burden themselves 
with the duty of learning another language, they all, with one 
honourable exception, voted for Hindustani, which they did 
know. Since that time Marathi has been proscribed in the 
courts. All trials, etc., have been conducted in a foreign 
tongue. I more than once hinted to Mr. Plowden after he 
came that this was an improper state of affairs, and 
I was asked to write out my opinion and suggestions. 
It is reported that Marathi will ere long be restored to its due 
place. Mr. Plowden is very much abused and censured in the 
newspapers, but hitherto he has shown himself to be one of 
the best administrators that I have become acquainted with. I 
would also ask a copy of Wood's Index Testaceologicus, new 
edition, brought down to the present day, by Sylvanus Han- 
ley, published by G-. Willis, Great Piazza, Co vent Garden, 
London, at 3 : 13 : 6d, in half morocco. I hope you will not 
object, for it is not many luxuries that I indulge in." 

Unhappily Mr. Plowden suffered from constitutional lazi- 
ness. The non-appearance of his Salt Keport was the stand- 
ing joke of Anglo-Indian officials. He could not and did not 
send in reports to the central Government at Calcutta, which 
was almost as ignorant of the course of events in the new 



310 STEPHEN IIISLOP 1861 

Province as the Calcutta or Bombay public. In spite of the 
provision of an Act of Parliament passed in 1854, he never 
sent in an annual report on the moral and material progress 
of the country. He left a mass of arrears to Colonel E. K. 
Elliot, a successor who to his failings added that of weak health. 
On his return Hislop found the administration not only 
weaker but more corrupt than ever. Uncontrolled by a 
Commissioner of energy and high morale, the district officers, 
with a few exceptions, left the routine of work to their native 
subordinates. These sold justice, or were believed to do so 
by the suitors. The lazy adoption of Hindustani as the 
court language and banishment of Marathi, the mother 
tongue of the majority of the people, threw the administration 
into the hands of men of the Kaiet caste, who fattened on a 
monopoly of office in every department. Hislop wrote 
privately to the Editor of the Friend of India, at that time the 
present writer. The two set themselves deliberately and per- 
sistently to expose the scandals and bring about reform. 
Hislop's full and impartial letters were made the basis of 
frequent articles. Cases were mentioned, names were given, 
of the native servants and court subordinates of British 
officers who had been allowed by the incapacity and laziness 
of their masters to fatten on bribes. Acting on the policy 
which had always led the great weekly journal to give inde- 
pendent support and counsel to a Government placed like 
that of India, while opposing it when principle seemed to be 
overlooked, the editor confidentially submitted all the facts 
and allegations in Hislop's letters to Lord Canning and his 
Foreign Office. Moved by the exposures, the official most 
reprehensible for permitting the corruption of the natives 
around him asked the permission of the Government to 
bring an action against the journal. On being consulted, the 
Editor privately assured the Governor- General that he would 
rejoice if the officer were allowed to take public proceedings, 



1861 CONSTITUTION OF THE OENTKAL PROVINCES 311 

as the best means to bring the system to an end. Stephen 
Hislop was no less ready to vindicate his statements. But 
the Viceroy, having had his eyes opened at last, agreed to 
a better way. He sent Sir E. Temple to Nagpoor. 

When the Mutiny and its campaigns had ceased, towards 
the end of 1858, Lord Canning for the first time saw North 
India with his own eyes, and had the frankness to confess to 
Sir William Muir that he should have done many things very 
differently. From Lower Bengal to Peshawur in the north, 
and Nagpoor in the south, the administration of Hindustan 
had to be reorganised. Financial considerations alone ren- 
dered this urgent. Everywhere the lavish expenditure of 
two years of confusion and war had to be intelligently checked. 
Mr. James Wilson set the painful machinery in motion. His 
lieutenants were Sir George Balfour for the military and Sir 
Richard Temple for the civil establishments. The latter was 
charged with the duty of reporting, after personal inspec- 
tion, on the financial results of combining the province of 
Nagpoor with the North- West districts of Sagar and Narbada 
under one jurisdiction. At Kamthi he was closely associated 
with Brigadier Browne, the noblest soldier of the Madras 
army, and Hislop's helper in all good works. There was a 
hope that Berar would form part of the new Proconsulate, 
at a time when the American Civil War had given extraordi- 
nary importance to the production of East India cotton. 
Lord Canning did his best to bring this about, but he was 
opposed by his own representative in Haidarabad, to which 
State the surplus revenue is paid. 

On 30th November 1861 the Calcutta Gazette pub- 
lished the "Resolution" decreeing that a territory as 
large as Italy, with a population which our rule has 
increased to twelve millions, be consolidated "under 
one central jurisdiction at Nagpoor." The decree frankly 
and in general terms admitted the charges of Mr. Hislop 



312 STEPHEN HISLOP 1861 

and the Friend of India. Of the superseded form of 
administration it confessed that "it does not present that 
unity, completeness, and efficiency which are requisite in 
order that justice may be done to the condition and prospects 
of territories so largely capable of improvement." " With a 
province situated as Nagpoor the control exercised by the 
supreme Government is necessarily remote, and therefore 
slow." Thus two provinces, hitherto separated from the rest 
of India, had a chance of good government for the first time. 
They consist of perhaps the grandest plateau on the face of the 
globe, more than half of which, thirty years ago, was covered 
by dense forest and jungle, where the wild beast found its 
lair, and the Gond sought a precarious subsistence. The 
" unexplored " and unknown territory of Central India, 
over the south of which for fifteen years the missionary 
savant had been tramping and toiling as he preached to the 
people the glad tidings of the Kingdom, roadless, schoolless, 
barbarous, was at last to enter on an era of reformation and 
prosperity, to be second only to the Panjab and Burma. But 
who is to be the first Chief Commissioner ? 

Sir Eichard Temple's report, and the unanimous voice of 
Anglo-Indians, marked him out as the man to do there what 
John Lawrence, whose secretary he had been, had done in the 
Panjab ; as nearly as the different type of people allowed. But 
he was not a favourite of the Governor- General, and Lord Can- 
ning's regard for official etiquette prevented him from seeming 
to supersede Colonel Elliot, notwithstanding that officer's 
physical weakness. After the officials had settled down in their 
districts and had drawn their larger pay, the scheme would not 
work. The machinery looked well, but the motive power was 
wanting. Hislop was in despair ; for the old-new Chief had 
besides planted the old incompetents in the valuable Commis- 
sionerships. The Serampore Journal became deluged with 
complaints, so that it asked, " Are we living in a British de- 



1861 SIR RICHARD TEMPLE CHIEF COMMISSIONER 313 

pendency in the middle of the nineteenth century, or is British 
India as bad as Bourbon Naples and worse than St. Peters- 
burg ? " The very taxes were collected through a Marwaree 
firm, itself the largest tax-payer. The " Nagpoor clique " 
became notorious and intolerable all over India. The scandal 
had reached a height when the Calcutta Gazette announced the 
grant to the new Chief Commissioner of leave to Europe under 
medical certificate. Shut up to this course, Lord Canning's 
last act of patronage was to appoint Sir Richard Temple to be 
Chief Commissioner. On his way, in April 1862, to take up 
the duties, he spent an evening in the old dining-hall of the 
Serampore Brotherhood, from which it was said India was 
sometimes governed so many distinguished administrators 
discussed there the affairs of the Indian empire. He was shown 
the correspondence of Hislop, and told in detail of the value 
of the missionary to the public service as well as to the highest 
good of the people. The new ruler went to the Central Pro- 
vinces prepared to do him justice. The two became fast 
friends and fellow-workers. 

It is thus that the English Governor has since written of 
the Scottish missionary when reviewing Men and Events of 
My Time in India : l 

" At Nagpoor the best schools then existing belonged to 
the Mission established many years previously by the Free 
Church of Scotland, under the leadership of the Reverend 
Stephen Hislop. Indeed, the Mission establishment had 
been for many years a little focus of enlightenment in an 
isolated and uncivilised part of the empire. Hislop was 
among the most gifted and accomplished missionaries whom 
this generation has seen in India. Besides having much 
ability for organisation and education generally, for philology 
and antiquarian research, he had a taste and aptitude for 
physical science especially botany and geology. His varied 

1 John Murray, London, 1882, p. 241. 



314 STEPHEN HISLOP 1862 

talents were all brought to bear on the work of his sacred 
profession as an evangelist. He was a good teacher and 
preacher in the Marathi language, and had much knowledge 
of Hindu philosophy. He also perceived that the aboriginal 
tribes formed a not inconsiderable part of the population, and 
were as yet free from any preconceived notions, having minds 
quite open to the reception of Christianity, unless, owing to 
tardiness in missionary work on the part of the Christian 
Church, they should fall under the proselytising influences of 
Hinduism. He therefore specially studied the unwritten 
languages or dialects of these aboriginal tribes, collecting care- 
fully their ballads, legends, proverbs, and gathering information 
of much value and originality. He acquired an insight into 
the geology and botany of the Province, as affecting the soil, 
products, and climate. He had also a predilection for observ- 
ing the prehistoric remains scattered about the country, and 
pertaining to the so-called Scythian era before the coming of 
the Hindus to India. While still in his prime, he had 
become a shining light, a power for good, and, had he lived, 
he would have become, under Providence, an instrument of 
incalculable benefit to the people. It is sad to think what 
holy aspirations, what lofty hopes, what bright promises, were 
buried in his grave." 

Temple's advent changed the whole aspect of the adminis- 
tration, and even the country. In the saddle or at the desk, 
from sunrise to the late dinner hour, he stirred up every 
department and official, till schools, roads, the advancing 
railways north and south, mines, canals, and above all the 
land assessment, revolutionised the country in the best sense, 
and raised the revenue wherewith to make more extensive 
improvements. Engagements to the Bhosla family were 
faithfully maintained; one-fourth of the whole revenue of 
823,347 in 1861-62 having been assigned to 2158 pensioners, 
besides the lands of Deor, near Satara, conferred on Janoji 



1362 THE NEW ADMINISTRATIVE ERA 315 

Kaja, the adopted son. At least thirty-eight per cent, or 
325,000, was devoted to civil administration next year, 
such as officials, courts, police, schools, and dispensaries. 
The supreme Government spent on the public works and 
other improvements some 200,000 a year over and above 
the income of the Provinces. Temple's first report was re- 
ceived with gratulation by the Anglo-Indian press, which 
said of the writer " He shows no little skill in effectually 
conveying an impression of the gross misgovernment of Nag- 
poor without inculpating any of his predecessors." 

Hislop watched and helped and criticised, in his corre- 
spondence, the progress which he more than any other man 
had set in motion. He wrote thus to his old colleague, Dr. 
Hunter : 

" NAGPOOR, 6th July 1862. . . . We hope that our work will now 
take a start. Certainly there is much activity displayed now in all de- 
partments of Government. Mr. Temple, formerly in the Panjab, has 
succeeded Colonel E. K. Elliot, and with him has flowed into the 
Central Provinces a stream of improvement which is extending to 
every unvisited nook and corner of this inaccessible part of India. 
One of his first measures was to proceed to Mothoor, near the 
Mahadewas, and, on comparing it with other localities in the hottest 
part of May, to decide in favour of our old haunt, which will now 
be prepared for the accommodation of invalid soldiers and a delicate 
public. Then again the benefits of sanitary reform, with the imposi- 
tion of a slight tax, are to be introduced into the city and the larger 
towns. Nagpoor, if ever its trade shall be developed by the approach 
of the railway, is to have a new town added 011 the four sides of 
the_tank, while the old unseemly mounds that distressed us as we went 
to our English school are to be levelled, and boulevards made in their 
place. A system of education is to be commenced, but no rival school 
is to be set down where we may have one already. The only school 
to be established in the city is a normal one, in which as many of the 
ancient pantojis as consent are to be fitted for some usefulness. Bands 
of agents are to be invited from Poona, and Dr. M. Mitchell and myself 
will be to blame, if among them there shall be found any one of posi- 
tive infidel tendencies. I could multiply statements of this kind, but 



316 STEPHEN HISLOP 1862 

have not strength. Though Mr. Temple himself is only an enlightened 
civilian with respect for religion and missions, his secretary is Captain 
Mackenzie, a Highland Free Churchman and a Christian. 

" Oldhani now acknowledges the receipt of the small box of Scotch 
specimens, and is much obliged for your contribution. He has gone 
home for two or three months, and is to be heard of at the Government 
Museum, Jermyn Street, London. I hope in consultation with Pro- 
fessor Balfour you will soon work out the Eocene fruits." 

"NAGPOOK, 22d November 1862. . . . In my last I stated that you 
would scarcely know Sitabaldi. Many of the same names are still 
heard around us ; but the bearers of them known as children are now 
grown up and filling respectable positions in society. The clerks, with 
whom Sitabaldi is now crammed, desire a first-class school for their 
children, and invite the charitable aid of the European community. 
The old Maharaj Bagh is now the garden of an agri- horticultural 
society, which has branches throughout the Central Provinces. We 
have volunteers and a band. Dr. Heude has established a dispensary 
opposite the palace which is supported by voluntary contribution. At 
the beginning of this week, I am sorry to say, I received warning that 
Hunterpoor must be removed for the terminus of the railway, which 
is to occupy its site. We are to receive Es. 600 as compensation, 
but we have not yet obtained a new piece of ground on which to 
build. We hope to procure Lieutenant Bay's old compound behind our 
church in the ordnance lines. Our station is to have a museum and 
library, the former to be scientific as well as economical, the latter 
for works of reference, among which I hope to see the Asiatic Re- 
searches, etc. 

" I had a letter from Dr. Carter, now at home. He had visited 
Bowerbank in connection with sponges, and Eev. M. J. Berkeley, of 
Kingscliff, Northamptonshire, one of the greatest of fungolists, but a 
poor clergyman with thirteen children. He asks me what progress 
you and Professor Balfour made with the Eocene Flora. I hope soon 
to give him a satisfactory reply. I suppose the winter is really the 
Botanical Professor's season of greatest leisure, so I trust you will 
not let him off. Captain Forsyth, son of Eev. Dr. Forsyth, of 
Aberdeen, has selected from the Mahadewas a section of a tree fern 
stem, which is a great novelty. It grows about five feet high, with 
a trunk about the thickness of a man's arm. Perhaps you can tell 
me the nearest locality for a similar product. I have no book here 
to help me. Did I mention to you the true rose that was found in 
Bastar last year by Captain Stuart, an officer then in the Forest Conser- 



1863 GEOLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE 317 

vatory Department like Forsyth ? Any information regarding this 
will be acceptable. Wallich's Plantce Asiatics Rariores is in the Advo- 
cates' Library. Other works you might be able to consult in the 
University Library or from Professor Balfour." 

Mr. Hislop continued to send home and to Calcutta rich 
collections of fossils, and to receive from the scientific friends 
who had learned to know him during his furlough letters full 
of geological discussions and words of personal affection. 
Among others, Professor Huxley was engaged in reporting on 
his latest treasures. On 2d April 1863, Mr. Eupert Jones 
wrote from Sandhurst, where he was then one of the pro- 
fessors, of the completion of his Monograph of the Fossil 
Estherice, then about to appear : 

" The monograph will be of interest to you on account of the Indian 
Estherise. I regard the Mangali specimens as young and old, male 
and female, of one species (analogous variations in size and form 
being known in other species), and the Panchet specimens are prob- 
ably the same. The Kotah form is different. I wished to name them 
after Hislop and Hunter, but Baird had iised your name for a recent 
form, so I have termed them E. Mangaliensis and E. Kotahensis. I believe 
that all the known particulars are stated aided by your last memoir 
in the Bombay journals. I have also given a tabular ' correlation of 
the Estherian deposits of India (approximative only). Indeed I have 
fully treated of the geological relations of all the fossil Estlierice that 
are mentioned in the monograph. An appendix comprises the other 
bivalved Entomostraca that occur with the Estheriae. The cypris- 
like specimens in the Estherian bed of Kotah I describe as Candona (?) 
Kotahensis, acknowledging that its general resemblance to other Oandonce 
and Cyprides makes it hazardous to name it except for convenience sake. 
The Kotah Estherice is much like our Wealden species in some respects. 
The Mangali form is nearer to E. minuta on one hand, and to the 
Virginian E. owta on the other. I have never been able to get an 
opportunity of fixing Professor Morris with the Nagpoor Tceniopteris 
that you wish to be compared with T. lata. But this point will not be 
forgotten. 

" Your reptilian bones reached London safely and are in the Society's 
cabinet. Huxley has seen them. They could not be submitted to 
Owen for two reasons : he was too full of work, and Huxley had had 



318 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

the subject in hand. Oldham kindly sent from India a piece of the 
Panchet stuff for me, and I saw him subsequently in England, and the 
two Blanfords also. I shall try to send you a proof of the plate of 
Estherice comprising E. Mangaliensis et Kotahensis. 

" If your red sandstones, etc., be really triassic, there is an equiva- 
lent carbonaceous group in the European trias, namely the Lettenkohle 
group at the bottom of the Keuper. 

" We all remember you with pleasant cordial feelings ; we wish you 
well always ; we hope you have had good health of late, and that we 
may be all spared to meet again in health and strength." 

Like the closing sentence of the above, the following letter 
has a pathetic interest from the fact that the writer, Dr. Old- 
ham, and he to whom it was sent were so soon, though they 
knew it not, to be called away from their busy life on earth : 

"RooRKEE, llth July 1863. 

" MY DEAR MR. HISLOP The address above will in some degree 
plead excuse for my not having answered your kind and interest- 
ing note of alas ! 1 3th June. I have been running about a 
good deal, and have been very busy. I was rejoiced to hear that 
there was a better chance of good workable coal at Meerut. Your 
man Virapa seems to be most successful as a collector. How very 
provoking it is that one generally gets only those small terminal 
portions of fossils or branches of those Coniferse or Cupressium. It is 
impossible to make anything out of them. We have numbers from the 
Eajmahal Hills, but they are useless except to confuse. . . . It is a 
great relief to get away from the unceasing worry of the office and of 
Calcutta, although absence I find terribly delays progress. Nothing is 
done in many ways while you are away. 

"These are most interesting teeth, and as you say, their Megalo- 
saurian affinities are very remarkable. Have we no prospect of your 
getting down to these beds yourself ? It is clear there is much yet 
to be made out regarding them and their relations, and while Virapa's 
collections are most valuable, it is, I think, clear that nothing satis- 
factory can be inferred from them without careful examination of the 
beds 011 the spot. I presume, though you do not say so, that the 
Unios are different from those you have from the Intertrappean ? 

" I heard from Huxley, London, last mail. He is terribly over- 
worked, and has done nothing at the Indian fossils as yet. He does 
not say whether Rupert Jones has sent him those interesting specimens 



1863 FRUIT OF HIS ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS 319 

I took home or no. But I fancy not, from what he says of other 
things. Jones's paper on Estheriffl is out, and in it he gives a tabular 
view of Indian rocks, in which he has made several egregious mistakes 
as regards some of your subdivisions, I think, as well as my own. Of 
the latter the most important is that he puts the reptile remains into 
the Damuda or Eaniganj group. I must write to correct this and 
some other things. 

"I do hope to be able to send you some things for your Museum, 
but here I can do nothing. I will leave this before end of month. 
Must go over a section the hills near Naini Tal on my way down. 
I hope to be in Calcutta by middle of August. It is not pleasant 
weather for running about, but this cannot be helped. I have been 
lecturing at the College here, and have also undertaken a heavy job 
to arrange all their minerals and fossils in the Museum, which has 
given me work morning and daytime for some days, but I have made 
an approach to completion, and a few days more will finish them off. 
I have not got a single fossil up here. No Siwalik fossils near 
this. The hunting grounds for them are more to the West and 
North. . . ." 

The good government, the honest and careful administra- 
tion which Stephen Hislop had at last set in motion, produced 
financial and moral results even more rapid than he had 
dared to anticipate. At once, in the more important and 
ultimately in all of the eighteen districts or counties, a settle- 
ment of the land-tax for a generation was set on foot. The 
Central Provinces reaped the fruit of the experience of the 
Panjab, whose younger officials were joined with some from the 
neighbouring Province of Bombay in doing the work. The 
completion of the settlements resulted in an increase of five 
per cent on the previous assessment. The average rate for 
each cultivated acre is only thirteenpence. This is mar- 
vellously little in itself and compared with the neighbouring 
districts of the North-West. The cause is not far to seek. 
Central India was the favourite hunting-ground of the 
Marathas. There they hunted men, now deluging its fields 
with the blood of a hundred battles, now squeezing from the 
peasantry the highest sums they could possibly pay. The 



320 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

triennial settlements of the Marathas left to the people a bare 
subsistence, but the demands of their armies and the un- 
authorised exactions of their officials took away even that. 
Land went out of cultivation, the population fled, and those 
who remained ceased to increase. What the Marathas began 
we in many cases completed, by our ignorantly severe assess- 
ment. Then came the Mutiny, which was to many provinces 
a revival of the Maratha times. Our records were swept 
away, our settlement work was arrested. The creation of a 
separate Chief Cornmissionership was followed by the great 
rise in cotton, and there was hope for Central India. Hislop 
lived to see the new era, which he had done so much to in- 
troduce, dawn in districts like "Wardha, where " the price of 
cotton rose till it reached 900 per cent on the prices of 1858, 
and the price of grain of all kinds went up at least forty per 
cent." But rents did not rise in proportion to the rise in the 
price of produce. The increase was only nine per cent in 
Wardha because of abounding waste land ; it was thirty per 
cent in Hoshangabad. 

A quarter of a century has passed since the new era began. 
Koads, railways, mining companies, the forest and public 
works officers have penetrated everywhere. What used to be 
called the " great wilderness " of the Indrawati now responds 
to the influence of the new civilisation. From Eaepoor, centre 
of the long neglected and isolated plain of Chatteesgarh the 
land of threshing-floors which the Banjaras' pack cattle alone 
visited a Commissioner like Mr. A. H. L. Fraser, who re- 
joices to give his leisure to the development of Hislop's work, 
sends forth the highest influences. The Chief Commissioner 
himself, the Hon. A. Mackenzie, of the same school, reviews 
with satisfaction the progress set in motion during those 
memorable years 1862-64. In a land nearly as large as 
Italy (115,935 square miles) the population has risen from 
less than nine to nearly twelve millions the coming census 



1887 THEN AND NOW 321 

. will show that a population as large as that of Scotland has 
been added to it in a generation. The annual land revenue, 
which was 530,303 in the year ending March 1863, was 
625,673 in 1887; the total revenue just doubled itself, 
rising to fl^O^QO. 1 

The moral progress may be estimated from the two de- 
partments of excise and education. Before Hislop passed 
away the former yielded 74,535 from drink and drugs, and 
765 from opium j in 1887 these had risen to 257,521 and 
21,470 respectively. Undoubtedly the department has 
checked the drinking excesses of the Gonds and other abor- 
igines with gain to the public revenue, but the native staff 
have been, as in other provinces, the zealous promoters of 
drunkenness. There is no such drawback in the region of 
public instruction, not even that which in all the other pro- 
vinces has just been acknowledged by the Government of 
India to be a consequence of the purely secular education 
given in State colleges. Until Hislop's own example and 
remonstrances prevailed there were practically no schools 
worth the name in the Central Provinces. Under Colonel 
Dods and his successor, Mr. Colin Browning, B.A., some 2000 
schools, with 110,000 pupils, have been called into existence, 
exclusive of those not under inspection. While the bulk of 
the grants in aid have gone to primary and girls' schools, the 
higher education has kept pace with these in colleges and 
high schools, the Hislop Missionary College being at their 
head. Local self-government has made more progress there 
than in any other part of India. As yet, too, this is only the 
beginning of prosperity, whether the Central Provinces be 
linked on to the Bombay Governorship or be developed into a 
Lieutenant Governorship. The completion of the Bengal- 

1 Report on the Administration of the Central Provinces for the year 1886- 
87. By A. Mackenzie, Esq., C.S.I., Chief Commissioner. Nagpoor: October 
1887. 

Y 



322 STEPHEN ITISLOP 1862 

Nagpoor railway, which will make Nagpoor the principal half- 
way depot on the main line from Bombay to Calcutta, and 
soon to Burma and China, will produce improvements which 
the reformers of the year 1900 will rejoice over, as we now 
do when we look back on the toils of Stephen Hislop. 

To him. the root and the fruit alike of all true progress was 
found in the manifestation of Christ to Hindus, Gonds, and 
Mohammedans, and in His living manifestation by as many 
of them, and of the ruling class as had found Him. Frequent 
attacks of fever troubled Hislop in 1862, and he was much 
occupied by the superintendence of the college building. 
But the four missionaries, the Hislops and the Coopers the 
former among the Marathi-speaking, the latter among the 
Tamil-speaking, and both in the English services and girls' 
schools toiled on through heat and cold, often gladdened by 
new converts, and ever on the watch and in prayer to build 
up the young native churches. Hislop's letters during his 
second Indian service are rich in incident, in aspiration, in 
gratitude to God, as he records the ingathering of inquirers, 
the growing hopefulness of the work of colporteurs like 
Apaya and catechists like Pahud Singh, the proofs of the 
working of the Spirit of God among the dumb millions. In 
June 1861, while repeating his cry for a third missionary, if 
only a lay teacher, he urged his Church to occupy Haidarabad 
by an offshoot from its Madras Mission, in obedience to the 
call of the Native Christian community there : " It would be 
a noble opportunity for beginning the work of evangelisation 
in the long -neglected territories of the Nizam; it would 
form the link between Bombay and Madras as ours, 
though at what a distance ! does between Bombay and 
Calcutta." 

His tour in the cold season of 1861-62 was made west to 
Amraoti, the capital of Berar, where he had engaged to 
preach to the Englishmen employed on the railway. 




CO 

o 



o 

CO 



is 






1862 AMONG THE PEOPLE 323 

" Though it is very undesirable for a missionary to deal in the most 
cursory manner with secular matters, still they will sometimes be 
thrust in his way. As might be expected, the income tax was thus 
often forced 011 my attention by my native hearers. When I could 
not avoid the subject, I told them that the Bible taught me, as one of 
the people like themselves, the duty of contributing towards the expenses 
of the Government, and that if there were no British to administer the 
country they might lay their account for paying tax in another form 
not so agreeable which the elder among them might remember in 
their childhood, when the Pindarees were in the habit of overrunning 
their villages, and extorting their wealth with the infliction of torture 
and threats of death. 

" But there was one complaint brought at Kundali against the 
British Government, which it would puzzle a European to conjecture. 
It was not against their injustice, but their impartiality. For the first 
time within the memory of man the priestly caste are being treated by 
the magistrate like other men. If a Brahman has committed an offence 
he is condemned to the same punishment as a Mahar (low caste person) 
who has been guilty of the same crime. I replied that not only did 
the British Government act thus ; but that in the government of the 
Most High there was the same rule of rectitude that at the bar of 
heaven there was no difference between high caste and low caste, and 
that on the day of judgment no one would be pardoned because he was 
a Brahman, but because he had accepted the righteousness and atone- 
ment of the Great High Priest, who was a Saviour for all, the lowest 
as well as the highest of mankind. A group of Mahars, who had 
listened with peculiar interest to this statement on the outskirts of the 
crowd, led the way in the dark to my tent. 

"On another occasion I was cheered by the concern felt in my 
message by one of these despised outcasts. At Pipulgaum, on the 
Pindi Hills, I addressed a small number of villagers, who, considering 
that they had never heard the gospel before, were not only attentive 
but displayed much intelligence in entering into it. There was one, 
however, before all the others in this respect, though being a Mahar he 
was as usual seated behind them. When I rose to leave he offered to 
accompany me. This being the official duty of the class to which he 
belongs, I thought he might have offered from that feeling, and I de- 
clined, at the same time setting off on the remainder of my day's 
ourney as rapidly as I could, hoping thereby to leave him behind. 
However, he followed close at my heels, and when I repeated that I 
did not need his services, he said he had come on business of his own. 



324 STEPHEN HISLOP 1862 

1 But what,' lie asked, * was the name of that Saviour of whom you 
spoke ? ' I told him ; whereupon he repeated it over and over, 
observing that this was the business on which he had come. I had 
his company for two miles to Yawatmahal, conversing as we went along 
about the affairs of eternity. Though unaware of it at the time, I was 
not long in ascertaining that his presence was not altogether unneces- 
sary. We had been on our ground not more than half an hour, when 
we heard the sound of shouting. It proved to be the noise of men, 
frightening away a tiger, which had leaped from its covert by the way- 
side on a cartful of people as they passed along. The animal had 
marked a little child for its prey ; but on the father using a stick, 
which he had, to drive it off, it sprang upon him, seizing him by the 
arms and thighs. The shouting of the other men caused the tiger to 
let go its hold of the man, and it made off with his turban, which, 
however, was dropped and afterwards recovered. As the cart ap- 
proached the village, I went out to meet it and examined .the poor 
man's wounds. What a deliverance ! I subsequently spoke to the 
people of the still greater deliverance which the gracious God, who 
had preserved him, was willing to vouchsafe from the power of Satan 
that devouring lion. But, as if to show the art with which the 
enemy of souls works, next morning, when we left our ground before 
dawn, the chief of the village police, who accompanied us to the first 
hamlet on our road, was full of questions of a speculative rather than 
a practical kind, such as, Who made Satan, and Whether the Southern 
Cross, which was at that moment shining in the heavens, was, as he 
had heard from Konianists, when he was in the Nizam's army, a 
veritable witness to the truth of the Christian religion ? 

" In the country through which we travelled after leaving Yawat- 
mahal wild beasts were unusually abundant even for Central India. 
On the second day we came to a spot on the road where a cow had 
been carried off by a tiger four clays before, and a little farther on 
the same march we passed a place where a Kolam had fallen a victim 
that clay week. But amid all our journeyings we would record it to 
the praise of the Lord's faithfulness, that not a hair of our head was 
injured. 

" The Kolam just mentioned belonged to one of those aboriginal 
tribes that are scattered over all the jungly tracts. On my late tour, 
as well as on other occasions, I collected a considerable amount of in- 
formation on their religion, language, customs, and moral condition. 
They are in many respects an interesting people ; but as there is no 
missionary acquainted with their language they may well say, No man 



1863 HIS LAST REPORT 325 

careth for our souls. Is there no call on our Church, which professes 
to have occupied the Nagpoor Province, to consider what she can do 
on behalf of these neglected children of the forest ? With only two 
European labourers here, nothing, I regret to say, can be clone in the 
meantime." 

To the Eev. Dr, Hanna, biographer of Thomas Chalmers 
and most beloved of Scottish ministers, who became for too 
short a time director of the Missions in Edinburgh, Mr. 
Hislop wrote his first official letter on 22d October 1862, 
describing the previous neglect of the country and consequent 
ignorance of the people : 

"I am thankful to say that since 7th May, when Mr. Temple 
arrived here as Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, all this 
has been changed. An impetus has been given to improvement of 
every kind such as Nagpoor never experienced in any period of its 
history. The banished vernacular has been recalled, and schools for 
teaching it are to be established. A grant in aid has been given to 
our schools, and in respect of our having had previous possession of the 
ground no Government school, except one for training teachers, is to be set 
down in the city. The education of the capital, therefore, in a manner 
depends on the Mission ; and how needful that while imparting sound 
secular knowledge we should leaven the minds of the young with the 
saving truths of the gospel ! "We entreat the committee to send us 
help. Our schools in the city, Sitabaldi and Kamthi, would require all 
our time, but we have in addition to preach to our countrymen at the 
two latter places, and we long to preach more extensively among the 
adult natives of the Province. If you cannot send us a third mis- 
sionary, we would earnestly solicit the appointment of a pious young 
man accustomed to the work of teaching. This gift, so urgently needed, 
I trust you will be able to confer upon us, and thus render the com- 
mencement of your Convenership memorable in our Mission." 

To the General Assembly of 1863 he made his last report, 
showing 61 adult converts as the fruit of his pioneering 
ministry, and a native Christian community at the close of 
1862 of 140, of whom 45 were in full communion. In the 
Institution and five other schools 628 youths of both sexes 
39 girls were receiving a Christian education. "The pro- 



326 



STEPHEN IIISLOP 



1863 



spect of a native pastorate supported by the members of our 
native church is still far distant," he somewhat sadly wrote. 
" The desire for it is, however, increasing." Even he had not 
faith to realise the progress of the living temple whereof he 
had laid the foundations, though it was so soon to be deprived 
of his fostering care. Here, as with Livingstone's death for 
Africa, and Ion Keith-Falconer's for Arabia, and that of many 
other missionary martyrs, the Lord's parable of the seed-corn 
has been and is being verified. 




MISSION HALL, BIIANDARA. 

The staff now consists of six Scottish missionaries, of whom 
two are ordained medical graduates, 1 besides four are women 
missionaries. While the Gond work has been efficiently pro- 
vided for at Chindwara through the Swedish Society, and at 
Mandla and Jabalpoor by the Church Missionary Society, 2 and 

1 One of these, the Rev. Dr. Sandilands, M.A., is generously supported 
by the Rev. Robert Barbour of Bonslceid. 

2 ' ' The Rev. H. D. Williamson's report of the Gond Missions is one of 
the most deeply interesting received from any part of the world. The 



1863 CHRISTIAN TEACHERS AND ITINERATING PREACHERS 327 

the Original Secession Church of Scotland works from Seoni, 
the populous county town of Bhandara has become a new 
centre chiefly through the zeal and sacrifice of the Native 
Christians. 

These, from Hislop's and other Missions, had themselves 
been preaching the Gospel to the fourteen thousand inhabitants 
of Bhandara, and, in the surrounding country, had been dis- 
tributing the Scriptures and tracts ; had opened a school for 
boys of the lower classes ; had employed a catechist, a col- 
porteur, and teachers ; had built a schoolhouse and a manse. 
Their indigenous Mission reached a point where the super- 
intendence of one of Hislop's successors became necessary 
for its development. The Eev. J. Douglas was sent to 
them. Soon there was built the Mission Hall, in which not 
a few converts have since put on Christ, including Moham- 
medans. The leaders of the Native Christian community are 
men like Mr. Eangarao, pleader or advocate, and Maulavi 
Safdar Ali, one of a large class of seekers after God who, 
reluctantly driven from Islam by its failure to help the sin- 
ful, have become the most successful missionaries of Christ 
to their co-religionists. His brother-in-law, Hisam-ood-deem, 
is one of the Church's missionaries in Bombay. The latest 
convert was Abdool Masihi, who was followed by his whole 
family. Such men of position and learning, of purity of life 

Gospel is now spreading rapidly among these Dravidian aborigines ; and the 
fifteen adult baptisms of the year were all remarkable cases. One of the men 
baptized was not a Gond but a Baiga, a distinct and much lower race, 
wild men of the woods, who wash only once a year. 'The conduct and 
simple faith of all of them,' says Mr. Williamson, 'have given me the 
greatest joy, and they let their light shine among their friends and neigh- 
bours.' Inquirers and secret adherents abound, and many are asking for 
baptism ; but much care has to be exercised, as the Gonds have a tendency 
to add the worship of Christ on to their old idolatry, or to worship Him 
in their old ways, as by offering Him cocoa-nuts. This tendency, how- 
ever, is accompanied by extreme simplicity, and God has seemed to honour 
their childlike faith by using dreams to guide them, and by giving them 
remarkable answers to prayer." Church Missionary Society's Ecmew of the 
Year 1887-88. 



328 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

and love of truth, who belong to the school of Barzoi, the 
physician to whom the world owes the Kalilah and Dimnah 
literature, and of Al Kindy, the Apologist at the court of the 
Caliph Al M&rnun, show what converts Mohammedanism will 
give up to Christ when the Church works for them in 
earnest in a tolerant land such as India now is. 

Kamtek, the great shrine of Kama and a pilgrim centre, 
is about to be occupied for the first time. There are 
three native congregations, meeting at Sitabaldi, at Kamthi, 
and in the city of Nagpoor, where they are erecting 
the first Christian church. They enjoy the ministrations 
of one of their own countrymen, the Kev. P. Timothy, 
a duly trained convert whom they " called " according to 
Presbyterian order. The Hislop College, affiliated to the 
Calcutta University, is the crown of a succession of high 
schools and Anglo-vernacular and vernacular schools ; it has a 
staff of one Principal, Eev. J. G. Cooper, and six Professors, 
Eev. David Whitton, Eev. A. Eobertson, M.B. and C.M., 
Mr. James Bremner, M.A., Bagiratha Prusad, B.A., Sedashive 
Jairam, B.A., and Gopal Ganesh Eanade, B.A. There are 
230 girls at school, and Scottish ladies visit the zananas. 
The number of youths of both sexes under Bible and secular 
instruction last year was 1093. According to the Lord's 
missionary law, Stephen Hislop laboured, others rejoice to 
enter into his labours. 

Hislop's latest utterance on a question which is still a 
subject of controversy only outside of India, we find in this 
letter to his brother : 



j 23d April 1863. I suppose there is a current setting 
in at home against the Institution system. My own view has always 
been an eclectic one, combining botli it and the itinerating method ; 
but I am afraid the disposition to undervalue Institutions proceeds 
from impatience for results. I cannot help thinking that at the Pre- 
sidency seats, where there are many Missions and a division of labour 



1863 INHUMAN PRACTICES SUPPRESSED 329 

is possible, Dr. Duff's plans were just what our Church should there 
carry out ; and who will say that their fruits have been less than those 
of other methods in the same field ? I think the record of the Madras 
Mission, as given in the True Yokefellows, will make this plain. No 
Mission in Madras was so much blessed as that for which John Ander- 
son and Kobert Johnston sacrificed their lives, and Braidwood shattered 
his constitution. In reading his and his friend's life how am I 
humbled ! How cold is my heart ! How unprofitable my efforts ! 
I wish to have more of the power of the Word and Spirit j more of 
the savour of Jesus dwelling in me. Pray for us here, dear Kobert, 
and for the work in which we are engaged. I desire with all sincerity 
to commend your soul, your family, and your important labours 
among the youth of our native land to the blessing of the Most 
High." 

In the last letter addressed to his brother, he wrote : 

" 1st August 1863. Since I wrote you last we have had an interesting 
occasion in connection with our work. When we returned from the 
country at the beginning of the year there was a letter lying for me 
dated ' Nagpoor Jail.' It proved to be from a native of Bengal, one of 
the educated young Hindus from the neighbourhood of Calcutta. On 
a charge of having attempted to cheat the Government in the Engineer- 
ing Department, he had been condemned to one year's rigorous imprison- 
ment. His education had been at a Government school ; his life had 
been one of infidelity and excess ; but he had come in contact with 
Christians, and now that he found Deism could give him no comfort in 
his season of shame and solitude, he turned for relief to the Bible. 
In his letter soliciting a visit from me, he asked a copy of the Scrip- 
tures. In my interview with him I found him under deep concern 
about his souL I have visited him twice a week ever since the end of 
January. Light was not long in breaking in on the darkness. He 
rejoiced in God his Saviour. His case was reinvestigated, and he was 
declared to be innocent. On his release he was baptized, and he 
desires, at a considerable pecuniary sacrifice, to serve his Lord in some 
direct way." 

In what proved to be the last of his twenty years' toil for 
the people of Central India, Hislop rejoiced to reap the fruit 
of his long and frequent remonstrances against the inhuman 
and intolerant practices sanctioned by Hinduism as meri- 



330 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

torious. In Nagpoor, up till 1863, men and women, who had 
made vows to Khandoba, used to swing about, suspended 
aloft by a hook fixed in the muscles of their back ; they were 
wont to insert cords, one on each side of the waist, and 
allow these for an hour to be drawn through the wounds with 
a see-saw motion ; and to many other similar penances they 
were in the habit of submitting. At a village named Kondi, 
about thirty miles east of Nagpoor, a custom prevailed which 
appears still more cruel. There the popular god is named 
Hirba, and a crowd of worshippers annually assemble to do 
him honour. On these occasions there was produced a 
wooden frame of the length of a man's body, and of about 
half the breadth across, while at equal intervals were arranged 
five swords, with their sharpened edges up. Over these the 
devotee extended his naked body, with his face downwards, 
when the frame was swung to and fro ten times. He then 
changed his position, and lay down on his back, when he was 
swung as before. " Such are the sufferings devised by the 
natural heart, and promised at a sanguinary demon's shrine 
to coax him into the withdrawal of his wrath ! They are, 
however, praised be God, at an end in this part of India," 
wrote Hislop. 

Another instance of social progress was the abolition of 
caste distinctions in drawing water from public tanks and 
wells. It was the cliambhars (curriers or shoemakers) who, 
at Nagpoor, were most oppressed in this matter. They were 
not permitted to draw for themselves, but were compelled to 
call in the help of some more favoured individual, whom they 
had to remunerate, and on whose leisure they had to wait in 
groups on the margin of the well or tank. The loss of time 
and money to which they were thus subjected was a very 
serious grievance. To escape it one day, two or three of their 
women repaired to a pool, where they thought there would 
be no objection to their helping themselves. They were ob- 



1863 HIS LAST ACT AS A MISSIONARY 331 

served, beaten, and sent home with their vessels smashed. 
With tears they represented their case to Mr. Hislop as he 
passed. He brought it to the notice of the Chief Com- 
missioner, and orders were at once issued, conferring on them 
equal privileges with the rest of the community. Practically 
it is still sometimes difficult for them to assert their right ; 
but, at all events, native officials know that they must no 
longer join in the wrong. 

When the Mission thus came into friendly relations with 
the cliamWiars in the water controversy, a very natural result 
of their success in procuring the means of refreshing their 
bodies was to lead them to seek knowledge for the improve- 
ment of their children's minds. Hence a few of them pro- 
posed to send their boys to the new school. The principle on 
which the schools had been conducted from the first, was to 
pay no deference to caste. In Nagpoor, where Brahmauical 
influence is strong strong both to eradicate the desire for 
knowledge from the minds of the lower classes, and to repress 
it, should it in any instance be found to spring up this 
principle was scarcely ever put to the test. When, however, 
the little chambhars were brought by their parents to its 
doors, consistency required the missionaries to admit them, 
though at the loss of many of the " twice-born " scholars. 
But the loss was not to be compared with the victory. By 
all these causes combined, the number of the English and 
Marathi pupils in the city fell from 420 to 240. But what 
was lost in numbers was gained in efficiency. A month after 
entering the new college building the Mission commenced 
a Hindustani class, which prospered. 

In the cold season of 1862-63 Dr. Cotton, the Bishop of 
Calcutta, visited the Central Provinces on tour, when he and 
Hislop met face to face for the first and last time. With the 
catholicity that gave power to his Christian influence, the 
Bishop examined the Mission schools. He never failed to 



332 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

show his earnest interest in the progress of Scriptural educa- 
tion. " On two occasions he took the opportunity of publicly 
acknowledging the value of the Free Church services in 
India," Mr. Hislop reported to Dr. Hanna, " and expressed 
it to be his conviction that Dr. Duff had done more for 
the enlightenment of this dark land than any other man." 
Having with the Coopers completed a tour to the south along 
a line of new road on which thousands of labourers were 
employed, and having revived the impressions made in the 
same region nine years before, he and Mrs. Hislop spent the 
toiling months of heat and rain in labours more than ever 
abundant, and with results more than ever encouraging. In 
August 1863 he rejoiced to meet the desire of the natives by 
opening a new vernacular Mission school, followed by a new 
girls' school, in the now populous Sitabaldi, just behind the 
Eesidency, and to receive for it a grant -in -aid. In the 
Mission which he had founded and fostered with unceasing 
toil, that was his last act. 



CHAPTER XI 

"GOD TOOK HIM" 

Thursday, 3d September 1863 With the Chief Commissioner on tour Bori 
and the new Educational Department Family worship and intoler- 
ance to young converts Friday, 4th September 1863 The last words of 
the First Epistle to the Thessalonians Ready for the day of the Lord 
Among the cromlechs of Takalghat again Stephen Hislop's last conversa- 
tions Preaches Christ for the last time Suddenly drowned The rider- 
less horse, the search, the discovery The burial Public opinion, 
English and Native Discourses by Mr. Cooper and Dr. John Wilson 
Letters from Dr. Wilson and Baba Pandurang to Mrs. Hislop Stephen 
Hislop planted and watered, God is now giving the increase He led the 
second band of martyr or hero missionaries in this missionary century 
The hero missionary's life and death an argument for Christianity and 
its Missions The everlasting All Saints' Day which St. John saw in 
heaven The hymn of All Saints. 

IT was the beginning of the month of September 1863. The 
summer monsoon, with its annual rainfall of forty-five inches, 
had slackened, and seemed about to give place to the return 
current from the north-east, with its steady outflow of cool 
air. At the elevation of upwards of a thousand feet, which 
is that of JSTagpoor and the plain of the Dekhan, the life- 
giving cold season begins earlier and lasts longer than on 
the low-lying coast. The Chief Commissioner had already 
begun his tours throughout the districts, during which he and 
his secretaries kept up a close correspondence with Mr. 
Hislop as to schools, civil reforms, and objects of scientific 
interest. On this occasion,' since the tour began close to 
Kagpoor, Sir Richard Temple desired the presence of the 
missionary in his camp. In all these departments there was 



334 STEPHEN HISLOr 1803 

much to be done in the southern districts, over which Mr. 
Hislop had walked more than once during the previous 
twenty years. The rainy season had for two years weakened 
him by the low malarial fever which it leaves behind, and 
the fresh air of the open country, with the daily rides, cul- 
tured talk, and contact with a people whom he loved, pro- 
mised to give the invalid new strength. Sunrise on Thurs- 
day, the third day of September, saw him cantering along the 
eighteen miles of the Great Southern Eoad, which leads 
from the capital to what is now the railway station of Bori. 

Boil is a prosperous village embosomed in groves and 
gardens, inhabited by four thousand shopkeepers, peasants, 
and dyers, the last of whom use the waters of the Wana, on 
the left bank of which it stands, to produce a red brick 
colour so lasting as to make the cloths of the place locally 
famous. The Wana flows eastward into the Waenganga 
tributary of the Godavari. In the comfortable traveller's 
bungalow, built by Government at Bori as all along the 
admirable high-roads of British India, Mr. Hislop found the 
Chief Commissioner, Captain Hector Mackenzie, and Lieu- 
tenant Puckle, ready for the late breakfast of Anglo-Indian 
official life, after a day's work already done in the cooler 
hours of the morning. In a narrative written by Sir Eichard 
Temple for Mrs. Hislop we have a detailed account of the 
conversation and the events of that Thursday, and of the 
fatal Friday which succeeded it. 

Having joined the party as they assembled for the morn- 
ing meal, Mr. Hislop's first inquiry was as to the results of 
the new educational system in the Wardha district from which 
they had just come. How many village schools had been 
opened ? How were the Maratha teachers succeeding, whom 
Dr. John Wilson and Dr. Murray Mitchell had selected and 
sent up from Bombay and Poona ? Were the people friendly 
to them? Was Colonel Dods, the Maratha scholar who 



1863 AN ANGLO-INDIAN BREAKFAST 335 

had been made first inspector, satisfied thus far ? Mr, Hislop 
" seemed glad to hear that the several young men who had 
come up from Bombay to teach in the village schools were prov- 
ing successful, as setting an example of progress, and at least 
of intellectual enlightenment. Whatever might be the right 
view on higher questions, he certainly thought that the State 
did so far well in diffusing some light among the villages in 
the interior of the country, which he described as sunk in 
the deepest ignorance. He then alluded to the Mission 
school in the Nagpoor city, and to the grants-in-aid. He 
said that an additional teacher was expected from Scotland ; 
that one had been advertised for, and that suitable candidates 
might be expected to come forward. He then adverted to 
the intention of the Mission to establish a new school in the 
Sitabaldi bazaar, for which also a grant-in-aid was proposed. 
The only difficulty had been house accommodation, which 
difficulty he had now overcome. It was remarked that when 
education was being diffused among the villages, something 
ought to be done in Sitabaldi, which was immediately under 
the eye of headquarters. He then showed me several 
scientific and antiquarian journals illustrative of Druidical 
(or Scythian) remains, found alike in Great Britain and 
India. 

" After breakfast he read a chapter from the Bible to the 
party and offered up a prayer. Shortly afterwards the con- 
versation which took place was about the conversion of 
heathen youths. He said that Hindus were more accessible 
to the persuasive and convincing truth of the Gospel at an 
early age than at any other age ; and that their consciences 
were then more tender and impressible. He mentioned the 
circumstances of the conversion of a Maratha youth some 
years ago, and of the efforts, partially successful, of the 
parents to gain influence and authority over the youth. He 
said that in his father's house the youth was treated as an 



336 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

outcast, and relapsed into sin ; that afterwards, when un- 
questionably a major (that is, arrived at full legal privileges) 
he returned to the Mission. Eeference was then made to the 
recent case of Hemnath Bose of Calcutta. Mr. Hislop 
seemed to think that the judicial opinions recently given 
differed from those given by Chief Justice Burton at Madras ; 
but agreed with that of Sir Erskine Perry at Bombay (in the 
case of Shripat, in his thirteenth year). He said that it 
would be satisfactory to missionaries in India, if it were 
finally decided by the highest judicial authority, as to whether 
or not a heathen parent could prevent his child, when under 
age, from openly professing Christianity. He thought that a 
child of sufficient sense and discretion might even, though 
under age, be allowed, without any hindrance from parental 
authority, to profess Christianity." 

The Chief Commissioner and the missionary separated to 
do their daily duties till the late afternoon, when the whole 
party rode out to the village of Takalghat, three miles off. 
There Mr. Hislop pointed out the stone circles described in 
Chapter VIII., of which they had been reading in the morn- 
ing. The Chief Commissioner gave orders that systematic 
excavations should be made in several of the mounds. As 
the party returned through Takalghat "we met a newly- 
appointed schoolmaster in company with the landlord of the 
village. We spoke to the men, and told the landlord that he 
should give the schoolmaster all the assistance he could. Mr. 
Hislop remarked that it was of consequence to raise the 
character of a schoolmaster in the eyes of the natives, inas- 
much as the scholastic profession was not so highly esteemed 
as it ought to be by the villagers, and in the interior. We 
then returned to Bori. Before the party retired to rest that 
evening, Mr. Hislop offered up prayer as usual." 

Sunrise on Friday saw Mr. Hislop and Lieutenant Puclde 
already at Takalghat, along with Mr. Jackson, a Public 



1863 EEADY FOR THE DAY OF THE LOED 337 

Works assistant overseer. When the native labourers had 
been set .to work, Mr. Hislop was joined by the Chief Com- 
missioner and Captain H. Mackenzie, at late breakfast, in a 
tent pitched beside the workmen. Immediately afterwards the 
missionary conducted family worship in the simple Scottish 
fashion. What was it that led him to select for reading, and 
as a preparation for prayer, the fifth chapter of that First 
Epistle in which St. Paul, in the earliest of his writings, 
tells the Thessalonians who were the crown of all his con- 
verts " ensamples to all that believe " Of the times and 
the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 
For yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord so coineth 
as a thief in the night ? The writer of the narrative of the 
events of that time declares it to have been " a providential 
coincidence that a man should read out that particular chap- 
ter on the morning of the day in the evening of which he 
was unexpectedly to die." So the reader went on, in divine 
words, which at once reflected his whole past life as they 
did St. Paul's, while they unconsciously consecrated him for 
that " day of the Lord " which for him was to set in a few 
hours. 

Let us, who are of the day, l>e sober, putting on the breast- 
plate of faith and love; and for an helmet the hope of salvation. 
For Gfod hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation 
by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake 
or sleep, we should live together with Him. Wherefore comfort 
yourselves together, and edify one another. 

Warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, 
support the weak, be patient toward all men. 

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I 
pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved 
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful 
is He that calleth you, who also will do it. 

Brethren, pray for us. 

z 



338 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

With his soul supernaturally filled with the vision of the 
great Coming, Stephen Hislop prayed in the Spirit. " I re- 
member that he concluded by soliciting the divine blessing 
on all that had been, and was still being, done for the spiritual 
conversion of the heathen in this land. After that he observed 
at some length on the efficiency of the divine word in con- 
vincing the human conscience. He said these things with a 
solemnity and earnestness that come quite clearly to my 
remembrance. 

" After that we walked out and looked at the excavations 
that had been made, and the various articles of iron and 
pottery that were being exhumed. He remarked on the ex- 
ternal appearance of the country, which was that morning 
fresh and green, the sky being stormy, with occasional sun- 
shine. He said that this visit recalled to his recollection a 
period of fourteen years ago, when he first saw the place, and 
since which he had not seen it. He alluded to a former 
colleague, Mr. Hunter, in whose company, he said that he had 
first visited Takalghat. 

" Alluding to ordinary and public affairs, he remarked that 
men whose conduct was conscientious before God were those 
best to be trusted in all affairs of life. 

" Then we walked about, looking at the ancient circles of 
stone, and speculating on the character, habits, and institu- 
tions of the people who raised them, or rather who arranged 
them. He thought that all the remains then before us were 
tombs and burial-places. I asked him whether he supposed 
that these people had any temples or such like places of 
worship. He said he thought not ; that probably they wor- 
shipped some spirit, or some of the elements ; and that per- 
haps they had sacred groves, but nothing more. He observed 
that every one of the circles of stones had one outside stone 
towards the east. I asked him whether he thought that 
these people were migratory in their habits. He did not 



1863 HIS LAST CONVERSATION 339 

give a positive opinion on that, but said that the large number 
of circles, or supposed tombs, indicated that a considerable 
population must have resided at this spot for some time ; that 
there were, he believed, some eighty of these circles, in each 
of which at least one person, or perhaps several persons, had 
been interred. He added that it was not possible to tell how 
many persons had been buried, inasmuch as the bodies had 
been burned, and the others only interred. He said that 
when the Hindus first came to this part of India they probably 
found these people in possession and conquered them ; that 
then, he supposed, they became mingled with the lower castes 
of Hindus ; that the dwellings of the conquered were swept 
off the ground ; and that these curious burial-places were all 
that remained. We then went to the top of a hillock close 
by, and pointed out the various rows and cross rows of these 
stone circles extending over the plain. 

" Descending from this hillock we met some natives from 
the village, among whom was a man who had, some fifteen years 
before, assisted Mr. Hislop in examining the circles in this 
very place. They recognised each other, and conversed about 
those times. Then we met a Maratha gentleman of high rank 
(Nanajirao), who owned a large village in the neighbourhood. 
Mr. Hislop asked what had been done regarding the school 
in that village ; and by his advice I gave Nanajirao various 
particular directions regarding the enlargement and improve- 
ment of this school, and the ISTana went off to execute them. 
At that time Mr. Hislop said that he would, if possible, visit 
that school, and also another Government school on his way 
back to Nagpoor the next day. 

" We then repaired to the tent and sat down. Mr. Hislop 
began mentioning various forms of infidelity which he had 
known at different times to exist in sections of Anglo-Indian 
society ; adding, however, that there was much less now-a- 
days. He then adverted to the fear that an actual infidel 



340 STEPHEN I1ISLOP 1863 

must probably entertain of death. He thought that a 
hardened infidel must have an apprehension (though perhaps 
unacknowledged) of future punishment, and that even the 
thought of absolute annihilation after this life, if really enter- 
tained, must be awful. We then began speculating as to 
whether any person could possibly persuade himself of anni- 
hilation after physical death. 

"Mr. Hislop then asked me if I had read Guthrie's 
Sermons, and alluded to the vigorous nautical imagery con- 
tained therein ; remarking that the waters of the sea afforded 
many awful physical illustrations of those spiritual dangers 
against which the preacher had to warn men. He then 
alluded to recent discussions at home regarding the Apocry- 
pha, remarking that it ought never to be placed on a level 
with the Scriptures, and that if it were read authoritatively, 
or bound up in the same volume with the Bible, there was 
danger of its being taken as a part of the inspired word of 
God. He afnrmed the perfect inspiration of Scripture, and 
the extreme danger of private judgment being permitted to 
consider which parts of Scripture were to be believed abso- 
lutely, and which not. Thence he turned to the Free Church 
of Scotland, to the purity of its origin and to the disinter- 
estedness of its founders. He added that its leaders were 
men who had suffered for their principles, and were men of 
great power and might. 

" The above was the last serious conversation which he 
ever held. It was now afternoon. I proposed that we should 
go back to Bori. He said that I had better start, as there 
might be business awaiting me ; that he would stay a little 
and classify the various things that had been exhumed from 
the circles, and would examine the school at Takalghat, and 
would be in time for dinner at Bori. I then looked at the 
various things which were being classified and started for 
Bori, seeing Mr. Hislop no more." 



1863 THE RIDERLESS HORSE 341 

From such worship, such labour, and such converse in the 
tent Stephen Hislop passed into the village, and there, amid 
a crowd of the parents, as the sun went down and it was 
becoming already dim, he examined the scholars and taught 
Christ. Besides kindness to the people, his object was to give 
moral support, courage, and dignity to the new schoolmaster. 
Was not the warning that precedes the great Coming this 
"Comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient 
toward all men " ? Mr. Jackson, the overseer, was the last 
European to see him, as, from the rude tombs of the 
aboriginal people, his figure became lost in the throng of the 
Maratha villagers and their children. 

Takalghat is a wooded hamlet on a mound above the little 
Krishna, which feeds the Wana. The stream is easily forded, 
even in the height of the rainy season, and is dry at other 
times. Often, and last of all that morning, had Hislop crossed 
it. But by the evening the Chief Commissioner found so 
much water in the bed that he stationed a servant there to 
warn Mr. Hislop to cross higher up. The Wana, it proved, 
had been swollen by rain in the hills from which it flows, and 
had suddenly flooded the Krishna, making it a backwater for 
a time. About half-past seven, when the dusk was rapidly 
deepening into darkness, Mr. Hislop left Takalghat, taking 
neither guide, torch -bearer, nor orderly, though all were 
there, seeing that the ground was so familiar to him. " For 
a short time after leaving the village the horsekeeper was 
with him. But coming to open, smooth ground, Mr. Hislop 
cantered on, leaving the horsekeeper behind. This man re- 
turned then to Takalghat, intending to come on to Bori in 
company with other servants ; he was the last person who 
saw Mr. Hislop alive. Mr. Hislop must then have cantered 
on for half a mile and more, till he came to this little stream, 
which is a mile distant from Takalghat, and two miles from 
Bori. Arriving at the stream he must have ridden into it, 



342 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

supposing the water to be shallow. The fact of water being 
there may perhaps have struck him as peculiar, but he knew 
that it was generally empty, and doubtless supposed that it 
did not contain much water now. Moreover, it was getting 
dark. In reality, however, at that particular point the water 
was deep, and the horse on getting into it may have plunged. 
Certainly I infer from examination of the bridle and saddle, 
that both rider and horse must have been immersed; and 
that the rider was violently disengaged from the animal. He 
clung for a moment to the grassy bank and then sank. The 
horse was a strong, quiet, and steady animal ; he re- 
covered himself and got across the stream without the 
lamented rider. Life must have been extinct within a few 
minutes after submergence." 

About eight o'clock the riderless horse dashed up to Bori 
bungalow, where were Sir E. Temple and Lieutenant Puckle. 
" This led us to apprehend that Mr. Hislop had been detained 
and lost his horse, or possibly had met with some accident. 
I instantly despatched two parties in search of him with 
torches, it being then dark. One of their party was accom- 
panied by the torch-bearer who had just accompanied me on 
the same road, and the other by the horsekeeper of the horse 
I had just ridden. These parties searched the ground in 
different directions, between Bori and Takalghat, and not 
finding him, came on to Takalghat. Midway they found a 
small stream with water in it, fordable at some places, but at 
others deep and rapid. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Hislop 
had left Takalghat for Bori about dusk that evening, and that 
as he had not arrived at Bori, and had not been met with 
midway by the searching parties, something must have 
happened. Mr. Jackson then went, together with the two 
searching parties and fresh torches, to the stream already 
mentioned. They went to a pa,rt of it where the water, 
when the parties last saw it, had been deep and rapid. In 



1863 PREACHED CHRIST FOR THE LAST TIME 343 

the meanwhile, even in that short interval, the water had 
rapidly subsided ; and there they found Mr. Hislop in the bed 
of the stream, drowned. The body was at once brought to 
Bori, and examined by a medical officer. Every effort 
at resuscitation was made without avail. The water had 
rapidly risen to a height of some ten feet above the 
bed, and had as rapidly fallen. When the searching party 
first arrived, the body must have been deep below the muddy 
turbid waters, and was not visible ; when they returned 
shortly afterwards the water had subsided from a depth of ten 
feet to a depth of three feet, and then the body was found." 

It was in a sitting posture, with turf in each hand, show- 
ing how nearly the missionary had succeeded in scrambling 
out of the torrent on to the bank. In one pocket was his 
Bible, in another a few trophies from the excavations of the 
day characteristic of his twofold career. It was his faithful 
convert and collector, Virapa, who found the dear remains, 
and had them reverently carried to the Mission house. Mr. 
Cooper thus told the sad tale to Robert Hislop in Scotland : 

"NAGPOOR, 19th September 1863. 

" MY DEAR FRIEND The first sight of this letter will at 
once prepare you for heavy and sorrowful tidings from Nag- 
poor. Yes, we are, as a Mission, plunged in the deepest grief 
and are profoundly solemnised in spirit at the mysterious dis- 
pensation of God's providence, that has taken away from us 
your dear brother, the Eev. S. Hislop, and that in a manner 
very strange, very sudden, and very unexpected, as the follow- 
ing account will show. In an official letter to the Eev. Dr. 
Candlish, interim convener of the Foreign Missions Com- 
mittee, announcing the very mournful event, I say, This 
very sad event has come upon us with awful suddenness and 
surprise. The manner of his death has been strangely 
peculiar and melancholy, so that we are struck dumb, yea, 



344 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

confounded at the mysterious providence of God. The Chief 
Commissioner, Mr. Temple with his secretary, Captain H. 
Mackenzie was out in the district on a short tour towards 
the end of August ; and just before coming into headquarters 
wrote to Mr. Hislop, asking him to come to Bori, a distance 
of about eighteen miles, to examine, some cromlechs, or 
Druidical remains, in the neighbourhood, which were about 
to be excavated. Mr. Hislop complied, and early on Thurs- 
day morning, the 3d September, -he left Sitabaldi in his 
usual health, intending (D.V.) to return on Saturday 



morning. 



" This, however, was not the will of our heavenly Father, 
for on the following evening, while returning alone on horse- 
back from Takalghat, where he had been engaged all day, 
to Bori, after it had become quite dark, he fell into a deep 
nullah, or rather a deep backwater of a small stream, which, 
during the rain, seems to rise to a considerable height, and 
was there found drowned. On the previous day, in company 
with Mr. Temple, while going to and returning from. Takal- 
ghat, niy dear colleague had crossed and recrossed at the very 
same spot, and again on Friday morning, along with Captain 
Puckle, a Christian friend, he went over it a third time, and 
on all occasions there was a mere driblet of water in the 
place which gave no one any concern. After walking to 
Takalghat on Friday morning, Captain Puckle, not feeling 
well, returned to Bori, leaving Mr. Hislop alone, but before 
breakfast Mr. Temple joined him, and they both remained to- 
gether in a tent till about half-past five P.M., superintending the 
excavations that were going on. Mr. Hislop, always anxious 
to embrace every opportunity of serving his Master among 
the natives, instead of now returning with Mr. Temple to 
Bori, where dinner was prepared for them, remained behind 
to examine a Government school which has recently been 
established at Takalghat, and to deliver to the villagers the 



1863 THE SEARCH THE DISCOVERY THE WIDOW 345 

Gospel message. This must have detained him till it was 
almost quite dark, when he left for Bori, pursuing the same 
path he had travelled the previous day and that morning. 
Mr. Temple, on coming to the nullah, found that its waters 
had risen considerably in consequence of rain that must have 
fallen among some neighbouring hills, although none had fallen 
that day at Takalghat. In order to discover a safe and easy 
passage, he went farther up the stream to a place where 
carts generally ford it, and got over without difficulty. Mr. 
Temple then detached one of his attendants to wait at 
the dangerous spot till Mr. Hislop arrived, and show him 
where to cross over. This man, however, either misunder- 
standing the orders given him, or afraid to remain alone in 
the dark, went "back to the place, and finding that Mr. Hislop 
had not arrived, proceeded to Takalghat in the hope of meeting 
him. In this he failed, and in the meantime Mr. Hislop must 
have come up to the nullah alone and at the very spot which 
was to he avoided. Two sowars or horsemen should have 
accompanied him, as Mr. Temple had left them at Takalghat 
for that purpose, but from some cause or other they seem not 
to have been present when Mr. Hislop started to return to 
Bori. It appears also that the horsekeeper, who usually 
accompanies his horse, at the request of Mr. Hislop, after 
walking about half a mile while the ground was uneven, re- 
turned to Takalghat to come on with the party there. My 
dear colleague then seems to have cantered on towards Bori, 
and on reaching the nullah, and not in the slightest degree 
expecting to find deep water, must, with his horse, have been 
suddenly immersed. How he became detached from his horse 
is not known, but after an ineffectual attempt to get out, he 
must soon have sunk to rise no more. The horse on arriving 
at Bori without his rider was at once an intimation to his 
friends there that something had occurred, but they never for 
a moment imagined that it would be of a serious nature. 



346 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

" Immediately parties were sent out in quest of Mr. Hislop, 
and although they went to the nullah, crossed over, and pro- 
ceeded to Takalghat, he was nowhere to be found. Here a larger 
party was organised, and after searching the jungle 011 their 
way back, came again to the nullah, where they found the body 
in the water cold and rigid. It was then about eleven o'clock 
P.M., or about three hours after the sad event had occurred. 
Every effort to resuscitate was made, but in vain. The body 
was then conveyed to Bori and underwent a medical exami- 
nation which resulted in the conclusion that death had been 
caused by drowning. And now it remained to communicate 
the very sad and distressing news to dear Mrs. Hislop. Cap- 
tain Puckle wrote a letter and despatched it by a sowar, 
which reached me on Saturday morning about half-past seven 
o'clock. I was seated in my study, beginning to think of my 
preparation for Sabbath, and conceive, if you can, what a 
stunning shock I received as I read the first sentence, ' This 
is to prepare you for receiving all that remains of our dear 
friend Mr. Hislop.' Indescribably painful and acute were my 
emotions as I told my wife what had happened, and as it 
devolved on me, and that without delay, to go and break the 
awful intelligence to dear Mrs. Hislop, lest a report should 
suddenly reach her, Mrs. Cooper and I entered our room, 
and with burdened sorrowful hearts prayed to Him who is a 
help and refuge in every time of need to enable us to do so 
calmly and wisely. 

"Dear Mrs. Hislop met us with her usual smile, and 
inquired after our welfare. It was with difficulty I could 
find utterance to reply, when she at once saw that all 
was not well within. ' What is the matter ? ' she feelingly 
inquired, when after a short pause I said I had just received 
a letter from Bori. Instantly it flashed on her mind that 
something of a serious nature had occurred to her dear absent 
husband, and in one breath exclaimed, ' What has happened ? 



1863 HIS BURIAL 347 

tell me, is he gone ? ' After a brief pause, and with deep 
suppressed feeling I replied, ' Yes, he is no more.' Oh, it 
was a terrible and stunning communication, but she received 
it with wonderful meekness and resignation. She cast her- 
self upon the Lord at once, and, praised be His holy name, 
He hath not forsaken her in this time of sore trial and 
bereavement. Strength, comfort, and grace have been signally 
vouchsafed to His handmaid. May our gracious heavenly 
.Father continue His rich and abiding consolations to her soul. 
We prayed together and sought our comfort and strength in 
God. 

" Soon news of the very sad event spread in Sitabaldi, the 
city of JSfagpoor and Kamthi ; and all classes and ranks Euro- 
peans, 1 East Indians, and Natives felt that a great calamity 
had befallen not only the Mission but the Province at large. 
As a man and a missionary my dear colleague was greatly 
beloved and esteemed by all; and without exaggeration I may 
say that deep and sincere was the sorrow expressed and felt at 
his sad and melancholy removal. His loss to the Mission and 
Province is irreparable. The body was brought in between 
nine and ten o'clock, and in the evening it was committed to 
the dust till the resurrection morning, amidst a very large 
crowd of all classes of the community. At the grave I read 
some suitable portions of Scripture, and endeavoured to 
improve the solemn occasion by a short and pointed ad- 
dress. Next day (Sabbath) our usual public services were 
not held, but the time was spent in private, in silent 
meditation, prayer, and converse together on the wonder- 
ful but wise and gracious ways of God towards us. On 
the following Sabbath, however, I again endeavoured to 
improve the mysterious dispensation, both in Kamthi and 

1 When the Scots regiment at Kamthi learned their loss the wife of one 
of the sergeants at once rushed to Sitabaldi, to Mrs. Cooper, exclaiming, 
" What's happened to the minister ? Naebody '11 streek " (lay out for burial) 
"the minister but mysel' ! " 



348 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

Sitabaldi, in a sermon on the text, 'And Enoch walked 
with God; and he was not, for God took him' (Gen. v. 
24). The life, labours, and earthly end of that distin- 
guished patriarch and prophet, we all felt, were very sug- 
gestive and appropriate to our peculiar circumstances as a 
Mission and community. May the Lord grant that we all 
may be warned and stirred up by this mysterious and 
solemn event. 

" I have thus, my dear friend, given you a brief account 
of this very sad and melancholy event, as desired by dear 
Mrs. Hislop. It is a deep deep affliction to us all, and 
especially to her who is left a widow, and the children who 
are fatherless. But the Lord has done it, and it is our duty 
and privilege to submit to His holy will. I weep for a true 
friend and brother, and a colleague most tenderly beloved and 
prized. Our work was just beginning hopefully to expand 
our educational plans and arrangements beginning to take a 
definite and tangible form, when suddenly we are deprived 
of him who was best fitted to carry on the Lord's work in this 
Province. Praying that the Lord may be with us all to com- 
fort and sanctify us in this time of affliction and sorrow 
I remain, my dear friend, yours affectionately in Christ, 

"J. G. COOPEE." 

Thus, from drowning in boyhood, from shipwreck in 
young manhood, from the horror of hydrophobia, from the 
worse madness of an ignorant mob, and from almost accom- 
plished massacre in the Mutiny of 1857 had Stephen Hislop 
been saved that the prayer of the first missionary to the 
heathen might be answered in his case that the "whole 
spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" to him in that Krishna 
backwater. " Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do 
it" had, in the last struggle of a moment, been fulfilled to him. 



1863 PUBLIC OPINION, ENGLISH AND NATIVE 349 

He had walked with God, he had worked for God, and " he 
was not, for God took him." 

Stephen Hislop could leave nothing behind him from the 
subsistence allowance which formed his stipend, save the 
mission -house. The annuities given to the widows and 
orphans of missionaries by his Church, from a fund created 
only the year before his death, were too small at that time 
for their support, and the local officials at once raised a 
capital sum "to enable Mr. Hislop's family to live in 
comfort." His library was presented to the College. 

In very different circles all over India, evangelical and 
scientific, in the pulpit and the press, the ablest men bewailed 
the loss. But it was with Stephen Hislop as with all our best 
beloved who have gone before us, to swell the great cloud of 
witnesses he was more ready than we who are left, to enter 
into the blessed rest which precedes the full resurrection joy. 
The leading Anglo-Indian Journal wrote thus of the event : 
" Short of the loss of the highest official in the Central Pro- 
vinces, the death of no Englishman there could have been 
more serious to the welfare of the people. There has been 
taken away a most excellent missionary, a diligent teacher of 
the natives, a zealous preacher among his own countrymen, 
and a man of varied scientific acquirements which were con- 
stantly used for ends of practical value. His loss will be 
deeply felt by the community of Nagpoor, by whom his self- 
denying zeal and great scholarly acquirements were so much 
admired. Still more will it be felt by his own Church, which 
cannot afford to lose in the same year missionaries of such 
widespread usefulness in every channel of native improve- 
ment and Indian progress as Dr. Duff" (who was about to 
leave India) " and Mr. Hislop." 

The Nagpoor Journal wrote that a deep gloom overspread 
the city, affecting high and low, on the announcement of the 
death of Mr. Hislop ; and told how his remains were followed 



350 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

to the grave by every individual in the station and by a large 
concourse of natives. It described the local impression of 
him as " an eminently silent but effectual worker." All "dis- 
covered in him that suavity of manner, that grave deportment, 
that fulness of knowledge which betokened a well-balanced 
mind. As a preacher he was precisely suited to benefit all 
who, having minds fitted for reflection, claimed the right of 
thinking for themselves." A few days after, when the 
residents met in the Nagpoor Central Museum to form The 
Antiquarian and -Scientific Society of the Central Provinces, 
for researches especially in Archaeology, Ethnology, and 
Geology, all declared that this would be the best memorial, 
by officials at least, of the man whose teaching had at once 
inspired and directed their action. 

The Native, and above all the Native Christian, news- 
papers in Western India mourned their "irreparable loss." 
The Dnyanodaya ("Kise of Knowledge ") Maratha newspaper 
declared, "This painful event will bring sadness to many 
hearts. The converts for whom Mr. Hislop has so long 
laboured will mourn for him as their spiritual father and 
best friend. The whole missionary body will mourn for him 
as one who was always earnest and faithful in his Master's 
cause." On the Sabbath, 13th September, after the burial, 
the Eev. J. G. Cooper preached to the military and civil 
residents and Native Christians of the whole district, from the 
record of Enoch's walk and translation, a sermon which they 
caused .to be printed. Dr. John Wilson took as his text, 
when preaching on the same occasion to the Christians of 
Bombay city, " He gave some, apostles ; and some, pro- 
phets ; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and 
teachers;" and published the Discourse as "an im- 
perfect (and it is to be hoped only provisional) memorial 
of the departed to his numerous friends in India and 
in Britain, who remember and admire his work of faith 



1863 OPINION OF THE CHURCH 351 

and labour of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

The Foreign Missions Committee, then presided over by 
Dr. Candlish, thus reported to the General Assembly of the 
Free Church of Scotland their sense of Stephen Hislop's ser- 
vices and India's loss : " While possessed of deep conscienti- 
ousness and great firmness of character, he was yet conciliatory 
and kind ; and a rare union of excellences had raised him to 
a position of high influence both with Europeans and natives 
in Central India. In preaching the gospel to the natives 
through their vernacular, in superintending Christian schools 
and teaching the young, and in ministering (often with great 
personal inconvenience) to our countrymen in India, his 
labours were incessant, and such as probably few men could 
have long endured. Had it not been for his entire consecra- 
tion to the mission work, Mr. Hislop would have attained no 
small scientific eminence; and his actual acquirements in 
several branches of natural science were truly remarkable 
in one who gave to the study only those fragments of leisure 
which were properly due to recreation. Nor should it be for- 
gotten that, on account of the regard entertained for him by 
the natives, Mr. Hislop, at a critical period during the 
Mutiny, was able to render a most important service to his 
country. The committee desire to humble themselves under 
the mighty hand of Him who has assigned them this sudden 
and very sore affliction ; beseeching Him that men of a like 
spirit may be raised up to fill the void when devoted labourers 
are snatched away in the midst of their usefulness. They 
also desire to express their deep sympathy with Mr. Cooper, 
the esteemed colleague of Mr. Hislop; with the native 
church at ISFagpoor ; and, above all, with the widow of their 
departed friend and brother ; and they affectionately commend 
her and her children to the loving-kindness of Him who is 
the husband of the widow and the father of the fatherless. 



352 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

" Thus, as was remarked by one of the highest of Indian 
functionaries, one of the wisest and best missionaries was cut 
down in the zenith of his usefulness. The loss is incalculably 
great ; and we must cry to the Lord of the harvest to raise 
up qualified labourers in the room of those who have thus, 
with startling suddenness, been removed. In the midst of 
our sorrow we must thankfully acknowledge the remarkable 
and spontaneous burst of sympathy towards the widow and 
orphan children of the deceased missionary. The sum sub- 
scribed in India is understood to be up wards, of three thousand 
pounds, and that raised in Scotland and England upwards of 
twelve hundred. It is very pleasing to note that among the 
Indian subscribers were distinguished members of the Hindu 
and Parsee communities." 

All that was mortal of Stephen Hislop was laid in the 
Nagpoor cemetery, half a mile to the west of Sitabaldi. Over 
the grave is a large flat memorial stone resting on pillars, and 
bearing these words in Marathi, that each of the people of the 
land may still hear the missionary's message, "Believe on 
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." 

The letters of sympathy sent to the solitary widow by 
men and women of all classes, reveal still more in detail 
the impression made by Stephen Hislop on his contem- 
poraries and his time. Of these the following are repre- 
sentative : 

FROM DR. JOHN WILSON. 

" BOMBAY, 15th September 1863. 

" My DEAR MRS. HISLOP What a day of sorrow to us in 
Bombay was yesterday, when we received the afflictive tidings 
from Nagpoor of the sudden and unexpected death of your 
beloved husband and our dear and highly- esteemed fellow- 
labourer in the evangelistic enterprise of India ! Our sorrow 
was principally for your loss and that of your dear children afar 



1863 LETTER FROM DR. JOHN WILSON 353 

off; for our own loss, and that of all the Mission with which 
we are connected, for the loss of the Native and European 
churches at Nagpoor, and for the loss of the Free Church of 
Scotland and of 'all the churches' sympathising with the 
work of the Lord in this great and remarkable land. All the 
parties here mentioned must feel this bereavement in no 
common degree, for it deeply affects all their interests. It 
is a bereavement, however, from the LORD ; and it has been 
ordered and carried into effect in the exercise of that wisdom 
which cannot err, of that faithfulness which cannot fail, and 
of that love in which all God's chastisements of His people 
originate. There are no ' accidents ' in the all-comprehend- 
ing providence of God, which extends to every object which 
exists and to every event which occurs ; and the hand of God 
was in reality, though not in miraculous speciality, as much 
felt in the waters of the flood which carried your dear hus- 
band to the regions of glory, as in the fiery chariot by which 
Elijah was conveyed to heaven. There were a great many 
concurrent circumstances in the case which are of striking 
and impressive character, and which seem to indicate to us 
the purpose of God as to the actual issue. They are such as 
the delay in starting from the school by the way where 
Mr. Hislop terminated his zealous missionary labours, his 
outriding the sowars to get speedily to the resting-place of 
his excellent friend Mr. Temple, the sudden rise of the river 
which he had easily passed in the morning, and his missing 
in the dark the ckaprasi who had been purposely sent to 
warn him of the danger which existed. But, independently 
of these combining incidents, we have the assurance that in 
this, as well as in all other instances of the removal of the 
Lord's people from this sublunary scene, the predetermination 
of God has been carried into effect. ' Precious in the sight 
of the Lord is the death of His saints.' That death is ob- 
served by Him when there is no human eye to witness it. 

2 A 



354 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

The Saviour is with the departing spirit to give it the victory, 
and by His hands it is received as it leaves the body. 

" We are quite unable to choose for ourselves the manner 
of our death. God knows and orders what is best in the 
case of every individual. It is more nature than grace which 
prays for exemption even from sudden death. The great 
object of desire with us all should be preparation for death ; 
and our great effort in connection with our friends who die in 
Jesus should be to realise the ineffable glory and bliss into 
which they are introduced when they are absent from the 
body and present with Him their Lord. 

" The case of our dear friend, which so powerfully moves 
us at present, is very similar to that of my two beloved sisters 
Mary and Isabella Bayne, who were drowned near the Bridge 
of Allan in 1832; and it consequently calls forth peculiar 
sympathy with you from myself. To the God of all consola- 
tion we commit you in believing prayer. He who has en- 
abled you already to say, 'Thy will, Lord, be done!' will 
continue to comfort, uphold, direct, and bless you and yours. 
It is He who, in all the splendour and might of the Godhead, 
' rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH/ who is a father 
of the fatherless and a judge of the widow in 'His holy 
habitation ' ; and He, with unspeakable and unfathomable 
love and all the resources of omnipotence at His disposal, 
will be your guide, guardian, and portion now and for 
ever. 

" How sweet and instructive will be the memory of the 
dear departed to yourself and his many friends, and to thou- 
sands in the Church of Christ in many lands when they call 
to rnind or become acquainted with his exalted character and 
works and patience. He will not at least be forgotten in 
Central India, where he laboured and died, and founded the 
first native church within its borders. He will not be for- 
gotten in Scotland, which sent him as the bearer of glad 



1863 AT THE TURNING-POINT IN THIS MISSIONARY CENTURY 355 

tidings to this sin-bound land. Though dead he yet speaks 
to multitudes, and will long speak to multitudes. I hope 
next Lord's day to thank God in the congregation as I now 
do in the family for the gift which He Himself gave our 
Mission in your husband, and to pray for grace to enable us 
to improve that gift, the consequences of which are not 
removed with him in whom they centred. 

" Mrs. Wilson has already expressed to you her sympathy. 
She now joins with me in its reiteration. I am, my dear 
Mrs. Hislop, yours in Christian affection, 

" JOHN WILSON." 

FROM EEV. BABA PANDURANG TO HIS BROTHER CONVERTS. 

" CHINDWARA, 10th September 1863. I cannot express the 
sorrow and grief I had on receiving your letter regarding the 
death of Mr. Hislop, who was so estimable and kind to one and 
all of us. Dear friend, I could not refrain from shedding 
tears all that day. Where can we now look to him who so 
dearly and affectionately loved us ? Can we now get one 
who so really took interest in us, who so earnestly desired 
our temporal and spiritual, social and moral good? Alas, 
alas, that sudden death has brought upon us and on our 
Mission a day of great trial and affliction! He was a 
father, friend, and teacher, as you say, really in heart and 
action. What heart would not render him gratitude and 
reverential respect ? Was he not worthy of this ? He was 
really and truly the object of love. His accidental death 
has brought a great calamity indeed. The deep and lasting 
wound that his death inflicted on us will never be effaced 
by any earthly object, though ever so kind and affectionate 
that object be. He is gone, gone for ever to wear the 
crown of glory. He is happy, yea happy, happy among 
immortals." 

God took Stephen Hislop to Himself, just at the turn- 



356 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

ing-point in the missionary history of the century, as it has 
proved. The planting of Schwartz, Carey, and their asso- 
ciates had been followed by the watering of Duff and Wilson, 
Anderson and Caldwell, and many other devoted workers. 
In his twenty years' career in the unexplored heart of India, 
in what was first a native state, and then a too long neglected 
British province, he was called to combine both apostolic 
duties. Not till he was removed in a moment could it be said 
that " God gave the increase." All over Central and Northern 
India at least, and to a large extent in the older Christian dis- 
tricts of South India, the "increase" has come, in its first-fruits, 
during the quarter of a century that has passed since Septem- 
ber 1863. In his own Nagpoor districts and church, in the 
northern province of which Jabalpoor is the centre, in the hill 
fastnesses and forests of his beloved Gondwana, comparatively 
many others have entered into his labours. All will rejoice 
together they and their successors who will yet gather in the 
full harvest from the wild Gonds, the cultured Hindus, and 
the proud Mohammedans. He never faltered amid the dis- 
appointments, the delays, the hardships, the neglect, as it 
seems to us now, which tried his faith. Slowly he thought, 
resolutely he willed, silently and swiftly he acted, with an 
enthusiasm which burned ever more intensely till the last 
appeal in the obscure village school, because drawn from the 
heart of Him who said, " I must be about my Father's busi- 
ness : " " My meat and My drink is to do the will of Him 
that sent me, and to finish His work : " "I have a baptism to 
be baptized with ; and how am I straitened till it be accom- 
plished ! " 

Stephen Hislop's clear thinking and wide knowledge, his 
self-sacrificing affection and heroic service, compelled the 
admiration of all who came under his influence, and drew 
many of them to his Master for ever. Though masterful in 
his work, he was so humble and affectionate that the nearer 



1863 A HERO MISSIONARY 357 

a colleague was to him the more they loved each other. The 
relation of Hislop and Hunter to each other is at once an 
example and a rebuke to the many, both at home and abroad, 
who have almost every grace but that of self-effacing for the 
work's sake. Mrs. Colin Mackenzie 1 happily described the 
former, in 1852, as " a missionary pioneer, a man full of bodily 
and mental energy, practical sense, and indomitable deter- 
mination ; " and the latter as " of a gentle, poetic, sensitive 
temperament, great refinement of mind, and extraordinary 
accuracy and readiness in the use of his extensive acquire- 
ments, spiritual in his conversation, and altogether a sort of 
Melanchthon. They seem admirably suited to each other 
from their diversity of character and oneness of purpose." 

As a preacher Hislop unconsciously followed the first 
martyr, Stephen, who, standing in the very presence of God, 
declared what he saw. He spake the first truths of the 
Gospel with earnest simplicity and prophet -like boldness. 
There still live in English and Scottish homes veterans who 
thank God for His servant whose works do follow him. 
Few of his native converts survive; not only these, but 
hundreds of his Hindu and Mohammedan students, now in 
positions of influence and authority, still speak of him with 
loving gratitude, and trace all that they are to his labours to 
do them good. 

He was the most genial and lovable of friends, while 
ever tremendously in earnest. His quiet humour often 
became an effective weapon against hypocrisy and priestcraft, 
especially when these were used to delude the people. A 
Brahman pilgrim to the somewhat inaccessible shrine in the 
Mahadewa hills, annoyed at the toilsome path, exclaimed to 
the Christian missionaries, " Why does not your Jesus Christ 
keep the roads in better repair ? " Hislop instantly replied 

1 Life in the Mission, the Gamp, and the Zenana, or Six Years in India, 
p. 298, vol. iii. (1853). 



358 STEPHEN HISLOP 1863 

that the inquirer erred in his geography, " You fancy you 
are in British territory; you are passing through a State 
almost entirely under Brahmanical influence." The man was 
speechless. On another occasion a crowd of peasants called 
their priest to answer the missionary's appeals, but he replied, 
"I have taken medicine to-day, and it is contrary to my 
religion to sit under a tamarind-tree." " Let us remove to 
the shade of that mango-tree," said Hislop. The reluctant 
Brahman adduced the usual argument for idolatry, " I worship 
the idol because God is there." A herd of swine was feed- 
ing near, and, pointing to one of them, Hislop asked, " Is God 
in that pig ? " " Yes," replied the Brahman. " Then," was 
the rejoinder, " in consistency you are not only an idolater 
but a pig-worshipper." 

Stephen Hislop led the second band of martyr or hero-mis- 
sionaries in this missionary century, whose motto is per crucem 
ad lucem. As in the first three centuries, a living church is a 
martyr church. What St. Paul wrote of himself to the native 
church of Colossse, which sprang from the house of Philemon, 
in the valley of the Eiver Lycus, is true in its measure of 
every Christian and period of the Church's history: "I, 
Paul, am made a minister : who now rejoice in my sufferings 
for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ." So far as the Church in any age represents Christ 
to the world, its members bear the ministerial sufferings and 
sorrows of the conflict which flows from the completed aton- 
ing sufferings of Christ. 1 Brainerd, Carey, Martyn, Williams, 
and earlier men like Peter Greig less known but not less 
devoted, mark the pioneering stage of modern missions. The 
Indian Mutiny, rebuking a spell of faithlessness in Christen- 
dom, and especially in the United Kingdom, introduced the 

1 See the Rev. Walter Abbott, Vicar of Paddington, on " Ayuvla the 
Measure of Success," in the Church Missionary Intelligencer for January 1888 ; 
also, Dr. R. N. Gust's Missionary Address to Undergraduates of the University 
of Cambridge, 23d January 1888. 



1888 THE EVERLASTING ALL SAINTS' DAY 359 

second stage. Laying down his toiling life for Christ at the 
age of forty-six, Stephen Hislop was followed by the mission- 
ary Bishop Cotton, by Adam White, by Allen Gardiner, by the 
two brothers Gordon and Mrs. Gordon in Eromanga ; by David 
Livingstone, leading a host of martyrs, such as Mackenzie, 
Hannington, and Parker; Stewart and M'Ewan, Sutherland 
and Kollo, William Koyi the Kafir, and Mrs. Cross; the Baptists 
of England and the United States on the Kongo ; the native 
martyrs of Uganda ; and Ion Keith-Falconer, who to Arabia 
gave not only his all but himself. As from the young Scottish 
noble and the young English bishop we trace the martyr- 
succession back for twenty-five years to Stephen Hislop's 
life-struggle for Central India and death-struggle in the little 
Krishna water-course, we once more proclaim our belief and 
our joy in missions for this among other reasons that only 
the Christ of God could send such men and women so to live 
and so to die. 

" ' AFTER THIS I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no 
man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed 
with white robes, and palms in their hands ; and cried with 
a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon 
the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood 
round about the throne, and about the elders and the four 
beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and wor- 
shipped God, saying, Amen : Blessing, and glory, and 
wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and 
might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.' Eevela- 
tion vii. 9-12. 

" We l commemorate and, as far as our dull minds will 
let us, contemplate the saints ; the holy ones of God ; the 
pure and the triumphant, be they who they may, or whence 

1 Charles Kingsley, on All Saints' Day, in "Westminster Abbey. 



360 STEPHEN HISLOP 1888 

they may, or where they may. "We are not bidden to define 
and limit their number. We are expressly told that they are 
a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, 
and kindreds, and people, and tongues ; and most blessed 
news that is for all who love God and man. . . . 

" The great multitude are saints. They are the holy ones, 
the heroes and heroines of mankind, the elect, the aristocracy 
of grace. These are they who have kept themselves un- 
spotted from the world. They are the pure who have washed 
their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, 
which is the spirit of self-sacrifice. They are those who 
carry the palm-branch of triumph, who have come out of 
great tribulation, who have dared, and fought, and suffered 
for God, and truth, and right. Nay, there are those among 
them, and many, thank God weak women, too, among them 
who have resisted unto blood, striving against sin. . . . 

" And what are they like, those blessed beings ? The 
Gospel describes them to us ; and we may look on that 
description as complete, for He who gives it is none other 
than our Lord Himself. ' Blessed are the poor in spirit : for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that 
mourn : for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek : 
for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled. 
Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 
Blessed are the peace-makers : for they shall be called the 
children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
righteousness' sake : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my 
sake. Eejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your re- 
ward in heaven.' This is what they are like ; and what we, 
T fear, too many of us, are not like. But in proportion as we 



1888 THE HYMN OF ALL SAINTS 361 

grow like them, by the grace of God, just so far shall we 
enter into the communion of saints, and understand the bliss 
of that everlasting All Saints' Day which St. John saw in 
heaven. 

" And what do they do, those blessed beings ? Whatever 
else they do, or do not do, this we are told they do they wor- 
ship. ... If there be mysteries in the universe still hidden 
from them, they know who has opened the sealed book of 
God's secret counsels, even the Lamb who is the Lion, and the 
Lion who is the Lamb ; and therefore, if all things are not 
.clear to them, all things at least are bright, for they can 
trust that Lamb and His self-sacrifice. In Him, and through 
Him, light will conquer darkness, justice injustice, truth 
ignorance, order disorder, love hate, till God be all in all, and 
pain and sorrow and evil shall have been exterminated out of 
a world for which Christ stooped to die. . . . Therefore they 
worship; and their worship finds a natural vent in words 
most fit though few, but all expressing utter trust and utter 
satisfaction in the worthiness of God. Therefore they wor- 
ship ; and by worship enter into communion and harmony 
not only with each other, not only with angels and arch- 
angels, but with all the powers of nature, the four beings 
which are around the throne, and with every creature which 
is in heaven and in earth, and under the earth, and in the sea. 
For them, likewise, St. John heard saying, 'Blessing and 
glory, and honour, and power, be unto Him that sitteth on 
the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever/ 

" And why ? I think, with all humility, that the key to 
all these hymns whether of angels, or of men, or of mere 
natural things is the first hymn of all ; the hymn which 
shows that, however grateful to God for what He has done 
for them those are whom the Lamb has redeemed by His blood 
to God out of every kindred, and nation, and tongue ; yet, 
nevertheless, the hymn of hymns is that which speaks not 



362 STEPHEN HISLOP 1888 

of gratitude, but of absolute moral admiration the hymn 
which glorifies God, not for that which He is to man, not for 
that which He is to the universe, but for that which He is 
absolutely and in Himself that which He was before all 
worlds, and would be still, though the whole universe, all 
created things, and time, and space, and matter, and every 
created spirit likewise, should be annihilated for ever. And 
what is that ? 

" ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and 
is, and is to come/ 

" Ah ! what a Gospel lies within those words ! A Gospel ? 
Ay, if you will receive it, the root of all other possible 
Gospels, and good news for all created beings. What a 
Gospel ! and what an everlasting fount of comfort ! Surely 
of those words it is true, 'Blessed are they who, going 
through the vale of misery, find therein a well, and the pools 
are filled with water.' " 



APPENDIX 



THE CASE OE NATHA SINGH, SIKH CONVERT 

TO CHEIST 

JUDGMENT BY THE ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OE 
SIALKOT, PANJAB 

IN this case the accused is charged under section 363 l Indian 
Penal Code with having conveyed one Natha Singh beyond the 
limits of British India without his consent, and thus committed 
the offence described in section 360 I.P.C. 2 The accused denies 
that Natha Singh was not a consenting party, and pleads that 
even if he had objected, he the accused was quite within the 
law in doing what he did. The facts are as follows : I give them 
in their historical order. 

Natha Singh, who appears to me to be a lad of seventeen or 
eighteen years of age, and who seems to me to possess excep- 
tional intelligence and no little strength of character, is the son 
of one Hira Singh, a trader, and a Kapur Khatri by caste, who 
usually resides in Poonch. The accused is brother of Hira 
Singh, and usually lives in Gujrat, and is in partnership with his 
brother. 

Natha Singh for some two years has been living with his 

1 " 363. Whoever kidnaps any person from British India or from lawful 
guardianship, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a 
term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine." 

2 " 360. Whoever conveys any person beyond the limits of British India 
without the consent of that person, or of some person legally authorised to con- 
sent on behalf of that person, is said to kidnap that person from British India." 



364 STEPHEN HISLOP 

uncle and has been a regular attendant of the mission school at 
Gujrat. While there he came under Christian influences and took 
the missionary into his confidence. The missionary, after some 
consultation with his colleague and superior in Sialkot, advised 
the boy to tell his father of his change of views. On this 
the boy went to Poonch, where he remained some time. 

In October last (1887) he again appeared in Gujrat, and made 
a formal request to Mr. Paterson, the missionary, for baptism. 
Mr. Paterson then came to Sialkot for advice, and, the day after 
his arrival, was followed by Natha Singh, who reiterated his 
request. 

The Eev. Mr. Youngson, head of the Mission, refused to 
comply until the father in Poonch could be communicated with, 
and until the legal ability of the lad to leave his father's protec- 
tion could be settled by competent authority. He further wrote 
to the accused telling him what had happened, and suggesting 
that he the accused should come to Sialkot and see the lad. 
The accused came on the 24th October along with the lad's 
cousin, one Karm Chand, who has since disappeared, and for 
whose arrest I have issued a warrant. For three days they had 
access to the boy. 

On the 27th October Mr. Youngson came to the Deputy 
Commissioner, stating that this boy had been carried away by his 
relations by force, and he had reason to believe they had taken 
him to Jammu (Kashmir). By the Deputy Commissioner's order 
I held an investigation and recorded evidence under sections 
159 et seq. Criminal Procedure Code. 

I further issued a warrant for the arrest of accused and 
Karm Chand, the cousin, and later I issued a proclamation, and 
ordered the attachment of their property under sections 87, 88 
of the same Code. 

On the 24th of December, at 4.30 P.M., the accused surren- 
dered himself to me, and the trial came on for hearing on the 
3d of January (1888). On that date the counsel for the accused 
informed me that he would produce the boy, who would swear 
that he had left the missionaries of his own free will, and no 
violence had been used. The lad was then brought into court 
by his father, and deposed that he had been forcibly and with- 
out his consent taken from the custody of the Mission. 

I will now give what I consider the evidence for the prose- 
cution to have proved to be the real history of the events on the 
27th October: 

About 6 A.M. the boy left the room in which he slept and 
went to a neighbouring well to wash, While there he was sud- 



APPENDIX 365 

denly seized, gagged, and dragged off. He was taken down the 
road to the station, where he was concealed in the house of the 
telegraph clerk, also a Kapur Khatri, until the latter, having 
finished his duties in connection with the arrival of the morning 
train, could procure an ekka (cart). The ekka was brought and 
stationed on the Jammu road, some distance from the station, 
the boy was put on the ekka and taken across the frontier. The 
evidence in support of the above story is to me convincing. The 
telegraph clerk alone, of all the witnesses who saw the boy in 
company with the accused, says he was cheerful and happy. 
This man, Bhaggat Singh, gave evidence before me in both the 
preliminary investigation and the subsequent trial, and he lied 
throughout. When I first took his evidence, the day after the 
event, he was so nervous that it required some encouragement 
on my part to enable him to speak at all. His deposition needs 
only to be read to be disbelieved, and although his manner of 
lying shows he is not as yet an adept in the art, the revelation of 
character he has made before me stamps him as unfit for the 
confidential position he at present occupies. 

The counsel for the accused did not produce any evidence to 
contradict the weight of testimony on the other side, and satisfied 
himself by attempting, through cross-examination, to bring out 
discrepancies between the story told by Natha Singh and those 
related by the witnesses. He also dwelt in his pleading on the 
feeble efforts which, on his own showing, the lad seems to have 
made to effect his escape. I allow that Natha Singh has not 
shown, although his assailants were sturdy men, that he did all 
in his power to get away. But the boy was afraid, and, as he 
exclaimed when he came into my court, he resolved to keep 
silence until he could meet an Englishman to whom he might 
appeal. He felt it was hopeless to appeal to any one but an 
Englishman, and this feeling explains the writing of the letter 
and the declaration alluded to below. Again, both these dis- 
crepancies and the apparent apathy of the boy are, I think, suffi- 
ciently explained by the nervous terror with which the sudden 
attack upon him seems to have filled his mind. Not only was 
he incapable of realising much more than the few main events 
which meant so much to himself, but the sudden and bold nature 
of the attack prevented his appreciating all the possible means 
of escape. 

The accused's counsel further adduced the letter written from 
Poonch by Natha Singh (Exhibit A) and the declaration (Exhibit 
B) on the file, as proofs that the boy had gone willingly. Natha 
Singh allows having written both these documents, but states he 



366 STEPHEN HISLOP 

did so under pressure and in fear of his life. The explanation is 
reasonable, and, although the declaration was written within an 
hour of his deposing in court to the exact contrary, I am clearly 
of opinion that the circumstances under which it was written are 
sufficient, even were there no other considerations to be looked 
to, to render it valueless as evidence on behalf of the accused. 
It should be remarked also that the boy swore that the counsel 
for the accused used his influence to get the document written, 
and this testimony was allowed by the defence to go un- 
challenged. 

Such are the facts. The sole question now is, Do these facts 
constitute an offence under section 360 ? The defence says that, 
even admitting these facts, the answer must be " No," and gives 
the following reasons : 

The consent required is an alternative consent, i.e. "the con- 
sent of that person or of some person legally authorised to con- 
sent on behalf of that person." The law here contemplates the 
case of a minor. Act IX. of 1875 lays down the age of a minor 
as any age under eighteen years. The boy, on his own showing, 
is seventeen and a half, therefore on this occasion he was, in the 
eye of the law, incapable of giving consent. His uncle, in the 
absence of his father, stood in loco parentis, and was entitled, to 
use all reasonable means of compulsion to make the boy go 
wherever he, the uncle, thought best. Accused's counsel further 
strengthened this argument by reference to the provisions of 
sections 81 and 92 of the I.P.C., as there was "no criminal in- 
tention to cause harm," and the act was done " in good faith for 
the purpose of preventing or avoiding other harm to person," 
and further, as " the circumstances were such that the person was 
incapable of giving consent." 

I do not agree with the above explanation. If the legisla- 
ture contemplated the case of a minor, why is that idea not given 
expression? The following section 361, which deals with the 
same offence, when the act is begun and ended within the limits 
of British India, does so expressly lay down the law as to carry- 
ing off a minor, and goes on to state that gud this offence, the 
age of a minor is fourteen years and under if the minor be a 
male. Should, therefore, this argument for the defence be ad- 
mitted, I think that it follows that the boy, Natha Singh, whom 
the accused allows to be above sixteen, must be considered 
for the purposes of this trial to be no longer a minor. 

This being my view of the law it is unnecessary for me to 
state how far sections 81 and -92 apply, though on the face of 
their wording it is clear that the act was not done to "prevent 



APPENDIX 367 

other harm to person " as, before the law, a change of religion 
cannot be described as "harm" and in section 92 "incapable 
of giving consent " cannot be taken to imply a legal incapability 
under any enactment of the legislature j it clearly means a 
mental incapability of forming a correct judgment regarding a 
given set of circumstances. 

The question then comes to be, If a minor, in the legal 
acceptation of the word, is not meant, when has the person's con- 
sent to be considered, and when is that of the legally authorised 
person to be preferred 1 I maintain the law gives the courts the 
power to decide this in each particular instance, as it happens to 
arise. And it is impossible for any one who sees the boy and 
converses with him for some time to resist the conviction, that 
in such a matter as gave rise to this offence, and with which he 
is so intimately connected, he is eminently capable of forming an 
independent and responsible opinion. 

This being so, and assuming that the accused, as his uncle, 
would come under the definition of a legally authorised person, 
I hold that his, Natha Singh's, consent was necessary before he 
could be removed from British territory. 

Accused's counsel further contended that this boy was, in his 
relatives' eyes, in bad company ; that his uncle felt that, as the 
lad had been sent to him by the father, he was responsible for 
his conduct, and that it behoved him, if he could not persuade the 
boy to do what was right, to use all reasonable coercive measures 
to remove him from pernicious influences : that he considered 
the father's guardianship was what the boy required, and that 
he accordingly took him to his father, who, unfortunately, lived 
across the border ; that he acted in the boy's best interests and 
with the sole desire of saving him from becoming a renegade. 

Now, in considering whether the taking away of the boy 
comes under this section I have nothing to do with the man's 
motives. I have to look to what actually happened, and I am 
not bound either, at this stage of the proceedings, to take into 
account the man's ignorance of our laws. He had for three days 
been afforded unimpeded access to the boy, and there was no 
chance of any irrevocable step being taken by the boy, as the 
missionaries had promised to withhold baptism till they could 
ascertain the boy's legal ability to act for himself. And I con- 
sider it my duty here to put on record that throughout the 
whole history of this case, as far as that is known to me, the 
missionaries have acted with scrupulous fairness and honour. 

The accused had it in his power to make an application to 
the magistrate of the district for custody of this boy, though it 



368 STEPHEN HISLOP 

by no means follows that, supposing he could have proved the 
minority, his application would have been granted, as the law 
gives courts discretion in such matters. Accused's counsel pro- 
duced a ruling of the Chief Court, P. Eec., No. 15 of 1887, 
Uit Sahibzadi v. M. C. Newton, to prove that the missionaries 
could not claim the guardianship of the boy. But, as I have 
already shown, that ruling bears only very indirectly on this 
case. As the notes to section 360 point out, this offence may be 
committed on a child as well as on a grown man. The question 
of the proper guardian of Natha Singh is one for a civil court to 
decide. 

In this case the accused took the law into his own hands, 
and he must bear the consequences. Section 363 provides the 
punishment for this offence, and lays down a maximum of seven 
years. I am not prepared to deny that the motives which 
induced the accused to act as he did, were, from his point of 
view, laudable, and so far as he was ruled by a desire to keep 
the lad from changing the religion of his fathers, he has my 
sympathy. Considering also the facts of the case, that the boy 
was his own nephew, that he felt himself in a degree answerable 
to the boy's father, that he took the boy straight to his father's 
house, and that no brutal violence was used, I think there is no 
necessity for a heavy sentence. 



SENTENCE. 

I sentence the prisoner Narain Singh to be imprisoned for one 
year. The imprisonment shall be simple. 1 

(Signed) J. E. DuNLOP-SMiTH. 

1 On appeal to the District Judge the prisoner was released. The young Sikh 
was baptized, having in court declared his desire to go with the Missionaries. 



APPENDIX 369 



II 

A MODEL MISSIONARY ADDEESS 

To THE STUDENTS OF THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH 

WHEN a stranger lands on the shores of Western India he 
sees realised before him the dreams of his youth regarding 
Oriental scenery. A luxuriant tropical vegetation, including 
various kinds of palm, and intermingled with rice -producing 
swamps everywhere meets his eye. As, however, he proceeds 
into the interior, the soil becomes drier and the landscape barer. 
Acacia trees, armed with thorns and distilling gum, succeed the 
waving palms, and instead of a succession of square plots of rice 
inundated with water, he meets with fields of cotton and of flax 
or wheat, growing scarcely above a foot high. 

This variety in appearance and products is typical of the 
country in other respects. Among its 180,000,000 of people 
there are at least four different nations. One of these consists 
of the original inhabitants, who once occupied the plains, but 
are now confined to the woody and mountainous districts, like 
the Welsh of our own isle. Others are Hindus, who, about 
3000 years ago, came into the country by way of Afghanistan, 
and drove the aborigines into their present retreats. A third 
nation, found chiefly in the Bombay Presidency, are Parsees, who 
fled for refuge to India to avoid persecution from the Moham- 
medans when they overran Persia. The fourth are Mussulmans, 
who, after establishing themselves in Persia and the adjoining 
countries, invaded India and conquered the Hindus. All these, 
with the exception of the Parsees, who adopted the speech of the 
district in which they first settled, differ in language. The jungle 
tribes have various dialects of their own, not one of which has yet 
been reduced to writing; the Mussulmans, wherever they are 
scattered, retain their Hindustani ; and the Hindus have eleven 
or twelve languages among themselves, into which the New 
Testament has already been translated. As might be expected, 
there is the same diversity in religion. The mountaineers adore 
genii, or spirits, who are supposed to preside over the earth and 
the waters, the hills and the forests ; the Parsees offer prayers 
and praises to the elements, especially fire ; and the Mussulmans 

2 B 



370 STEPHEN HISLOP 

believe in one God, of whom Mohammed is declared to be the 
last and greatest prophet. None of these are avowedly idolaters 
like the Hindus, who form the great bulk of our Eastern sub- 
jects, and with whom principally our Missions have had to do. 

Hinduism is a monstrous compound of error, impurity, and 
tyranny. Though professing to recognise one Supreme Being, it 
robs him of all activity, and all those moral attributes which we 
reckon peculiarly divine. According to it the universe has to do 
with three emanations from Brahma, each of whom has his wife, 
to whom he proves unfaithful, whom he scolds, and by whom he 
is scolded in turn. The members of this triad lie to each other, 
quarrel with each other, and one even cuts off another's head, or 
rather one of his many heads. Brahma, the first in order, by 
whom the world is said to have been created, is represented as 
now suffering from the curse of a Brahman, and deprived of all 
religious homage for having been guilty of falsehood. Vishnu, 
the preserver, is stated to have appeared on earth in corporeal 
shape nine times, while a tenth incarnation is still expected. In 
the bodily form of Krishna, certainly the most popular of all his 
avatars, he lied and stole, and indulged in all manner of lascivi- 
ousness. Shiva, the destroyer, according to Hindu accounts, 
was nothing but an impure red-eyed debauchee. Besides these 
deities, and their various incarnations, there are 330,000,000 
of gods, who, however, were so helpless, that a king of Ceylon, 
named Rawan, having by the practice of austerities acquired 
great merit and wonderful power, carried them all away captive 
and lodged them in a dungeon. 

You may readily imagine that the adherents of this religion 
are sunk in depravity and misery. Men cannot rise above the 
level of their gods. If the worshipped are held forth as guilty 
of falsehood and deceit, it cannot be expected that the worship- 
pers should be superior to these sins. If their deities are de- 
scribed as full of envy, malice, and all uncleanness, what can we 
suppose but that the community at large should be pervaded by 
these vices. And this is too true. The late rebellion has cast 
a lurid light on the character of the actors in it. 

And on what is founded their hope of deliverance from sin 
and its consequences ? Their reliance is on the efficacy of their 
alms and prayers, their repentance and tears, their pilgrimages and 
penances. No doubt these last are of a painful kind. They 
will hold up their arm above their head until the sinews stiffen 
and the withered member cannot be withdrawn. They will 
pierce their bodies with iron skewers, and submit to be whirled 
about in the air for an hour at a time, suspended from a. trans- 



APPENDIX 371 

verse beam by a hook in the muscles of the back. They will 
go hundreds of miles, measuring the weary way by the length 
of their body, till at last they reach some sacred city and bathe 
in the stream of some holy river. 

With their absurd doctrines, disgusting idols, and obviously 
insufficient remedies for sin, one might suppose it would be easy 
to convince them of their error and danger. But experience 
shows the opposite. The Hindus are not like the last generation 
of South Sea Islanders, with scarcely any faith or civilisation to 
boast of. They have books that are perhaps the oldest in the 
world next to those of Moses, a subtle priesthood to exalt the 
credit of their books and keep their countrymen in bondage, 
a civilisation which dates back to a period when Europe was in 
barbarism, and, above all, a system of caste, which fetters the 
minds of the people, and deters them from change under the 
pain of an excommunication worse than death. 

But passing from statements about India in general, let me 
turn to that part of it with which I am best acquainted. 

The Province of Nagpoor, where our Mission is established, 
contains between four and five millions of inhabitants. Situated 
in the interior of the country and almost equidistant from the three 
great Presidency cities, and having till recently been under the 
government of a native prince, it has not been subjected to much 
European influence. In the south and east there are impene- 
trable jungles, which you will find put down in maps as " unex- 
plored territory," and which are as little known as those parts 
of Africa which the adventurous foot of Livingstone has not yet 
trod. But even in the open country, where I have gone to 
preach the G-ospel, there are many tracts in which a white face 
has never been seen. 

Among the aboriginal tribes inhabiting our jungles the most 
numerous are called Gonds. At the time I settled at Nagpoor 
the horrible rite of human sacrifice prevailed. These are the 
same as the Khonds, of whose Meria sacrifices you must have 
heard. Meria is *he name given to children whom these 
mountaineers buy from men that have kidnapped them on the 
plains. They are kept and treated with great respect until the 
recurrence of a great annual festival, when their body is fastened 
in the cleft of a tree, and their flesh is literally torn from their 
living members, and the shreds carried away in triumph by their 
savage murderers to bury in their fields, as an offering to their great 
earth goddess, and a means of insuring abundant crops. Though 
no admirer of the general character of our Indian polic}^ I am 
thankful to be able to say that by the efforts of the British 



372 STEPHEN HISLOP 

Government for the suppression of this crime, as well as the 
kindred ones of infanticide, thaggi, and sati, thousands of lives 
are now annually preserved that were formerly sacrificed on the 
altar of a horrid superstition. For the attainment of these ends 
expensive agencies have been maintained in a spirit of disinterest- 
edness for which the East India Company could not always claim 
credit, but which is worthy of a nation that surrendered twenty 
millions of money to loosen the bands of the slave. Drunken- 
ness is a prevailing vice among the jungle tribes. Their religious 
observances invariably end in intoxication. Of course, having 
no written language, they are unable to read. And yet in other 
respects they are an interesting class of men. They are honest 
and truthful, intelligent, energetic, and manly. A Mission to 
them would not have to encounter the same difficulties as to the 
Hindus. An attempt was made in 1843. It is among a 
kindred and neighbouring race that the German missionaries are 
labouring with much success at Ohutia Nagpoor. And in Burma 
it is a similar hill tribe, known as the Karens, who are now 
receiving the Gospel message with so much avidity from the 
American Mission. 

The inhabitants of the plains, consisting chiefly of Hindus, 
with a small sprinkling of Mohammedans, are just the opposite 
of this class. They are forbidden to taste strong drink, and in 
general are free from intemperance, but they make up for this by 
indulgence in all other forms of sin. Moral distinctions, though 
known among Hindus, seem not to be realised in the same way as 
in other countries. Their indolence and apathy may in a great 
measure be attributed to the climate, and their helpless depend- 
ence on others to the long period they have continued as a 
subject nation ; but their falsehood, deceit, and ingratitude may 
be most justly ascribed to that degrading superstition by which 
they have been for a longer period enslaved. 

Nagpoor, the capital of the Province, is a stronghold of 
Brahmanism. Being for generations the seat of a wealthy native 
court, it attracted from all parts of the country members of the 
priestly caste anxious to bask in the sunshine of royal favour. 
They were not only the keepers of the Kaja's conscience but the 
rulers of his country as well. His prime minister was a 
Brahman, his general was a Brahman, and Brahmans were usually 
the heads of departments at the capital, as they were the gover- 
nors of the different districts. Every day his Highness enter- 
tained a certain number of priests, and drank water consecrated by 
the immersion of their great toes. Once a year as many as fifteen 
or twenty thousand collected at the palace, and each received 



APPENDIX 373 

according to his reputation for sanctity and learning a gift from 
the royal treasury. This, I regret to say, was continued, though 
on a diminished scale, by our Government after the annexation 
of the country. The festivals were celebrated with great splen- 
dour while the Eaja was living, and to our shame be it men- 
tioned the representative of the British nation on more than one 
annual occasion contributed to the eclat. At the Dasara, when 
the native prince went out of the city to worship a tree, the British 
Eesident and a detachment of British troops went out also from 
their cantonments and saluted him by the way. Again, on the 
Holi, a season of unbridled license under the name of religion, 
like the ancient Saturnalia, when men covered each other with 
streams of filthy water, and insulted women with catches of still 
more filthy songs, the British Resident was wont to pay the 
Eaja a visit of state, when he had to submit to the indignity of 
receiving some of the pollution of the feast on his person. There 
was another festival observed at Nagpoor, which reminded me 
of the worship of Baal or Moloch. A trench was dug and filled 
with live charcoal, and those who had made a vow for deliverance 
from sickness or for some other temporal benefit on the accom- 
plishment of their wish ran through it. This was accompanied 
by tearing the flesh and torturing the body, as we read in the 
Scripture allusions to the ceremonies most acceptable to the 
Babylonian god. 

The Mission at Nagpoor was established in fulfilment of the 
dying request of an officer's lady. She had shortly before been 
brought to a knowledge of the truth, and while glowing with all 
the ardour of a first love to her Saviour she received a large 
sum of money which had been given up as lost. This she requested 
her husband to devote to the Lord's cause, and he, having soon 
after herself been converted, was forward to comply with her 
wish. The money (upwards of 2600) was offered to the Church 
of Scotland before the Disruption, but at that time the Church 
had not faith to enlarge her operations, and the generous offer 
was not immediately accepted. It was in this position when 
the Disruption occurred ; but the officer, though an Englishman 
and an Episcopalian, was at no loss to recognise the true Church 
of Scotland after that event, and he renewed his proposal to the 
ecclesiastical body which had the confidence of all the mission- 
aries both to Jews and Gentiles. The Free Church, with a 
reliance on her Great Head and a zeal in her Lord's service 
which I trust will ever animate her, not only undertook to carry 
on all the existing stations of the Foreign Missions in addition 
to the support of the ministry at home, but to found the new 



374 STEPHEN HISLOP 

station at Nagpoor. Before the end of 1844 I had arrived in 
India, and in February thereafter I found myself, in the provid- 
ence of God, settled on the outskirts of a city with a population 
of 130,000 souls, wholly given to idolatry. To communicate 
with them I commenced the study of their language Marathi, 
which extends all the way up from Bombay. A useful degree of 
acquaintance with a vernacular tongue may be acquired in 
the space of a year, but for some years after the student must 
be adding to his stock of words and idioms ere he is thoroughly 
competent to meet a Brahman in discussion. Before I was able 
to preach to adults I thought it right to establish schools for the 
young. 

Some have a doubt regarding the educational operations 
of the India Mission. Let me tell you the grounds on which I 
acted. (1) To confer a favour is to conciliate. A missionar3 r 
who heals a disease, finds a more willing hearer when he speaks 
of the great Physician; and a missionary who communicates use- 
ful knowledge that can at once be appreciated by his pupils, 
gains an influence over them, which disposes them to listen to 
his spiritual instructions. (2) The secular instruction removes 
prejudices, and in this sense also it clears the way for the con- 
sideration of God's Word. You cannot teach a lesson on geo- 
graphy or astronomy without overturning some statement on 
these subjects in the' Hindu sacred books, and in proportion as 
you weaken the hold which these have on the minds of your 
scholars you prepare them for receiving the doctrines of the Bible, 
which it is your highest aim to teach them. (3) In teaching 
these doctrines in a school you are placed at an advantage. In 
the street you have no control over your audience. They come 
and go. They may catch the beginning, middle, or end of a dis- 
course, but seldom will they hear the whole. Or if you have them 
one day they are absent the next. But in a school you have 
youthful minds listening to you from the beginning to the end of a 
Scripture lesson, and not only one day but for days, weeks, 
and months you may be permitted to ply them with those truths, 
which are able to make them wise unto salvation through faith 
which is in Christ Jesus. And lastly, the converts that are 
made in this way, having had their minds disciplined during 
their education, become more intelligent Christians, and are 
better fitted to expound to others those saving truths, which they 
have learned themselves. At the same time I think it expedient 
that as soon as possible they should go forth to preach to their 
countrymen in their own language the wonderful works of God. 

But as missionaries commanded to make known the Gospel 



APPENDIX 375 

to every creature we cannot neglect the claims of the old j and 
hence at Nagpoor there was preaching at our branch schools to 
the adults who passed by. And every year for a month, when 
the schools were vacant, tours were made into the neighbouring 
districts, and the Gospel carried to villages that would not 
otherwise have heard it. You may wish to learn something 
about our village preaching. "We rose early in the morning, and 
having sent on our tent to a village say ten miles off, we started 
and reached the first of the intermediate villages about sunrise. 
Here we preached and then proceeded to the next village, where 
a second address was delivered, if possible, before the people 
went out to their fields. By this time the sun was hot and we 
had to mount our horse and hasten to our encamping ground. 
There, after a late breakfast, we received visitors from the village, 
and endeavoured to sell tracts. In the afternoon we preached 
again, and advanced two or three miles farther on our journey. 
Our addresses, of course, were very different from sermons in 
this country. We generally began by referring to some passing 
event or some object that was interesting to the people them- 
selves, and then sought, to lead their thoughts on from the works 
of God to their great Creator; and, however injurious might 
have been the influence of their mythological books upon their 
minds, we always found that they possessed deep down in their 
intuitions the idea of a Supreme Being, who was at once the 
Former, Preserver, and Judge of the world. We spoke of the 
attributes of this God His goodness, His holiness, His justice ; 
and referred to the guilt of men and the necessity of punishment 
if there was no adequate atonement. 

To this extent the Hindu agriculturists are ready to go along 
with the Christian preacher. Then we show the insufficiency of 
all human modes of salvation, such as washings, fastings, pilgrim- 
ages, and even repentance, and enlarge on the love of God in 
sending His own Son to fulfil all righteousness in our stead, and 
to suffer the just for the unjust. But we are made to learn that 
the offence of the Cross has not ceased, for when our hearers find 
they must give up their own merits for Christ's, and see the 
trials and sacrifices to which such a course would necessarily ex- 
pose them, they go back on the address which they have heard, 
and begin to dispute propositions which they have formerly 
admitted. Hardly a discourse can be ended without having to 
encounter the pantheistic notions that God is not only every- 
where but is and does everything, that He speaks and acts 
through us, and that there is no distinction between truth and 
falsehood, right and wrong, and consequently no need of an 



376 STEPHEN HISLOP 

atonement. Thus do we discover that there are perverse specula- 
tions, even among the peasantry, by which Satan blinds their 
minds and hardens their hearts. I have said that on our tours 
we sell books. In this there is a special agency kept up all the 
year round. A native Christian colporteur makes extensive 
journeys through the Province, and sometimes into the adjoining 
territories, persuading the people to buy his little publications, 
and explaining their contents when there is no reader to be 
found. This the Mission has always regarded as a most im- 
portant means of doing good, and thoroughly evangelistic in its 
character. 

I would now briefly refer to the effect of the various agencies 
employed by the Mission. I shall give you a single illustration 
from the old and another from the young. 

Yadoji, when I first knew him, was about sixty years of age. 
He was an intelligent farmer, living in a village about seventy 
miles from Nagpoor. One day he came to my house for a book 
containing the same doctrine as a little one that he had been 
reading. This, he said, he had some time before obtained in 
the shop of a merchant in the city, who, not valuing it himself, 
tossed it to him to do with it as he pleased. It was the First 
Book for Children in Marathi, beginning with the alphabet and 
ending with some simple sentences full of Christian truth. This 
Yadoji took home, and, as he read about Jesus dying for his 
salvation, he thought of Him by day and dreamed about Him 
by night. The little book contained the ten commandments ; 
and the old man, feeling it right to observe the Lord's Day, 
made a division of his only room. On the one side he sat with 
his book and read and prayed ; on the other his wife, who could 
not understand what had come over him, sat with her wheel and 
span. G-ladly I gave him a Marathi New Testament, and soon 
after visited him at his village. I found that in about three 
months he had read the New Testament through, and could turn 
to passages that had struck him during perusal. There was one 
mistake, however, into which he fell, though naturally enough in 
his circumstances. Not knowing the interval of time that had 
elapsed since the book of the Eevelation had been written, he 
sometimes prayed that the backsliding churches there mentioned 
might repent and do their first works, and so be saved from the 
punishment with which they were threatened. In about a year 
after he was baptized, when he was cast out by his relatives and 
disowned even by the wife of his bosom. He continued with the 
Mission for another year, making known the truth which he had 
embraced, when he revisited his village in the hope of inducing 



APPENDIX 377 

his wife to live with him. By the way he was seized with fever, 
and on reaching his old home he was denied admittance to it, 
and sent to the cowhouse, where he lay till he died. Before his 
decease he told his relatives that he died a believer in Jesus, and 
that they were not to burn his body like a heathen's but to bury 
it like a Christian's. The relatives, who had treated him with 
cruelty while alive, disobeyed his injunctions after death. His 
body was burned on the banks of the river, and his ashes cast 
into the stream ; but his soul, I believe, is now with his Saviour 
and his God. 

My next case is that of Baba Pandurang, a Brahman boy 
instructed in one of our city schools. When about fifteen years 
of age he expressed his desire to follow Christ. As he was an 
intelligent youth, this wish of his, had he lived at Madras, would 
have been respected by the courts of law. But he resided at 
Nagpoor under a native prince, and though he had taken refuge 
with us and broken his caste, he was peremptorily demanded by 
the British Resident, handed over to the Raja, arraigned before a 
Brahmanical court convened in the palace, and for having boldly 
declared in the presence of all that he wished to be a Chris- 
tian, was sent to prison, where he remained, with the sanction 
of a countryman of our own, for upwards of a quarter of a 
year. Being all that time cut off from Christian inter- 
course, and perpetually assailed with the solicitations of 
sorrowful parents and the arguments of sophistical priests, his 
constancy gave way, and he was released from confinement on 
his denying Christ. But in a year after his convictions returned, 
and when he fled to us again for protection not even the British 
Resident had the courage to order him a second time to be given 
up. He is now a consistent Christian, a catechist labouring 
among both old and young of his countrymen, and a candidate 
for the ministry. 

The number of adults baptized since the commencement of 
the Mission is forty-four. Our schools are attended by 800 
pupils, and we have to minister to between two and three 
hundred of our countrymen belonging to the military service. I 
cannot conclude without what has been called "recruiting." 

Though we have to thank God that He has granted us some 
measure of success at Nagpoor, yet we have hitherto made only 
the most inconsiderable beginning of the work there. What 
are two missionaries (alas ! too frequently reduced to one), but 
what are even two missionaries to four or five millions of people ? 
There are hundreds of villages in our Province that have never 
heard the Gospel hundreds that contain not even one individual 



378 STEPHEN HISLOP 

able to read. Our cry is for teachers and preachers. And the 
same cry proceeds from all our Mission stations. The number 
of our missionaries has been diminished by death ; their strength 
has been reduced by disease and manifold labour, and even to 
supply existing vacancies one or two men are required. But 
surely God expects more than this at our hands. In vain will 
be all the lessons which He has been teaching us by recent 
events in India, if at a time when the stewardship of that land 
has afresh been given to our nation, and the openings for usefulness 
are every year becoming wider and more numerous, if at a time 
when He is pouring out His Spirit on our people at home, and 
spreading among them a deeper concern about their own souls 
and the souls of others, we shall be content simply to maintain 
our ground and shut our eyes to the millions of our fellow-sub- 
jects that are perishing for lack of knowledge. At the call of 
duty the soldiers of an earthly monarch make light of heat and 
cold and dangers by sea and land, and shall the soldiers of the 
Cross shrink from an equal measure of self-denial ? When the 
stability of our power in the East was imperilled by the late re- 
volt, Britain did not grudge her treasure or the flower of her 
chivalry to avert the evil and reconquer the rebellious districts ; 
and shall the churches of the land be more parsimonious of their 
money or their men, when they know that the sacrifice is to bring 
India, that has been so long ruled over by Satan, under the blessed 
sceptre of the Saviour King. The Churches in the South have in- 
creased their agency, and why should not the Church of our 
fathers ? The English seats of learning are sending forth their best 
men men like French 1 of Agra, a double first, equally eminent in 
classics as in mathematics, who would not enter a place of safety 
if his native Christian brethren were to be left to the tender 
mercies of the Sepoys ; or like the late lamented Eagland, who 
left his academic dignity and spent the proceeds of his fellow- 
ship itinerating through the villages of Tinnevelli. I am per- 
suaded that there will be found the same self-sacrificing spirit 
among the students of our own halls and the preachers of our own 
beloved Church. 

1 First Bishop of Lahore. 



3d December 1859. 



INDEX 



ABDOOL MASIHI, 327. 

Aberdeen, 210, 284. 

Aboriginals of India, 214. 

Achatince, 286. 

Adoption, 137, 139. 

./Ebba, 4. 

sEshna, 12. 

Afghan War, 151. 

Africa, 270, 274. 

Ahmednagar, 55. 

Ajanta, 36, 55. 

Akbar, 35. 

Albert, Prince, 275. 

Alexander, Rev. W. B., 300. 

Al Kindy, 328. 

All Fools' Day, 107. 

Al Maraun, Caliph, 328. 

Alps, 259. 

Amarkantak, 42, 241, 270. 

Atnpullaria, 249. 

Amraoti, 152. 

Anderson, Eev. J., 74, 93, 99, 
292. 

Anglo-Indian society, 339. 

Annelids, 265. 
Annexation, 139, 142, 158. 
Ants, 69. 
Apa Saheb, 36. 
Apaya, 85, 322. 
Arabia, 270. 
Arbutus, 12. 
Archaeology, 241. 
Arthington, Mr. R., 197, 207. 
Aryan, 33, 80. 
Assye, 36. 

Asterophyllites, 265. 
Auckland, Lord, 173. 
Azeemoolla Khan, 173. 

BAKI BAI, 137, 281. 
Balfour, Dr. G., 275. 

Sir George, 311. 

Barbour, Robert, 326. 
Barclay, Miss Mary, 160. 
Barkoi, 167, 264. 
Baroda, 36, 112. 



149, 



Barrackpore, 172, 175. 
Barzoi, 327. 
Belaspore, 42. 
Benfey, 82. 
Bengal, 248, 263. 

Asiatic Society, 275. 

Bengal Hurkaru paper, 121. 
Bentinck, Lord W., 37, 151. 
Benuas, 286. 
Berar, 55, 151, 323. 
Berhampore, 172. 
Berkeley, Rev. M. J., 316. 
Bernard, Sir C., 116. 
Bhandara, 222, 326. 
Bhima, 224. 
Bhosla family, 36. 
Bible, 129, 293, 328, 340. 
Binjewars, 219. 
Birdwood, Colonel, 283. 
Blanford, Mr. W. T., 268. 
Blattidce, 257. 
Boilean, Colonel, 190. 
Bolarum, 153. 
Bombay, 54, 247, 260. 

Asiatic Society, 261, 275. 

Bonar, Horatius, 18. 

Bori, 334. 

Bose Hemuath, 336. 

Boston, Thomas, 5, 300. 

Botany, 273. 

Brachyops laticeps, 268. 

Brahmanism, 55, 64, 68, 82, 114, 181, 

214, 294, 356, 370. 
Braidwood, the missionary, 328. 
Brainerd, 358. 
Brandis, Sir D., 275. 
Brenmer, Professor, 328. 
Brewster, Sir D., 18, 268, 295. 
British Association, 264, 284. 
British rule, 323. 
Brittany, 241. 
Brown, 213. 

Dr. R, 274. 



Browning, Mr. Colin, 321. 

Bryant, 13. 

Buchanan, Dr. James, 15. 



380 



INDEX 



Buchanan, Dr. Eobert, 300. 
Buckland, Dr., 18. 
Buddhism, 55, 214, 294. 
Buist, Dr., 144, 244. 
Bunbury, Sir C., 261, 274. 
Bunyan, 13, 85. 
Burma, 294. 
Burns the poet, 18. 

the missionary, 21, 300. 

Burton, Chief-Justice, 336. 
Butara, 266. 

Caesalpina, 107. 

Calcutta, 172, 173. 

Calcutta Review, 276. 

Calder, J., 246. 

Caldwell, Bishop, 211, 356. 

Calopteryx, 12. 

Cambuslang Revival, 300. 

Campbell, Sir George, 218. 

Candlish, Eev. Dr., 47, 343. 

Canning, Lord, 40, 127, 173, 310. 

Carey, William, 36, 213, 249, 358. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 14, 16. 

Carnival, 107. 

Carter, Dr., 246, 275. 

Cassida, 256. 

Caste, 114, 117, 123, 181, 323. 

Celts, 241. 

Census of India, 214. 

Central Provinces, 33, 311. 

Ceratodi, 263. 

Chalmers, Thomas, 14, 29. 

Chambars, 330. 

Chamberlain, missionary, 38. 

Chancla, 81, 264. 

Chapatees, 175, 183. 

Chapman, Captain W. D., 202, 284. 

Chatteesgarh, 34, 320. 

Chesney, Captain, 168. 

Chikakol, 152. 

Chikalcla, 151. 

Chindwara, 164, 241, 326. 

Church of Scotland, 45. 

Free, 15, 45, 47, 289, 313, 378. 

Established, 79. 

United Presbyterian, 47. 

of England, 73. 

of India, 41. 

Presbyterian, 41, 289. 

Missionary Society, 327. 

Chutia Nagpoor, 380. 

Civil courts and conscience, 123, 363. 

Cleveland, A., 213. 

Coal, 164, 202, 262. 

Codes of India, 308, 363. 

Coldingham, 4. 

Coldstream, 2. 

Colebrooke, 36, 103. 



Coleoptera, 150, 257. 

Colossians, 358. 

Colportage, 130, 191, 293. 

Columba, 4. 

Coming of the Lord, 337. 

Conscience, 123, 338, 363. 

Cooper, Eev. J. G., 280, 328, 343. 

Coorg, 116. 

Corncockle-Muir, 20. 

Coromandel coast, 260. 

Cotton, Sir A., 138. 

Bishop, 331, 358. 

Craig, 294. 

Crichton, Captain, 143. 
Crimean War, 173. 
Cross, Mrs. Kerr, 359. 
Crystalline rocks, 258. 
Cubbon, Sir M., 116. 
Cullen, Eev. G. D., 291. 
Cunningham, Principal, 6, 300. 
Cuthbert, 4. 
Cuvier, 247. 
Cydopteris, 254. 
Cypridce, 262. 

DALHOUSIE, Marquis of, 37, 103, 110, 

173, 247. 
Dalton, Colonel, 218. 
Darwin, Dr., 258. 
Dasara, 105, 195, 373. 
Dawson, Eev. J., 241. 
Day of the Lord, 337. 
De Beaumont Elie, 248, 258. 
Dekhan, 33. 

Delhi, 189, 196, 209, 282. 
Denison, Sir W., 273. 
Deogarh Eaja, 220. 
De Tracy, Destutt, 248. 
Dewali, 195. 
Dhanjibhai Nauroji, 6. 
Dhawalagiri, 230. 
D'Herbelot, 230. 
Dicnyodonts, 305. 
Diroms, 18. 

Discretion, age of, 124, 363. 
Disruption of Church, 30. 
Dnyanodaya, newspaper, 350. 
Dodds, Eev. J., 18. 
Dods, Colonel, 321, 334. 
Douglas, Eev. J., 327. 
Dravidian, 33, 212. 
Druidical Circles, 170. 
Duff, Dr. A., 25, 53, 99, 120, 157, 

204, 289, 332, 
Duiferin, Lord, 308. 
Dum-dum, 172. 
Dumfries Courier, 18. 
Synod, 288. 



Duncan, Dr. H., 16, 18. 



INDEX 



381 



Dundee, 27. 
Duns, 2, 11, 120. 

Professor, 8, 63, 275. 

Scotus, 4. 

Durand, Sir H., 103, 128, 307. 
Durham, 4. 

EAST INDIA COMPANY'S ARMY, 70, 173, 

180. 

and Idolatry, 104, 182. 

Charter of 1853, 131. 

Contrasted with Native States, 113. 

Edinburgh, 47. 

Education, Christian, 52, 98, 129, 198, 

308, 374. 

Commission, 308. 

Despatch of 1854, 308. 

Edwardes, Sir H., 105, 173, 291. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 296, 300. 

Elateridce, 257. 

Elephanta, 283. 

Elichpoor, 150. 

Ellenborottgh, Lord, 103, 129, 182. 

Elliot, Colonel E. K., 142, 310. 

C., 149. 

Sir Walter, 275. 

Ellis, Mr. R., 174. 
Elphinstone, Lord, 173. 

Mountstuart, 36, 103. 

Elura, 57. 

Entomology, 69, 257, 273. 
Entomostraca, 265, 266. ' 
Eocene flora, 316. 
Equisetum, 265. 
Erskine, Dr. John, 296. 
Eshwant Eao, 138. 
Estherice, 263, 317. 
Eyre, Dr., 58. 
Excise, 321. 

FAIBBAIRN, Principal, 6. 

Falconer, Dr. , 274. 

Fawcett, Henry, 140. 

Feiz Buksh, 176, 190, 205. 

Ferryden, 294. 

Finns, 211. 

Fisher, Edward, 5. 

Folk-lore, 229. 

Fraser, Mr. A. H. L., 320. 

Free Church of Scotland, 15, 45, 254, 

285, 313, 378. 
French, Bishop, 378. 
Friend of India, weekly, 120, 127, 

289, 310, 351. 
Forbes, Professor E., 14. 
Forsyth, Captain, 34, 220, 316. 
Funeral rites, 225. 

GANOID FISHES, 271. 



Gardiner, Allen, 358. 
Gardner, Eev. J. W., 303. 
Gayatri, 82, 165. 
Geological survey of India, 275. 
Geology, 163, 202, 260. 
Geris, 12. 

German Missionaries, 42, 95. 
Ghazipore, 43. 
Girar, 163. 

Glasgow General Assembly, 45. 
Missionary Society, 46. 



Rev. Dr., 102. 

Synod, 288. 

Glenelg, Lord, 104. 
Glossopteris, 253, 265. 
Godavari, 34, 95, 264, 334. 
Gondi, 62, 168, 216. 
Gonds, 34, 42, 166, 212, 321, 371. 
Gondwana, 42, 247, 268, 270. 
Gordon, Rev. Dr., 26, 45. 
Gordons in Eromanga, 358. 
Gossner, 42, 
Grant of Arndilly, 295. 
Sir Charles, 218. 



Greenough, Mr. G. B., 264. 
Greig, Peter, 6, 358. 
Grey, Henry Dr., 18. 
Grote, Mr. A., 275. 
Guiiidy, 273. 
Guthrie, Thomas, 340. 
Quy Mannering, 296. 
Gwalior, 112. 
Gyrinus, 12. 

HAIDAR ALI, 102. 

Haidarabad, 55, 124, 208, 243, 322. 

Haig, Colonel, 275. 

Halifax, Lord, 107. 

Hamerton, P. G., 247. 

Hamilton, Sir W., 14. 

Hanna, Dr. T., 325. 

Hannington, Bishop, 359. 

Hardinge, Lord, 141. 

Hardy, James, 15. 

Samuel, 130, 153. 



Hastings, Marquis of, 136. 
Haughton, Professor, 268. 
Havelock, Sir H., 39. 
Hebich, 153. 
Hemar Pant, 307. 
Heude, Dr., 188, 280. 
Hiawatha, 229. 
Hill, D. 0., 29. 

Mrs., 44, 373. 

Sir William, 39, 43, 60, 373. 

Hill Stations, 279. 
Himalaya, 34, 259. 
Hindi, 62. 
Hinduism, see Brahmanism. 



382 



INDEX 



Hindustan, 33. 

Hindustani, 62. 

Hingangliat, 80, 82. 

Hippuris, 95. 

Hisam-ood-deen, 327. 

Hislop College, 75, 114, 158, 321, 
328. 

Alexander, 2. 

Eobert, 2, 11, 14. 

Janet, 27. 

HISLOP, STEPHEN, birth, 2 ; parents, 7 ; 
teachers, 8 ; boyhood, 9 ; student, 
15 ; teacher, 17 ; spiritual history, 
21 ; missionary, 26 ; shipwreck, 28 ; 
marriage, 30 ; lands at Bombay, 31 ; 
ordination described, 47 ; reaches 
Nagpoor, 55 ; founds the mission, 
60 ; spiritual state, 63 ; entomolo- 
gist, 69 ; work among Europeans, 72 ; 
founds the Hislop College, 75 ; first 
converts, 76 ; colleague, 79 ; tours, 
81 ; fears hydrophobia, 91 ; work in 
Madras, 93 ; geological discovery, 
97 ; fights against intolerance, 101 ; 
on East India Company and idolatry, 
105 ; the Holi and Dasara, 107 ; 
Baba Panduraug's case, 117; thoughts 
on 31st birthday, 119 ; intimacy 
with Durand, 129 ; intercourse with 
Mr. Mansel, 131 ; on Raja of Nag- 
poor's death, 137 ; nearly killed by 
a mob, 144 ; on Eobert Nesbit, 149 ; 
with Colin Mackenzie, 151 ; visit of 
Dr. Duff, 157 ; tours, 161 ; the 
Gonds, 167 ; saves Nagpoor in the 
Mutiny, 176 ; Mutiny Journal, 189 ; 
intercourse with British officers, 203 ; 
final opinion on the Mutiny, 207 ; 
study of the Gonds, 215 ; describes 
them, 221 ; reduces their language, 
228 ; takes down the Lay of Lingo, 
230 ; archaeological researches, 241 ; 
as a geologist, 248 ; his scientific 
correspondence, 253 ; his Madras 
lecture, 258 ; an ideal naturalist, 
263 ; study of soils, 269 ; helps the 
Geological Survey, 273 ; on sick 
leave, 278 ; life at home, 284 ; ad- 
dresses, 289 ; in the' revival at Ferry- 
den, 295 ; addresses the General 
Assembly, 301 ; returns to India, 
306 ; causes civil reforms, 310 ; geo- 
logical correspondence, 316; fruit of 
his action, 319 ; tour in Berar, 322 ; 
last report, 325 ; saves a Bengali, 
329 ; last attack on inhuman and 
intolerant practices, 330 ; meets 
Bishop Cotton, 332 ; at worship, 335 ; 
last conversation, 339 ; last preach- 



ing of Christ, 341 ; drowned, 342 ; 

public opinion, 349 ; burial, 352 ; 

character and position in the history 

of missions, 356 ; one of the great 

multitude of saints, 359. 
Hislopia, 257. 
Hislopite, 268. 
Hogg, 18. 
Holcus, 270. 
Holi, 105, 189. 
Holkar, 36. 

Holmes, History of Mutiny, 174. 
Hooker, Sir W., 251. 
Horoscope, 125. 
Hull, Mr., 20. 
Human Sacrifices, 223. 
Hunter, Eev. Dr., 79, 115, 151 5 156, 
185, 357. 
Thomas, 79, 185. 



Hunterite, 268. 

Hutton, 14. 

Huxley, Professor, 261, 317. 

Hydrophobia, 92, 138. 

Hymn of All Saints, 361. 

IDOLATRY and East India Company, 
105, 131, 165, 222, 281, 373. 

Income-tax, 323. 

India, Physical and Ethnic, 33, 259, 
369. 

Peninsular, 259, 270. 

Indian Civil Service, 140. 

Indore, 32, 112, 123. 

Inkerman, 170. 

Intolerance, 105, 116, 134, 377. 

Irish Missions, 45. 

Irving, Edward, 16. 

JABALPOOR, 34, 158, 264. 
Jackson, Mr., 336. 
Jacquemont, Victor,. 246. 
Jainas, 57. 

Jairam, S., Professor, 328. 
Jameson, Professor, 14. 

Major, 23, 283. 

Janoji, 195, 314. 

Jenkins, Sir E., 36. 

Jerdon, Dr., 194, 257, 266. 

Jibel Atakah, 283. 

Johnston, Major L., 174, 189, 199, 

282. 

the missionary, 329. 

Jones, Professor Eupert, 262, 274, 

317. 

Judson, 44. 
Jung, Sir Salar, 124. 

KAFIR MISSIONS, 46. 
Kalankis, 65. 



INDEX 



383 



Kali, 222. 

Kamthi, 44, 164, 179, 258. 

Kanhan, 164, 264. 

Karanjia, 40, 42. 

Karens, 294. 

Kathiawar, 45, 102. 

Kaye, Sir J., 121. 

Keith-Falconer, Ion, 359. 

Khartabliojas, 66. 

Khelat, 287. 

Kilsyth revival, 300. 

Kingsley, Charles, 359. 

Knox, John, 3. 

Koitor, 219. 

Kolam tribe, 324. 

Kols, 42, 212. 

Konds, 219. 

Koran, 35. 

Korhada, 265. 

Kota, 262. 

Kotlingam, 86. 

Koyi, William, 359. 

Krishna river, 96, 341, 359. 

idol, 107. 

Kurs, 227. 

LABYRINTHODONTS, 268, 271, 305. 
Ladies Society for Female Education, 

23, 284. . 
Laing, Eev. J., 300, 
Lammermuirs, 6. 
Land-tax, 319. 
Lanji, 170, 223. 
Lauderdale, 6. 
Lawrence, Lord, 40, 173, 308. 

Sir H., 308. 

Lay of Lingo, 232. 
Leith, Dr., 275, 287. 
Lesley, General, 3. 
Leslie, Professor, 14. 

Eev. A., 41. 

Leyden, 18. 

Lias, 256. 

Lindisfarne, 4. 

Lingapa Ganu, 133. 

Lingo lay, 229. 

Liverpool conference, 291. 

Livingstone, David, 218, 358. 

Lochar Moss, 20. 

Loesch, missionary, 42. 

Lonar Lake, 307. 

London Geological Society, 252, 261, 

274. 

Longfellow, 230. 
Longicorn, 256. 
Lncknow, 209. 
Lulloo Bai, 128. 
Lyall, Sir A., 67. 
Lymnea, 252. 



M'CHEYNE, R. M., 18, 20. 

M'Crie, Dr. T., 6. 

Mackenzie, General Colin, 150, 153, 

351. 

Bishop, 358. 

Hon. A., 320. 

Captain H., 316, 334. 



M'Leod, Donald, 39, 291. 
Madagascar, 270. 
Madhoji Bhosla, 36. 
Madras, 96, 124, 251, 253, 260. 
army, 199. 



Mahadewas, 168, 264. 
Mahanadi, 34. 
Maine, Sir H. S., 155, 308. 
Malaysia, 270. 
Malcolms, 18. 

Malcolmson, Dr., 246, 252, 265. 
Maledi, 263. 
Man, Early, 245. 
Mangali, 262, 268. 
Mansel, Mr., 131. 
Maratha states, 35, 101. 
Marathi, 62, 148, 308. 
Marriage rites, 225, 237. 
Marrow of Divinity, 5, 300. 
Marshman, Joshua, 39, 53. 
John, 120. 



Martyn, H., 358. 
Masulipatam, 158. 
Mayo, Lord, 104. 
Medlicott, Mr. J. G., 276. 
Meerut, 172. 
Menzies, F. N., 15. 
Mercer, 8. 
Meria, 223, 371. 
Merimee, P., 247. 
Metcalfe, Lord, 103. 
Mho\va tree, 227. 
Middleton, Rev. E., 20. 
Midnapoor, 158. 
Miller, Hugh, 15, 274. 

Dr. Hugh, of Shandou, 300. 

Dr. J., 265, 295. 



Misal, Eev. S., 152. 

Missionary qualifications, 24, 49, 63. 

methods, 43, 51, 98, 129, 288, 

294, 308, 325, 328, 335, 374. 

societies, 44, 45, 46, 300, 302. 

ordination, 47. 

ideals, 51, 359, 378. 

sacrifice, 54, 358. 

saints, 358. 

tours, 81, 161, 170, 323, 332. 

address, model, 369. 



Mitchell, Eev. Dr. M., 31, 54. 
J., 55. 
Rev. Dr. Hugh, 286. 



Mohammed, 35. 



384 



INDEX 



Mohammedans, 68, 82, 163, 175, 181 

214, 328. 

Moliaram, 82, 189. 
Moncreiff, Sir Henry, 296. 
Monkhali, 76. 
Monro, Lieutenant, 264. 
Montgomery, Sir R., 131, 308. 
Montrose, 294. 
Moore, J. C., 254, 274. 
Moravians, 42. 
Morris, Professor, 274. 
Mothoor, 164, 315. 
Moulton, 300. 
Mouswald, 14. 
Moxon, Colonel, 38. 
Muir, Sir W., 311. 
Munro, General, 102. 
Murchison, Sir E., 20. 
Mure, Mrs. Macredie, 240. 
Murray, Mr. A., 262. 
Museum, 194. 

Mutiny in India, 79, 172, 189, 289, 358. 
Mysore, 141. 

NAGPOOR, 27, 81,'<194, 311, 332, 371. 

State, 32, 64, 101, 133, 142. 

geology, 261, 350. 

Nairn Tal, 319. 

Nair Brigade, 112. 

Nana Dlioondopunt, 103, 173, 196. 

Narbada, 34. 

Natha Singh's case, 363. 

Natural History, 272. 

Nellore, 95. 

Nesbit, Rev. R., 31, 59, 149. 

Neuroptera, 257. 

Neutrality in religion, 292. 

Newbold, Captain, 246, 286. 

New College, Edinburgh, 13, 30. 

Nicolson, John, 173. 

Nirmal, 94. 

Noble, Rev. R., 93. 

Non-regulation system, 307. 

Northumbria, 14. 

OLDHAM, Dr., 247, 275, 318. 

Olney, 20, 287. 

Ongole, 96. 

Ordination, missionary, 47. 

Orissa, 36. 

Orthoptera, 257. 

Owen, Sir R., 257, 268. 

PACHMARHI, 170, 279. 

Pahud Singh, 154, 322. 

Paithan, 288. 

Palmerston, Lord, 107. 

Paludina, 252, 257. 

Pandurang, Baba, 115, 155, 355, 377. 



Pariahs, 114. 
Parker, Bishop, 359. 
Parvati, 231. 
Paspulum, 222. 
Paterson, David, 8. 
Rev. Mr., 364. 



Paul, St., 145, 240. 
Pecopteris, 254. 
Pegu, 44. 
Pelias, 12. 
Pench, 164, 264. 
Penny, Captain, 59. 
Pentaptera, 170, 222. 
Perry, Sir E., 336. 
Persian, 62. 

Gulf, 287. 

War, 173. 



Perumal, 85. 
II, 90. 



Phayre, Sir A., 104, 308. 

Phyllotheca, 265. 

Physa, 252, 266. 

Piiidari robbers, 38, 205. 

Plassey centenary, 175. . 

Playfair, Professor, 14. 

Plowdeu, Mr. G., 148, 174, 308. 

Polygamy, 137. 

Pondicheri, 271. 

Poona, 55. 

Pottinger, Sir H., 97. 

Pranhita, 264. 

Prestwich, Professor, 244. 

Prices, 320. 

Primula, 16. 

Prostrations in Revivals, 296. 

Providence, 10. 

Prusad, Professor B., 328. 

Puckle, Lieutenant, 334. 

Pykoo, Gond, 39. 

Pyrola, 12. 

QUEEN VICTORIA, 27, 124. 

RAGHOJI BOSHLA, 36, 132, 136, 141. 

Ragland, 378. 

Railways, 322. 

Rajahgopaul, Rev. P., 93. 

Rajamahendri, 271. 

Rajmahal flora, 286. 

Rajpootana, 124. 

Ralston, Rev. J., 7. 

Ramasawmi, 86. 

Ramsay, Captain G., 103, 113. 

Ramtek, 328. 

Rana, 287. 

Ranade, Professor G. G., 328. 

Ranees of Nagpoor, 128, 137. 

Rangarao, 327. 

Raniganj coalfield, 304. 



INDEX 



385 



Ranjeet Singh, 103, 247. 

Red Sea, 283. 

Regulations of East India Company,307. 

Regur soil, 269. 

Reid, Sir W., 251. 

Relief Church, 6. 

Renwick, 5. 

Revivals, spiritual, 295. 

Rhizodus, 13. 

Rikad Gowree, 233. 

Ripon, 4. 

Lord, 308. 

Robertson, Rev. Dr. A., 328. 
Romanists, 194. 
Raskin, John, 291. 
Russellkonda, 201. 
Rutherford, Samuel, 296. 
Ruthwell, 20. 

SAGAB, 42. 

Safdar All, Maulavi, 327. 

Saints, missionary, 358. 

All, 359. 

Salicornia, 95. 

Sandilands, Rev. Dr., 326. 

Sankey, Lieutenant, 264. 

Sanskrit, 52. 

Santals, 213. 

Saswad, 210. 

Satara, 141. 

Satpoora, 34, 240, 264. 

Savings Banks, 19. 

Schlagintweit brothers, 275, 287. 

Schwartz, 86. 

Science, 130. 

Scottish soldiers, 58, 61, 71. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 296. 

Scotus, J., of Duns, 4. 

Scythia, 212, 227. 

Sedgwick, Professor, 20. 

Seoni, 41. 

Serampore, 38, 282. 

Serpents, 283. 

Shaftesbury, good Earl, 291. 

Shamanism, 244. 

Shankar Acharya, 165. 

Sheridan, 142. 

Sheriff, T., 8. 

Sherwood, Mrs., 85. 

Sheshadri, Dr. N., 124. 

Shields, A. and M. , 4. 

Shiva, 67, 370. 

Shorapoor, 243. 

Shortrede, Colonel, 283, 300. 

Shrawan, 89. 

Shripat's case, 336. 

Sialkot, 79, 363. 

Sikhs, 123, 124, 162. 

Sikh War, 71, 141. 



Silewada, 265. 
Sindhi, 80. 
Sindia, 36. 

Singh, Behari Lai, 41. 
Natha, 123. 



Sitabaldi, 36, 58, 190, 199, 266, 316. 

Siva, 231, 240. 

Sivaji, 35. 

Smith, Baird, 173. 

Snake peoples, 34, 67. 

Soils of India, 269. 

Spring, 255. 

Stephen, 357. 

Stevenson, Rev. Dr., 24, 286. 

Stewart, James, C.E., 359. 

Stothert, Rev. R., 209, 240, 303. 

Suez, 283. 

Swinging Festival, 330. 

Taeniopteris, 255. 

Takalghat, 80, 242, 336, 341. 

Takli, 176, 305. 

Tamil, 62, 228. 

Tantia Topee, 205. 

Tapti, 34. 

Tattooing, 220. 

Taylor, Meadows, 244, 

Telugu, 62, 94, 228. 

Temple, Sir R., 174, 311, 313. 

Tenasserim, 307. 

Thessalonians, 337. 

The Vestiges of Creation, 257. 

Thomson, Dr. A., 18. 

Tigers, 324. 

Timothy, Rev. P., 328. 

Tinnevelli, 378. 

Tipoo, 102. 

Toleration, see Intolerance. 

Touch, General, 197. 

Trap rock, 268. 

Travankor, 102, 112. 

Trevelyan, Sir C., 102. 

Trichinopoli, 271. 

Tucker, H. 0., 284. 

Turanian, 33, 212. 

Tweedie, Rev. Dr., 160, 280. 

Tyndall, Professor, 268. 

UMBET, 168, 262. 
University of Edinburgh, 14. 

of Glasgow, 15. 

of Dublin, 268. 

Usan, 300. 



VEPEBT, 260. 

Vernacular Education Society, 293. 

Vertebraria, 253. 

Vindhya, 34. 

Virapa, 152, 253, 263, 318, 343. 

2 C 



386 



INDEX 



Viraswainy, 76. 
Vishnu, 66. 

Visions in Revivals, 296. 
Voysey, 246, 265. 

WAENGANGA, 34, 264, 334. 
Wallace, Sir John A., 17. 
Wallich, Dr., 317. 
Wan, 94. 
Wana, 334, 341. 
Wapshare, Captain, 265. 
Wardha, 34, 80, 161, 264, 320. 
Warora, 80. 

Wellington, Duke of, 36, 55. 
Welsh, Professor D., 14, 30. 
Western India, 369. 
Whitby, 4. 

White, Adam, 209, 358. 
Whitlock, Captain J., 90. 
Whitton, Eev. D., 328. 
Williams, 358. 
Williamson, Rev. H. D., 326. 
Willoughby, Sir J. P., 102. 
Wilson, Dr. John, 6, 23, 44, 47, 202, 
261, 350. 



Wilson, Professor John, 14. 

Rev. Dr. J. H., 284. 

James, 311. 

Windsor Castle wreck, 27. 
Wisely, Rev. G-., 283. 
Witness paper, 184. 
Woman, Hindu, 87, 137, 221, 281. 
work, 91, 284. 



Wood's Index Testaceologicus, 309. 
Woodward, Major, 90. 
Wreck, 27. 
Wynch, Major, 59. 

Xylobius, 302. 

YADOJI, 78, 85, 89, 376. 

Yawatmahal, 324. 

York, 4. 

Youngson, Rev. Mr., 364. 

Yule, Colonel Henry, 66, 244. 

Sir George, 213, 243. 

ZANANA, 128. 
Ziemann, missionary, 43. 
Zoology, 273. 



THE END 



Printed by R. & R. CLARK Edinburgh 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



The Life of William Carey, D.D., Shoemaker and Missionary, 
Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, in the College of 
Fort - "William, Calcutta. With Portrait and Illustrations. 
LIBRARY EDITION, price 16s. POPULAR EDITION, 7s. 6d. 
London: John Murray. 1885. 

"Dr. George Smith, author of the well-known lives of Dr. Duff, and of 
Wilson of Bombay, continues his biographies of Indian missionaries by a 
Life of Dr. William Carey, in many respects the most remarkable man of 
the three. Carey has had to wait long for a biography ; previous accounts of 
him have all been rather sketchy ; but he has at length found one with un- 
usual qualifications for the task, who has produced an altogether admirable 
work. Dr. Smith began to collect materials for this work during his long 
resideuce in Serampore, which was begun Avhen Carey was only twenty years 
dead, and in the course of which he got thoroughly acquainted with the 
nature of Carey's work in India, and had access to everything likely to 
illustrate it. These materials he has worked up with great literary skill and 
finish, into one of the most instructive and readable biographies we have 
seen." Contemporary Review, March 1886. 

" It is long since we have read any book so full of the highest inspiration, 
and presenting a portrait of the very grandest religious and moral beauty, 
in which simplicity and humility of feeling are as prominent as quiet great- 
ness of achievement. " British Quarterly Review, January 1886. 

" This biography brings out the man thoroughly, and it will be welcome 
to a much wider circle than that which is interested in Missions." The 
Spectator, 21st November 1885. 

This "biography of Carey is a fascinating book." The Scotsman, 25th 
December 1885. 

' ' We have spoken plainly on the points of which we have to complain 
in this biography. But we hope that the very fact of our having done so 
will serve to emphasise our welcome of this really valuable volume, and our 
tribute to the honour of the great missionary who is the subject of it." The 
Mission Field, published for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
May 1886. 

The Life of John Wilson, D.D., P.B.S., for Fifty Years 
Philanthropist and Scholar in the East. With Portrait and 
Illustrations. Second Edition. Price 9s. London : John 
Murray. 1879. 

"Dr. Smith's life of the late Dr. John Wilson of Bombay is, without 
exception, one of the most valuable records of missionary work in India ever 
submitted to the English public, and equally worthy of its subject and its 
author. . . . Dr. George Smith's mature knowledge of Indian affairs has 
enabled him to give an admirable presentation of Dr. Wilson's life and labours 
in connection with the great public improvements and progress of the years, 
extending over two generations of official service, during which he resided in 
Bombay. Dr. Smith has given us not a simple biography of Dr. Wilson, but 
a complete history of missionary, philanthropic, and educational enterprise in 
Western India, from the Governorship of Mountstuart Elphinstone, 1819-27, 
to that of Sir Bartle Frere, 1862-67. He has arranged the many subjects 
with which he has had to deal, and the materials placed at his disposal, with 
great simplicity, clearness, and effect." The Times. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



The Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D. With Portraits by 
JEENS. (1) LIBRARY EDITION, 2 vols. Royal 8vo. Price 24s. 
(2) POPULAR EDITION, 1 vol. Price 9s. London : Hodder and 
Stonghton. 1879. 

"Dr. George Smith's life of Duff is characterised by the same mastery 
of his subject and skill in its presentment as distinguished his 'Life of Dr. 
John Wilson of Bombay.' " The Athenceum. 

"The two missionaries are happy in their biographer." The London 
Quarterly Review. 



The Student's (3-eography of British India, Political and 

Physical, with Maps (detailing the principal Mission Stations 
of Forty -six Churches and Societies, and of the Latin and 
Greek Churches there). Price 7s. 6d. London : John Murray. 
1882. 

" It is a marvel of labour and condensation." The Spectator. 

"The difficult and usually ungrateful task of condensing such a gigantic 
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Short History of Christian Missions, from Abraham and 
Paul to Carey, Livingstone, and Duff. Second Edition. Price 
2s. 6d. Edinburgh : T. and T. Clark. 1886. (Handbooks for 
Bible Classes and Private Students.) 

"Here we have not only the history of all missions, but also the philo- 
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work of the world's most noted and devoted missionaries, are graphically 
recorded, and the statistical information given is particularly useful and 
thorough. The possessor of this little volume will find himself as well fur- 
nished as if he had a hundred volumes on missions at his hand." The British 
and Foreign Evangelical Review. 



ALBEMARLE STREET, 

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Trinity College, Dublin. 



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SIR HENRY LA YARD'S 

Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and 

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OTHER WILD TRIBES. 

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12 Mr. Murray's New Publications. 

{UNIFORM WITH THE "SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY."} 

The Apocrypha, 

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BY THE FOLLOWING CLERGY OF THE ANGLICAN ClIURCH. 

Introduction .... GEORGE SALMON, D.D., Provost Trin. Coll., Dublin. 
Esdras J. H. LUPTON, M. A., Sur-master of St. Paul's School. 

Tobit & Esther . . . J. M. FULLER, M.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical 

History, King's Coll., London. 
Judith . \ 

Song 1 of Three Children 

Susanna . . r C. J. BALL, M. A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn. 
Bel and Dragon 
Manasses . . . . / 

Wisdom Archdeacon FARRAR, D.D. 

Ecclesiasticus . . . ALFRED EDERSHEIM, D.D. 
Baruch & Jeremy . . . Archdeacon GIFFORD, D.D. 
Maccabees .... Canon RAWLINSON, M.A. 

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A Readable English Dictionary. 

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By DAVID MILNE, M.A. 

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t 



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A History of Greece 

FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE TIME OF 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

By GEORGE GROTE. 

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%.* This Edition is printed from the last Library Edition, which contained the 
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CONTENTS : 
I. LEGENDARY GREECE. 



II. EARLY SOCIETY ; HOMERIC POEMS ; 
GEOGRAPHY ; RACES ; MIGRATIONS ; LYKUR- 
GUS ; MESSINIAN WARS ; CONQUEST OF 
SPARTA ; AGE op DESPOTS ; SOLSN. 

III. GREEKS OF ASIA ; PHCENICIANS ; 
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KALE ; SICILY AND THE GELONIAN DYNASTY ; 
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ADE OF POTIDJEA. 

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IN ASIA MINOR ; BATTLE OF ARGINUS^E ; 
THE THIRTY TYRANTS AND THEIR EXPUL- 
SION. 



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ONDAS ; HEADSHIP OF THBES ; PELOPIDAS ; 
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DIONYSIUS. 

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TIMOLEON ; ACCESSION OF PHILIP OF MACE- 
DON ; SACRED WAR; EUBOIC AND OLYNTHIAN 
WARS ; DEMOSTHENES ; CH^ERONEIA ; ALEX- 
ANDER THE GREAT ; CAPTURE OF THEBES. 

X. ASIATIC CAMPAIGNS OF ALEXANDER; 

BATTLE OF Issus ; SIEGE OF TYRE ; DEATH 
OF ALEXANDER; SAM IAN WAR; EXTINC- 
TION OF GRECIAN FREEDOM ; SICILIAN AND 
ITALIAN GREEKS ; AGATHOKLES ; OUTLYING 
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The Campaign of the Nile. 

THE TESTIMONY OF AN INDEPENDENT EYE-WITNESS OF THE 

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Mr. Murray's New Publications. 15 

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4 Vols. Crown 8vo. $s. each. 
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I. Speculative Philosophy in Greece before So- 

krates ; Growth of Dialectic ; other Com- 
panions of Sokrates : Xenophon; Life of Plato; 
Platonic Canon ; Platonic Compositions gener- 
ally ; Apology of Sokrates ; Kriton ; Euthry- 
phron. 

II. Alkibiades I. and II. ; Hippias Major, Hip- 
pias Minor ; Hipparchus Minos ; Theages ; 



Erastse or Anterastse Rivales ; Ion ; Laches 
Charmides ; Lysis ; Euthydemus ; Menon ; 
Protagoras ; Gorgias ; Phsedon. 

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tus ; Sophistes ; Politikus ; Kratylus ; Phile- 
bus ; Menexenus Kleitophon. 

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BV 3269 Smith, George. 
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