Sva

SVA

JY*s*?z^^ ^/u^^^r>^C

SVA

BY SIR GEORGE C. M. BIRDWOOD, K.C.I.E., C.S.I.

M.D. & M.R.C.S.(Edin.), HON.LL.D.(Cantab.), OFFICER OF THE LEGION
OF HONOUR AND LAUREATE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY

EDITED BY F. H. BROWN

11 Where Ind's enchanted Peaks arise

Around that inmost One,
Where ancient Eagles on its brink,
Vast as Archangels, gather and drink

The Sacrament of the Sun."

G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse.

LONDON: PHILIP LEE WARNER.
HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS, BOMBAY
MELBOURNE, TORONTO. MDCCCCXV

Qoj

yhjuJWtA

AUM

TO

THE BRAHMANA

THE GOLDEN CENSER OF THE PRAYERS OF INDIA
TO

THE KSHATRIYA

THE CONSECRATED SWORD OF HER DEFENCE
TO

THE VAISHYA

THE CUP OF HER PLENTEOUS RICHES

AND EVER OVERFLOWING CHARITIES

AND TO

THE SUDRA

THE KEEN, WIDE-INGATHERING SICKLE
OF HER BOUNTIFUL HARVESTS —

TO THESE

THE FOUR VARNA, " COLOURS," OR " CASTES "

THE ARK OF THE SOUL OF INDIA

OF THE HINDUS

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

IN TESTIMONY OF THE AFFECTION THAT
GLOWS WITHIN MY HEART FOR MY MOTHERLAND

SHRI BHARATA

AND ITS SACROSANCT PEOPLE

AND EVER MORE AND MORE FAITHFULLY

AND FERVENTLY AS MY LONG PROLONGED

PROBATIONARY DAY ON EARTH

RINGS TO EVENSONG

VIII DECEMBER, MCMXIV GEORGE BIRDWOOD

493757

" When all philosophies shall fail
This word alone shall fit :
That a sage feels too small for life,
And a fool too large for it.

i: Asia and all Imperial plains
Are too little for a fool ;
But for one Man whose eyes can sec

This little island of Athelney
Is too large a land to rule."

G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

DURING his long and eminently useful life Sir George
Birdwood has contributed so frequently to periodi-
cal literature, to the newspaper Press, and to the transac-
tions of various learned bodies, particularly those of the
Royal Society of Arts, that the present collection does
little more than illustrate the untiring activity of his mind
and the wide range of his far-brought knowledge. His
contributions to The Times alone — largely, though by no
means entirely, in the form of letters to the Editor, not
only over his own signature, but also under various noms
de plume, such as " Indicopleustes," " Indophilus," " John
Indigo," and " Hortus Siccus" — would easily fill several
volumes such as this. He has written no less constantly
for, or been interviewed on behalf of, Anglo-Indian and
Indian newspapers, thereby influencing public opinion
in a country which returns his reverent admiration by
an affectionate devotion. Of his several books the best
known are the classic Industrial Arts of India, the Hand-
book to the Indian Section of the Paris Exhibition of 1878,
his Catalogue of the Vegetable Products of the Presidency of
Bombay, his Old Records of the India Office, and the First
Letter Book of the East India Company, edited jointly
with Mr. W. Foster, c.i.e. But all these are, techni-
cally at least, official reports prepared with more or less
reticence, and unlike his miscellaneous writings such as
those selected for this volume, do not reveal him at his
best. We find him here thinking aloud, as if in conversa-
tion with personal friends. Marked throughout by wide
reading, natural eloquence, and an unfailing gift of anec-

x SVA

dote, the interest of these papers is increased by frequent
etymological explanations and arresting footnotes.

Sir George has written no article or letter of any length
without bringing into it the praise of India, and this
feature gives appropriateness to the present title of " Sva,"
whereby he identifies himself with the land of his birth
(at Belgaum, in the Southern Mahratta Country, on 8th
December, 1832), to which, like his father before him, he
has devoted a life of whole-hearted service. Not the least
of Sir George's contributions to the mutual understanding
between Great Britain and her Eastern Empire has been
his generous readiness to place his pen at the disposal of
helpful literary enterprises connected with India, with-
out thought of fee or reward. Many a new and promising
writer has owed more of his or her initial introduction to
authorship to his advice and help than to any other
aid. To a great number of books he has contributed
introductions or other features, full of interest and
instruction.

Several of the articles herein collected originated in
this way, and I have to acknowledge with hearty thanks
the ready permission of their publishers to reproduce
such contributions — that of Messrs. Longmans for the
article on " Aryan Flora and Fauna," originally given in
the Appendices to Max-Muller's Biography of Words
(Collected Works, Vol. IX, 1905) ; that of Messrs. Smith,
Elder, in respect to Sir George's preface to Miss Gabrielle
Festing's From the Land of Princes (1904), the first
of a series of charming historical works from her pen ;
and that of Messrs. W. H. Allen and Co., in respect to
Sir George's large share in the preface to Sir Louis Pelly's
and Sir Arthur N. Wollaston's Miracle Play of Hasan
and Husain (1879), — as quoted at some length in Hughes's
valuable Dictionary of Islam, issued by the same pub-
lishers in 1885. Acknowledgments are also due to the
proprietors of The Times for permission to use the articles

EDITOR'S PREFACE xi

A Sunset on

Mather an," first contributed to that great journal, and
also some recent letters on " Indian Unrest." Sir George
was a most valued contributor to the Asiatic Quarterly
Review in its earlier years, and I have to thank the Editor
of what is now the Asiatic Review for permission to use
several articles, including one of the most highly prized of
Sir George's writings, "The Mahratta Plough" — a classic
revelation of intimate and discerning acquaintance with
the simple life of the Indian cultivator.

I have not attempted to set forth the complete biblio-
graphy of this series of papers, or always to give the dates
of their original appearance, for the reason that several
of them have undergone considerable amplification in
detail or other revision since they were first published.
Not infrequently such revision has been required on
account of suggestions made in them in their original
form having borne fruit. For instance, Sir George Bird-
wood's remonstrance in " The Mahratta Plough " when first
published a quarter of a century ago on the neglected state
of Shivaji's grave on the top of Rajgar, and his glowing
tribute to his patriotism and military genius, led the
Mahrattas not only to remove this reproach, but in other
ways to honour the memory of their great national hero.
Similarly, Sir George's vigorous denunciations of the
secular basis of our system of State education in India,
forcibly re-stated in these pages, have deeply impressed
many of her most thoughtful sons. The Chief of Ichal-
karanji, a cultured and clear-sighted Mahratta Brahman,
lately supported the demand for religious education at
a school prize distribution by Lord Willingdon, Governor
of Bombay, and discusses it in detail in his recently
published Impressions of British Life and Character.

The papers now given represent not only the earlier
enthusiasms, but also the later judgment, one may
almost say the final verdict, of their author. In reading

xii SVA

them it must be remembered that while clinging to the
traditional life of India, recognising its marvellous vitality
and interpreting it to the Western mind with a sympathy
and knowledge which no contemporary English writer has
equalled, Sir George has kept himself informed of the
manifold external changes wrought, since the days of his
youth, by British rule and the impact of Western civilisa-
tion. The great charm of the collection is that it mirrors
with so much freshness, vivacity, and insight the inner life
and thoughts and feelings of the people. With some of
his conclusions many of us may be unable to concur ; but
all his readers, and particularly his Indian fellow-subjects,
will keenly appreciate the spirit of earnest and affectionate
regard for India's welfare by which they are inspired.

F. H. Brown.
New Year's Day, 1915.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

SVA, the Sanskrit sva or swa, often abbreviated to su,
in the neuter svam or swam, in dialect som [compare
the Latin suus or sus, sua or sa, and suum or sum] means
"his," "her," or "its-self"; and is found in such words
as Svami, " Lord," in virtue of one's self-possessed being,
and power ; also any " Owner," or " Master " of inherent
right ; and is used in its fullest meaning as a title of all
the gods, and their ministering Brahmans, and in the
feminine form Svamini, " Ladyship," of the wives of the
Brahmans, and also of the dancing girls [deva-dasi, " holy-
servants," compare the i^eoSovXoi of Aphrodite at
Corinth] of the temples of " the Lord Siva," and " the
Lord Vishnu " ; Svayam-bhu, " the Self- existing," a title
of " the Lord Siva " ; Svayam-bhu Lingam, the designa-
tion of all naturally phallomorphic rocks, as distinguished
from rocks and stones artificially so figured, as idols of
"the Lord Siva"; Svyam - Prakasha, " Self-giving-
Light " and " Science," a title of Supreme Deity ; Svadha,
" Self-contained," applied to the material and visible
" Kosmos," or Prakriti [pra, in Latin per, an intensive
prefix, and kri, " to create," " to do," etc.], the Sakti
female or reproductive energy of Nature [otherwise called
Maya, " Illusion," " Mirage "], the complement of the
male or generative energy, the One eternally self- existing
and infinite God above all gods ; sva-rupam, " one's own
image," as the idol of a god [compare rupiya, " rupee,"
an Indian silver coin, struck with the " own-image," or
the symbol, of the ruler issuing it], also one's own lands,
moneys, etc. ; svai, " possessing," " reigning," of one's
own inborn right ; svamityam, " lordship," " mastership,"

xiv SVA

etc. ; svatva, " ownership " of any kind ; sva-karma9
" one's own business," " work," " doing," " job " ; svam-
bhogam, "the enjoyment of one's own rights," " posses-
sions," etc. ; svayamvara, a Hindu princess's "own " public
choice [out of a number of selected candidates] of a hus-
band, as Draupadi's of the bright Arjuna, described in the
Mahabharata ; sva-desha, " one's own country," and,
formed from it in recent years, with the meaning of
" patriotism," sva-deshi ; sva-raj, " one's own kingdom " ;
and Svamimara, in dialect Soimida, the " Lordly-tree,"
" the Bastard Cedar " of Anglo-Indians, and Soymida
febrifuga of botanists, a lofty evergreen foliaged [its young
leaves appear before the old ones fall] Meliaceous tree of
the forests of Central India: after the towering contour
of w ich I have figured my "Dedication."

" SVA." here, implies that these pages are, so far as they
go, part and parcel of myself, being a selection from a series
of " stocktakings " of the facts of human history that in
the course of a long and all-absorbingly studious life have
most deeply pervaded and impressed me ; and of the
views and opinions thereon which, in the process of re-
peated reconsideration, I have more or less judgmatically
matured ; not for the sake of others, or not primarily, but
for the purpose of bringing my imperfect knowledge and
insight of them periodically " to book " ; and for mine
own especial correction, reproof, and profit in self-realisa-
tion ; thus, to the best of my humble ability, persistently
pressing forward to the ever " upward calling " of our
Creator to all His creatures : —

' ' O God of Science and of Light ! "

Elsewise, I have no part, nor lot, in " SVA." During the
past twenty years I have several times been invited to
permit of the reproduction of some of my casual writings
[from the first to the last, all published at the sugges-
tion of others] but under conditions I could not accept.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xv

Two years ago I myself became solicitous to reproduce
a collection of them, but not obtaining the co-operation
of the firm I approached for the purpose I definitely dis-
missed the inadvertent ambition from my mind. Then,
on the eve of the sudden, albeit long-portended outbreak
of this fratricidal war between the noblest nations of
Christendom, Mr. Lee- Warner, publisher to the Medici
Society, expressed to me the most earnest desire to bring
out a collection of my writings, just as I might be pleased
to pick and choose them. At first I denied him, as by
weight of years, I had meanwhile rapidly become in-
capable of correcting proofs ; and yet more decidedly
because he is the son of his eminent father, the late Sir
William Lee- Warner, g.c.s.i., who with Lord Elphinstone
[John, thirteenth Baron] and Sir George Russell Clerk,
"George Clerk of Umballa," and Sir Bartle Frere, had
all their lives been " my gracious patrons, and most
cherished honour."

The papers I had ear-marked for reproduction are precious
to myself as a record of my progressively wider and clearer
"open vision" of the future of enchanted India; and I
feared therefore that they might be taken by " the stay-at-
home people " of England [in whose ears even the incom-
prehensible war now raging across the Channel strikes but
as idle echoes from far-distant mountains] for a " sealed
book " : " Which when men deliver to one that is learned,
saying, ' Read this, I pray thee,' he sayeth, ' I cannot, for
it is sealed ' ; and the book is delivered to him that is
not learned, saying, ' Read this, I pray thee,' and he
sayeth, ' I am not learned ' " ; and I could not tolerate the
thought of the like qualification of this volume by the
booksellers of Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane, Paternoster
Row, and Amen Corner, from ancientest pagan [with Lud
and Apollo] and earliest Christian [St. Paul] associations, the
most sacred heart of London ; and to-day the centre of
the book-trade of the whole British Empire.

xvi SVA

But finding the publishers resolute in their proposal, " will

I nil I," I agreed to accept it, provided my friend, Mr.

Frank Herbert Brown, Fellow of the Institute of Journalists,

and one of the best informed and soundest-minded of

living publicists on Indian affairs, edited the volume.

I am responsible only for the selection of the papers, and

their division into twelve parts, and other less observable

observances of the ritual of lucky numbers ; and for

the wrong spelling, here and there, that has become

familiar to us of Indian place-names ; and for the back

of the binding of the book being stamped with " the

right-hand -going " svastika or swastika, as, at least for me,

a worshipful and inspiring foretoken or prediction of the

ultimate triumph of integrity and righteousness, at " this

extant moment" when Europe, no longer "Christendom,"

lies prostrated in guiltiest shed blood, under a Divine

Dispensation of Apocalyptic terrors and astoundments.

Do I say Divine ? " Shall there be evil . . . and the

Lord hath not done it ? " Whose oftentimes most dreaded

instrument

u In working out a pure intent
Is man, arrayed for mutual slaughter :
Yea, Carnage is his Daughter."

The conclusions to which I have come from my study
of our relations with India are, that conquest, for the
sake of mere conquest, is not only morally wrong, but
materially unprofitable ; and only to be justified, if at all,
when necessary for the maintenance of commerce with a
country rich in its natural resources, and still richer in the
industrial and mercantile aptitudes of a people, who, while
anxious to trade with other people, are incapable of safe-
guarding themselves against anarchy within, or subver-
sive invasions from without their borders. Our own pur-
pose in India has obviously been to secure to the United
Kingdom — that is, originally to the Honourable East
India Company — an absolute freedom of trade with the

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xvii

East Indies ; and provided we could enjoy that trade in
full assurance of uninterrupted quietness and good fortune,
it would, from a business point of view, be absurd to waste
our resources of money and men in defending India whether
against the external or the internal enemies to her peace
and well-being. As, however, in the course of Providence,
we have been placed in the position of the Paramount
Power throughout India, it does seem to me to behove
us well to consider what may be the "counsel of God"
in having permitted us to saddle the staggering burden of
so weighty and perilous a responsibility on our own sturdy
and stubborn shoulders.

We dare not dogmatise on so elusive a question. Yet,
there must be something, beyond the satisfaction of our own
sordid and selfish purposes, in the fact of India having been
ensured, for now 157 years, against relapsing into the
wild anarchy of the thousand years from a.d. 711 to 1757 ;
during which mad millennium — let Englishmen never for-
get— the domestic, and social, and religious life of out-
raged India was kept intact simply by virtue of the all-
conserving, all-healing virtue of the Brahmanical Caste
System, as stereotyped in the Code of Manu, and similar
Hindu Law Books. The protection of the peace and
prosperity of the vast and far-stretched fertile and
populous tropical and sub-tropical Peninsula, may
well be presumed therefore to have been imposed upon
us, and as a most sacred duty, by a will above our
own will ; and, quite apart from our own profit
therein, for the greater profit of India. India has
done everything for us, everything that has made these
islands, as insignificant on the face of the globe as the
islands that make up Japan [placed symmetrically with
our own on the other side of the Eur-Asian Continent],
the greatest Empire the world has ever known, and for
this we owe undying gratitude to India. Nevertheless,
I have no intellectual certitude of its being binding on us
b

xviii SVA

to go out of the cut-and-dry ruts of our daily duty as the
protectors and administrators of India, to seek any other
end therein than the satisfaction of our own covetous and
grasping needs. It is only of moral conviction, or, so to
say, of religious inspiration, that I feel it incumbent upon
us, that, being in India for our own advantage, we should
also seek in every way, to the utmost of our power, and
as a consecrated service, to subserve her material and
moral advantage.

Misfortunately, whenever we have attempted to do
so, we have too often done more evil than good ;
as in the destruction of the idiosyncratic handicraft
arts of India by the teaching of our English Schools
of Art ; and worst of all, in the undermining of the
religious beliefs of the Hindus through the atheistical,
indeed the antitheistical influences of our system of Public
Instruction in India. Should we proceed further with
this Anglicising programme, and, in our ignorance of
the true character and aspirations of the Hindus, and
meticulous subservience to home-bred proselytising philan-
thropists, foist on India any instalments of self-govern-
ment, after the model of our indigenous methods of
" party government," the end of all things will at once
be at hand, alike for the Muslims and Hindus of India,
and for the United Kingdom as the tutelary of the Indian
Empire. That would probably be to our own exceeding
gain, but it would certainly be utter and irremediable
ruination [satyanas] for India. The British administra-
tion of that country must, for at least the next three or
four generations [100 to 120 years] be loyally entrusted
as heretofore, to the ablest and wisest men at our command
in the United Kingdom and in India, men at once sympa-
thetic and level-headed, who would masterfully regulate
every tentative taken by us to endow India with self-govern-
ment ; the consummation to which we all desire, stage by
stage, slowly and surely, "Deo adjuvante," to upraise her.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xix

As for " the Unrest in India," of which so much has
recently been heard, its originating cause is the physiologi-
cal fact that the population of an old, well-ordered, and
prosperous country, invariably tends, in spite of warnings
such as Thomas Malthus and Charles Bradlaugh uttered,
to outrun the means for its maintenance. This pressure
of the population of British India on the resources
of the country is greatly aggravated by the reduction,
under our benevolent rule, of the virulence of endemic
plague, the frequency of famines, and of epidemics of
cholera and small-pox, by the treatment of malarial fever
with quinine, by the abolition of female infanticide, widow-
burning, and other ritualistic murders, and by the long-
settled, stable, and uniform administration of the whole,
wide, outstretched peninsula.

Of the predisposing cause of " the Unrest," the most
active is the higher education, administered directly by
the Government, for the training of medical men, lawyers,
and literates — a training that unfits the greater number
of them for any duly remunerative means of livelihood in
India ; and which undermines the faith of the Hindu
students in their own hereditary religion, without sub-
stituting [save in the schools of the Catholic Roman
Church] any other in its place.

The direct exciting causes of " the Unrest " are the
ever-increasing number of Europeans of no education, and
strong race-prejudices, who seek a living in India outside
the Government Services, and of educated Englishmen
both in the Service of Government, and outside it, who
knowing little of the profound spiritual culture of the
Hindus, and the Muslims, are over-zealous to impose our
European culture upon them, not as a supplementary
accomplishment, but in supersession of their own tra-
ditional learning, literatures, arts, and religions. Again,
there is the closing of the Commonwealth of Australia, the
Union of South Africa, and the Dominion of Canada against

xx SVA

Indian immigrants. But the most potent exciting cause —
in its ubiquity, subtlety, and energy — of "the Unrest," is
the alienation from our rule of the priestly caste of Brah-
mans, to conciliate whom should be the abiding solicitude,
not only of the Government of India, but of every in-
dividual Englishman in the country.

The Sudras and the Vaishyas, or the agrarian and in-
dustrial, and the commercial castes of India are perfectly
indifferent as to who governs the country, Hindus, Muslims,
English, Russians, or Australian and South African
English, so they themselves be left to sow and reap, and
otherwise earn their daily bread in sooth of soul;1 but
the Brahmans are the gods and saviours of their souls.
The Rajputs, and other Kshatriyas and reigning Princes,
are loyal from the ground of their hearts toward us,
forasmuch as they have now reigned for a hundred years,
in unclouded sunshine, under the aegis of England, as the
paramount power in India ; but the paramount power
over their souls also are the Brahmans ; and they deserve to
be, for verily they are the only authentic and authoritative

1 Whether in the fields of Central India and the Southern Mahratta
country, or in the bazaars of Poona and Bombay, the invariable reply
of the men of these two castes to me when I questioned them on any
political matters that happened to be under discussion in the Native
Indian Press, was in the identical spirit, and almost in the identical
words of Yeshua ["Jesus"] ben Sira in Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 24-38:
" Every one is wise in his own work. . . . We [Sudras and Vaishyas]
maintain the state of the world. . . . Without us no city can be in-
habited. . . . But it is not for us to be sought for in public counsel, nor
to sit on the judges' seat, nor to speak in parables. . . . Such wisdom
cometh by opportunity of leisure ! . . . How can he get wisdom
that holdeth the plough . . . and whose talk is of bullocks, and his
mind in his furrows . . . and is diligent to give the kine fodder ? So the
carpenter . . . the smith, the potter, [the weaver] ... all these can
only be wise each in his own handwork ; and all our desire is in the
work of our craft." The Europeans who know the peoples of India best
are our Civil Servants and the Christian missionaries, and first of these
last, the missionaries of the Catholic Roman Church. Next to them
I must place our Medical Officers, for the Hindus, after their priest, most
honour their physician: — "for the Lord hath created him" [Ecclesi-
asticus xxxviii. 1-8]. They "cotton to" Scots and Irish far more
readily than to the English.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxi

depositaries and wardens of the Covenant of God with
India — India of the Hindus.

Were I responsible for the government of India, I would
at once place the Educational Department wholly in the
hands of duly qualified Hindus, Muslims, and Parsis ; the
Judicial Department three-fourths in their hands ; and
I would freely admit the Rajputs, and members of the
other ruling classes and warrior castes, into the higher
commissions of the Imperial British Army, up to one-
third of the number of officers required : and above all
else, I would insist on developing, without let or stint, the
illimitable reproductive resources of the country pari passu
with the European education of its people. This bene-
ficent policy, inter alia, would indefinitely postpone any
inclination on the part of the latter to emigrate to our
hostile democratic Colonies.

In the crisis of the physical and spiritual agony of the
death struggle between militarism and nationalism now
proceeding in wrack and ruin throughout Europe, it is
impossible to avoid comparing the Rajput ideal of the
conduct of war with that of the Germans. In principle
they are identical, and thoroughly virile, and only in their
application are the differences between them to be found ;
and henceforth, to the eternal defamation of the virility
of the hitherto incomparably masculine Allemanian
[" Matchless-men "] tribes of the Western Aryas. There
must be wars, and in the earlier stages of the evolution
of humanity from savagery to barbarism, and thence on
to semi-barbarism and civilisation, brutal and brutalis-
ing warfaring. There was war in Heaven ; Michael
and his angels, against the Dragon and his angels, the
worshippers among all kingdoms, and tongues, and
nations of the Beast ; and, many a time, with their
antitypes, it is difficult to discriminate between the
hosts of the Beast and those of the Archangel ; for
they are not all black, and all white, respectively, as

xxii SVA

are, so microscopists say, the black and white bacilli
that keep mankind sound and sane by the ceaseless
lictoring of each other's backs ! "All things are double,*'
writes " The Son of Sirach " [Ecclesiasticus xlii. 24], " one
against another ; and He hath made nothing unperfect."

The whole infinite frame of material Nature is the
daily, hourly, and momentary issue of the eternal con-
flict of " hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce
. . ." for mastery. Indeed, antagonism — obdurate, in-
ebranlable antagonism — would seem to be the prerequisite
of all spiritual as of all physical perfection. In the in-
stance of mankind, the struggle for existence — for a liveli-
hood— takes its earliest forms in cannibalism, and the
trade in slaves ; and trade and commerce, as carried on
between semi-civilised and civilised nations, are but less
barbarous forms of murderous warfare ; which, under
specious outward appearances, present " behind the
scenes " the ever expanding prospect of failures, deadlier
and more persistent in their consequences than the
bloodiest foughten battlefields. 1 The Spanish Inquisition,
the driving force of which was the passion to save souls,
and the massacre and sack of Drogheda by Oliver Crom-
well [who gave us " the Act of Navigation, 1651, as one
of the results of the commercial success of the " Old India
Company "], are salient illustrations of the fact that
whenever the fervour of the heart upsets the even
balance of the mind, spiritual warfare may become as
irrational and as demoniacal as the worst besotted, hideous
butcheries of Hottentots and Huns.

Similarly the Germans under the infection of psychical
frenzy have erred in prosecuting the present war by
methods violating all the dictates of reason, and senti-

1 It is notable how many words describing traders have gradually
come to bear a sinister significance, as "adventurer," "huckster,"
"swindler." In Ecclesiasticus xxvii. 29, we read: "A merchant shall
hardly keep himself from wrong doing ; nor a huckster free from sin."

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxiii

ments of humanity, and teachings of religion, as recog-
nised by the Aryan races from the beginnings of their re-
corded histories in Persia and India, and in Europe ; in
attestation of which quotations might be made from
Greek and Roman writers [Plato, Polybius, Diogenes
Laertius, Cicero, Catullus, Livy, Ovid, Plutarch, and the
Christian Latin poet Ausonius] that would fill a small
volume. Here I will refer to but three of such passages.
The first is in Plutarch, "M. Furius Camillas," where he
says : " War at the best is but a savage resource . . . yet
it has its conventions, observed by all men of honour, who
seek victory by valour and skill, and not by villainy."
The other two are both in Polybius: (1) V. 11— " The
taking and demolishing of an enemy's forts, harbours,
cities, men, ships, and crops . . . are necessary acts ;
to deface temples, statues, and such-like erections, in pure
wantonness ; and without any prospect of strengthening
oneself, or weakening the enemy, must be regarded as an
act of blind passion and insanity " ; and (2) V. 12 — " In
truth to conquer one's enemies in integrity and equity is
not of less, but of greater practical advantage than vic-
tories in the field. In the one case the defeated yield
under compulsion, in the other with cheerful assent."
These chapters, in the late Evelyn Shuckburgh's vivid
translation of Polybius [Macmillan, 1887] ought to be
quoted at full length in every " handbook " published for
the use of our young naval and military officers.

The teaching of the Christian " Gospels " is inferentially
the same. Paley, in his Moral and Political Philosophy,
writes : " Although the origin of wars be ascribed in
Scripture to the operation of lawless and malignant pas-
sions, and though war itself be enumerated amongst the
sorest of calamities with which a land can be visited, the
profession of a soldier is nowhere forbidden or condemned."
John the Baptist, when asked by the Roman soldiers
(Luke in. 14), " What shall we do then [to be saved] ? "

xxiv SVA

replied : " Do violence to no man, neither accuse falsely,
and be content with your wages." In Luke vn. 9, the
Lord Christ says of the Roman centurion : "I have not
found so great faith, no, not in Israel "; and in Acts x. 1-2,
Cornelius the centurion is described as : "A devout
man and one that feared God with all his house, which
gave much alms to the people ; and prayed to God alway."
The " Sermon on the Mount," in its two versions
[Matthew v.-vn. and Luke vi. 20-49], in no way militates
against the manifest deduction from these three texts ;
but the point in regard to it is that it is now regarded as
a late interpolation, inspired by the impracticable ideals
of Buddhism, — which abounds with the idle counsels of
perfection that were in wide vogue over all Southern
and Western Asia between 250 b.c. and a.d. 250. They
are the ideals of the pessimistic Turanian and not
of the optimistic Aryan races, and the honest and
frank acceptance of them always has meant, and always
will mean individual and racial suicide. When I was
last in India [1854-69-70] there were to be found in
all the greater bazaars of the Carnatic, stray bronzes, and
everywhere the work of the same deft hand delightfully
figuring infantry, cavalry, artillery, camelry, and ele-
phantry, through the whole gamut of military swagger
in man and beast. I drew the first attention to them, here
in England, in my Industrial Arts of India [Science and
Art Department, 1881], p. 162, plates 20-6 ; and " cheap
as dirt " at that time, they are now priceless. They
originated, so the tale was told to me, with a
warlike petty prince of Southern India, who in the
earlier half of his reign annexed some of the smaller
principalities neighbouring his own, which at last became
quite a little kingdom. He then fell under the influence
of a new Dewan, a Brahman indeed, in whom there
was no guile, who gradually succeeded in convincing
his royal master of the wickedness of war, and in per-

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxv

suading him to disband his army of alive men, and sub-
stitute for it these inimitable " figures of fun " wherewith
innocently to indulge his royal pleasure in " the game of
war." The results were the speedy recovery by the con-
quered princes of their independence, and the scattering
of the brave brazen army of their erstwhile overlord to the
four wild wandering winds of Vayu. " The Twelve Good
Rules " of Conduct said to have been formulated by our
pious-hearted and elegant-minded King Charles I, in like-
wise proved for him — if, indeed, he followed them — but
a "Royal Game of Goose." The " Bhagavat-Gita "
[" The Song of the Divine One "] is another forgery of the
period of the supremacy of Buddhism in India, put into
the mouth of the Lord Krishna, where, in the great Hindu
epic of the Mahabharata, he stands between the armies of
his opposed cousins, the Pandavas and Kauravas, pleading
for peace between them ; but all to no purpose with those
self-possessed, determined, strong-willed, true-born Aryas.
The only influence of the " Sermon on the Mount " on
ourselves has been, over and over again, in leading
us on and on, up to the very last, into sincere
expressions of our desire to preserve peace, when we
ought to have known from the first that " the enemy "
had already decided on war ; thus giving him the oppor-
tunity of protesting, with more or less plausibility, that
we had betrayed him into war ; as in the case of the
present fateful war, stamped, as we all now know it to
be, with the authentic and imperishable brand of —
"Made in Germany."1

1 See "The Hohenzollerns," by Francis Henry Skrine, late 1.0.8. ,
Royal United Service Magazine, November, 1914. The German Emperor,
William II, King of Prussia, has not only been tutored in his fatuous
international policy by the teachings of Frederick the Great, and Lorenz
Oken, and the Menzels, long before Bernhardi was heard of, but en-
couraged in it by our own cowardice in the betrayal of Denmark to
Russia and Austria in 1864; the desertion of France in 1870; the sur-
render of Heligoland to Germany in 1890; and by our repeated refusals
during the past decade to sufficiently increase our Navy, and provide an

xxvi SVA

There is one convention of war, as of all human rivalries,
common to Israel, and the Greeks and Romans, and the
Rajputs, and to Islam, as also to Christendom — until to-
day Christendom has become Christless : " Never to speak
evil of an enemy." The worldly wisdom of it is as pro-
nounced as its natural piety. It was one of the finest traits
in the character of the Duke of Wellington : " Who never
spoke against a foe." Rudyard Kipling gives expression
to it [" The Seven Seas "] with an Agnikula Rajput's
spontaneity and intensity of feeling : —

"Ah ! Mary, pierced with sorrow,

Remember, reach, and save
The Soul that comes to-morrow

Before the God that gave ;
Since each was born of woman,

For each in utter need —
True Comrade and true Foeman —

Madonna, intercede ! "

Of whatever iniquities the German Emperor may have
been guilty in the inception of this most foul and infamous
war, the curses of it will in due time return to raven and
rave within his own self-loathing breast. He would seem
to be ignorant of the maxims of one of the most notable
of his own ancestors : —

' e Malheur aux apprentifs dont les sens e'gares,
Veulent, sans s'applique, franchir tous les degre's.
Te'me'raires, craignez le sort qui vous menace ;
Phaeton pe'rit seul par sa funeste audace."

But he reads the Bible, and in Luther's divinely in-
spired translation, and must well know [Proverbs vi.
16-17] : " The six things . . . yea seven,1 that the Lord

army adequate to the defence of the United Kingdom against the pre-
sent war on us ; of which we have for the past twenty years been
forewarned with ingenuous iteration by the Prussians and Prussianised
Germans themselves !

1 I recently read this passage, copied into her Prayer Book, in her

AUTHORS PREFACE xxvii

doth hate " ; and that whosoever fulfils these abomina-
tions, becomes accurst in his own eyes, as well as of God.
Constituted as the world is : "It must needs be that
offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence
cometh." If the recognition of this retributive and re-
parative reaction of sin against itself, inherent in all sin,
does not quicken our sense alike of pagan and of Christian
chivalry, or at least our innate sense of personal dignity,
the story [II. Esdras xi. and xn.] of the many-headed
Eagle, and the bold Lion [Proverbs xxxviii. 1] that re-
buked and destroyed the mighty bird of prey, should serve
to recover for us something of the normal equanimity of
our temporarily overstrained minds. In any case we have
to abide the patience of God. This war is certainly not
to be a triumphant march, in "the Goose-step" of the
pampered Praetorians of Potsdam, over the truth and
justice of Heaven ; and, beyond question, it will prove to be
for the confirmation of the all-sustaining, all-saving Faith
of mankind, of every clime, and colour, and creed, that the
fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and that the love
of God passeth all things for illumination.

The Swastika or Svastika, the Hindu symbol of blessing
and blessedness, was first brought to notice in this country
in Edward Moor's Hindu Pantheon [1810], and next in
Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament [1856], and James
Fergusson's History of Architecture in all Countries [1865-
67]. I reproduced Moor's plate M, 1-74, of " Sectarial

own handwriting, by Queen Caroline, whose application of it was
obvious. Compare : —

" A wise man living like a drone ; an old man not devout ;
Youth disobedient ; rich men that are Charitie without ;
A shameless woman ; vicious Lords ; a poore man proudly stout ;
Contentious Christians ; pastors that their functions do neglect ;
A wicked King ; no Discipline ; no Lawes men to direct ;
Are Twelve the Foulest Faults that most all Common- wealths infect."
William Warner, Albion's England, 1586.

Compare also Ecclesiasticus xxv. 2, and xxvi. 5 and 28.

XXV111

SVA

Marks " in my Industrial Arts of India [1880] ; but it was
the illustration of a leaden figure of the Goddess Nana,
" The Lady," stamped with the left-handed svastika, as
a mark of the sinister sex, in Schliemann's Troy [1883],
which first popularised the knowledge of it among our-
selves, and on the Continent and in the Americas. Subse-
quently the subject of its abeternal and universal usage
was discussed by F. Max-Miiller, and myself, in The
Athenceum and The Times ; and again in the English
translation, edited by me, of Count Goblet d'Alviella's
" epoch making " work, The Migration of Symbols [1891] ;
while I gave a full and detailed account of the history and
significance of the symbol, in both its right-handed and
left-handed forms, in the Journal of the Royal Society of
Arts of March 8, 1912.

The word Svastika is Sanskrit ; and composed of the
words svasti, " well-faring," and tika, " ticket," " mark,"
" sign," " token," etc. ; the word svasti being composed
of the Sanskrit equivalent of the Latin esto, " be thou,"
" let him be," and su, " good " ; as found in svarna,
literally " good-colour," and the Sanskrit name for
" gold " ; subandu, literally " well-bound (together),"
" good friend," the Sanskrit name of Costus speciosus ;
sushena, " beautiful clusters," the name of Carissa Car an-
das ; sugandha, " fragrant," Alpinia Galanga ; and so
on and so on, in the names of a hundred more good things.

Any house facing the East is a Svastika ; and svasthya
are the freehold lands held in their villages by the Brah-
mans. In short, the Svastika is with you in whatsoever
you do and whithersoever you turn in India; and enters
into the whole scheme of the sacramental life of the
Hindus in the same intimate and welcome way as the
Chaurasi, or number 84 ; the number of the 12 signs of
the Zodiac, multiplied by the number of the 7 planets ;
in other words, the multiple of the number of the 7 days
of the week, by that of the 12 months of the year ; and

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxix

again, the multiples of 84 by 7, and 12, and 84, are all
Chaurasis. The all-comforting plenipotency of the Chau-
rasi, and the explanation of my trust in it, lies in the
Hindu belief that if you reach the eighty-fourth anniver-
sary of your birth you are at once constituted a saint,
however big a blackguard you may have been up to the
eve of that day !

The monosyllable above my " Dedication " — p. vii —
is the 3-lettered tantra, i.e. the ritualised or magical
" device," AUM, representing the mantra, i.e. the mystical
or spiritual " sound," variously pronounced — but in-
variably slowly and lowly, and almost inaudibly, although
with an emphatically breathed musical intonation : —

ouhm, as in ploughman
om „ loam

aun „ awning
and on „ " on-dit."

It is known among Hindus when lettered as the Ekak-
shara, i.e. " the One-syllable," and when uttered as the
Omkhara, i.e. " the Sound," and whether as a tantra or
a mantra, it is expressive of the most awed and adoring
assurance and sense of beatitude. Differing explana-
tions of the sanctity of " the Sound " and " the One-
syllable " are given, as that it represents certain Vedic,
and certain Puranic Trinities of gods ; and a whole
chapter of the Vayu-Purana is devoted to the question.
I am, however, satisfied that the syllable AUM in its first
origin was simply an imitative word, like " mama,"
" papa," " baba " ; and imitative of the sound the mothers
of numberless species of mammaleous vertebrates make
when fondling their endearing offspring ; and that in
India it originated, long before the Aryan settlement of
the country, in the instinctive worship of " the divine
Cow " by the primordial aborigines of the Peninsula.
The Hebrew word " Amen " probably has an analagous

xxx SVA

origin ; as also our dialect words — yam-yam, " pleas-
ing," and yammer, " to please, delight, desire." The
Hindu " device " is placed at the beginning of MSS. books,
and I hope, therefore, that I have been guilty of no im-
propriety in Hindu eyes in crowning my "Dedication"
with this, their most holiest " charm."

The Svastika has been associated with myself through
all the happiest years of my life, from infancy to boy-
hood, and from early to mature manhood, in India ; and
having in a previous paragraph stated my more serious
purpose in placing it on the back of this book, I will only
now add in lighter mood the expression of my hope, that
its presence there may also prove auspicious for my
publisher : and —

"God sende every trewe man bote of his bale."

I have said my aforesay ; "And there a poynt ."

George Birdwood.

"Charter Day" [East India Company, 1600]— MCMXIV.

CONTENTS

PAGE

EDITOR'S PREFACE ix

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii

THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON 1

A SUNSET ON MATHERAN 17

THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH 25

SETT PREMCHUND ROYCHUND 89

THE RAJPUTS IN THE HISTORY OF HINDUSTAN 93

ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA 149

THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY 159

LEPER IN INDIA 183

THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES IN THE HISTORY OF

ART 201

ORIENTAL CARPETS 225

INDIAN UNREST 299

THE CHRISTMAS TREE ' 321

INDEX 359

xxxi

THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

Its Mechanism

OUR terraqueous globe is wrapped in a layer of air
about 40 miles high. This air is chiefly a mechanical
mixture of nitrogen and oxygen gases, but is also the
recipient of the volatile matters ever rising from the
surface of the globe, and, among others, of the vapour
of water in proportionally large quantity. The heat of
the sun draws up the watery vapour from the seas and
rivers, which while in the state of vapour remains invisible,
but on cooling again takes palpable form, and falls to the
earth whence it arose. It may be condensed and pre-
cipitated either by the greater cold of the higher spaces of
the atmosphere, or through being traversed by a colder
current of air, or from being whirled, with the revolving
globe, away from the heat of the sun into the earth's
cool shadow, we call the night. The cold of a clear night
precipitates it as dew, or as hoar frost, which is frozen dew.
A fog is caused by the condensation of the watery vapour
in the air that rests directly on cold ground. A cloud
is a fog high in the air, and snow is a frozen cloud
congealing as it descends. Rain is caused by the gathering
together of many clouds, or aerial fogs. The sun cannot
dissipate them, and their moisture gradually collects in
drops, that fall as rain. Hail is a shower of rain, suddenly
frozen in falling. The heat of the sun also sets the atmo-
sphere in motion, the winds blowing over the face of the
earth being caused by the unequal heating of the air.

2 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

When a fire is lighted, the heated air ascends the chimney,
carrying the smoke with it, and the vacuum caused in the
air of the room draws to the hearth the colder outside air
through every opening in the doors and windows. When
a city is on fire, so great is the vacuum caused by the
upward draught of heated air, that the cooler surrounding
air flowing in to take its place becomes a violent wind ;
and so in accounts of great conflagrations we often read
that the terror of the inhabitants was increased by the
simultaneous hurricane. In such a fire the column of
smoke as it rises into the cooler air spreads out on all sides
like the branches of a palm, and gradually falls in " blacks "
to the earth ; and in this way bits of charred wood and
paper are often brought back to a fire by the wind it has
caused.

Within the tropics the sun's rays fall vertically on the
air; and its heated particles, constantly rising, form a
column ever moving towards the poles. To fill the vacuum
thus caused, colder air from the frozen poles rushes down
over the surface of the globe towards the equator ; and
hence result the great polar and equatorial air currents.
Their direct courses between the poles and the equator
are bent by the revolution of the earth on its axis ; in
the northern hemisphere into the north-east and in the
southern hemisphere into the south-east " trade winds,"
or vents alisees ; called "trade winds," not because they
facilitate commerce, but because they hold a certain
steady course, trend, or " tread " all round the earth. The
air brought by the " trade winds " ascends to a great
height in the tropics, and flows back towards the poles, in
the northern hemisphere as the south-east " anti-trade,"
and in the southern as the north-east " anti-trade."
The ascending air carries up an immense volume of
watery vapour ; and as the air is quite calm on or near
the equator, where the trade winds meet, this vapour,
on reaching the upper atmosphere, is at once precipitated

TRADE WINDS 3

in the rains that fall within the tropics nearly all round
the year.

The Assyrians 3,000 years ago anticipated Hunter's
theory of the periodicity of sun spots, and understood
the theory of climate, given in Ecclesiastes i. 6 : — " The
wind goeth towards the south, and turneth about unto the
north ; it whirleth about continually, and the wind
returneth again according to his circuits." Had the
world remained, as, probably, at first, a waste of waters,
the trade winds would have blown over it uninterruptedly,
and the moisture in the air would have fallen on the earth
in three continuous belts, one corresponding with the
equator, and the others with the calms of Cancer and
Capricorn. These calms would indeed have reached to
the poles, and darkness covered the face of the deep.
But the globe is divided between sea and land, and the
land becomes heated more quickly than the sea, as shown
by the " sea breeze," which begins to blow about noonday
in the tropics ; and cools more quickly, as shown by the
dangerous " land wind " which in tropical countries
begins about midnight to blow over the land toward the
sea. The consequence is that when the sun becomes
vertical over any portion of the earth's land surface, the
surrounding air is drawn to a focus there ; and in this way,
in every latitude, the great primary winds and rains are
broken into secondary or local winds and rains, producing
the differences in nature and season of the climates pre-
vailing over the globe. Thus the manifold climates of
the world are caused by the mutual relations of its atmo-
sphere and sea and land ; and all the changes of weather,
shade and sunshine, heat and cold, calm and tempest,
drought and rain, depend upon the movements the
atmosphere is thrown into by the sun.

Owing to the excess of land in the northern hemisphere,
the constant belt of rain where it exists between the trade
winds, instead of corresponding with the equator, lies

4 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

a little to its north, and the moisture gathered by the south-
east trades only falls in rain on reaching the tropic of
Cancer ; thus compensating the northern hemisphere
for its want of evaporating (sea) surface. Similar modi-
fications and compensations, on a smaller scale, occur in
regard to each of the trades separately as the sun suc-
cessively passes through the north and south ecliptic.
But here we have only to consider " the Rains," or " South-
West Monsoon"1 of Western India. India stretches out
into the belt of the north-east trades, and were these un-
deviating winds the only rain this immense, outspread
peninsula would receive would be that falling from October
to April during the North-East " Monsoon." The rain
which then falls is not brought by this wind, for in blowing
from the high lands of Eastern Asia, it absorbs but the little
watery vapour lapped up in the Bay of Bengal. The
great volume of rain falling on India during the North-
East Monsoon, or winter rains, is really derived from the
evaporation of the ocean about Australia, where during
our winter months the sun is shining with all the force of
midsummer. The vapour there drawn up into the higher
atmosphere returns in an upper current towards India,
where it is precipitated through the lower current blowing
from the north-east, and furnishes the North-East Monsoon
rains, on which the Indian winter crops depend.

If India received only the North-East Monsoon, she
would indeed be almost as unfortunately circumstanced as
the peninsula of Arabia, wedged in between the high lands
of Persia and Abyssinia. But observe what actually
takes place. At the vernal equinox, March 21, the sun
passes from the southern hemisphere to the northern ; he is
first vertical over Bombay about May 15 ; reaches the
highest point of his upward journey, or summer solstice,
June 21 ; descending, is again vertical over Bombay
about July 27 ; and finally, at the autumnal equinox,

1 Monsoon = Arabic mausim, " season," through the Portuguese tnongdo.

THE WELCOME CHANGE 5

September 23, having traversed the whole tropic of
Cancer, re-enters the tropic of Capricorn, and reaches his
lowest southern point, or winter solstice, December 23.
Between May and July he shines down furiously on the
sandy plains of Sindh and Rajputana, and the great
grassy plains of Central Asia, wherefrom so vast a column
of heated air ascends through the atmosphere that
the draught caused has the power not only to reverse
completely the normal direction of the north-east trade,
but even to deflect and draw the south-east trade toward
India. Thus is the South -West Monsoon brought about.
This mighty wind, laden with the moisture gathered
from the Indian Ocean, strikes the Malabar Coast and the
Konkans at nearly right angles ; and there, chilled by the
cool, green, forest barrier of the ghats, pours down its
condensed vapours on Western India for four months in
violent rains, that are ushered in and depart with the
most awful thunderstorms ; and in this way the tempera-
ture of India is lowered during months that otherwise
would be so hot as to make the country unendurable. The
Deccan slopes eastward, having been upheaved chiefly
by the eruption of the Western Ghats ; and such super-
fluous rain as falls on them, and does not flow off in the
mountain torrents of the Konkans, slowly drains off to
the Bay of Bengal in the continental rivers known as the
Godavery, Cauvery, Pennair and Kistna. But the ghats
do not line the whole coast ; they cease about Surat ;
and there the Sautpura and Vindhya mountains condense
the clouds borne by the South-West Monsoon, and pour
their waters into the Arabian Sea by the flooded Tapti
and Nerbudda, the only Deccan rivers flowing westward ;
while from the Aravalli hills in Rajputana, the Sabarmatti
flows south-westward through the fertile plains of Gujerat.
The South-West Monsoon reaches to the wide plain of
Hindustan, the Punjab, and Sindh ; and all round the
coasts of India and Southern Asia, within the influence of

6 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

the great solstitial up-draught from the deserts of Raj-
putana and Central Asia, we find the phenomenon of
summer rains. At the very time, also, that the sun is
drawing the vapours of the Indian Ocean towards the
Western Ghats, his rays are melting the snows of the
Himalayas and Hindu Kush, which flow down to the
Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, in the perennial streams
of the ancient Indus and sacred Ganges.

The mystic Saras vati, which once flowed through
Rajputana to the sea, has long ages ago disappeared
through the desiccating action of the summer solstice, or
" standing still " of the sun over that country between
May and July. The evaporation of this river of Hindu
poetry is a proof of how little unphilosophical political
agitators take into account the play of natural climatic
forces in India. We have traced the course of the sun
through Cancer and Capricorn, and it will have been
observed that he shines vertically twice as long over his
" turning points " as over any other part of his ecliptic
course. He appears to stand still over these points —
hence named the summer and winter solstices ; and so it
happens that all the lands lying about the 23rd degree
north and south of the equator, under these sun " stations "
are desert lands. This is clearly seen in the northern
hemisphere, where there is so much land, in the deserts
of Rajputana, Sindh, Baluchistan, Persia, Arabia, in the
Great Sahara of Africa, and the Tierra Caliente of Mexico.
In the southern hemisphere the very little land along the
solstitial line is surrounded by the widest oceans ; but
Central Australia is a desert, and the Kalahari desert
stretches across South Africa, and the Pampas through
South America.

India is, in fact, one of the blast furnaces wherein the
winds of the world are evolved, bearing with them every-
where fire and hail, snow and vapour, and the life-giving,
purifying oxygen disengaged in ceaseless and immeasurable

SALVATION FROM FAMINE 7

volumes from the perennially green primeval forests of
the tropics. So placed at the very focus of her mightiest
operations, man must stoop very humbly to Nature if he
would hope to understand her and subdue her to his
purposes. This, through 3,000 years' experience, the
patient, religious-minded Hindu has learned to do ; and it
is certainly not for the farmers of our mild, equable
climate to be too sure of being able to improve on Hindu
husbandry, or to insist too energetically on the superiority
of their own doctrines and methods. The real wonder is
that India does not suffer more from agricultural distress
and famines ; and the reason of her comparative exemption
lies in the phenomena of the South- West Monsoon. But
most precarious, from a merely scientific point of view, is
the yearly prospect of the seasons in India between
the date of the solstitial hyperthermescence of the Raj-
putana desert and that of the rain-storm it calls up from
the vasty deep of the Indian Ocean. It always comes,
but one might every year repeat the question, " Will it
come ? " — with the prayer, " God help its coming ! "

Great alteration in the physical condition of Raj-
putana by extended irrigation, or forest planting, or by
an increase of its desert area, might produce incalculable
results of the most disastrous character. The destiny of
India seems, in fact, to hang in the balance between this
desert country and the deep sea. The Hindus themselves
have always been devoutly alive to those solar influences
and atmospheric phenomena that so intimately affect
their prosperity and happiness as an essentially agricultural
people. The gods of the earlier Vedic Hindus are but the
vaguest impersonations of the heat and cold, rain and
drought, whose effects on their crops and herds were at
once felt ; and in the mythology of the later Brahmanical
Hindus the first place was still given to Agni or Fire
["ignis"], and to Surya, the "shining" Sun, and to
Vayu, the " vague," " vagrant," " vagabond " Wind, or

8 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

to "domineering" Indra, the " atmospheric " Firmament
[dome]. They, together, were pre-eminently the gods over
all the gods of the earlier Brahmanical " college of gods,"
foreshadowing the Tri-murti or " tri-form " supreme
divinity [Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu] of the finally con-
stituted pantheon of the Puranic Hindus.

II

Its Phenomenon

The Western Ghats or Sahyadri Mountains are the
crest of the great wave of trap covering all the Deccan
from Gwalior and Nagpur to the Konkans, and over-
hanging the latter like a rampart of the Titans. This
rampart lies almost at right angles to the South- West
Monsoon, which beating thereon through sumless ages
has worn it into its characteristic peaks, and table-lands,
and spurs. On the eastern side, the slope of the trap wave
being gradual, the Sahyadri range presents spurs some-
times stretching almost across the Deccan, in the plain of
which they are at last lost. Thus the Deccan is divided
between the open country and the hilly. The open country
they call desk, and the hilly tract between Poona and
Satara, or more properly the mountain valleys of the
Nira, Kistna, and Yenna, they call the mavals, the cradle
of Sivaji's svairaj, or " own dominion." South of Poona,
the capital of the Peshwas and the Kabul of the Deccan,
stretches the Katruj Ghat spur and its ramifications,
crowned by the inspiring ruins of Sivaji's old strongholds,
Purandhur, Singhur, and Tornea ; and south of it the
plateau of Mander Deo, the water-parting of the Nira and
Kistna ; and beyond the latter spur rises the polypus-like
mountain mass of Mahabaleshwar — " the Great Strength
of God " — whereupon an average of 292 inches of rain
descends from June to September. Into the Konkans

THE GHAT SPURS 9

the ghats fall either abruptly in sheer precipices, often of
2,000 feet scarp, or in short spurs of tableland and peaks,
groyning this narrow maritime region into a series of
murhen or " steamy " glens.

On one of these spurs, in front of Mahabaleshwar,
stands Sivaji's famous fortress of Partabghur ; and on
another, only three hours' distance by rail from Bombay,
and lying between Kalyan and Pan well, Lord Elphinstone
founded the sanatorium of Matheran — " the Supernal
Forest." Rising abruptly from almost the sea -level,
and standing like an advanced tower in front of the ghats,
which seem to end to the north-east in the stupendous
scarp of the Harichandraghur, it commands the most
striking and picturesque scenery ; while constantly
cooled by the sea-breeze, and screened by the ghats
about Khandala from the land wind, its vegetation is
greener, nobler, and more varied than that of much
higher summits of the ghats themselves. With the twin
table-mountain mass of Prabal — " the Almighty " — and
the pinnacle of Funnel Hill, it is the dominant landmark on
entering the harbour of Bombay, and in the sultry chasms
and abysses, or khoras, between Matheran and Prabal
and Khandala, the thunders of the Monsoon at Bombay
are generated. Matheran is, in fact, the elevated table-
land portion of one of the innumerable spurs of the
Sahyadri range falling across the Konkans into the sea ;
and generally leading to a ghat or pass through the main
range running north and south. And this Matheran spur,
continued north-westward in the weirdly jagged crest of
blasted pumice peaks called Bhawa-Malang, before finally
sinking into the Arabian Sea, forms the bright little
archipelago of palm-tufted islets which, joined together
by the clay deposit of " the Flats " and the white strand
of shells heaped up by the waves of the South-West
Monsoon along " Black Bay," constitute the island of
Bombay ; — with its groves of cocoanut, and wide, grassy

10 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

Esplanade, and glowing gardens of strange outland flowers
and fruits. At the other end of the spur, at Khandala,
40 miles south-eastward of Bombay, we have the deep
cleft or gorge [khora] in the Sahyadri barrier, called the
" Bhor Ghat," the only practicable pass to and from
Bombay and Poona.

Between these points the Matheran spur lies extended
like a horseshoe, thus determining the course of the
Kalyan, here called the Ulhas, river, flowing, under its
eastern and northern declivities, from the Bhor Ghat,
past the ancient port of Kalyan — undoubtedly known of
the Chaldeans " whose cry " was " in their ships," and to
the navies of the Pharaohs and King Solomon, manned
by the " go-a-ducking Phoenicians," — and past the
mediaeval port of Thana, into Bombay Harbour, the
great modern port of Western India. As in fact the
Kalyan river silted up, the port had to be removed further
and further seaward. The southern and western declivities
of the hill overlook the courses of the Pan well and Nagotna
rivers. From all points one looks down, and back, and
around on tremendous basaltic precipices, glittering
waterfalls, wooded gorges, and irregular, rugged spurs ;
and above all the vast overhanging forest of Matheran,
cool, green, and joyous with the song of birds, and so
wondrously contrasted against the scarred and blackened
ridge of Bhawa-Malang. Far below lie the misty plains of
the Kalyan and Panwell rivers, and beyond them, to the
westward, the Arabian Sea, with Bombay, the sanctuary of
the eponymous goddess Mambai, in all the magnificence
and pride of her commercial prosperity, lying in it,
diminished in the long perspective, as if to a minnow
taken up out of the water in the hollow of one's hand ;
and eastward the loom-line of the Sahyadri mountains,
with the arches of the Bhor Ghat railway incline just visible
through the loom. Such is the romantic physical and
historical theatre of the burst of the Monsoon over Bombay.

THE FIRST DAY 11

The grand spectacle of the phenomenon will be best
described by the following extracts from observations
made by the writer of the burst of the Monsoon at Matheran
in 1865. The storm began on Monday, June 6, at 3.30 p.m.,
with sullen thunder in the north-west, where the clouds
had all day long been rolling up in towering electric piles.
As the clouds thundered they moved slowly down through
the Northern Konkan, and gathered at 4 p.m. along the
fantastically engrailed volcanic sky-line of Bhawa-Malang.
All along Bhawa-Malang and northward, the sky and land
were filled with lurid clouds and shadows, and thunder,
lightning, and rain ; the Kalyan river flowing black as
ink through a scene of the most oppressive desolation
and gloom ; while, all southward of this abrupt line of
storm-clouds and shattered peaks and pinnacles, the
whole country from Bombay to the Bhor Ghat lighted
up with a pure, serene light, shone like the plains of
heaven. Every village, every hut, every road, and every
jungle-track, even the bridge over the river at Chouk,
came distinctly into view. The trees and groves looked
magically green ; and the light picked out the most hidden
streams of water, and made them glitter in threads of
molten silver. The Panwell and Nagotna rivers shone
like mirrors, and the Arabian Sea seemed ruled, so far
as it could be distinguished from the sky, with lines of
this vividly reflected sunshine. The contrast with the
outer darkness around and beyond Bhawa-Malang was
supernatural.

Suddenly, at 4.45, the storm-rack rushed headlong down
over Bhawa-Malang like a tumultuous sea, and rapidly
moved into the profound valley between Matheran and
Prabal ; the wind blowing furiously, and the rain pouring
in torrents, accompanied by the most awful peals of
thunder and the ceaseless flash of forked lightnings. But
when it had filled the valley, the rain and the wind ceased,
and the storm-rack stood still, and for one hour in that

12 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

dead stillness (4.50 to 5.50 p.m.) the thunder and the
lightning, both in horizontal and perpendicular bolts,
raged without a moment's intermission. The thunder
mostly rolled from end to end of the valley, but sometimes
seemed to explode in its midst like a bombshell, and with
a force that seemed to burst the bonds of the surrounding
hills. The detonations were instantaneous with the bolts.
Once in the dreadful stillness the thunder came with the
sound of a terrific rushing hiss, although not a breath of
air stirred the while. At 6 p.m. the storm again moved and
passed slowly southward over Prabal towards the Nagotna ;
and another enchanting scene was opened up in the
southern Konkan. Every hut and tree and stream became
preternaturally clear, the inundated rice fields and rivers
flashing like steel, while fleecy clouds lay on every hillock
and slowly crept up every ravine.

Then, as the sun set behind Bombay, the whole scene
became tinctured with a glorious halo of the softest golden
light. The summits of the hills westward towards Thana
were irradiated with every tone of golden light, passing
gradually into deep purple, the while, between their bases
the river flickered out in burnished gold. It is impossible
to describe the transient glory of the scene. Then the
moon rose and illuminated the fog that had now gathered
out of the ravines and off the hills and formed an aerial
street stretched in frosted silver right across the calm,
translucent heavens from north to south. High up in the
south, but seeming to lie from east to west, stood the black,
embattled storm-rack towards Mahabaleshwar, belching
forth flame and thunders the whole night long.

The next day, Tuesday the 7th, passed off without a storm ;
but on Wednesday, the 8th, the sky was again filled with
vast electrical cloud-banks eastward toward the Bhor
Ghat. At 2 p.m. muttering thunder was heard from this
direction, when the sky became oppressively overcast
and lurid. At 2.30 the storm moved westward, travelling

THE THIRD DAY 13

in the opposite direction to its course on the 6th, directly
on Matheran. A mist went before it, thickening as it went,
first into trailing clouds, and then a dipping rain, muttering
thunder all the while. At 3 p.m. the valley between
Matheran and Prabal was filled with the storm, thundering
in long, reverberating peals, the lightning illuminating the
dense fog wherein it seemed to be generated with ineffable
splendour. Heavy rain accompanied the illuminated fog
until 3.45 p.m. ; when a light wind suddenly swept it away
westward on to Bombay, and showed that a heavy rain
had fallen over the whole country. At 4 p.m. the storm
seemed concentrated above Bombay. Just then another
dense fog, but luminous as magnesium light, again filled
the valley between Matheran and Prabal, and the distant
storm could no longer be watched ; but the newspapers of
the following morning, when they were delivered at
Matheran, told us that on the previous evening the
Monsoon had burst in Bombay.

Another year the Monsoon was ushered in with a
very picturesque phenomenon. About 2 p.m. masses
of cloud came along the plain from Khandala on Matheran,
and as in succession they rounded the high basaltic scarp
of Chouk Point exchanged regular broadsides of lightning
and thunder with it. The sky was perfectly clear all the
time, and the salutation between these clouds and the
mountains was repeated for a day or two before the great
burst. It was exactly like the bombardment of a great
casemated fortress by a fleet of ironclads [of the type of
1854-5] in full sail. On another occasion the Monsoon,
burst without thunder. The clear sky suddenly turned
black, and one universal solemn downpour set in, and
continued for about 36 hours.

Always these appalling electric outbursts close serenely.
The storm clouds retreat hilariously, like a drove of
bellowing bulls, their last echoes dying away beyond the
distant wall of mountains ; the sun shines forth again in

14 THE SOUTH-WEST MONSOON

majesty ; fragrant with the freshening breath of a myriad
opening flowers, the winds fall toa" cheerful note " ; in
every dell the delicious sound of running waters reawakens
life ; the woods become vocal with the glad songs of birds ;
and the heart of man is filled with an exalted joy in the
contemplation of the sublime manifestations of the
beneficent Power by which the face of Nature is renewed
in perpetual youth and glory and praise. It is the sudden
rapture of the untaught and instinctive vision of the
absolute unity in infinite diversity of all existence and
being ; the magic mood that spiritualises sense, and
through this passing show of things reveals the things
that are imperdible and eternal.

One of the most moving passages in Sanscrit literature,
I will say in all literature, is the hymn in the " Rig- Veda "
to the toads and frogs on their grateful welcome of the
" greater rain " of the S.W. and N.E. Monsoons ; and on
first hearing it, I at once had it engraved, as Englished
by myself, on the belly of the brazen image of a toad,
given to me by the present Sir Bartle Frere, the second
Baronet : —

" When the Monsoon bursts in lightnings and thunders ;
on the day when the greater rain pours down upon the
overclouded world ; the frogs in their sudden joy, leaping
out upon the fragrant earth, join in rapturous gratulations,
— the speckled yellow frog with the green frog, and the
green frog with the yellow, — the concert of their grateful
greetings being like unto the solemn chanting of the Brah-
mana, — bearing the soma libation at the ''atirotra sacrifice,' —
in the immemorial ascription [' actio gratiarum '] of adoring
worship and praise to the Lord God the Most Highest, the
glorious splendour of Whose might and majesty and mercy
is as the clear shining after the great rain of His strength."

Imagine any English poet from Chaucer and Shake-
speare and Milton onward finding a " Te Deum " in the
croaking — it is deep -chested barking when they spring

FROGS IN THE " RIG-VEDA" 15

up out of the ground as the first electric droppings of
the Monsoons fall on it, — of frogs and toads ! The Hindus
also believe that these " squat " and " ugly and venomous "
creatures of God — creatures of the same elements, and
modelled on the same vertebrate archetype with ourselves
— bring great good luck to all who join with them in
praise of the Almighty at the outburst of the Monsoons ;
and one of their folk-sayings founded on this faith I
engraved, as coming out of its mouth, on the back of my
brazen toad : —

" To all who raise their hearts in praise
For timely rain on hill and plain,

To God most High,

Who from of old

Spread out the sky

In hot or cold

Or moist or dry

For each fourfold

Necessity —
To orie and all who Him extol,
Or churl or king, ' good luck ' I bring."

It is an interesting coincidence that Aristophanes
should put into the mouth of the frogs in the comedy
named after them self-praise of " the harmonious strain
of our hymns, and sweet-sounding song, — croaks, croaks " ;
but this is merely to sharpen and envenom the tooth of
his sarcasm, and satiate the rage of his satire. Still it is an
interesting coincidence ; and serves to emphasise the
antithesis between Western and Eastern thought on an
identical subject.

A SUNSET ON MATHERAN1

" Die for the Son "

THE idolatry of the Hindus is a moot point with
most Englishmen, and with Europeans generally.
The following anecdote will suffice to indicate my own
conclusions on the subject, impressed on me as they were
by many similar experiences in Bombay.

The late Hon. Jugonnathjee Sunkersett was an orthodox
Hindu of the most uncompromising temper ; but owing
to some service I was able to render him in 1857, I enjoyed
his entire confidence. There is no man in whom I have
ever taken a deeper personal interest, or for whom I could
possibly have a more affectionate and steadfast regard.
We were so intimate together that he would freely admit
me to his presence while engaged in his private devotions
with his domestic Brahman ; only, on such occasions, I
sat down just beyond the threshold of the door leading
from his bedroom — in his Girgaum house — into the room
in which he worshipped the ancestors of his family, and
the greater deities of the official Brahmanic Pantheon.
Seated there opposite me, stripped to the skin, with the
officiating Brahman, and the images of his gods before
him, and all the utensils of idolatrous worship, he would
explain every detail to me as it proceeded.

Now, the great longing of his heart was that before he
should see death, he might be blessed with the birth of a
son to his only son, Venayekrow Jugonnathjee, familiarly

1 This ethnographical vignette was originally a footnote on the name
of the late Honourable Jugonnathjee Sunkersett (1802-1865), of Bombay,
in Sir George Birdwood's Introduction to Mr. Sorabji Jehangir's Repre-
sentative Men of India [W. H. Allen & Co., 1880].— Ed.

C 17

18 A SUNSET ON MATHERAN

called Rowjee. Years had followed years, but only girls
had been born to Rowjee, and the birth of a man child
began to appear hopeless. Jugonnathjee Sunkersett
himself had visited every shrine in Western India, praying
for a grandson, and had even extended his pilgrimages
for the purpose to Benares, and I believe to Muttra and
Hard war j1 and he never saw me without introducing the
subject into our conversation. Such was the state of
matters when, being on a visit to the hill station of
Matheran, and curious to ascertain the ritual of the orgiastic
worship said to be enacted there by the outcast jungle
tribes — chiefly cowherds, and cutch [extract of Acacia
Catechu, W. and A.] collectors — before the uncouth altar
to " Pisnath Deo,"2 [i.e. Pasha-Natha, " Pasture Lord "]
in the dark grove of evergreen ironwood trees [Anjun,
Memecylon edule, Rox : ] at Danger Point, on the west side
of the hill, just above and to the left of the Waterfall, I
concealed myself for the purpose behind a rent in the wall
of piled blocks of basalt enclosing the grove.

1 The Hindu worship \_puja, literally, " adoration "] of the Gods, i.e.
of the Deity, through the images, or other imaginations, whereby they
feign or effigy Him, is " celebrated " thrice daily in three interdependent
acts : — (1) in the morning, of " perfect sprinkling " [abhisiaca] or combined
ablution, libation, and anointing with the " five nectars " [pancha
amrita, compare our rum-punch], milk, clarified butter [ghi], curds [dhi] or
cocoanut-milk, sugar, and honey ; (2) at midday of incensing [dhupa] with
gum-Benjamin, or frankincense, and (3) of oblation, literally " the weigh-
ing," or "measuring out" of griddle or girdle cakes [chapatis, literally
" four-leaved "], sweetmeats, and other sorts of food ; all afterwards
eaten, as are "the five nectars " drunken, by the officiating Brahman, or
Brahmans, and, at the temples, their attendants [pujachari].

2 This is one of, if not indeed, the most fascinating of all the words in
the whole cycle of verbal affinities among the pan- Aryan languages : going
back to the Sanskrit pa " protector," as in Gopala " the Cowherd," the
Persian Padshad " Lord-sovereign " ; the Greek dea-irdTrjs " lord " ;
irda-TTj " food," and Tra<rr6s " porridge," and vav6s " bread," Udv Pan ;
the Latin " pater " father, " patria " native country, " patronus " patron,
" pastura " pasture, " pabulum " fodder, " panis " bread, Pales, Penates,
and Palatinus [Mons] ; and the English, ( 1 ) through German, Palgrave,
foster, father ; (2) through Latin by way of French, appanage, pantry, pasty,
pattypan ; (3) through Latin direct, see above, and innumerable other
words ; (4) through Greek, panic, patronymic, patriarch ; and (5) through
Persian, pasha, bashaw, bezoar-stone, i.e. Pad-zahar " Lord over poison."

ORGIASTIC WORSHIP 19

A number of poor, abject creatures had gathered there
in the dread gloom, and were about to kill a scared-looking
cock, when suddenly who should come from opposite my
hiding-place, trotting straight into the grove, but the
Hon. Jugonnathjee Sunkersett, followed by a mounted
orderly and two running peons. I thought at first that
he was there, like myself, from curiosity, and was about to
go forward to greet him ; but the peons immediately
placed themselves at the head of his horse, and he himself
dismounted, and stepped up before the dreary and degraded
shrine. He was a man of the Scytho- Aryan type, and of
splendid appearance, from his shoulders upwards higher,
wherever he was, than the people about him. There he
stood, in the light of a sloping ray of the declining sun that
stole in between the dark trunks of the ironwood trees,
long-robed, and high-turbaned, and girded round his
loins, a living presentment of the " magnificent son of
Akbar." But in another instant he was wringing his hands
in an agony of prayer, with the burning tears streaming
down his handsome, massive, but now deeply seared face ;
his wan, beseeching eyes looking right up towards the
heavens high above that closely grown canopy of deep
green, polished Anjuni leaves.

Feeling myself to be the spectator of a scene I certainly
ought not to witness, I stealthily withdrew from the spot,
strolling on leisurely toward the bazaar. I had not gone
on my way more than a quarter of an hour when, just
before reaching the Clarendon Hotel, I became aware
of the clatter of galloping horses approaching from behind
me, and presently I heard my name being joyfully shouted.
Almost before I could turn round, Jugonnathjee Sunkersett
and his escort were upon me, his face lighted up in the
deep -toned brilliance of the setting sun, with the most
proudly radiant look of gladness.

"Oh, Settjee," I said, responsively to his mood, "you
have good hope of a grandson."

20 A SUNSET ON MATHERAN

44 Indeed, yes," he replied, " it is just what I wanted
to tell you, Bird wood."

44 But," I resumed, 44 what solid ground have you for
your assurance ? "

His answer was : 44 Solid ground of assurance ! Why
God Himself has told me!"

I was astounded by the reply, and — remembering what
I had secretly seen — could say nothing for my emotion ;
and I left him to talk on awhile like a happy child, until
by devious paths — but as much as possible still pressing
eastward — we at length arrived at Alexander Point. This
is a little more than a mile east from Danger Point, and
commands the whole of the picturesque vale of the Chouk
river, trending away south-westward, between the main
mass of Matheran and its treeless north-eastern spur,
called, from its flinty surface, Gar but.

The twilight had now passed in the valley below us
into a purple tint, rising higher and higher to the great
grove [Ram Bagh, 44 God's Garden "] of widespreading
mangoes, and towering Jambuls [Syzygium Jambolanum,
W. and A.], lordliest foliage of the woodlands of Western
India, and the other fine forest trees hanging upon the east
side of the hill, half-way down the steep and thread-like,
rock-cut and splintered track of the old zigzag ghat road
to Chouk. The ardent purple tint had welled up to this
level. Above it the umbrageous top of Matheran was
flushed with the clear reflection from the refulgent orange
light yet aglow in the west, turning all its exuberant leafage
to a rich mystic green, of gem-like illumination. In the
advancing night, thus momentarily irradiated with the
still enfolded brightness of departing day, the whole
enchanted mountain and valley seemed as if filled with
the visible glory of over-shadowing Deity ; and Sunkersett
at once became silent before the profoundly solemnising,
wondrous scene. Silently he watched the primitive hill-
men returning by the precipitous and slippery Chouk ghat

THE ANSWER TO PRAYER 21

road to their scattered huts in the rapidly darkening depths
of the valley below ; each one, as he advanced to the head
of the dangerous descent, bending lowly down, and
reverently, towards the sun's far sunken flame : —
" Through ages hymned by Hindu devotee."

The tumult of his soul was hushed, and at the last — as
we turned to retrace our steps homeward — from out its
depths he thoughtfully, and in his frequent oracular
manner, observed : " Yes, just as our five ringers go back
to one and the same arm, so all religions go back to one
and the same God." Thus closed what was to prove an
ever memorable day with him, and with me, for, remarkable
to relate, with the completion of nine months from that
date, a grandson, the deferred hope of all the years of his
prime, was born to Jugonnathjee Sunkersett. The patient
heavens had heard his prayer, and now their answer was
not weak. And then, the great hope of his life having been
fulfilled, straightway a change came over him. He was
a man of strenuous energy, the most masterful natural
capacity, and undisguised ambition and pride. He was
not only the leader of the Hindus of Bombay, but after the
death of the great Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy,1 of the whole
Native community. But now he laid aside all worldliness,
and unobtrusively and determinedly submitted himself
to the great longing for death that seemed to have taken

1 How great they all were, the Bombay Parsis of that golden prime of
their glory ! — Cursetjee, the second Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, the " perfect
gentleman," his brother Rustomjee, the absolute reincarnation of their
great father's philanthropy, but not of his genius in business ; C. F. Paruk ;
C. N. and C. R. and B. F., and D. F. and M. F. and M. H. Cama [" the six
Camajees "] ; Cowasjee Jehanghir ; Nusserwanjee M. Petit ; Byramjee
Jejeebhoy ; C. M. Limjee : A. C. and H. C. Dady ; D. P. and H. B. Wadia ;
F. N. Patel ; D. F. Karaka, the historian of the Indian Parsis ; Manockjee
Cursetjee ; Nowrojee Furdonjee ; Sorabjee Shapoorjee ; S. J. Sett, — all
dead men now ; — and brightest and best of all the sons of that morning of
their fresh-gathered greatness and glory, Dabadhai Naoroji, who still lives,
through a third generation, in the all-cheering light of his long life of
fearless and unfailing uprightness and devotion in the highest service of
his exiled race and their foster country.

22 A SUNSET ON MATHERAN

complete possession of him ; saying, on my once venturing
to remonstrate with him for thus yielding himself up to
die, and, in so saying, using almost the very words of the
Greek writer : — " It is not difficult, Bird wood, but easy ;
for the road is not crooked, but straight ; not up and then
down, but all downward ; and an unf earing man may walk
it blindfold." No ! He had seen the salvation of God, as
sought by himself ; and now all he desired was to depart in
peace.

Soon afterward he died ; and very great burning was
made for him. I thought it would have given me a cruel
shock ; but it was attended with none of the horrors —
the awful reverberatory furnace, the repulsive, factory-
like chimney, and all the soulless mechanism — of cremation
in Europe. Except that milk was used instead of wine,
the ritual was essentially that observed by Homer in the
burial of Patroclus. So far from being pained, when it
was all over, and I looked up into the clear and brilliant
heavens above, I was soothed by the reflection that no
taint of earthly corruption would ever be associated with
my memory of my friend, for all that had been mortal of
him was now part of the vital air and the cheering sunshine
around and about me. This naturally suggested the
inspiring hope that if human self -consciousness was indeed
immortal, the freed spirit of Jugonnathjee Sunkersett was
already with the " Father of Lights," the " Ancient of
(undying) Days." It is impossible not to be deeply
interested in such men, and when you know them for what
they really are, not to have the sincerest friendship and
admiration for them. As for their idolatry, my whole
mind was changed toward it after that answer given by
Jugonnathjee Sunkersett near the Clarendon Hotel : —
" Solid ground of assurance ! Why, God Himself has told
me ! " And this out of the mouth of a man I had just seen
in that wizard wood of Anjun trees, praying, apparently, to
a hideous heap of foully-ruddled and stinking idol stones !

THE RITUAL OF BURNING 23

Henceforward I knew that there were not many gods
of human worship, but one God only, who was polyony-
mous and polymorphous, being figured and named accord-
ing to the variety of the outward condition of things, ever
changing and everywhere different, and unceasingly
modifying our inward conceptions of them. We all are
His offspring : and every place is His temple.

THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

The Mahratta Country, or Ager

" In omni quidem parte culturse, sed in hac quidem [i.e. arandi
disciplina], maxime valet oraculum illud : ' Quid quseque regio
patiatur.' " — C. Plinii, Nat. Hist., xviii. 18.

rPHIS defence of the Mahratta plough was originally
■*- written in reply to the sweeping attack on the
vernacular implements and operations of Indian agri-
culture, made in a paper read on the 16th of July, 1888,
before the East India Association, by the Pandit Srilal, a
distinguished student of the Royal Agricultural College at
Cirencester, and late Secretary to the Agricultural Society
of Bijnaur, the northernmost District of the Rohilkand
Division of the United Provinces.

I restrict myself to the vindication of the indigenous
plough, in regard to its perfect adaptation to the sur-
rounding conditions of the land, and life, and labour in
that part of India known to me familiarly, in the strict
etymological sense of the word, from my birth, and dear
to me as my native country,1 the " great " basaltic
" kingdom " of Maharashtra.

1 The name of my birthplace, Belgaum, is Canarese, its correct form
being Vennu-grama ["Bamboo — my 'Tree of Life' — Town"], and it
was included within the limits of the ancient Karnataka, or "Canara
[literally 'Black Soil'] Country." The Mahratta language is, however,
spoken right up to Belgaum, and the Ghat-prabha [" Pass-leader " — my
"River of Life"] river rising by numerous affluents in the Western
Ghats between the Hanuman and Ram ghats or "passes," and flowing
past Belgaum and Gokak, westward to the Kistna, now bounds the
extremest southern marches of the Mahratta Country, and, up to its
junction with the Kistna, divides the basaltic formation of Maharashtra
from the granite plateau of Karnataka.

25

26 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

Hindu geographers divide the Deccan, or India " south "
of Hindustan [the alluvial plains of the Indus and Ganges],
into six principal provinces — viz. (1) Gujarashtra, north-
west of the Narbada ; (2) Gondwana [the Central Pro-
vinces], south-east of the Narbada ; (3) Andra or Telingana
[the Nizam's Dominions, etc.], south of Gondwana, to the
Coromandel Coast ; (4) Dravida [Travancore, etc.], in the
extreme south ; (5) Karnataka [Mysore, etc.], on the
Malabar Coast, north of Dravida ; and (6) Maharashtra,
extending from the Ghat-prabha river — which separates
Maharashtra from Karnataka — nearly 500 miles north to
the Satpura mountains, the watershed between the Tapti
and Narbada rivers ; and from the Malabar Coast, 300 to
400 miles eastward to the borders of Telingana and
Gondwana ; the westward border of the latter province
being denned by the Wardha river, a northern affluent of
the Godavari.

These are the extreme ethnographical frontiers of the
Mahratta Country ; but its political limits have been
enlarged by conquest even beyond them — past the Wardha
river, and past the old Bhonsla city of Nagpur, right up
to the Wain-ganga, the eastward affluent of the Godavari ;
and again across the Narbada, where Mahratta dynasties
have permanently established themselves at Baroda
[Gaekwar] in Guzarat, and at Indor [Holkar], and Gwalior
[Sindhia] in Central India. These Mahratta States are,
however, excluded from the present survey ; as are also
the Khandesh District [Baglana], or basin of the Tapti,
between the Satpura mountains and the Chandor hills ;
and the whole of the Nasik District ; and all the six
northern subdivisions of the Ahmadnagar District, forming
with the Nasik District, between the Chandor and the
Ahmadnagar hills, the fluviatile area, wherein are gathered,
by its head stream and western affluents, the waters dis-
charged by the pastoral Godavari, through Telingana,
into the Bay of Bengal. The latter tracts are termed,

MAHARASHTRA 27

indiscriminately, by the Mahrattas themselves, Vindhyari,
that is, belonging to the Vindhya [" the Hunters' "]
mountains, and are still in large proportion peopled by
the Bhils1 [" Bowmen "], and other aboriginal tribes,
who, from the remotest prehistoric times have had their
home in Gondwana, whereto Khandesh truly appertains,
rather than to Maharashtra.

The boundaries of the true Mahratta Country, therefore,
are : on the west, the Arabian Sea from Goa to Bombay,
250 miles ; on the north, the Kalyan river from Bombay
to the Sahyadri mountains, at the Malsaj ghat, 70 miles as
the crow flies, and thence, along the Ahmadnagar hills,
so far as they extend due east, 100 miles more ; on the
east, the south-eastern prolongation of the Ahmadnagar
hills to beyond the sacred Mahratta city of Tuljapur, and
the fortress of Nuldrug, both in the Nizam's Dominions,
120 miles in all ; and on the south, an irregular line from
Nuldrug to Goa, crossing the Bhima, the great contributory
to the Kistna from the Northern Mahratta Country [the
Ahmadnagar, Poona, Satara, and Sholapur Districts], about
60 miles south-east from Pandharpur, the holiest of
Mahratta towns, and the main stream of the Kistna itself,
30 miles south from the splendid ruins of the mediaeval
Moslem city of Bijapur, and just east of the influence of
the Ghat-prabha, the south-most contributory to the
Kistna from the Southern Mahratta Country [the Kolapur
State, and Bijapur and Belgaum Districts], a distance, as
the crow flies, of altogether 200 miles.

Within the area thus circumscribed, the most charac-
teristic Mahratta territory is, according to Grant Duff,

1 The Mahrattas are mixed, but true Aryas, and represent the south-
west extension, en masse, of the Aryan race in India. The Bhils are un-
mixed aborigines, or Vindhyan Dravidas, and are represented south of
Khandesh by the Varalis [north of Bombay], Kathodis [north of Poona],
Ramusis [north of Kolhapur], and other semi-savage tribes of the Western
Ghats, who form the autochthonous substratum of the lower out-castes of
the gallant Mahratta nation.

28 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

the region of upland dales, about 50 miles in breadth, and
200 in length, extending across all the eastward spurs
of the Western Ghats from Junnar on the Bhima, south-
ward through Poona, the capital of the old Mahratta
Peshwas,1 on the Muta Mula, an affluent of the Bhima,
and through Satara, on the head stream of the Kistna,
to Euru-Manjira, lower down the same river, a little east
of Kolhapur. These mountain valleys, locally termed
mavals, and the wide straths of the Bhima, and its
affluents the Sina and Nira2 — all this well wooded, and
well watered, and well laboured, fertile, and inaccessible,
and strongly defensible country, is " the very heart of
heart " of the mighty basaltic tableland of Maharashtra.
Toward it the hearts of all its true sons, the hardy, brave,
shrewd, hospitable, and intensely devout mavalis, the
Scotch of India, are drawn, as with a fourfold cord, by its
romantic and sublime picturesqueness, its bounteous fruit-
fulness, its profoundly emotional associations with the
religious poetry of Tukaram (circa 1609 to 1649), and by
the heroic history of Sivaji (1627-1680) : — Tukaram, who
passionately extols the glory of Vithoba or Vithal, the
popular incarnation of [Krishna]-Vishnu, and of Pand-
harpur, the seat of Vithoba's noblest shrine, and of the

1 The Pesh-wa [literally " fore-man "] was the Prime Minister of the
Mahratta kings ; and the office becoming hereditary in the family of
Balaji Bao, they gradually usurped the supreme authority, reigning in
great power at Puna [Poona] between a.d. 1718 and 1818 ; leaving to the
royal family of Sivaji only the principalities of Satara and Kolhapur. The
word pesh in their title is Persian, and occurs also in Peshawar, " the
frontier station," in Peshin, " the front-land," i.e. " sun-rise," or " morning-
land " [Anatolia], as viewed from Persia ; and in such words as pesh-kash,
" what is fore-drawn," i.e. " first-fruits," " taxes " ; pesh-qi, " money
advanced " ; pesh-kabz, " fore-grip," a dagger, the blade of which curves
forwardly from the handle ; pesh-ani, " the fore-head " ; pesh-ab, " fore-
water," i.e. odpov, et cetera.

2 The Bhima and Sina, rivers flowing side by side, between the Ahmad-
nagar and the Poona hills, and the Nira between the Poona and the
Satara, or Mahadeo Hills, and the open vale of the Kistna, where it
opens out southward from Satara, and away east from Kolhapur, into
Telingana, together with the precipitous, low-lying, narrow maritime belt
of the Konkans, to the west of the Sahyadri mountains.

THE GHATS 29

Bhima, the perennially flowing, broad -meado wed river of
Pandharpur ; — and Sivaji, the typical and greatest leader
of the historic Mahratta race, at once their Wallace and
Bruce and Douglas, to whom they owe the imperishable
and inspiriting memories of an independent national life
centred for 168 years [1650 to 1818] at Poona. This city,
on account of its commanding strategic position, still
maintains its pre-eminence as the military capital of the
Deccan. It is the Kabul of Southern India ; and as,
according to the Eastern proverb : " the Master of Kabul
is the Master of Hindustan," so a ruler strongly seated in
Poona holds the entire Deccan in his all confronting
power.

I retain from childhood the liveliest recollection of the
scenery and people of the whole of Maharashtra, between
Belgaum and Indor, and Surat and Asirghar ; while with
the Mahratta Country, as known to me in later years, and
comprised within the administrative Districts of Poona,
Ahmadnagar, Sholapur, Satara, Kolhapur [Native State],
Bijapur, and Belgaum, and, in the Southern Konkan, of
Goa [Portuguese possession], Sawantwari [Native State],
Ratnagiri, and Kolaba, and, in the Northern Konkan, of
Thana, I am more intimately acquainted than with any
part of the United Kingdom, unless excepting the basaltic
plains of the Forth and Clyde.

The Sahyadris are the crest of the great wave of trap
covering the whole of the western Deccan from Belgaum
to Indor, and from the Central Provinces to the Konkans,
over which it hangs like a citadel of the Cyclops ; attaining
in the flat -topped mountain mass of Mahabaleshwar, " the
Great -strength-of God," its greatest height, 5,000 feet
above the sea.

This aerial ramp lies almost at right angles to the direc-
tion of the South-West Monsoon, which beating on it
through incalculable ages, has worn its sky-line, where the
trap rock is of harder basalt, into prolonged chains of

30 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

bluff, flat -topped, terraced headlands ; and, where of
softer amygdaloid, into an occasional jagged peak ;
and at a lower height has moulded it, by the same process
of secular denudation, into the confused maze of lateral
spurs, where between the rain water of the Monsoon runs
off in the head springs of the Kistna towards the east, and
on the west in the numerous little rivers that furrow their
rapid way to the Arabian Sea through the Konkans. The
black soil of the plains of the Deccan has been chiefly
formed from the Monsoon waste of the Sahyadris ; and
this soil, so well adapted to the cultivation of cotton,
extends beyond the trappean tract of Western India, far
into the south and east of peninsular India, where it gives
its name both to Karnataka and the Kanaras.

These mountains fall toward the west very abruptly, in
terraced slopes, of alternate horizontal belts of evergreen
woods and black bands of basalt, and sheer precipices, often
of 2,000 feet deep, and rugged, irregular spurs, often
reaching the sea in 20, or in some places 40 miles, and
cutting up the Konkans into a succession of transverse
ravines and gorges of incredible difficulty, and deep
steaming valleys, covered with thick forests, mostly of
bamboo and teak. On the flat top of an isolated hill of
one of these spurs, stretched out between the Bhor Ghat
and Bombay, Lord Elphinstone founded the sanatorium
of Matheran [" The Top of the wild "]. Rising abruptly,
from almost the level of the sea, to a height of 2,500 feet,
and standing like an advanced tower in front of the
Sahyadris, it commands the most striking panoramic view
of them, from the stupendous scarp of Harichandraghur
[Malsaj Ghat] rising to an altitude of 4,000 feet, in the
north, to the pinnacled precipice, called by the natives
Nagphani, " The Cobra's Hood," and by Europeans, " The
Duke's Nose," on the east, there marking the position of
the Bhor Ghat, down to the levelled loom-line of the mighty
bluff of Mahabaleshwar in the extreme south.

BOMBAY THE BEAUTIFUL 31

Matheran, and the twin flat -topped Prabal hill, and the
remarkable, curiously serrated, saddle-back ridge of Bhawa
Mulleng, and the Panala Hill, surmounted by the basaltic
column that gives it the name of Funnel Hill among
Europeans, are the most conspicuous masses, crests, and
peaks of the semicircular spur forming the southern
watershed of the affluents, from the Malsaj Ghat, the Tal
Ghat, and the Bhor Ghat, of the beautiful Ulhas or Kalyan
river, the principal river of the Northern Konkan ; a
corresponding semicircular spur is the southern watershed
of the affluents, from the Bhor Ghat and the Sava Ghat, of
the Amba or Nagotna river, the most sylvan stream of the
Southern Konkan ; and these two curved spurs, con-
verging, from the north and south respectively, toward
the west, before sinking out of sight, form the bright little
archipelago of basalt islets, which, joined together by the
clay deposits of the Kalyan and Nagotna rivers, and of
the little Panvel and Patala-ganga [" Infernal "■ — literally
" Patent," i.e. " Wide-mouthed "— " Ganges "] rivers, and
by the shells and sand thrown up by the waves of the
South-West Monsoon, constitute the compound island,
lying like a natural breakwater in front of the common
estuary of the four creeks of the Kalyan, Panvel, Patala-
ganga and Nagotna rivers ; and thus forming the magni-
ficent harbour that has given its Portuguese name, and
the commercial and naval control of the Indian Ocean, to
the palatial city of Bombay j1 rising from its bright green
Esplanade, flush with the blue level of the Arabian Sea, like
the apparition of another Venice, suffused with the richer
golden light of the eternal sunshine of the East.

Beautiful indeed for situation is Bombay, — and for
providential opportunity the joy and praise of all those
whose business is in the salt deep ! Among the palm

1 The ultimate source of the name of Bombay is the temple of the
tutelary island goddess Momba-Devi, " Our Lady of Bombay," an
auspicious local form of the " Great Goddess " Devi, the consort of Siva.

32 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

groves, tufting the five basaltic monticules and mounds
of the surrounding suburbs, sparkle the white walls of
the houses of its opulent and luxurious merchant princes.
This rare aggregation of natural and artificial features
presents a scene at once splendid, comfortable, and, in its
encompassing alpine panorama, wonderful ; and abso-
lutely rapturous, when the blaze of day has set, and the
silver moon hangs above all in the spacious silence of the
clear midnight sky.

There has always existed along the Ulhas, so far as it is
navigable to sea-going craft, a great emporium of Oriental
commerce, which, as this river became from age to age
more and more silted up, gradually gravitated lower and
lower down its course, from Kalyan, the Kalliana of the
Greeks in Buddhistic and later Brahmanical antiquity, to
Thana, i.e. Sthan, " the Settlement," in mediaeval or
Mahometan times, and to the port of Bombay, its
southern debouchure, in the modern English period.

Bhivindi, the Binda [Benda] of Ptolemy, 5 miles from
the right bank of the Ulhas, opposite Kalyan, is thought
to be an older Aryan mart than even the latter town, and
was probably a primitive Vindhyan station ; while the
period of Portuguese supremacy in Western India is
represented by Bassein, i.e. Vassai, " the Settlement,'* at
the extremity of the northern outlet of the Ulhas ; which
with its southern debouchure [and the sea], delimits a
portion of the true mainland, the so-called " Island of
Salsette," famous for its Buddhistic caves, dated between
100 B.C. and a.d. 50, at Kanheri. Chimbur, 2 or 3 miles
to the east of Mahim Causeway, joining Bombay to Salsette,
and corresponding with the Portuguese town of Bandra
west of Mahim, has been thought to be the Symulla
[Simulla] of Ptolemy ; but the latter is rather to be
identified with Chaul, at the mouth of the Kundalika river
in the Southern Konkan. Yet the white variety of the
pangri (Erythrina indica) found by the ruined Hindu

SOPARA 33

temple at this place,1 and, in all the world, found only
there, is to my mind a distinct relic of the ancient Buddhists
who, as their grove at Lanouli, beyond the Bhor Ghat, shows,
were enthusiastic arboriculturists. About 10 miles north
of Bassein is the common creek of the Tansa river, flowing
from the Tal Ghat, and of the sacred Vaitarna or Agashi
river, the Goaris of Ptolemy, flowing from the Tal Ghat
and the other ghats more to the north, that lead off,
through their eastward gradients, the sources of the
Godavari.

About 15 miles east from Bassein is the shallow and
rapidly disappearing breakwater connecting the Ulhas or
Kalyan river with the Vaitarna, and with them forming
the spurious " Island of Sopara " or " Island of Agashi,"
where yet stands the town of Sopara, the capital of the
Konkans from 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1310. It is mentioned in
the Mahabharata, under the name Shurparaka, as a very
holy place, where the five Panda va brothers rested on their
way to Prabhas ; and also in the Mahawanso of Ceylon ;
and is now justly held to be the Ophir of the Bible, spelt
Sophir by Josephus ; this form of the word still denoting
India among the Copts of Egypt and Abyssinia. Without
doubt it is the Soupara and Nousaripa of Ptolemy, placed
by him between Nousaripa [Nosari] in the Baroda State
and Symulla [Chaul] in the Southern Konkan. The well-
known tope2 here, was shown by Messrs. Mulock and
Sinclair, of the Bombay Civil Service, to be a Buddhist
relic mound, dating not later than a.d. 100, and one of
the most interesting as yet excavated in India. It was

1 The discoverer of this tree was Mr. Bhasker, the karbhari of the
Victoria Gardens, Bombay, where I was careful to propagate innumerable
cuttings from it, and to distribute them widely, even so far as Egypt.

2 This Anglo-Indian word has a double derivation, viz. from the
Sanskrit stupa, " a tumulus," as here ; and the Canarese topu, " a clump of
trees," as here also ; the tope at Sopara having been so called by both
Europeans and natives, from the vegetation on it, chiefly karanda bushes
[Carissa Carandas], long before it was recognised, and first by Mr. Mulock,
as a Buddhist mound.

34 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

further explored and learnedly described by Sir James
MacNabb Campbell (1846-1903), the compiler of the
Bombay Gazetteer. The saintly associations of this tumulus
probably account for the traditional sanctity of the
" Island of Sopara " or " Agashi," not less than the
origin of the Vaitarna in the same sacred summits of the
Sahyadris with the deified " delimiting " [Tamil, Goda],
and " cattle -bearing " Godavari.

The Aryas must have been early attracted from Gujarat
into the picturesque and gloriously umbrageous coast
land of the Konkans ; and it was by moving up the
Konkan rivers, and scaling their innumerable ghats,
excavated by the descending streams, that they finally
reached and civilised Maharashtra, rather than through
the forbidding Vindhyan regions of Gondwana and
Baglana. The Buddhistic remains at Kanheri and Sopara,
and the imposing later Brahmanical sculptures on the
little island of Elephanta, in Bombay Harbour, prove, by
the great wealth lavished upon them, that all through
antiquity, down to the rise of the Mahometan power in
Anterior Asia, the creeks and estuaries of the Konkans
were everywhere the busy scenes of the immemorial trade
carried on between the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Eastern
Coast of Africa, and Western India. We witness it actually
pictured for us on the contemporary wall paintings of the
Buddhistic caves at Ajanta (250 B.C. — a.d. 250) at the
extremity of the northern bifurcation, within the Nizam's
Dominions, of the Chandor spur of the Sahyadris. The
inland routes of this commerce from Kalyan over the Bhor
Ghat into the valley of the Kistna ; and from Sopara over
the ghat, into the upper valley of the Godavari, and on
to Pithana [the capital of Salivahana] on the lower
Godavari, and Tagara1 [Daulatabad, the Hindu Deogiri],

1 Tagara has also been identified with Deogiri, at the mouth of the
Deogiri river, in the Ratnagiri District of the Southern Konkan, and the
natural seaport of the Kolhapur State j while Dr, J. F. Fleet, c.i.e., late

CHANDOR 35

about 50 miles north of Pithana ; where, on the southern
bifurcation of the Chandor hills, the sumptuous Buddhistic
viharas,1 and later Brahmanical pagodas2 at Ellora, as
also the marvellous mural paintings at Ajanta, 50 miles
north-east of Ellora, testify to the affluent resources of
the ancient, pre-Mahometan trade of Maharashtra at
its eastern termini, as graphically as do Kanheri and
Elephanta at its western starting-places in the Konkans.
From Nasica [Nasik] a branch from this easterly trunk
road turned more to the north, and crossing in succession
the Chandor hills near Chandor, the Tapti river, the Saut-
pura mountains through the Sindhiva Ghat, the Narbada
river, and the Vindhya mountains over the Jam Ghat, at
last reached Ozene [Ujjain] and Sagida [the Sagida or
Sageda of Ptolemy] in Malwa.

These ancient routes are to be traced not only where
they begin and end, but throughout their course, by the
remains of Buddhistic and later Brahmanical architecture,
as at Karli in the Bhor Ghat, where there is the largest and
best preserved rock-cut chaitya, or Buddhist memorial
hall [church], hitherto discovered in India ; and at Bhaja
and Bedsa south of Karli ; at Junnar north of Poona, and
Nasik north of Junnar ; and at Kolvi and Dumnar near
Ujjain. And the great Buddhist topes at Bhilsa [Sanchi]

of the Bombay Civil Service, identifies Tagara with the town Kolhapur
itself, one of his arguments being that the tagara [Taberncemontana
coroniaria] grows freely in its neighbourhood. There is a town called
Tegur, a few miles N.E. of Dharwar.

1 Vihara is a Sanskrit word meaning a Buddhist convent, and is traced
in the name of the Province of Behar ; of the village on the island of
Salsette, near the great reservoir of the Bombay Waterworks ; and,
according to Colonel Yule [Hobson-Jobson], of the city of Bokhara in
Central Asia.

2 The Anglo-Indian word " pagoda " has also, like " tope," a double
derivation, viz. from the Sanskrit dhatugarbha " relic receptacle " [literally
" tooth- womb "], through the Cyngalese dagaba ; and from the Portuguese
pagao, " a pagan." In India, however, the word " pagoda " is always
applied to the idol- temples of the Hindus, and the word " tope " to the
relic-mounds of the Buddhists. The " pagodas " of China and Burma are
Buddhist temples built [nominally] in seven stories.

36 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

and Bharhut, 125 and 325 miles, respectively, east of
Ujjain, are also indications of the far extended prosperity
of the ancient trade of Maharashtra, rather than of the
separate commercial system of the alluvial valley of the
Ganges, cut off as the latter is from the lofty plains of the
Godavari and the Kistna by the defiles of the Jumna.
These from opposite Delhi to opposite Allahabad and
Benares form the northern escarpment of the triangular
trappean and granitic tableland of peninsular India.
The beds of the Sone and Narbada, forming a continuous
waterway, sloping in opposite directions, from Patna
[Palimbothra, i.e. Pataliputra] on the Ganges to Broach
[Barygaza] at the mouth of the Narbada, seem to open
out a thousand miles of direct inland communication,
through the very heart of Gondwana, between Northern
and Southern India ; but so inaccessible are the Amarkan-
taka highlands, in which these rivers, and the Mahanadi,
the river of Orissa, have their common source, and so
precipitous is the channel of the Narbada, and so intricate
that of the Sone before it reaches the plain of the Ganges,
that these rivers, so far from serving to overcome, rather
aggravate the obstructions placed by the Vindhya and
the Satpura mountains to free intercourse between
Hindustan and the Deccan.

The strange admixture of religious ideas and practices
current among the Mahrattas is only to be satisfactorily
explained by the enlarged commercial intercourse with
Anterior Asia, and Egypt, and the West, enjoyed by
Western India all through the great Buddhistic millen-
nium from 500 B.C. to a.d. 500. That commerce made
Buddhism in the East, as, through Buddhism, it made
Christianity in the West ; while in Maharashtra, to the
deeply rooted and strongly infectious animism of the
Vindhyan aborigines, and the Vedic polytheism of the
Aryan settlers, it added the elements of Chaldaean Sabaism,
Egyptian Asceticism, Roman Stoicism, and some of the

TRADE WITH THE WEST 37

distinctive principles of that general humanitarianism of
the period that at last found its highest expression in
Christianity. Even Bible names are surmised to have
been deified among the Mahrattas, who near Pandharpur
worship an image called Bawa-Adam, and in the Berars
another known as Jabral-Abal [? the Angel Gabriel]. I
am satisfied that the glory of the legendary Hindu rajah
Vikramaditya [of Ujjain] of this period, is in part the
reflected glory of Augustus Caesar ; and that " the Nine
Gems " of Vikramaditya's court are none other than
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and the rest of the Augustan poets.

It was, in all probability, in the course of this secular
trade between the East and West, and long before it
became so intimate as it did between the dates of Alexander
the Great and Justinian I., that the characteristic Mahratta
drill ploughs, the moghar and pabhar, were introduced into
Western India direct from Chaldaea.

Janjira, at the mouth of the romantic Rajpuri creek,
below Chaul, in the Southern Konkan, and Mhasla, at the
head of the creek, are both identified with place names
located by the Greeks and Romans in this region. Below
Janjira are Bankot, at the mouth of the Savitri river,
flowing from Mahabaleshwar, and Dabhol, at the mouth
of the Vashishti, both places of some trade in the Mahom-
etan or mediaeval period ; and Ratnagiri, at the mouth of
the Bhatya ; and Deogiri or Devgad, absurdly identified by
some with the ancient Tagara ; and Malvan, at the mouth of
the Kalavli, where the trappean formation is last seen in
the Konkan ; and Vengurla, where the gneissic series of
Southern India first makes itself prominent on the Malabar
Coast. But none of these exiguous ports ever accommodated
anything more than a precarious local trade. Being thus
inaccessible to the international trade of antiquity, the
narrow alpine strip of the Konkans between Chaul and
Goa was never fully brought under its denationalising
influences, and remained all through the thousand years

38 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

of the predominance of Buddhism in Hindustan, — and in
the Deccan so far south as the left bank of the lower
Kistna, — a safe refuge for the families of the conservative
Aryan priesthood now known as the Konkanast Brahmans.
The Brahmans of the Ganges valley affect to despise them,
and in their disdainful and despiteful ignorance apply
literally to them the traditional cognomen they bear of
Chit-pavan, i.e. " a corpse saved from the funeral pyre " ;
a figurative epithet condensing in a word the long
history of their almost miraculous survival from the
fire of Buddhistic persecution.

Whatever may be the interpretation of the local legend
of their origin, they are a well-grown, handsome race of
men, with fair complexions, light grey eyes, and strikingly
intellectual faces, and obviously of far purer Aryan blood
than any other Hindu people east of the Gandak and Sone,
or south of the Kistna : and above all else, they present,
in their manly and joyous national temperament, a
complete moral antithesis to the witty and plaintive
Bengali Babus, a radically Turanian race. Such being
their inherent aristocratic characteristics, it is not surpris-
ing that, on the collapse of Buddhism, and during the
decline of the Mahometan power in India, emerging
from their secure retreat in the Southern Konkan, they
gradually, as of natural right, gathered into their masterful
hands the whole administrative, political and social, control
of the Mahratta nationality ; and, from the Peshwa
downwards, became the first and foremost personages
throughout the Deccan. Their mental superiority is
shown by the manner in which their historic family names
crowd the honours -lists of the University of Bombay.

The Chit-pavan women are of the most refined type of
feminine loveliness ; and in the sweetness, grace, and
dignity of their high-bred beauty, at once modern in its
delicacy, and antique in its fearless freedom, they might
well be taken for the Greek originals of the Tanagra

CHIT-PA VAN WOMEN 89

" figurines," awaked to a later life among the tropical
gardens and orchards and cocoanut groves of the Southern
Konkan. One never wearies of watching them, as they
are to be seen in the dewy morning in their gardens, peram-
bulating, in archaic worship, the altar of Holy Basil [tulsi,
Ocymum sanctum] placed before every Hindu house ; or
of an afternoon as they pass, in fetching water, to and from
the near riverside, or the lotus-covered tank of the village
temple, all in their flowing robes of cotton, of unbleached
white, or dyed a single colour, pink, scarlet, black, green,
or primrose yellow, presenting as they move in the deepen-
ing shadows of the trees, along the red laterite roads,
fitfully illumined from across the blue sea by the sidelong
glances from the declining sun, the richest chromatic
effects, in all the bright glamour of a glowing Turner or a
Claude. And the outward and visible charms of these
fair Chit-pavnis faithfully mirror the innate virtues of
their pure and gentle natures ; for they are perfect
daughters, and perfect wives, and perfect mothers, after
the severely disciplined, self-sacrificing, Hindu ideal, the
ideal also of Solomon and Sophocles, and of St. Paul and
St. Augustine ; remaining modestly at home, as the proper
sphere of their duties, unknown beyond their families,
and seeking in the happiness of their children their greatest
pleasure, and in the reverence of their husbands the
amaranthine1 crown of a true woman's glory in the
highest.

The ascent from the Konkans to the summits of the
Sahyadris, or Konkan-ghat-matha2 (" Konkan-pass-top "),
is very rapid. The old military road up the Bhor Ghat
rises 600 feet in a mile ; and the Tal Ghat is as steep. In

1 All a-down the delectable Malabar Coast the women wear the flowers
of the Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa), cultivated in every garden,
in their hair. Compare I. Peter v. 4 ; and I. Cor. ix. 25.

2 Often spoken of simply as Bala-ghat, " the country Above-the-
passes." Desh, literally " country," is the general plain beyond the
mavals.

40 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

order, therefore, to carry the railway from Bombay to
Nagpur and Benares over the Tal Ghat, and to Madras over
the Bhor Ghat, our engineers had to take advantage, at the
farthest possible distance from these passes, of the shoulders
projecting from the main axis of the Sahyadris towards
the Island of Bombay. In this way, along the Tal Ghat
incline, half the ascent is almost unconsciously overcome,
and the final lift on to the plateau of the Deccan is made,
with comparative ease. The Bhor Ghat railway incline is
almost 15 miles in length, and its average gradient is one
foot in forty-eight ; the work consisting of a series of
Cyclopean cuttings, tunnels, embankments, and viaducts,
carried through and over some of the finest scenery in the
world. Thus, starting at a wide distance from the military
road, the railway line runs straight up until it joins that
highway at the old Toll House on the west side of a gorge,
surmounted on its opposite or eastern side by the per-
pendicular precipice of the Duke's Nose. From this point,
where a reversing station stands, 1,548 feet above the
sea, it doubles back, with the military road, to the village
of Khandala, 1,786 feet above the sea, and continues its
course past the ancient Buddhistic grove at Lanouli,
2,030 feet above the sea, and thence, down gradually
descending gradients, on to Poona and Sholapur, and to
Bellary and Madras.

The slope of the trappean formation of Maharashtra
is very gradual from the Sahyadris towards the Coromandel
coast, and these mountains, therefore, present on their
eastern side very long spurs, sinking slowly into the
general level of the Deccan ; but in starting from
the same culminating headlands of the axial range,
the eastward spurs correspond symmetrically with
those on the west. Thus, about 60 miles south from the
Chandor, or Ajanta and Ellora, hills, the Ahmadnagar
hills start from the mountainous mass of Harichandragar,
— rising 3,894 feet above the sea, and having a fort with

SIVAJIS STRONGHOLDS 41

walls 18 miles in circumference on its summit. Thence
they run in a ridge on to Brahmanvara, where they are
2,866 feet in height, and then expand into a terraced
tableland, 24 miles long, 20 broad, and from 2,474 to 2,133
feet high, at Ahmadnagar, whence they are continued
southward, until they disappear in the neighbourhood of
Sholapur and Nuldrug. A short secondary spur, jutting
out from them close to their connection with Harichan-
dragar, ends, west of Junnar, in the rugged rock of Shivnar,
rising 1,000 feet above the surrounding plain ; and the
fort at its top was the birthplace of Sivaji. The famous
temple of Bhimashankar, on the crest of the Sahyadris,
3,000 feet above the sea, midway between Harichandragar
and Khandala, marks the sacred source of the Bhima,
which, with its northern affluents, drains all the rich,
fertile dale between the Chandor and the Poona hills.

The Poona hills originate in the territory [jaghir] of
the Pant Sacheo of Bhor, in a maze of spurs, merging in
the course of 10 or 12 miles in the spur that stretches south
of Poona, separating the strath of the northern affluents
of the Bhima from the dale of the Nira, the main affluent of
the Bhima from the south. Close to the Sahyadris stands
out boldly, to the height of 4,605 feet, the hill fort of
Torna [cf. tortus, and torque, torch, torture, tart, etc.], so
called from the contorted, or twisted, pinnacle of basalt
that marks its position from afar. It was here that Sivaji
hoarded the booty gathered in his earlier forages. Imme-
diately south of it is the hill, 3,392 feet high, that Sivaji, on
finding Torna insufficiently secure against a surprise, forti-
fied, and re-named " Raj gar," " The Citadel of the
Kingdom." About 12 miles west of Torna and Rajgar
is the hill fort originally called Kondhana, but re-named
by Sivaji after he had captured it, Sinhgar, " The Lion's
Den." Rising from 4,162 to 4,322 feet above the sea, and
2,300 feet above the plains below, it commands toward
the north the whole vale of the Muta Mula, from the rich,

42 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

evergreen forests [chiefly of Memecylon edule, and Carissa
Carandas] about Khandala, to the open arable country,
wherethrough, on the extreme east, the Muta Mula reaches
the Bhima. In the middle ground, under the dominating
hill temple of the " Great Goddess " Devi, in her name of
Parvati, " The Mountaineer," the red-tiled roofs and gaily
painted house walls of Poona stretch hither and thither
amid the deep verdure and towering foliage of the agar
[cf. " ager "], or broad tract of enclosed orchards, and
gardens, and groves, and avenues of richly grown forest
trees [nimb, Azadirachta indica ; pipal, Ficus religiosa ; and
bur, Ficus indica], within which the fairest city of the
Deccan, the Damascus of India, lies far and wide em-
bosomed. From the south, Sinhgar looks down upon the
narrow, lovely valley of the Nira ; but it is best seen from
Sivaji's proud hill fort of Purandhar, 7 miles south-west
of Sinhgar, standing 4,472 feet above the sea, and 2,566
feet above the plains of Poona, with the sparkling Nira
flowing past its base, almost due south-eastward, for 70
miles, to the Bhima.

On the right bank of the sunny Nira stands the sacred
town of Jejuri, famous for its majestically-situated fane
of Khandoba or Khandarao, a national incarnation of Siva,
in the figure of an armed horseman, and, next to Vithoba
or Vithal, the most popular object of worship throughout
Maharashtra. Attached to his temple is a large establish-
ment of dancing girls [devadasi, UpoSouXcu, eraipai].
Not far from the temple, and close to Nira bridge, is the
village of Valhe, the reputed birthplace of Valmiki,1 the
legendary author of the divine Ramayana. In this valley
also is Hoi, the native village of the first Holkar.

About 11 miles below the confluence of the Nira with
the Bhima is the handsome city of Pandharpur, esteemed
so holy, owing to the presence of the great temple of

1 See The Triumph of Valmiki, translated from the Bengali of H. P.
Shastri, m.a., by R. B. Sen, b.l., Chittagong College, 1909.

SHIVAJI S STRONGEST FORT 43

Vithoba, the national incarnation of [Krishna-]Vishnu,
that the rich land immediately round it is restricted to
the cultivation of the sacred tulsi plant, Ocymum sanctum,
famed throughout India for its refreshing and sanative
fragrance. It was the custom of all the principal members
of the Mahratta Confederacy, the Peshwa, the Sindhia,
and the Holkar, to keep up a house in this town ; and
here it was that the Gaekwar's ambassador, Gangadhar
Shastri, was foully murdered in 1815, at the instigation
of the degraded Baji Rao Peshwar, by the hired assassins of
Trimbakji Danglia.1 About 60 miles due east from the
junction of the Nira with the Bhima, is the third sacred city
of the Mahrattas proper, Tuljapur, an open town in the
Nizam's dominions, containing numerous temples dedicated
to Bhairava, a lower national incarnation of Siva than
Khandarao or Kandoba. To the south and west of Purand-
har the horizon is closed in by the Mahadeo or Satara hills
and the Sahyadri mountains, and beyond and above the
latter, 44 miles due west of Purandhar, rises out of the
Konkan, 2,851 feet above the sea, the hill fort formerly
called Rai-ri, in Sanskrit Raygiri, " the Royal Hill," but
named by Sivaji Raj gar, " the Royal Fort." It is the

1 Together with the names of the Hindu gods, and such titular names
as the Peshwa, the Holkar, the Sindhia, the names of Gangadhar Shastri,
and Trimbakji Danglia, were the most familiarly impressed on me from
my earliest infancy in India, 1832-9 ; and Trimbakji Danglia's, with the
vividness of that of a popular hero still actually alive ; as for generations
after their deaths the names of Robin Hood and Rob Roy lived on in the
memories of Englishmen and Scots. Bishop Heber's lines on his romantic
escape out of our hands from the fort of Thana, in " the Island of Salsette,"
are well known : —

" Behind the bush the foemen hide,
The horse beneath the tree :
Where shall I find a knight will ride
The jungle paths with me ?

" There are five and fifty coursers there
And four and fifty men ;
When the fifty-fifth shall mount his steed
The Deccan lives again."

44 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

strongest of his forts, " the Gibraltar of the East," where
Sivaji held his coronation, in 1674, and died in 1680.

The scandent Bougainvilleia spectabilis irradiates with
the exotic splendour of its loose waving tresses of magenta-
coloured bloom the stately marble cenotaph of Akbar at
Sikandra near Agra, a befitting emblem of the magnificence
of the alien rule of the Mo(n)gols in India. As aptly, and
yet more remarkably, because quite fortuitously, the grave
of Sivaji, on the top of Raj gar, was traceable in my time
only by the patch of one of the commonest wild flowers of
Maharashtra growing over it, the Commelina communis ;
its exquisite bright blue petals reflecting back year after
year the azure of the skies above, as if in sign of the great
national leader's eternal peace with heaven.

Another notable grave on these mountain tops is that
of the botanist, John Graham, who died in 1839 at Khandala,
and was buried there behind the Travellers' Bungalow, at
the extremity of the grassy platform, thickly studded with
the pretty white-flowered terrestrial orchid, Habenaria
platifolia, overlooking the Khandala ravine ; the spot
being indicated by a short obelisk. South-west of the
village of Khandala, beyond the barracks, in the old
military cemetery on the slope of " Carnac Point," close
under the Duke's Nose, there stood some 60 years ago, out
of the thick sward of the dark blue and white magpie -
flowered Exacum bicolor, a headstone labelled simply
" Poor Nellie," marking the grave of some English soldier's
young wife, and hallowing all the hills around by the
associations of its tender and heroic pathos. I deeply
regret that, on inquiring after it, on reading the announce-
ment of the publication, by the author of My Trivial Life,
of the novel entitled Poor Nellie, I found in 1888 that this
most touching tombstone had disappeared.

The Satara hills project 100 miles eastward from Maha-
baleshwar, and from this main spur send off, toward the
south-east, three subsidiary spurs, each about 50 miles

THE KISTNAS SOURCES 45

long ; the first — running at a distance of from 5 to 10 miles
from the Sahyadris — separating the long, narrow dale of
the Koyna, the west-most affluent of the Kistna, from the
broad vale of the head stream of the Kistna, and of the
Yerla, the largest of the direct eastern feeders of the Kistna
within the Satara district ; the second separating this vale
from the valley of the Man or Man-ganga, a tributary of
the Bhima ; and the third separating the Man valley from
the wide strath of the Bhima ; which river receives the Man
about 50 miles below the influence of the Nira, and after
receiving the Sina from the east, about 25 miles south of
the influence of the Man, itself becomes confluent, 100 miles
farther south, with the main, eastward-flowing stream of
the Kistna.

The head stream of the Kistna, with the Koyna, and the
Yenna, a small tributary of the Kistna, all have their head
springs in Mahabaleshwar ; as also have the westward flow-
ing streams of the Savitri and Gayatri ; and these five
rivers, with the sacred Ganges, — feigned by the Brahmans to
derive a source every fifth year from Mahabaleshwar, — are
known to the hill-men of the locality as " The Six Sisters."

The Brahmans in charge of the temple of Krishnabai,
" the Lady Krishna," at the head of the Kistna ravine,
show you five rills of water running through five holes in
the west wall of the temple, into a small tank, held of the
highest sanctity, from which their collected waters flow
through a carved stone cow into a second tank of lesser
sanctity, and thence tumble down the steep side of the
ravine into the Kistna ; and they tell you that these five
rills are the secret fountains of the rivers Kistna, Koyna,
Yenna, Gayatri, and Savitri ; as every drop of rain that
falls on Mahabaleshwar, and every square foot of its oozy
sward, may be said to be the common source of all the
rivers flowing from it, the pious fantasy of these Brahmans
is not to be lightly gainsaid. But in profane fact, even the
Kistna itself rises a mile or two to the left of the temple

46 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

among the runnels, formed by the superfluous drainage
from the hill, below Arthur's Seat [Malet Point], the north-
most point of Mahabaleshwar, and the water-parting be-
tween the Kistna and the Savitri, or river of Bankot.

A south-westerly projection from Arthur's Seat, called
Elphinstone Point, forms the water-parting between the
Savitri and the Koyna, the latter winding past Lodwick
Point, and Bombay Point, and Babbington Point, all on
the west side of the Mahabaleshwar plateau, before con-
tinuing its south-easterly course inland, toward the Kistna.
Babbington Point looks right down the long, green fairy-
like dale of the Koyna, dotted throughout its length, along
the course of its perennial river, with groves of tall trees,
mango [Mangifera indica], jack [Artocarpus integrifolia],
and jambul [Sizygium Jambolanum], and, towards the open
plain of the Deccan, babul [Acacia arabica], all indicating
the sites of the hamlets and little villages, nestled within
them, of the patient and skilful Mahratta cultivators, who
have everywhere in these retired valleys carried the tillage
of the mavals to the highest perfection.

From the temple of " The Lady Krishna," or from Kate's
Point, three miles to the right, the valley of the Kistna
opens out to the right, past Wai, and Satara, and Kurar,
a gradually widening view of the plain of the Deccan and
its far-extended and ampler agriculture. But as both the
summits and the escarpments of the hills on either side, as
seen end on, present an unbroken outline, the prospect
lacks variety ; and only the vast magnitude of its scale,
particularly in the immediate foreground, lends a sublime
sternness to its severe monotony. Yet, visited in the still
moonlight, and looked down on from the Krishnabai temple,
and past the sacred town of Wai, with its clusters of
superbly sculptured shrines, as one yields sympathetically
to the associations of the locality, the scene makes an in-
delible impression on the memory.

From Arthur's Seat north-westward, across the dense

THE ROTUNDA PASS 47

forest that shelters the sources of the Kistna, extends the
main axis of the Sahyadris ; their blackened, trackless
gorges, and bluffs of stratified basalt, stratum upon
stratum, high uplifted to the zenith, and gigantic stacks
of serried peaks, presenting, as thus viewed fore-shortened,
a boundless prospect of the wildest desolation.

Lodwick Point is a narrow wall of basalt, not more than
from 6 to 12 feet broad towards its extremity, running out
10,000 feet into the west, and there dropping down sud-
denly into the valley of the Koyna below. The drop is so
perpendicular that a runaway horse I once saw leap at full
gallop from the Point fell dead at its base without striking
against any salient ledge or angle in the fall. Projecting
out into the sky, almost like a bowsprit from a ship, it
commands a lofty perspective of the Konkans, in front of
the main axis of the Sahyadris ; but the predominant
feature in the landscape here is the point itself, rearing its
colossal wall, like a horse's neck thrown up inquiringly,
above the deep, beautiful-wooded ravines of the Koyna on
either side of it.

Bombay Point is so called from its having been there
that the plateau of Mahabaleshwar was first reached by the
old road from Bombay up the Rotunda Ghat.1 It is a
large space cleared out of a wood of noble evergreen trees,
and fenced in, above the Rotunda Pass, by a low parapet,
overgrown with Clematis wightiana [murvail], Hoya viridi-
flora [hirandori], the sweet-scented, white-flowered Jas-
minum latifolium [kusur], Embelia Basaal [ambut], and
other luxuriant creepers and scandent shrubs. The view
from it is the most extensive and varied and the most in-
teresting on the hill ; and hence this green, cool, and
fragrant spot is the general resort, of an afternoon, toward

1 That is, Rortundi-ghat, " the Roaring [or Crying] Pass," so called
from the difficulty of its ascent ; and the groans of the palanquin-bearers
who carry you up it. It has, in these latter days, been used for ascent by
motor-car.

48 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

sundown, of the English families residing during the hot
season at Mahabaleshwar. It is evergreen-wooded down
to its base, in the sweet valley of the Koyna, west of which
the rugged, craggy spurs of the Sahyadris, stretching across
the Konkans, present an infinite diversity of picturesque
contours, spur beyond spur, without end, toward the north
and south, and only bounded on the west by the glittering
horizon of the Arabian Sea. It is said that sometimes a
glimpse may be obtained, beyond the long sylvan valley of
the Nagotna river, of Bombay, 100 miles distant as the crow
flies ; while southward the coast can be followed to Ratnagiri.
In the middle ground the low saddle-backed ridge,
dipping down from Elphinstone Point, and forming the
western enclosure of the Koyna valley at its head, suddenly
ascends, before dipping down again to the Par1 ghat, in
Sivaji's massive flat -topped hill fort of Pratabgar. Only
4 miles distant, and rising by steep grassy slopes to an
altitude of 3,543 feet above the Arabian Sea, distinctly
visible on the left, it stands out boldly against the blue
sky, directly in front of Bombay Point, and in strong
contrast, when, after midday, its whole eastward side is in
shade, with the bright, shining heights of the Konkans
beyond. As the rays of the afternoon sun begin gradually
to strike more and more horizontally through the heated,
rarefied mists drawn up by it during the forenoon, the
natural complexion of this majestic scene undergoes a
series of atmospheric transfigurations of indescribable
splendour. At first the hills and dales of the Konkans
seem to be suddenly transmuted into silver, shining, as
with its own light, in dazzling brightness along the ridges

1 That is, " the village," par or para being the Mahratti for " village "
or " hamlet," but meaning literally " altar " ; that is, the altar thrown
up about the pipal [Ficus religiosa], or bur, or " banyan tree " [F. indica],
round which every village or hamlet in India is built, and the village
assemblies are held. Par-ganah, a revenue circle of many villages, is
literally " the collection [" gang," cf. Gana-pati, " Lord of Hosts "] of
altars."

MYRIAD SHRINES 49

of the hills, but with a softer lustre in the dales ; where
their ethereal illumination is subdued by the lengthening
shadows thrown by the sinking sun. Again, in the twink-
ling of an eye, all is changed to radiant gold, clear as topaz
on the hill-tops, with the sea on the left ruled in long
levelled lines of chrysolite. When the day closes upon the
eastern hemisphere, the rapidly falling mists pass from a
glowing purple to dense indigo, and the cleared sky at last
reflects back from the darkened landscape the deep trans-
parent sapphire colour that is the proper tincture of an
Indian night.

Before natural scenery of such spiritual expression and
significance men have ever recognised that this outspread
green earth, with the revolving circle of the sun and moon
and stars above, is but the marvellous contexture of the
veil dividing the world we see from the unseen, inscrutable
life beyond. Inhabiting a country at once of great grandeur
and loveliness, and of the strongest individuality of natural
features and phenomena, the Hindus in general, and
particularly the Mahrattas, have marked every hill and
dale and river, and almost every " kenspeckle " tree and
stone throughout India, by a shrine, altar, towering temple,
or lone uncouth image, in acknowledgment of the felt
presidence of the one polyonymous God of universal human
wrorship ; who is everywhere identified by some dramatic
name, accurately descriptive of the most characteristic
local manifestation of His might, majesty, and all per-
vading presence. Barren, scorched plains, and pestilential
marsh-lands, and blackened, lightning -riven mountains
are identified with Siva in some one of his higher or lower
incarnations ; and fertile tracts, and pleasurable prospects
with Vishnu or Krishna ; or with Siva's consort, " the
Great Goddess," Devi, in her more auspicious aspects, such
as Parvati, "the Mountaineer," Gauri, "the Yellow-
haired," "Uma," "the Wanton," and " Jagan-mata,"
"the World Mother." Again, the money-making classes

E

50 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

have for their tutelary divinities Vishnu, and his consort,
the fair Laksmi, also called Loka-mata, " the World
Mother " ; while the ruling classes, whose duty it is to
be " untender -hearted " [afxelXixov rjrop e'x^], worship
Siva, and his consort Devi as Bhavani ['AOrjva noAtc^].
The armed horseman, Khandarao, is the historical Mahratta
manifestation of the Godhead. The higher class of agricul-
turists are the devotees of Krishna and his loose lady-
loves ; while the favourite divinity of the lower class of
agriculturists all through Maharashtra, and of all men in
their less serious moods, is the playful monkey-god
Hanuman, i.e. " Long-jaw " or " the Prognathous One."
Thus throughout the length and breadth of the Konkans
and the mavals, as surveyed from Bombay Point, from
every height and depth there goes up the joyous salutation :

" Thou art, O God, the Life and Light
Of all this wondrous world we see ! "

In everything the Mahratta finds God ; the stones dis-
course of Him, the running brooks are His life-giving word,1
every tree is a tongue in His praise, and every flower an
Alleluia ! This is the simple explanation of the intensity,
the downright fanaticism, of the patriotism of the Mah-
rattas. Maharashtra is not merely their mother country,
but also their heavenly inheritance ; while the presence
of the Mahometans, as religious persecutors, was re-
garded, not simply as a foreign intrusion about which
of itself they would have been very indifferent, but as an
absolute profanation and sacrilege, to be expiated at any
cost.

Of all Europeans, the Scots are probably the most
fervent in their patriotism ; but Scotland after all is no
more than their native country, — since the Reformation
robbed them of their tutelary saints. It is not their Holy
Land, where God has walked with man, which for them,

1 A saying attributed to Mahomet.

AFZUL KHAN'S DEATH 51

as for all Protestant Christians, is far away in Jewry. To
judge therefore of the Mahratta feeling for home and
country, we have to conceive what perfervid Scotch
patriotism would be, were Kishon a Scottish brook like
Bannockburn ; and evergeen Carmel, and Mount Gilboa,
and Tabor and Hermon, spurs of the Cheviots, or the
Lammermuir Hills ; and the fragrant valley of Sharon, and
the plain of Jezreel, " the seed plot of God," tracts of
Tweeddale or Clydesdale ; or were Flodden Field also the
fateful field of Megiddon, as in sense it was ; or,

" stately Edinborough, throned on craggs "

one with Jerusalem " the Golden."

1 Thy terrettes and thy pinacles

With carbuncles doe shine.
Thy verie streetes are pauved with gold

Surpassinge cleare and fine.
Those statelie buildings manifold

In squares and streetes doe rise,
With gardens deckt, and lofty fanes

Enclosed Castle-wise.
Quyt through the streetes with siluer sound

The Flood of Life doth flowe,
Upon whose bankes on everie syde

The Wood of Life doth growe.
There Magdalene- hath left her mone

And cheerfullie doth singe
With blessed Saintes whose harmonie

In everie streete doth ringe."

And it is in this conception of the Mahratta character
that the foul and treacherous murder of Afzul Khan by
Sivaji at Pratabgar, must be estimated. From Bombay
Point you can distinctly see the temple of Bhavani,
wherein Sivaji, Siva's son, solemnly dedicated himself to
the terrible act, and the gateway in the circumvallation
of the frowning fortress through which he walked down to
meet the chivalrous, unsuspecting Bijapur general at the
fatal try sting -place, whereto the latter, with only a single

52 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

attendant, walked up from the Koyna valley ; and the
very spot where he was so vilely assassinated, and where
his body lies buried, is conspicuously indicated by an
evergreen shrub [apta, Bauhinia racemosa], standing
solitary on the hill- side. The deed was damnable ; but
Sivaji, in all truth and sincerity, deemed it high and
worthy, and the last sacrifice of his devout patriotism to
the welfare of his sacrosanct country ; and it will be a bad
sign for the Mahratta people if they ever come to think
less of Sivaji for it. The Bijapur army lay between him
and the independence of his country, and the only way of
its overthrow in his power was by the destruction of its
commander. Hardening his heart to the necessity, he
enticed his noble victim into an ambush, and in a paroxysm
of sacramental ecstasy determinately slew him.

The Kolhapur hills start from the hill fort of Vishalgar,1
3,350 feet high, whence Sivaji made his incredible night
raid on Mudhol, on the Ghat-prabha, 150 miles distant;
and from Vishalgar they extend for about 45 miles east-
ward, being crowned near their extremity by the hill fort
of Panhala, the last of the seven greater strongholds of
Sivaji in the Mahratta country, where a dozen others of
lesser note might be named. These hills are the water-
parting between the Warna — forming, from its source up
to its confluence with the Kistna at Miraj, the frontier
between the district of Satara and the Kolhapur State, —
and the Panch-ganga or Kolhapur river ; and they are
the only range of the confused mass of hills covering the
Kolhapur district that runs out over the plateau of the
Deccan at right angles to the Sahyadris. All the shorter
spurs to the south of it run at a more or less acute angle
toward the north, carrying northward the three terrestrial
tributaries of the Panch-ganga, 2 which reaches the Kistna

1 There is another Vishalgar fortress in the Thana district and a Vishal-
gar pass, or ghat, in the Ratnagiri district.

2 The fifth tributary, constituting it " the Five-Ganges," is the celestial
Sarasvati.

"A THING OF BEAUTY" 53

half-way between Miraj and Erur-Manjira ; the point
where the Kistna is joined from the south by the united
streams of the Dudh-ganga, Ved-ganga, and Hiranya-
keshi. Beyond Mudhol the Kistna is swollen by the Ghat-
prabha, flowing almost due west from the Ram Ghat,
almost coincidently with the line of division between the
trappean and the granitic Deccan, and forming the natural
boundary between Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The highest pleasures afforded by the scenery of the
Sahyadris are for the botanist, and the flora of these
mountains shows in its fullest glory in the Kolhapur region
between Vishalgar and the Ram Ghat, the great pass,
just beyond the Kolhapur frontier, between the shores
of the Arabian Sea at Vengurla and Goa and the plateau
of the Deccan. I shall never forget my first vision of the
Bombax Malabaricum, or " Red Silk Cotton Tree," in
the Ram Ghat.

I had left the plain below about 2 a.m., in medical
charge of a party of about 250 European troops, and after
a slow ascent of some hours, suddenly, at a turn of the
road, just at sunrise, came out upon a glassy glade, over-
hanging the profound forest depths below. There, at its
farther edge, stood a colossal specimen of this tree, quite
fifty feet high, the trunk straight as "the mast of some
great ammiral," deeply buttressed at its base, and sending
out horizontal branches, like the yard-arms of a ship, in
whorls of five and seven, gradually tapering to the top,
and at this season, the month of March, leafless, but
covered on every branch, in place of green leaves, with
huge crimson1 flowers, each from five to seven inches in
diameter, and forming in the mass a vast dome-like,
symmetrical head that, with the beams of the rising sun
striking through it, shone in its splendour of celestial,
rosy red like a mountain of rubies. I fairly shrieked with

1 By reflected light deep crimson ; by transmuted, the radiant red of a
ruby.

54 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

delight at the sight of it, and galloped off at once toward
it, followed in a rush by the whole column of men (who
were mostly recruits fresh from England like myself) and
at last, by the young officer in command, who, on taking in
the whole situation, a most picturesque one — the red coats
swarming over the green grass up to the resplendent tree
— from where he had stood in momentary astonishment
at so unexpected a breach of discipline, after administering
a kindly rebuke to myself, left us to sit on for a while,
worshipping in its ruby-tinted light, before continuing our
march to the top of the ghat.

Again, when I first saw the Hoya vividiflora, " all a-
growing, all a-blowing," in its natural state, on the lower
slopes of Prabhul, opposite Matheran, before I knew what
I was doing, I was off my pony, turning " cart-wheels "
round and round this mystically green-flowered scandent
shrub. I could particularise many individual specimens
of different gorgeously flowered species of forest trees,
such as the golden yellow flowered Cassia Fistula [bava],
the purple flowered Lagestrcemia reginse [tamari], the
vermilion and chrome yellow flowered Butea frondosa
\jpulas\ and the scarlet Erythrina indica [pangri], that,
on account of their stately development, and the striking
situations occupied by them at Matheran, Khandala,
Mahabaleshwar, and the Ram Ghat, are each one of them
worthy, during the months of their glory, of a visit from
England.

For the present I may do no more than note, as an
indirect proof of the great botanical charm of the whole
region of the Konkan-ghat-matha, and the mavals, and of
its recognition by the Mahrattas, that the Kolhapur State
still bears its ancient name of Karavira [Sirkar Karvir in
the vernacular], " the 01eander[-land] " ; and that the
white flowered, fragrant dog-bane, Tabernsemontana
coronaria, which is to be found with the Nerium odorum
throughout the upper valleys of the affluents of the

BOTANICAL JOYS 55

Kistna, probably gave its native name, as suggested by
Dr. Fleet, to Tagara ; whether we identify that ancient
Indian city with Daulatabad in the Nizam's Dominions,
or with the city of Kolhapur, " the Lotus-city," itself.
At every turn in the mavals, the wayfarer comes on the
bed of some mountain stream, tufted all along its banks,
and all over the little green eyots amidst its waste of
pebbles, with mixed sweet-scented oleander and tamarisk,
carrying the beholder back at once to the Ilissus and the
slopes of Mount Hymettus. The lovely blushing oleanders
are always found to shade some pure, clear pool left by
the river from its summer flood, at which the gentle
maidens and comely matrons from the near village are
filling their water -jars —

" a group that's quite antique,
Draped lightly, loving, natural, and Greek" ;

as in the painting of the Rogers vase of the women of
Athens filling their pitchers at the fair flowing fountains
of Callirrhoe.

The central plateau of the Deccan, or desk [i.e " [plain]-
country "], as it is called by the natives, [in contradistinc-
tion to the bala-ghat or ghat-matha] eastward of the mavals,
from Mudhol and Kaladghi on the Ghat-prabha, northward
past Bijapur, and past Sholapur along the Sena, to
Ahmadnagar, and north-westward past Pandharpur and
Indapur on the Bhima, and on toward Poona and Junnar,
is an open plain, rising and falling in prolonged tame lines,
the ground swell, as it were, of the boundless ocean of trap
flowing over it. Solitary tarwar [Cassia auriculata]
and babul1 [Acacia arabica] trees, and rare clumps of date
palms, diversify it, and multitudes of mud-walled villages,

1 I believe that this local name for the Arabian acacia is an indication
of its having been introduced into Western India from Babylonia. In
Hindustani babuli means " Babylonian " ; babil-khana, " a brothel,'*
literally, " Babylonian house " ; babiliyih, " enchantment," and " wine,"
and also " poison " — with a poetical signification. It has ever been but
a step " From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon."

56 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

the positions of which are shown in the landscape by lofty
" topes " rising amid black ploughed fields, and breadths
of corn and pulse and other crops, waving dark green over
the wide arable expanse, save where intervened with the
vivid verdure of the rice fields following the courses of the
river beds. The lesser of these trappean waves are mere
mounds of the rock, covered with a rusty-looking rubble called
mohrum, its first debris. Others of greater amplitude are
covered with black or brown soils, patched here and there
with deep violet or jasper red, all more or less advanced
stages in the decomposition of the same trappean debris.

Earths similarly diversified fill up the intermediate
troughs in the undulating champaign. The hard surface
of the exposed trap is scarred with innumerable runnels,
winding in and out among the clefts of the rock, while
through the less resistant soil accumulated in the hollows,
the gathered torrents have ploughed deep and straight
channels for themselves. The black soil is the regar or
" cotton soil " par excellence of India, already referred to
as the inexhaustible priceless treasure of the agriculturists
of the Deccan. It covers all the most level portions of the
desk, and is merely the ultimate stage of the brown earth
derived by direct disintegration from the ferruginous rock
on which it rests. Mixed with decomposed vegetation,
and in conditions favourable to the solution of the alkalis
combined with silica in its feldspar, it forms a rich, light,
and pulverulent staple, equal in fertility and ease of
cultivation to the finely lixiviated alluvium of the Nile,
and the looes or celebrated fluviatile loam of the Rhine-
lands, and tschernozieme or wheat soil of Southern Russia ;
all these natural soils, like the regar of the Deccan, being
derived ultimately from crystalline rocks.

Such is the unvaried aspect of the Deccan beyond the
limits of the eastern spurs of the Sahyadris ; and the way
in which the landscape becomes broken up as these spurs
are gradually approached, is well exemplified by following

SOILS OF THE DECCAN 57

the Poona hills backward from Sholapur to Khandala.
Advancing westward from the former station along the
old military road, we meet, at Bhigvan, a flat, terraced,
and symmetrical hill, protruding abruptly from the plain,
the advanced link of a chain, looming like a coast-line
along the right horizon. It is the lowest step, the outmost
ripple of the Sahyadris. At Patus the ramifications of their
spurs become more lofty and complicated, closing in on the
road, which, always rising and falling, is yet a steady,
although still more easy ascent.

At Arangaon, the fourth halt from Sholapur, a jasper-
red wacke is met with, capped by a decomposing ferruginous
trap. At the line of contact with the trap the wacke is
hard and lateritious, but lower it becomes more and more
earthy. Wherever the trappean rocks exist in the Deccan
we are sure to find this laterite near ; it generally caps the
ghats ; and, according to the late Henry J. Carter, the
distinguished geologist of Western India, it is essentially
" formed of red iron clay, the iron of which, by means of
segregation, has formed itself into cells and irregular
tubes, chiefly at the expense of the clay contained in their
interior." It would appear to be derived from basalt,
first disintegrating into a wacke, and then, by a sort of
reaction, becoming laterite. It is soft when fresh dug,
but dries into a hard stone on exposure, and is thus
admirably adapted for building. Great masses of this
strange rock occur in the Nizam's Dominions, eastward of
Sholapur. Its special feature at Arangaon is its associa-
tion with a powdery calcareous deposit, usually found
elsewhere in nodules, called by the natives kankar, occurring
irregularly throughout it in immense heaps. Thus a
" nullah " or watercourse, to the west of the town, passes
for some distance through nothing but kankar, and then
through kankar and wacke, mixed promiscuously together.
The kankar from being more concrete than the wacke
generally stands out beyond it. Both are indifferently

58 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

overlaid by a secondary effusion of trap, that appears,
where touching it, to have crystallised the kankar into
radiated zeolites. In fields from which the secondary
trap has been denuded, the mounds of kankar amongst
the wacke are indicated by smooth, white, irregular
patches, many yards in diameter, scattered over the red
ground.

At Bhigvan, the puce and lavender trap rock [amyg-
daloid], which is friable at Sholapur, is hard, and used as a
building stone. At Mulud, a section of the river bank, at
a spot near the camping ground, presents at its base a
brown trap, veined with zigzag bands of kankar, and above
this a solidified stratum of kankar, crammed with worn
blocks of various traps. It has resisted the action of the
river so much better than the trap below that it projects
for some distance in a ledge beyond the latter. It is
covered by a deep deposit of black soil. In many parts of
the river bed the trap is so completely decomposed that,
although looking quite hard, it can be dug out with the
hands to obtain water, or to form extemporary bathing-
troughs ; yet every crystal in the rock remains in situ.
Below the pebbly bed of the Bhima at this place layers of
soft, plastic kankar were being dug into, when I was there,
nearly 60 years ago, by the railway engineers.

Patus is situated in a regar plain of immense extent,
studded by several low, tabular hills, covered with huge
black blocks of basalt, and contrasting strangely with the
shoreless green ocean of javari [Sorghum vulgare] fields
from which they rise. Some of the blocks are boulders,
others, from their quadrangular form, and the accurate
way in which they are piled on each other, evidently
remain in the situations wherein they were upheaved,
and have been simply unmasked by weathering. The
distant horizon is bounded by lofty mountains, mostly
tabular, rising step on step, like an amphitheatre ; a
solitary group on the west is peaked ; while between their

A LAND OF FAR DISTANCES 59

rolling spurs, projecting like promontories into the plain,
stretch broad reaches of luxuriant fields for miles, like
inlets of the sea. From Yevut, until amidst the basaltic
ramparts that on all sides dominate Poona, the scene is
open to the right ; while on the left the road lies along
the base of an unbroken range of flat, stratified heights,
on the most prominent of which stands a Hindu temple.
Onwards, and always upwards, to Khandala, the formation
attains its grandest developments, rising to the immeasur-
able, flat-topped mountain masses of alternate green
forest bands, and black basalt cliffs, and fantastic peaks
and pinnacles ; and exhibiting, after the outburst of the
rains in June, the added feature of the gigantic, although
transient waterfalls, that from every declivity and preci-
pice, and through every winding gorge, pour down from
June to September the flood waters of the ubiquitous
affluents of the Kistna.

And from these altitudes, so attractive in their serene
silence from October to May, and so awe-compelling in the
appalling atmospheric passion and uproar of " the South-
West Monsoon," we again look down [now north, now
south of Bombay harbour] upon the low-lying Konkans, —
their densely wooded hills and dales, their palmy plains,
their shore belt of grey. salt marshes, or vivid green rice
fields, fringed westwardly with dark green mangroves, —
and beyond all the pale-green waters of the Erythrean Sea ;
the whole paradisaical scene shining in the setting sun
with the transcendent resplendence of its various verds and
shimmering gold.

60 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

II

The Plough

" Doth the plowman plow all day to sow ? doth he open and
break the clods of his ground ? When he hath made plain the face
thereof, doth he not . . . cast in the principal wheat, and the
appointed barley and the rie in their place ? For his God doth
instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. . . . Bread corn is
bruised. . . . This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts,
which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." — Isaiah
xxviii. 24-29. (A.V.)

When engaged in the contemplation of the creative
power of the Almighty as manifested in the geography and
general physiography of the Mahratta country, we are apt
momentarily to regard merely human affairs and interests
as altogether insignificant and contemptible ; and to
exclaim with the Hebrew Psalmist : " What is man that
Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man that Thou
visitest him? " And yet when we come to examine the
wonderful ways in which the Mahratta rayat, or cultivator,
has adapted himself to his surrounding conditions of soil
and climate, and gradually secured his economic mastery
over them, it seems to us again as though the Almighty
had contrived them to no other end than to subserve the
purposes of man ; and as if indeed the Godhead's Self was
one with Nature, or the Divine Reason residing in the
whole world, and in its parts, and adjusting and deter-
mining them all to the abiding well-being and highest
happiness of man.

Between the reaping in January and February of the
rabi [literally " spring," otherwise called " the cold
weather " and " the dry weather "] crop, consisting
chiefly of wheat, barley, grain, peas, lentils, and safflower,
sown in October and November, and the sowing in June

THE THIRSTY GROUND 61

and July of the kharif [literally " autumnal," otherwise
called " the summer " and " the rain "] crop, consisting
of javari [Sorghum vulgare], bajri [Penicillaria spicata],
rice, maize, and numerous species of country pulse, and til
[Sesamum orientale], all reaped in October and November,
— in this fallow interval between February and June, the
central plain of the Deccan assumes, particularly during
the sullen stillness of the direct and the reflected solar heat
from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., a scorched and most desolated
appearance ; a yearly recurring reminder of the ominous
fact that Southern India after all lies within the solstitial,
and therefore desert, zone of the northern hemisphere ;
and that only by a wide promotion by the State of scientific
forestry, and of irrigation works, such as dams along the
natural lines of the trap dykes crossing the rivers, and by
assiduous cultivation on the part of the rayat, can even
the Mahratta country, beyond the immediate shadows
of the Sahyadris, be made certain of an adequate
water supply, and secured against famine.

But all is changed, as by some supernatural spell, with
the first fearful deafening appeals of the burst of the
Monsoon, and the furious downpour, amid sudden gleams
and flashes of lightning, and ceaseless reverberations of
thunder, of the divinely odorous1 and revivifying rain.
In a single night, as I have known it happen at Kaladghi
and Sholapur, the parched earth of the four previous
months turns to the tenderest, liveliest green ; rivalling
in softness of texture, and outvying in vivacity of hue,
the azure of the now refreshened skies outstretched above.
And when the blossoms of this, the true Indian spring,
begin to appear upon the green expanse, and, trembling like
stars in every breath of air that stirs across them, first
unlock their painted petals, white, and red, and blue, and

1 " Et cum a siccitate continua [terra] immaduit imbre ; tunc emittit
ilium suum halitum divinum, ex Sole conceptum, cui comparari suavitas
nulla possit." — Pliny, xvii. 3 (5).

62 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

yellow, and purple, to the expectant day, beholding them,
one feels that there is no pleasure under heaven equal
to that of looking upon bright, fragrant flowers, fresh
blooming in their native fields ; and imposing as is the
revelation of the wonderful vegetation of the Sahyadris,
still greater is the charm of the enchanting inflorescence
of the vernal Deccan plains.

A few weeks later, and round all the hamlets, and
villages, and rural townships, and the palatine and sacred
cities [Civitates Neocorae] of Maharashtra, as far as the
eye can reach, the fields are already everywhere swelling
high with pulse and cereal grains, oil seed, and fibre and
dye-yielding plants, sown for the autumnal harvest.

Pliny tells a story of a Roman freedman, who having
found himself able from a very small piece of land to raise
a more abundant harvest than his neighbours could do
from the largest farms, was accused of enticing away
their crops by sorcery ; when, pointing to his firmly-
hafted mattock, and stoutly-bound plough, and sleek
oxen, all collected in his defence before the magistrate : —
" Here, Roman citizens," he cried, " are my implements
of witchcraft ; but it is impossible for me to exhibit to
your view, or to bring into this Forum, those midnight
toils of mine, those early watchings, those sweats, and
those fatigues." It is the perfected indigenous plough of
the country, the product of three thousand years' experience,
and the master's eye everywhere, that not once, but twice
in each year, brings about the same magical results in
Maharashtra, and, I might add, throughout India.

Some 35 years ago Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen had photo-
graphs taken of the native ploughs in the India Museum
at South Kensington, for the purpose of enabling a
leading firm of English agricultural mechanists to manu-
facture similar ploughs for use in this country. They
really need not have gone so far as India for improved
ploughs for light soils, and small peasants' holdings, for

SIMPLE IMPLEMENTS 63

the single stilt plough in use in the Shetlands is identical
with the native plough used in the Deccan. The foot-
plough, casehroom, of the Hebrides, is yet simpler —
probably the simplest plough now known ; and com-
parable in Europe only with the avroyvov1 of the Greeks.
It can be carried on a man's shoulder, or under his arm,
when he goes forth to his work in the morning, and returns
therefrom in the evening ; and it would be really more
useful than any Indian plough in the cultivation of the
small patches of arable bog-land in Ireland.

I believe it was also the hope of the English firm to
undersell the native manufacturers of agricultural imple-
ments in India. It was an evil hope, but, fortunately,
also a vain hope, for there is no chance of its ever being
fulfilled. In India the cultivators manufacture their
implements almost entirely themselves. In the Mahratta
country the rayat makes up the whole of the plough
himself, except the ironwork on it. This is prepared
separately, and so adjusted to the woodwork that, after
the day's ploughing is done, the rayat removes it, and
carries it home with him every night. This ironwork is
all for which he pays directly " out of pocket " ; and the
price of the whole plough, woodwork and ironwork, is
from 2| to 3 rupees, i.e. 5s. to 6s.2 The cost of the native
drill plough is from 5s. 6d. to 6s. 6d., including the wooden
receptacle [carved with figures of the merry -hearted rural
gods, Hanuman or Krishna], whereinto the seed in sowing
is poured. No English manufacturers, here or in India,
will ever make ploughs below these prices. In the Mahratta
country, a slighter plough is also used for the light ferru-
ginous soils of the mavals, and a heavier for the deep-
stapled black soil of the desk ; but everywhere these two
ploughs are made convertible by means of a weight, that

1 Compare Virgil, Georgics, I, 170 : — " et curvi formam accipit
ulmus aratri."

3 At the rate of exchange during my time in Bombay.

64 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

can be fastened to or removed from the ham of the plough.
There are also two kinds of drill ploughs, one used for
sowing safflower and gram, and the other for sowing bajri
[Penicillaria spicata] and urud [Phaseolus radiatus]. The
Indian bullock hoe is most effective for cutting up the
stalks and roots of plants and loosening the earth wherein
they have grown. It invariably follows the drill plough
to cover in the furrows sown by the latter.

The application made by these English manufacturers
to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen is, however, most interesting
and instructive, as showing that even in agriculture
England has lessons to learn from Indians. I had great
practical experience in flower, fruit, and field cultivation
all the time I was in Bombay, and always took the most
intimate interest in the ways and means of native agri-
culture ; and I am convinced that all the doctrinaire
outcry against it, from the days of Tennant and James
Mill downwards, as unscientific and wasteful, is as ignorant
and insular as is the stereotyped depreciation of the
industrial arts of India, by the same writers, and in the
reports on the earlier International Exhibitions held in
Europe.

This is not the occasion for entering into any lengthened
chemical statement on the subject ; yet I would wish
briefly to set forth here some of the more striking facts in
proof of the exhaustless richness of the Indian soils, and
the perfected science of Indian agriculture. There is no
manure known more fertilising than March dust. Its
fruitfulness is proverbial. In India we have this March
dust blowing everywhere all through the year. In the Deccan
the deep-stapled black cotton soil is ploughed through and
through to the bed-rock below it by the wide gaping
cracks formed in it during the hot season, from February
to June. So soon as these cracks are formed they are
filled up again with the fine blown dust which loads the
winds that all day long, and all through the night, sweep

NATURE'S FERTILISATION 65

the whole country. As soon as the cracks are filled, new
ones form again at once ; and thus the soil is kept in a
perpetual state of almost molecular disintegration and
movement, and is ceaselessly reoxygenated by these
simple, natural processes, to its lowest depths.

The trap rocks forming the substratum of the Mahratta
country abound in quartzose and zeolitic crystals, contain-
ing all the mineral constituents necessary for the renewal
of arable soils. I have seen millions of tons of these
crystals heaped up on the weather-worn eastern slopes of
the ghats about Yevut and Patus. There they lie, baking
and cracking in the sun, and eroding in the wind, during
all the hot season ; and when the overwhelming rains
follow they are rolled for hundreds and hundreds of miles
along the beds of all the rivers that pour down from the
ghats across the Deccan to the Coromandel coast ; and
with their flood waters spread the finely lixiviated fer-
tilising dust into which the crystals are ceaselessly ground
and comminuted far and wide over all the plains of the
Deccan. The black " cotton soil " of India needs, for
ordinary field cultivation, no other manuring than that
which in this way it receives from the open hand of
Nature.

Yet there is always in. every village plenty of the best
material for artificial manuring, where it is needed, in the
deposits formed in the village tanks. It is in constant use
for garden cultivation. But in truth the whole soil of the
Deccan is in a sense tank deposit. The trap formation of
Western India slopes, as has been shown, from west to
east, like a shelving beach, and crops above the general
surface of the Deccan in a succession of reefs, running at
right angles to the eastern spurs of the Sahyadris, between
the Malabar and Coromandel coasts ; and the staple of
the soil of the Deccan was originally deposited from the
succession of fresh-water lakes, formed by the rain-water
falling on the Sahyadris between their eastern spurs, and

66 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

pounded back by these longitudinal trap dykes ; lakes
that at one time covered the greater part of the surface of
Southern India. When the rocky barriers were at last
forced, the waters of the lakes drained off into the Bay of
Bengal, through the channels now marked by the courses
of the Godavari and the Kistna, leaving the plain of the
Deccan covered to the depth of often thirty and forty
feet, with its exhaustless arable soil. One can always
trace where these rents have taken place by the great
breadth of arable land behind them, and the sudden con-
traction of the bed of the river, which often at these
points flows with a peculiar noise as between closing
flood-gates. The village of Gulgula, near one of these
rents in the course of the Kistna, just beyond Mudhol,
derives its name from this noise. It is the same word as
44 gurgle " and " gargoyle," and as Gilgal, the name of
two or three places in Palestine, and of Silsilis [the soft
Greek form of the Arabic Jiljilleh], the name of an ancient
town on the Nile, near a rocky barrier in the course of the
river that was burst within historical times by the lake
once existing behind it.

I am referring, of course, to the historical black soil of
the Deccan, not to the red ; the specific " cotton soil " of
Anglo -Indians, and the regar of the Hindus. In this word
the syllable "ar," sounded " wr," is probably the same root,
referring originally to ploughing, that in so many Indo-
European languages enters into words connected with
agriculture, and the ideas and institutions derived from
agriculture, such as " arvum," "aratum,"1 etc. etc.,
harvest, altar, area, arable, aristocracy, etc. It is the

1 The English name of the plough, the immediate derivation of which
is uncertain [v. Skeat — sub plough and plover], refers to the boat and
bird-like shape and movement of the implement itself : going back to a
Sanskrit root signifying float, swim, fly, wash, boat, etc. ; from which,
through the Germanic language, we get the words fly, flock, fowl, float,
fleet, etc., and hypothetically plover; through the Latin languages lustre
[of 5 years], lotion, lavender, pluvial, etc. ; and through Greek [peri-]plus.

FERTILISATION 67

root of the word Arya. Reg, i.e. rig, is the same word as
the Scotch "riggs" [entering also into Rig-[" Veda "],
" regular," etc.], or the lines of heaped-up earth formed
in ploughing. Regar, therefore, radically means simply
" arable," and this ancient Hindu designation of the
" cotton soil " of the Deccan is an incidental proof of its
immemorial reputation for fertility.1

There is also another unmistakable proof of its inherent
fertility. Pliny, in enumerating the different qualities of
arable soil, pretty much in the same way as we find them
set forth in the Settlement Reports of the Bombay
Presidency, and describing the tests for them, points out
that the one infallible characteristic of a naturally rich
and wholesome soil is " the divine odour " it exhales
[v. footnote, supra], when it is first turned up, or when
the first dews of twilight fall on it, or rain after prolonged
drought. Every one who knows India will recognise that
this is the distinguishing odour of the black " cotton
soil " of the Deccan ; and the authentic credential of its
being the charmed treasure that assures the fortune, the
felicity, and the unfailing fame of Indian agriculture.

The Hindus habitually use manure in the cultivation of
rice. Sometime in the hot season the land is strewn with
all the refuse of the homestead, the floor sweepings, and
old thatch, old clothes, etc., being burned together on the
surface of the rice fields. Then when the rains set in, the
ashes from this burning are trodden by the men, women,
and children, and by the cows and buffaloes, into the
ground, until the whole surface is kneaded into a plastic,
cohesive mud, called chikal, wherein the rice is sown. The
effect is to bake the ground immediately below the upper
layer of fertile mud into an impervious bottom, which
prevents the rain from draining through ; rice requiring

1 The word regar as actually used throughout Southern India means
" black soil" ; while the word rig, in combination with vid, "to know,"
as in "Rig-Veda," means in popular use, "the Veda of Praise."

68 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

that its roots should be completely covered with water the
whole time it is growing. In a carefully cultivated rice field,
or rather pond, the water of the rainy season, June to
September, disappears only by evaporation ; and by the
completion of this process the grain is ripe for the harvest.

More than this, rice cultivation and brick and pottery
making are almost everywhere interdependent industries
in India. The natural crude clay of the soil is too con-
tractile, and too little cohesive for brick and pottery
making. It has therefore to be kneaded with ashes before
it can be used for these purposes ; and in fact it is the
barsat-mati, or " rain-earth " of the rice fields, that is always
used for the best native bricks, and pots and pans throughout
the Mahratta country. The potter also is almost always the
rice cultivator of the village. There could not be a stronger
proof than this of the thoroughly practical and scientific
character of Indian agriculture. The simple reason why
every attempt by self-sufficient Englishmen to make
bricks and pottery in Bombay at first proved a ruinous
failure was that crude clay, obtained, as in England, from
the first ground to be purchased in the market, was used
in their manufacture, instead of barsat-mati.

In the Deccan the fields are never ploughed oftener than
once in two years, and in some places only once in four or
five, or even six years. The surface regar does indeed
become exhausted by continual cropping without plough-
ing ; but with occasional ploughing, just to turn the soil,
and, still more important, to clear away the thick mat of
creeping weeds, its fertility is exhaustless, if it is of any
staple, and a foot is sufficient. In a word, regar is itself
manure in its final chemical form ; and the Sahyadri
mountains and their spurs, its original source, may be
compared to an everlasting mound of manure, and the
Monsoon drainage of them to liquid dressing, by the
regular application of which the incorruptible vitality of the
regar deposits in the plains below is perennially renovated.

ITS PARTS 69

The nangar [cf. " anchora "], or ordinary Mahratta
plough, is made up of the six following parts : — x

1. The dant,2 " dentale " or " dentalia," of the Romans,
eXev/ma of the Greeks — the body of the plough, or share
beam of babul wood [Acacia arabica].

2. The phal, " vomis " of the Romans, iW? of the
Greeks, sikka of the Hebrews — the spade-shaped iron share,
fastened to the share beam by its long handle [pahla],
and a triangular iron girdle called wasu. It will be remem-
bered that the Roman spade was called " pala."

3. The ruman, " buris " of the Romans, yvw of the
Greeks, dakas of the Hebrews — the upright stilt, or plough
tail, fastened into the broad end of the plough beam.

4. The mutiah, " stiva " and " manicula " of the Romans,
exerXrj of the Greeks, kabusa of the Arabs — the cross handle
passed through the top of the ruman, by which the plough
is held and guided.

5. The alus, " temo " of the Romans, and fivjuLo? [cf.
ruman above] of the Greeks, buruk of the Arabs — the pole
or plough tree, by which it is drawn.

6. The juh, " jugum " of the Romans, fyyov of the
Greeks — the yoke for the oxen.

This plough can easily, be converted from a light into a
heavy one by placing a stone weight on the share beam,
or by substituting a second heavier share beam for
the lighter when necessary. A light plough, drawn by
two oxen, is used on the acclivities of the mavals, but in
the desh a heavy plough, drawn by four or six, and even
eight oxen, is occasionally used.

The drill plough, for sowing at the same time as plough-
ing, is also of two kinds — the heavier, called the moghar,

1 Read with this,— Hesiod, Works and Days, 426 et seqq. ; and Virgil,
Georgics, I, 161-75.

2 The Roman dentale was sometimes made up, as in the Mahratta
danti, of two symmetrical pieces, and its name then took the plural form
of dentalia.

70 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

for sowing gram and wheat ; and the lighter, called
pabhar, for sowing millets and other small grains. Both
are composed of the eight corresponding parts following : —

1. The lohr or roughly triangular transverse beam ;
heavier in the moghar than in the pabhar.

2. The four phan [cf. fangs], or pieces of wood inserted,
pointing forwards, at regular intervals at the lower edge
of the transverse lohr.

3. The four pharoli, or four iron tips of the four phan.

4. The four nala [" nullahs "], or hollow bamboos
inserted by their lower ends through the four phan, and
opening out on the ground, behind the four pharoli.

5. The charh, or wooden cup [carved with the images
of Hanuman, Krishna-Vishnu, or Siva, or all of them]
into the bottom of which the four converging nala are
inserted by their upper ends ; and thus carry off the seed
poured into the charh, and deposit it through each of the
four phan in furrows, simultaneously turned up by the
four iron-tipped phan.

6 and 7. The dandi or plough pole ; and the juh or
yoke.

8. The ruman or plough tail.

The whole of the apparatus for sowing, the charh and
four nala, is removable, and this plough can therefore,
when required, serve as a harrow.

It is identical in principle with the drill plough of
Mesopotamia1 represented on the black stone monument
of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon, 681-668 B.C., now in
the possession of the Earl of Aberdeen ; and looking at
this figure, and considering that Lower Mesopotamia was
the earliest seat of advanced agriculture, including river
damming and canal construction, in Anterior Asia, there
can be little doubt of the drill plough of India having
originally been obtained from Babylonia. It was probably

1 It is figured in Canon Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, ii. 198, ed. 1864.

OTHER IMPLEMENTS 71

introduced into Western India by sea, direct from the
Persian Gulf ; while the ordinary single-stilted plough
would seem to have passed from Mesopotamia overland
into North-Western India, through Persia. The Greeks
and Romans must also through their common ancestors
have received their single-stilted plough from Mesopo-
tamia ; while the later double-handled plough of Europe
is to be traced back to the influence of ancient Egypt.1

In the kulav or hoe, a long iron scraper, called phas, is
attached by two lateral pegs, called janavli, to the trans-
verse beam or lohr ; whereinto are inserted the draft pole
or dandia, supporting the yoke or juh at its end, and the
upright stilt or ruman, with its cross handle or mutiah.

The remaining draft implements are the alvat or muhig,
a long transverse beam fixed to a pole and used to level
down ploughed fields and break up clods ; the jang or
janjia, the common husbandry cart, consisting of a large
wicker-work basket -like body, set on solid hewn wooden
wheels, and used for carrying weeds, rubbish, and manure ;
and the gara, consisting of a flat light frame, of four long
longitudinal planks, fixed by three shorter transverse
planks, set upon solid wooden wheels, and used for carrying
produce, — the " Tribulaque Eleusinae matris volventia
plaustra," of Virgil, Georgics, I, 163. The cost of the gara
is Rs.100, and it is the most expensive article of rolling
stock in a Deccan farmyard.

The chief hand implements are the yila or sickle, and the
koita or bill -hook, and the kudal, kudli or pick ; and so
perfectly adapted are the forms of these implements to the
work to be done with them, and so true the steel used in
their fashioning, that in the work of the Victoria Gardens,
Bombay, I preferred them to the best American and
English-made gardening tools.

The cut grain is stacked before threshing ; and is threshed

1 Pliny, vii. 57 (56) writes : " We owe the use of oxen and the plough
to Buzyges (i.e. Ox-yoker) the Athenian ; but others say to Triptolemus."

72 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

by being trodden out by oxen on some near spot, made
smooth by damping it with water, and beating it down,
and cow-dunging it, and allowing it to dry in the sun.
A pole [tevrah] is then stuck in the middle of this open-air
floor, and six or eight bullocks, half on one side of the pole
and half on the other, are driven round and round it, until
all the grain is trampled out, and the stalks crushed into a
friable fodder much relished by the cattle. The winnowing,
or upun, is done upon a winnowing basket [upun-vati],
identical with the " mystica vannus Iacchi " of Virgil j1
and the grain is then stored in baskets, called kuning,
made of the twigs of the sacred nirgand [Vitex Negundo],
and thatched over the top, like old-fashioned beehives ; or
in earthenware jars called hotli, of very archaic form and
decoration, being square at the top and bottom, but bulged
out above, and marked round the neck with bold notches,
or a rope -like moulding. When the grain is wanted for
household use, it is ground by the women in a hand-mill
called chaki [" wheel "] consisting of two round stones,
one turned on the other by a wooden peg fixed in the rim
of the upper stone. Through a hole in the centre of the
latter the grain is poured in between it and the nether
stone. Husked grains, such as rice, and some of the
smaller millets, are pounded in a mortar called ukal, with a
pestle called musal, formed of a straight piece of wood
4 or 5 feet long, tipped at the bottom with iron, and at the
top with a round knob, cut on the stick itself. The mortar
is of wood, shaped like a truncated hour-glass, and notched
archaically round the constricture of its body.

This exhausts the distinctive properties — the whole
"arma Cerealia " — of a Deccan rayafs farmstead ; but in
every considerable village there is sure to be found an oil
mill and a sugar-cane press ; and among the surrounding
fields and plantations one or more wells [vihir], with their
high-raised, overhanging apparatus of running wheels, and

1 Georgice, I, 166.

INDOOR APPLIANCES 73

folded large leather bucket, of about 60 gallons capacity,
for raising the water, and sending it flowing through a
thousand tiny channels all over the adjacent acres of lush
and swelling vegetation. They present one of the most
characteristic sights round an Indian agricultural town-
ship ; and nothing can be more delectable in the noontide
of the cold season than to listen to the hardy, manful
Deccan rayats, stripped naked to their work, singing
joyously at these wells, to the sweet and enheartening
musical accompaniment of the water ceaselessly out-
pouring from them into a widely murmuring maze of
rippling rivulets and rills.

Add to these out-of-door properties the appliances to be
found indoors ; — the large earthenware or brass lamps,
the jars for holding meal, spices, and condiments, the
pestle and mortar for bruising them together, the kneading -
board and a rolling-pin for preparing the unleavened
cakes of bajri and javari, the iron girdle for baking, and
the copper pots and pans wherein the bajri and javari
porridge, the pulse porridge and pulse soup, and the spiced
vegetable stews, and the sweetmeats, are cooked, — and
you exhaust the whole inventory of the mechanism, from
the plough downward to the necessaries of domestic
furniture, of the agricultural life of the Deccan. But the
prime movers, so to say, in the development of the latent
wealth of the soil into food and other products for human
use, are the hardy, thrifty rayat and his wife, and his oxen,
and his incomparable plough.

It is the simple agricultural life portrayed by Hesiod,
Virgil, and Pliny, and by the Scriptores [Varro, Columella,
Taurus iEmilianus, and Cato], Rei Rusticce, Veteres Latini,
and by our own Tusser ; but without the restless, hustling
spirit of emulous competition that, from the first days of
their enforced exodus from the East, has been the necessarily
disturbing and disintegrating element in the agriculture,
as in the general progressive civilisation of the Aryas of

74 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

the West. I do not mean that the steam-ploughing of
England and America, if applied in India, would not
augment the productiveness of its soil, or at least extend
its area of production ; although for all the social disad-
vantages resulting from the growth of large estates in the
West, the only compensation England has over India in
this respect of extended arable land, is that, while a frac-
tion less than one-third of the surface of land and water
is under cultivation in India, in England one-half of our
total acreage is cultivated. But the point of my defence
is that as the Hindus maintain their natural interdepen-
dence and recognise their indissoluble fraternity as the
first law of their social organisation (the responsibilities
and obligations of which are enforced on all, from the
highest to the lowest), it would be impossible to introduce
prematurely the vaunted farming of England into India,
even if its methods and appliances were in themselves
improvements, without involving the destruction of the
beneficent co-operative rural life whereon the whole
system of the civilisation of the Hindus has been im-
memorially based. That system, and that life, like all
else that is of human origin, are probably destined to
disappear, and have already been affected by the economic
changes of the twentieth century. But if we are wise, this
disappearance will be gradual, through self-evolved
changes in the internal consciousness of the race of Brah-
manical Hindus. We are answerable for the happiness
of the people of India, as distinguished from the " progress
and prosperity " of their country, or, in other words, its
scientific exploitation ; consequently the last thing to be
desired or encouraged by us is the hastening forward of
the probably inevitable reconstruction of Hindu society
by means for which the people of India are still unpre-
pared, and which therefore could only act with destructive
and revolutionary effect.

The introduction of the machinery of Western agriculture

A DEIFIED PLOUGHSHARE 75

into India is quite impossible in the present economic
condition of the country ; and every attempt at it, in
my experience, has proved a flagitious and farcical
failure. I remember a steam plough being sent to Jam-
khandi, one of the Southern Mahratta Native States. It
was led out festooned with roses and jasmine, like an
Indian bridegroom, into a rich regar field, and all of us
who were called together to witness the prodigies it
was to perform, were also wreathed with roses, and touched
on our hands and foreheads with atar ; and sprinkled
all over with rose water. In a moment, with a snort,
and a shriek, and a puff of smoky steam, the gigantic
mechanism made a vigorous, loud-hissing rush forward,
but, as was at once perceived, also gradually downward,
until, after vainly struggling for a while against an igno-
minious fate, it at last settled down silently and fairly
foundered in the furrow it had so deeply delved into the
soft, yielding soil ; and then not all the king's soldiers, and
all the king's men, nor all the servants of the incensed
Bhavani [Athene Boarmia, the " Ox-yoker " here], the
hereditary blacksmiths and carpenters from the neigh-
bouring palatine village, could do anything with the
portentous monster. Nothing could be done with it as
a steam plough. It had been recklessly brought into a
sacrosanct economic system wherein it had no place,
except as another god ; and another god it was at once
made. As soon as it could be moved out of the field it was
sided into the village temple hard by ; and there its huge
steel share was set up on end, and bedaubed red, and
worshipped as a lingam, the phallic symbol of Siva ; and
there, I suppose, it stands an object of worship to this
day.1

The Indian plough is, in short, part and parcel of a fixed,

1 The late Mr. Grattan Geary, Editor of the Bombay Gazette, on
reading this article in its original form in 1888, at once sent an agent to
the Jamkhandi State, who found the ploughshare still there in undisputed
deity, as evidenced by its daily daubs of dominical red.

76 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

crystallised life, wherein it is the primitive and primary
integrant molecule, regulating the relations, and deter-
mining the dimensions, and the ultimate character of the
entire and indissoluble economic, social, and religious
system built up on it. In that life all are but co-ordinate
parts of one undivided and indivisible whole, wherein the
provision and respect due to every individual are enforced,
under the highest religious sanctions, and every office and
calling perpetuated from father to son by those cardinal
obligations of caste on which the whole hierarchy of Hin-
duism hinges.

Thus the social aspects of a Deccan village are as of a
large family, living together that united life of content-
ment in moderation which is the perfection of human
felicity. The first sound heard in one of these villages after
the deep stillness of the night and just before the dawn,
is of " the house father," who having, on rising, worshipped
the family gods, is now moving about quietly, with his
head and shoulders still wrapped in the chadar [" sheet "]
wherein he has been sleeping, quietly arousing the
bullocks and oxen, stalled either in a yard behind the house
or in the porch in front.1 It is a devoutly soothing sound,
for it tells you at once that you are among a people setting
about their daily duties actually hand in hand with God.

Having got the cattle out into the road, and lit his
cigarette of tobacco rolled in a leaf of the apta [Bauhinia

1 The ritualism to be observed in attending to cattle, and especially to
the cow, is most minute, and would be exacting, but that it has become
instinctive in the race of Brahmanical Hindus. You must not step over
the rope to which a calf is tied ; and must always approach and pass a cow
on your right hand ; and keep your right arm covered the whole time
you are in the cow-shippen. You must never ride a cow, nor interrupt her
while sucking her calf, nor in any way annoy her. Shortly after the railway
between Poona and Bombay was first opened, a cow having to be sent by a
Hindu in the former city to another in the latter, its entrainment for the
journey was telegraphed by the sender to the receiver in the equivalent
of these terms : — " Her Holiness just booked by the — a.m. train to Byculla
[a suburb of Bombay] ; please be at the station at — p.m. to receive Her
Holiness."

THE DAILY ROUND 77

tomentosa], and taken up his breakfast of javari or bajri
cakes, cooked by his wife the day before, and tied up by her
overnight in a cloth with an onion, or some pickle, he strolls
off at daybreak, keeping his oxen before him, to his fields.
There yoking the oxen, and stripping to his work, whether
it be to plough and to sow, or to reap,1 he works on for a
steady hour until eight o'clock ; and again, after ten or
twenty minutes spent in eating his breakfast, for four hard
fagging hours more until midday.

Ere yet he leaves his home, the voice of his wife is heard
singing as she grinds out from the hand-mill the supply of
flour for the day. This done, and the rooms all swept out
and fresh cow-dunged, and the tulsi plant before the porch
perambulated, and her own breakfast eaten, she cooks the
dinner, — consisting of fresh-baked cakes of bajri or javari
meal, and either a mess of pulse porridge, or a pot of
highly spiced pulse soup — she must be careful to carry to
her husband by twelve o'clock. The cultivators within
hail of each other generally take this meal together ; and
after the four hours from breakfast spent in the furrows,
or amongst the stubble, they devour it with obvious zest
of appetite, joking and laughing heartily all the time : so
true is it of the peasant proprietor's independent life all
the world over : —

" Pingue solum lassat, sed juvat ipse labor."2

Thus from half an hour to an hour is spent ; and then up
to two or half-past two o'clock, the men lie down to sleep,
lying where they had eaten, on their cumblis, or out-of-
door woollen wrappers. While they sleep, the women dine
off the scraps that are left, and then either at once return
to their household duties and to prepare the supper, or,

1 Compare " nudus ara, sere nudus " of Virgil's Georgics, I, 299 ; and
Hesiod's Works and Days, 390.

2 Compare " Robustus fossor rege est felicior." Also the culminating
precept of Hesiod's " points of good husbandry " : " The hard- working
cultivator is beloved alike by mortal man and the immortal gods" (Works
and Days, 309-10).

78 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

before doing so, spend an hour or two assisting their
husbands in the fields.

When the men awake they re-yoke the oxen, and resume
their work for three hours more, or until the sun sets, at
which signal they return in long winding lanes towards
their respective villages, walking along leisurely, chatting
and laughing, and always keeping their oxen before them.
On reaching their homes, they at once tie up the cattle,
and then, after bathing and again worshipping the house-
hold gods, the husband at eight o'clock partakes of his
supper of pulse porridge.

After this the social life within the village — a life lived
here, and now, and in every homeliest detail, with God
and immortality — suddenly bursts into its brightest,
happiest activity. The temples of the gods are in turn
all visited : those of Mahadeo, " the Great God," meaning
Siva, and Bhairava, an incarnation of Siva, and of Hanu-
man, and any other of the lesser gods to whom there may
be temples, or shrines, or altars, or but upraised, ruddled
stones ; — and these last are everywhere.

Hanuman, or " Long -Jaw," is the favourite village god.
Originally he was possibly the totem of the Vindhyan races
of Central and Southern India ; and he is adopted as their
representative in the Ramayana. But in the official
pantheon of the Brahmans he is a sort of satyr leader of
the oreads and dryads of the wooded mountains and hills
and dales of the Malabar coast and Gondwana : and as
Arcadian Pan was the son of Hermes, so Hanuman is the
son of Pavana, " the Vagrant," " Vagabond " wind, or a
personification of Vayu,1 who is "the Wind" also. He
represents the sun as he seems, to those who pass through
the forests of the Sahyadris, to leap from tree to tree above

1 Ariel is possibly, and aerial certainly, a form of Vayu ; and both
Vayu and [Pa]-vana are radically related ; our English words wind, winnow,
winter, etc., being more closely cognate with the former ; and vague,
vagrant, voyage, fan [" vannus," eventalle], way, wain, waggon, etc., with
the latter.

HANUMAN 79

them. The gleams of light that shine suddenly on the
wayfarer's path through dark woods ; the pleasurable
earth-born glow that springs up in the youthful heart at
the sight of the luxuriance of Nature ; and again the feeling
of awe that at times seizes the lonely traveller on suddenly
coming on some uncanny spot — all these are Hanuman.
Again, he is the lengthening shadows that steal at sunset
through forests and across valleys, and from one hill-top
to another.

The vocal cloud of dust that swept from Eleusis towards
the Grecian fleet at Salamis, like a wafted echo of the songs
of the Mysteries, the Hindus would probably interpret
as a higher apparition of Hanuman. He is, indeed, the
local personification of the vital power of Nature in its
more familiar and more playful manifestations and
emotions ; and these the Hindus as naturally represent by
a monkey as the Semites of Anterior Asia represented
them by the wild goat, the atadu of the Assyrian inscrip-
tions, and atud of the Hebrews ; names from which,
through their Greek form, we derive the word satyr.
Thus in Western, Southern, and Central India, Hanuman
is everywhere the favourite divinity of the lower
agricultural classes ; whose innocent gaiety of heart, so
promptly responsive to all the pleasanter conditions of
their life, he precisely personifies : and in the Deccan
villages the vicinity of his temples is always of an evening
a popular rendezvous.

Every month, moreover, and indeed almost every
week, some religious anniversary is celebrated ; the
principal among the agricultural communities of the
Deccan being the following five : —

1. The Holi, or Saturnalia of the spring equinox, held
towards the end of March.

2. The Dasara, or " Tenth," held early in October,
when, after nine days of mourning for the ravages of

80 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

Mahesh-asura — " the Buffalo-headed demon," from whom
the State and city of Mysore take their name — on the
tenth day, in joy for his destruction, by Bhavani, all the
villagers, the higher and lower " twelve " hereditary
village officials, the Brahmans, the whole body of the
cultivators, and even the occasional Mahometan
" sacrificer " or butcher within their gates, proceed in
their gayest costumes to perambulate the village bound-
aries, and to worship the trees planted there, more
especially the apta [Bauhinia tomentosa], and, where it
grows, also the palas [Butea frondosa]. On this day also
the Mahrattas of the great historic families celebrate
the declaration of " The Great War in Bharata," the
" epos " of the Mahabharata, between the Panda vas and
their paternal cousins the Kauravas. Heralded by the
arousing, archaic sounds of shawms and bagpipes and
kettledrums — the last often mounted on a camel, — they
sally forth from their palaces into the westward wild
[" jungle "] in long, leisurely advancing cavalcades, their
horses in full caparison of war, but festooned over their
trappings with flowers ; and themselves garlanded and
crowned with flowers ; and their spears, of many-coloured
fluttering pennons, all hung with flowers. As they move
along, gathering from every pulas tree they pass its yellow
blossoms, on turning, at the gloaming, homeward, they
joyfully heap them on every woodland altar, or ruddled
stone, by the wayside, calling them " gold " [sona], — as
much as to say : "It would be gold — if we had it — that we
would heap on you with the like largess of heart." And
wherever these gallant Mahratta princes ride that day,
in their ecstatic vision, the good Lord Sivaji rides on before.
3. The Devali, or " Feast of Lanterns " [literally
" Lamprows "], held twenty days after the Dasara, and
celebrated amid the greatest rejoicings in honour of
Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, as the goddess of " Good
Luck," and of Saras vati, the consort of Brahma, and

FESTIVALS 81

goddess of learning, and protectress of bank-books,
ledgers, and all money accounts. These three solemnities
are commemorated by all classes of the community.

4 and 5. The two remaining festivals are kept up
exclusively by the women, namely, the Nag Panchami, on
July 25, in honour of the destruction of the serpent Kali
by Krishna ; and the Gauri, on August 25, in honour of
Parvati in her epithet of Gauri, " the Yellow-Haired."
The latter is specially observed by making up sweetmeats
in the shape of round balls and eating a couple of them
before going to bed. For two months beforehand songs in
honour of Gauri are nightly rehearsed by the women.
Their principal employment, however, of an evening is in
visiting from house to house, arranging the marriages in
the village, and settling the names of the latest-born
babies. Every Mahratta family has its crest, and no
marriages can take place between families having the
same crest — a clear survival of totemism.

The Mahratta women of the rayat class, although they
soon lose the good looks of their girlhood, are a fine, healthy
race, tall and straight, modest, frank, and chatty ; and in
their yellow, or shot-red and purple, bodices [choli], and
dark green, or indigo-blue robes [sari], are everywhere,
in the fields, or in the village streets, welcome objects to
the artistic eye. The ladies of the higher castes, and
particularly the Deshast Brahmanis, are very comely,
although not so fair as their Konkanast sisters. They are
all known at a glance by their great beauty and richer
clothing ; and as one of them sweeps past [eKKev'nreTrXos]
in her flowing sari of crimson, gold-bordered, nothing can
be nobler than its glow against her olive flesh-tints, as it
waves round her stately figure, and ripples in gold about
her dainty feet, a study worthy of a Lombard master's
canvas. And irvy octtoXos also is there, loitering in the
shadows of the big temple, not illicit, degraded, and

82 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

depraved, but a recognised institution, established, en-
dowed, and sacramental.

A great deal of conversation also goes on every evening
with the village astrologer, especially as to the right day
and hour for sowing the different kinds of crops ; and it is
quite surprising to find the full and accurate knowledge
the humblest husbandmen show, in these consultations,
of the exact time the sun enters the successive signs of the
zodiac, whereby the sowing of rice, wheat, barley, bajri,
javari, and every other sort of grain, pulse, and oil seed,
etc., is scrupulously regulated.1 They prove themselves
indeed as much at home around and about the zodiac, and
among the burning stars, as in their own beloved fields,
and with their conversable cows and calves and ploughing
oxen ; and the picturesque, Propertian2 epigram : —
" Nauta de stellis, de bobus arator " —

is foiled of its antithesis in any reference to them.

All this intercourse conducted on the most familiar
terms between the members of the same township, and in
the open streets, by the light of the flaring oil lamps set,
or hung, in every portico, and of the pillar of lamps, when
occasionally lighted, before one or other of the temples,
is of the most unaffected and cheering sociability : —
" that after, no repenting draws."

By ten o'clock nearly everybody has gone to bed ; except
that when the songs of Tukaram, or the stories from the
Ramayana and Mahabharata are sung on moonlight
evenings, these joyous, blameless al fresco reunions may
be kept up to nearly midnight. Then the deepest night
again closes on each village, and its dependent hamlets,
until six o'clock the next morning.

1 In the Madras Mail, July 9, 1908, will be found a most informing
and most interesting article, signed C. H. R, on the Ritualism in Agricul-
ture as observed by the Hindus of Southern India.

2 " Navita de ventis, de tauris narrat arator ;

Enumerat miles vulnera, pastor oves." — Propertius, ii. 1, 43-4.

THE VILLAGE ECONOMY 83

Thus in the division of the twenty-four hours the
Deccan rayat has, for the past 3,000 years, realised the
vainly-hoped-for ideal of the English artisan, and at a
twelfth of the cost : —

" Eight hours to work,
Eight hours to play,
Eight hours to sleep,

And eight 'pennies [not shillings] a day."

He has realised also, and in its fullest security, the ideal
co-operative life of the day-dreams of the Socialists of the
West. And is not this co-operative agricultural life of the
people of India high farming in its noblest sense ?

Pliny, writing on the Maxims of Ancient Agriculture
(bk. xviii. ch. 8), asks : " In what way, then, can land be
most profitably cultivated ? " and answers : " Why, in the
words of our agricultural oracles, 4 by making good out
of bad.' " He adds, " But here it is only right that we
should say a word in justification of our forefathers, who,
in their precepts on this subject, had nothing else in view
but the benefit of mankind, for when they used the term
1 bad ' here, they only mean to say that which cost the
smallest amount of money. The principal object with
them was, in all cases, to cut down expenses to the lowest
possible sum." And further on, he quotes, " that maxim
of Cato, as profitable as it is humane : ' Always act [in
farming] in such a way as to secure the love of your
neighbours.' "

The enactments embodied in the Code of Manu, and
cognate law books of the Hindus, have achieved this con-
summation for India from before the foundations of
Athens and Rome. Through all that dark backward,
and abysm of time, we trace there the bright outlines of a
self-contained, self-dependent, symmetrical, and perfectly
harmonious industrial economy, deeply rooted in the
popular conviction of its divine character, and protected,
through every political and commercial vicissitude, by the

84 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

absolute power and marvellous wisdom and tact of the
Brahmanical priesthood. Such an ideal social order we should
have held impossible of realisation, but that it continues
to exist, and to afford us, in the yet living results of its
daily operation in India, a proof of the superiority, in so
many unsuspected ways, of the hieratic civilisation of
antiquity over the secular, joyless, inane, and self-
destructive, modern civilisation of the West. Of a truth,
it is in the contemplation of the practical workings of this
socialistic system of the Code of Manu that the sympa-
thetic Englishman in India drinks deepest of the bliss of
knowing others blest.1

And this is the " unhappy India " of the writers on that
country, who know not the things that really belong to
her peace, and have acquired all their knowledge of it
from " Statistical Abstracts " and " Blue Books." Un-
happy India, indeed ! I might rather bemourn the un-
happiness of England, where faith for nearly four cen-
turies has had no fixed centre of authority ; where political

1 The late Mr. B. M. Malabari, the sanest and most sympathetic of
native Indian [Parsi] " reformers," devoted the whole prime of his life
to the advocacy of a rehabilitation of the Panchayat System [i.e. Council of,
nominally, 5, panch : — compare " punch," the Anglo-Indian " brose " or
brew of 5 ingredients — spirit, limejuice, sugar, spice, and water ; — and the
Greek " punch," 7revrcur\6a, — the words panch, "rrhre or irtvTa, and five,
being all one word, originally meaning " outspread " — like the hand with its
five fingers] in Indian villages ; but his efforts were in vain. It is a
proverbial saying in India : — " In the Panchayat is God ! " We speak of
" the Wisdom of Parliament " ; but that is sarcastic- wise, and with
reference to the " Parliament of Dunces," the " Addled Parliament," the
" Mad Parliament," etc. Nothing could be more fair, and reasonable, and
beneficent, than our regulations for raising the land revenue in India,
and they compare favourably with the rule of the Mahrattas and other
Hindu princes, who levied from their Muslim subjects, — including the
Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Emperor of Delhi, one-fourth of the assessed
value of their crops, — the chauthai, or " chout " of which one reads so
much in English works on India of late in the eighteenth and early in the
nineteenth centuries. But even the chauthai was not so onerous as is
often represented ; for in closely parallel circumstances the Spartans
took one-half of their Tcrop values from the Helots, and the Athenian
Eupatridse one-sixth from the Attic Thetes. They all gained from the
assessments being fixed — at least when there were no droughts !

NOT BY BREAD ALONE 85

factions rage so furiously that men seem to have lost all
sense of personal dignity and public shame, confusing
right with wrong, and wrong with right, and excusing the
vilest treasons against the commonwealth on the plea of
party necessity ; where every national interest is sacrificed
to the shibboleth of unrestricted international competition ;
and where, as a consequence, agriculture, the only sure
foundation of society, languishes ; and the peaceful
plough, the mainspring of industrial activity, no longer
holds its proper place of public honour and pre-eminence : —
and no longer is heard throughout our land, from far
across the freshly fluted furrows, the lulling lilts of the
lowly ploughman, who, as he sturdily plods his heavily
clodded way : —

" Sweetens his labour with some rural song."

The truth is that closet publicists and politicians,
trained in the competitive economic principles of the West,
do not sufficiently distinguish between the prosperity of a
country and the felicity of its inhabitants. Indeed, they
do not discern the distinction. They dwell with their
books, and not among the people ; and that men do not
live by bread alone is one of the strongest facts of life in
India absolutely hidden from their eyes.

What we call prosperity exists only in figures, and has
no place in the personal experience of the vast masses
making up the population of the so-called " progressive "
nations of the West. It merely means the accumulation
of amazing wealth in the hands of a few, by the devouring,
wolfish spoliation of the many ; and in its last result, the
bitter, stark, and cruel contrast presented between the
West End of London and the East. And do Europe and
America desire to reduce all Asia to an East End ?

Happy India ! where all men may still possess them-
selves in natural sufficiency and contentment, and freely
find their highest joys in the spiritual beliefs, or, let it be,

86 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

illusions, that have transformed their trade-union organisa-
tion into a veritable " Ci vitas Dei."1

Happy India, indeed ! But how long before the
Saturnian reign shall be brought to the same end in India
as it was in Europe four centuries ago ? The sight of our
manufacturing and commercial wealth, the fruit of our
competitive civilisation, so deceptively beautiful without,
but within full of gall and ashes, like the apples of Sodom,
has inflamed the people of India, in the neighbourhood of
Calcutta and Bombay, with the same insatiable greed of
gold as the opulence of Rome excited in the barbarians
who were provoked by it — " the Nibelungs' gold " — to
the destruction of the Empire ; and wherewith again the
ancient and mediaeval fables of " the Riches of the East "
inflamed the avarice, in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, of the renascent nations of the West, and lured
them on, in speculative quest of India, to the huge inven-
tion of the Americas.

Through this contact between the East and the West
at the Presidency towns, the traditionary ideal of life
among the Parsis and Hindus is gradually becoming super-
seded by the Western ideal — according to which the basis
of all social advancement, and the standard of all moral
worth, is the possession of money. That hangs on the
hazard of a crude competition, in the prizes whereof but

1 " Where every one has his divinely co-ordinated place, and his
security, and honour, and content therein ; and no one is envious of
another's higher estate, and reverence and happiness ; where God is sought,
and is found, and is magnified in everything ; and where every one
seeking and ensuing every other's good, realises for all the perennially
inspiring human vision of a New Heaven and a New Earth." — St. Augustine,
De CD., xxii. 29, 30 precis-ed. Long may " God stay them in that felicity "
in India — no wan hope — notwithstanding present appearances there !
" Sinister omens " are, after all, sent from the right hand of the gods ;
and thanks to the wary wisdom and deft dexterity of the Brahmans as
" men of affairs," concessions towards representative government of the
English type to India, may yet serve to revivify and reinvigorate, and
definitively restore to them their pristine powers, and salutary, because
natural supremacy, throughout the country.

SECULARISATION 87

few, of the many called, are chosen to participate. Thus
in the place of the old-world content with the conditions
of existence, we are arousing in India a universal spirit of
discontent, the characteristic incentive of modern civilisa-
tion, and have needlessly exaggerated it through the
malign influences of the fastidiously secular system of
eleemosynary education enforced by us on the country.
The sinister shadow, as of the legendary Upas tree, on
Western civilisation, is the slow poisoning, wherever it
becomes rooted, of the vital atmosphere of the spiritual
life latent in our human nature ; and there was no necessity
for anticipating, by a direct attack on the ancestral faiths
of the people of India, led as it is by professedly Christian
missionaries,1 the inevitable catastrophe that has every-
where dogged the steps of exclusively material civilisations,
and at last involved them in self-destruction.

Examining in 1863 or 1864 some Parsi boys in the Fort
School in Bombay, on my asking the meaning of the word
" happiness," one of them instantly stretching out his arm
toward me replied energetically, and with the applause
of all his little class fellows : — " To make a crore of rupees
[at that time equal to £1,000,000] in cotton speculations,
and drive into [sic] a carriage and four."2— adding, how-
ever, in the yet uncorrupted spirit of the boundless
philanthropy of the ancient Buddhism of Asia — " and to
give away lakhs upon lakhs in charity " : — and as well in
princely public benefaction, as in inexhaustible private
done and dole. Many years ago a distinguished Bengali
Brahman, to whom I was pointing out that he was not
in the least obliged to break formally with the religion of
his forefathers because he was an " Agnostic," replied : —
" You do not understand. It is not simply your education

1 The first and best triumphs of Christianity were won by absorbing
and transmuting the classical paganism of Greece and Rome, and not by
arrogantly defaming it. The true destiny of Christianity in India is not to
reprehend and destroy, but to amend and regenerate Hinduism.

2 " Quadrigis petimus bene vivere." — Horace, Ep., i. 11, 20.

88 THE MAHRATTA PLOUGH

that has made me an Agnostic ; I have rather been forced
to become one by the high standard of civilised life you
have set up in India. I really cannot afford to be a Hindu,
and spend so much as a good Hindu must on his ' un-
divided family,' and in general charity — not if I am to keep
up appearances, on the same income as Christian and
Muslim gentlemen, who have no such compulsory demands
on their means."

Thus the lesson of the Indian plough, if rightly read,
goes deep ; and he who runs may read it -,1 and the deepest
gulf before England is that we are ourselves digging, by
forcing the insular institutions of this country on the
foreign soil of India, — India of the Hindus. That is the
special lesson of the English steam-plough laid up, in
divinity, in the Jamkhandi State.

1 And verily, " he may run who readeth it."

SETT PREMCHUND ROYGHUND1

I FIND it impossible to respond to the invitation
to write for the Indian Magazine and Review any
adequate account of the life of the late Premchund Roy-
chund. As for the mere chronicle of his wonderful career,
I can add nothing to the admirable abstract of it in
the obituary notice of The Times of October 3, 1906 ;
while for personal reminiscences of him — I was so inti-
mately " at the back " of the whole private history of
" the Bombay Share Mania of 1861-5," and so confiden-
tially in the counsels of Mr. Premchund Roychund as a
civic benefactor, that I have made it a sacred rule never
to publish any of the incidents and circumstances of the
time to which, merely through my privileged relations
with individual persons and personages, I became privy.
There is always a grave wrong, and, as between man and
man, an unpardonable wrong, involved in such revelations,
toward those of one's fellow-sufferers in misfortune who
have meanwhile died, and cannot reply to the injustice
directly or indirectly and intentionally or unintentionally
done to their good name and fame. I will therefore restrict
myself to an appreciation of the late Sett Premchund
Roychund's character and individuality, as they impressed
me, now over fifty years ago.

He was essentially a spiritual being ; and so simple and
elemental in his nature that he might have passed for a
sprite but for his dutiful and devout sense of responsibility
toward the Unknown Power that works throughout the

1 Contributed to the Indian Magazine and Review, November, 1906 ;
reproduced in Mr. D. E. Wacha's biography of Premchund Roychund
(Bombay: 1913).

89

90 SETT PREMCHUND ROYCHUND

worlds for righteousness. He was playful as a kitten, and
an irrepressible optimist ; with an energy in every look and
movement that flashed wireless messages to all around and
about him a generation before they were invented by
Marconi. That is how the man Premchund Roychund
was born. But he was bred a sravak [" hearer," of the
doctrine of Buddha] Jaina, that is a layman Jaina, or
Brahmanised Buddhist, having no belief, at least in the
form of creed and dogma, in a personal God ; holding the
Universe to be self-existing, and in ceaseless flux, and
imperishable ; and every intelligent and responsible being
in it capable of rising through the practice of self -negation,
and of good-will and helpfulness towards others, to the
highest height of spiritual perfection and beatitude. And
Premchund Roychund was this sravak Jaina indeed, a
man in whom there was no guile ; and, when his heart
was set on any generous and beneficent work, " full of the
spirit of God." He was quite a little man, — of the race
of Piccolomni, — lithe of figure, his every muscle always
at " attention," — ready to act ; with keen, bright eyes ;
and an expression of face yearning and resolute, as always
on the alert to take promptly and irrevocably the step
determined on. He thought out any question before him
with electric rapidity, and his decision on it was always
clearly formulated, and put into operation ere yet the
fateful words were well out of his mouth : — and those
familiar with him knew beforehand, by the sudden jerk
of his left arm, with a snap of the fore and middle fingers
backward, or of his right arm forward, whether the decision
was in the negative or the affirmative. In either case he
threw up his head smiling (the angelic smile of an Italian
child), his eyes looking straight into your eyes.

When considering some public benefaction his vote was
invariably, — in my experience, — in the affirmative : and
when he himself initiated the proposal, he would, on my
suggestion, at once cap it with the requisite provision for

AN ASCETIC MILLIONAIRE 91

worthy architecture — a point I never failed to insist on
all my life in Bombay. He never hesitated a moment.
He was totally devoid of every form of worldly ambition.
He had no greed of gold, no lust of riches : wealth with
him was a divine trust, and through prosperity and
through adversity he lived the same simple life, — that
rather of a Jaina yati, or " ascetic," than a sravak. He
was an absolute asarcolatrous dietarian. In his commer-
cial activities there may possibly have been something
of the vice of speculation ; but if so his pleasure was in
the race run, not in the prize. The truth is Sett Prem-
chund Roychund was, as I began by saying, essentially a
spiritual entity ; and although, when not directly imbued
with religious feeling, I recognised in him something of the
joyous devilry of the irresponsible sprite, the predominant
feature of his fiery spark of a soul was an unfeigned
enthusiasm for humanity ever fervent and aflame with
the twofold energy of an elemental force and an all-
consuming spiritual passion.

When the crash came, Premchund Roychund was day
after day in the Press of all India a man " full of the names
of blasphemy " ; only Mr. William Martin Wood (1828-
1907), who always as a journalist showed a strong sense
of righteousness, stemmed the seething tide of detraction
against him, and with all his authority as editor of The
Times of India. I also, I am happy to recall to-day,
contributed to the same faithful and just purpose, and as
it proved with greater effect than I dreamt of, a parody of
" 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have
loved at all." But the public rage was inevitable ; as in
all such incalculable calamities a scapegoat has to be found
for the sin of the whole people ; and I will not dwell on
this phase of "the Bombay Share Mania of 1861-5."
We had all sinned, and we all had our punishment for it,
and on the whole we took it like men ; and Sett Prem-
chund Roychund took it best of us all. " 'Twas better to

92 SETT PREMCHUND ROYCHUND

have won and lost, Than never to have won at all," was
the prevailing note of those terrible days.

I shall never forget the day and the scene when the first
bolt fell. I was at a business meeting in the Fort, at the
offices of one of the leading European " houses," and
representatives of most of the other great firms were
present ; and of some of the philanthropic movements
then in progress in Bombay. In the midst of the considera-
tion of the schemes before them, a clerk presently brought
in the telegram announcing the surrender of Lee's Army.
For a moment a dead silence filled the room, which also
seemed lighted up with a strangely unnatural light. (This
optical effect on me happened again when reading the
first depeche telegraphique announcing the overthrow of
the Second French Empire at Sedan, when the blaze of
superb dahlias in the country garden near Boulogne in
which I at the moment stood, in the twinkling of an eye,
took on an uncanny metallic lustre, as if painted in
enamels.) But in another moment or two some one at the
meeting said : " Well, it's a good thing to be made to sit
up to your business once again " : while Premchund
Roychund on my leaving the room said to me : " This,
Bird wood, means beginning my life over again " : and he
began his life over again that night. When swollen by
unwonted rains Pactolus bursts its narrow, restraining
banks, what man may withstand its gold -impounded flood ?
That is the absolution for all of us sinners of 1861-5 ;
while for Premchund Roychund, the greatest benefactor
Bombay ever knew, the bravest and the best of men, and
the most fascinating character of Western India since
sargiya Sivaji, — if nor storied urn, nor animated bust be
raised in honour of his memory, it will still ever remain
triumphantly true of him that : — " Stirring spirits live
alone ; Write on the other's, ' Here lies such an one.' "

THE RAJPUTS IN THE HISTORY
OF HINDUSTAN1

i

Rajputana

" His hidden meaning dwells in our endeavours,
Our valours are our best gods." — John Fletcher, Bouduca.

WE stand at the parting of the way followed by us
for the past 150 years in India ; and if we would
take true divination of the goal, on the right hand or the
left, whereto our searching arrows are winged, nothing
could be more helpful to us than a close study of the
character and the history of those who before us have held
paramount power over the country, — the warrior caste of
Rajputs, the priestly caste of Brahmans, and the fierce
Ismailites [Arabs, Afghans, and Mo(n)gols] who held both
in more or less complete subjugation throughout the 1,046
weird, penitentiary years preceding the revindication of
Aryan supremacy in India under the broad sevenfold
shield of the " British Raj." I here treat only of the
Rajputs ; and on the basis of Miss Gabrielle Festing's
From the Land of Princes, and Colonel James Tod's
famous Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829-32).
Miss Festing's book does for the stirring national traditions,
and dynastic chronicles of Rajasthan, " the land of
Kings," what Charles Kingsley and the Rev. Alfred J.
Church did for the tales, from Homer, Hesiod, and Hero-
dotus, of the gods and heroes of ancient Greece. She
has epitomised the bardic legends, or rashas, as they are

1 In the original form this paper was the Preface to From the Land of
Princes, by Miss Gabrielle Festing (London : Smith, Elder, 1904). — Ed.

93

94 THE RAJPUTS

termed by the Rajputs, or " Sons of Kings," first systemati-
cally gathered together for English readers by James Tod ;
who, going out to Calcutta at the impressionable age of
seventeen, after serving in the Intelligence Department of
the Army during the operations undertaken by Lord
Hastings in 1817 against the Pindaris, was appointed
in 1818 Political Resident at Udaipur, the capital, in suc-
cession to Chitor, " the Painted," of Me war, " the Mid-
ward M1of Rajasthan.

The Hindus hold the Maharana, or " Great -King " of
Udaipur, as the reputed descendant, in the direct line of
primogeniture, of the eponymous hero of the Ramayana,
and, of divine right, the absolute head of the Solar Rajputs,
to be sacrosanct above all other Rajputs. These Solar
Rajputs, with the Lunar Rajputs, or descendants of the kin
Kaurava and Pandava Princes, the antagonistic heroes
of the Mahabharata, constitute the Kshatriya [cf. " Satrap"]
or " Sovereign " caste, the second, after the Brahmana or
" Priestly " caste, of the three " Twice-born " sections
[the third being the Vaishya or " Settled " caste of traders],
into which the primitive Aryan invaders of India, under
the operation of the natural and economic influences,
systematised by the Code of Manu, and similar law
books of the Hindus, became separated ; the fourth
Brahmanical caste of Sudra, or " Shattered-serfs," re-
presenting the subjugated aborigines,2 or, at least, the
pre-Aryan people of the country.

1 The Hindus designate the whole country between the valley of the
Indus and the valley of the Jamna and Ganges, and between the Himalaya
and the Vindhya Mountains, Madhya-desa, i.e. " the Middle Land " ; the
Mahrattas apply the term to the country between the Konkans and
Khandesh ; while all Hindus refer to the cradle of their race in Central
Asia as Madhya-bhumi, i.e. "the Middle Earth." The Sikhs similarly
name the land round about Lahore, as the original home of their sect,
Manja, a local form of the Sanskrit madhya ; this word, over all India,
also meaning the land between any two villages, " the Hub of the Universe "
for each village. " Media " is probably the same word.

2 The word used in the Mahabharata and the Rig- Veda for the people
the Vedic Aryas found in India is daysu, the equivalent of the Hindustani

MOUNT ABU 95

Seventy miles westward from Udaipur, at the angle
formed by the northward emergence of the Aravali Hills
from the Vindhya [" Dividing " between Hindustan and
the Deccan] Mountains, towers, to the height of 5,650 feet
above the sea, the abrupt dome of Mount Abu [Arbuda],
famous for its Jaina temples ; similar to the wonderful
Jaina temples, rising terrace upon terrace, up the slopes
of the Satrunjaya Hill in Kathiawar — all of white marble,
sculptured outside and inside, both pillars and roofs, with
the finish and refinement of carved ivory or ebony, an
ecstasy in the art of mystical architecture : " a Satanic
mockery " — as the Reverend Dr. John Wilson, with
pardonable professional prejudice, once pronounced them —
" of that heavenly Jerusalem whereinto shall nowise enter
any thing that defileth." This cone, the guru-sikhar,
" Saint's Sanctuary " [literally " Pinnacle "] of the Jainas,
is the culminating point of the Aravalis [literally " Row
of Peaks," " Stockade "] ; the " strong Refuge " of the
Rajputs when overwhelmed in the flood of the
successive Mahometan invasions of India from the
eighth to the eighteenth century a.d. ; and again
when, driven by outrageous oppressions, senselessly
prosecuted through successive centuries, they from
time to time revolted against the Afghans and the Great
Mo(n)gols.

From Mount Abu the Aravali Hills range boldly north-
eastward, straight as an arrow, through the midst of

de8hi, i.e. " of the country " ; but the Vedic and Epic term daysu includes
brown Hamites [Dravidas], and yellow Turanians [aboriginal Bangalas],
as well as absolute autochthons, probably, of the Negroid [blackish] colour
of the Andamanese. The Sanskrit word for " caste " is varna, literally
" colour " ; and caste, in its origin, was the colour-line between white and
brown, and white and yellow, and white and black, men in India ; and
between shades of these mixed colours ; — the Sanskrit word for the
innumerable Brahmanical sub-castes of the present day being varna-
8ankhara, and meaning, simply, " colour-intermixture," " colour-con-
fusion." In the phrasing of ethnologists, India west of the confluence
of the Ganges and Jamna, and southward into Gujarat and Kathiawar is
" India Alba " ; east of this confluence and on into Burma, " India Flava";
and Southern India, the Carnatic, " India Nigra."

96 THE RAJPUTS

Rajputana, " the Land of Princes " [called also Rajwara,1
"the Ward — the Dwelling-Place of Princes"], for about
200 miles ; whereafter they begin to decline from their
pre-eminence, and become more and more disconnected ;
cropping up again in the historic " Ridge " at Delhi, 360
miles north-east of Udaipur, before they finally disappear
under the alluvium of the plain of the Jamna. As now
restricted to the States lying between the Indus and the
Jamna, a little less than one-half of Rajasthan — that is
Marwar [Jodhpur], Jeisalmir, Bikanir, and Sirohi — lies
to the westward of the Aravalis, and is watered only in
Marwar and Sirohi, by the " Salt " Luni, as it flows south-
ward to the Rann, or salt- " Waste " of Cutch ; and a little
less than one-half — that is Mewar [Udaipur], Amber
[Jaipur], Kotah with Bundi [Haraoti], etc., watered by the
many affluents of the Chambal, as it flows north-eastward
to the Jamna — lies to the eastward of these hills. The
British province of Ajmir, " Aja's Hill," with Mairwara,
" the Highland-ward " [compare Mount Meru], extends
over the middle third of their crest ; the City of Ajmir,
dominated by Taragar [" Star -garth "] 2,855 feet above
the level of the sea, making the point wheref rom the Aravali
Hills begin to decline toward Delhi.

Situated on the verge of the Tropic of Cancer, Rajputana
falls within the Northern Solstitial Zone ; the desert
tracts of Persia, Syria, Arabia, the Sahara of Northern
Africa, and the Tierra caliente of Mexico, marking other,
so to say, broken links of the Earth's close clinging girdle
[" shingles "] of fire and famine. Where not an absolute
desert, as in the Thul, i.e. " The Deadly-region," between
the Luni and the Indus, and parts of Marwar,2 i.e. the

1 The familiar Rajput denomination of Rajputana is Raj vara ; vara
here not being used in the sense of " ward " exactly, nor of " heaven "
[cf. " pan-orama "] or " property " [cf. Trolsworthy in Devonshire], but
rather of " warren," with the meaning of " our own endeared homeland."

2 The etymologies of these place-names are of themselves indicative
of the nonsense of the denunciations of the British Government as the

THEIR VARIED LAND 97

" Death-ward," or " Grave-yard," Rajputana is still an
arid, and, for the most part, sterile land ; but relieved
within the morning and afternoon shadows of the Aravalis,
— intermittently along the banks of the brackish Luni, and
continuously, and in greater breadth, in the courses of the
Chambal and its contributories, — by green tracts of wild
woodlands and herbage, and of cultivated fields and
orchards and pleasing gardens ; and further diversified
by the mediaeval walled towns, uprising on the rock-
crested ridges of sand rippled over the wide extended
plains, like so many islands ; or so many huge turreted
ironclads riding grimly at anchor, moored by two anchors,
on a swelling sea. Vast herds of camels and horned cattle,
and innumerable flocks of sheep, ever in search of new
pastures, freely wander about everywhere ; and behind all is
the more or less distant background of the everlasting
Aravali Hills with their shimmering peaks of white and
rose-coloured quartz. The varied prospect — with its
contrasts so harshly accented by the dry glitter of a sub-
tropical midday — as seen embalmed and harmonised in
the softer amber light of morning, or suffused with the
refreshing rosy flush of evening, is at once transfigured
to a fairy land. In a moment, one's own soul is brought
face to face with, as it were, the very soul of the soil, and

generators of Indian famines and plagues. But the Government of India
have only themselves to thank for this popular superstition of the last
fifty years' genesis. When I was ordered to compile the weekly rain returns
for the whole Presidency of Bombay, — which I dutifully did for nearly a
decade " in the 'sixties," — I protested against their being made public
through the official Gazette, as I had before protested against the publica-
tion of the mortuary returns ; and on the express ground that the people
of India had always devoutly resigned themselves to droughts, and famines,
and plagues, as dispensations of the Almighty ; but that if my " Monsoon
Rainfalls " were gazetted, thenceforward the blame of these disasters
would surely be put upon the Government, to their grievous discredit,
and the ever-increasing discontent of the subject-peoples. But the witty
Secretary to the Government of Bombay, in their General Department,
simply replied : — "Thy much learning doth turn thee to madness";
using, indeed, the old and not the new phrasing of the text. The event has
shown that I but spoke words of truth and soberness. And since then the
weekly publication of the plague returns has wrought us infinite harm.
H

98 THE RAJPUTS

its foster-children, and their history, and their autoch-
thonous gods, — the gods of the land ;x and the impression
thus suddenly created by the transient scene abides
for ever.

At Udaipur young James Tod was fascinated by
everything around him ; by the spiritualising pic-
turesqueness of the landscapes ; the gay colourings of
the palatine cities — the white and green of their painted
houses, the rose madders, and other reds, and lemon and
saffron yellows, and cobalt and indigo blues of the nodding
turbans, and swaying girdles, and twinkling shoes, of the
white-robed people in the spacious streets ; the vermilion,
and Chinese yellow, and indigo blue flags of all the gods,
fluttering among the green trees in every air of heaven that
breathes about the frequent temple spires ; by the lofty
palaces of the Rajput Princes, and the stately splendour
of their military courts, and their own manly, gallant
bearing, and fine " civility of manners, arts, arms, and long
renown." Beyond all else he was moved by their old feudal
fortresses, and the shrines and temples of their gods,
instinctively adapted as these are to the sentiment of the
country and its inhabitants, and their chivalresque history.
Seen day by day in sunshine and shadow, and month after
month in all the glamour of the full moons of India, and
sketched and painted over and over again by himself, it
was the aerial architecture of the visionary summits and
peaks of the Aravali Hills that, to the subjective sensibility
of James Tod, touched Rajputana with supreme enchant-
ment. With an industry, assiduity, and perseverance
only enthusiasm fed on " the corn of heaven " could so
strenuously have sustained, he devoted whatever leisure
official duties permitted during the years 1818-22, to the
study of the physical geography, ethnography, and history
of Rajputana ; and of the social, political, and religious
system under which it had been governed by its famous

1 II. Kings xvii. 25-7.

TOD'S "ANTIQUITIES" 99

princes ; and to the collection of their genealogies and
family legends and traditions, as these are found epitomised
and embodied in his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan.
This work is an inexhaustible storehouse of the known and
accessible information of the Rajputs and of Rajasthan, as
limited by the modern official connotation of Rajputana.
Although in the present day its author's conclusions on
certain moot points of obscure ethnology and obscurer
etymology may be questioned, it remains the standard
history, and will always remain the classical history, of
Rajasthan. It is simply amazing how its author could
have amassed the materials for its production, and reduced
them from chaos to the fair and lucid order in which they
are found in his pages, and within the years, that were
also otherwise well-laboured years, of his all too brief life ;
for he died in 1835, at the age of 53. But the work,
contained in two bulky volumes, in imperial 8vo, has long
been out of print, and is rarely to be found even in the
catalogues of the sales of second-hand books. Moreover,
it is too solid and preoccupying reading for the present
day of superficial knowledge and professorial culture.
It is " caviare to the general," and outside the British
Museum and our University Libraries is now rarely found
except in the houses of families that have inherited copies
from relatives connected with the Honourable East India
Company ; standing beside the treasured Oriental Memoirs
of James Forbes, the grandfather of Montalembert, the
History of the Mahrattas of James Grant Duff, the father of
Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, and the Ras
Mala of Alexander Kinloch Forbes : three books that
any one responsibly associated with the Indian Empire
should read, and ever keep at hand, or for ever hold his
tongue on India.

Miss Festing's From the Land of Princes would,
therefore, have been more than justified if only for its
attracting wider attention to a work of such rare originality

100 THE RAJPUTS

and authority as Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajas-
than, a veritable " Open Sesame " to the heart and mind
and soul of the great and sacrosanct military caste of
India ; and the only Hindu caste with any quickening and
controlling traditions of political power and responsibility.
But her handy volume has its own independent value,
in the very qualification of affording a clear insight into
the character and ideals of the Rajput Princes which
renders Tod's two unwieldy volumes invaluable for those
who would acquire a true understanding of the people of
India. Her collection of stories is all from definite and
unimpeachable family traditions and documents, selected
with careful discrimination, in the diligently observed
order of their proper chronology and topography. In the
things that are profitable for inspiration and example,
and therefore alone essential to historical teaching, they
are faithful transcripts in prose of the rashas, or " bardic
annals " of Mewar, Marwar, Amber (Jaipur), Haraoti
[Bundi and Kotah], and Jeisalmir. Miss Festing's book,
therefore, cannot but exert a salutary influence in pro-
moting in this country a more intimate knowledge, and a
more intelligent comprehension of India, and in arousing
among us a feeling of generous and romantic sympathy
with the noble Kshatriya caste of Rajputs, — and of radical
brotherhood with the " Twice born " castes of Hindus
generally, Brahman, and Rajput, and Vaishya ; who in
blood, and brawn, and bone, and in their ineradicable
virility, are one and the same Aryan people with ourselves.
The very word that labels our ethnical unity with them
is taken out of their own mouths, and in its original sense ;
and amongst the earliest derivatives from it are the
Sanskrit and Old Persian words signifying " brave "
[cf. the Greek War-God Ares], and "truthful," and
44 noble " [cf . Greek &pi<rros\ and 44 friendly."

The Aryas of the prime, as they descended on India
from the offlcina gentium, some vague regions about

ARYAN MIGRATION Wf

the Euxine, Caspian, and Aral Seas, the " seething pot,
and the face thereof toward the North," of the perfervid
vision of the prophet Jeremiah, may have been mixed of
all the ethnical stocks, Caucasian or Noachian, and
Scythian1 of Central Asia ; but without doubt they were
predominantly of the Aryan or Japhetic stock, speaking
the language from which Sanskrit and Zend [Old Persian],
Greek and Gothic [Teutonic], Latin and Romance, have
all been derived. As they pushed farther eastward across
Hindustan, and later southward, down into the Deccan,
" they set up every one his throne by the way," subjugating
to themselves the Caucasian Hamites [represented by the
Dravidas of Southern India] and Turanian [" Yellow "
Scyths] and Nigritian [Negroid] peoples already in the
peninsula. And as their paramount position was thus con-
solidated in the country, two things happened. They were
no longer an army on the march. They had formed larger
and smaller settlements, needing only a central garrison
for their defence. Multitudes of the warriors thus fell out
of occupation, and these, turning their energies to trading,
in the process of the centuries became the Vaishya caste
of Brahmanical India. It was a straightforward, frank
solution of a pressing economic problem. But the develop-
ment of the reproductive resources of a country and of
mercantile relations with contiguous countries, has ever
had a humanising influence on man ; and the initiation
of this process of national and social evolution by the
unemployed Aryan warriors in India, proved the beginning,
as in a grain of mustard seed, of the implacable and
destructive conflicts that were to rage for centuries in a

1 The Scyths of classical writers were not unmixed Turanians, or
" Yellow-men." The " Royal Scyths " of Herodotus have many Aryan
characteristics ; and the Turks and Indian Mo(n)gols can hardly be dis-
tinguished in their physical, emotional, and intellectual features from pure
Aryas. The true " Yellow," and the true "Black " races, are outside the
Caucasian [Aryan, Hamitic and Semitic] or Noachian pale, and the
genealogies of Noah. The Semites seem to have classed the Negroes as
" monkey-brands."

iQ2 THE RAJPUTS

far-off future between the commercial and internationalised
Buddhists, and the priestly and emmordantly nationalised
Brahmans, when as yet there were none of either of
them.

At first every Arya was a king and priest unto himself,
his family, and his state. But now and again a poet of
genius had appeared among them, chanting his own impro-
visations to cheer his comrades on their ceaseless marchings
and counter -marchings, or to rouse their courage on " the
Field of Slaughter " to its highest fire. The " Hymns "
of the Rig-Veda, the only true Veda, are the lyrical heart -
burst of the devout joy of the Aryas (a transport of religious
emotion that thrills the world to the present day), when,
after their weary wanderings among the inhospitable
uplands of Persia and Afghanistan, they at last stepped
down into the immense extended, well-watered, and semi-
tropical plains of the Panjab. A special reverence was
rendered to such gifted men, and was continued to their
children, and children's children, as the keepers, locked
up within their trained and specialised memories, of these
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ; now regarded as,
in themselves, the ever-living Word of God, and as arming
their custodians with the prerogatives of actual divinity.
The remaining fighting Aryas becoming more and more
preoccupied with their administrative and military duties,
whether as sovereign rulers or feudal vassals, the here-
ditary guardians of the Vedas, or sacred rashas, gradually
monopolised the service of the priestly duties theretofore
incumbent on every Arya t.o discharge personally, and
thus became at length segregated as the caste of Brah-
mans from the similarly differentiated castes of Kshatriyas
and Vaishyas.

The usurping Brahmans, in their sacerdotal intolerance
of the natural superiority of the Rajputs, sought to brand
them with an artificial inferiority, not only by writing
them down second in the order of their four theocratic

BRAHMANICAL ASCENDANCY 103

castes, but by striving, and on the whole with remarkable
success, to impose upon them all manner of ceremonial
disabilities. This is already indicated in the Aitariya
Bralimanam, an Appendix to the Rig-Veda, giving for the
guidance of the Brahmans the earliest glosses on the
sacrificial prayers of the Veda, with speculations on their
origin and explanations of their ritual. The English
translation of this Brahmana by Martin Haug was published
by the Government of Bombay in 1863, and in book vn.,
chapters hi., iv. and v., and book vin. chapters ii., hi., iv.
and v., we have a clear insight of the means used by the
Brahmans, as increase of appetite grew by what it fed on,
to magnify their sacred office, and exalt themselves over
the Rajputs, not only in the sphere of their spiritual life,
but in the very domain of their inherent and indefeasible
temporal authority and power. The story of Parasu
Rama, " Rama of the Axe," who " cleared the Earth
twenty-eight times " of the Kshatriyas, and gave it — India
— to the Brahmans, is another myth of the immemorial
rivalry between the Brahmanical hierarchy and the
Kshatriya, or Rajput regal stratocracy.

The irresoluble hostility of the Brahmans toward the
Kshatriyas is shown also by the much later myth of the
origin of the Agnikulas or " Fire (born) family " of Rajputs.
They are said to have been raised by the royal and saintly
Agasthya, the reputed author of so many of the " Hymns "
of the Rig-Veda, from a sacramental fire kindled on the
summit of Mount Abu [Arbuda], in the presence of a con-
vocation of the whole college of Brahmanical gods. These
Agnikulas are : — (1) the Paramaras, Pramaras, and Powers
or Puars, i.e. " Premiers/' of whom Chandragupta, the
Sandracottus of the Greeks, and the illusive Vikramaditya,
the great champion of the Brahmans, are both claimed
as members ; (2) the Pariharas, formerly of Mar war and
Idar, but now found only in Central India, and the Deccan ;
(3) the Chalukyas or Salunkis of ancient Ajodhya [Oudh],

104 THE RAJPUTS

and mediaeval Saurashtra [Kathiawar and Gujarat, called
also Valabhi or Balabhi], who are still represented by the
Bhagela Rajputs of Rewa, the Jhala Princes of Dhran-
gadhra, Limri (or Limdi) and Wadwan in Kathiawar ; and
(4) the Chauhans of Rajputana and Malwa, of whom
Prithvi-Raj of Delhi, Ajmir, and Lahore, the Paladin of
the Rajputs in their earliest conflicts with the Mahometan
invaders of India, is the most illustrious name, and who
are at this day represented among the rulers in Rajputana
by the Deoras of Sirohi, and the Haras of Haraoti [Kotah
and Bundi].

The legend probably refers to the enlistment in the
third and second centuries b.c. of Zoroastrian Persians
and Pagan Greeks into the Kshatriya caste, as supporters
of the Brahmans against the older recalcitrant Kshatriyas ;
or it may be simply an allegory of the hallowing of the
warrior caste by the fire of their lives of devoted self-
sacrifice. According to the traditions of the Rajputs, who
claim to be descended from the Kshatriyas of the primitive
Aryas of India, these are still represented in Rajputana,
in the Solar line, by (1) the Grahilot, Gehelot or Sesodia
Princes of Mewar [Udaipur], Dungarpar, Bansvara, and
Shapura, — and the Gohil Princes of Bhavnagar and
Palitana in Kathiawar are of the same clan ; (2) the
Kuchwaha Princes of Amber [Jaipur] ; and (3) the
Rathors [originally from Kanauj] of Marwar [Jodhpur],
Kishenghar and Bikanir ; and in the Lunar line, by (1)
the Bhati Princes [descended, in the pedigrees of Yadavas
or Jadons, from Krishna, the deus ex machina of the
Mahabharata] of Jeisalmir ; and (2) the Jadija or Jharija
Princes of Cutch, Gondal, and Morvi, in Kathiawar.

Nevertheless, the Brahmans persist with the calumny
that none of the primitive Kshatriyas survived the massacres
of " Rama with the Axe," and that the Agnikulas, of their
own creation, are the only Rajputs now existing in India.
The contention is absurd. The Rajputs, who never lost

THE PUREST ARYAS 105

their pride of Aryan race, never hesitated to recruit their
ranks by the admission of desirable aliens from over
" the North- West Frontier," whether Greeks, or Sassanian
Persians. A Greek prince is traced in the genealogical
list of the Rathors of Kanauj and Mewar ; and, in the
fifth century a.d., one of his successors married the
daughter of Barham Gaur [Varanes V] ; and there is a
tradition among the Gehelots of Mewar of an ancestress
in the sixth century a.d. who was the granddaughter of
one of the Christian Caesars of Byzantium. My own
opinion, based on persional knowledge of the men them-
selves, is that the purest Aryas of India are to be found
among the Jainas, descendants of the Aryas who became
Vaishyas, and then, influenced by the tenets of Buddhism,
formed themselves into the heterodox sect of Vaishnava
Hindus, named after " the twenty-four Victorious Jins "
[cf. Arabic jinn, and " genii "], or deified saints, the
objects of their especial worship. They form the prosperous
and highly influential community of merchants and
bankers known everywhere in Rajputana, Malwa, and
Gujarat, by the style and title of Mdhajans ; and, soiled
with all ignoble use by the money-lenders who have made
the name of Marvari a byword throughout India, the
appellation means, and still upholds, the ideals of a
" great gentry."

Apart from coins, and inscriptions on temple walls and
other enduring structures, and a vast number of " copper
plates " commemorating grants to temples, and the
registers, ledgers, and similar documents accumulated in
the current business of administration, constituting the
chalta daftar [literally "walking parchments," cf. SvpOcpa
of Greeks] used by Grant Duff when writing the History
of the Mahrattas, the Hindus possess few authentic records,
provided by themselves, of their own history. In attempt-
ing to reconstruct it, we have to depend on the arbitrary
references to past events to be found, generally mytholo-

106 THE RAJPUTS

gised out of all recognition of their real form, in the Vedas,
Pur anas [" Olds "] and other sacred scriptures ; and in
such secular romances as the Prithviraj Chauhan Rasha of
Chand Bardai, the Poet Laureate of the last Hindu King
of Delhi ; the Raja Tarangini, with its continuations
[the Rajavali and others], of the Rajas of Kashmir, in
the Kaurava line of the Lunar Kshatriyas ; and the Raja
Tarangini of Amber [Jaipur], giving a similar list of the
Kings of Indraprashta or Delhi, from Yudisthira, the eldest
of " the Five Panda vas of the Mahabharata" to Vikra-
maditya of Ujain and Delhi, composed so late as the early
part of the eighteenth century, for Savai Jai Sing, the
builder, all in white marble, of the gracious city of Jaipur.
Mere facts, even the obvious convenience of cardinal
dates, are quite beyond the scope of history as understood
by Hindus, to whom its teachings, as apprehended and
applied by themselves, would seem to have been all they
ever cared to heed ; and wrested from the truth, and
allegorised for doctrinal purposes as the actual events dealt
with by them may be (this having been done with the
sincerity of religious zeal), they have intuitively expressed
their grateful sense of the dealings of Divine Providence
with them, as a favoured people, in devotional, and epic,
and ballad poetry, singing and making melody in their
hearts to the great gods to whom they raise their soul-
moving and animating strains of exaltation and blessing
and glory in the highest. The composite " Sesostris "
[Seti I and Ramses I, II, III] of the Greeks may have
sent a naval expedition against Western India ; Darius
Hystaspes certainly stretched out his sceptre over North-
western India, or Sindh and the Punjab ; but there is no
definite date in Indian history, before that transmitted to
us by the Greeks, of the crossing of the Indus near Attock
[" the Limit "], in the midsummer of 329 B.C., by Alexander
the Great ; while the continuous history of India, the
earlier chapters of which we owe to the Mahometan writers

MIGHTY KINGS 107

of Arabia and Persia, only begins with the momentous
apparition of the conquering armies of Islam in Sindh,
a.d. 711 ; at the very time [a.d. 713] that another Muslim
army, under the one-eyed Tarik ibn Zayad, was striding
the Straits of Gibraltar, " the Hill of Tarik " into Spain.

The millennium [1,037 years] between the advent of the
Greeks and that of the Mahometans in India is a period
of intolerable confusion for the systematic historian.
But, viewed in the light of the following eleven centuries
[1,111 years] of " the Mahometan Terror " in India, the
conclusion is justifiable that the previous period was also
ennobled by the like dauntless and indomitable resistance
of the Kshatriyas to the Scyths — whether of the Turkman
or the Mo(n)gol races, who then commenced to pour
ceaselessly into India — as in after centuries they opposed
to their Mahometan conquerors. The shadows of the
mighty names of the period are, (1) Chandragupta [316-
292 B.C.], — variously regarded as a Lunar Kshatriya, an
Agnikula, and a Vrishala, or Kshatriya degraded to the
status of a Sudra, for neglecting the service of the sacred
rites, and to consult the Brahmans, — the " Sandracottus "
who drove the Greeks out of the Punjab and Sindh, and
married the daughter of Seleucus I ; (2) his grandson
Asoka [260-220 B.C.], the wilier Constantine of Buddhism ;
(3) Kanishka [either the last century b.c. or the first a.d.],
another patron of Buddhism, whose reign marks the cul-
mination of the political ascendancy of the Scyths, —
Dhes [Dahae], Jats [Getse, Goths], Hunas [Huns], and others
— in India ; (4) Vikramaditya, i.e. " The Blazing Sun "
of Righteousness, the Melchizedek of the Hindus, sur-
named Sakhari, " the (slayer) of the Scyths " [Sakas or
Takas] ; and (5) Salivahana, a Mahratta potter of Paithan
in Maharashtra, also surnamed Sakhari, from whom the
Rajputs of Bezwara are descended. Both Vikramaditya
and Salivahana are held to have been contemporaries
with Kanishka, and are both revered by the Brahmans

108 THE RAJPUTS

as persecutors of the Buddhists, and the unresting,
strenuous, and ever victorious assailants of the Scyths.
Yet " the Saka Era," so named in honour of Salivahana,
" the Slayer of the Scyths," commences a.d. 78, and the
44 Samvat Era," established in honour of Vikramaditya,
commences in 57 B.C. ; while the bloody battle of Korur,
in which the Scyths were finally brought down by Vikra-
maditya from their paramountcy, is dated by the expert
chronologists of Europe between a.d. 524 and 554. x

Such are the bewildering entanglements, obstructing
the symmetrical treatment of Indian history between the
exit of the Greeks from the darkened stage and the
entrance upon it of the Mahometans. The Brahmans
utterly ignore the invasion of Alexander the Great ; and
we only know that they did at the time recognise the
presence of the Greeks in their midst from their including
in their list of Vrishalas, a people they call the Yavanas
[compare " Javan "], by whom they undoubtedly indicate
the Greeks [i.e. " Ionians "], although this designation is
found to include the Scyths, and even the Mahometans
of Hindustan : in short, any mlecha, or white -faced
44 barbarian " from the North or West of India. In the
form of Jonahan it is still applied in Southern India to the
Mopla of Malabar.

Yavani was the title of the female servants of the
harims of the earlier Muslims ; and in the Southern
Presidency of Madras, they are still so entitled, as also
Mughulani. The word 44 Javan " in the Bible, sometimes
translated in our A.V., by 44Grecise," "the Grecians,"
and 44 Greece," in some places, undoubtedly refers to
Greece. The Hindustani for 44 young man " is javan [cf.
Sanskrit uva, 4; young"], and 4' Javan" and 44 Ionian "
may refer to the young Aryas who emigrated out of their

1 I have been greatly assisted in working out these details by Mrs.
W. R. Rickmer's Chronology of India, a work that calls for the most grateful
acknowledgments of all students of Indian history ; and worthy of a
daughter of the great Free Kirk missionary to India, Alexander Duff.

THE ISMAIL1TES IN INDIA 109

over-peopled original home in N.W. Asia, eastward into
Persia and India, and westward into Southern and
Midland and Western Europe. The Turks call America
" Yangi Dunia," " the Young World," and this may be
the origin of our phrase " Yanki Doodle."

II

The Ismailites in India

The Arabs

Within four years of the death of " the Prophet of God,"
a.d. 632, the Caliph Omar built Bassora, in order to control
the course of the lucrative trade of India, Persia, and
Arabia with Europe ; and in a.d. 647 the Caliph Othman
sent ships from Bassora to reconnoitre the coasts of Western
India between Broach, anciently Barygaza, the port of
Saurashtra, and Thana, in mediaeval times representing
ancient Kalayana, and itself represented in our modern
days by Bombay, the great emporium of Maharashtra,
and the industrial and intellectual, although not the
titular, capital of British India. But the Arabs, a Cau-
casian or Noachian race, and highly intellectual people,
who had with the keenest alacrity and zest entered into the
inheritance of all the wisdom of the Greeks, alike in the
arts of war and peace, at once perceiving that before the
opulent prize of India could be appropriated with any
hope of its undisturbed retention, Afghanistan, the
Barbican, or " Antemural " to the " Bayley-yard " of
Hindustan, had to be permanently occupied, the Caliph
Muaiwah I, a.d. 664, equipped an enormous army for
the conquest of that country. To the accomplishment of
this prescient and sagacious task fifty years of arduous and
steadfast righting were doggedly devoted ; although in vain,
for any perenduring advantage it was to bring to the Arabs.

A detachment from the force was at the same time sent,
in charge of Mohalib, to make a reconnaissance of the

110 THE RAJPUTS

approaches into Sindh ;* and when the military and re-
ligious reduction of the Afghans was sufficiently assured,
the Caliph Walid I, after a survey of the coasts of Baluch-
istan, Mekran, and Sindh in a.d. 705, in a.d. 711 fitted
out a naval expedition, under the command of Muhammad
ibn Kasim, acting in co-operation with Hijaj, the Governor
of Bassora, for the subjugation of Sindh. Muhammad
Kasim sailed boldly up the Indus to Bakkar [some say he
landed at Deval, " the Temple," near the modern Karachi],
and thence marched on Alor, and after a brief campaign
annexed the whole of Sindh, from the delta of the Indus
to Multan, to the Ommiad Empire of Damascus. Dahir,
the Rajput Deshpati, that is, " Despot " [desk, " land " ;
pati, "lord"], of the country, made a most determined
defence ; but in every implement of war he was hope-
lessly " out-classed " by the newly-gotten " Greek science "
of the Arabs. There is presented to the eye all the pic-
turesque pageantry of Agincourt, as illuminated on the
pages of Michael Drayton : the brave show, in the brilliant
sunshine, of lines upon lines of glittering steel, and
flapping banners, and fluttering banderolles, of every
" tincture," each with its own " armings " — not one
" But something had pight that something should express," —

and of gorgeous trappings and caparisons of horses and
horsemen, and camelry, and towered elephantry, in their

1 Sindh [Sind, " Scinde "] is the Sanskrit sindhu, " the sea," " a river,"
and here the country watered by the Indus. In old Persian the form was
Hindu ; in Hebrew [Esther i. 1, and viii. 9] Hoddu or Hiddu ; in modern
Persian, and in Arabic, also out of Persian mouths Hind. The Greeks
dropped the aspirate, and called the river 'Ivdos, and the country 'IvBikt),
i.e. 'lvbi-yq, " Indus-land " ; which in Roman mouths became India ; the
term being now applied to all India ; Hindustan being Northern India ;
and Southern India, the Deccan, that is " the country on the right hand,"
dakshina, of the worshippers of the rising sun in Hindustan. The Arabs
still separate even " Sind " from " Hind." The Greeks retained the Sanskrit
form of the word India in their name for fine muslin, (rivdibv ■ the sadin of
Judges xiv. 12 and 13, Proverbs xxxi. 24, and Isaiah iii. 23. The Hindu
sacred and epic names for India are Bharata, Sri Bharata, " Holy India,"
Arya-barta [the Doab], and Tambu-dvipa, all India.

THE JOHUR 111

solid array ; and, when " the drums begin to yell," the
sudden tumult and shoutings in the ranks, and the rush and
clatter of hoofs, and the flash and clash of arms at close
quarters, the now confused battle swaying backward and
forward, as

" The Trumpets sound the Charge and the Retreat,
The bellowing Drum the March again doth beat."

But it is not war ; and with the setting of the sun all that
gay and gallant chivalry of Sindh of the Kshatriyas is seen
rolled in blood and dust ; and the tragedy of Alor closed
with burning and fuel of fire in the woeful Rajput rite of
the johur [Hindi juhar, from Sanskrit yodhri, " warrior "].
Dahir fell fighting in the thick of the Arab cavalry ; but
his widow continued the defence of the city until the
exhaustion of provisions for the garrison. Then she, and
all the women, with their children, gathered themselves
together, and built up a great funeral pyre in the garden
of the Palace, and, mounting it, were sacrificed in the
flames of their own kindling : and the men having bathed
and duly gone through the other ceremonies of the sublime
" office," sallied forth sword in hand against the enemy,
and perished to a man. This is the immemorial Rajput
ritual of the johur.

After Sindh, Muhammad Kasim annexed Gujarat ; and
thence marched on to Mewar. When, according to the
vague traditions of the Hindus, Valabhi, now Vala, in
Kathiawar, was stormed by a Persian king — Naushirvan
the Great (530-78) is the king named — the widow of the
slain Rajput king, fleeing into the desert of Western
Rajputana, there prematurely became the mother of a
son [and heir to his father], known as Prince Goha. He
established himself at Idar, and is said to have married
a daughter of Naushirvan, by a wife who is said to have
been a daughter of one of the Emperors of Constantinople
— Maurice (582-602). The seventh from the posthumous

112 THE RAJPUTS

Prince Goha was Prince Bappa, who, on hearing that the
Arabs had entered Mewar, collected a following, and in-
flicted a crushing defeat on them, and raised himself to
the gadhi [literally, " a cushion," which, placed on a
carpet, is a Rajput Prince's sovereign seat] ; and it is
from him that the reigning Ranas of Udaipur are lineally
descended.

The Arabs in India never recovered from this reverse ;
received at the very moment of their overthrow, at the
other extremity of their far-stretched empire, by Charles
Martel, on the glorious green fields between Poictiers and
Tours, a.d. 752. The Rajputs in Sindh rose successfully
against them in 750 ; and on their attempting to re-enter
India from Kabul, under the command of the Mahometan
Governor of Afghanistan, a relative of the Abassid Caliph,
Harun al Rashid, the Rajputs at once set out against them,
and, led by Prince Khoman of Chitor, finally expelled
them from the sacrosanct soil of India, a.d. 812. The
Arabs were, in fact, at this time paralysed at the very
centre of their power by the suicidal struggle ending, a.d.
750, in the extinction of the Hellenised Ommiades [saving
the few who escaped into Spain, and renewed at Cordova
the splendours of the Saracenic art of Damascus], and the
transfer by the triumphant Abassides of the seat of the
Caliphate to Baghdad, a.d. 763. This was a fatal error, for
they lost touch with the stimulating West, and were
brought completely under the debilitating and demoralising
influences of the East ; and were thus led on into aban-
doning the military defence of the Empire to mercenaries,
until in the thirteenth century " the Caliphate of the East "
found its dishonoured grave in " golden Baldac."

For the Scythians, now known as Turks and Mo(n)gols,
again issuing forth, first as free-lances, and then as
ravening conquerors, from the frost-bound steppes, and
hills of ice, of the uttermost north, the Uttara-Kuru of the
Hindus, once more swept away the undermined fabric

THE TRAGEDY OF THE OLD WORLD 118

of Semitic civilisation in Anterior Asia, and of Aryan
civilisation in India and Eastern Europe — as though they
had been but the glory of an hour. The Caucasian races
have always rapidly spread themselves along the course
[" litus Aryanum "] of the immemorial overland com-
merce between India, its perennial fountain-head, and
Europe ; and the great catastrophes of civilisation have
resulted from the intersection of this line of human progress
and culture by secular cataclysms of Negroes from Inner
Africa into Hamitic Egypt, and of Turanians [in the
phrasing of mediaeval legends, the impure " Shut-up-
Nations " of " Gog and Magog "] from Posterior Asia into
Semitic Anterior Asia, and Hamitic Egypt, and Aryan
India, and Persia, and Europe ; isolating Caucasian civil-
isation in separate compartments, from the Ganges and
Indus to the Danube and Nile. And the pity of it is that
these humanising nations have never since the time of
Alexander the Great been again joined together in the
same mind, and the same judgment, living in peace to-
gether, as men drinking from one " loving cup " ; and
armed with the omnipotence of their unity alike against
the " Yellow Peril " and the " Black Peril." This is the
unplotted tragedy of the Old World, whereon the curtain
has never yet been rung down.

The Afghans1

The decline of the Arab Empire became manifest
immediately after the death of Harun al Rashid, the con-
temporary and friend of Charlemagne, when one after
another the provinces of the Eastern Caliphate began to
throw off their allegiance to Baghdad. The Turkman,
Ismail Samani, possessed himself of Transoxiana, Persia,

1 The Afghans are the Assakani of the Greeks ; this word being the
Sanskrit ashvaka, meaning " horsemen " ; that is " riders," " road(st)ers,
— and, here emphatically, " raiders," ever " ready " to " raid."

I

114 THE RAJPUTS

and Afghanistan, setting up his throne in Bokhara. The
fifth in descent from him appointed his " favourite "
Turkman slave, Alptegin, Governor of Kandahar ; where,
on the death of his patron, he asserted his independence ;
leaving his kingdom on his own death, in 979, to his
" favourite " Turkman slave and son-in-law, Sabuktegin.
Jaipal, the Rajput Prince at Lahore, suspecting the
designs of his minatory neighbour, resolved to anticipate
them by himself seizing on Afghanistan ; but, brought
face to face with Sabuktegin at Lagman, on the road from
Peshawur to Kabul, not far from Badiabad (where Lady
Macnaughten and Lady Sale were held captive in 1842),
a sudden storm in the mountains caused a panic among
his superstitious warriors, and reduced him to the humilia-
tion of purchasing his retreat by the surrender of his
elephants, and the promise to pay a pecuniary indemnity.
On the sinister advice of his Brahman priests, he de-
liberately broke his word of honour ; when Sabuktegin,
in his turn, marched off for Lahore, and, coming upon
Jaipal on the plain of Lagman, inflicted a disastrous defeat
on the unfortunate Prince ; notwithstanding that his
large army was now swollen by contingents from the
allied Rajput States of Ajmir, Delhi, Kalinjir, and
Kanau j .

The son of Sabuktegin, the fierce and avaricious bigot,
" Mahmud of Ghazni," maintained the quarrel of his
father, and in 1001 defeated Jaipal with frightful slaughter
on the Peshawar [" Frontier -ward "] uplands ; permitting
him to return to Lahore only on the condition of paying
an annual tribute to Ghazni. The disgrace of this was too
bitter for the misguided Prince, who, after agreeing to the
terms imposed on him, solemnised his death in accordance
with the Rajput " office " of the johur. Mahmud 's second
expedition was against the Prince of Bhatia [whose domain
is now included in the Patiala State], and here also the
Prince Bijai Rai, when he found his courageous resistance

MAHMUD OF GHAZNI 115

vain, committed the imperative sacramental suicide of the
johur.

Mahmud's fourth expedition, 1008, was directed to the
destruction of the powerful league formed against him by
Anandpal, the son of Jaipal of Lahore, and supported with
passionate patriotism by all the noble Rajput ladies of
Hindustan. For forty days the rival hosts confronted
one another on the wide pavilioned plateau rising westward
from Peshawur to the Khaibar Pass, and when a general
action was brought on by an irresistible charge of Kash-
mirian highlanders, and Anandpal seemed to hold the
winged victory in his outstretched hand, the elephant he
rode in grandiose state, took fright at "the Greek fire "
used by the Mahometans, and the panic thus caused
turned the battle in their favour ; 20,000 of the flower of
the Rajput manhood being left dead on the field. Then,
pillaging on his way the fabulously endowed shrines of
Nagarkot, now Kangra, Mahmud went back to Ghazni, to
gloat at leisure over his abounding booty of " barbaric
pearl and gold." His sixth expedition was undertaken
for the sack of the yet holier and wealthier shrines of
Staneshwara, " the Throne of God." In his seventh and
eighth expeditions, 1014 and 1015, he ravaged Kashmir.
His ninth expedition, 1017, he carried right into the heart
of Hindustan, creeping stealthily along the slopes of the
Himalayas, as near to the river sources as possible, and
suddenly presenting himself with 20,000 Afghan infantry,
and 100,000 Turkman cavalry before the gay and joyous
garden city of Kanauj. The Rajput Prince at once
capitulated ; whereupon Mahmud, after three days' rest,
hurried on to the great Brahmanical shrines of Muttra, the
birthplace of Krishna, giving them up to fire and sword
and rapine and plunder for twenty days ; sparing only the
fabric of a few of the temples, because of their exceeding
beauty. His tenth and eleventh expeditions, of 1022 and
1023 respectively, were of comparative unimportance. The

116 THE RAJPUTS

former was successful in its punitive object, the deposition
of Jaipal II, of Lahore, for inciting a Rajput campaign
against the Prince of Kanauj for his submission to Mahmud
without an appeal to " the fortune of war." The latter,
directed against the Prince of Kalinjir, for assistance
given by his predecessor to Jaipal I, of Lahore, against
Sabuktegin, and by himself to Anandpal against Mahmud,
proved unsuccessful.

The twelfth, and last, and locally most vividly recollected
of Mahmud's expeditions, was in 1024, when he trudged
down across the sands of Sindh and Western Raj put ana, a
thousand miles to " the sack of Somnath " in Kathiawar.
The Rajputs let him proceed on his outward march un-
molested ; but when he turned back, overweighted by
the votive offerings of centuries, with his face anxiously
set toward Ghazni, they dogged every turn of his flagging
course through the desert wastes between the Luni and the
Indus ; leading him away from the sparse water-springs
on the right hand and the left, and betraying him into
every manner of ambages and ambuscades, until well-
nigh the whole of his bedraggled army was lost, and the
greater part of his impious plunder. For the rest, he bilked
the poet Firdausi [" the Paradisaic "] of his trivial pension
(as others of us have been similarly bilked since then).
In the very hour of his death (1028) he wept on bidding
farewell to his treasures of costly arms, and armour, and
precious jewels ; sternly controlling an occasional impulse
to divide them among the loyal comrades of his retributive
raids and other faithful friends. But he had a quick
eye for great architecture ; and, from a maze of squalid
Turkman huts, he made Ghazni, with its " Palace of
Felicity," and arcaded streets, and refreshing fountains,
and its " Mosque of the Celestial Bride," the pride and
boast of Central Asia. Therefore, one understands, after
a passing emotion of amused surprise, the fitness of things
in the fact that he died, if not exactly in the show and

THE GHORI DYNASTY 117

seeming, yet, and emphatically~as regarded and judged by
his contemporaries, in the full savour of sanctity. In a
word, he was a man ; and whatever he determined to do
he did it right thoroughly. Furthermore, his fine feeling
for architecture and for sumptuary objects of art, for all
its taint of cupidity, must be accounted to him, and
scarcely less than his leonine boldness, for the righteous-
ness that exalteth a nation.

The first Afghan dynasty, called of Ghazni, gave place,
in the regular course of Afghan infamy, and perfidy, and
treachery, and murder, to the second Afghan dynasty,
called of Ghor, 1153-1206 ; and Shahabudin, better
known as Muhammad Ghori, succeeding to the masnad
[the " cushion " and carpet throne of Mahometan rulers,
Hindi, from the Arabic sanada, " to lean against "], re-
solved on the conquest of Hindustan as a deliberate and
definite policy. The moment was propitious for him. The
Rathors of Kanauj had never been forgiven their ready
surrender to Mahmud of Ghazni ; and Ananda Deva,
the Tomara Prince of Delhi, dying without male issue,
left his kingdom to Prithvi Raja, the Chauhan Prince
of Ajmir. Prithvi Raja, now uniting in his person the
Tomara and Chauhan Rajputs, and the Sovereigns of
Delhi and Ajmir, asserted his pretensions, against the
prescriptive claims of [? his uncle] Jaya Chandra, the
Rathor Prince of Kanauj, to be recognised as " the Over
Lord," " Primus inter pares," of the reigning Rajputs
of Hindustan.

This was bitterly resented by Jaya Chandra ; who,
taking advantage of the approaching marriage of his
daughter, summoned all the Rajput Princes to be present
on the occasion, and render him homage as their Lord
Paramount. Prithvi Raja, who loved and was loved by
his fair cousin, strong in his pride as in his affection,
bluntly refused to demean himself as a vassal of Kanauj.
Jaya Chandra, enraged, had an image of Prithvi Raja

118 THE RAJPUTS

made in the garb of a door-keeper, and placed it at the
entrance to the hall in which the nuptials of his daughter
were to be celebrated. But he counted without the fair
Sangagota, who, on approaching the hall, bearing the
garland she was to place round the neck of the bridegroom
selected for her, quietly turned to the right and cast it
over the head of the affronting image of Prithvi Raja. In
a moment Prithvi Raja was at her side, and before the
brilliant assemblage could recover from their amazement,
had, with a sweep of his right arm, swung her up and
across his saddle-bow, and galloped off with her, fast as
his horse could bear them, all adown the rattling road to
Delhi. It was Netherby Hall, and Young Lochinvar
anticipated ; and Sir Walter Scott was also there, in the
person of Chand Bardai,1 to immortalise the incident, so
typical of the romantic and chivalresque life of the old
Rajputs, " in love and arms delighting," — in the " martiall
Pyrrhique and the Epique straine " of the " Kanauj
Kandh" or " Canto," of the Prithviraj Chauhan Rasha.
Jaya Chandra, while sending his daughter her wedding
trousseau [jehaz], called down on his son-in-law the wrath
of the Afghans from Kabul and Lahore.

Muhammad Ghori had, in 1191, made an attempt on
Delhi, but being promptly met by Prithvi Raja west of
the city, between Panipat and Staneshwara, the tradition-
ary battlefield of the Kuravas and Pandavas, he was
there well defeated. But now, 1193, having strongly
recruited his Turkman cavalry, he at once called them
" to boot and saddle," and set off again for Delhi, with
an invincible force. Betrayed by Jaya Chandra, and
deserted by the Bhagela Rajput Princes of Gujarat, yet
supported by the Gehelot Rana of Chitor, Prithvi Raja

1 The bard Chand actually nourished at this date ; and although his
authorship of the Prithviraj Chauhan Rasha has latterly been called in
question, no reason whatever has been adduced for doubting the un-
hesitating tradition of the Rajputs on the point.

PRITHVI RAJA'S DEFEAT 119

was able to muster some 200,000 " cavaliers," and a pro-
portionate number of " men-at-arms " to his colours. The
two hosts came in sight of each other from the opposite
banks of the River Sarasvati ; Prithvi Raja having again
chosen his ground, " the Field of the Kuravas and Pan-
da vas " at Staneshwara, because of its auspiciousness
among all Hindus, and its good omen for himself also.

The time passed by the Afghans in preparations for the
coming battle was wasted by the Rajputs, who trusted
to the charmed ground whereon they camped, in athletic
sports and feasting ; when, one night, just before the
dawn, Muhammad Ghori, crossing the Sarasvati, suddenly
awoke the day with his drums and trumpets, and was
upon the Rajput host before his approach had been
observed. Prithvi Raja, however, soon got his army in
hand, and was apparently pressing Muhammad Ghori to a
second defeat, when the latter, feigning a general retreat,
and the unsuspecting Rajputs — true Aryas in this respect
— falling into the flagrant confusion of a reckless pursuit,
he at once charged them with the whole elite body of his
hitherto masked cavalry, called up from the right and
the left against the heroic Prithvi Raja. For miles " the
stricken field " was strewn with cast-away flags, and
spears, and shields, and heaped bows and jewelled swords,
and plumed casques, and gauntlets, greaves, and breast-
plates, exquisitely chiselled, and damascened, and gaily-
dyed scarves, all commingled with the blood of the count-
less dead. It was not only the number of the dead and
dying that was so portentous of evil to come, but their
position, their power, and their princely hearts.

Prithvi Raja, fighting to the last, his sword still in his
hand, refusing all surrender, though surrounded on every
side, and virtually a prisoner, was cut down in cold
blood. His youthful bride immolated herself on his
funeral pyre. The Prince of Chitor shared in his death ;
and with them also fell 150 of the purest and best " bloods "

120 THE RAJPUTS

of all the Rajput nobility of India. It was the Flodden
Field of Rajasthan ; and for 600 years India, India of the
Hindus, never recovered from that " doubly redoubled "
deadliest stroke of doom : not until England stepped
forward to revindicate her Aryan liberties from Turanian
slavery and oppression. Storming Ajmir, and massacring
its garrison, Muhammad Ghori, in 1194, passed on to
Kanauj, which fell an easy prey to his arms ; most of its
defenders being driven into the Jamna, with the brave old
Jaya Chandra at their head, " bearing up their chins " to
the last. When recovered his body could only be identified
by his case of false teeth, held together by gold wire !

In the dramatic contrasts of its opening and closing
scenes, surely never was a tragedy, not even of " the House
of Atreus," of deeper or more moving woe. It is the story
of Juliet and her Romeo, but involving in the pathetic fate
of these Rajput lovers the doom of a great mediaeval Aryan
Empire ; presenting Aryan civilisation and Aryan culture
in a brighter, happier — because more natural — and simpler
form than it had taken since the days of Alexander the
Great, or will ever take again ; for it was still Greek in
outward form as well as in sentiment and vitalising spirit.
No wonder that the story inspired Chand Bardai to sing
his undying requiem of the Rajput race. The scattered
remnants of the reigning families retired through the
defiles of the Jamna into the sequestered recesses of the
Aravali Hills, and the even more secretive solitudes of
the salt desert between the Luni and the Indus. Rao
Sivaji, the grandson of Jaya Chandra, settled in Marwar,
with his capital at Mandor.

The conquests of Gujarat, Oudh, Bengal and Behar
followed, and by 1206, the date of Muhammad Ghori's
assassination, the irregularly and loosely organised rule
of the Afghan Mahometans extended over all Hindustan,
or India north of the Tapti and Nerbudda Rivers, and the
Satpura and Vindhya Mountains.

LATER AFGHAN DYNASTIES 121

On the death of Muhammad Ghori,one of his "favourite"
slaves seized on the government of Afghanistan ; and
another, his ablest general, Kutubaddin, on that of
Hindustan, and founded the third Afghan dynasty of
India, called of " the Slave Kings," 1206-88, with their
throne at Delhi ; where the Kutub Minar commemorates
his name. During the reign of his successor, Chinghiz Khan
appeared on the banks of the Indus, and again between
1246 and 1266 ; and during the latter period an embassy
was sent to Mahmud II, the eighth of "the Slave Kings,"
from Hulaku Khan, the destroyer of Baghdad, a grandson
of Chinghiz Khan, and brother of Kublai Khan " in
Xanadu." However, the only events of this period
directly connected with Rajputana were the capture of
the hill fort of Rintambor in the Jaipur State, and a rising
of the Princes against Balin, the ninth " Slave King,"
1266-88, said to have been quelled in an immense slaughter
of the Rajputs.

The fourth Afghan dynasty of India, called " the House
of Khilji," was founded on two assassinations by the
Khilji chieftain Jelaluddin in 1288. He was succeeded,
after the assassination of his two sons, by his nephew
Allauddin Khilji, "The Sanguinary," whose reign is
memorable for a great raid of the Mo(n)gols on Delhi,
1298 ; and for the commencement of the regular sub-
jugation of the Deccan and the Carnatic. Risings of
the Rajputs were put down by the reduction of Gujarat,
1297, the capture of Jaisalmir in 1294, the recapture
of Rintambor in 1300, and the siege and sack of Chitor,
1303-5. The Gehelot Prince, driven to despair, resorted
to the awful rite of the johur. His queen, Padmani,
a woman of notable beauty, with all the ladies of the
court, and the wives of the warriors, built up a vast
funeral pyre in the centre of the city, and " so passed, as
in a chariot of fire, to the Heaven of Indra " ; and all the
men rushed out through the gates upon the besiegers, who

122 THE RAJPUTS

cut down the most of them on the spot, a few only es-
caping into the overhanging Aravali Hills. This is " the
First Sack of Chitor," of the three great " sacks " of that
city. With the poisoning of Jelaluddin by his " favourite "
slave and trusted general, Malik Kafur, and the murder
of his third son and successor by his own " favourite "
minister, a vile parvari [compare the Greek 7rdpoiKog,
" parishioner "], an outcast from Hinduism, and a pervert
to Islam, the House of Khilji came to its hideous end in
1321.

The fifth Afghan dynasty in India, called " the House
of Tughlak," from its founder, Gheiazuddin Tughlak,
Governor of the Punjab, the son of a Turkman slave by a
Jat mother, reigned in a succession of seven kings from
1321 to 1412. This period is marked by the rebellion of
the Mahometan Governors of the provinces of the Empire
against the central authority at Delhi, and by the terrifying
advent of Timurlangra, " Timur-t he-lame," " Great Tam-
burlame," at Attock, September 1, 1398. He swept
through Hindustan like a devastating whirlwind ; and,
on being proclaimed Emperor at Delhi, after massacring
100,000 prisoners in cold blood, in jubilation over the
occasion, and going in state to the noble mosque of polished
white marble on the banks of the Jamna, " to render to
the Divine Majesty his humble tribute of fervent praise
for the signal honour done him," he recrossed the Indus,
in March, 1399, in the same unexpected way as when he
entered India just six months before ; taking with him
the massed, incomputable, and incomparable pillage of
Delhi, Meerut and Hard war.

The sixth Afghan dynasty, called " the Four Seiads,"
1414-1450, ruled at Delhi as Viceroys of the Mo(n)gols ;
and the Seventh, called " the Three Kings of the House of
Lodi," 1450-1526, was the last of the abhorred Afghan
dynasties of India. Altogether, they had torn and battened
on her, like wild devouring dogs, 320 years.

THE EMPEROR BABER 123

The Mo(n)gols

The Afghan Governor of Lahore, himself a Lodi, having
revolted from Ibrahim Lodi, the last of his dynasty, called
in the aid of Zahiruddin Muhammad, surnamed Babar
[" Baber "], " the Lion-hearted," hereditary Khan of
Kokan. He was the sixth in descent from Timur, and, on
his mother's side, a descendant also of Chinghiz Khan.
Having occupied Kabul in 1504, and Kandahar in 1522,
he readily responded to the invitation of Daulat Khan
Lodi ; his first act, after crossing the Indus, being to
seize and depose the disloyal Daulat Khan, as an un-
trustworthy person to leave on the line of his communica-
tions with Central Asia while on the march to Delhi.
Baber had only 20,000 men with him, but mostly Turkman
cavalry ; and when he found himself barred at Panipat by
Ibrahim Lodi with an army of 100,000 men and 1,000
elephants, he at once extended himself, masking his
cavalry on both flanks. He let Ibrahim Lodi exhaust
himself in repeated attempts to rush the position, and
then, at the psychological moment, slipping his elite
cavalry on the disordered Afghan host, and assailing
them on the right hand and the left, he struck down
5,000 of them on the spot, with Ibrahim Lodi in their midst.
The rest of the rout, recoiling before his solid assault like
surging waves from a rock-bound shore, were rolled back
in a headlong flight, and torrent of bloodshed, into the
swift -flowing, unheeding stream of the Jamna. In such-
wise, on April 19, 1526, was the second of " the four
historical Battles of Panipat " won and lost. The capture
of Agra [compare " ager," a " field "] immediately
followed. Henceforward, throughout the rule of the
Mo(n)gol Emperors of Delhi [1526-1806, and nominally
to 1857], the history of Hindustan passes into the open
light of our own day, and need be no further traced here

124 THE RAJPUTS

beyond its points of contact with the history of Rajasthan,
as now contracted into Rajputana.

Neither the Afghans nor the Rajputs anticipated that
Baber would remain in India after the plunder of Delhi
and Agra. They expected that he would return like Timur,
with the bloated burden of his bag and baggage, into
Central Asia. He had, however, resolved to govern India
in India ; and forthwith set about the supersession of the
rebellious provincial Governors of the Lodis, and the
resurgent Rajputs, entrusting his arduous duty to his
eldest son and successor, Humayun. The Rajputs, when
they found that Baber had come to stay among them, at
once rose against him, in a last desperate effort to restore
the Kshatriya supremacy throughout Hindustan. They
were led by Rana Sanga the Kalas [compare " ccelus "],
" the Pinnacle — of glory " of Chitor, and the Rai of
Jaipur, and the Rao of Jodhpur, and Medni Rai, a brave
and enterprising Rajput cadet, who had recently possessed
himself of the fortress and territory of Chanderi in Malwa.
This patriotic league was shattered at a blow at the battle
of Sikri — afterward called by the Mahometans Fatehpur,
the " City of Victory "—February, 1527. Shortly after
this, Bahadur, the Sultan of Gujarat, invaded Mewar, and
storming Chitor, 1532, " the second Sack of Chitor," the
noble Rajput queen before celebrating the johur sent her
bracelet to Humayun, to pledge him by this immemorial
Rajput token of adopted brotherhood, to the protection of
her son. The magnanimous Mo(n)gol at once marched
against Bahadur, and drove him back into Gujarat. But
Humayun, although brave and generous, was unenter-
prising, and was never free from troubles with the Afghans
during a reign, often only nominal, of 25 years, 1530-1556.
Jellaluddin, surnamed Akbar, " the Great," the son of
Humayun, was, throughout his reign, 1556-1605, the
contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603. He, or
rather his faithful guardian and great general, Beiram,

MARITAL ALLIANCES 125

stamped out the Afghans, now led by a great Kshatriya
general, Hemu, on the plain of Panipat, November 5, 1556,
44 the third Battle of Panipat " ; and the following six
years, 1567-73, were spent in the reduction of the again
resurgent Rajputs. The first to submit was Bahara Mai
of Amber [Jaipur], one of whose daughters had been taken
in marriage (? 1561) by Akbar ; and the daughter of whose
son, Rai Bhagvandas, was married (? 1585) to Selim, the
son and successor, under the name of Jehanghir, 44 the
World Conqueror," of Akbar. Again, on the submission
of Jodhpur in 1573, Rao Udai Sing gave up his sister
Jodha Bai in marriage to Akbar. Raja Man Sing, another
brave and ever-faithful general of Akbar, was a member
of the reigning family of Jaipur ; and another Kshatriya
Jodai Mai, distinguished as a general, was also a distin-
guished financier, and the greatest of Akbar 's ministers.
The great Emperor's employment of Kshatriya Hindus,
in this way, in high office, and responsible military com-
mands, served greatly to reconcile them to the rule of the
Mahometans ; and his marriages with the Rajput prin-
cesses also undoubtedly improved the physical vigour
and the intellectual power of the offspring of 44 the Great
Mo(n)gols," and tended to ameliorate the religious and
social prejudices separating Mahometans and Hindus.
But, at the time, the Houses of Jodhpur and Jaipur
incurred much odium and contempt for permitting these
family alliances. The Rana of Chitor resolutely refused
to acquiesce in the degradation, as he regarded it, and
defied the wrath of Akbar against his proud and scornful
contumacy. He preferred death to what he deemed, and
was deemed by all his peers, to be dishonour, and the
foulest dishonour. Akbar accordingly laid siege to Chitor ;
when, there being no hope of deliverance, the Rani
solemnised the rite of johur. This is known as 44 the third
Sack of Chitor," 1567-8. Udai Sing, the Rana, on the
approach of Akbar, leaving the defence of the city to Jai

126 THE RAJPUTS

Mai, the Chief of Bednor, had sought refuge in the neigh-
bouring forests, where he afterwards built the city of
Udaipur, making a vow that so long as Chitor remained
a ruin, neither he nor his successors would twist their
beards in the Rajput fashion, or eat or drink from any-
thing but leaves, or sleep on anything but straw ; and to
this day the Ranas of Udaipur sleep on sumptuous beds
laid on straw, and eat from golden and silvern plates laid
on green leaves, and never twist their beards.

By 1592 Akbar had made himself master of Hindustan,
keeping a strong hold on Afghanistan, as the key to the
plains of the Indus and Ganges ; and he now commenced
operations for the recovery of the lost Deccan to Islam.
But in 1601 his health seriously failed him, and the last
five years of his life were overshadowed by the gloomiest
forebodings for the future. He knew that he was a man
superior to all the men about him ; that there was none to
carry on his work, or that even understood its full signifi-
cance. He died in absolute mental isolation, — as of the
alonely eagle in its solemnising flight at sundown to its
lofty upland " aire." In truth he was not only the greatest
of " the Great Mo(n)gols," but pre-eminent above all his
pre-eminent contemporaries in Europe ; an ornament and
pride not only of Islam, but of the human race. His
transcendent name in India not so much rests on his
conquests, as on his genius in consolidating them, and
creating the organisation for their civil administration
and military defence.

He freely bestowed, or rather enforced, religious tolera-
tion on his subjects ; and could he have had his will of
their hearts he would have broken down all social barriers
between them. He advanced Hindus not only to the
highest and most dignified, but to the most responsible
and confidential appointments in the State : and never
should it be forgotten that they served him with scrupulous
and whole-hearted fidelity, and that the very loyalest of

AKBAR'S DYING YEARS 127

them were the strictest and most uncompromising devotees
of their own religious beliefs and observances. He abolished
the infamous poll tax on Hindus, he forbade sati [" suttee"],
and encouraged the remarriage of Hindu widows. He
severely repressed the attempts of the Rajputs to act
independently in matters of high policy and State necessity;
but so long as they were submissive in their political rela-
tions with the Paramount Power he not only respected
their social prejudices, and sympathised with their mis-
fortunes and aspirations, but treated them as valued and
honoured and trusted friends ; and he made the most
advantageous uses of them for the purposes of imperial
defence ; not attempting to dragoon them into uniformity
with the Mo(n)gol drill-books, but leaving them in their
own national military formations, racy of the soil, as
volunteer troops, who above all, horse and foot, were, each
one of them, a gentleman, as it was of olden days with the
Scots clansmen. He never interfered in any way in the
internal economy of their sovereign States ; and he never
in the benign intelligence of his capacious brain, conceived
the thought of forcing an alien system of education on a
people who, through at least 2000 years of history, had
elaborated the most perfect type of Aryan speech, and
created a splendid literature, and unique architectural
and industrial arts of their own, and a highly spiritualised
idiosyncratic religious culture. We may therefore the
better understand the anguish of his dying years, 1603-5 ;
the daily failing of his great heart for fear, and for looking
forward to the evils that he saw were coming on the
Mo(n)gol Empire when his own fate was fulfilled. He was
constantly speaking to his family and his great nobles
of the inevitable consequences of their mutual jealousies
and rivalries, and of the imminent dangers of persisting
in them ; and exhorting them to concord and frank co-
operation. But they were as words spoken to the wind
that bloweth where it listeth : while at this very time,

128 THE RAJPUTS

(February of 1601) " riding in Thames, between Lyme-
house and Blackwall" were the " Hector," " Ascension,"
" Susan," and " Guift," with the " Red Dragon " of the
" First Voyage " of the first East India Company, freighted
with the " unshunable destiny " of the English race in
Asia ; those who turned a deaf ear to the warnings of
Akbar little witting that they were thus already preparing
the way before it.

Ill

The English in India

In the reign of Jehanghir, 1605-27, the ever-smouldering
disaffection of the Rajputs was, after a reverse suffered by
the imperial troops in 1610, appeased for a time, on terms
most advantageous to the Rana of Mewar, Amara II, the
grandson of Udai Sing. Shah Jehan, the third son of
Jehanghir, owed his succession to the throne of Delhi,
1628-58, to the support given him by the Rajputs, who in
his reign were equally powerful in the court and the camp
of the Great Mo(n)gol. The year of his succession was also
the year of the birth of Sivaji, the man of men destined
to reanimate the Mahrattas with that Aryan passion for
personal freedom and pride of race which, under un-
paralleled adversities, had sustained the Rajputs through
800 years of uncompromising hostility to the rule of the
Arabian, Afghan, and Mo(n)gol Mahometans. The auspices
seemed favourable to the future of India — India of the
Hindus ; but the Mahrattas were new to the respon-
sibilities of power ; while the Rajputs, in the course of
their prolonged struggle for very existence with the
Mahometans, had lost something of the foresight and
sagacity of their once magnanimous statesmanship.
Instead of uniting in a common policy toward the Mo(n)gol
Empire, these inherently patriotic Hindu nationalities

ENGLISH INTERPOSITION 129

entered on a fratricidal contest for predominance at Delhi ;
with consequences that would have brought universal
ruin on India, but for the tardy and reluctant, but at last
definite interposition of the English in their internecine
warfarings. Aurungzib,1 " the Ornament of the Throne,"
otherwise known as Alumgir, " the Conqueror of the
Universe," the perfidious, intolerant, fanatical, and cruel
fourth son of Shah Jehan, secured the succession to the
throne by a series of the very blackest and most inhuman
murders. Both Jeswunt Sing Rao of Jodhpur and Jai
Sing of Udaipur had assisted him against Sivaji ; but his
reimposition of the poll tax alienated the loyalty of the
Rajput Princes ; and his vindictive treatment of the widow
and children of Jeswunt Sing drove them again into open
revolt ; and they were conciliated only by the remission
of the tyrannous and obnoxious tax.

Under Bahadur Shah, otherwise Shah Alam I (1707-12),
the grandson of Aurungzib, the Sikhs and Mahrattas gave
great trouble at Delhi ; and on an alliance being formed
between Rana Amira II of Udaipur, Sivaji Jai Sing of
Jaipur, and Ajit Sing [son of Jeswunt Sing of Jodhpur],
virtual independence was granted to Raj put ana. For the
support rendered at this crisis, and in the previous re-
bellion against the poll tax, by Jaipur and Jodhpur to
Udaipur, they had restored to their Houses the privilege
of marriage with Udaipur. Unfortunately, the concession
revived the antipathies excited against the former families
for having given their daughters in marriage to Akbar and
Humayun, and greatly aggravated the rivalries among the
Rajput Princes for marriage with the pure-blooded
princesses of Udaipur ; the tragical issue of one of these

1 Zib, " Ornament," occurs also in the name of his daughter, Zibanisa,
" the Ornament of her Sex," the poetess Makhfi, i.e. " the Anonymous " ;
and of Zibilina, the wife of the nephew of Kublai Khan. And in the name
of the Zibu, the [beautiful] humped " Brahmany Bull " of India, Bos
indicus ; and of the [striped] " Zebra," and the Zebayer islands in the
Red Sea.

130 THE RAJPUTS

romantic feuds directly leading at length to the estab-
lishment in 1817-18 of the British protectorate of
Raj put ana.

The eighth Mo(n)gol (1712), a son of Shah Alam I, the
ninth (1712-19), and tenth and eleventh (1719-20), all
grandsons of Shah Alam I, are empty names ; but the
ninth, Farukshah, may be named because of his marriage,
in 1713, with a daughter of Ajit Sing of Jodhpur. Muham-
mad Shah, the twelfth Mo(n)gol Emperor (1720-48), was
entirely in the hands of the Mahrattas, to whom he granted
the chouth, or " one-fourth " of the revenues of the Deccan.
The Mahrattas being called in by Jagat Sing II of Udaipur
to assist him in asserting the claims of his nephew to the
vacant gadi of Jaipur, also received for this service the
chouth of Mewar, and the session of the district of Rampur.
But the outstanding event of Muhammad Shah's reign
was the invasion of India by Nadir Shah, 1738-9, with
its climax in the bloody massacres of Delhi, and the
symbolical abduction of " the Peacock Throne " of Shah
Jehan. In the last year of his reign India was again in-
vaded, this time by the terrible Ahmed Shah Abdalli,
one of the lieutenants of Nadir Shah in his conquest. He
was met and repulsed by Muhammad Shah's son, and
successor, Ahmed Shah, 1748-54. But " the Abdalli "
was permitted to retain possession of the Punjab [Lahore
and Multan] as a solatium for a check recognised as full
of menace for the future of the Mo(n)gol Empire. Under
Alamghir II, the fourteenth Emperor, 1754-9, a brother
of Muhammad Shah, the dreaded Abdalli once more
crossed the Indus [1756, the year of " the Black
Hole "], and having seated his infant son in the
government of the Punjab, marched on Delhi, and
entered the city on September 11, 1757 [the year of
Plassey]. But pestilence breaking out in his army, he at
once, with his prolonged lumbering trains of high-packed
loot, marched back to Kabul.

THE FOURTH BATTLE OF PANIPAT 131

The nominal reign of Alamghir's son, Shah Alam II,
was from 1761 to 1806. As soon as " the Abdalli " was
out of sight, the wirepullers at Delhi incited the Mahrattas
to plunder the Punjab, and this most ill-advised, if brilliant,
adventure again brought " the Abdalli " down upon Delhi.
After many marchings and counter-marchings, the Mah-
rattas were at the last driven to bay, and entrenched
themselves at Panipat, there to await the onset of the
Abdalli. His force was less numerous than theirs ; while
careful, therefore, to watch them on every side, he resolved
to wait until they were starving before he destroyed them.
He had not to wait long, for on the eve of January 6 (our
" Twelfth Day "), 1761, Sivadasa Rao sent round the
word : " The cup is full to the brimming, and we must
drink it down to the dregs " ; and at dawn the following
day, hounded on by hunger, the whole army moved out to
the attack, 65,000 horse, 15,000 foot, 200 cannon, and
200,000 Pindharis, the Chinchuses of their date. The
Sindhia was on the right, the Holkar, with the Rajput
auxiliaries, in the centre, and the Mahrattas from Sivaji's
svai-raj (" Own-kingdom," compare svadeshi, " Own-
country ") on the left. The latter, " the dalesmen "
(mavalis) of the Western Ghats, between Poona and
Satara, drove back the Abdalli's right, and the Rajputs
and Jats drove back his centre, and the fortune of the day
would have been with the Hindu army, but that the
Holkar at this moment treacherously abandoned the
field, and was incontinently followed by the Rajputs.
" The fourth battle of Panipat " then became the Armaged-
don of the Mahrattas.

The fight ended, and Delhi well looted, the Abdalli
returned to Kabul, where he died, having no bonds in his
death, in 1773. At Delhi itself everything was left in
confusion worse confounded than before ; sometimes the
Mahrattas securing possession of the person of the puppet
Emperor, and sometimes the Mahometans, each in turn

132 THE RAJPUTS

wielding his still controlling sceptre as the madder " Lords
of Misrule."

Rajputana suffered terribly during the chaos. In Me war
the Rana Jagat Sing, 1733-51, had, as already said, sur-
rendered Rampura, and agreed to pay half chouth to the
Mahrattas. In the reigns of his successors, Raj Sing,
1754-61, and Arsi Sing, 1761-71, the State was constantly
overrun by roving bands of these freebooters ; and the
Rana, Amira II, 1771-7, was compelled to yield up several
districts to the Scindhia and the Holkar of the period.
But it was in the early part of Bhim Sing's long reign, 1777-
1828, that Me war suffered most from the senseless and
ruinous raids of these marauding Mahrattas. Jaipur and
Jodhpur were treated in the like manner, but the energetic
Jaipur Prince, Pratab Sing, 1769-1803, in alliance with
the Jodhpur Prince, Vijaya Sing, 1752-93, succeeded in
inflicting condign chastisement on them at the battle of
Tonga, 1787 ; when Vijaya Sing obtained possession of
Ajmir, after it had been held continuously from 1756 by
the Mahrattas.

It was inevitable that England would be drawn into
the vortex ; but the pressure of the Mahrattas was first
felt by the Honourable East India Company chiefly
in Southern India. The complications of the position
were perplexing, but Warren Hastings1 was now at the

1 See Sir John Strachey's Hastings and the Rohilla War ; Sir G. W.
Forrest's Selections from the Records of the Foreign Department of the
Government of India, 1772-85 ; and Sir Charles Lawson in The Journal of
Indian Art and Industry, 1892, on his pilgrimage to the grave of Warren
Hastings at Daylesford. Sir Charles Lawson's mongraph is of particular
interest and value, proving as it does, and all the more impressively
because quite unintentionally, that the success of Warren Hastings as a
public servant was based on his solid English worthiness in every relation
of private life. He was the subject of the most cruel calumnies by the
" Little Englanders " of his day, and his great memory was for nearly a
century obscured by their scandalous misrepresentations ; but men like
Warren Hastings always have God on their side, Who, if patient, is unerring
in His law, in the end discriminating clearly and strongly between right
and wrong. Looking through Sir Charles Lawson's illustrations, one
cannot help feeling that after all it is some reparation for the wrongs a

GODDARD'S MARCH 138

head of affairs [1772, 1774-85], and at the right moment
ordered Colonel Leslie to lead a force from Calcutta, dia-
gonally across the breadth of the peninsula, upon Surat ;
and on Leslie's showing himself a little dilatory in his
preparations for the adventure, forthwith replaced him
in the command by Colonel Thomas Goddard,1 who,
starting off from Calcutta in October, 1778, reached Surat
on February 6, 1779. This memorable feat of combined
political insight, sagacity, courage, and military skill
and vigour, was vehemently denounced in England as " a
frantic exploit." The reply is, that but for such heroical
frenzies the English would never have been Lords Para-
mount of India : and the triumphant result of " Goddard' s
March " was the Treaty of Salbai, 1782, regulating the
future relations of England with the Mahrattas, and the
Nizam, and " Tipu Sahib."

The prestige of the Mahrattas having been lowered by
Goddard's splendid achievement, and further injured in
Hindustan by the victory of the Rajputs at Tonga, they
lost for a time their influence at Delhi ; and Shah Alam II
passed into the hands of the Mahometan faction of the
Mo(n)gol Court. Suspecting that he had amassed great
treasure, the Rohilla,2 Golam Kadir, to induce him to

man may suffer in life, to lie in death in so unpretentious and tranquil an
English grave as that wherein Warren Hastings sleeps at Daylesford, the
very place of his birth, and instinct with the spirit of the antique bene-
diction : " Peace be here " [Eij<p7]fj.la Vrw]. In the darkest hours a states-
man can know, — when the beneficent results of the labours of years are
suddenly exposed to destruction by party politicians, with their wild mad
whirlwind of winged words, wielding the ignorant, wayward masses to
their will, and he is assailed on all sides by the parasites of these dema-
gogues, base-bred, foul-mouthed, mean fellows, Thersites-like apt in all
the vile arts of contumely and detraction, — in such hours of personal
affront and insult, and evilest national portent, the tardy but complete
vindication the private and public character of Warren Hastings has at
length received, should reanimate faith and hope, and the sweet serenity of
his sequestered grave breathe balm.

1 Afterward Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army. Falling
sick, and " invalided home," he died in sight of the Land's End, July 7,
1783.

2 The Rohillas [from rohu, " a mountain "] were Afghans [the Assakani

134 THE RAJPUTS

reveal the place of its concealment, put his sons [the second
was Akbar II, the sixteenth Mo(n)gol Emperor, 1806-37]
and grandsons [the son of Akbar II was M. Bahadur, the
seventeenth and last Mo(n)gol Emperor, 1837-57], to
piteous tortures before the presence of the unhappy
monarch. This failing of its fell purpose the Rohilla
Chieftain, in his fiendish rage, snatching the dagger from
Shah Alam's girdle, gouged out both his eyes with it,
casting them one after the other to the ground. The
Mahrattas now regained hold of the blind, broken-hearted
Emperor ; and, using their opportunity to cause trouble
once more in Southern India, brought on another conflict
with us, 1803, "the Second Mahratta War," so called.
After Wellington's victory at Assaye, September 23, 1803,
it was most satisfactorily concluded by " the Treaty of
Deogaom," of December 17, 1803, with the Bhonsla
[Mahratta ruler of the Sivaji family] of Berar, and " the
Treaty of Argengaom," of December 30, 1803, with the
Sindhia — a marvellous year's work, due chiefly to the
energy of the Marquis of Wellesley, as Governor-General,
1798-1805. Subsidiary treaties of protection were made
with Jaipur, Jodhpur, and others of the Rajput States.
These treaties were condemned " at Home " as committing
England to the virtual " Protectorate of India " ; and
this weak, evasive demeanour of ours [that is of the
Parliamentary " Opposition " of the day], before an
obvious duty, disheartening the Rajputs, and encouraging
the Holkar, — who, owing to the vacillations of policy
caused by political cowardice of " the Home Government,"
had all along been left at large, — he at once fell upon Raj-

— from Sanskrit asvaka, " horseman " — of the Greeks] who settled in and
gave their name — Rohilkhand — to the country between the Jamna and
the Ganges, about Bareilly, Moradabad and Bijnour up to the Tarai. They
cleared these districts of their Hindu inhabitants. Their later encroach-
ments on Oudh led to the Nawab Vizier of that country seeking the pro-
tection of the English against them ; which was at once given by Warren
Hastings, 1781.

AN UNREAL PEACE 185

putana, and thus brought on " the Third Mahratta War,"
April, 1804, to December, 1805.

Although the Holkar caused some trouble, Lord Lake
cut him up severely at Fatehghar. But the simultaneous
delay in the siege of the Jat fortress of Bhurtpur em-
boldening the Sindhia to join the Holkar, a preposterous
panic seized on the authorities at Home, who, in July, 1805,
sent out Lord Cornwallis again to Calcutta with express
instructions to restore peace at any price. A separate
" peace," in which there was no peace, was at once made
with the Sindhia and the Holkar ; and, although they
both were absolutely in our power, the shameful and
shameless price we paid for it was the sacrifice of our
faithful allies in Raj putana to the unleashed vengeance
of their hereditary foes.

Mewar, still under Bhim Sing, was scoured from end to
end by the Sindhia and Holkar, and the notorious Afghan
adventurer, Amir Khan, the ancestor of the Nawabs of
Tonk. The cities were destroyed, the forests burnt down,
the fields laid waste, and the people driven with feline
ferocity up into the unassailable and safe fastnesses of
the Aravali and Satpura Hills, and Vindhya Mountains.
Jaipur, under Jajat Sing II, 1803-18, was similarly
devastated and desolated ; and Marwar, where Man
Sing's first act on the gadi, 1803, was to assent to the
repudiation by ourselves of the treaty of protection we
had solemnly entered into with his predecessor, " in
articulo mortis," was left by us to the same lamentable
fate. But the most abject and basest betrayal of all was
of the little Rajput State of Bundi. When the British,
under Colonel Monson, were retreating before Holkar, July
8 to August 31, 1804, they at length reached Bundi,
where Umed Sing, disregarding the reprisals of the Holkar,
gave them a most cordial reception, rendered them every
possible assistance, and conducted them safely through
his kingdom, and out of all pressing danger ; thus ful-

186 THE RAJPUTS

filling to the letter, and in the frankest manner, the obliga-
tions we had enforced on him in 1803. Yet, and in spite
of Lord Lake's protestations, we left him completely
disclosured to the ruthless vindictiveness of the Holkar ;
for the Government in London had given their panic-
stricken orders, and the abdominous and slouchy General
who had surrendered Yorktown, and made the inconclusive
Treaty of 1702 with " Tipu Sahib," good slogging fighter
though he was, had not the stuff in him to turn, in reply,
upon the contemptible authorities in England with an
accomplished fact overmastering all remonstrance or
reproof.

Further serious aggravations of the troubles created by
the policy initiated through Lord Cornwallis, were stayed
by his transparently providential death ; and when the
Earl of Minto went out as Governor-General (1807-18),
the fatal consequences of our dastardly truckling to the
Mahrattas were so obvious, that the exercise of the
greatest discretion was required on the part of the Govern-
ment of India, if order and peace were to be maintained
in the country.

Then occurred the strange, sinister quarrel between
Jaipur and Jodhpur for the hand of Krishna Thumari Bai,
the younger daughter of the twice aforesaid Rana Bhim
Sing (1777-1828), of Udaipur. She had been betrothed
to Bhim Sing of Jodhpur (1798-1803), and on his death
was claimed by his successor, Man Sing, on the specious
plea that her betrothal was to the throne of Jodhpur,
and not to the person in passing occupation of it. Her
father, however, had already betrothed her to Jagat Sing,
the effeminate and debauched Prince of Jaipur. The
lovely Thumari Bai, born in 1792, was barely 12 years
of age at this time ; and for the next seven years Raj-
putana was convulsed by the rivalry of Jaipur and
Jodhpur for her innocent little hand. Nearly every Prince
and Chief in Raj put ana took part in the direful quarrel :—

A DAUGHTER'S SACRIFICE 137

a revival in the nineteenth century a.d. of the great
mythical war in the fourteenth century B.C. of the Mahab-
harata ; and on its very scene.

In a fatal moment both sides sought the support of the
infamous Amir Khan, and his brutal banditti of renegade
Mahrattas and Pindharis ; who accorded it, now to the
one side and now to the other, as they outbid each other
for his mercenary and merciless sword. In his extremity
the Rana of Udaipur besought the intervention of the
English. Under the influence of the cruel orders from
Home, this was refused ; and, driven to despair, the
miserable father yielded to the demand of the scoundrel
Amir Khan to have his daughter murdered. She was now
eighteen, and Greek in the grace and sweetness of her
perfected loveliness ; and, obedient to a fate that would,
as was hoped, bring her royal House and renowned country
peace — attired as a royal bride — taking the poisoned
[opiate] kasamba bowl, timidly proffered to her by her
distracted father, and crying out gallantly, " This is the
bridegroom foredoomed for me ! " — she drank it to the
last drop, falling down on the floor, in a deadly swoon, at
the feet of her weeping handmaids. The heart-breaking
tragedy filled India, and filled England, with horror,
anguish, and remorse ; and served more to convince the
conscience of the people of England of the iniquity of our
pusillanimous perfidy toward Rajputana, after " the Second
Mahratta War," than even the representations of Lord
Minto on its improvidence and folly.

It fell to the Marquis of Hastings, as seventh Governor-
General, to carry out the virile policy recommended by
Lord Minto ; and, after settling scores with Nepal, he
carried through his short and thoroughly effective cam-
paigns of October, 1817, to February 10, 1818. They were
signalised by the victories of Kirki, Nagpur, Mehedpur,
Korigaum, and Ashte, involving the virtual extermination
of the Pindharis ; and were felicitously terminated by

138 THE RAJPUTS

" the Treaty of Mandeshwar," in Rajputana, whereby
a final accommodation was come to with the Mahratta
States of the Deccan, and the British Protectorate over
Rajputana was reaffirmed and permanently constituted.
The Holkar had to give up the whole of his ill-gotten
territories in Rajputana ; and the State of Bundi was
liberally compensated for its disinterested loyalty to the
British Raj.

" And thus in happy days, and rest, and peace,"

44 the Fourth Mahratta War " was brought to its beneficent
end.

The fort of Asirghar, indeed, was not taken until
April 9, 1819. It crowns an isolated hill of the Satpura
[" Seven-towns "] range, south of Mhow and Indore, both
away on the other side of the river. I lived in the fort
some two years between 1832 and 1839 ; and I believe
I can correctly recall every prominent feature of the
fortress, and of the rock on which it stands. I certainly
could draw a good ground-plan of its platform, and a
recognisable silhouette of its profile ; and I well recollect
the awe and execration with which to that day the people
about me spoke of the Pindharis in the last Mahratta war.
The large beaten brass gindi [" hollowed "], in which I
tubbed, and took with me to England in 1839, had been
an unconsidered portion of the prize booty recaptured
from the Pindharis some fifteen years previously.1 On

1 Asirghar is one of the finest stations in India for the observation of
sunrises and sunsets, and moonlight effects. In the clear sapphire of the
earth's shadow we call the night, the stars, as viewed from this, and
similar Indian hill forts, do not shimmer, but shine with the bright steady
glow of distant orbs hanging at varying altitudes in the illimitable heights
of the heavens ; and the face of the moon is seen in full relief, and to be
not of silvern, but of pearly radiance of the most exquisite nacre ; and the
varying remoteness and magnitude of these worlds upon worlds define
an inter-stellar perspective, leading the eye in every direction, beyond the
pillars of " the Seven Planets," and beyond " the Towers of the Twelve
Signs " of the Zodiac, and on and on through endless vistas of glory into
the very mystery of Infinity ; — and the mind, losing all sense of time, as
measured by days, and weeks, and months, and years, seems by a trans-

PINDHARI MEMORIES 139

every one of the six occasions on which I crossed the
Nerbudda, going and returning from Mhow and Indore,
or from excursions into Rajputana, there was some mur-
derous scrimmage afoot along the rough countryside over-
hanging the right bank of the river ; and every day
Bhils were to be seen from afar following the jungle tracks
through Khandesh, when I was visiting my uncle at
Dhulia ; and arrows were discharged at the palanquin, or
the pony, wherever I happened to be borne.

This condition of things, between only seventy and
eighty years ago, is now entirely forgotten, if it was ever
realised by the sleek dwellers of the populous maritime
cities that have grown up in India under the aegis of the
British Raj — Calcutta and Madras, and Bombay and
Karachi. But they remain living memories for Khandesh,
Malwa, Bhopal, and Rajputana ; and in all the domestic
histories of the reigning Rajput families, after the sickening
record of the untoward calamities of the fifty-seven years,
from 1761 to 1818, there is a sudden change to the joyous
and frankly grateful acknowledgment made of the im-
provement in the material and moral condition of the
country and in the position of the sovereign Princes, under
the terms of the Treaty of Mandeshwar ; and in every
instance these histories associate the redemption of Raj-
putana— as of a brand plucked out of the burning — with
the ever -revered name of Colonel James Tod.

mutation overmastering all materiality and self- consciousness, to pass into
the absolute, unconditioned light and perfect life of Eternity. The
Vindhyan sunrises and sunsets also have their own fulness of glory, and
may be compared in their magnificence with those seen from Edinburgh
Castle and Stirling Castle and Dumbarton Castle ; but they have not the
specific celestitude, and do not inspire the definite wonder and awe and
worship of the moonlight nights of Asirghar, ringing through all their
sapphire depths with the song of the " Trisagion " ; " 'Agios 'o Theos,
'Agios Ischyros, 'Agios Athanatos.,,

140 THE RAJPUTS

IV

Verba Novissima

This is the round, unvarnished recital, running through
twenty centuries, from Alexander the Great to Muhammad
ibn Kasim, and onward to Karim Khan, of the unflinching
and inebranlable antagonism of the high-souled Rajputs
against every intruder into India, and every hateful per-
secutor of " the twice-born " Hindus ; a hostility inspired
to the last, as from the first, by the unquenchable love of
individual freedom and the unswerving, self-sustained
fortitude denotative of every true-blooded Aryan race.
In all the unrivalled record of their interminable warfarings,
whatever the emergency of their merciless fate, their
spirit was never broken, and whatever the storm and
stress of unequal battle, their rent flag was never lowered.
When it could no longer be upheld, they raised the dread
signal of the rallying johur ; and shoulder to shoulder, and
back to back, fought their feud out to the well and
righteously purposed end of every good fight between
gentlemen of " fire i' the blood."

The practical reflections suggested by the trumpet -
tongued chronicle, and pressed by it as well upon us
Englishmen as upon Rajputs, are : — What causes have
conduced to the vitality of the Rajput passion for personal
virility ? and, What lessons have the results of them, as
read in their history, for themselves, and, in especial, for
ourselves ? — not as an imperial people, for that wider
scope of the question lies beyond my province here, but as
individual men, living the round of our daily lives among
other men. The less invidious course will be to let the
reply to the first interrogation be the reply also to the
second ; and it is this : — The predetermining and pre-
ponderating influences in the development of the strong

THEIR VIRILITY 141

historical personality of the Rajputs have been the
superiority of race they as Aryas share with the English
and other Germans in Europe and North America ; and
with the French and other Latins, and the Greeks of
Southern Europe ; and the Russians, and the Persians ;
and the proper pride fostered in every man of them by
the self -consciousness of their ethnical superiority ; and
the instinctive exclusiveness, engendered by this pride,
with which, by vigorously avoiding mixed marriages,
they have sought to sustain the pristine purity of their
pan -Aryan strain. The distinguishing note of this
superiority is virility, as shown in every worthy and be-
seeming quality implied thereby — temperance, endurance,
patience, courage, fortitude, equity, and, above all these,
because the sum of them all, magnanimity ; and again,
in all these natural virtues, educated to their perfected
expression in the character of chivalrous men. Of such
are " the brave in the dark," the darkness of forgotten
history, " the heroes before Agamemnon " ; and again the
innumerable English youths, beardless striplings, " steeped
in honour and in discipline," who yearly yield up their
lives in our Army and Navy, a last sacrifice to patriotism,
" unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," because there is
no Homer to immortalise their deeds.1 Their daring
is its own reward, and their one desire to find in the
44 enemy " they needs must meet an equal daring to their
own. In Fletcher's Bouduca, the prayer of Caratach
[44 Caractacus "] to the British War-God, Andate,2 is : —

" Give us this day good-hearts, good enemies,
Good blows o' both sides, wounds that fear, or flight,
Can claim no share in : —

Let Rome put on her best strength, and thy Britain,
This little Britain — but as great in fortune —
Meet her as strong as she, as proud and daring."

1 " ' Quo procul hinc ' — the legend's writ,
— The frontier grave is far away ! —
1 Qui ante diem periit,
Sed Miles, sed Pro P atria.' "
2 Andate, Andraste, or Andras, was a "goddess," and in Fletcher's

142 THE RAJPUTS

This is the prayer of every British soldier's heart when
marching into " the field of slaughter," and this was the
prayer from the heart of every Rajput Prince when
solemnly entering on a campaign against Delhi, Gwalior,
or Indore, addressed to their supreme War-God, the Lord
Siva, in his most eldritch sanctuary of Vindhyan Elnalinga.

This virility, the essential and fundamental element of all
natural, manly virtue, has been perpetuated from father
to son, through at least seventy generations, among the
Rajputs, by their ancient system of domestic education.
They have never confounded instruction with education,
for they have never confounded knowledge with character,
but have ever recognised that manual dexterities and
mental acquirements, the inherent powers of the intellect
itself, are vain things, unless behind them is the inspiring,
guiding, controlling, co-operative, and omnificent force of
a fearless, resolute, just, and benignant character, matured
in the warriors of Rajputana by 2,000 years of the stub-
bornest oppugnancy to the most heaviest malignancies of
Fate ; and refined and elevated to a national, or rather, an
ethnical ideal, by the obligation to study the history of
that perenduring argument of shed blood, imposed as a
religious duty on every young Rajput of any pride in
his generous race and ennobling lineage. This history
is taught him, not in its dead letter of dates and
statistical tables, but in its living and moving spirit as
caught and handed down from man to man by the glowing
genius of their tribal poet Chand Bardai. The Mahab-

Bouduca [Boudica, " Boadicea "] the word " god " is applied to her
simply as the masculine of honour. The speech Fletcher puts into the
mouth of " Caratach " [Caradoc, " Caractacus," ? Caird] should be com-
pared with one of the Latin ballads of the period of the decline of the
Roman Empire, sung by the Legionaries after a victory : —
" Mille, mille, decollavimus,

Unus homo mille decollavimus.

Mille vivat qui mille occidit.

Tantum vini habet nemo

Quantum fundit sanguinis."

THEIR CLASSICS 143

harata, the Ramayana, and the Prithviraj Chauhan Rasha
are the choice historical library of every Rajput gentle-
man ; and this, simply, is why, in spite of all the calcu-
lators, the economists, and the sophisters with whom we
have overflowed India, and who have for ever extinguished
the epic life of Europe, " the Age of Chivalry " has not
wholly passed away in India.

These poems have the same virtue in forming the
historical personality of Rajputs as that exercised by
the Iliad and Odyssey, the plays of Shakespeare and
the Bible — books that " show, contain, and nourish all
the world," — in moulding the national character of the
English, as we recognise it at the very zenith of its typical
and specific greatness, in the eighteenth century.
Germany, England, and the United States of America
owe everything they are, and have, to their vernacular
versions of the Bible — the bed-rock of their national
greatness and glory, and the sure staple, proof, and bulwark
of their defence in the warfare for righteousness against
" a whole world in arms " ; and so long as they remain
true to Luther's German rescript of the Bible, and we Anglo-
Saxons to our " Authorised Version " — for both America
and England, that other " well of English undefiled "
— it may be asked of the three, — " Quis separabit ? " 1

To steep and imbue the souls of men, and from child-
hood, in these books is indeed what alone can quicken the
dead clay of mere clerical and technical proficiency into
operative life, and unquestioned magistery ; and of all
professional experts, this baptism of the true Promethean
fire, is the imperative pre-requisite of the warrior who
would be a leader of warriors, of the type of —

" Henry the fift, that man made out of Fire,"

as he is finely phrased by Drayton ; and, coming to our
own generation, those other right heroical and illustrious

1 Written 1904. See Author's Preface.— Ed.

144 THE RAJPUTS

Agnikulas, the late Viscount Wolseley, the late Earl
Roberts, and Prince Louis of Battenberg. In the Rig- Veda,
the poet and the warrior are one ; both are Agnikulas.
The hero fires the poet, and the poet in return rekindles
the fecund flame in other heroes.1 The one has no life
without the other ; only the poet is ever the predominant
partner in their common fame. This is tersely told in
Sir John Vaughan's lines [1631] " Upon the Battaile of
Agincourt " : —

" What Power is a Poet ; that can add
A life to Kings, more glorious than they had.
For what of Henry is unsung by thee,
Henry doth want of his Eternity."

To say nothing of " the Seven Arts " [" the Trivium "
and " Quadrivium," answering to " the Seven Planets,"
the three outer and four inner], that in themselves are
poetry, — in the very mechanical and industrial arts, the
heroic spirit, which is the poetic spirit, is equally necessary,
if they are to be elaborated to their paradigmal ideals.
The scattered Silpa-darpana, " Mirrors of Art," of the
Hindus, are all, so far as I have known them, written in
metre, and many who have never been in India remember
observing at the Earl's Court Indian Exhibition in the

1 Simon Ockley, in his wonderful History of the Saracens, relates how
at the battle of Aignadin, July 13, 633 a.d., wherein the Emperor Heraclius
I. was defeated by Kalid, the celebrated general of the Caliphs Abubekr
and Omar, the patriotic Arabian women danced behind the rear ranks
of the Saracen army, as it advanced to meet the Greeks, singing : " Fight
on, fight on, and we kiss you, and embrace you ! Turn not back, turn not
back, or we scorn and spurn you ! " On the first charge of the imperial
troops the Saracens did turn back, and would have fled, but that the
women rallied them with their taunts and gibes ; when, refacing the
Greeks, Kalid gained the victory over Heraclius. Of this character must
have been the Saltatiunculae, and Ballistea, or ballads, sung to dancing,
and in the tetrametric trochaic step of the war dance of the Roman armies ;
and the form of these ballads thus quite naturally became that of the
earliest hymns of the Christian Church militant. In the advancing pro-
cession of the Muharram, as witnessed in Bombay, the dancing " beat " of
the " Tiger-men," and other mummers, is exactly timed to the catalectic
tetrametric trochaic ballad metre.

ARYAN INDIA 145

early 'nineties how the Hindu weavers of carpets and other
artistic fabrics, chaunted in their archaic patternings to
the time of their flying shuttles, with the unfailing as-
criptive refrain — Ram ! Ram ! — " Glory to God in the
Highest." The whole worship of the Hindus is hymned.
Anthems, antiphons,grayles, introits, proses, and sequences,
all are there. And, therefore, it happens that the still
living industrial arts of India, and the still living chivalry
of Rajputana, and the still living religion of the Hindus
— of the Mahrattas and Tamils in special — are the three
only " points " whereon there is any possibility of rallying
and regenerating the national life of Aryan India — India
of the Hindus.

I began by acknowledging my obligations in the pre-
paration of this paper to James Tod and Miss Gabrielle
Festing.1 She has given us all the more notable episodes
of the tragic history of Rajasthan in a form that renders
them generally accessible to English readers. In their
remote atmosphere and outland circumstance they are
fairy tales, but of the faery of real life, the direction and
control whereof, by a strange eventful Providence, has
passed into English hands. But these stories are profitable
to us not only in familiarising us with something of the
typical history and character of a magnanimous and
mighty Indian people, whose future we may make or mar.
They are gainful also in stimulating in their English
readers those virilities that are as instinctive in them-
selves as in the Rajputs. The human heart is ever
animated and encouraged by the recital of tales of heroism,
and Miss Gabrielle Festing's stories, From the Land of
Princes, cannot but lead those who read them to mark,
learn, and consider, with many close and intimate self-

1 An acknowledgment of my indebtedness is due also to Shri Cheda
Sing Varma's " Kshatriyas and would-be Kshatriyas," Allahabad, 1894;
and to Shri Purshotam Vishram Mawje's " Shivaji's Swarajya," read
before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, December 19,
1903.

146 THE RAJPUTS

searchings, the clear, fixed, and unflinching view taken
of life and of its inexorable necessities and stern responsi-
bilities by the traditional Rajput gentleman ; and to
receive into their own bosoms some radiation from the
fire and splendour of his steadfast and matchless valours.
Where duty calls, the Rajput ideal gentleman knows no
whimpering scruples, no debauched and impotent senti-
mentalities : —

" Work of his hand

He nor commends nor grieves.
Pleads for itself the Fact —

As unrelenting Nature leaves
Her every Act."

The book has done good among the Rajputs also, if
only by the gratification it has given them as a proof of
the popular interest in their sacrosanct country of " The
Seven States " felt by us in this England of our own : —

" This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seal of Mars,
This other Eden.

This blessed spot, this Earth, this realm, this England."

It should revive their pride in their own country and
themselves, and lead at last to the rebuilding, in pure
white marble, of Chitor, on the old ground-plan, still
easily to be traced amid the ruins of the city. This would
be a national Rajput achievement of the most auspicious
political significance.

Of not less felicitous augury would be the dedication,
by the Government of India, of the whole Kurukshetra, or
" Kuru's-field," the battlefield of Staneshwara, and field
of all " the Battles of Panipat," to the perpetual service
of the public, as an inviolable sylvan sanctuary, on the
scale, and after the manner of " the National Yellowstone

THE PARTING WAYS 147

Park " in America ; and as an Indian national park
worthy at once of the imperial Delhi of the past and of the
future.

Furthermore, Miss Festing's book should prepare the
way for a new edition of Tod's great work, edited with the
same conscientious reverence for the original text of The
Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, as has been shown
by that eminent Orientalist, Mr. William Crooke, for that
of his edition of Yule's Hobson-J obson, and by Henri
Cordier in his edition of Yule's Book of Ser Marco Polo.
A reproduction of Tod's Rajasthan, in the same loyal and
worthy spirit and form, would have an immense effect in
re-arousing in the Rajputs a beneficent sense of their
commanding place alike in the past and the future political
life of India. What great publishers (it ought to be the
India Office) will commission, say, Mr. Crooke to prepare
such an edition for them, brought down to the date of
King George's Delhi Durbar ? At the parting of ways
whereat we stand to-day in India, its publication would
do more than the " rattling " of arrows (by party publicists
and politicians), the looking into the livers of sacrificial
victims (Anglo-Indians), and the mixing of oil and vinegar
(in the Indian Viceroy's and the Indian Secretary of State's
Councils), to determine the divination, whether to keep
forward by the right, wreathed with olives and laurel or
roses, or turn to the left, bearing the unsheathed sword
to resistless slaughters. The years 1918 and 1957, in the
prevision of those who know, not only the history of
Hindustan, but something of the hiero-psychical tem-
perament of Hindus, are full of the farthest-reaching
fates of the future of Sri Bharata (the " weighty "
earth whereof, and water, air, and sunshine, I also took
truest nativity, and pulsated into this mortal, human life
more than fourscore years since), emphasised as these are
by the passing, now in actual progression, of the sanctity
of the Ganges to the Nerbudda : — a predication that is a

148 THE RAJPUTS

simple induction from an overmastering multitude of
ethnographical, physiological, psychological, and historical
facts; unbiased by any whisper of the "mystical
lore" that comes to all men with "the sunset of
life."

ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA1

YOU ask : — " Is there no animal or tree of common
occurrence which exists only N.W. of Samarcand or
S.E. of it ? " or, in other words, in " Western Turkestan "
(Sogdiana and Bactriana), and the Punjab (" Vedic India"),
respectively. I find it extremely difficult, and in regard
to trees quite impossible, to answer Yes or No.

In maps of physical geography the globe is ruled round
from the poles to the equator with blue, green, yellow,
orange, and red zones of floral and faunal life. The first
zone of vegetation is the northern glacial zone — called
Wahlenberg's — of mosses and lichens and low tufted
alpine plants, extending from about 80° to about 70° of
northern latitude. The second is the zone of winter cold
— named after Linnaeus — extending from about 70° to
about 50° and 45° of northern latitude, and marked by the
predominance of firs, pines, larches, and such deciduous
trees as the willow, birch,2 ash, alder, elm, maple, poplar,

1 A letter to Sir F. Max-Miiller — published in his Biography of Words
(London : Longmans, Green and Co., 1888). — Ed.

2 On the birch, Sir F. Max-Miiller quotes in this Biography of Words,
p. 104, the following passage from a letter by Sir George Birdwood in
The Times of September 2, 1887 : — " Moreover, the common birch
(Betula alba) is not restricted to the parts of the Euro-Asiatic continent
westward of the line drawn by Professor Sayce, but is a native of all the
colder regions of Europe and Asia. It is found everywhere throughout
the Russian Empire, and the oil extracted from it is used in the prepara-
tion of Russian leather. Two species are common to the Himalayas — viz.
Betula acuminata, found in Tibet and Nepal and the outer ranges of the
Himalayas generally ; B. Bhojpattra, called bhurja (i.e. birch) in Sanskrit,
and bhujpattra in the North- West Provinces, a native of Ladak, Lahoul,
Cashmere, Spiti, Kunawar, Sikkim, and Bhutan. The inner bark of the
bhurja, which is closely allied to B. papyracea of North America, has
been used by the Hindus as paper from the beginning of the Christian
era." — Ed.

149

150 ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA

aspen, and " British " or, as you would say, " German
Oak," and by the cranberry, cloudberry, berberry, currant,
and other edible berries ; and also, in its more temperate
areas, by the holly, beech, chestnut, sycamore, plane,
hawthorn, and such almost sub-tropical climbers as the
ivy, hop, and clematis. The third is De Candolle's zone of
winter verdure, extending from about 45° to about 25° of
northern latitude. It is the zone of the Caucasian range,
stretching from the Pyrenees and the Atlas mountains on
the West, to the termination of the Kuen-lun mountains
in Northern China on the East. It is the enchanting
cestus of our Earth-mother, broidered with umbrageous
trees, and all the fruits and flowers of the poetry of the
Caucasian races, viz. the laurels and myrtle blooms and
citron worts, with dark shining evergreen leaves, the vine,
fig, olive, walnut, mulberry, pomegranate, peach, apricot,
date palm, and tea-plant ; the rose, oleander, hyacinth,
narcissus and tulip ; and the sweet -leaved Labiates, and
sweet-seeded Umbellifers. The fourth and fifth are the
tropical and the equatorial zone, together extending from
about 20° northern latitude to the equator : and repeated
from the equator to about 20° of southern latitude. In the
Old World, where I am confining myself, these duplicated
zones include Bengal and the Deccan in India, and Ceylon,
and Farther India, and the Indian Archipelago, with
Northern Australia, and are characterised by such magnifi-
cent tree-forms, most of which are indigenous to India
(exclusive of Rajputana and Sindh), as the cocoa-nut,
" palmyra tree," areca-nut, and other palms ; the " Indian
fig " trees ; the teak, ebony, sandalwood, and satinwood
trees ; the jack-fruit and bread-fruit trees ; the silk cotton
trees, and the pulas tree (Butea frondosa) which gives its
name to the field of Plassey ; the spice-bearing laurels,
cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg ; and the pepperworts and
gingerworts. But these zones lie beyond the limits of your
question, and are excluded from further consideration here.

THE GREAT PAMIR 151

The zones indicated do not everywhere run parallel with
the lines of latitude within which they are painted on the
charts, like five (or seven) straightly stretched ribbons.
They would indeed have done so had this globe been a
perfect sphere, and the land and water uniformly distri-
buted over it. But it presents the greatest confusion in
the division of its land from its water, and in the contours
and levels of its land : circumstances all tending every-
where to deflect the lines of equal temperature, and with
them the zones of similar vegetable and animal life, from
the roughly corresponding lines of northern and southern
latitude. This is particularly the case in the northern
hemisphere, more especially in the Old World, and most
emphatically in the very regions to which your query
refers. Here all the chains of mountains by which the
highly integrated configuration of Europe, Asia, and
Northern Africa has been determined converge in the
stupendous steppe of the Great Pamir, known locally as
the Bam-i-Dumiah, or " Roof of the World," as in the
mighty axle of a six-spoked wheel : from which the Ural
mountains stretch northward ; the Suleiman mountains
southward ; and eastward the Himalayas and Kuen-lun
mountains, holding up between them the elevated table-
land of Tibet ; and north-eastward, almost continuously
to Behring Straits, the Thian-shan and Altai mountains,
leaving between them and the Kuen-lun mountains the
wide extended depression of the desert of Gobi, presenting a
waterless valley of even greater area than the corresponding
basin of the Mediterranean sea ; while westward the
Caucasian range of the Hindu Kush, Elburz, Caucasus and
Taurus mountains stretches continuously to the western
coasts of Asia Minor, where it divides into the Balkans,
the Alps, and the Pyrenees on the north, and the Lebanon
and far projected Atlas mountains on the south ; these
northern and southern branches of the Caucasian range
holding between them the vast valley, which, probably,

152 ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA

within the mythical memory of the Caucasian races
(Hamitic, Semitic, and Aryan), if we may so read the
Samothracian legend preserved by Diodorus, became con-
verted, by the bursting of the waters of the presumptive
Aralo-Caspo-Euxine sea through the Bosphorus and the
Hellespont, into the Mediterranean sea.

Comparing the zones of vegetation to ribbons, it may be
said that they are all brought together about the N.W.
frontier of India, and intertwisted into an almost inex-
tricable knot. Indeed you can no longer here arrange the
development of vegetable life on the globe in zones (Vegeta-
tions-zonen) ; but must divide it into regions (Floren-
reiche). India is in latitude within the tropical zone ; but
the Himalayas and the high plateau of Persia bring down
to the plain of the Ganges the climate and vegetation of
the zones of Wahlenberg, Linnaeus, and De Candolle. The
southern slopes of the Himalayas, marked by the preva-
lence of oak (Quercus incana) and the deodar pine, consti-
tute Wallich's Kingdom. Central India and the Deccan,
characterised by the tropical plants already enumerated,
form Roxburgh's Kingdom ; while beyond it, in the Indian
Archipelago, is Blume's Kingdom. Persia is Gmelin's
Kingdom, and carries the vegetation of De Candolle's zone
eastward into the valley of the Indus, i.e. the Punjab
(Vedic India) and Sindh, and northward into Western
Turkestan, which is also overlapped by the flora of the
Siberian Kingdom of Pallas.

There is thus at once a great similarity between the flora
of Western Turkestan and of the Indus valley (India
alba), and a great contrast between the flora of Western
Turkestan and of India west and south of the Indus valley
— that is, of the Ganges valley and the Deccan (India
nigra). So many medicinal herbs indigenous to the
Punjab grow spontaneously on the sides of the famous
Koh Umber, north of Kunduz, that the Turkmans
believe this mountain to have been miraculously trans-

PREDOMINANT PLANT-FORMS 158

lated into their country from India. It is difficult there-
fore to discriminate between the flora N.E. and S.W. of
Samarcand by naming plants either exclusively Inner
Asian or exclusively Indian ; meaning, that is, plants
existing only either in the plain of the Oxus or in the valley
of the Indus. It is easy enough to enumerate the assem-
blage of plant -forms that make up the vegetable physiog-
nomy of each of these countries, and even to name a single
plant -form predominant in either of them. There is no
" kenspeckle " plant, no plant that would take hold of the
popular eye, and the memory of wandering barbarians,
characteristic of Western Turkestan ; in the same way,
for instance, as the "glutinous -birch" and "Weymouth
pine " are characteristic of the Highlands of Scotland, and
Northern Sweden, and Finland ; the oak of Ulster, England
north of the Humber, and Scotland south of the Forth,
and of Southern Norway and Sweden, and Western and
Central Russia ; the beech of Southern Ireland and England
and Northern France, Denmark, and Germany ; Amygdalus
nana and various species of Stipa (grasses) the Russian
Steppe region from the Black Sea into Upper Inner Asia ;
and the birch, willow, larch, and fir of the whole of Siberia ;
the Oriental plane of Anterior Asia ; the tragacanth and
assafcetida of Northern Persia; and the date-palm of
Mesopotamia, Southern Persia, Baluchistan, and Sindh.
Botanists cite the Borszczowia Aralo-Caspica as charac-
teristic of Western Turkestan ; but it is a plant conspicuous
only by the protracted cacophony of its scientific nomen-
clature. Wood, Schuyler, and Lansdell repeatedly describe
the vegetation of Turkestan from the popular point of
perception, and over and over again they repeat the names
of the same plantation trees, the plane, poplar, birch,
elm, willow, ash, fir ; and of the same fruit trees, the apple,
plum, peach, apricot, fig, mulberry, pistachio, and the
vine ; and of the same flowering plants, the rose, poppy,
and larkspur : plants which are everywhere found growing

154 ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA

in natural or cultivated patches amid the undulating
heathlands of grass, furze, broom, wormwood, and liquorice
scrub. The assafcetida plant is found all over Western
Turkestan, but it is more characteristic of Northern Persia.
In the Indus valley the date-palm abounds ; but it grows
still more luxuriantly throughout Southern Persia, Mesopo-
tamia, and Syria. The natives of India are peculiarly apt
in identifying countries by their distinguishing plants.
In Rajputana they have a famous saying : —

" Aonla, aonla, Me war ;
Bawul, bawul, Marwar."

They thus identify the Phyllanthus Emblica with the sub-
tropical province of Mewar, and the Acacia arabica with
the Mediterranean province of Marwar ; and, if compelled
to name a single plant as predominantly characteristic of
the Indus valley, and which, although not exclusively
found there, does not exist in Turkestan, I should have to
name the Acacia arabica. Similarly, if forced to identify
a universally popular plant with Western Turkestan,
taken in connection with Central Asia generally, I should
instance (for I know of none better for the purpose) the
thorny shrub which yields the manna called turanjabin
throughout the East. It is the " Hyrcanian tree,"
" occhus " of Pliny, the Alhagi Maurorum of botanists.
Its area extends from Nepal and the Southern Mahratta
country to Syria, but it yields its manna, for which alone
it is " kenspeckle " only in Western Turkestan.

In regard to the geographical distribution of animals,
Alfred Russel Wallace, the most philosophical authority
on the subject, divides the entire Euro -Asiatic continent
into but two regions, namely, the Palcearctic, including all
Europe, with Northern Africa, and all Asia, excepting
Southern Arabia, Yemen, India, Further India, and the
Indian Archipelago, which, with all Australasia, he includes
in his Oriental region. The Palaearctic region he again

THE BACTRIAN CAMEL 155

subdivides into four sub-regions, namely, the European
or trans-Alpine ; the Mediterranean or cis-Alpine, including
Northern Africa, Asia Minor, Syria, Northern Arabia,
Afghanistan, and the Western Punjab ; the Siberian or
trans -Himalayan ; and the Mongolian, including Mongolia,
Manchuria, Northern China, and Japan.

Your question has strictly to do only with that portion
of the Siberian region immediately north-west of the
Hindu Kush, and that portion of the Mediterranean region
immediately south-west of it. But it will be observed that
immediately south-west of these mountains you have, as in
the case of plant -life, to deal with two distinct regions
of animal life ; that is, the Mediterranean west of the
Indus, and the Indian sub-region of the Oriental region
east of that river. But as animals exercise something of
volition in their movements, and it is easy for animals of
the Ganges valley to extend their range into the Punjab,
while it is scarcely practicable for any of the larger Indian
or Siberian mammals to pass respectively northward or
southward through the lofty recesses of the Himalayas,
each into the other's natural region, it should be some-
what less difficult than it is in regard to plants, to name
some animal of common occurrence that exists only north-
west of Samarcand or south-east of it. Wallace names four
animals as absolutely restricted to the Siberian sub-region
— a peculiar mole, two antelopes, and the yak. But deer
and moles are found everywhere, and the yak is almost
entirely confined to the tableland of Tibet. He does
not name the dromedary [Spo/maio? Ka/uLi]\og — Sanskrit dan-
dram-yate, " swift -moving "], which is of common occurrence
only in Western Turkestan, its original country ; and as
in a popular sense it is a most conspicuous and memorable
animal, and with its double hump would never be con-
founded even by the most barbarous of mankind with
the single-humped camel of Arabia, I would cite it, " the
Bactrian camel," as the exclusively representative animal

156 ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA

of Western Turkestan. For Indian, i.e. Vedic India, I
would name " the Bengal tiger." It is the distinctive
animal of Oriental rather than of Mediterranean India.
But it is occasionally seen roaming along the southern
slopes of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush and Elburz
mountains as far westward as the Caspian Sea. Pliny
tells us that "Hyrcania and India produce the tiger";
and it was as an Hyrcanian rather than an Indian beast
that he first appears in English literature. Shakespeare
speaks only of " tigers of Hyrcania," and " the Hyrcan
tiger," the " Hyrcanian beast " of the players in Hamlet ;
and before him, Daniel, in one of his Sonnets, which was
probably in Shakespeare's mind when composing Macbeth,

writes : —

" Restore thy fierce and cruel mind
To Hircan tigers, and to ruthless bears."

Unfortunately the range of the tiger extends also north-
ward along the Thian-shan, Altai, and Kuen-lun mountains
into China and Japan, and through the eastward confines
of Western Turkestan. Still I should not hesitate to name
it as the distinctive animal of Vedic India ; and with its
dazzling colouring, in black and yellow stripes, and its
terrific ferocity, so " kenspeckle " a beast, once encountered
by " the undivided Aryas," should never have been for-
gotten by them.

I find it stated, however, in standard ethnological works,
I know not on what philological authority, that neither
the tiger nor the dromedary were known to them, nor the
loud-roaring king of beasts, the lion ;x which, although an
African animal, is common to the whole Mediterranean
region as far eastward as Sindh and Kathiawar ; and is the
same lion in India and Mesopotamia as in Africa. This is

1 Sir F. Max-Miiller noted here : " The tiger, unknown in the Rig- Veda,
ia known in the Atharva-Veda. If the dromedary could be the ushira, it
would have been known to the Vedic Indians. The vrishabhah kakudman
is taken for the humped ox. The lion, simha, is well known in the Rig-
Veda. The Greek \£<jp might be the Sanskrit ravan, roaring." — Ed.

PHYSICAL CHANGES 157

strange, if " the Home of the Aryas " was, as I believe, in
and about Western Turkestan. We must not, however,
forget the great physical changes undergone by the whole
of the Uralo -Caspian region in past ages, and which it is
still undergoing. The country has visibly altered within
the historical memory of its present inhabitants, among
whom there is a tradition that in ancient times it was so
well wooded that the bulbul (Persian nightingale) could
flit from tree to tree all the way from the mountains of
Kasghar to the Aral Sea. What I, however, most rely on,
after the (to me) sufficiently conclusive arguments of
the philologists, is the circumstance that all the traditions
of the historical races of mankind, Turanian as well as
Caucasian, refer back to Higher Asia as their primitive
historical (I will not say ethnologically aboriginal) home ;
from whence all the leading mountain-ranges of Europe
and Asia radiate north, south, east, and west, pointing
like road-posts the direction taken by the Turanian nations
eastward and northward, and by the Caucasian nations
southward and westward, when they first went forth from
this universal " officina gentium " to divide the world
between them.

Moreover, man himself modifies nature, and, before he
has evolved a scientific civilisation, nearly always in-
juriously ; and it is not simply because the temperature
of Northern Europe is milder than that of Central Asia
and Southern Europe that it is greener than these regions,
but because it has not been so long subjected to the corrod-
ing influences of the presence of barbarous and semi-
civilised humanity. Under these influences India was being
gradually reduced, during the decline of the Mo(n)gol
Empire, to the blighted condition of Central Asia, and
was only saved from this impending doom by the British
conquest. Similarly, were extended irrigation and scientific
forestry introduced into Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand,
their pristine verdure and prosperity would gradually be

158 ARYAN FLORA AND FAUNA

restored to them ; and it would at last be found that in
the apparently purposeless subjugation of these countries
Russia had fulfilled her highest destiny.1

I still [1914] hold this view. Soma is an original Sanskrit
word ; its root being su, " to generate," " extract,"
" distil," — as found also in sura, " wine," and Suradevi,
" the goddess of wine," — and obviously refers aboriginally
to some milky juice of plants like Sarcostemma sps. Sava is
any juice offered as a libation to the gods ; and savana
the act of offering a libation ; Soma yaji the offerer of
the libation, or " sacrifice " ; and Som-raj, the " Radiant-
Moon." Soma-Natha, " the Moon-Lord," i.e. Siva ;
Som-war, " Monday " ; and Soma-lata — the " Moon-
Creeper " of the Hindus, i.e. the Sarcostemma brevistigma: —
the " Moon-Creeper " of Anglo-Indians being the indi-
genous Calonyction roxburghii of India. The word
soma is undoubtedly identical with the Persian horn —
[compare " Sindh " and " Hind "] ; but wherever the date
or the vine could be grown, their wine was substituted for
that of the aboriginal som and horn of India and Persia
respectively.

1 As to the Soma plant of the Hiridies, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, dis-
cussing its suggested identification with Sarcostemma brevistigma, Aeri-
ploca aphylla, etc., says : — " Both Periploca and Sarcostemma are slightly
addicted to climbing. Indeed Sir George Birdwood sees the conven-
tionalised form of Sarcostemma (though it is not clear where it came
from) in the Assyrian Honeysuckle ornament, and the suggestion is
plausible, though I have my doubts about it. He copies from Rawlinson,
Ancient Monarchies, ii. p. 236, a figure in which it is twined about the date,
and adds : ' Possibly the date was substituted for the original Horn in
Assyria, in consequence of the Aryas finding that they could not naturalise
the true Horn plant, or because the date yields a more abundant intoxicat-
ing juice. . . . Later the vine took its place in Asia Minor and Greece ' "
{Industrial Arts of India, pp. 336, 337). — Ed.

THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY1

i

The Origin of the Shiah Schism

LEAVING out of consideration the false prophets
" Musailimah the Liar," " al As wad the Master of
the Ass," and Tulaihah, and the prophetess Shijaj, who
all set up their pretensions in the year that Mahomet
[Muhammad] died, and the terrible al Mokanna, " the
veiled prophet of Khorassan," who appeared in the reign
of al Modi [Mahdi], the third of the Abbaside Caliphs of
Baghdad, as also the fanatical Ismailians, better known
under the name of " Assassins,"2 the Muslims may be
divided into the two great sects of Sunnis and Shiahs.

1 Published in the original form as part of the preface to Sir Lewis
Pelly's and Sir Arthur N. Wollaston's Miracle Play of Hasan and
Husain (London : Allen and Co., 1879), and quoted at some length in
Hughes' Dictionary of Islam, by the same publishers, 1885.

2 These Ismailians [Ismailiyah] of Persia and Syria were represented
in Turkey by the Carmathians, or followers of the Turk, Harmat, who after
being crushed by Sultan Babers in the eleventh century, drivelled out as
the Druses of the Lebanon, the stronghold of the Ismailians ; whence the
chief of the military and religious order of the Assassins [indulgers in
hashish, Cannabis indica, or " Indian Hemp "] is called by the Arabian
historians, Sheik al Jabal, " the Old Man of the Mountain." They are
represented in the maritime cities of Western India by the "Boras " and
Cojas, the most enterprising and prosperous of the Muslims of India.
The name Bora is the Anglo-Indian form of the Hindi Bohra, and
the Gujarati Vora ; and these of the Sanskrit Vyavahara, meaning
" Business "-man. They are Gujarati Muslims, converts from various
castes of Hindus of Gujarat, trading from the earliest times with the
Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Eastern Africa. They are found in two main
divisions in Gujarat ; the village Voras, who are agriculturists, and among
the best in India, and to a man Sunni Muslims, and the urban Voras, of
whom the Patani Voras alone are Sunnis, and the rest Shiahs : these Shiah
Voras being with the cognate Cojas or Khajahs [i.e. Khwajah, " Holy "- or

159

160 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

The Sunnis, or " Traditionists," literally " those of the
Path," are so called because they acknowledge the
authority of the received traditions of the sayings and
doings of Mahomet, " the Prophet of God," which the
Shiahs, literally the " Followers," utterly reject ; and
uphold the succession of Abu Bakr, Omar [Umar], and
Othman [Usman], whom the Shiahs denounce as usurpers
of the Caliphate.

The Shiahs, or Mahometan Dissenters, who sprung up
soon after the death of Othman, declare that Ali, " the
Lion of God," his two sons Hasan and Husain, and the
descendants of the latter, are the only true Imams or
Sovereign Pontiffs, and that a belief in their indefeasible
and inalienable right to the Caliphate comprises the most
important article of the faith of Islam.

The Coreish [Quraish] were the most renowned of the
children of Ishmael, and during the fifth century became
the head of all the Arab tribes whose centre of worship
and of tribal sovereignty was Mecca ; and the sanctity of
the Caaba [Kabah, i.e. the sacred " Cube "] at Mecca
above all other Sabsean shrines had always been recognised
by the tribes of peninsular Arabia. In the sixth century
Abd Manaf was the Chief of the Coreish and Prince of
Mecca, and the second of his family on whom the sacerdotal
charge of the Caaba had devolved in direct descent. It
was in his time the Abyssinians sent against Mecca the
army that was signally defeated by one of his sons,
named Hashim, the great-grandfather of the Prophet
Mahomet. In consequence of this victory Hashim and
his descendants obtained the ascendancy in the tribe of
the Coreish, and the custody of the Caaba, that would

" Respectable "- man] of the Ismailian sect of Shiah ; that is, Shiahs who,
on the death of Jafar, the sixth and last Imam of the united Shiahs,
accepted his eldest son Ismail as his successor, instead of his son Musa.
On the death of Ismail, the Ismailians, as we write the word, bifurcated,
in their turn ; the Boras accepting as his successor his eldest son and the
Cojas a younger son.

INTERNECINE FEUDS 161

otherwise have passed to Abd Shams, the eldest son of
Abd Manaf, and the father of Ommiyah, the progenitor
of the Ommiyah Caliphs [Ommiades] of Damascus (a.d.
661-750), and Cordova (a.d. 755-1031) ; and thus origi-
nated the family feud between the Hashimites, as the
descendants of Hashim are called, and the house of
Ommiyah, which for centuries influenced the whole history
of Islam. Abdal Mutallib, the son of Hashim, had three
sons, Abdullah, the father of Mahomet, and Abbas, and
Abu Talib. Abbas was the progenitor of the Abbasiyah
[Abbaside] Caliphs, who, after driving the last of the
Ommiades over into Spain, set up their own rule at Bagh-
dad, a.d. 750 ; where they reigned until the Eastern
Caliphate was subverted, a.d. 1258, by the Turks and
Mongols under Hulaku Khan, a grandson of Chinghiz
Khan. Ali, the son of Abu Talib, married Mahomet's
daughter Fatima ; and it was Ayesha's jealousy of the
children of Mahomet's first wife, Cadijah, and her special
antipathy to Ali personally, that at last hastened the
family quarrel between the Hashimites and the house of
Ommiyah to the tragical catastrophe that is the subject
of the Persian Passion Play of Hasan and Husain.

The domestic feuds of the Hashimites with the house
of Ommiyah thus foreshadowed in complete outline the
history of Islam under the Arabs ; while the Shiah heresy
still divides Islam under the Persians from Islam under
the Turks and Mongols. The heterodox Fatimites or
Aliades of Egypt were pretenders to a descent from Ali
and Fatima. Their colour was green, the wear only of the
true lineage of the Prophet ; that of the Abbasides black ;
and of the Ommiades white ; the colours of the Ismailians
being red and green.

When Mahomet died his religion might have perished
with him, and the unruly tribes of Arabia, to whom,
through his immense personal influence, he, for the first
time in their history, had given political unity and a

M

162 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

national organisation, might have returned to their ancient
anarchy, but for the astuteness and energy of Omar, who,
so long as he lived, remained the ruling spirit of Islam.
There were four claimants to the Caliphate : — Ali, the
first cousin of the Prophet, and the husband of Fatima,
his youngest daughter and only surviving child ; Abu
Bakr, " the Father of the Virgin," that is, of Ayesha, the
favourite wife of Mahomet ; Omar, the father of Hafsah,
another of his wives ; and Othman, the only member of
the house of Ommiyah who had voluntarily embraced
the religion of the Prophet, and who had married two of his
daughters, both of whom were now dead, as were also their
children.

Beyond doubt the succession lay with Ali ; but Ayesha,
who had never forgiven Ali for inclining his ear to the
scandalous charge of incontinence against her, successfully
used her influence to prevent his election. All the Coreish
also of the house of Ommiyah were opposed to Ali. The
disruption of Islam seemed imminent. It was actually
proposed to elect two chiefs ; when Omar vehemently
forbade it, exclaiming : — " Two blades cannot go into one
scabbard." Then Abu Bakr proposed Omar as worthy of
the succession, whereon Omar suddenly rising up hailed
Abu Bakr as Caliph ; and stepping forward, bowed down
and kissed his hand in token of allegiance, and swore to
obey him as his sovereign. The example of Omar being
followed by all present, he at once ascended the pulpit
and publicly proclaimed Abu Bakr. He went so far, it is
said, as to surround the house of Fatima, and threaten
to burn it down, and put all within to death, unless they
acknowledged the newly-chosen Caliph. Ali accepted
the election in words, but spurned it in his heart, and
retired from Mecca into the desert of Arabia, with his two
sons Hasan and Husain, the only surviving grandchildren
of Mahomet. To this day their descendants are con-
sidered noble in every country of Islam, and wear the

THE CALIPHATE 163

green turban as the outward sign of their almost sacred
lineage.

On the death of Abu Bakr, Ayesha secured the election
of Omar ; and Ali, seeing that opposition was useless,
acquiesced. When Omar died the Caliphate was offered to
Ali, on the condition that he would govern according to
the Coran [Quran], and the Traditions of Mahomet
established by Abu Bakr and his successor. Ali replied
that he would govern according to the Coran, but in other
respects he would act on his own judgment, without
reference to " the traditions of the elders." This reply
not being satisfactory, the election devolved on Othman.
He at once advanced different members of the house of
Ommiyah to the highest and most responsible offices in
the Empire ; and Muawiyah, the son of Abu Sofyan, the
deadliest enemy of the descendants of Hashim, he ap-
pointed Governor of Syria. Othman was assassinated
a.h. 35 (a.d. 655) ; and on Ali being at last elected, on his
own terms, and in spite of the opposition of Ayesha, to
the Caliphate, one of his first acts was to recall Muawiyah
from Syria. Muawiyah refused to obey, and claimed the
Caliphate for himself, a pretension wherein he was sup-
ported by Ayesha.

In " the Battle of the Camel," so called because the
vindictive virago herself was present mounted on a camel,
Ali was victorious, and Talhah, the grand-nephew of Abu
Bakr, and Zobair, the cousin of Mahomet, the commanders
of the rebels, were both killed, and Ayesha was taken
prisoner. The contest was renewed at Siffin ; and not-
withstanding that the Syrian army was led by Muawiyah
in person, Ali had almost won, when a device of Amrou
[ben el Ass], the conqueror of Egypt, suddenly paralysed
the onset of the Caliph's army in the very moment of
victory. That arch-intriguer ordered his soldiers to raise
copies of the Coran on their spears, and to shout as they
advanced : — " Let the blood of the Faithful cease to flow ;

164 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

if the Syrian army be destroyed who will defend the frontier
against the Greeks ? If the army of Irak be destroyed
who will defend it against the Persians and Turks ? Let
the word of God decide between us ! " " God is great ! "
shouted back the army of Ali, " we must all submit to the
arbitrament of the Book."

It was in vain that Ali protested against the false and
hollow pretence of Amrou ; and the two armies arranged
that the claims of Ali and Muawiyah should be adjudicated
by two arbitrators, one chosen by each side. Immediately
a controversy broke out among Ali's troops as to the law-
fulness of this mode of settling the dispute ; and on his
arriving at Cufa, twelve thousand of them, who had been
the most clamorous to abide by the decision of the Coran,
deserted from him. These men were the original Khare-
gites [Khawarij], or " Separatists," a heretical sect of
Muslims who reject the lawful government established by
public consent. Ali never recovered this defection. While
he was gathering together a fresh army against his enemies,
three of these Kharegites met by accident, as pilgrims, in
the mosque at Mecca, and joining at first in lamentations
over the dissensions of the Faithful, ended in planning a
sort of Nihilist plot to assassinate on one and the same
day Muawiyah, Amrou, and Ali, to whose rivalry they
attributed all the troubles of Islam. The names of the
conspirators were Barak, Amrou, and Abdulrahman
[Ibn Muljam].

Barak repaired to Damascus, and on Friday, the 17th
Ramazan, while Muawiyah was officiating in the mosque,
struck at him what was intended to be a fatal blow. But
though the wound was desperate, Muawiyah recovered.
Amrou, the second of the assassins, at the same hour
entered the mosque in Cairo, and at one blow killed Karijah,
who happened to be officiating there, imagining him to be
Amrou ben el Ass. Being led to execution the murderer
calmly exclaimed : — " I intended Amrou, but God intended

HASAN'S MURDER 165

Karijah." The third conspirator, Abdulrahman, repaired
to Cufa, where, as Ali entered the mosque, he felled him
to the ground by a blow on the head, a.h. 40 (a.d. 660).
Ali's body was buried five miles out of Cufa ; and in after
times a magnificent tomb was erected over his grave,
which became the site of the famous city of Meshed (Ali),
or " the Sepulchre of Ali." On his death his eldest son
Hasan (i.e. " The Handsome ") was elected to the Caliphate
without opposition, but he resigned it in favour of Muawi-
yah, on condition that he should resume it on the death
of the latter ; who had the less scruple in assenting to
the arrangement, owing to his secret determination that
his son Yazid should be his successor. At the instigation
of Muawiyah, Hasan was poisoned by his wife, a.h. 49
(a.d. 668). In his last agonies his brother Husain asked
him to name whom he supposed to be his murderer,
but Hasan refused, saying : — " This world is only for a
night, leave my murderer alone until we meet at the
Judgment Day before the Most High God."

Hasan had several wives ; and one of them was the beauti-
ful daughter of Yezdegird III, the last of the Sassanian
Kings of Persia. He left altogether fifteen sons and five
daughters. It was his wish to be buried by the sepulchre
of Ali, but the implacable Ayesha refused her consent,
and his body was laid in the common burial-ground beyond
the city. Ayesha herself died a.h. 5Q (a.d. 676). The
story is told of how she was trapped by Muawiyah down a
well, masked all over with green branches, through which,
as, in response to his warm welcome, she entered the garden,
the masterful and dignified dowager subsided softly into
everlasting night. The miscreant Muawiyah himself died
a.h. 60 (a.d. 679). He was succeeded by his son Yazid,
" the Polluted," without election ; and thus was established
the dynasty of the Ommiades at Damascus, where they
reigned for one hundred years in the unfading splendour of
their ever-rising renown. But the family feud between

166 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

the descendants of Hashim and Abd Shams, the sons of
Abd Manaf, continued without abatement, and Islam was
definitively rent asunder by the great Shiah schism.

Shortly after the accession of Yazid, Husain received
at Mecca secret messages from the people of Cufa, en-
treating him to place himself at the head of the Faithful
in Babylonia. Yazid, however, had full intimation of the
intended revolt, and long before Husain could reach Cufa,
the too easy Governor of that city had been replaced by
Obaidallah, the resolute ruler of Bussorah, who, by his
rapid measures, disconcerted the plans of the conspirators,
and drove them to a premature outbreak, and the surrender
of their leader Muslim. The latter foresaw the ruin which
he had brought on Husain, and shed bitter tears on that
account when captured. His head was struck off and sent
to Yazid. On Husain arriving at the confines of Baby-
lonia he was met by Harro [al Hurr], who had been sent
out by Obaidallah, with a body of horsemen, to intercept
his approach. Husain, addressing them, asserted his title
to the Caliphate, and invited them to submit to him.
Harro replied : — " We are commanded as soon as we meet
you to bring you directly to Cufa into the presence- of-
Obaidallah the son of Ziyad." Husain answered : — " I
would sooner die than submit to that " : and gave the
word to his men to ride on ; when Harro at once wheeled
about and intercepted them. At the same time Harro
said : — " I have no commission to fight with you, but I
am commanded not to part with you until I have con-
ducted you into Cufa " : and he bade Husain choose any
road into that city " that did not go directly back to
Mecca " ; and " do you," he added, " write to Yazid, or
to Obaidallah ; and I also will write to Obaidallah, and
perhaps, should it please God, something may happen to
relieve me from being forced to an extremity on your
account." Then he retired his force a space to allow of
Husain leading the way towards Cufa ; and Husain took

"A MESSAGE OF DEATH" 167

the road that goes by Adib and Cadisia. This was on
Thursday the 1st of Muharram [the first month of the
Muslim year] a.h. 61 (a.d. 680). When darkness fell he
still continued his march, and all through that pregnant
night. As he rode, he once nodded a little, and waking
again, said : — " Men travel by night, and the destinies
travel toward them ; this I know to be a message of
death."

In the morning after prayers, he mended his pace ; and,
as he rode on and on, there rode up a horseman, who,
however, took no notice of Husain, but went past him
and saluted Harro, to whom he delivered a letter, giving
him orders from Obaidallah to conduct Husain and
his men into a place where was neither town nor fortifi-
cation, and there leave them until the Syrian forces should
surround them. This was on Friday, the 2nd of Muharram.
The day after, Amir the son of Said came upon them with
four thousand men, who were to have marched to Dailam.
They had been encamped without the walls of Cufa ; and
when Obaidallah heard of Husain's approach, he com-
manded Amir to defer his march to Dailam, and go against
Husain. But one and all dissuaded him : — " Beware that
you go not against Husain, and rebel against God, and so
cut off His mercy from you ; for you had better be deprived
of the dominion of the whole world than meet the Lord
your God with the blood of Husain on your hands." Amir
was fain to acquiesce ; but upon Obaidallah renewing his
command with threats, he marched against Husain, and
came up with him, as aforesaid, on Saturday, the 3rd of
Muharram.

On Amir sending to inquire of Husain what brought
him thither, the latter replied : — " The Cufans wrote to
me, but since they reject me, I am willing to return to
Mecca." Amir was glad when he heard this, and said : —
" I hope to God I may be excused from fighting against
him." Then he wrote to that purpose to Obaidallah, but

168 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

Obaidallah sternly replied : — " Get between him and the
river." Amir did so ; and the name of the place where
he cut Husain off from the Euphrates was called Kerbela
[Karbala] : — Karb (anguish) and Bala (vexation) :
" Trouble and affliction," said Husain when he heard of it.

Then Husain sought a conference with Amir, whereat
he proposed either to go to Yazid, or to return to Mecca, or
(as some add, but others deny) to fight against the Turks.
Obaidallah was at first inclined to accede to these con-
ditions, until Shimar stood up and swore that no terms
should be made with Husain ; adding significantly that
he had been informed of a long conference between Husain
and Amir. Then Obaidallah sent Shimar with orders to
Amir that if Husain would surrender unconditionally he
would be received ; if not, Amir was to fall upon him and
his men, and trample them under his feet. Should Amir
refuse to do so, Shimar was to strike off his head, and
himself command the attack against Husain. Thus
passed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday, the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th of Muhar-
ram. On the evening of the 9th, Amir drew up his forces
close to Husain's camp, and himself galloped up to Husain
as he was sitting in the door of his tent just after the
evening prayer, and told him of the conditions offered by
Obaidallah. Husain desired Amir to give him time until
the next morning, when he would make his answer.

In the night his sister came weeping to his bedside, and
awakening him, exclaimed : — " Alas for the desolation of
my family ! my mother Fatima is dead, and my father
Ali, and my brother Hasan. Alas for the destruction that
is past ! and alas for the destruction that is to come ! "
" Sister," Husain replied, " put your trust in God, and
know that man is born to die, and that the very heavens
shall not remain ; everything shall pass away but the
presence of God, Who created all things by His power,
and shall make them by His power to pass away, and

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ATTACK 169

resolve back into Himself, and He only shall remain. My
father was better than I, and my mother was better than
I, and my brother was better than I ; and they and we, and
all Muslims, have an example in the ' Prophet of God.' '
Then he told his men that Obaidallah wanted to take
none but him ; and that they should go away to their
homes. But they said : — " God forbid that we should
ever see the day wherein we survive you ! " Whereupon
he commanded them to cord their tents close together, and
make a line of them, to keep out the enemy's horse. And
he dug out a trench behind his camp, and filled it with
wood, to be set on fire, so that he could only be attacked
in front. The rest of the night he spent in prayer and sup-
plication, while the enemy's guard unceasingly patrolled
round and round the camp.

The next morning both sides prepared for the slaughter.
Husain first washed and anointed himself with musk, and
several of his chief men did likewise ; and one asking them
what it meant, Husain replied pleasantly : — " Alas !
there is nothing between us and the black-eyed girls of
Paradise but that these troopers come down upon us and
slay us ! " Then he mounted his horse, and set the Coran
before him, crying : — " O God, thou art my trust in every
trouble, my hope in every hazard " ; and submitted
himself to the judgment of his companions before the
opened pages of the sacred volume. On this his sister and
daughters began to weep, when he cried out in bitter
anguish, self -reproachfully : — " God reward the son of
Abbas " — in allusion to advice his cousin, Abdullah ibn
Abbas, had given him to leave the women behind in
Mecca.

The next moment a party of the enemy's horse wheeled
about and came up to Husain, who expected to be attacked
by them. But it was Harro, who had quitted the ranks
of the Syrian army, and had now come to die with Husain,
and testify his repentance before men and God. As Harro

170 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

rode into the doomed camp he shouted back to Amir : —
" Alas for you ! " whereupon Amir commanded his men
to bring up the colours. As soon as they were set in front
of the troops, Shimar shot an arrow into the camp, crying
out : — " Bear witness that I shot the first arrow " ; and
so the fight began in dire earnest. It raged in a series of
single combats, until noonday, when both sides retired
to prayer ; Husain adding to the usual office the " Prayer
of Fear," never used but in the darkest extremity of evil
fates. Shortly afterward, the fight was renewed, and
Husain was struck on the head by a sword. Faint with
the loss of blood he sat down by his tent, and took up on
his lap his young son Abdullah, who was in the same
instant slain by a flying arrow. He placed the gracious
corpse upon the ground, crying out : — " We come from
God, and we return to Him : O God, give me strength to
bear these chastisements." Parched with thirst, he ran
towards the Euphrates ; where, as he stooped to drink,
an arrow pierced him through the mouth. Raising his
hands, all besmeared and dripping with blood, to heaven,
he stood there for a while, and prayed earnestly. His
nephew, a most beautiful child, who went up to kiss him,
had his dear little hand cut off with a sword ; and Husain
again wept bitterly, saying : — " Thy reward, dearest
innocent child, is with thy fathers in the realms of their
everlasting bliss."

Hounded on by Shimar, the Syrian troops now sur-
rounded Husain ; and he, nothing daunted, charged them,
and again and again, and on the right hand and the left,
like a lion at bay. In the midst of the fighting his sister
came in between him and his slayers, demanding of Amir
how he could dare stand by and see Husain slain. With
tears trickling down his beard, Amir turned his face away ;
but Shimar, with threats and curses, set on his soldiers
again ; and at last one wounded Husain upon the hand,
and a second gashed him across the nape of his neck, and

HUSAIN'S MARTYRDOM 171

a third thrust him right through the body with a spear.
And no sooner had he fallen to the ground than the infamous
Shimar rode a troop of horsemen over his corpse, repeatedly
and remorselessly, backwards and forwards, until it was
trampled into the very ground, a scarcely recognisable
mass of cruelly mangled flesh and blood.

Thus, twelve years after the death of his brother Hasan,
Husain, the second son of Ali, met his own death on the
bloody plain of Kerbela, on Saturday, the 10th day of
Muharram, a.h. 61 (a.d. 680). This is the " Martyrdom
of Husain," celebrated every year during the first days of
Muharram by the Shiahs over all India and Persia ; and
with an intensity of feeling that ever keeps gaping between
the Sunni and Shiah Muslims the perennially festering
wound first opened more than twelve hundred years ago ;
and lends to the performance of the " Miracle Play," in all
its scenes and incidents of the last days of the Imam Husain,
the character of the most poignant reality. You yourself,
" dog of a Nazarene " though you be, are, for the time
being, a convinced and frenzied Shiah Muslim.

Though the personal history of Ali and his sons was
the exciting cause of the Shiah schism, its predisposing
cause lies far deeper in the impassable ethnological gulf
that separates the Aryan and Semitic races. Owing to
their strongly centralised form of government the empire
of the Sassanides succumbed at once before the onslaught
of the Saracens. Still Persia was never really converted
to Islam ; and when Muhammad, the son of Ali, the son
of Abdullah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet
Mahomet, proclaimed the Imamate as inherent of divine
right in the descendants of the Caliph Ali, the vanquished
Persians rose as one man against their Arab conquerors.
The sons of Abbas had all espoused the cause of their
cousin Ali against Muawiyah ; and when Yazid succeeded
to the Caliphate, Abdullah refused to acknowledge him
and retired to Mecca. It was he who tried to dissuade

172 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

Husain from going to Cufa. His son was Ali, who by order
of the Caliph Walid was flogged and paraded through the
streets of Damascus, mounted on a camel with his face to
the beast's tail ; and it was to avenge this insult on his
father that Muhammad resolved to overthrow the dynasty
of the Ommiades.

The Persians, in their hatred of the Arabs, had from the
first accepted the rights of the sons of Ali and Fatima to
the Imamate ; and Muhammad cunningly represented to
them that the Imamate had been transmitted to him by
Abou Hashim, the son of Muhammad, another son of the
Caliph Ali, whose mother was a daughter of the tribe of
Hanifa. This was a gross fraud on the descendants of
Fatima ; but the Persians cared not, so long as they threw
off the Arab yoke. When Muhammad died a.h. 124
(a.d. 742), they at once acknowledged his son Ibrahim as
Imam, and on the latter being taken prisoner by the
Caliph Merwan, he transmitted the Imamate to his brother
Abdullah, who overthrew his Ommiade antagonist in the
battle of Zab, and was proclaimed Caliph at Cufa a.h. 132
(a.d. 749). Thus fell the last eastern Caliph of the House
of Ommiyah ; and thus arose on its ruins the dynasty
of the House of Abbas, that reigned at Baghdad until
a.d. 1258.

The Persians were oppressed by the Abbasides as
intolerably as they had been by the Ommiades ; but as
the vigour of the Caliphate began to abate they again
rose in rebellion. In 808 Yacub, the son of a brazier
(saffar), of Siestan, subdued Kabul, Balk, and Fars, and
threatened Baghdad itself. His brother, who succeeded
him, was overthrown by Ismail Samani, the founder of
the Samanian dynasty of Khorassan and Bokhara. At the
same time the Dailamy or Bouyide dynasty, so called
after Ab'ul Bouya, a fisherman, of Dailam, on the Caspian,
established themselves in Fars and Irak. In the conten-
tions that began to distract and undermine the Caliphate

THE TABUTS 173

at Baghdad during the tenth century, the Sunnis all ranged
themselves under the Turks, while the Shiahs adopted the
cause of the Bouyides. It was Asadud Daulah (a.d.
977-82), the grandson of the fisherman of Dailam, who
restored the sacred buildings of Kerbela. The native
Safawi dynasty of Persia, which succeeded to the Mongol
dynasties, and immediately preceded the present Kajar
dynasty, derived its descent directly from the Caliph Ali,
through Ismail Safi, the son of Sultan Haidar, the founder
of the Haidari sect of Shiahs.

II

Celebration of the Martyrdom

The martyrdom of Hasan and Husain is celebrated by
the Shiahs all over India during the first ten days of the
month of Muharram, — beginning when the new moon that
ushers in the month is first seen. Attached to every
great Shiah's house is an Imambarrah — a hall or enclosure
— built expressly for the celebration of the anniversary
of the death of Husain. The enclosure is generally arcaded
along its sides, and, in most instances, is covered in with
a domed roof. Against the side of the Imambarrah
directed toward Mecca is set the tabut — also called tazia —
or model of the tombs at Kerbela. In the houses of the
wealthier Shiahs these tabuts are standing " appointments,"
faultlessly fashioned of silver and gold, or of ivory and
ebony, embellished all over with inlaid work. The poorer
Shiahs provide themselves with a tabut made for the
occasion, of lath and plaster, tricked out with mica, and
silvern, and golden, and greenish tinsels.

A week before the new moon of the Muharram they
enclose a space called the tabut kana, wherein the tabut
is prepared ; and at the very moment the new moon is
first seen a spade is struck into the ground before " the

174 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

Enclosure of the Tombs." A pit is then dug there, and
filled up with wood, and lighted, the fire being kept burning
through all the ten days of the Muharram solemnities.
Those who cannot afford to erect a tabut kana, or even to
put together a little tabut or tazia in their dwelling-house,
always have a Muharram fire lighted, although it may
consist of only a night-light floating at the bottom of an
earthern pot or basin sunk in the ground. It is doubtful
whether this custom refers to the trench of fire Husain set
blazing behind his camp ; or is a survival from the im-
memorially older Ashura (" ten days ") festival said to
have been instituted in commemoration of the deliverance
of the Hebrew Semites from Pharaoh and his host at the
Red Sea ; or derived from the yet more ancient Bael fires ;
but, in India at least, these Muharram fires, especially
among the more ignorant populace, — Hindus as well as
Mahometans — are regarded with the most profound
awe, and have a greater hold on their reverence than the
tabuts themselves. All day long the passers-by stop before
these fires, and make their vows over them ; and all night
long the crowds dance round and leap through them, and
scatter about burning brands snatched therefrom.

The tabut is lighted up, like an altar, with innumerable
green-coloured wax candles ; and nothing can be more
resplendent than the appearance of an Imambarrah of
white stone, or polished white stucco, picked out in green
and gold, all a-glowing with lighted glass chandeliers, and
polished brass sconces, and with oil lamps arranged
along the leading architectural lines of the building, its
tabut on one side, of white, and gold, and green, dazzling to
blindness. Before the tabut are placed the " properties "
to be used by the celebrants in the " Passion Play," the
bows and arrows, the sword and spear, and the banners of
Husain, etc. ; and in front of it is set a movable pulpit,
also made of the costliest materials, and covered with
rich brocades of green, and shimmering gold, and white.

THE TEN DAYS' SOLEMNITY 175

Such is the theatre wherein, twice daily during the first
ten days of the month of Muharram, the deaths of the first
martyrs of Islam are yearly commemorated in India.
Each day has its special solemnity, corresponding with the
succession of events during the ten days that Husain was
encamped on the fatal plain of Kerbela ; but the pre-
scribed order of the services in the daily development of
the great Shiah function of the Muharram would appear
not to be always strictly observed in Bombay.

During the four days after the tabuts have been carried
to the houses of those who do not possess permanent
representations of the tombs of Kerbela, there is little of
unusual excitement to be observed among the Shiahs in
any Indian city ; and this time is usually devoted by them
to paying visits to each others' tabut kanas, and Imam-
barrahs. Women and children as well as men are allowed
to enter them ; and Hindus and Christians, if they please,
may join the company. Only the Sunni Mahometans are
denied, and, under the English rule, prevented admission,
— simply as a police precaution.

The thronging visitors at first cover the whole area of
the enclosure, laughing and talking like the crowd at a fair.
But in the midst of the hubbub a signal is given, usually
by the muffled beating of a big drum in slow time, the
measured beats becoming fainter and more faint, until,
step by step, the people fall back into their places, and
are at length hushed in a silence of the most expressive
dramatic impression. Then a mullah enters the pulpit,
and intones a sort of " argument " or prelude to the play.
He begins in some such form as this : — " O ye Faithful,
give ear ! — and open your hearts to the wrongs and
sufferings of His Highness the Imam Ali, the Vicegerent
of the Prophet of God, and let your eyes flow with tears,
as water from a river, for the woes that befell their High-
nesses the beloved Imams Hasan and Husain, the foremost
of the bright youths of Paradise."

176 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

For a while he proceeds amid the deep silence of the eager
audience ; but as he tremulously chants on, they will be
observed to be swaying to and fro, and all together ; at
first almost imperceptibly, but gradually with a motion
that becomes more and more marked. Suddenly, a stifled
sob is heard, and again a cry, followed by more and more
sobbing and crying, and rapidly the swaying to and fro
becomes a violent agitation of the whole assembly ;
when, in a moment, it arises to its feet in a mass as one
man, each one smiting his breast with open hand, and
raising the wild rhythmic wail : — " Ya All ! Ai Hasan
Ai Husain, Ai Hasan Ai Husain, Husain Shah ! " As
the wailing gathers force and threatens to become un-
governable, a chorus of mourners, that has formed almost
without observation on the arena, begins chanting in
regular Gregorian mood a metrical version of the story ;
and this calls back the audience to itself, and, imper-
ceptibly, at last soothes and bequiets it again. At the
same time the celebrants come forward, and take up the
" properties " before the tabut ; and one represents Husain,
another al Abbas his standard-bearer, another Harro, and
another Shimar ; all going through their several parts
(every now and then explained by the chorus), not after
the manner of actors, but of earnest men, absorbed in
some high sacrament, and without consciousness of them-
selves or their audience.

The first day's performance should represent the
departure of Husain, against the moving entreaties of his
family, from Mecca, and the subsequent murder of his
nephew Kasim ; and so day after day each succeeding
act of the events at Kerbela should be represented. It is
open to question whether this is ever actually done in
India as it is in Persia ; but always on the fifth day the
banners of Husain and his children are taken in procession
through the streets, and his horse paraded, attended by
men bearing murchals [peacock tails], and chauries [whisps

THE CLIMAX 177

made of yak tails, or of shreds of ivory or sandalwood],
and aftabis [banners embroidered in gold with the figure of
the sun], insignia recognised everywhere in the East as
the most imposing symbols of royalty and empire. On
the seventh day the marriage of Cossim is represented by
a wedding procession through the streets by torchlight, a
quire of young men chanting funeral dirges (in place of
the usual troop of dancing girls) going before the bride-
groom, who is distinguished from the rest by a golden or
silvern umbrella held over his head. On the tenth day, in
commemoration of the death of Husain, the tabuts are
carried to the Muslim cemetery, as representing " the
plain of Kerbela," and at magnificent Bombay — as re-
built by the magnificent -minded Sir Bartle Frere — into
the sea ; which in Bombay does not simply stand mystically
for the Euphrates, but is regarded as that river itself,
seeing that in a sense it may be said to flow down the coast
of Western India. When Husain's horse is led into the
arena of the Imambarrah, and his little sons, and daughters,
and nephews appear on the scene, seated on thrones
carried on men's shoulders, the rage and agony of the
people become uncontrollable ; and for this reason no
representations of the dead Husain, or of his children, or
horse, are allowed through the streets of Bombay, for
fear of exciting outrages against the Sunnis.

On this 10th of Muharram every house wherein a tabut
is kept, or has been put up for the occasion, sends forth its
separate cavalcade, or its company on foot, to join the
general funeral procession ; which in the native Muslim
States sometimes assumes the character of a most imposing
military pomp. First go the musicians, with pipes and
cymbals, and uplifted straight horns, and enormous curly
ones, and deafening drums, followed by the arms and
banners of Hasan and Husain, and the crests, and other
badges in gold and silver, or other metals, of Ali and
Fatima, and these by a chorus of men chanting a funeral

178 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

dirge, and they in turn by Husain's horse. Next come men
bearing censers of burning myrrh, and frankincense, and
aloes wood, and gum-benjamin, before the tabut, or model
of the tombs of Hasan and Husain, upraised on poles, or
borne aloft on an elephant. Models of the sepulchre of
Ali, and that of Mahomet at Medina, and representations
of the Seraph-Beast Burak, whereon Mahomet is said to
have performed his journey from Jerusalem to Heaven,
are also carried along after the tabut.

There may be one or two hundred of these separate foot
companies, and cavalcades, in the general procession ;
and it is further swollen by crowds of faquirs, and clowns
or " Muharram faquirs," got up for the occasion in mar-
vellously fantastic motley, figuring, one as " Jack Priest,"
another as " King Tatterdemalion," and others as " King
Clout," " King Ragamuffin," " King Double Dumb," and
a hundred like " doubles " of the retinue of the " Lord of
Misrule," or " Abbot of Unreason," of our Catholic fore-
fathers. An immense concourse of people, representatives
of every country and costume of Central and Southern
Asia, runs along with the endless procession.

In Bombay, after gathering its contingent from all the
Shiah households, as it winds its way through the tortuous
streets of the native town, the living stream at length
emerges upon the Esplanade on the side bordering Back
Bay ; the whole green Esplanade, — " the plain of Kerbela"
for the day, — from Bombay Harbour to Back Bay lying
almost flush with the deep blue sea, with its white selvedge
of sleepy surf. The commotion and uproar of its advance
can be heard a mile away, and long before the procession
takes definite shape through the clouds of dust and incense
that move before it. It moves headlong onward in an
interminable line of glancing swords and glittering spears,
and blazoned suns (aftabis) and waving banners, and state
umbrellas, and thrones, and canopies, and, exalted above
all, the tabuts, framed of the most elegant shapes of Sara-

THE PROCESSION SEAWARD 179

cenic architecture, gleaming in white and green and gold,
and rocking backwards and forwards in mid air, — like
great ships upon a rolling sea, — from the rapid movement
of the hurrying multitudes, all swarming westward to the
banging, rattling, yelling of drums, blowings of horns,
shrillings of pipes, crashing of cymbals, and the ceaseless
minatory wail of " Ya Ali I Ai Hasan Ai Husain, Ai
Hasan Ai Husain, Husain Shah ! [drowned, drowned,
drowned, in blood, in blood, in blood ; all three, fallen,
and prostrate, and dead !] Ya All ! Ai Hasan Ai Husain,
Ai Hasan Ai Husain, Husain Shah I " — until the whole
welkin rings and pulsates with the wide, delirious, re-
verberating wail. Ever and anon a band of naked men,
drunk with opium or hemp, and painted up like tigers or
leopards, makes a rush through the ranks of the procession,
leaping furiously, and brandishing their swords, and spears,
and clubs in the air. The route, however, is strictly
defined by a line of native policemen, and before these
representatives of British law and order, the infuriated
zealots will suddenly bring themselves at full charge to
an emphatic halt, and wheel round, and retreat back into
the body of the procession, howling and shrieking like a
scared and scattered flight of baffled fiends.

And so for a mile in length, the far resounding, incense-
fuming, flashing and flaring, flaunting and fluttering,
towering and tottering, surging and staggering old-world
pagan pageant swirls and sweeps on against the rays of
the now declining sun, until the sea is reached ; where it
unfolds itself, and spreads itself out, along the long white
beach in a line at right angles to its " processional path "
across the Esplanade. Nothing can be more picturesque
than the arrival and tumultuous break up of the procession
in Back Bay. The temporary tabuts are taken out into
the sea as far as they can be carried, and abandoned to
the waves ; and together with them all the temporary
adornments stripped off the permanent tabuts of the

180 THE MUHARRAM IN BOMBAY

wealthy ; the dancing iridescence and sparkle and sheen of
it all reviving the vision of the tossed about flotsam and
jetsam of the Israelites, when, overburdened and top-
heavy with the spoil of the Egyptians, they excitedly
stumbled across the flooded ford at the head of the Gulf
of Suez to save the recapture of their well-gotten plunder
by the pursuing cohorts of the Pharaoh Amenophis IV.

The operation has a wonderfully cooling effect on the
mob. Their frantic clangours and clamours immediately
cease. In ironic fact, the mourners for Hasan and Husain,
having buried their tabuts in the sea, seize their opportunity
to have a good bath ; and a little after the sun has finally
dropped below the western horizon, the whole of the vast
crowd is seen in the vivid moonlight to be slowly and peace-
fully regathering itself across the wide extended Esplanade
towards their homes again. Thus the Saturnalia into which
the last act of the " Mystery of Hasan and Husain " has
degenerated in India, is closed for another year.

Up country, where the tabuts are carried to the Muslim
cemeteries, and Sunnis and Shiahs meet face to face
before the gaping graves of Hasan and Husain, the feuds
between them, that have been pent up the previous twelve-
months, would — in my day — often have been fought out
to a bloody end, but for the vigilance of the authorities.
The custom of carrying the tabuts into the sea at Bombay
no doubt contributes to the peace in which the Muharram
is observed by the Muslims of that city ; — the stateliest,
and most picturesque of the great maritime marts of
austral Asia.

The 11th and 12th of Muharram should be spent in
meditation by the graves wherein the tabuts have been
laid, and in Bombay beside the sad seashore ; but as a
spectacle the Muharram celebration is over with the mad,
weird masquerade, — Lupercalian, and Salian, but never
Corybantic in its madness, — of the tenth day. The pro-
cession on that day is all that is known to " the general "

" HOBSON-JOBSON " 181

of Europeans of the celebration of " The Muharram M in
India ; whence it is popularly designated by them, from
the semi-voluntary corruption between their lips of its
repeatedly recurring wail of Ai Hasan Ai Husain, as
" Hobson-Jobson " ! 1 — the title given by Sir Henry Yule
to his great and most fascinating glossary of similar Anglo-
Indian colloquial words and phrases.

1 Hobson-Jobson : A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and
Phrases (New edition. London : John Murray, 1903), in which Sir
Henry Yule repeatedly quotes from Sir George Birdwood's writings. — Ed.

LEPER IN INDIA

' ' Where a plague becomes endemic, there the sanitary laws have
been neglected." — Menander.

IN neither of its two forms [Lepra maculosa and Lepra
tuberculosa, seu nodosa, i.e. " Elephantiasis," familiar
to English people, in its most observable phase, under the
names of " Barbadoes Leg," and " Cochin Leg "] is true
leper1 [Lepra Arabum] really infectious ; and if it be
contagious, its contagion is extremely sluggish, and
operative only under telluric, atmospheric, and other
extrinsic conditions predisposing to its independent
development. Even when the disease has established
itself, its progress has to be measured by years ; and in its
earlier stages it may lie latent throughout a lifetime.

Among Anglo-Indians I knew of a leprous husband
whose wife never showed a symptom of the taint ; and
also of a leprous couple whose two grown-up and re-
markably beautiful daughters are perfectly free from all
trace of it. Again, in the case of a great personal friend
of my own, the disease, since first making its appearance
half a century ago, has never advanced beyond a narrowly
localised, slightly pallid and benumbed spot, with a con-
comitant numbness of the nervous system, marked most
prominently by the complete quelling of the extreme
energy of both mind and body that distinguished my
friend when I first made his acquaintance 55 years ago.
In England his symptoms remain in absolute abeyance,

1 See Skeat; and II. Kings v. 11 (R.V.) :—" Behold, I thought, he
will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord,
his God, and wave his hand over the place, and recover the leper."

183

184 LEPER IN INDIA

and only when he is in India do they show the slightest
tendency to excitation. If Father Damien's leper was not
spontaneously generated, but was indeed derived from the
leperds he nursed (a thing antecedently incredible to any-
one familiar with the disease in India), then its introduction
into his system was most probably owing to some entirely
accidental circumstance, such as his direct intoxication
with it through a cut or abrasion of the skin. But a similar
misadventure is not likely to happen a second time. I
once had to drink a cup of lemon sherbet prepared under
my eyes by a leper d ; but I never for a moment appre-
hended any danger from the draught, or most assuredly
I should not have taken it, or not simply, as I did in this
instance, out of polite consideration for the feelings of my
Muslim host.

As for the horror of leperds that has been revived by
the sensational treatment of the subject in recent years,
nothing could be more ignorant, heedless, and unfortunate.
The true panacea of medical science is the light and life
that flows in upon the sick from the sympathy of others ;
while the consciousness enforced on the leperds of being
shunned by everyone is the darkest feature of their
affliction. Yet contact with syphilis and cancer is just
as offensive, and, as regards the former, far more hazardous.

The English public has, indeed, never fully realised how
widely syphilis may be diffused by every conceivable
accident of casual contact, notwithstanding that the history
of its advent and progress, both in India and Europe, is
full of significance on the point. In its dangerous modern
forms it was unknown to the ancients, probably because
of personal cleanliness having formed an essential part of
godliness equally among the Hebrews and the pagan
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Phoenicians, and
Greeks and Romans. On the other hand, the people of
mediaeval Christendom had sunk into so disgusting a
condition of personal and domestic defilement, that this

SYPHILIS IN INDIA 185

swinish disease might, at any time, have been spon-
taneously developed among them. Actually its virus was
imported from the New World by the sailors Columbus
brought back with him from the West Indies to Cadiz, in
1493. It broke out with great virulence in the French
army [whence its unfair designation of " lues Gallica "*]
commanded by Charles VIII, at the siege of Naples in
1495, and from this point was disseminated within twenty-
five years throughout Europe, carrying off, among its
first great victims, the contemporary Grand Duke of
Moscow.

Owing, it may be premised, to the constant ceremonial
ablutions of the Hindus, it was absolutely unknown in
India before the arrival of Da Gama's ships at Calicut, in
1498. But within a few months of his sailors landing
there, the Zamorin became contaminated with it through
his zenana ; and within seventeen years from its first
apparition on the Malabar coast, it had spread like wild-
fire all over India, into the utmost recesses of the Himalayas,
where it has ever since remained ensconced in its most
envenomed types. Everywhere in India it is still known
by the name of Firinghee rogan, the " Frankish [specifically
" the Portuguese "] pest."2 It is quite impossible that this

1 The French themselves at first designated it mal de Naples ; while
the Portuguese, according to Colin [1619], called it ronge d'Espagne.

2 In Kashmir it is named gurmi-Firanj [" the Frankish heat "] ; in
Persia nar-i-Firangi [" the Frankish fire "], and also, more honestly,
nar-i-Farsi ; in Arabia woja-ul-Ifranji ; and in Turkey Frank zamiti. It
is deeply interesting to note also that " China Root " [obtained from
Smilax China of China and S. 'glabra and 8. lancecefolia of India], the use
of which in syphilis was introduced into Southern India, in the sixteenth
century, by the Portuguese, from Malacca, where it had been brought to
their notice by the Chinese traders at that port as a substitute for " Sarsa-
parilla " [S. officinalis of America], bears among the Telegus the names of
Parangi [" Frankish "] chekka, and Oali [" French "] chekka, while by the
Tamils it is called simply Parangi [the " Frankish " remedy]. The
Chinese had always known it, as the people of India had always known
" Cubebs " [the berries of Cubeba officinalis of Java], as an aphrodisiac.
" Cubebis in vino maceratis utuntur Indi Orientales ad Venerem excitan-
dem, et Surax Radice Africani. Chinae Radix eosdem effectus habet."
[Garcia's ab Horto in the Aromatum Hist. i. 28 of Clasius.]

186 LEPER IN INDIA

contagious disorder could have overrun Europe and Asia
with such fatal swiftness, unless its pollution had been
communicable by every kind of direct contact. The pre-
vailing libertinism of the time in Europe is insufficient to
account for its universal diffusion, from the two initial
points of [Cadiz-cum-] Naples and Calicut, within the 25
years from 1493-5 to 1515-21. It spread faster from
Calicut than even from Naples ; and it certainly was not
helped forward in India by any abnormal exacerbation
of immorality among the Hindus and Muslims of the
sixteenth century.

As for the imputed contagiousness of leper, there are,
in Western India at least, very few households, including
the family and its retainers and clients, without a more or
less leprous person among their number, and yet never in
my memory was an instance noted of leper being communi-
cated by such an one to any of his daily and hourly asso-
ciates. I was familiar, in the special practice of my friend,
the eminent Hindu physician, Dr. Bhau Daji, with many
cases of initial leper, but there was never, so far as I remem-
ber, any suspicion of their having originated in leprous
contagion. I could also name a large Indian city where
the clerk-in-charge of the public library, for years daily
engaged in circulating newspapers and books to hundreds
of readers, was covered all over his hands and arms and
face with blotchy leprosy ; but never were any of the
subscribers to the library known to have suffered from it.
Would this have been possible with the distemper that
prematurely throttled the Zamorin of Calicut, and 250
years later hurried Ahmad Shah Durani to his grave under
the burden of indescribable bodily and mental tortures ?
The irrational dread of leperds felt by the ignorant and
selfish patrons of philanthropy in England is indeed very
largely superstitious, being an unconscious heritage from
the belief still held over all Western and Southern Asia,
that these poor hopeless creatures must have been guilty,

BIBLICAL REFERENCES 187

in themselves, or through their ancestors, of some heinous
offence against the Deity. Thus in Numbers xii. the
leprous affection of the inspired " suffragette " Miriam is
attributed to " the anger of the Lord," simply on account
of her sedition against Moses.

Among all the Semites it was the Sun-God the leperd
was supposed to have offended. In India, of the post-
Puranic period, it is the Snake-God. This is why every
Hindu leperd is a worshipper of the Snake-God. Yet note
that one of the ceremonies particularly observed by Indian
leperds is every month to entertain a number of young
unmarried men and women at dinner. The superstition
is thought in India to be supported by certain texts of
the " Code of Manu " [hi. 161 and xi. 51], as it is certainly
sustained in this country by the severity of the Levitical
regulations1 [Leviticus xiii.] against cutaneous eruptions,
or rather the class of cutaneous eruptions, the Hebrew
name of which is translated in the English " Authorised
Version " of the Bible by the words " leper " [i.e. lepra,
scaly "] and " leprosy."2 But although the native Egyptian
tradition, according to Manetho, but scouted by Josephus
[Antiq., hi., xi. 4], was, that the Hebrews were expelled
from the land of Goshen on account of the prevalence
among them of true leper, from time immemorial endemic
in the Delta of the Nile, it is quite uncertain whether the
compilers of the Pentateuch had true leper exclusively in
view in the regulations directed against the disease they
designate saraath. Certainly the " leprosy " [" Lepra
Mosaica "] of Moses, Miriam, Naaman, and Gehazi, was
not true leper, or it would not have been curable as in

1 In France, leperds were for centuries treated as religious heretics,
and were actually hunted down and burnt at the stake in the fourteenth
century. The first edict for their relief was published in 1612, and it was
not until 1664 that they were placed under the Order of St. Lazarus.

2 Lepry is another English form of the word (see Skinner's Etymo-
logicon, London, 1671); and yet another " lobhar " [compare "lubber"],
although I know it only as the distinguishing epithet of St. Finnian the
Lobhar, or Leper,

188 LEPER IN INDIA

the first three of them, nor transferable as in the case of
the last [Gehazi] of them.

A similar uncertainty exists as to the disease referred to in
the " Code of Manu " [hi. 161 and ix. 51] under the name
of svaitrya, i.e. " whiteness." It clearly does not include
"Elephantiasis"1 [Lepra tuberculosa]; and whether the
whiteness of skin characterising it was due to true blotchy
leper, or to some common cutaneous eruption, cannot now
be determined. Herodotus, writing of the ancient Persians,
describes two kinds of lepra [i. 139] as prevailing among
them, namely, lepra and leuke. The former was probably
some ordinary scaly eruption on the skin, and the latter
possibly blotchy leper. The whiteness in both forms of
the disease, and not its malignancy in the latter form,
marked the vengeance of the gods.

In the " Code of Manu," " white-[\eprosy] " is the
punishment for stealing clothes, that is white cotton cloths ;
and it was meted out for this offence evidently in accord-
ance with ideas similar to those that suggested the doctrines
of " signatures " in ancient and mediaeval therapeutics.
Thus " lameness " is the punishment, according to the

1 Elephantiasis is nowhere mentioned in the " Code of Manu." It is true
that among the diseases which prevent those afflicted with them participat-
ing in the worship of the Lares and Penates, one designated [iii. 165]
slipada, literally " stone-foot," is enumerated, and that this word has
been translated by " elephantiasis " ; but it really means " clubfoot,"
and is so translated by all Sanskritists. The true Sanskrit name
for elephantiasis is hasti-pada, or gaga-pada, literally " elephant's
foot," a direct translation of its Arabic name ; and this Sanskrit name
for leper does not appear in the medical or general literature of the Hindus
until after the first century a.d. The Sanskrit word in the Mahabarala
we translate " leprosy," is kushtha ; and the presumption that it means
true leprosy is so far supported by the fact that the modern Tamil name
for blotchy leper, kustum, that the Javanese name for both blotchy and
nodular leper, kudig, and the Malayan names for them, kudal and untal,
are all four corrupted from the Sanskrit word kushtha. This word is also
the Sanskrit name of the drug Costus, the white root of the Auklandia
Costus [Saussurea auriculata] of Kashmir, which, in accordance with the
popular doctrine of " signatures," is throughout India a famed vernacular
remedy for every kind of scaly, scabby, sanious, and ulcerated skin
disease.

"SIGNATURES" 189

44 Code of Manu," for " horse-stealing," 44 blindness " for
" stealing a lamp," " foul-breath " for " calumniating,"
44 diseased nails " for 44 stealing gold from a Brahman,"
44 dumbness " for 44 plagiarism," 44 dyspepsia " for 44 stealing
cooked food," and 44 redundant limbs" for the fraudulent
44 adulteration of grain " down to the five per cent standard
of refraction until recently maintained by the London
Corn Trade Association !

Again, if persons stricken with 44 white-[leipYosy] " are
excluded, by the 44 Code of Manu," from participating in
the sacrifices offered to the ancestral manes, so are actors,
singers, dancers, gamblers — in short, all 44 sporting and
dramatic " characters, — as also engineers, architects,
doctors, and instructors in the Vedas for a fee.

" Donum Dei non donatur
Nisi gratis conferatur,
Quod qui vendit vel mercatur,
Lepra Syri vulneretur."

The references in the 44 Code of Manu" to " white-
[leprosy] " are less diagnostic, therefore, than even the
description of saraath in Leviticus xiii., and they in no way
uphold the ghostly awe of leper in India, where it is to be
directly attributed to the later legends of the mediaeval
Puranas. The Bavishya Purana, a work of very late date,
is most instructive on the point. Unfortunately it has
never been printed in the original Sanskrit, and I cannot
therefore give the Sanskrit name of the disease of eight
varieties, assumed by Colebrooke, in a well-known passage
of the Digest [iii. 309], to be true leper. These eight
varieties are, according to the translation : — 1, 44 blisters on
the feet " ; 2, 44 a deformity of the generative organs," the
reference probably being to the Satyriacal form of 44 elephan-
tiasis " ; 3, 44 cutaneous fissures " ; 4, 44 elephantiasis " ;
5, 44 ulcers " ; 6, 44 coppery blotches " [Lepra maculosa] ;
7, 44 black leprosy " [? 44 Lepra Grsecorum," i.e. 44 of the
highest degree of scabbedness, or a universal canker of the

190 LEPER IN INDIA

whole body " of old writers] ; and 8, " white leprosy "
[" Lepra Mosaica "]. Of these only 4 and 6 are certainly
forms of true leper, and 6 may be " Satyriasis." But the
Bavishya Purana distinctly states that the worst of all is
the eighth, " white leprosy," and simply because it is the
stigma of the sins of the sufferer or of his ancestors. Ac-
cording to the Puranic ordinances leper excludes not only
from the domestic sacrifices, but from the inheritance of
property ; but distinctly not on account of the disease
itself, and only because of the inward invisible offence
against the gods whereof it is supposed to be outward and
visible sign ; for if the sin be repented of, the right to
inherit is restored to the leperd, albeit his leper remain —
as it must in the case of true leper ; whereas, if the sin
be unrepented of, although the disease may be cured, — as
might happen in the case of one of the non-malignant
cutaneous eruptions grouped by classical Arabic and San-
skrit writers under the generic term we translate by
44 leprosy " — then the bar to inheritance continues to
operate, even against the sinner's heirs, and that although
they be adopted heirs.

There are, in short, only two indisputable proofs of the
identity of the modern forms of leper with the mediaeval
and antique. The first is Holbein's picture [1516] at
Augsburg of St. Elizabeth feeding leperds, who here
present exactly such illustrations of the disease as one
observes in India in the direfulest examples of it, com-
bining both blotchy and tubercular leper. The second
proof is afforded by the Greek and Latin names — elephan-
tiasis, elephantis, and elephas — given to the tubercular
form of leper. We never shall be able to tell what the
ancients exactly meant by lepra, beyond that it was a
foully furfuraceous cutaneous excrustation of some sort
or other ; nor by leuke. But there is no mistaking the
meaning of the terms elephas and elephantiasis, as descrip-
tive of the similitude the soft, elastic human skin assumes,

A MEDIAEVAL DIAGNOSIS 191

under the tubercular variety of true leper, to the hard,
nodular hide of the pachydermatous elephant. In Abraham
Fleming's Nomenclator, " imprinted at London for Ralph
Newberie and Henrie Denham, 1585," " the leprosie " is
denned as " a disease that maketh the skin rough and
coloured like an Elephant's skinne, with blacke wannish
spots, and dry parched scales and scurfe."1

This type of leper, however, was not known in Europe
before the first century B.C., and Lucretius is the first to
mention it, 50 B.C. ; and he distinctly says [vi. 1112-3] : —
" There is the Elephant disease, which is generated beside
the streams [Delta] of the Nile, in the midst of Egypt, and
nowhere else."

* Est Elephas morbus qui propter fiumina Nili
Gignitur, JEgypto in media, neque preterea usquam."

After him comes Pliny, a.d. 79, who [xxvi. 5] tells us
that " Elephantiasis " was unknown in Italy before the
time of Ptolemy, and came originally from Egypt ; and
the contemporary Greek writer Aritseus, who names it

1 Bartholomew Gilbert de Glanville [Bartholomeus Anglicus], in the
eleventh century, describes the symptoms of leper, and prescribes its cure,
as follows : — " Universally this evil hath much tokens and signs. In them
the flesh is notably corrupt, the shape is changed, the eyen becomes round,
the eyelids are revelled, the sight sparkleth, the nostrils are straited and
revelled, and shrunk. The voice is hoarse, swelling groweth in the body,
and many small blotches and whelks, hard and round, in the legs and in the
utter parts ; feeling is somedeal taken away. The nails are boystous and
bunchy, the fingers shrink and crook, the breath is corrupt, and oft whole
men are infected with the stench thereof. . . . Also in the body be diverse
specks, now red, now black, now wan, now pale. The tokens of leprosy be
most seen in the utter parts, as in the feet, legs, and face ; and namely in
wasting and minishing the brawns of the body." " To heal or to hide
leprosy, best is a red adder with a white womb, if the venom be away, and
the tail and head smitten off, and the body sod with leeks, — if it be oft
taken and eaten." " De Proprietatibus Rerum," Basle, 1476 ; as repro-
duced from the translation of John of Treves, circa 1495, by Robert Steele
[Alexander Moring, Ltd. : 1903]. If the prescription is not so convincing
as the description, we can boast nothing better to this day, for while in
modern medical practice diagnosis and prognosis have marvellously
advanced, therapeutics serve them but at a reverent distance ; — and still
the only healer is Death, with the peonies, and the paean : — " '0 ddvare
Ilcudj'."

192 LEPER IN INDIA

both e\e<pas and i\e(j>avTia<Tis ,' also 'H/aaVAefoy 7rd#o?,
this nomenclature referring, I suppose, to the myth of the
robe of Nessus ; and if so, indicating a belief on the part
of Aritaeus in the cruel contagiousness of leper. Next the
mathematician Firmicus, a.d. 340, describes one afflicted
with elephant disease as " elephantiacus " and " elephan-
ticus " ; and Isidorus, the grammarian, a.d. 674, names it
" elephanticus morbus." It became endemic in Italy
during the seventh century a.d., and in Germany and
France in the eighth century, and in England in the tenth.
It came into Italy through Syria and Asia Proconsularis,
and was probably known on the Phoenician coast of Syria
as early as in the Delta of the Nile. The terror of the
Elephantiasis of Tyre survived in the mediaeval phrase
44 Lepra Syri " ; that is, of Sour or Tyre, the Sarranus of
Columella [ix. 4, 4 and x. 287] and Virgil [Geo., ii. 506],
and Sarra of Plautus [True, ii. 2]. In any case, just as we
find that in India and in Norway leper in both its kinds is
apparently propagated by eating half-putrid salted fish,
so we learn that the Syrians objected to an exclusive fish
diet, as causing swellings and ulcerations of the limbs, and
propitiated their goddess Atargatis [Der-ceto], a form of
Aphrodite, by offerings of representations of fishes in metal.
Thus Ovid [Fasti, ii. 473] sings :—

" Hence, Syrians hate to eat that kind of fishes ;
Nor is it fit to make their gods their dishes."

" Inde nefas ducunt genus hoc imponere mensis
Nee violant timidi piscibus ora Syri."

Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, published in the reign
of James I, attributes leper to " the disorderly eating
of sea fish newly taken, and principally the liver of them,
not well prepared, soused, pickled, or condited."
Eg It is this " elephant disease " which is the scourge of
India ; and, probably, it was during the great growth of
ancient commerce, from the sixth century B.C. to the

HUMAN SACRIFICE 193

sixth century a.d., that the agonising malady was gradually
introduced among the littoral nations of the Indian
peninsula, and along the shores of the Indian Ocean
generally, from its original habitat in the Delta of the Nile,
and the narrow Phoenician coast shut in between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Lebanon mountains; in the
same manner as it was almost synchronously disseminated
from Egypt and Syria into Greece and Italy.

In India it prevails chiefly among the Hindus, and affects
the males among them in far larger proportion than the
females. All the cases of Hindus that came under my
observation in Dr. Bhau Daji's practice were from the
estuaries of rivers, as is so much the case with cancer in
this country, and they were invariably associated with a
diet largely made up of pickles of all kinds and candied
preserves.

The disease, to all outward seeming, considerably
increased after the British occupation of the country,
and that notwithstanding the improved sanitary con-
ditions introduced under our administration. But this
was probably merely a sort of ocular delusion, resulting
from our interference with the orthodox native method
of dealing with the visitation, so soon as its true character
is manifested, and there is no longer any hope of its yielding
to medicinal or sacramental treatment. The divine curse
on a family that elephantiasis is believed by the Hindus
to betoken can be removed only by the immolation, or
the suffocation in some sacred stream or tank, of its
victim, or by burying him in a newly -dug grave. But under
British rule this is either suicide or murder, and cannot
possibly be done on any enlarged and properly prophylactic
scale.

Some years ago in the Punjab, as Sir Mount stuart E.

Grant Duff has related, the father of a family, having been

laid low with leper, was for some time most carefully

nursed by his two sons, the only surviving members of

o

194 LEPER IN INDIA

his household. Nothing could exceed the tenderness and
self-denial of their care of him ; but as the disease advanced
and became hopeless he insisted on being taken to be
drowned in the neighbouring river. So, after much
resistance, the dutiful youths at last consented to do their
father's bidding, and bore him away to the purifying stream,
and laid him beside it, and reverently and affectionately
held him down in it until he was dead. They were at
once put upon their trial for murder, and convicted and
condemned to be hanged. Fortunately the sentence
came under the review of the late Mr. T. H. Thornton, c.s.i.
(afterward Lord Lytton's Foreign Secretary), who rightly
understood the people and their conduct, and, by a merciful
perversion of the English law on the matter, determined
their crime to be one of abetting suicide, and not murder,
and thus got the young men off with a nominal punish-
ment. In another case, mentioned to me by Mr. Thornton
himself, the father of a family, finding that he was irre-
mediably leprous, built up his own funeral-pyre, and
calling his household together, read to them from its summit
the Shastra commanding him to expiate the curse that
through his sins had been brought upon them, and then
set fire to the pile, and perished in the flames. The living
burial of leperds was at one time, Mr. Thornton tells me,
widely practised in the Punjab. But this high stoical fashion
of dealing with the outcasts of a cruel disease, and yet more
cruel superstition, we abolished ; and with the natural con-
sequence that leperds greatly increased in apparent numbers,
until now they are to be seen everywhere in India.1
'This is not becoming in any circumstances, and might

1 I note with satisfaction that Mr. Gait's Census Report, 1911, records
a fall in numbers since 1891 from 126,000 to 109,000, and he attributes the
decrease partly to the improvement of material conditions among the
lower castes, and partly to the greater efforts made in recent years to house
lepers in asylums. Mr. Gait says the omissions from the returns due to
concealment are no doubt very considerable. " It would be rash to assert
that the real number of lepers does not exceed by 40 or 50 per cent that
shown in Table XII."

SEGREGATION 195

with certain conditions prove a source of considerable
danger ; for although in its ordinary endemic phase leper
is not actively contagious, there is no saying, now that it
has become so widely distributed in India, whether at any
moment it might not pass into an epidemic phase, as when
Europe was decimated by it in the Middle Ages. Then
it came in with the Crusaders returning from the Holy
Land, just as it had previously come into Italy with the
soldiers of Pompey returning from Syria and Asia Minor ;
and now once more it seems to be finding its way westward
in the wake of our English Eastern commerce ; especially
since a direct passage for the trade of the Indian Ocean
was opened into the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez
Canal. An unavoidable and heavy, if not pressing, re-
sponsibility is, therefore, laid upon the Government of
India to take the necessary simple, and highly efficacious
measures, dictated as well by modern science as by the
experience of this and other European countries in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for its suppression.
The many questions of scientific interest to be investigated
in connection with it may never receive a completely
satisfactory solution ; but the practical points are that
leper can be extirpated by the segregated isolation of the
leprous, and can be prevented from reappearing spontane-
ously in a country whence it has once been extirpated, by
the amelioration of the sanitary conditions of its inhabi-
tants, particularly as affecting their food.

This is sufficiently proved by the whole history of leper
in modern Europe. It was by these means that the
plague was stayed in England, where at one time a Lazar
House [Lazaretto] existed in most of our larger towns.
Here, in London, one was built by William Pole, yeoman
to Edward IV, on the site of the present Smallpox
Hospital in Whittington Place,1 Salisbury Road, at the

1 Removed from King's Cross in 1860, to make room for the Great
Northern Railway Terminus.

196 LEPER IN INDIA

foot of Highgate Hill, as you proceed northward out of
Hollo way. It was dedicated to St. Anthony, but was
always known as " the Lazar House at Holloway." Early
in the fifteenth century another was established at Kings-
land, near the south-eastern corner of the road leading to
Ball's Pond, where the turnpike gate was afterwards put
up. It was called " Le Lokes," that is " the Enclosed,"
" the Guarded," " the Locked," a name still borne by
" the Lock Hospital " at Paddington. After the Reforma-
tion it was annexed to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. There
used to be "a Loke for lepers " also in Kent Street, in the
Borough, and one was formerly attached to Trinity
Chapel, Knightsbridge ; and another stood on the north
side of the diminutive " Green " in front of Tattersall's.

Earlier than any of these was the ancient hospital for
" maiden lepers," now represented by St. James's Palace ;
and the hospital in the parish of St. Giles's, founded in
1118 by Queen Matilda, as " a Cell " to the larger institution
at Burton Lazars, in Leicestershire. St. James's, St.
Giles's, and Burton Lazars, in Leicestershire, were the three
oldest houses for leperds in England. The Lizard Point
in Cornwall and Lezardieux1 in Brittany are both said to
take their names from the leper-houses, dedicated to St.
Lazarus, that once stood in these isolated spots . Altogether
over a hundred hospitals once existed in England for the
segregation of leperds ; and by the writ of " Leproso
amovendo " the authorities of a parish could at any time
be compelled to remove leprous persons to the nearest
of them. By pursuing this treatment leper began at last,
in the fifteenth century, to decline all over Europe, and

1 Compare the French word ladrerie for leper or leprosy, formed from
the name of St. Lazarus, the patron saint of leperds, who still is called St.
Ladre over all the north of France. " Lazar " for leper is formed, through
the French lazare, Latin Lazarus, Greek Aafapos, from the Hebrew
Eleazar, i.e. El-azar, " God-helped." " Lazzaroni," formed from the
Italian lazzarino, a " leper," is the descriptive term applied by the Spanish
viceroys to the rabble of Naples.

RELATION TO SYPHILIS 197

it was practically extinguished by the eighteenth century,
although it was not until 1741 that the last leperd died in
Scotland in the Shetlands,1 while the last recorded case in
Ireland occurred at Waterford so late as 1775.

The gradual introduction in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries of the use of fresh instead of potted meats
in winter, and of pot-herbs and salads as articles of daily
diet during the summer months of the year, as also the
substitution of constant changes of clean linen and cotton
[Indian " Calicuts " or calicoes] underclothing for flannel —
worn until it fell from the body in filthy rags — further
contributed to the extinction of leper from Europe. The
history of the disease in Norway during the last 40 years
has been to the same general effect.

But if the attempt to drive leper out of India is to be
entirely successful, it will probably be found necessary
to aim simultaneously at the expulsion also of syphilis.
Without ever being able to demonstrate it, Dr. Bhau Daji
always suspected the existence of some obscure connection
between them. Of course, when whole populations are
saturated with syphilis, as is the case in many parts of
Western and Southern India, there is a general lowering
of their vitality that of itself intensifies the vitiated con-
ditions favourable, where the constitutional predisposition
already exists, to the development of leprosy. But this
is not what Dr. Bhau Daji had in view. He was possessed
by the idea of a far closer relation between the two diseases,
and seemed to consider that where there was a tendency
to leper, its actual manifestation, particularly in instances
of unusual and otherwise unaccountable aggravation, was
often due to the stimulus communicated to the system
by the introduction into it of the specific virus of syphilis.
In the Himalayan valleys the two diseases are certainly

1 Dr. Edmonston is said to have met with a dubious case in Edinburgh
in 1809. The noblest of Scotch victims to leprosy was, of course, Robert
the Bruce.

198 LEPER IN INDIA

very remarkably associated, if in no ways interdependent,
in their baneful activity. It is further noteworthy that
they are not distinguished from each other by the natives
of Ceylon, and are indiscriminately named by them
Parangi, here emphatically " the Portuguese " pest. " Post
voluptatem misericordia " was the superscription borne
on one of the old London Lazar-houses. Possibly it merely
reflected, in proverbial phrase, the old religious prejudice
against lepers as sinners above all men ; but it does also
seem to indicate a popularly recognised sequence of cause
and effect between a sensual life and leper, and it un-
doubtedly suggests that the disorder may, from the earliest
times, in its more serious forms, have had at least one of
its origins in some independently developed Old World
contaminations cognate with the syphilis of America.

I am not entitled to express an opinion of my own on a
medical question of this sort, my self-gained knowledge of
leper having regard only to the history of its geographical
propagation, gained in independently following the lines
of inquiries indicated by the late Sir James Y. Simpson
[Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. lv.], and
that chiefly on account of the indirect light it throws on
the history of the decorative arts of India. But I naturally
took a keen professional interest also in Dr. Bhau Daji's
speculations on the point, and the tentative hypothesis I
early formulated with reference to it was that syphilis,
and, aboriginally, leper, were respectively active American
and passive Ethiopian types of a protean disease that
tends to generate itself wherever bodily cleanliness,
particularly in respect of the things dealt with in Leviticus
xv. and similar passages of the " Code of Manu," and the
Shayast La-shayast of the Parsis, is habitually neglected.1

This is obviously a very difficult question : but never-
theless it demands deliberate and circumstantial con-

1 Compare Ovid, A. A., ii., 329-30 : also Homer, Odyssey, xxii., 481-2,
and 493.

POSSIBILITIES OF EXTIRPATION 199

sideration. Leper can certainly be stamped out, and
syphilis itself is beginning to show unmistakable signs of
obsolescence, and that not merely in consequence of the
improved sanitary conditions of the world, but from the
gradual exhaustion of its inherent hurtfulness. If then
for no other reason than this, that " a long pull, a strong
pull, and a pull all together " would probably within two
generations make a lasting end of syphilis, and, apart
altogether from any hypothesis of its possible alligation
with local forms of leper, it would appear most desirable
to combine with the efforts directed against the latter, a
regularly organised endeavour for the complete extinction
of the former obscene disease within, at least, the limits of
British India. It was inflicted on India by the first nation1
of modern Europe adventuring into the pagan East ; and
if, as may reasonably be suspected, its presence there
serves to intensify the vernacular leper, it has indeed been
twice accursed to the country, where, so long as it is
allowed to prevail, it will remain the shamefulest of
stigmas on the civilisation of the Christian West. There
can be no true expiation of the sin of it but by thoroughly
purging the land, from Kashmir to Ceylon, and from
Bab-el Mandeb to Malacca, of the duplex pollution of it.
I feel strongly, therefore, that if we are to succeed in the
benevolent movement for the alleviation of leper in India,
we must, and all the more unhesitatingly in view of the
humiliating history of syphilis in that country, combine
the religious obligations of penitence and reparation with
the burden and the glory of a great imperial and inter-
national work of duty and mercy.2

1 The very country that India led, with the export of her " Calicuts,"
in the redemption of the West from leper !

2 The native Christians of St. Thom6 [Maliapur], near Madras, regard
the local leperds as descendants of the murderers of St. Thomas. It is
a matter for profound thankfulness that the subject of venereal diseases
is occupying the attention of a Royal Commission, presided over by a
statesman of pre-eminent ability, the Lord Sydenham, g.c.m.g., g.c.s.i.,
f.r.s., etc., late Governor of Bombay.

THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES
IN THE HISTORY OF ART1

" What wonder we that men should die ? The statelie
tombs do weare ;
The verie stones consume to nought, with titles they
bid beare." — Richard Knolles,

The Generall Historie of the Turkes, 1604.2

ALTHOUGH the Hittites are known to us as a political
-£*• power only through the contemporary chronicles of
the campaigns undertaken against them by the kings of
Egypt and Assyria, they occupy an independent position
of exceptional importance in connection with the develop-
ment of the archaic civilisation of Asia and Europe. They
were not merely the originators of the ideograms from which
the syllabaries of Cyprus and Cilicia, and Mysia, and the
non-Hellenic letters of the alphabets of Cappadocia, Lycia,
and Caria were derived, but, if we may rely on the evidence
of the Syrian and Anatolian sculptures ascribed to them,
they were also the actual propagandists, in the course of
their conquests and commerce, of the mythology, worship,
manners and customs, and characteristic illustrative arts,
that, as influenced in their inception by the ubiquitous
presence of Egypt, they received directly from Mesopo-
tamia. These were in turn transmitted, with gradual
and continuous local qualification, eastward into Media
and Central Asia, and westward through Lydia and
Ionia, to the islands and mainland of Greece ; appearing

1 Originally contributed to tYie, Asiatic Quarterly Review, Jan., 1888. — Ed.

2 Quoted in From Pharaoh to Fellah (1888) — the best work on modern
Egypt known to me — by the late Charles F. Moberly Bell, 1847-1911, the
eminent Manager of The Times, in succession to J. Cameron MacDonald,
1890-1911.

201

202 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

there concurrently with the elements of Pharaonic culture
directly imported from the delta of the Nile by the
Phoenicians.

The Hittites were, in short, the immediate inheritors,
long anterior to the subjugation of Babylonia by Assyria,
of the civilisation of the Chaldaean kingdom of " Father
Orchamus," and Sargon [I], and Hammurabi ; and the
first to disseminate it from " the river of Egypt " to the
Black Sea, and from the Caspian Sea to the river Halys,
and onward to the Mediterranean Sea, over all Syria and
Asia Minor : it being assumed that the Hittites [ha-Khitti,
and Khittim, and bene-Khetha] of the Old Testament are
one and the same people with the Kheta of the Egyptian
monuments, and the Khatti of the Assyrian inscriptions.

The Kheta of the wall paintings of the Ramesseum at
Karnak, and on the great temple of Abu-Sumbel, are cer-
tainly none other than the proto -Armenian defenders of
Van figured on the bronze gates (now in the British Museum)
of the palace of Shalmaneser II, at Balawat, who are the
Khatti of the cuneiform inscriptions ; and both are in-
distinguishable in their features, costumes, and military
equipment, from the people autoglyphically portrayed on
the sculptures attributed by Professor Sayce and Dr. W.
Wright to the Hittites. Further, as the definition of " all
the land of the Hittites " in Joshua i. 4 exactly limits the
country of the Kheta as known to the Egyptians, and the
country of the Khatti as known to the Assyrians, it is un-
reasonable any longer to question the absolute identity of
the Kheta, Khatti, and Khittim or Hittites.

The prolonged resistance they opposed to the ever-
victorious armies of Egypt and Assyria proves the ampli-
tude and solidity of the natural resources of their still
shadowy empire, while their sculptures, situated in so many
far-separated regions, show how wide was its extent.

They would appear to have been essentially a Turanian
people, who perhaps gradually became partially Semiticised,

RACIAL ORIGINS 203

and even in some degree Aryanised. They were originally

a Northern people, as their shoes, with the toes turned up,

indicate ; but it was on the south side of the Caucasus

mountains, before Media and Armenia were occupied by

their later Aryan inhabitants, that they developed their

distinctive nationality, and from Cappadocia enlarged

their empire southward, across Mount Taurus, to Egypt,

and westward to the shores of the Propontic and JEgean

seas. They are the people whom the Greeks called " Leuco-

Syrians," to distinguish them from the darker Semitic

populations south of Mount Taurus ; and again they are

identified by Mr. Gladstone with the Ceteans of the eleventh

book of the Odyssey : —

" And round him [Eurypylus] led his bold
Cetean train " ; —

who although classed with the Leleges and Caucones as
forgotten if not fabulous races of the Homeric world, were
in all probability a tribe of Hittites that had given their
name to the river Cetius [Bergama-Chai] in Mysia. We
have probably a trace of them also in the name of the town
of Citium [Niagusta] in Thrace, for in 1 Maccabees i. 1,
Macedonia is designated as the land of Chettim, and the
Macedonians as Citims [viii. 5]. Citium [Larnaka] in Cyprus
was undoubtedly a city of the Phoenicians, who from it
expanded the denomination of Chittim to the whole island
of Cyprus, and to all the islands collectively of the iEgean
Sea. Hence it is applied in the Old Testament [Genesis
x. 4 and 1 Chronicles i. 7] to the third son of Javan, as the
eponym of the Aryan tribes [Dorians, iEolians, and
Ionians] who succeeded the Phoenicians in the colonisation
and commerce of the Grecian Archipelago. But the
Phoenicians, who formed a geographical link between the
Aryan [Japhetic] Greeks, the descendants of Kittim, the
third son of Javan, and the Semiticised Turanian Khittim
or Hittites, the descendants of Heth, the second son of
Canaan, if they were not ethnologically connected, through

204 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

their Canaanitish predecessors in Phoenicia, the Sidonians,
with the Hittites, must at least have appropriated the
appellation of Chittim from the latter. Wherever the name
occurs, and under whatever disguises, we are justified in
assuming, in the absence of sufficient arguments to the con-
trary, that it refers ultimately to the formidable Hittites,
who between the twenty-fourth and eighth centuries B.C.
established their military domination over all Asia Minor
from Syria to Lydia and Ionia.1

It was in the seventeenth century B.C. that Thothmes I
began " the war of revenge " against the Kheta ; thence-
forth carried on by successive Pharaohs for nearly five
hundred years. Thothmes III defeated them before
Megiddo [Armageddon of New Testament], and at Kadesh
on the Orontes, and Carchemish on the Euphrates ; and
twice stormed the last-named city and reduced it to ashes.
The sanguinary struggle was continued by the imme-
diately following Pharaohs, but with such indecisive
results that, about one hundred and fifty years after
the death of Thothmes III, a treaty was concluded be-
tween his successor, Ramses I, and the king of the Kheta,
securing, for a time, peace between Syria and Egypt.
When, however, Seti I came to the throne of Thebes, circa
1366 B.C., finding that the Kheta and their allies had
recommenced their incursions into territories of Egypt, he
at once attacked them, defeating them at " Kanaan,"
near the Dead Sea, and again at " Jamnia " in Phoenicia,
where he overthrew with great slaughter " the king of the
land of Phoenicia,' ' and then marched against Kadesh,

1 I presume that it can never refer to the " Chatti," an ancient popu-
lation of N.W. Italy, or to the " Chattuarii " of the N.E. of Germany, or
the " Chatramotitae " of the Hadramaut of S. Arabia : but one may be
permitted to suggest a suspicion of it in the designation of the Kshdtriyas
[this Sanskrit, or Sanskritised, word having the meaning of " Rulers,"
" Governours," etc.], a people, named Chatriaei, being located in the
modern maps of ancient Asia between Ariana and Surastrene [Surashtra,
i.e. " the Good-land "] including Kathiawara [the " Ward of the Kathis "],
and Rajputana.

THE KHETA 205

expressly as " the avenger of broken treaties," and cap-
tured the city by surprise.

His son, Ramses II, who adorned the temples at
Karnak, Abu-Sumbel, Abydos, and Luxor with the
pictorial records of his father's and his own achievements,
prosecuted his campaigns against the Kheta with such
success, that at last " the great king of the Kheta " was
compelled to submit himself ; and a peace was settled
between them that lasted sixty years ; a circumstance
probably due to the happy marriage of the Egyptian victor
with the beautiful daughter of the vanquished Kheta king.
More than two hundred years later, the Kheta are found
among the federated invaders from Anterior Asia and
Northern Africa, who were defeated by Ramses III in the
great naval engagement at Migdol, the " Watch-city " at
the Pelusaic mouth of the Nile ; and thenceforward their
dreaded name disappears from this history of Egypt.

In the inscribed tablets from the library of Assurbanipal
[Sardanapalus], copied by that king from the original
tablets of the library founded by Sargon [I] at Agane, the
Khatti are mentioned as continually assailing the kingdom
of Chaldsea during the reign of the latter sovereign. He was
able to drive them for a time beyond Mount Amanus ; but
no sooner did the Elamites begin to ravage Chaldaea, than
the Khatti at once re-established themselves on the Orontes
and Euphrates. Again, although the Egyptians fre-
quently forced them to withdraw into Cappadocia, the
cradle of their empire, on the decline of the Theban mon-
archy, after the death of Ramses III, they promptly
reasserted their dominion over Syria, and sustained it
with the greatest vigour, until their final overthrow by the
Assyrians in the eighth century b.c. They were indeed,
with short periods of depression, the paramount power
in Syria and in Asia Minor, from about the twentieth to
the twelfth century b.c.

From the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I [1120-1100

206 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

B.C.] found at Kalah Shergat [Asshur], the oldest original
Assyrian text that has hitherto been discovered, we learn
that immediately on his coming to the throne he began to
beat back the Khatti from the western borders of his
kingdom ; and that after a series of expeditions against
them, he succeeded at last in temporarily freeing his
frontiers from them. Assur-nazir-pal [885-860 B.C.] carried
the arms of Assyria as far as the "Lebanon" and "the
great sea of the Phoenicians," and exacted tribute from
Carchemish and Gaza, " and other towns of the Khatti"
and from Tyre, Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad. His son, Shal-
maneser II [860-825 B.C.], according to the inscription on
" the Black Obelisk," led several punitive campaigns
against the Khatti, and captured Carchemish. One
hundred years later we find them still in deadly conflict with
the Assyrians. But at last the empire of the Khatti was
brought to an end by Sargon [II], who in 717 B.C. fell
suddenly upon Carchemish with an overwhelming force,
and plundered it, and levelled it to the ground ; and in
subsequent campaigns brought the whole country of the
Khatti to the Phoenician coast, and, north of Mount Taurus,
to the Halys, under his sway. Henceforth the Hittites
were known in Syria only as isolated tribes ; while in Asia
Minor their very name appears to have at once died out
of the memories of the nations inheriting their institutions,
and arts and industries, and their indefinite fame.

Their remains consist almost exclusively of inscriptions
and sculptures distributed over the whole of north-western
Anterior Asia. In Syria inscriptions have been found near
Damascus, and at Hamah [Hamath], and at Aleppo.
Several inscriptions, now in the British Museum, were
found by the late Mr. George Smith at Jerabis or Jerablus
[Carchemish], one of them being graven on the back of
the mutilated bas-relief figure of a man. The so-called
" Monolith of a King," now in the British Museum, was
discovered by the Rev. George Percy Badger, built into

ASIA MINOR MONUMENTS 207

the wall of the Turkish Castle at Birejik, on the Euphrates.
In the mountains dividing the plain of " Hollow Syria "
from the uplands of Asia Minor, are the sculptures repre-
senting a hunting scene, chiselled with great spirit, on the
rocks of the Bagtche-p&ss through the Ghiaour-Dag [Mount
Amanus] ; the inscription on the Assyrian lion1 on the
Turkish Castle at Marash, at the southern foot of the
Bulghar-Dag [Mount Taurus] ; and the inscription in a
curious gorge near Ghurun, at the northern foot of the
Bulghar-Dag.

We are now among the elevated pasture-lands and vine-
yards and wheat -fields of Asia Minor ; and it is here in
the Turkish provinces representing the ancient Cappadocia,
Lycaonia, Pontus, Galatia, Phrygia, and Lydia, that the
Hittite monuments of the greatest interest exist. Just
within the limits of the Turkish province of Koniyeh
[Lycaonia] and north of the Kulek-Boghaz, or " Cilicise
Pylae," at Ibreez, near Eregli, the ancient Heraclea, are the
remarkable sculptures representing a man, clad in the
usual Hittite costume, worshipping the local god of corn
and wine. The long robe wrapped round the former is
richly broidered and fringed, and diapered all over with
the simple but effective geometrical designs still to be seen
in the domestic fabrics woven by the hardy peasantry of
Koniyeh, Roum, and Armenia, and throughout Central
Asia. The robe is worn very much in the Hindu fashion
of Western India ; and the whole figure of the man, with his
weighty necklace, " tip -tilted Hittite boots," and twisted
head-gear, strongly resembles that of some wealthy mer-
chant of Guzerat in the attitude of devotion before an
exalted image of the Lord Preserver, Vishnu. There is an
inscription at Bor, between Eregli and Nigdeh, and another
at Kilesseh - Hissar [Tyana], not far from Bor, and at
Iflatun - Bunias, near to the Beishehr lake, in the

1 It is now, I believe, with the Hamah stones, in the Imperial Museum
at Constantinople.

208 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

southern corner of Koniyeh ; and there are traces of Hittite
art on two small slabs found at Kaissariyeh [Caesareia, more
anciently Mazaca], in Central Koniyeh [Cappadocia], but
known to have been originally brought f rom Amasia, in Roum.

At Boghaz-Keui [Pteria] in north-western Roum
[Galatian Cappadocia], the reputed site of the Hittite
capital of Asia Minor, are the dilapidated remains of a
building, arranged on the same ground plan as the palaces
of Chaldaea and Assyria, but raised on a terrace of Cyclo-
pean masonry, instead of on a mound of burnt -clay bricks ;
and near it are the ruins of a temple, sculptured within with
the figures of the Hittite gods, advancing in procession,
from the right hand and the left, until they meet face to
face in the centre of the side of the open rock-cut court
opposite the entrance. All the gods stand, after the manner
of the gods of the Hindus, on their symbolical vehicles
[vahans] ; the right-hand procession being headed by
Rhea-Cybele [Nana-Ishtar, Ma], borne on a lion, and wear-
ing her turreted diadem ; and the left by the beloved
Attys [Bel, Baal, Papas, Tammuz, Adonis]. Two smaller
figures behind the great goddess are represented standing
on the Hittite " double-headed " " spread-eagle."

At Eyuh, a little to the north of Boghaz-Keui, there is
another Hittite palace with Sphinxes, of the standing and
affronted Assyrian type, carved on one of the gateways.
Outside this gateway there are reliefs portraying a number
of persons worshipping before an altar, and also a snake-
charmer playing on a guitar [vina of Hindus] to the serpent
coiled round his body, while another man stands beside
him holding a long-tailed monkey by the hand — a group
thoroughly Indian in its composition and physiognomy and
movement. Several other animals are also represented,
the fanciful double-headed eagle again being prominent
among them. This device reappears also among the golden
ornaments found by Schliemann at Mycenae ; and then is
lost sight of in Asia Minor for nearly two thousand years,

"THE WEEPING NIOBE " 209

when it was revived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
a.d. on the coins of the Seljuk Turks ; and was introduced
by the Counts of Flanders into Europe in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries a.d. Professor Sayce believes it to
have been originally a form of the conventional winged
thunderbolt of Bel Merodach. Its plastic prototype was
the " spread eagle " borne as a military standard and sym-
bol of victory, by the conquering hero of the reliefs on the
funeral stele of white stone found by M. de Sarzec at Tel-
Ho in Chaldaea.

At Ghiaour-Kalessi, near the villages of Kara-Omerlu
and Hoiadja, nine hours south-west of Angora, the ancient
Ancyra, in Eastern Anatolia [Galatian Phrygia], are two
colossal figures of Hittite warriors, hewn in the face of
the mountain rock, supporting the walls of a Cyclopean
fortress, erected by the Hittites on this site for the trans-
parent purpose of commanding the ancient high road
between Pteria and Sardis. They are the counterpart of
the two colossal figures of warriors cut on the rocks over-
hanging the ancient road between Phoccea and Smyrna,
and Ephesus, where, after doubling the eastern shoulder of
Mount Sipylus, it is joined near the village of Karabel by
the road from Sardis. These latter figures have been
supposed, from the time of Herodotus, to represent the
renowned legendary Sesostris [Seti I and his son Ramses
II] ; but Professor Sayce has been able to demonstrate,
from the inscription still legible on one of the figures, that
they are the work of the Hittites . The famous seated figure,
carved in full relief out of the living rock, on the northern
slope of Mount Sipylus, 4 or 5 miles from the ancient
Magnesia, and alluded to by Homer [Iliad, xxiv. 602-20],
and Sophocles [Antigone, 816-22], and described by
Pausanias [Attica, xxi. 5] as " the weeping Niobe," has
also been shown by Sayce to be a Hittite statue of Rhea-
Cybele, to the worship of whom, as " Mater Sipylina," the
city of Smyrna was devoted.

210 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

A duplicate of this profoundly interesting statue has been
discovered by Sir William Mitchell Ramsay at Sidi-Gazi
[Nacolea], between Rutaya [Cotyseum] and Bala-Hisar
[Pessinus], in the very heart of Anatolia [Phrygia], in the
immediate vicinity of Pessinus, and among the defiles of
Mount Dindymum, and may be identified with Rhea-
Cybele as Dindymene and " Mater Pessinuntia."

In the neighbourhood of the latter statue, close to the
modern village of Ayazeen, Murray found a rock-cut
tomb, flanked at its entrance by two rampant lions,
affronted before a phallic pillar1 rising up between them
from the top of the doorway on which their forepaws rest.
The sepulchre proved to be the earliest of eight, decorated
with the same symbolic subject, and all belonging to an
age subsequent to that of the acknowledged Hittite
sculptures, but anterior to that of the similar lion group,
" the device of the Pelopidae," above the gate of the
Acropolis of Mycenae, now proved by Ramsay's discovery
to have been introduced into Greece from Phrygia. Close
to Sidi-Gazi and Doghanlu, at the village of Yazil-Kia, i.e.
" the Writing on the Rock," is the so-called " Tomb of
Midas " ; the type of several similar caverned sepulchres,
with facades carved all over with simple geometrical
patterns identical with those used in the ornamentation
of modern Turkman carpets ; and obviously intended to
represent curtains, similar to those hung before their tents
at the present day by the Turanian nomads of Asia Minor,
Persia, and Central Asia. These tombs are thought to be
the latest examples of Phrygian art, as those at Ayazeen
are supposed to be the earliest.

The Hittites were apparently still at the height of their
power when, in the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., Asia
Minor was overrun by recurrent hordes of Thracian Aryas
[Pelasgian Bryges], and this protracted assault on the

1 I believe that these pillars must have supported a solar disc like the
Buddhistic " wheel."

CONQUERING DYNASTIES 211

centre of their empire no doubt served to render their
destruction final on the capture of Carchemish by Sargon
[II]. But this renewed Aryan invasion of Asia Minor
would seem to have given a great impetus to the develop-
ment of the Phrygian, or, as it might be styled, Aryanised
Hittite kingdom that was now established on the Sangarius,
and which continued, in succession to the Hittite kingdom
on the Halys, to dominate all the countries between the
Euxine and the Mediterranean Seas, until it succumbed
to the attacks of the mixed Aryan and Turanian bar-
barians, known in history as the Cimmerians, by whom
Asia Minor was invaded in the eighth and seventh centuries
B.C. ; when Phrygia, on the death of its last king Midas,
became absorbed in the Maeonian kingdom of Lydia.
This in its turn ruled over Asia Minor, until Croesus, the
son of Alyattes, and the last of the great dynasts of the
Mermnadse, was subjugated by Cyrus, 554 B.C. It is to
the comparatively late period of the Mermnadse [724-
554 B.C.] that " the Tomb of Midas," and the other Phry-
gian tombs at Doghanlu probably belong. But if the
sculptures at Boghaz-Keui, Eyuk, Ghiaour-Kalessi, Karabel,
and Sidi-Gazi are the latest that can be classed as their
actual handiwork, the indirect influence of the Hittites
as the first civilisers of Asia Minor is still to be traced in
the so-called " Grave of Tantalus " on Mount Sipylus, and
the so-called " Monument of Alyattes " at Sardis ; the
former one of twelve, and the latter of a hundred graves
of similar character, all probably belonging to the age of
Croesus, and copied apparently from the heroic tumuli of
the Troad, known as the " Tomb of Achilles, " the
" Tomb of Priam," etc., all identical in form and
structure with the numerous Hittite burial mounds of the
plain of " Hollow Syria," between the Orontes and the
Euphrates.

Beside the monuments above enumerated, several other
minor objects of Hittite art have been discovered, such as

212 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

the stele, and a stone bowl with a Hittite inscription round
its outer surface, both found at Babylon ; the circular
seal of black hematite, now in the British Museum, found
at Yuzgat, near Boghaz-Keui ; the cubical seal of hematite,
belonging to Mr. Greville Chester, found near Tarsus ; the
eight seals found by Layard in the " Record Room " of
the palace of Sennacherrib at Koyunjik [Nineveh] ; the
eighteen seals, belonging to Mr. Schulemberg, " found
in Asia Minor " ; and lastly, the silver boss, offered in
sale about 30 years ago to the British Museum and else-
where, but refused in the belief that it was a forgery, and
since disapparent. Fortunately, an electrotype of it was,
despite the VHIth and Xth Commandments, taken at
the British Museum, and a cast by Lenormant ; and these
have enabled Professor Sayce to determine that the
inscription on the boss was what is called bilingual, or
written in two characters, cuneiform and Hittite, and
read : Tarik-timme [compare with Tarkondemos of
Plutarch], King of the country of Erme [compare with
Urume of the inscriptions of Tiglath-Peleser I]. It is
the only Hittite bilingual inscription yet [1888] brought
to light, but, unhappily, it is too short to be of any great
practical use of itself, and the longer Hittite inscriptions
consequently still [1888] remain undeciphered.1

But, notwithstanding that we have not yet succeeded
in expounding all the dark secrets of the Hittite inscrip-
tions, they, and the sculptures illustrating so many of them,
reveal to us a uniform system of ideographic writing, and
a self-consistent style of art, founded indeed on that of
Chaldaea, and not uninfluenced by that of Egypt, but
stamped with its own strongly-impressed ethnical and local
characteristics, and visibly pointing to a homogeneous
and universal, if invisible empire in Hollow Syria and

1 Time would fail me to tell, in any detail, of the discoveries of explorers
since this article appeared in its original form, such as Mr. J. Garstang,
Professor D. G. Hogarth, and others.

VAST ARTISTIC INFLUENCE 213

Asia Minor that can be none other than that of the Kheta,
Khatti, or Hittites. Their inscrutable inscriptions, and
their unambiguous and peculiar sculptures, exhibiting such
strange religious symbols as " the mural crown," and
" the double-headed eagle," everywhere in association with
the same decorative patterns — the chevron, meander,
square, cross [swastika], and anthemion [lotus] ; and with
the same fashion of dress and military armament — " the
tip-tilted boot," " the high-peaked turban," the short,
high-girded sword, the long spear, and round shield,
and bow and arrow ; — all these tangible, singular, and
significant vestiges of an extinct, "indigenous" civil-
isation at once indeed testify to the reality of "the
Empire of the Hittites," and to the all-important part
played by it in the development of the primitive,
and, as regards Europe, the prehistoric culture of the Old
World.

The broad conclusion of this epigraphical and general
historical survey is that until the eighth century B.C. the
Hittites were the most powerful people in Syria and Asia
Minor, and the main intermediaries through whom the
arts of Chaldaea and Babylonia were transmitted to the
shores of the Euxine, Propontic, and iEgean seas ; and
after the annihilation of the Hittite nationality by Sargon
[II], although the modified Babylonian arts of Assyria,
chiefly exported from Mesopotamia by sea, and in the
course of the coasting trade between Phoenicia and Hellas,
served to exert a specific influence on the proto -Ionic art
of Lycia, Caria, Lydia, and Mysia, they continued also to
find their way westward by the immemorial overland
routes through Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Lydia ; so
that it is almost impossible to set bounds, either in geo-
graphical area, or in historic time, to the influence of the
Hittites on the arts of the Old World.

The art of Greece, in its earlier prehistoric examples,
antecedent to the twelfth century B.C., was exclusively

214 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

derived from Chaldsea and Babylonia, through the Hit-
tites ; and in its later prehistoric period, between the
twelfth and eighth centuries, although Greece was at this
time in communication, through the Phoenicians, with both
Egypt and Mesopotamia, it continued to be predominantly
influenced, through the intervention of the Hittites, by
that of Mesopotamia, then centred in Assyria. Even
after the disappearance of the Hittites, the authority of
Assyria was exercised over Greek art all through its archaic
period, from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C., not so
much in the course of the commercial navigation of the
seafaring Phoenicians, as along the Hittite military road
from Carchemish to Sardis, and Smyrna, Ephesus, and
Miletus ; for it was by this overland route across Asia
Minor that the proto-Ionic column, and all the arts corre-
lated with the Ionic order, were carried from Assyria into
Greece. When, moreover, the Ionian States were, for a
while, during the rise of the Lydian Kingdom under the
Mermnadse, cut off from direct communication with the
interior of Asia Minor, the immemorial intercourse between
Greece and Mesopotamia was, notwithstanding this tem-
porary obstruction, maintained by way of Sinope, and
the other Milesian colonies, founded in the eighth and
seventh centuries B.C. on the Asiatic shores of the Euxine
Sea.

During the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., Hellenic art
completely emancipated itself from foreign exemplars, and
then, in the suite of " striding Alexander " and his succes-
sors, and of the " full-fortuned Caesars," it began to react
on Asia Minor, and Egypt, and Syria, and Mesopotamia ;
the Hellenisation of these effete Semitic and Semiticised
nations going on uninterruptedly to the commencement
of the attacks of the Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, and,
after them, of the Arabs, and Turks, and Mongols, on the
western and eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. This
refluent revivification of Asia by Europe was naturally

EVOLUTION OF HELLENIC ART 215

first and most felicitously felt in the primeval Hittite lands
opposite Hellas, the coasts of which had been colonised
from the eleventh century B.C. by the iEolian and the
Ionian Greeks ; and it was in Ionia (where, as also in
Lycia, there had been something like an independent
growth of Hellenic art, parallel with its development in
Crete, Argos, Sicyon, iEgina, and Athens) that some of its
noblest fruits were matured, on, as it were, its true native
soil, and from roots originally transplanted from Mesopo-
tamia by the Hittites.

We have thus preserved to us in Asia Minor illustrations
of the art of Greece at every stage of its evolution ; from
the rough-hewn bas-reliefs of alien workmanship that,
when as yet it was not, were the earliest models of its
lowly imitative beginnings, to the masterpieces of free and
spontaneous expression in architecture and statuary, that
bear still living witness to its unapproachable perfection in
the age of Pericles ; and also the debased and grandiose
monuments of its gradual decline and degradation during
its servitude to Imperial Rome.

First, there are the vestiges, extending over the sixteen
centuries from 2400 B.C. to 800 B.C., of the primitive Chal-
daean art of the Hittites, which was the immediate inspira-
tion of the prehistoric or pre-Homeric art of Greece, as
exemplified by the tombs of Spata and Menedi in Attica,
of Orchomenos in Bceotia, and of Nauplia and Mycenae in
Argolis ; by the Cyclopean masonry of " walled Tiryns "
and of Mycenae ; and, above all, by " the Lion Gate of
Mycenae." To the later centuries of this prolonged period
belong the remains found at Ayazeen of the dubious art
of the Phrygians. During these later centuries also, the
artistic manufactures of Egypt and Assyria began to
be imported by the Phoenicians into the southern and
western coasts of Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands
of the Grecian Archipelago ; and the kermes red, saffron
yellow, and indigo blue garments, and rich embroideries,

216 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

the jewellery, and bronze vessels, and arms and armour, and

furniture,

11 Made all of Hebon and white Yvorie,"

received overland across Asia Minor, and by sea from Sidon,
being imitated with ever-increasing skill by the Greeks of
Dorian, Crete, Rhodes, Thera, and Melos, and of " sud-
denly uprising Delos," the centre of the Ionian Cyclades,
and the most sacred seat of the Pan-Hellenic worship of
Apollo, there gradually rose among them the mixed
Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and indigenous insular art, inter-
mediate in character between the prehistoric and the
archaic art of Greece, and distinguished as Pelasgian. This
phase of Greek art is illustrated by the mass of the " Si-
donia wares " found by Schliemann at Mycenae and Troy,
and by the so-called " Island Stones," or ovoid, cubical,
and prismatic seals of steatite, sard, agate, jasper, and
chalcedony, engraved with an unpremeditated originality
and spontaneous sense of beauty that were the sure fore-
tokens of the supreme excellency in the higher representa-
tive arts subsequently attained by the Greeks.

Next in order are the remains in Asia Minor of the
archaic period of Greek art, arbitrarily reckoned from
776 B.C., the date of the first Olympiad, to 486-479 B.C., the
date of the close of the Persian wars with the decisive
Greek victories of Salamis and Plat sea. During these 300
years, the artistic influence of Assyria was still predominant
in Asia Minor and in insular and continental Greece, and
gradually led to the development of the proto -Ionic build-
ing style, most of the examples whereof in Asia Minor, its
native country, disappeared during the destructive pro-
gress of the campaigns of Cyrus, and of Darius and Xerxes
[546-480-479 B.C.] ; excepting in the mountainous and
comparatively secluded district of Lycia, where some of
the monumental tombs erected before these campaigns
survived them unharmed, or were at least restored without
any change in their construction and ornamentation ; and

THE HELLENIC TRANSITIONARY PERIOD 217

have thus preserved to the present time the true type of the
crudely compiled Assy ro -Aryan art of the period. The
so-called " Harpy Tomb," at Xanthus, is one of the earliest
of these Lycian monuments ; but the later rock-cut sepul-
chres at Telmissus, Antiphellus, and Myra, and the similar
structures at Caryanda, Pinara, and Limyra, none of them
probably dating before the third and fourth centuries B.C.,
as faithfully reflect the architecture of the wooden houses,
in which the Aryan Lycians dwelt in the first century of
the archaic or proto-Ionic period of Greek art. The so-
called " Tomb of the Rock " at Myra may be particularly
instanced, on account of the marked Assyrian character of
its decorative details. The same foreign features are to be
clearly traced in the more advanced Ionic art of the so-
called " Monument of the Nereids " at Xanthus, and the
Heroon at Djolbashi.

It was during this transitionary period of Greek art
that the vast Ionic temples, the ruins of the restorations
of which after the Persian wars are still to be seen at
Branchidae, Samos, and Ephesus, were first built of marble,
in the place of the timber temples that had previously
occupied the same sites. It was then also that " glorious "
statues [ayaAyuara] of marble were substituted for the
" scraped " wooden images [£6ava] of the gods ; and
these noble transformations were all initiated by the
Ionians, who, at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.,
were the leading people among the Greeks in all the arts
that minister to the dignity, the refinement, and the
spirituality of civilised life.

The artistic influence of Assyria during this period
moreover extended far beyond Asia Minor and Greece.
It had become predominant in Egypt from the tenth
century B.C. ; and about the same date it must have begun
to prevail in Italy ; for when Rome was founded in the
eighth century, Etruria, or archaic Rome, already possessed
its own peculiar national arts, the sources of which must

218 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

be sought not only in Egypt and Greece, but directly in
Assyria. The Etruscans were not actually, or not alto-
gether Phoenicians, like their intimate allies the Cartha-
genians, but they received the arts of the East through
the Phoenicians, and transmitted them, as modified in
passing through their own hands, to the Romans. The
iEolian Greeks of Cyme in Asia Minor (who, with the iEolian
Greeks of Chalcis in Eubcea, founded Cumae, the oldest of
the Hellenic colonies in Italy, in the eleventh century b.c.)
and the Ionian Greeks from Abydos and Naxos, and the
Dorian Greeks of Corinth, Megara, Crete, and Rhodes
(who settled in Sicily in the eighth century b.c.) also carried
with them the same Eastern arts as they practised in
Greece, where they had been originally introduced through
the Hittites and the Phoenicians, and again adapted them
to the local conditions and necessities, and the newly
developed manners and customs, of their larger colonial
life in " Magna Graecia." The Romans, in their turn, in
rising to importance in Italy, borrowed the circular
Assyrian arch from the Etruscans, the same arch as has
been found among the ruins of the Phoenician substratum
of the temple of Solomon [circa 1015-980 B.C.] at Jeru-
salem, and the Egyptian stone lintel from the Campanian
Greeks, as also the general plan, construction, and orna-
mentation of their temples, and domestic dwellings ; and
the mixed Etruscan and Italiote elements thus combined
in the national architecture, run through all the minor arts
of Republican Rome. When Greece became a province of
the empire [146 B.C.], and Greek architects and sculptors
and painters, who had long ceased to depend on Asiatic
incentives for their inspiration, were reduced to the
humiliation of having to labour for the gratification of the
ostentatious tastes of their proud conquerors, the extended
application they gave to the round Assyrian arch of
Etruria determined the type of the enslaved Greek art
of Imperial Rome, as exemplified by the vast basilicas

THE ROMAN PERIOD 219

[literally, o-rod fiaariXeios, the court in which an Archon
presided, a "town hall," a cloister, a warehouse, etc.],
and the baths and amphitheatres erected under the Caesars
in every capital city of their world-wide dominions, and
by the august Pantheon of Agrippa, and other similarly
constructed temples, the lofty domes whereof became the
distinctive feature of the churches of Christianised Italy.

The period of the greatest splendour of the arts of
Greece, from 480 B.C., the date of the deliverance of the
country from the Persians, to 146 B.C., the date of its
subjugation by the Romans, signalised by the successive
supremacies of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes [480-338 B.C.],
the astonishing conquests of Alexander and the Diadochi
[338-280 B.C.], and the brilliant reign of the Attalidae at
Pergamum [280-133 B.C.], is marked in Asia Minor by the
restored temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and of Here at
Samos, the two largest and most magnificent of Greek
temples ; by the temple of Apollo at Branchidse ; and of
Artemis Leucophryne at Magnesia, the most harmonious
and beautiful in its proportions of all Ionic temples ; by
the temple of Dionysos at T6os ; the temples of Athene
Polias at Priene and at Pergamum ; and by the majestic
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

Finally came the Roman period of Greek art, beginning
146 B.C., with the capture of Corinth by Mummius, and
ending in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries a.d., when
classical art was inseparably involved in the overwhelming
and conclusive destruction of classical paganism, science
and philosophy, wrought by the invasions of the bar-
barians, and the persecutions of Constantine the Great,
Theodosius the Great, and Justinian. Of this protracted
period of the progressive Hellenisation of the Roman
Empire, thus violently brought to an end through a series
of untoward calamities, culminating in the relentless
persecution of the old ethnic religion, the architectural
remains in Asia Minor are most instructive, and so numer-

220 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

ous that it is impossible here to more than merely indicate
the best known of them. These are the Roman theatres
at Aspendus in Pamphylia, at Patara in Lycia, at Iasus in
Caria, and at iEzani in Phrygia, all of the " Composite
Order " of architecture ; and the Corinthian temple of
Venus at Aphrodisias in Caria, the Ionic temple of Jupiter
at iEzani, the Corinthian temple of Augustus at Ancyra
in Galatea, the " Composite " temples of Jupiter at
Patara, and of " all the gods " at Myra, both in Lycia, and
the Corinthian temple near the modern Turkish village of
Kisseljik, wrongly identified by Fellows with the ancient
city of Labranda in Caria.

It was by means of the round-headed arch, super-
imposed upon the lintel,1 that the Greeks were enabled to
secure that combination of magnitude with impressive
stability distinguishing the building style of the imperial
period ; and, as I have already said, they adopted the
expansive framework of the arch from the Etrusco-Italiote
architecture of Republican Rome. Yet the universal
application of arching and vaulting by them under the
Caesars was probably also in some degree due to the direct
reaction at this time of Asiatic, that is, of predominently
Assyrian, forms and methods of construction on the
Roman world.

The commercial rivalry of the Greeks with the Phoe-
nicians may be dated from the twelfth century B.C., when
the Dorians began gradually to dispossess the Phoenicians
of their settlements on the islands of the iEgean Sea, so
that before the date of the Persian wars in the fifth and
sixth centuries B.C., Greece had drawn all the surrounding
shores of the Mediterranean Sea within the charmed circle
of her Hellenic life. Their victorious resistance to Xerxes
and Darius, with the consciousness of superiority it
inspired, stimulated their energy in every department of

1 The lintel appears above the arch in the later " debased " Roman
architecture, in which Byzantine architecture originated.

GREEK COMMERCE 221

national activity, and in particular served wonderfully to
develop their commercial enterprise and influence in the
Mediterranean during the brief period [from Thermopylae
480 B.C. to Chseronea 338 B.C.] of the golden prime of the
intellectual power and divine artistic genius of the Hellenic
race. Thus when Carthage, as the military rival of Rome,
was levelled to the ground by Scipio Africanus in the same
year [146 B.C.] that Corinth was occupied by Mummius
Achaicus, " the unbruised Greeks " at once took over
charge of the commercial business of the Phoenicians in
the Western Mediterranean ; and after the battle at
Actium [31 B.C.],1 where the maritime supremacy of the
Phoenicians received its last great blow, the Greeks
succeeded them in the Eastern Mediterranean also, and in
the control of the commerce of the Indian Ocean ; and
they held the monopoly thus acquired of the whole sea-
borne trade of the Roman Empire down to the conquests
of the Saracens in the seventh and eighth centuries a.d.

The Greeks were now, therefore — about the date of the
Christian era — brought, in Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia,
and Persia, into familiar and uninterrupted contact with
arts that had indeed been already modified by themselves,
though the establishment in the fourth century B.C. of
the Macedonian dominion of Alexander the Great, and the
Seleucidse and Lagidae, over all Anterior Asia to north-

1 From the fifth century B.C. onwards, Hellenic art began to prevail
all over the Mediterranean, and to take its place as an international art.
A little later, i.e. during the fourth century B.C., Carthage, influenced by
intercourse with the Greeks of Sicily and Italy, and with the Etruscan
and the semi-Hellenic populations of Latium and Campania, must have
partly abandoned the poor and unorganised [unassimilated] forms of
Phoenician art for that of the richer style she now saw rising around her.
Greek rivalry drove the Phoenicians out of the iEgean, and into the
Western Mediterranean, and from thence into the Atlantic. The fall of
Tyre prevented the Phoenicians from expelling the Greeks from Marseilles,
and the efforts of the Carthaginians having also failed to take up the role
of Greeks in the Western Mediterranean, the latter, under the aegis of
Rome, became the predominant mercantile power in both the Western
and the Eastern Mediterranean, and even pushed their adventurous
cargoes to the shrouded shores of far-off Britain.

222 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

western India [" India alba "], and in Egypt, but which
still, particularly in the building style of these countries,
preserved traces not to be found in Greece or even in Italy,
of the vague and barbaric grandeur of the Egypto-Meso-
potamian temples and palaces of Chaldaea, Assyria, and
Babylonia, wherein the architecture and subsidiary
decorative arts of the civilised world have everywhere had
their origin. Thus probably it was not less to the intimate
intercourse of the Greeks from the time of Alexander the
Great and his successors with Anterior Asia, than to the
universal influence of Rome under the Caesars, that we
owe the aggrandised features of the almost rankly luxuriant
classical art of the Graeco -Roman period.

At the same time that Greek art was thus adapting
itself to the varied requirements of the Roman Empire,
it in turn modified the local art of every nation brought
under its influence in the course of the conquests of the
Caesars and the commerce of the Greeks ; and to this day
in Persia, the Punjab, Sindh, Rajputana, Central and
Western India, and other countries of " the unchanging
East," the domestic architecture is more Roman (that is,
of the Pompeian villa, or " country house " type) than in
modern Rome itself ; a circumstance, undoubtedly, in
some part due to the timber construction used in their
dwellings by the Aryas wherever they spread themselves,
but principally attributable to the direct artistic impress
of the Graeco-Roman period on these Asiatic regions.

This interaction between the West and the East pro-
duced, between 226 B.C. and a.d. 652, the Sassanian art
of Persia. Again, when classical art, in its later " debased
Roman " form, sought a refuge in Constantinople [a.d. 330]
from the barbarians who overthrew the Western Empire,
it there, in the service of Eastern Christianity, and under
the influence of Sassanian, and Indo -Buddhistic, and
Coptic art, transformed itself, between the sixth and
twelfth centuries a.d., into Byzantine art ; of which

BYZANTINE INFLUENCES 223

a strong outpost was planted at Ravenna, in Italy
[568-752].

Then on the Nestorian Greeks being driven in the fifth
and sixth centuries from Constantinople, they fled into
Syria, Persia, and Egypt, and from Persia, where, as
seceders from the Church identified with the Eastern
Empire, they were most hospitably received, they spread
into Arabia, and Central Asia to the confines of China,
and into India, until, in the fourteenth century, their
further diffusion was cut short by the conquests and
persecutions of the Mongols under Timur. But they had
carried with them from the first the nascent principles of
Byzantine art, and in the seventh and eighth centuries
were everywhere accepted by the Saracen Arabs as their
architects and artisans ; and limiting themselves, in con-
formity with the religious scruples of their employers, in
part shared by themselves, to the production of floral and
geometrical ornamentation, they, on the foundations of
Sassanian, Coptic, and Byzantine art, created Saracenic
art as the ultimate Eastern expression of Greek art.

Similarly in the West, on Leo III [Isauricus], 717,
expelling the makers of images from Constantinople, they
sought sanctuary in Italy, where, under the patronage of
Charlemagne [768-814], they gave a direction to the
architecture of the Christianised barbarians who had over-
thrown the Western Empire, which, notwithstanding the
continuing vitality of the traditions of classical art in
Italy and France, resulted in the development, between
the ninth and sixteenth centuries a.d., of the sublime
Gothic art of Mediaeval Europe.

Such have been the outgrowths from the rudimentary
Egypto-Mesopotamian art of Chaldsea, Assyria, and
Babylonia under the fostering influences of the rationalis-
ing, artistic genius of the Greeks : and the debt to it of
Sassanian, Indo-Buddhistic, Coptic, Byzantine, Saracenic,
and Gothic art may be learned, not only from the remains

224 THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES

of indigenous Egyptian and Mesopotamian architecture,
but from those arts of Southern and Posterior Asia,
derived directly from Mesopotamia, that have never been
modified by the harmonising touch of the Greeks, or only
indirectly and partially, through very imperfect contact
with Saracenic art along the secluded commercial coasts,
and far remote frontiers of the countries where they have
survived the term put to antiquity in Anterior Asia and
Europe by the fall of the Western and Eastern Roman
Empires, and the rise of Christendom and Islam. Such
are the calyptric Hindu arts of Southern or Dravadian
India [" India nigra "] and the derived ecclesiastical [Bud-
dhist] arts of Ceylon, Further India, the Indian Archipelago,
and of the Chinese and Japanese Indies [" India flava "J.
But if the marvellous adaptation to local conditions of
the Western forms of Egypto -Mesopotamian art was every-
where the work of the Greeks, and the eastward and west-
ward propagation of them that of the Phoenicians and
Arabs, the primitive impulse to the artistic life and
activity of the Old World was not given by the " keen-eyed
Greeks "* or the " go-a-ducking Phoenicians," but by the
redoubtable Hittites, who, advancing their conquering
banners

" from Syria

To Lydia, and to Ionia,"

first extended the religious, military, scientific, artistic,
and commercial culture of Asia from Chaldaea, the delta
of the Tigris and Euphrates, westward to our own " sun-
set lands " of Europe : and this makes their unique im-
portance— by whatever name they may be called — in the
history of art, as told by its monuments, the most truthful
and trustworthy of the authentic archives of antiquity.

1 " The ^Ethiop gods have ^Ethiop lips,
Bronze cheeks and woolly hair ;
The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,
As keen-eyed, calm, and fair."

ORIENTAL CARPETS1

" Alles Vergangliche
1st nur ein Gleichniss ;
Das Unzulangliche,
Hier wirds Ereigniss ;
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ists gethan." — Goethe, Faust, ii. Th,

" Ingens decorum omnium templum Mundus." — Senecce Epistolce, xc,

I

Early Civilisations

AS I have to deal with the question of the origin of
Oriental carpets, I will at once state that, having
from my earliest childhood been familiarised with the entire
range of the artistic handicrafts of Southern and Western
Asia, and, for the last 60 years of my life, with every passage
in classical literature relating to the sumptuary arts of
antiquity, and having always been accustomed to interpret
the whole life of the ancient pagan West by that of the
modern, but still, for the greater part, pagan East, I have
long since been led, by an overwhelming inference from
the gradually accumulated special facts thus ever present
to my mind, to the tentative conclusion that the sumptuary
carpets now manufactured in Turkey, Persia, Central
Asia, and India, are, in texture, design, and colouring,
and indeed in every decorative detail and technical manipu-

1 Originally published as a monograph in Oriental Carpets (Vienna :
Imperial Ministry of Commerce, Worship, and Education, 1893), under
the title of " The Timeless Antiquity, Historical Continuity, and Integral
Identity of the Oriental Manufacture of Sumptuary Carpets." The work
was elaborately prepared at a cost of £60,000. — Ed.

Q 225

226 ORIENTAL CARPETS

lation, essentially identical, in all their traditionary
denominations, with the Oriental carpets known to the
Greeks and Romans ; and that, through " the dark
backward, and abysm of time," no limit can be given, on
this side of 5000 B.C., to the date of their origin in the Valley
of the Nile, and by the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.

I deliberately indicate Egypt first, and Chaldaea, or
archaic Babylonia with Assyria, second. Civilisation no
doubt appeared in its initial Turanian aspects simul-
taneously in the Valleys of the Indus, the Ganges,
the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, and the Yang-tse-
Kiang. But even in the protracted period of universal
Turanian predominance it must have advanced more regu-
larly in countries which, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, are
exposed to an annual overflow from the rivers draining
them, than in countries, like India and China, not subject
to annual inundation. Its progress must also have been
more rapid in the countries lying along the middle course
of the immemorial overland trade route between the
East and West, as do Egypt and Mesopotamia, than in
those that mark the extreme limits of that trade, as do
China and the countries of Southern and Western Europe ;
while it would reach its higher developments only in those
countries where, all other conditions being favourable,
the aboriginal populations, whether Turanian or Nigritian,
gradually became mixed with immigrant Caucasian races,
as with Hamites and Aryas (Japhetites) in India, and
Semites, Hamites, and Aryas, in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The Caucasian type of civilisation undoubtedly had its
actual beginning in Chaldaea ; or somewhere on the shores
of the Persian Gulf, between the Valley of the Tigris and
Euphrates and the highlands of Kirman, along the tract
of Susiana, and Persis or archaic Persia, corresponding
with the modern Iranian provinces of Laristan, Fars, and
Khuzistan ; for Chaldaea was nearer the fertile plains of
the industrial pre-Aryan populations of India than

THEIR TIMELESS ANTIQUITY 227

Egypt was ; and was the first point of exchange for the
overland commerce between the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean Sea. But civilisation became more broadly
and fully developed in Egypt than in Chaldaea, and after-
wards in Assyria and Babylonia ; and while Chaldaea
undoubtedly exerted an earlier, and at all times more
direct, influence on the civilisation of the East, not only
throughout Anterior Asia, but in India, and even, as Pro-
fessor Terrien de Lacouperie has shown, in China, and in
the end deeply affected, through Assyria and Phrygia, the
arts of Greece, it was Egypt that from its beginnings, and,
for countless centuries, almost exclusively inspired the
prehistoric civilisation of the West. If, therefore, civilisa-
tion did not positively originate in Egypt, it there first
made itself manifest in the imposing sepulchres, temples,
and palaces, and the innumerable necrological, ritualistic,
and sumptuary manufactures dependent on them, that
exercised so marked an effect on the technical and aesthetic
arts of Etruria and Greece, and through them of Europe ;
and also on the architecture and handicrafts of Chaldaea,
Assyria, and Babylonia, and through them, as well as more
directly in the time of the Ptolemies, on the architecture
and handicrafts of Aryan India. We cannot fix the date
of the oldest pyramid in the Valley of the Nile later than
about 5000 B.C. ; and for not less, at the lowest compu-
tation, than the 1700 years between 2700 and 1000 B.C.,
Egypt was a light, to lighten the world, the lofty lone
Pharos in the outer darkness of the Neolithic night of
Europe ; and she continued to occupy this position of
solitary supremacy in relation to the West, until the dawn
of civilisation in the Valley of the Nile grew, between
480-403 B.C. and 336-280 B.C., to the perfect day of
Greece.

If these profound chronological retrospects are not yet
fully appreciated in Europe, whose age, counting from the
mythical foundation of Rome, 753 B.C., to the present day,

228 ORIENTAL CARPETS

falls far short of that of the combined Old (Memphian
5000-3100 B.C. ?) and Middle (First Theban 3100-1700 B.C.)
Pharaonic Empires and barely equals that of the New
Empire (Second Theban, 1700 B.C.), when its term is ex-
tended beyond its overthrow by Alexander the Great,
332 B.C., to the Arab conquest of Northern Africa, a.d.
638-40 : if, in short, we find it hard to believe that the
history of the whole civilised world is but the sequel of,
and relative to, that of Egypt, it is simply because of the
inveteracy of the inherited prejudice of the West in dating
its civilisation from the incipiency of the arts of Greece.
But the first period of Egyptian greatness, under the
Pharaohs who ruled at Memphis and raised the pyramids,
as also the second, under the Pharaohs who ruled from
Thebes and built the temples of Luxor and Karnac, had
passed away long before Cecrops started from Sais in Lower
Egypt for Athens, or Danaus from Chemmis (now Akh-
mim) in Upper Egypt for Argos, or Cadmus had emigrated
from Phoenicia to Thebes (Bceotia), or Pelops from Phrygia
to Elis ; and before the legendary " voyage of the Argo-
nauts," and the expedition of " the Seven against Thebes,"
and " the flood of Deucalion," the son of Prometheus, the
mythical author of Western civilisation. Indeed, the third
period of Egyptian greatness, under the dynasties of the
New Theban Empire, had reached its culmination, and was
turning to its decline, when, through the lifting mists of
the morning of history in the Mediterranean Sea, we for
the first time discover, in the sunshine of Homer, the
azure prows and ruddy sides (" cheeks ") of the hollow
warships of the bronze-mailed Greeks (Achaeans), and their
allies, fleeting as fast as oar and sail can bear them to the
assiege of Troy — the earliest indication we possess, of any
historical value, of the nascent international life of South-
Eastern Europe.

It is about the same time that a distant sound, as of
war chariots and horses in motion, is heard in the East,

EGYPT IN THE HISTORY OF ART 229

from beyond the Euphrates, the first presage of the rising
power of Assyria, whose dogged rivalry for Empire with
Egypt (1271-607 B.C.), transmitted in succession to Baby-
lonia (747-578 B.C.), Achaemenian Persia (559-331 B.C.),
and Greece (500-332 B.C.), at last brought the long and
often renewed glories of the Pharaohs to a full and not
incongruous close (332 B.C.).

For in consequence of Alexandria, notwithstanding the
competition of Seleucia, the capital of Western Asia,
until superseded by Ctesiphon, becoming, under the
Ptolemies 332 b.c.-a.d. 30, the great focus of the trade
between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, a
trade it continued to attract under the Caesars, notwith-
standing the stronger competition of Ctesiphon,1 a.d. 226-
652, the industrial predominance of Egypt remained un-
shaken until the conquests of the Arabs, during the
seventh century a.d., in Syria, Northern Africa, and
Persia, followed by those of the Turks, and other Tartars,
gradually broke up and destroyed the great historical
trade, through Mesopotamia and Egypt, between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean ; and with the
triumph of Christianity in the West, and of Islam in the
East, brought antiquity to its final end in Europe, and over
the greater part of Southern and Anterior Asia.

The rapid and exceptional development of the civilisa-
tion of Egypt, and the widespread influence it exercised,
were the natural consequence of the unique geographical
position of the country. Chaldsea commanded the Indian
Ocean only, being 800 miles distant from the Mediterranean
Sea. It thus lost the larger portion of the trade between
the two seas ; while not all the trade passing between
Anterior and Farther Asia necessarily passed through
Chaldaea ; and in fact much of it crossed the Valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates, more to the northward, through

1 Al-Modayn, as the place was called by the Sassanians, included both
Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and was superseded, under the Arabs, by Kufa.

230 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Assyria and Media. Chaldsea, therefore, although watered
by a river subject to annual flooding, and lying much
nearer than Egypt to India, must have always held its
prosperity by a comparatively precarious tenure ; and the
remark applies equally to Assyria and Babylonia.

Egypt, on the other hand, is situated beside a narrow
isthmus, uniting two vast continents, and separating two
seas ; and therefore the chief part of the trade between
Asia and Africa, and between the Mediterranean Sea and
the Indian Ocean, always in ancient times passed through
Egypt ; and for over 5000 years that country took toll and
tithe of it all. Dynasties rose and fell, and foreign in-
vaders came and went, but the Nile in its regular ebb and
flood, flowed on for ever ; and until the Turkish conquest
of Anterior Asia and Northern Africa, and the discovery
of the ocean way to the Indies, round the Cape of Good
Hope, the overland trade also ceaselessly flowed through
the Valley of the Nile, the mid point of earth ; and thus
doubly and perennially enriched, the Egyptians were en-
abled, for from 40 to 50 centuries B.C., to fill the world
with their manufactures, in the same proportionate
profusion as Manchester and Sheffield and Birmingham
are filling it now, and to cover their country with public
works, which for magnitude and utility can only be com-
pared with the Mont Cenis Tunnel, and the Suez Canal,
the two greatest triumphs of the engineering enthusiasm
and joint-stock enterprise of the nineteenth century a.d.

If also Egypt received some of the germs of its civilisa-
tion from primeval Chaldaea, they sprang up in the country
to which they had been transplanted as if the indigenous
growth of its own soil. The traditions of the Egyptians of
their own origin were not associated with those of any
other people ; nor was their idiosyncratic civilisation con-
nected with any other ; whilst every other civilisation,
both in the East and the West, is more or less related to
that of Egypt. Every true alphabet is ultimately, in the

MESOPOTAMIA IN THE HISTORY OF ART 231

greater number of its letters, of Egyptian origin ; and if no
link has yet been found between the gold and silver weights
of Mesopotamia and the still unintelligible metrology
of the ancient Egyptians, we may be sure that the progress
of modern research is destined to demonstrate a close
kindred between them ; as also between the latter and
the primitive copper weights and copper money of the
oldest countries of Europe and Asia. Egypt was one of
the sources of Greek science and mythology, and the
chief source of the refining and elevating elements in
Greek art. The religion of the Jews was under obvious
obligations to Egypt ; and when the Egyptians, very much
in consequence of their inherent belief in the immortality
of the soul — whereon indeed the whole fabric of their
civilisation was based — spontaneously accepted Chris-
tianity, the new religion received from them the leaven of
the mysticism and puritanism that have ever since charac-
terised it, in its prevailing ecclesiastical and popular forms.
They are the direct source of the unnatural repugnance
shown by some Christian sectaries to the cultivation of the
fine arts, the glorious issue of the polytheism of Greece, in
its efforts to give expression to the instinctive Aryan
tendency to humanism in religion, as opposed to the
morbid, self-mortifying proclivities of the polytheism of
Hamitic Egypt.

In view of the absolute priority and measureless dura-
tion of Pharaonic civilisation, it seems strange, at first sight,
that there should be so little tangible evidence of the im-
pulse the arts of the Old World must necessarily have re-
ceived from Egypt, in comparison with the ubiquitous
proofs of their obligations to Mesopotamia. We know that
the Doric column, and possibly the core of the Corinthian
" capital," came from Egypt, and that the Doric style in
Greek art was generally affected by the intercourse of
Greece with Egypt ; and if the plastic fine art of Greece
drew any inspiration from abroad, it was rather from the

232 ORIENTAL CARPETS

idealising art of Egypt, than from the grossly realising art
of Mesopotamia. But beyond this the influence of Egypt
on the existing arts of the world is very much a matter of
presumption. That of Mesopotamia, on the other hand,
is demonstrable by an immense induction of instances ;
for it has left its immutable impress, as fresh and sharp
to - day as when first imparted between four and five
thousand years ago, on all the handicraft arts of the con-
servative East ; while there is scarcely a conventional
ornament in use in the ever-changeful West that cannot
be unravelled from the modifications it may have under-
gone, whether from ignorant employment without refer-
ence to symbolism, or from the caprice of fashion, and
traced back step by step, to its first, crude, allusive form,
in Chaldsea and Assyria. In short, not only the Ionic
column, but all that is Ionic in the arts of Greece, and in
the derivative arts of Europe, originated in Mesopotamia.
A moment's reflection suggests the obvious explanation.
The operative force of Egyptian civilisation for the 3000
years before it joined hands, about the twentieth century
B.C., with that of Mesopotamia, was chiefly spent, and
in a sense spent in vain, on the prehistoric inhabitants
of the Neolithic age in Europe. But the historical Aryan
races were already extending themselves over Europe, and
overspreading Persia and India, when the Chaldaeans
began, about the same time that they organised their
commercial communications with Egypt, to navigate the
Indian Ocean, and to plant their arts, under the shield of
the Hittites, in Syria and in Asia Minor. Thenceforth
both India and Greece remained in almost constant com-
munication with Mesopotamia — Greece, both inter-
mediately through the Phoenicians, and immediately
through the overland trade between the Persian Gulf and
the iEgean Sea — until gradually all Anterior Asia, with
Egypt and Upper India, and Greece, were made one with
each other under the Hellenistic Empire of Alexander the

THE TURANO-HAMITIC ARTS 238

Great, and the Diadochi, and Epigoni ; and, afterward,
excepting India and Persia, with Rome, under the Caesars.
The energetic West thus rendered back sevenfold into its
bosom the harvest of the foreign seeds of technical culture
originally brought from the East — the type which the
Byzantine Greeks, in the service of the conquering Arabs,
imposed on the Egypto-Mesopotamian building and
decorative style of Anterior Asia having survived to the
present day as the so-called Saracenic art of Islam.

How far-reaching and fruitful were the direct Hellenising
influences exerted by the conquests of the Macedonians is
illustrated by the Graeco -Buddhistic sculptures near Jella-
labad, in Afghanistan, and near Peshawur, in the Punjab ;
and, although later in date, by the colossal strangely-
mixed deities, Zeus-Oromazdes, Apollo -Mithras, and the
like, discovered in 1882 on the summit of the Nimrud-
Dagh, 6,500 feet above sea-level, and there raised, as
the inscription on them state, for the adornment of
the Graeco -Persian (pre - Byzantine) tomb prepared for
himself by Antiochus I, who reigned over Commagene
69-34 B.C.

The generic identity of the universal industrial arts of
the old democratic life of Asia and Europe is thus seen to
be due chiefly to their being the immediate offspring of
the Egypto-Mesopotamian arts of ancient Greece and
Rome, and to their long precedent, more direct, derivation
from the Semiticised primitive Turano-Hamitic arts of
Central and Anterior Asia ; every tribe of Aryas that
settled in Europe having had to traverse on its westward
way the line of Egypto-Mesopotamian commerce that,
from about the twentieth century B.C., extended con-
tinuously from Inner Africa to Central Asia. In some
degree also it is due to the renewal of the Semiticised
primitive Turano-Hamitic arts of Central and Anterior
Asia, particularly in Transalpine Europe, by the Aryan
and Turanian barbarians who overthrew the Roman

284 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Empire ; and to the parallel renewal of them in Cis-
alpine Europe by the westward propagation of Chris-
tianity, and, later, of Mahometanism, from Anterior Asia.
And in a less, but still appreciable measure, it is due to the
mediaeval overland trade of Genoa and Venice with the
East ; and again to the modern sea-borne trade established
by Portugal, Holland, and England with India, the only
country of the pan-Aryan pale of the Old World that has
maintained the uninterrupted historical continuity, and
the imprescriptible heirship of antiquity.

II

The Ancient History of Carpets

In this brief review of the commercial and political
conditions and vicissitudes of the two greatest industrial
populations of antiquity, and of the evolutions along the
course of their international relations of the economic,
educational, and aesthetic arts, and religious culture of
their intrinsically identical civilisations, we may trace in
outline the history of the rise and progress of the im-
memorially famous Oriental manufacture of sumptuary
carpets. Already, sometime between 1000 and 800 B.C.,
they were known to Homer and the Homeridse ; and if we
bear in mind that the people of antiquity did not strictly
discriminate (as we, since the seventeenth century only,
have learned to do) between carpets and other tapestries,
such as tablecloths, counterpanes, and coverlets generally,
and curtains, and hangings of every description, it at once
becomes clear that already at the time of the composition
of the Iliad and Odyssey these textiles had acquired the
ritualistic Euphratean types by which they have since
been predominently characterised throughout Central, and
Southern, and Western Asia. It is also clear that in their
passage through Phoenicia and Phrygia, into Europe, and in

THEIR HISTORICAL CONTINUITY 235

the course of their adaptation to the purposes of the Greeks,
and subsequently of the Romans, these textiles were, for
the most part, completely secularised ; although in some
of their uses, as for the veils of temples, they retained,
down to the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the
plenary religious significance always borne by them at
Memphis and Thebes, and at Babylon and Nineveh, the
four chief centres of their primary production.1

From Egypt, and from Chaldaea (later Babylonia), and

1 The decoration of textile fabrics was at first entirely ritualistic, and
prehistorically it would seem to have originated in tattooing : from which
the rich symbolical vestments worn by kings and priests have, over the
greater part of the world, been obviously derived. The practice was once
universal, and is still widespread ; and where it yet survives, is invariably
ritualistic, indicating the relation of those so " stigmatised " to their
tribes and tribal divinities. That is to say, the typology of tattooing, as
still practised, is invariably totemistic and mythological, its mythology,
most frequently, being of cosmological significance. And this was always
so. In Genesis iv. 15, it is said : — "And the Lord set a mark upon Cain,
lest any rinding him should kill him." In Ezekiel ix. 4 and 6, in the vision
foreshadowing the destruction of Jerusalem for idolatry, a mark is set on
the forehead of the men who remained true to Javeh, that they might be
spared when the idolaters were slain utterly, " old and young, both maids,
and little children, and women," and without sparing or pity. In Galatians
vi. 17, St. Paul says : — " For I bear in my body the marks [arty/MTa, literally,
" prickings with a needle," i.e. tattooing] of the Lord Jesus " ; and in the
Revelation of St. John the Divine, xiii. 16, xiv. 9, 11, etc., we have repeated
references to the mark of the beast, and to the mark on those who over-
come the beast. Here the word invariably used is xd/acry/xa — " a mark
engraven " or " imprinted." The Hebrew word used in Ezekiel is tau,
which is the Egyptian sign of the male element in nature and of life.
Again, Herodotus ii. 113, in the Egyptian account of the flight of Helen
with Paris, says, that on reaching Egypt their attendants went off to the
temple on the banks of the Canopic mouth of the Nile, and there dedicated
themselves to Hercules ; in sign thereof " receiving certain marks on their
person " ; and thus delivering themselves from the service of the guilty
fugitives. The historian adds : — " The law still remained unchanged to
my time." This ritualistic tattooing was early forbidden by the Jews,
probably from opposition to the Egyptians, as is seen in Leviticus xix. 28 :
— " Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any
marks upon you; I am Javeh" : and Ptolemy Philopator (222-205 B.C.),
in his malignant hatred of the Jews, forced them to be tattooed with ivy
leaves in honour of the god Dionysos, whose ivy leaf he himself bore
tattooed on his forehead. Those who did not submit to the idolatrous
brand, as the Jews deemed it, were outlawed.

Herodian tells us how the ancient Britons were printed with representa-
tions of the heavenly bodies ; and among the savages seen by the early

236 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Assyria, the manufacture of carpets spread into Asia
Minor (Khita), where, at a very early period, it attained
to great perfection in Phrygia (probably at Hierapolis,
Dindymum, Fessinus, etc.), and Lydia (more anciently
Maeonia, at Sardes) ; and into Phoenicia (at Sidon and
Tyre), and across to the island of Cyprus, where the primi-
tive Nilotic, as distinguished from the archaic Euphratean,
type of these textiles was perpetuated later than elsewhere
in the East. On the destruction of Nineveh and Babylon

European navigators along the coasts of the Americas, and in the South
Seas, the tattooing was always found to be of this ouranographic de-
scription. Now we know from the Orphic Hymns that the spotted leopard's
skin, or the spotted deer's skin (compare the spotted deer's skin worn by
the Hindu Siva), worn by the worshippers of Dionysos, symbolised the
shining frame of the spangled heavens, and the golden girdle the stream
of ocean, and the crimson robe intertissued with gold, the life-giving light
and heat of the glorious sun. Here, the passage from tattooing to dress is
clearly indicated and the ritualistic origin of, at least, sumptuary vest-
ments. Similar evidence is afforded by the descriptions of textile fabrics
given by classical writers I subsequently quote, which all go to prove the
identity of ancient pattern designing in textiles with that still being
everywhere pursued in Anterior and Southern Asia. The Mussulmans,
following the Jews, rejected tattooing, but the fellaheen in Egypt, and the
ryots in Syria, and certain of the women in Persia also, still tattoo them-
selves.

Many of the aboriginal tribes of India, and some of the Burmans also,
follow the practice, which, at present, reaches its highest elaboration in
the great Polynesian South Sea, extended between Posterior Asia and the
Continents of America. And everywhere throughout those regions it is
totemistic or mythological, and in India, in Java, and in others of the
South Sea Islands, it has transparently suggested the ritualistic vestments
that have taken its place for the use of those locally exercising the sacerdotal
or sovereign authority. Nowhere is it found used merely for its attractive-
ness. In fact, in Burma, women are frequently tattooed expressly to
detract from their beauty. In the early ages of the Christian Church
nuns were for tins very reason similarly stigmatised. Branding is indeed a
survival of ritualistic tattooing, as are also crests and coats-of-arms as
regards the objects borne. The ritualistic character of the dress, including
the head-dress, shoes, and jewelry, of the Pharaohs, and the Chaldsean,
Assyrian, and Babylonian kings, is obvious and undeniable. Painting the
body probably very widely marked the passage from tattooing to the
use of vestments ; and the extreme sanctity attaching to tattooing is
proved by the practice of its subsisting, at least as a poetic figure, among
the Jews, long after it had been forbidden among them by law ; by its
continued prevalence in Mahometan countries ; and by such legends as
that of the miraculous stigmatisation of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine
of Siena, and other saints of the rival Franciscans and Dominicans.

THEIR WIDESPREAD MANUFACTURE 237

the manufacture, after flourishing for a while at Susa,
was taken up with great activity at Alexandria ; and also
at Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Al-Modayn ; and from Alexan-
dria was imported into Western India ; and from Al-
Modayn and Ctesiphon and Seleucia, as earlier from Susa,
if not still earlier from Babylon, into Southern India.
Finally, the Saracens, and the Seljuk, and Osmanli Turks,
and other Tartars, who followed the Saracens in the
propagation of the Empire of Islam, established the manu-
facture at Kufa, as the modern representative of ancient
Al-Modayn, Seleucia, and Babylon ; at Aleppo and
Damascus ; at Baghdad in supersession of Kufa ; at
Cairo, the modern representative of ancient Alexandria,
Thebes, and Memphis ; at Kairwan, the modern repre-
sentative, as regards the ritualistic arts of Northern Africa,
of ancient Carthage ; at Cordova in Spain ; at Ushak
(Brousa) and Koula, the modern representatives of Sardes
(Mseonia) and Dindymum in Asia Minor ; at Ardebil,
Ferahan, Kermanshah, Gostchan, Shuster (the modern
representative of ancient Susa), Shiraz, Murghab, Teheran,
Mashad, Herat, Subzawar, Sennah, Yezd, Kashan, and
Kirman in Persia ;x at Samarkand, Bokhara, Khiva, and
Yarkand in Central Asia ; at Kabul in Afghanistan ; at
Quetta in Baluchistan ; and at Jammu, Hyderabad
(Sindh), Shikarpur, Khirpur, Lahore, Fathipur, Agra,
Allahabad, Benares, Mirzapur, Murshedabad, Gorakpur,
Patna, Arcot, Ellore, Nellore, Masulipatam, Warangal,
Bellary, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and elsewhere, in India.
And wherever throughout the modern world of the
East the Mahometans introduced them, they employed
in the decoration of their sumptuary textile fabrics, and
particularly of their carpets, the same ancient Euphratean
types of embroided, or inwoven, genii, seraph-beasts, and
" Trees of Life," and the same floral diapers, of " the knop

1 The modern town of Sultanabad, in Irak Ajami, is now the chief
centre of the carpet manufacture of North- Western Persia.

238 ORIENTAL CARPETS

and flower " pattern, with the same borderings of sea and
cloud scrolls, river meanders, mural gradines and chevrons,
as are sculptured on the Nineveh marbles, and enamelled
on the tiles of Susa. These strictly emblematical devices,
as ultimately drawn in faultless beauty by the Greeks, but,
unfortunately, without due reference to their spiritual pre-
figuration, have also, for over twenty centuries, furnished
the inexhaustible types of conventional ornamentation to
the architects, sculptors, painters, and artistic handicrafts-
men of the entire ancient pagan, and modern Christian,
West. Where the orthodox Sunni, or non-Aryan, form of
Islam prevailed, as in Arabia and Central Asia, the animal
types were eliminated from Saracenic art ; but where its
schismatic Shiah, or Aryan, form was developed, they
survived, as in Persia, and parts of India ; as partially
also in the Sunni countries of Islam, which, before their
conquest by the Arabs, had been brought under intimate
and enduring Aryan (Hellenic) influences, namely, Egypt,
and, in a less degree, Northern Africa generally, and Syria.
But even in Asia Minor the drawing of " the Tree of Life,"
in the local carpet manufacture, is still severely Euphratean
in character ; while the carpets of the Caucasus (Daghe-
stan), Kurdistan, and Central Asia, including Yarkand,
alike in the details of their conventional ornamentation
and their brilliant and harmonious colouring, are, we may
surmise, absolutely identical with those of ancient Assyria
and Babylonia.

After these, the wonderful carpets of Bangalore (Mala-
bar) probably approach, in their bold scale of design, and
archaic force of colouring, nearest to their Euphratean
prototypes. The old blue and red chequered cotton carpets
(satranjis) of the Mahrattas, and the gaily -striped, or other-
wise mat-patterned, cotton rugs (daris)1 of Kathiawar,
Gujarat, and Rajputana, have in their crude, primitive

1 For the etymology of this word, see footnote on the word " Sitsan-
gird," p. 291.

THEIR EUPHRATEAN TYPE 239

designs, and almost prismatic colours — black, orange, red,
yellow, green, blue, and white — preserved their ancient
Egyptian physiognomy, of the period of the Ptolemies,
without the slightest change, to the present day ; while
the Indian susni,1 or counterpane, embroidered with
white water-lilies, has preserved in its name the record of
its original importation from Susa, i.e. the " City of Lilies."
There need be the less difficulty, therefore, in coming to
the conclusion that the grand (and, in India, quite excep-
tional) type of the magnificent carpets of Bangalore, is to
be traced back, through a direct descent of over two
thousand years, to the spacious palaces of Susa and
Babylon.

In Persia the Euphratean type of the local manufacture
of curtains, coverlets, and carpets survived the alien Arabs
and the Samani, Sabuktagini, and Seljuki Turks, and the
Timuri Mongols ; and it was not until the reign of Shah
Abbas the Great, a.d. 1587-1629, the fourth sovereign of
the native Shiah dynasty of the Sufawis (" Sophis "),
that a change was effected in the designs of these sumptuary
tapestries, under the direction of the young Persians who,
according to the tradition, as the late Sir Caspar Purdon
Clarke informed me, of the modern Persians, had been
sent by the Shiah Shah to learn painting in Italy " under
Raffael " (a.d. 1483-1520), and certainly under masters
of the school of Raphael. The Italianesque style thus
introduced in the treatment of modern Persian carpets,
and, with marked local modifications, of the Masulipatam
(Coromandel) and other denominations of Indian carpets,
if a departure from the traditionary Euphratean mode,
is yet undeniably pleasing ; and on account of its broken
patterning, and generally diffused colouring, is better
adapted to carpets intended for European rooms, where
they are crowded over and overshadowed by other furni-

1 For the etymology of this word, see footnote on the word " Susan-
gird," p. 291.

240 ORIENTAL CARPETS

ture, than the severely co-ordinated designs, and immense
masses of clearly-defined deep-toned colours of the carpets
of Ushak, Koula, and Bangalore. These are seen to their
fullest advantage only when spread under the domes of
the mosques, or in the outer courts of the temples, or
along the audience-chambers of the palaces, for which
they are, in the first instance, manufactured.

The late Sir Bartle Frere had one of these Abbasi
Persian carpets brought for him by Sir Frederic Goldsmid,
direct from Kirman. It is referred to by Sir Henry Yule
in a note on the chapter (17), " concerning the Kingdom
of Kirman," in Book I of his edition of the Travels of
Ser Marco Polo ; and I knew it well. The field was of a
creamy white, overspread with pink and yellow roses, and
the border black and green, scrolled with white roses and
red. Another Persian carpet of this Italianesqued style
was seen at the Vienna Exhibition of 1876 ; the field of
marigold yellow, all over diapered with pinks, and the
border of dark turquoise blue, conventionally scrolled in
yellow and true full pink. Both carpets reflected the light
from their enchanted surfaces with the transparent
radiance of the purest gems, harmonised to the neutral
bloom of a richly-variegated garden seen in the soft sun-
shine of the dawning day, so skilfully were their rare colours
blended.

The patronage by Abbas the Great of these Italianised
carpets, as fresh and fair and fragrant as one of his own
enclosed paradises, was no matter of caprice or accident,
but part of the general reaction of the Persians in the
sixteenth century a.d. against the degrading tyranny of
their Turanian oppressors ; and due, as its predisposing
cause, to the instinctive love of the Iranian Aryas, as of
every Aryan race, for the beauties of nature, and more
especially for the swelling blossoms of the spring, the
Raphael of the northern earth, as Jean Paul Richter has,
in one word, so exquisitely described it : — " der Raphael

THE WORSHIP OF FLOWERS 241

der Norderde." The Par sis of half a century ago used to
frequent the Victoria Gardens, in Bombay, simply to
" eat the air," that is, to take a good healthy walk there ;
and the Hindus to sniff at the most heavily scented blooms,
which they would crush between their fingers, and apply,
like snuff, to their noses. But when a pure Iranian
sauntered through, in his flowing robe of blue, red-edged,
and high hat of sheepskin, " black, glossy, curled, the fleece
of Karakul," he would stand awhile and meditate over
every flower in his path, and always as in vision ; and when
at last the vision was fulfilled, and the ideal flower found,
he would spread his mat, or carpet, before it, and sit before
it to the going down of the sun, when he would arise and
pray before it, and then refold his mat, or carpet, and go
home. The next night, and night after night until that
bright, particular flower faded away, he would return to
it, bringing his friends with him in ever-increasing numbers,
and sit and sing, and play the guitar or lute before it ;
and anon they all would arise together and pray before it ;
and after prayers, still sit on, sipping sherbet, and talking
the most hilarious and shocking scandal, late into the
moonlight : and so again and again, evening after evening,
until the beauteous flower died, satiated of worship. Some
evenings, by way of a grand finale, the whole company
would suddenly rise up, as one man, before the bright,
consummate flower, and serenade it with an ode from
Hafiz, and thereupon, rolling up their carpets, depart into
the silences of the outer night.1

1 The attitude of the orthodox [Sunni], or non-Aryan Muslim towards
flowers, is different from that of the heterodox [Shiah], or Aryan Muslim
of j'Persia ; and finds its exact expression in the profound saying, attributed
to " the Prophet of God " : — " The flowers of the Garden of God, this
Earth of ours, are every one an ' Alleluia ! ' " When, some years ago, the
Khedive was here, two of His Highness's suite, walking across St. James's
Park from Storey's Gate, as I happened to be walking down from the Duke
of York's Column to the India Office, coming upon a recessed group of
various roses within the park railing, just before it turns westward to
Buckingham Palace, struck by the transcendent beauty of the freshly
blooming bushes, at once halted, and after giving them a spontaneous
R

242 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Notwithstanding, however, the natural charm of the
Abbasi Persian carpets of modern trade, the palm for pre-

military salute, went through the postures — excepting that of absolute
prostration upon the roadway — observed by Mussalmans in the adoration
of Almighty God. Mentioning this to the late Sir Charles Malcolm Kennedy,
he told me that when, some years previously, he, on behalf of the Foreign
Office, took an Envoy from Morocco about London, he seemed indifferent
to everything shown him, that is, of the works of man ; but when on
entering the road skirting Flamsteed Hill — [Greenwich Observatory] —
they suddenly came upon a handsome laburnum tree laden with its festoons
of golden flowers, the Envoy at once stopped the carriage, and stepping
down into the road, stood there for a while before the glorious apparition,
similarly adoring God. Again, the attitude of the Hindus towards flowers
is something different from that of both sects of Mussalmans. There is
not a flower they have not dedicated to one or other of their gods, — and
always on the basis of its phallic suggestions, which they were quick to
observe millenniums before Erasmus Darwin sung of " The Loves of the
Plants " ; and their folk-lore of flowers is as delightful as it is luxuriant.
But this apart, they seem to regard the wonders of the vegetable kingdom
chiefly for their use as foodstuffs, and medicines, and scents. Neverthe-
less the floral ritual of the Hindus is often in its naturalness of sentiment
and simplicity of observance most impressive. The sacred tulsi (Ocymum
sanctum), a most perfect purifier of the air, is planted before every Hindu
house, on a four-horned altar, and every morning " the Mother of the
House " is, — or was, in my time, — to be seen perambulating it in archaic
worship, invoking the blessings of Heaven on " the father of her children,"
and on them, and herself. I was always spellbound by the rite, so perfect
alike in its science, its piety, and its art ; and it is one of the most moving
scenes from the life of antiquity that have been perpetuated in India down
to our modernity.

It is only with the decay of virility in the West that men begin to regret
in the beauty and the glory of flowers, that they should ever fade and
wither away. This irrational taint begins with Horace (C, ii. 11; and
contrast Anacreon, liii.) : —

" Non semper idem floribus est honos
Vemis " ;
and from him the sigh passes to Ausonius [Idyll xiv.] :—

" Collige virgo rosas, dum flos novus, et nova pubes
Et memor esto saevum [sic] properare tuum " ;
and to Ronsard : —

" Cuillez des aujourd'huy les roses de la vie" ;
and on to Herrick : —

" Gather ye rose buds while ye may " ;
and

" Fair daffadells we weep to see
You haste away so soon."
This feeling is incomprehensible to a Muslim, who, in the inner court of
the soul, sees in the phenomena of the outer court of the senses, the eternal
witnesses of the infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness of a divine
Creator, dwelling in the secret place of his habitation within the close-
drawn curtains of " the Holy of Holies."

THEIR INTEGRAL IDENTITY 243

eminent artistic merit, above all other denominations of
Oriental carpets now manufactured for merely commercial
gain, must be awarded to those of Masulipatam and Ban-
galore ; to the former, for their perfect adaptability to
European domestic uses ; and to the latter, on account of
the marvellously-balanced arrangement of their colossal
proportions, and the titanic power of their colouring,
which in these carpets satisfy the feeling for breadth, and
space, and impressiveness in State furniture, as if they
were indeed made for the palaces of kings, and the temples
of the gods. These Southern Indian carpets, the
Masulipatam, derived from the Abbasi Persian, and the
Bangalore, without a trace of Saracenic or any other
modern influence, are both, relatively to their special
applications, the most nobly designed of any denomina-
tions of carpets now made, while the Bangalore carpets,
in my judgment, are unapproachable by the commercial
carpets of any time and place.

Ill

The Modern History of Carpets

The restriction in Europe, since the commencement of
the nineteenth century, of the use of Oriental carpets to
covering floors, and of the meaning of the word carpet to
floor coverings, has added to the difficulty sometimes felt
in realising the indissoluble unity, in all their local diver-
sities, of modern and ancient Oriental carpets, and other
sumptuary tapestries. The processes of their manufacture,
and the designs for their decoration, have always been the
same ; and throughout the East they have always been
indifferently used, or with vague differentiation, and
denomination, as curtains, hangings, coverings of all
sorts, and ordinary carpets. In Northern and Western
Europe they were at first almost exclusively used as table-

244 ORIENTAL CARPETS

cloths, counterpanes, and wall hangings ; and they only
came into common use as floor coverings during the
Protestant Reformation in Germany, Denmark, Sweden,
Holland, and Great Britain, and that owing to the spolia-
tion of the Catholic Roman Churches, and the scattering
of their treasures, the accumulation of a millennium, among
the predacious laity of the so-called reformed churches,
particularly in Great Britain. In England, ordinary cloths,
even Oriental tapestries, had been occasionally used from
the thirteenth century, by the prelates of the Catholic
Roman Church and the nobility, for floor coverings ; but,
down to the seventeenth century, rushes were in general
use for the purpose : —

" All herbs and flowers fragrante, fayre and swete
Were strewed in halls, and layd under theyr fete " ;

while down to the middle of the eighteenth century the
word carpet still meant any sort of covering, either em-
broidered or woven, spread on a table, sideboard, or couch,
or hung from a door or window, or upon a wall, or laid
down on a staircase, or along a passage or floor. Only in
the early part of last century, in England, were carpets
entirely withdrawn from their aboriginal indiscrimate use,
and used exclusively as floor coverings ; and in con-
sequence the word carpet was reduced to its present precise
interpretatien : "A thick, tapestry- woven covering for
floors." In the Comedy of Errors, iv. i, Antipholus
refers to Adrian's desk —

" That's cover'd o'er with Turkish tapestry."

Shakespeare knew of the use of carpets as a covering for
floors, for in Richard II, in. 3, Bolingbroke speaks . of
marching his troops

" Upon the grassy carpet of this plain " ;
that is, the plain before Flint Castle. But in Pericles,

" CARPET-KNIGHTS " 245

iv. 1, where Mariana enters on the open space, near
Tharsus, saying : —

" I will rob Tellus of her weed,
To strew thy green with flowers ; the yellows, blues,
The purple violets, the marigolds,
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave,"

the great dramatist had in mind the practice of hanging
carpets, as has even been done in the East, on graves,
rather than that of spreading them on the ground. In
Twelfth Night, in. 4, Sir Toby Belch's protestation
" He is knight ... on carpet consideration " — refers,
like the idiomatic phrase, " on the carpet " (sur le tapis),
to the use of carpets as table-covers ; the meaning of the
sentence quoted, being that Sir Andrew Ague-cheek was
knighted on courtly considerations, before his Sovereign
at the Council table, and not for services rendered on the
field of battle. And all through the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, such phrases as " carpet -peer," "carpet-
knight," and " carpet-squire," indicate men frequenting
the tapestried chambers of kings and nobles ; " carpet -
monger " always meaning a flatterer, and " carpet -trade,"
flattery.

From the evidence afforded by the paintings of the early
Italian and German masters, we find that the Oriental
carpets imported into Europe during the later centuries
of the Middle Ages (a.d. 486-1499), and the earlier portion
of the Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)
were, principally of both the geometrical and the degraded
animal types of Central Asia, and also of the severely
conventional " Tree of Life " type of Asiatic Turkey ;
while we learn, from actually surviving examples, that
during the later period of the Renaissance, Persian carpets
also began to be imported, but of the degenerate types
imposed on the manufacturers of the country, during the
prolonged period of its subordination to Turan (a.d. 980-

246 ORIENTAL CARPETS

1499), the " Dark Ages " of Persia. These are the carpets
now so extravagantly prized by wealthy but tasteless
collectors ; exquisitely finished, often richly intertissued
with gold, and nearly always gloriously coloured, but
rendered offensive by the introduction of incongruous
Chinese and other Tartar emblems, as also by the over-
crowding of the decorative diapers and scrolls, and the
feeble, helpless drawing of the whole design. Fortunately
there are but few extant examples of these barbarous
tapestries, which have only an antiquarian interest, not-
withstanding the fabulous sums paid for them by the
ignorant and ostentatious patrons of any fashionable
craze. During the seventeenth century the East India
Company began to import the modern Persian carpets,
of the Italianesque Abbasi type ; and these have ever
since held the European markets equally with the Turkey
carpets of Ushak and Koula. The European trade in the
modern Indian carpets of Coromandel and Malabar, was
wholly the creation, subsequently to the Great Exhibition
of 1851, of the late Mr. Vincent Robinson, c.i.e., founder
of the house of Vincent Robinson and Co., of Welbeck
Street, London.

Like the ancient, the modern manufacture of sumptuary
carpets in the West, originated in the imitation of the
carpets of the East, and its development has always kept
pace with the importations of the latter by the Saracens,1
from Persia, Syria, and Egypt, into Sicily, Spain, and
France ; by the Venetians, from Central Asia, Persia, and

1 Sarcenet is said to derive its denomination from the Saracens (Du-
canga, " pannus Saracenici " ; Skinner, " sericum Saraeenicum ") ; but I
cannot help suspecting that the word may be rooted rather, or at least
partly, in " sarcinator " and " sarcinatrix," the " patchers " of clothes,
who in the lewd and luxurious days that prepared the fall of imperial
Rome, were employed in adding silken linings, edgings, and other trim-
mings, to the traditionary classical garments of the simpler wardrobes of
regal and republican Rome. There may also be in the word an echo of the
word " sarcinae," the heavy bales in which goods of this sort were received
from the East, through the mediation of the Arabs.

NEEDLE AND LOOM 247

Turkey, into Italy and Germany ; and by the English
East India Company, from Persia and India, into Western
and Northern Europe.

The first weavers of tapestries known to modern Europe
were the Saracens, who, introducing their looms into
Spain and Southern France, transmitted to these countries
the textile traditions inherited by themselves from Nineveh
and Babylon, and Memphis, Thebes, and Akhmim ; and
it was from France that the weaving of tapestries
spread into all the countries of Western and Northern
Europe.

Up to the twelfth century a.d., the decorative
hangings and coverings used in the latter countries
were mostly of broidered, and very rarely of in-
woven work ; but after that date, owing chiefly
to the example of the Saracens settled in Southern
Europe, and partly through the influence of the
intercourse, during the Crusades, of the Flemings
with the Saracens, the loom gradually superseded the
needle in the preparation of tapestries in Spain, France
(Paris, Tours), Flanders (Antwerp, Arras, Bethune, Brus-
sels, Bruges, Lille, Oudenarde, Tournay, Turcoing, Valen-
ciennes), England, Germany (Nuremberg), and Italy.
In France, the weavers of the new stuffs were at first dis-
tinguished by the names of sarrazins and sarrazenois ;
and still the Spanish for the upright, rustic loom (" tela
jugalis ") is " sarazinesca," and for a carpet, the Arabic
word, " alhombra," the name of the (red) palace in which
the people of the Iberian peninsula were first familiarised
with the use of sumptuary tapestries as floor coverings.
The Spanish epigrammatist Martial informs us (xiv. 150)
of a parallel revolution in the ancient manufacture of
textiles, due to the shifting, by Alexander the Great, of
the commercial centre of the Old World, from the valley
of the Tigris and Euphrates, back again to the valley of
the Nile ; when, gradually, the work of the Babylonian

248 ORIENTAL CARPETS

needle was surpassed by that of the Memphian loom-
comb (" pecten ") : —

" Heec tibi Memphitis tellus dat munera ; victa est
Pec tine Niliaco jam Babylonis acus."

The new European manufacture was carried on inter-
mittently, and more or less obscurely, all through the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries ; when in
the seventeenth century it received an immense and
enduring impetus through the opening up of the trade of
the East India Company with the Persian Gulf.

The French, who had initiated the industry in modern
Europe, again took the lead in its revival ; and they main-
tained it till 1851. The English were, indeed, the first
to send a dyer, Morgan Hubblethorne, in 1579, to Persia,
to learn the art of dyeing and carpet weaving ; but the
French were the first regularly to organise the manufacture,
and that with the aid, as it strangely happened, of weavers
trained in the Persian processes, and style of decoration,
in England. Thus the old factories, founded at Fontaine-
bleau (1516) by Francis I (1515-47), and at the Hopital de
la Triniti, Rue St. Denis, by Henry II (1547-59), and at
Tours, by Charles IX (1560-74), were rapidly followed by
the factories founded in the Faubourg St. Antoine (1597),
transferred to the Louvre and the Tuileries (1603), and
at the Palace of Les Tournelles, transferred to the Fau-
bourg St. Marceau (1607) by Henry IV (1589-1610), and
at La Savonnerie (1627), transferred to the Gobelins by
Louis XIII (1610-43) ; whose son, Louis XIV (1643-1715),
permanently established the manufacture, successively at
the Gobelins (1662), at Beauvais (1664), and at Aubusson
(1665). Beauvais has to the present day scrupulously ob-
served the traditions of the decorative arts of ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia, thus received through Persia ;
subordinating the treatment of the conventional, or semi-
conventional, design to the naturally flat surface of a

GOBELINS AND AUBUSSON 249

carpet, and qualifying and distributing the colours, so
as to secure that general diffusion of light and shade, and
charming effect of neutral resplendence instinctively re-
quired in a fabric, intended, at least in modern Europe,
to serve in its administration to household beauty, as a
harmonising background to the furniture placed upon it.
But at the Gobelins and Aubusson these immutable prin-
ciples of ornamentation were from the first derided, dis-
carded, and defied ; the floral diapers and scrolls of the
Italianesque Abbasi carpets being replaced by vast
scenic compositions of landscape, architecture, and moving
idyllic, heroic, and mythological life, drawn in the strictest
perspective, with borderings of heaped fruits and flowers
in full relief ; all pictured, as in a true painting, in immense
masses of strongly contrasted colour, and light and shade.
The result is that these tapestries of Aubusson and
the Gobelins, together with the similarly false and vulgar
porcelain of St. Cloud (1688), and subsequently, of Sevres
(1756), have, through the high vogue enjoyed by them,
exercised a most degrading influence on all the ornamental
arts of Europe. The fictile, textile, and paper-hanging
industries of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland only began to slowly recover therefrom after the
Great Exhibition of 1851.

The manufacture of the new tapestries in England was
first systematically undertaken by James I, at Mortlake,
in Surrey, under the superintendence of Sir Francis Crane ;
and noble examples of his work are to be found on the
Continent, as well as in the various Royal Palaces of this
country, where his celebrated reproduction of the cartoons
of Raphael are still preserved at Hampton Court. But
the Civil War, so destructive to native art over all England
and Scotland, wrecked the factory at Mortlake ; and
although restored by Charles II it never recovered pros-
perity, and on the death of Sir Francis Crane it was
finally closed. Thus the definite establishment of the

250 ORIENTAL CARPETS

modern manufacture of tapestries and carpets in Great
Britain, has to be dated from the Edict of Nantes, in 1685,
when a number of French Protestant dyers and weavers
found an asylum here and naturalised themselves, with
their beautiful art, in various parts of the country. In
1757, the Society of Arts awarded a premium to Mr.
Moore for the imitations of Turkey carpets produced at
his factory in Paddington, under the direction of Mr.
Parisot, a descendant of one of these French refugees.

This particular manufacture was afterwards established
at Axminster, in Devonshire ; at Wilton, in Wiltshire ; at
Holyrood, near Edinburgh ; and afterwards at Glasgow
and Kilmarnock ; and these English and Scotch denomina-
tions of pile carpets are the finest now made, outside
Turkey, and Persia, and India. All, indeed, now wanted
to perfect them is to adapt the forms and colours of British
flowers, and leaves, and trees, and of British national em-
blems, to the diapers, scrolls, and " Tree of Life " pattern,
and the medallions, all in the Persian style, with which
they are ornamented. It is absurd introducing the tropi-
cal palm, and pomegranate, and sacred lotus, into the
decorative arts of temperate Europe, where we possess, in
our own woods, the pine, oak, and mountain-ash ; and in
our fields the daisy, buttercup, bluebell, fritillary, violet,
eglantine, honeysuckle, columbine, golden chrysanthe-
mum, camomile, poppy, and cornflower ; and for national
floral emblems, the rose, shamrock, thistle, and leek.
About the end of the eighteenth century, the Brussels
denomination of carpet manufacture was introduced into
Wilton, from Tournai, in Belgium ; and now flourishes at
Kidderminster, in Worcestershire.

Every denomination of modern European carpets has
thus been traced back to the ancient carpets of Central
Asia, Persia, Western Asia, Egypt, and India ; and their
affiliation would never have been lost sight of but for the
repeated breaches made in the historical evolution of the

LINKS BETWEEN OLD AND NEW 251

industrial arts of the Old World by the overthrow of
the Western Roman Empire by the Goths and Huns, and
Vandals, and of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the
Sassanian Persian Empire, by the Arabs, the Turks, and
Mongols ; and by the violence with which the Protestant
Reformation was carried out in Germany, and Holland,
and Great Britain ; and again, so far as the last-named
country is concerned, by the Civil War.

If this has been made clear, there should no longer be
any serious difficulty in recognising the presumptive, if
not the absolute identity of the modern denominations of
tapestry and pile carpets with the sumptuary tapestries
of antiquity as made known to us by the monuments of
Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the literatures of Greece and
Rome.

IV

Tapestries, etc., on the Monuments
of Antiquity

Among the ruins of the great necropolis at Medinet
Abu (Thebes) of the Pharaohs of the New, or Second Theban
Empire (1700-1000 B.C.) one of the frescoes represents the
weaving, by three men, of a patternless web, on an upright
loom (tcrro? opOios,) furnished with a regular cloth-beam
(olvtiov, "insubulum," "tela insubulis"). At Beni Assan
(Speos Artemidos) the beautiful grotto-like tombs, with
proto -Doric columns of the Pharaohs of the Middle, or
First Theban Empire (3100-1700 b.c), one of the wall
paintings represents a party of Egyptian women, ap-
parently superintended by a man, filling the distaff
(yXctKOLTrj, "colus") with cotton or lint, twisting it with
a spindle (arpaKTos, " fusus ") into thread (o-ttj/xow,
" stamen "), dyeing the thread, and weaving it on a simple,
that is cloth-beamless upright loom ("tela jugalis ") ;

252 ORIENTAL CARPETS

separating, that is decussating, the threads of the warp
(io-tos, <TT)]fjL(jov, r/Tpiov, iulitos, "tela," "stamen") with
a leash rod (kolvuv, " liciatorium,,, " arundo ") to form
the tramway (" trama," cf. " trames," "a cross-path")
through which the threads of the woof (icpoKt], Trrjvlov, e<j>v<prj,
poSavrj, " subtegmen," " subtemen," " subteximen ")
are being passed, and beaten home, not with the true
shuttle (/ce/o/c/?, kolvwv, " alveolus ") and batten ($7rd6>],
"spatha," "arundo"), or the comb (kt€i$, " pecten "),
but with the " radius," a very ancient textrine instru-
ment, similar to the long weaving reed of the Hindus,
and serving at once as shuttle and sley. In both of these
looms the web is fastened down to a yarn-beam (?Aca7ro?,
" scapus "), instead of being kept taut by weights, usually
stones (aywOes, " pondera "J,1 as is still done in India.
Another of the Beni Hassan pictures represents a man
weaving a small chequered carpet on a horizontal loom

On the storied walls at Thebes are also to be seen
representations of ships with sails, woven over the field in
large chequers of green and red, and along the borders
in red, yellow, and blue chevrons ; of regal thrones,
covered with red and blue stuffs, diapered with roundels
and rosettes ; of the awning of a royal pavilion, bordered
with rows of the sacred basilisk (the Uraeus cobra, hadji),
alternating with rows of roundels, gradines, and " the
knop and flower " pattern ; and of the corslet of Ramses
III (1200-1166 ? 1269-1244 B.C. ?) figured, within its
four compartments formed by perpendicular bands of
chevrons, and horizontal bands of " the knop and flower "
pattern, with lions and camels ; the latter a beast, said
not to have been known, in the flesh, to the Egyptians,

1 In Western India I have seen the horizontal loom kept stretched by
swathing the web, as worked, round the weaver's body. And I have seen
thread spun from cotton -wool by the simple expedient of using the left
hand as the distaff, and the right as the spindle and reel.

EGYPTIAN CORSLETS 253

until after the Roman occupation of their country. Hero-
dotus (484-czraz 424 B.C.) mentions (ii. 182) that Aahmes
II (570-526 B.C.) presented a corslet of linen to the temple
of Pallas at Lindus, and (iii. 47) another to the Lace-
demonians. The latter, he says, " had figures of animals
inwoven with its fabric (fwwy ew^aor/mei/cov ctvkvwv),
and was likewise embroided with gold and tree wool"
(cotton) ; and he adds : " The corslet which Amasis
(Aahmes II) gave to the temple of Minerva in Lindus was
like unto it." Each thread of these corslets consisted of
360 threads, and the Roman Consul Mucianus told Pliny,
the Naturalist (xix. 7, a.d. 23-79), that when in Rhodes
he saw the corslet at Lindus, but very little then remained
of it, in consequence of the injury it had suffered from
the fingers of visitors anxious to verify the fact of the
extraordinary complicity of its finely-twisted threads. At
Sakkara the sleeve of an Egyptian dress has been found
similarly ornamented with embroidery on the woven web ;
a characteristic Egyptian fashion of work referred to also
by Lucan (a.d. 65) in his description (x. 141-3) of the robe
worn by Cleopatra when she feasted Julius Caesar in
Alexandria : " Her white breast shone through the Si-
donian tissue, which finely wrought with the sley of Seres,
the needle of the Nile [in embroidering it], separates,
loosening the warp of the extended web."

" Candida Sidonio perlucent pectora filo,
Quod Nilotis acus percussum pectine Serum,
Solvit, et extenso laxavit stamina velo."

Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson mentions (Ancient Egyptians,
vol. iii., 172) an ancient Egyptian carpet discovered by
Mr. Hay at Thebes. It has in the centre of the field the
figure of a boy in white, on a green ground, surmounted
by a white goose, the Egyptian hieroglyph of a boy ;
beyond this lozenge, the ground is yellow, variously
figured in white ; the whole being bound in by a border

254 ORIENTAL CARPETS

of lines of red, white, and blue, and a triangular device,
running all round the extreme edge of the carpet. Evi-
dently it belongs to the same period (a.d. 284-640) as the
carpets, and other fabrics, discovered by Maspero at Akh-
mim, when the native Pharaonic art of ancient Egypt had
become modified by the debased Greek art of the Lower
Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

There are no actual remains of ancient Assyrian and
Babylonian carpets ; but the slab with large rosettes sculp-
tured in the centre, and " the knop and flower " pattern
along the border, discovered by Layard, in the doorway
of the palace of Sennacherrib (705-681 B.C.), on the
Koyundjik mound near Mosul (Nineveh) ; and the door
sill, with a similar border, and a centre of a cross-barred,
semi-floreated, semi-geometrical diaper, found in the
palace of Sargon (722-705 B.C.), on the Khorsabad mound,
north of Mosul ; together with the enamelled bricks found
at Khorsabad, and in the palaces of Esarhaddon (681-668
B.C.) and Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.) at Nimrud (Calah) ;
and the decorations of the royal robes of the Chaldean King
Merodach Nadin-Akhi (1100 b.c), and of the Assyrian
kings represented on the " Nineveh marbles " : all these
contemporary documents incontestably prove that, in
design and colour, the carpets woven in Hindustan and
Central Asia to-day, are the self -same carpets as were used
for awnings, and floor covering, in the palaces of Sargon,
Sennacherrib, Esarhaddon, and Sardanapalus, " the great
and noble Asnaper " of the Book of Ezra (iv. 10). The
stone slab from Koyundjik, and the door sill from Khorsa-
bad, are palpably copied from carpets, the first, of the style
of the carpets of Bangalore, and they were probably
coloured like carpets ; while the pectoral worn by Sardana-
palus, as it is seen on the " Nineveh marbles," is an exact
miniature of a Kurdish carpet with the " Tree of Life "
in its field, and its border set with alternate bars and
rosettes (lotus flowers) ; and the same difficulty has been

REGAL AND SACERDOTAL ROBES 255

felt by the designer in turning the corners of the carpets
with the rosettes and bars as may be still observed in
Kurdish and other Eastern carpets. In short, the carpets
now woven in Asia Minor, Persia, and Turkestan, and in
Southern India, faithfully repeat, alike the general scheme
of design, the decorative details, and the colouring of the
Assyrian and Babylonian sumptuary textile of fabrics of
1000-606 B.C. (Fall of Nineveh) and 538 (Fall of Babylon).

The monuments of the Hittites in Syria and Asia Minor
prove that the arts of this semi-Semiticised Tartar people
were borrowed direct from those of the Egyptians, and
the Chaldeans, and Assyrians ; while the elaborate costume
of the Hittite king, or priest, sculptured, worshipping
before some Earth God, on the side of a spur of the Bulgar
Dagh, at Ibriz, is ornamented with the same patterns as
those found on the oldest representations of textile fabrics
in Chaldaea, and Assyria, and Egypt, and to this day, in
Kathiawar Gujarat, Sindh, and Raj put ana in India.
The broad hem of this regal, or sacerdotal, robe, bears the
swastika pattern, the predominance of which now, every-
where, marks the Turanian art of the Old World, as that
of the " Tree of Life," and " the knop and flower " dis-
tinguish the Aryan.

In Anatolia the facades of the Phrygian tombs are
decorated with the same patterns as are at present used
on the carpets woven by the Turcoman nomads of Asia
Minor and Central Asia. These tombs are in short repro-
ductions of the wooden houses of the ancient inhabitants
of Asia Minor, and the facades, of the carpets they hung
before them ; and still in the East carpets are not only
hung before the entrances of tents and other dwellings, but
over the graves of the dead.

There are neither any remains nor representations of the
textile fabrics of either the Phoenicians or the Jews. But
we know from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin literature, that
these Semitic peoples were famous, from the earliest

256 ORIENTAL CARPETS

times, for their love of the sumptuary arts ; and that the
tissues of Sidon and Tyre were always highly prized, al-
though more perhaps for their purple dyes than their
designs. Carthage, a colony of Tyre, also acquired a
high reputation for its figured stuffs.

In Persia, the Egypt o -Assyrian sculptures of Persepolis,
and the brilliantly enamelled tiles of Susa, but repeat the
story of the intimate affiliation of all the industrial arts
of the Old World. The warriors painted on the glazed tiles
at Susa have vestments of the patterning of the robe worn
by the king, or priest, on the Hittite sculpture at Ibriz ; and
an encaustic flooring, with its chequered field, and border
of " the knop and flower " pattern, cannot be discriminated
in design from the large Mahratta satranjis used, during
the early decades of the last century, in the palaces of the
Peshwas at Poona, in Western India. Persia received all
her arts from Egypt, from Assyria and Babylonia, and from
Lydia and Greece ; but through her predominant position
in Anterior Asia, she powerfully reacted on these countries
all through the Achsemenian (559-331 B.C.), Parthian
(226 b.c.-a.d. 226), and Sassanian (a.d. 226-651) periods;
and thus became one of the principal agencies in the evolu-
tion of the Byzantine art (sixth to twelfth centuries a.d.)
of the Lower Roman Empire, and of the Saracenic art
(seventh to tenth century a.d.) of Islam.

As would be anticipated from their natural good taste, and
love of symmetry and proportion in all things, the Greeks
have left no detailed illustrations of sumptuary textile
fabrics among the remains of their plastic and glyptic arts,
while the delineation of them is less definite than might
have been expected even in their fictile art, fraught as this
is with the reality of their daily lives. There is a solitary
engraved gem, now in the Berlin Antiquarian Museum,
and figured in King's Antique Gems and Rings, xix. 8,
representing Athene in the act of transforming Arachne
into a spider, the loom here being a domestic form of the

CLASSICAL REPRESENTATIONS 257

simple " tela jugalis." The " tela insubulis " in its crudest
and most rustic form, is represented on a vase of the fifth
century B.C., found in 1888, on the site of the Kabeirion
at Thebes, and now in the British Museum ; and on the
vase of the same date, purchased for the Oxford Museum,
from the Van Branteghem Collection ; both being illus-
trated in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (vol. xiii.,
part i., 1892-3). On an Attic vase of the fifth century B.C.,
a Greek lady is represented spinning thread ; and on
another of the same date, threading a shuttle ; while on the
Attic vase of the same period, found at Chiusi, and now in
the Berlin Antiquarian Museum, is the famous representa-
tion of Penelope sitting beside her loom, with Telemachus
standing before her. The loom is a complicated expan-
sion of the " tela insubulis " ; the web on it showing a
richly inwoven pattern of winged beasts and winged men,
of the Egypto-Mesopotamian type, with here a star, and
there a swastika, set before them ; and a border of the
familiar Egyptian frets and stripes.

An Attic vase of the fifth century B.C., now in the
Campanari Collection, represents two Greek women fold-
ing up clothes, either after having woven or washed them.
The large Attic vase, found at Cervetri, and now in the
Vienna Museum, is painted with the scene of Priam's
visit to the tent of Achilles, the sumptuary coverings of the
couch on which Achilles reclines, and the bales of carpets
offered to him by Priam, being all of the Egyptian patterns
of the monuments at Medinet Abu, Luxor, and Karnak.
These are the only classical illustrations known to me of
coverlets and carpets ; other representations of the textile
manufactures of the Greeks and Romans being all of more
or less elaborately ornamented articles of male and female
attire. But mention may be made of the painting of Chryse
propitiating Apollo, on an Italic vase in the Jatta Collec-
tion at Rome ; of Thamyris and the Muses, on the Attic
wine jar in the same collection ; of the heroes in Hades,
s

258 ORIENTAL CARPETS

on an Italic vase, now in the old Pinakothek, Munich ; and
of warriors arming and mustering for battle on an Attic
drinking cup of the fifth century B.C., in the Museum of
Art and Industry at Vienna ; of the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis, by Clytias and Ergotimus, on the celebrated
Francois vase ; of the Judgment of Paris, on the Attic
vase, figured in the Romische Mittheilungen, vol. ii., of
1887 ; of the Assembly of the Gods, by Oltos and Euxi-
theos, on an Attic vase of the fifth century, now in the
Cornet o Museum ; of Alcmene and Megara, by Assteas,
on an Italic vase of the fourth century B.C., now in Madrid ;
and of Leda and the Dioscuri, by Exekias, on an Attic
vase of the sixth century B.C., now in the Museo Gre-
goriano at Rome. All these fictile paintings prove that
the costumes worn by the Greeks, and Italiots, and
Thracians, and Lydians of the sixth to the third century
B.C., were not only similar in their general character, but
absolutely identical in their patternings, with the gay and
costly costumes represented on the monuments of the
Egyptians, Chaldaeans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians,
and Persians from the earliest to the latest dates of their
history ; and also with those of India, and the greater
part of Anterior Asia and Northern Africa to the present
day.

In Italy, there is at Pompeii a fresco of the imperial
Roman period, representing an awning, with alternated
dolphins and sea-horses careering along the limits of the
field, and a tessellated pattern on the heavily-fringed
border.

The Christian period of the stromaturgic arts is beyond
the scope of this retrospect of their history, as recorded on
the monuments of antiquity ; but in turning from the
latter I must mention the mosaic at Ravenna, in the
church of Sant' Apollinare (nell a Citta) built in the sixth
century by Theodoric the Great (a.d. 493-556), repre-
senting the palace of the Ostrogothic king ; because its

THE PALACE OF THE PESHWAS 259

corridors are hung with curtains in the very same fashion
as was followed during the picturesque times of Peishwas
in draping the colonnades, forming the aisles, of the old
Mahratta palace at Poona,1 and, as happens, the curtains
of Theodoric at Ravenna, and of Baji Rao at Poona, were
covered with a similar floral diaper.

V

Tapestries in Ancient Literature

It would be impossible to quote, within the space at my
disposal, all the literary allusions and references of the
ancients to tapestries, and under this head I must confine
myself to a summary review of the more remarkable
passages, relating to them, to be found in the Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin writers.

Beginning with the Bible, we find in the Pentateuch,
chapters xxvi.-viii., xxxv.-vi., and xxxviii.-xl. of the Book
of Exodus, devoted to a minute working specification of the

1 The destruction of this palace by fire in 1827 will never cease to be
regretted by the student of the history of art in India, for like the still
standing temple of Vishnu, in his avatar of Rama, on the island of Rames-
waram, it was a striking example of the survival of the sumptuous building
style of Mesopotamia in India down to dates immediately preceding the
English conquest of the country. It was commenced by Baji Rao I, the
second Peshwa (1720-1740), and completed by his successor Balaji Baji
Rao (1740-1761) ; and was built in the Shanvar ward, because Baji Rao I
happening one day to see a hare drive a dog off the spot, thought that a
palace built there would never be taken by the Mo(n)gols of Delhi. It
was seven stories high, the seventh story being the Asmani Mahal, or
Palace of the Firmament, erected by Baji Rao II, the last Peshwa (1795-
1818), whose adopted son was the infamous Nana Sahib. It was divided
into four larger and three smaller courts, and contained seven Divan
Khanas or reception halls. The latter each consisted of a long hall with
lateral corridors, separated from the body of the hall by richly carved
pillars. The ceilings were covered with beautiful carving in wood, and the
walls were all painted with scenes from the Itihasas and Puranas in
enamelled colours and gold. It was from the sixth story of this palace
that Madhu Rao Narayana, the fifth Peshwa (1771-1795) threw himself
into the fountain in the court below, sustaining such injuries that he died
on the following day.

260 ORIENTAL CARPETS

ritualistic furniture of the Tabernacle or Tent of Javeh,
and of the vestments of the ministering Cohen and Levites.
In xxvi. 1, we are told that the ten lateral curtains of the
Tabernacle were " of fine twined linen, and blue, and
purple, and scarlet, with cherubims of cunning work " ;
in v. 31, that the veil (KaraireTacTiJ.a) of the Holy of
Holies was "of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine
twined linen of cunning work, with cherubims embroidered
thereon " ; in v. 36, that the outer veil (KaXv/uL/uia), or
hanging, at the entrance into the Tent, was " of blue, and
purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with
needlework " ; and in xxvii. 16, that the hanging " of the
gate of the court " of the sacred Tent was coloured in the
same manner, and similarly " wrought with needlework."
In II. Kings xxiii. 7, Josiah is recorded to have destroyed
the houses that were by the House [the temple of Solomon]
of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the
Grove (Asherah), i.e. " the Tree of Life " symbol, wor-
shipped by those, mentioned in v. 5, " that burned in-
cense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to
all the host of heaven." In the Book of Esther (circa
450 B.C.), i. 6, we read (Authorised Version) of " the white,
green, and blue hangings " of the King's palace at Shushan
(Susa, now Shuster). But the Hebrew word, karpas (here
translated " green "), is the Sanskrit word for cotton
(karpasa, Kapirao-os, carbasus) ; and the passage really
refers to the well-known blue-striped cotton carpets of
India, called daris (literally — twillo, i.e. Si-/uutoi, dimities)
" door "-mats, and satranjis, literally — " four-colans."
In Psalm civ. 1, 2, the prophet Ezra, or Nehemiah,
apostrophises the Creator in the sublime words : " Who
coverest Thyself with light as with a garment : Who
stret chest out the heavens like a curtain." In Proverbs
vii. 16, King Solomon, in his graphic apologue of the
cunning woman and the desperately simple young man
of the period, describes the former as saying : "I have

BIBLICAL REFERENCES 261

decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved
works, with fine linen of Egypt " ; or, as the Revised Ver-
sion has it : "I have spread my couch with carpets of
tapestry, with striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt." And
again, in xxxi. 22, 24, in his antithetical picture of the
points and properties of a good wife, he says, amongst
other things in her praise : " She maketh for herself
coverings [R.V., carpets] of tapestry ; her clothing is
silk [R.V., fine linen] and purple." " She maketh fine linen
[the R.V. adds — garments] and selleth them, and de-
livereth girdles unto the merchant [literally, the Canaanite,
i.e. the Phoenician]." In this passage the Hebrew word,
rendered fine linen, is sadin, which is the Greek aivSwv —
that is " Indian " — muslin. In the Song of Solomon, the
bride, in i. 5, speaks of herself : " I am black, but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the
curtains of Solomon " ; while in iii. 10, the chariot of
Solomon is described as covered with purple ; like the
" serica carpenta " (Propertius, iv. viii. 23) of the Romans ;
and the silver-gilt, and silk-canopied and curtained, gay
eka of the Hindus.

Finally, in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (circa
596-74 B.C.), in xxvii. 20, it is said of the rich and universal
trade of Tyre : " Dedan was thy merchant in precious
clothes [cloths] for chariots." Some have translated this
as " magnificent carpets for chariots." It is indifferent
which translation is the closer to the original Hebrew,
for either equally indicate the sumptuary tapestries for
which India, and Irak Arabi, have ever been renowned.
In vv. 23, 24, Haran and Canneh, and Eden and Sheba,
Asshur and Chilmad, are enumerated as trading with
Tyre " in all sorts of [excellent] things ; in blue clothes,
and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound
with cords, and made of cedar." All the commentaries are
agreed that the cotton, woollen, and silken stuffs of ancient
India, in which the Arabians traded with the West, by

262 ORIENTAL CARPETS

way of the Persian Gulf, and Aden and the Red Sea, are
here meant ; and the " cedar boxes " were probably
deodar cases, containing woollen stuffs, similar to the
present Cashmere shawls ; and the blue clothes, or " blue
foldings," as the marginal version has it, were possibly the
indigo -dyed vestments still made upon the loom, without
seam, and still woven in one piece, all over India.

There is no stronger proof of the personality of Homer,
and, I would add of a Semitic strain in his Mceonian blood,
than his exceptional, and among Hellenic writers, quite
extraordinary feeling for the beauty of sumptuary objects
of every sort, and particularly textile fabrics ; which he
was the first, by the force of his sympathetic genius, to
invest, and for all time, with the spiritual fascination of
the highest poetry. He sings their praises in almost every
book of the Iliad and Odyssey ; and all I can do
here is to indicate the passages in which he specifically
refers to tapestries, under the denomination of ra7n??,
and then to quote some of his descriptions of the manner
in which textile fabrics generally were ornamented in
his time. The textile denomination pnyo<s, a " rug,"
" carpet," or " covering," frequently occurs in the Iliad
or Odyssey, and generally with the qualification
koXos, " beautiful " ; but it cannot be identical with
any true variety of sumptuary tapestry, and was probably
a fabric of loosely woven, or possibly felted wool, owing its
beauty to its softness, and the bright colour in which it
was often dyed.

In the Iliad, ix. 200, the heralds of Agamemnon sit
" upon couches and purple coverlets " {rairrja-i re
iropcfrvpeoKTiv) ; in x. 156, Diomed sleeps outside his tent,
" but under his head a splendid tapestry (rair^G- <f>aeivo<;)
was spread " ; in xvi. 224, among the contents of the
chest presented to Achilles, by Thetis, are expressly men-
tioned, " pile carpets " (ovXcov re Ta7njra)v) ; and in
xxiv. 230, among the presents taken by Priam to Achilles,

HOMER 263

for the ransom of the body of Hector, were " twelve
carpets " (AcoSeKa 8e Ta7rtiTa?).

In the Odyssey, iv. 124, Alcippe brings Helen " tapestry
of soft wool" (Tonrtira /uloXcikov iploio) ; while in lines
297-8 of the same book, Helen spreads on the couches, on
which Nestor and Telemachus are to sleep, " beautiful
(purple) blankets (priyea Ka\d), with tapestry (rdirt]Ta<i) on
the top of them " as a counterpane ; in vii. 337, Aerte
directs the bed of Ulysses to be made up in the same way,
and in the very words used in Book iv. 298 ; and in x.
12, the sons of iEolus are described as sleeping, " with
their chaste wives, on tapestry " (i'v re Tdirrjcri), as the
humbler classes of the natives of India still sleep in the
verandah of their master's house, with their wives, on
carpets, unrolled for the purpose every night, and rolled
up again every morning, and laid aside during the day.

As to the textile designs of the Homeric period, in the
Iliad iii. 125-7, Helen is found, by Isis, " weaving a
great web (/meyav 1<ttov) of twilled purple (AiVXa/ca
Trop(f>vper}v), wrought with the many woes of both the
horse-taming Trojans, and the bronze-armoured Greeks,
that, on her account, they had suffered at the hands of
Ares " ; in vi. 289-94, Hecuba descending to her fragrant
chamber, where " were her variously embroidered robes
(ireirXoi iraixiroUiXoi), the work of Sidonian women,"
takes one of these, " the most beautiful for its variegated
embroidery (*0g KaXierrXos 'ir\v TrotKiXjuLao-iv), and the
largest, and which glittered like a star," and hastens with
it to the temple of Athene, to place it, as an act of propitia-
tion, on the lap of the blue-eyed goddess ; in xiv. 178-85,
Here folds around her " an ambrosial robe, wrought by
Athene in needlework, with much varied decoration
(SalSaXa 7roX\d) and girding herself " with a zone,
adorned with a hundred fringes, throws over all "a
beautiful veil, bright as the sun " ; and in xxii. 440-1,
Andromache, all unconscious of the death of Hector, is

264 ORIENTAL CARPETS

described as weaving a web (Itrrov v<f>aive), of twilled
purple, and embroidered with a diaper of flowers (ev Se
Opova ttoikDC eiracrarev). In the Odyssey, xv. 417-18,
there is a reference to a Phoenician woman " skilled in
(weaving) resplendent tapestries," " in resplendent em-
broideries " (ay A act epya ISvia) ; while in Book xxi.
lines 225-33, is the description of the cloak of Ulysses : —

" The god-like Ulysses had a cloak of twilled purple,
with a clasp of gold, double buckled. It was embroided
on the front, where a dog, panting with joy, held down,
with its fore feet, a spotted fawn ; and all wondered to
see how, being but wrought in gold thread, the one gloated
over his prey, and the other, eager to escape, struggled con-
vulsively with his feet. The beautiful garment fitted to
his body, like its slender skin to an onion — so soft was it,
and it shone like the sun ; and the women all feasted their
eyes upon it."

iEschylus (525-456 b.c.) in Prometheus vinctus, 24,
speaks of " night in spangled robe " (rj ttoikiXcliulcov vu() ;
in The Persians (836, 821), of the tattered condition of the
" embroidered robes " (ttoiklXwv io-Otuxarcov) of Xerxes ;
in Agamemnon (909, 864), of strewing the path of the
returning hero " with carpets " (ireTaa-iJLacnv) ; (910, 865)
of " a purple-strewn path " (irop<f>vp6<TTpwTo<z ir6po<s) ;
(923, 878) of walking on " embroidered fineries " (ep
7toikI\oi9 KaWeonv) ; (926, 881) of " carpetings and em-
broideries " (7roSo\^7ja-rpcov koi tow ttoiklXoov) ; and again
(957,912), of "treading on purple" (-7rop<pvpa$ irarciov) ;
in the Choephori (229-30, 225-6), of the "woven robe"
(vcpaarma) of Orestes, the work of Electra's hand, " the
strokes of her batten, (a-iraB^ re ifKrjya^) and the repre-
sentations of wild beasts " (Orjplcov ypacprjv) ; and (1011,
1000), of the blood of Agamemnon staining " the many
colours of his embroidered (robe) " (7roX\ag Ba(pa<s tov

SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES 265

7roiKi\iu.aTos) ; and finally in The Suppliants (277-83,
267-73), he makes Pelagus address the Chorus : " It is
incredible what you relate, O strangers, that you are
Argives ; you are more like Lybian women, and by no
means resemble natives of my country. The Nile might
have nourished you, and the Egyptian decoration (Kvirpiog
XapcucWip, ' Cyprian ' motifs, i.e. ' the knop and flower '
pattern), on your chintzed raiment (t eV yuwiKeiois tvttok;)
shows that it was woven by male weavers "x (el/cox?
ireirXrjKTaL t€Kt6v(jov 7rpog aparevwv).

Sophocles (496-405 B.C.), in (Edipus Coloneus (340-4,
337-41), seems also to share this belief of the Greeks,
that the weaving in ancient Egypt, was all done by the
men, making (Edipus remark of his sons : "In the nature
and breeding of their lives, they are in everything like to
the people of Egypt, for there the men sit indoors working
at the loom, while the women procure the means of support
out of doors." Herodotus, ii. 35, says the same thing,
but we now know, from the monuments, that there were
female weavers in ancient Egypt, as well as male.

Euripides (480-406 B.C.), in Hecuba, 466-74, refers
to the representations in embroidery, on the saffron robe,
or veil (eV KpoKew 7re7rAa>), carried at the Panathenaic
festival, of " the steeds harnessed to the car of Pallas, and
of the Titans whom Zeus sends to eternal rest with his
flaming lightnings " ; in Iphigenia in Aulis, 73-4, to
Paris, coming from Phrygia to Lacedemon, " in flowery
garments, glittering with gold, barbarian fineries " (avOripos
fj.lv ci/jloltcov <rro\fl XPV<TV Te Xa/A7r/309 ftapfidpw x^'(%aaT0 f
in Iphigenia in Tauris, 222-4, once more to the
robe, or veil, which was the great feature of the

1 This is an exegetical — and paraphrastic — translation of a difficult
passage, adopted by me in accommodation to, and emphasis of, my con-
viction that the quotation affords an indication of a contemporary know-
ledge of the connection between the artistic culture and general civilisation
of Cyprus and Egypt that has been fully demonstrated by modern archae-
ological research.

266 ORIENTAL CARPETS

annual1 Panathenaic festival, " adorned in the sweetly
humming loom, with the image of Pallas Athene, and of
the Titans " ; and 814-16, to a deftly-wrought web :
representing the Argonautic Expedition, and another,
" the turning away of the sun " ; in The T wades,
991-2, to Paris, " radiant in barbarian vesture and gold "
(/3ap/3dpoig ea-OrjfJLao-i XPvcr(!) T€ ^Wxpov) 5 m I°n> ^06, to
" woven pictures " (/cep/aW) ; and 1141-65, to the "sacred
tapestries " (ixpaar/uLaO' lepa) of Delphi, wherewith Ion
covered the banqueting tent pitched by him below the
crags of Parnassus. I must give the description Euripides
has left of them, in full : —

" First, he (Ion) spreads over the roof a double peplum
(robe or veil), the gift of the son of Zeus, which Heracles
brought to the God, the spoil of the Amazons. And these
woven figures were painted on the texture : Ouranos
collecting the stars in the circle of ether ; Helios driving
his horses down to the waning light of day, drawing with
him the lambent light of Hesperos ; and black-robed Night,
driving her two -horsed chariot, the stars following the
Goddess ; the Pleiades travelling through the mid air ;
and sword-bearing Orion. Above was Arctos, turning
round the Golden Pole ; and the circle of the full Moon
(the measurer of the Months), darting its rays ; and below,
the Hyades, the most kenspeckle of signs for sailors ; and
Eos, chasing away the stars. And upon the walls he placed
other weavings of the barbarians (/Sapfidpcov vcpdcr/uLara),
in their well -rowed ships, drawn up in array against the
Greeks ; and savage men, and huntings on horseback, and
the chase after stags and fierce lions. And at the entrance
into the tent, near by his daughters, was Cecrops, rolling
in his dragon folds — the gift of some Athenian."

And again in the same tragedy of Ion, 1417-25,

1 Some say quadrennial.

ARISTOPHANES AND THEOCRITUS 267

Euripides refers to a web with a Gorgon in the centre,
fringed with serpents, like the aegis (literally the " goat "
skin) of Pallas Athene ; which when shown to Creusa she
salutes with the exclamation : " O ancient virgin-labour
of my loom " (do \poviov Icrrwv irapOevev/jia tcov cjulwv) ; and
in line 1491, describes " the plying of my shuttle "
(/cepKiSos e/uLas 7r\avov$). In Andromache, 148, he refers
to Hermione's vesture of " embroidered robes " (ttoiklXcop
7re7rAcoy); and in Electra, 314, and 1000-1, to "Phrygian
spoils," i.e. embroideries (QpvyioicrLv and o-kvXoktl Qpvylois) ;
while in lines 454-78, he gives a description of the
ornamentation of the shield, helmet, and cuirass of Achilles,
recalling that given by him of the sacred tapestries of
Delphi, in Ion.

Aristophanes (circa 444-380, 450-385 B.C.) has numer-
ous references to spinning and weaving, particularly in
Lysistrata, and also to the ordinary plain saffron1 coloured
clothing of the Greek women of his time, and a few to
sumptuary articles of attire, such as the " Cimmerian
robe," and the " Persica,"2 or Persian slipper; but his only
references to tapestries of any kind are in Lysistrata,
933-5, where Myrrhina tells Cinesias he has not a " counter-
pane " (o-KTvpav), and he,. as she runs off for one, mutters :
" The women will kill me with bedclothes " (a-Tpooixara) ;
and in The Frogs, 542, where Bacchus speaks of a slave
lying on Milesian bedclothes (a-rpwixaariv MiXrjo-lois).

Theocritus (third century B.C.), also, while full of the
subject of spinning, has little to say of sumptuary tapes-
tries. In Idyll xv. 80-7, Gorgo directs the attention of
Praxinoe to some charming embroideries (ra ttolklXo),
on which the latter exclaims : " O Athene ! what woman
could have wrought, and what designer (£woypd(f>ot) drawn
them ? How true to nature the figures stand, and move

1 Saffron was the favourite colour of Greeks, purple of the Romans, red
of the Gauls.

2 Compare persica, the peach, i.e. Persian fruit.

268 ORIENTAL CARPETS

about, like living creatures, not woven patterns. And
Adonis himself, how beautiful, reclining on his silver couch,
in the first bloom of manhood ; thrice beloved Adonis,
Adonis beloved even in death ! " And in the immediately
following Psalm of Adonis occurs the famous lines : " O,
the purple coverlets (iropcpvpeoi. Se rainn^) more soft than
sleep ! (/maXaKwrepoi virvoo) [cf . Virgil, Eclogue, vii. 45]. So
Miletus will say, and the shepherds of Samos."

Polybius (204-122 B.C.), in the account he gives (xxxi.
3, 10) of the great festivities held at Daphne, by Antiochus
Epiphanes (165 B.C.), states that the " Companion
Cavalry," and the cavalry corps of " the King's Friends,"
and the " Cavalry of the Guard," and the " Cataphract
Cavalry " who took part in the celebration, to the
number of 4,500, all wore " purple overcoats " (iropcpvpas
eQonrrlSas), in many cases embroidered " with gold, and
figures of animals " (Siaxpvarovs kcu fcocora?). This state-
ment, we shall presently note, is repeated by Athenaeus.

Diodorus Siculus (circa 90 b.c.-a.d. 14) is more barren
than Herodotus of notices of sumptuary tissues ; but his
description, Book n., of the scenes depicted on the glazed
tiling of the circular wall of the royal palace at Babylon is
worth quoting, as indicating one of the sources in which the
scenic tapestries of the East originated : — " On this wall,
and on its towers, were represented every kind of living
creatures, painted in the most brilliant colours ; especially
huntings of all sorts of wild beasts, each scene four cubits
high, and upwards. Among them, was one of Semiramis
on horseback, piercing a panther with an arrow, and close
by, her husband, Ninus, attacking a lion with his lance."
The historian adds that on the " burnt brick walls " of
another palace, " on the other side of the river," there
were likewise represented armies drawn up in battle array,
and divers huntings, to the great diversion and delight of
the beholders.

Josephus (a.d. 37-100) in the Antiquities of the Jews,

THE TEMPLE VEILS 269

in. vi. 4 (in. ii. 22-6), writes : — " This Veil of the Holy
of Holies was very ornamental, being embroidered with
every sort of flower the earth produces ; and there was
woven into it every variety of form that might be orna-
mental, excepting the forms of animals " ; and in the
Wars of the Jews, v. v. 4 (v. iv. 16-26) : —

" The Veil of the Holy of Holies was a Babylonian curtain
embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet and
purple, and of a contexture truly wonderful. Nor was
this mixture of colours without its mystical meaning, but
was an image of the universe ; for the scarlet enigmatically
indicated fire ; the flax, earth ; the blue, air ; and the
purple, water. The fire and air having in their colours the
suggestion of their significance ; but the fine flax and
purple having, in their origin in the earth and the sea, re-
spectively, the source of their symbolism. The curtain
had also embroidered upon it all that was of mystery in the
heavens, excepting the representation of the twelve signs
(of the Zodiac) by living creatures."

Plutarchus (circa a.d. b. 41-51, d. 120), in his Themistocles,
compares the conversation of a man to " embroidered
tapestry (ttoiklXois crrpcD/mao-iv) which, when stretched out,
showed its patterns, but when folded up, they are hidden
and lost."

Arrian (circa a.d. 90-170), in his Expedition of
Alexander, vi. 29, describing the tomb of Cyrus, at
Pasargadse, writes : — " In the building was a golden coffin,
wherein the body of Cyrus had been buried, and by the
side of the coffin a couch, the feet of which were of gold,
wrought with the hammer. A carpet of Babylonian
tapestry (rdirriTa €7ri/3XtnuLdTOov ~Bci8v\goviwv), with purple
rugs (KauvoLKag iropcpvpovs) were laid upon it, also a Median
coat with sleeves, and other tunics of Babylonian manu-
facture " (rrjs Ba/3v\oovtov epyacr/a?).

270 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Pausanias (circa a.d. 138-180), in Laconica, xvi., tells us
that every year the women wove a garment for the Apollo
at Amyclae, and called the place, in which they wove it,
Chiton ; in Eliaca, xi., that the sandals of the Phidian
Zeus at Olympia, and the robe of the god, were of gold,
and that on the latter various animals were represented,
and of flowers, the lily (£doSid re kcli twv dvOecov ra
Kplva) ; adding in chapter xii. that Antiochus IV
(174-64 B.C.) dedicated a veil, adorned with Assyrian
weaving ({/(pour/mao-tv 'A<rovploii}, and Phoenician purple,
to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. In chapter xvi. he
tells us that every year, sixteen women of Elis wove
a veil for the temple of Here there, and held sports in her
honour ; adding in Posterior Eliaca, xxiv., that in the
forum of the city was a building called the " Sixteen
Women," where they wove the veil of Here : and in
Arcadica, v., he refers to the veil which Laodice, the
daughter of Agapenor, sent to Tegea, for the temple of
Pallas Alea.

Athengeus of Naucratis (circa a.d. 192-230), like the
Latin writer Pliny, treats the subject systematically, and
even more copiously than Homer, and I shall, therefore,
only note those passages in The Deipnosophists, or " Ban-
quets of the Learned," wherein he either indicates the
designs of the sumptuary tapestries of the period, or
expressly discriminates them as coverings for the floor, or
carpets proper, as we understand the word. In Book v.
xxii. he states that the soldiers present at an entertain-
ment given by Antiochus Epiphanes, wore purple cloaks,
and many had them " embroidered with gold, or with
figures of living animals " (toWo! Se kcu Siaxpvcrovs koi
foxoTa?) ; in c. xxvi. that the king placed under the
golden couches, used at the feast, " carpets of sea purple,
the same on both sides " (d/uL<piTa7roi oXovpyek) ; and that
on the couches were " embroidered rugs " (Trepia-rpcojuara
7roiKiXa) ; and that all the centre space, where the guests

"BANQUETS OF THE LEARNED" 271

walked, was covered with " thin Persian rugs " (^TiXat Se
HepariKai) having most accurate representations of animals
embroidered on them (aKpi/3rj t^v evypa/j-ixiav twv evv^ao-jmevcov
e'xovcrai faSlcov) ; and in c. xxvii. that the images of Victory
borne in the Dionysiac procession at the same celebration,
were clad in tunics embroidered with figures of animals
(faooTovs ivSeSuKviai x'Towa?) ; in Book XI. lxvii. that a
young Paphian spread his couch with " a Sardian piled
carpet " (2apSiav)j \fn\oTd7riSi) ; in Book xi. lv. he quotes
some verses from Hipparchus, referring to " a delightfully
embroidered Persian carpet (7 SairlStov h ayairrirov ttoiklXov)
having some Persian figures, and preposterous shapes of
Persian griffins, and such -like beasts worked on it"
(ITe'/ocra? exov kcu ypvira? e^coXei? rivas tcov JlepcriKWv) ; in
Book xn. viii. he again mentions " Sardian pile carpets "
(\p-i\ora7riScov HapSiavwv) ; in c. xxiv. he refers to " the
flowery robes " (crroXdg /xev avdiva?) of the Iapygians ; in c.
xxv. to "the embroidered tunics " (avOtvovs xitmcl?) of the
Sybarites ; in c. xxix. to the Persian stuff called "actaea,"
all over-diapered with "golden millet seed" (£e xPv(ro^
Keyxpots) ; in c. xl. to a Phrygian robe embroidered with
flowers (av6ivr]v ea-Ofjra) ; and in c. 1. he gives his well-
known description of the Chlamys of Demetrius : "It
was of a brilliant tawny colour, with a representation of
the heavens woven on it, the stars and the twelve signs
of the Zodiac being all wrought in gold." And in c. liv.
he states that at the extraordinary connubial entertain-
ment given by Alexander the Great, when he took Darius
prisoner, the tents in which it was held were furnished in
the most magnificent manner, " with sumptuous garments
and cloths " (ijuaTioig re kol oOovloig woXyTeXeo-iv) for the
guests, and were spread with cloths of purple and scarlet
interwoven with gold (iropcpvpoi? kcu <poiviKoi$ xPv<r0^(P^(Tt) >
and that the pillars supporting the tents were hung about
with " costly curtains embroidered with figures of animals "
(7roXfTeXef? facorol kq.1 Sidxpvcroi).

272 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Philostratus (circa a.d. 217), the author of Imagines, in
his life of Apollonius of Tyana, states, i. 25, that the latter
[obit. a.d. 97], when in Babylon, where he stayed for
some months, described the vestibule, rooms, and halls,
and corridors of the " royal palace " there as having some
work with silver, and some with gold wrought curtains
. . . the subjects depicted on these tapestries being illus-
trative of the Hellenic myths (and apparently the Persian
invasion of Greece), for " one could see the Hellespont
bridged, and Athos pierced, and Athens occupied." He
is the last Greek writer that needs be cited here.

Coming to the Latin writers, Plautus (circa 254-184 B.C.),
in Mercator, i. 1, where Charinus states that his father
Demipho " had had a sight of the peplum " (spectavisset
peplum), alludes to the great Panatheniac Festival, at
which the saffron-coloured veil, or robe1 woven by the
noblest maidens of " the City of the Violet Crown," was
hung from the mast of a ship on wheels, and so borne in
triumph, up the Acropolis, to the Temple of Athene
Polias.2 In Aulularia, hi. 10 (5), he explicitly mentions,
through the mouth of Megadorus, a Phrygio, or " em-
broiderer " ; and the patagiarii, or "dealers in figured tunics
for females," that is the tunic ornamented round the neck,
and down the front, with a purple, or golden, or em-
broidered edging (patagium), pretty much in the way the
tunic for males among the Romans was bordered with the
clavus. In Mencechmi, ii. 4 (ii. 4) he again mentions a
Phrygio, or " embroiderer." In Pseudolus, i. 2, he makes
Ballio threaten his slaves with so sound a hiding that not
even Campanian coverlets are broidered so well, nor purple
Alexandrian carpets, figured with beasts : —

" Ut ne peristromata quidem seque picta sint Campanica,
Neque Alexandrina beluata conchyliata tapetia."

Finally in Stichus, ii. 3, Pinacium enumerates among

1 See above Euripides, in Hecuba, and in Iphigenia in Tauris, p. 265.

2 Cf. Iliad, ii. 546-51, and Odyssey, vii. 81.

LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS 273

the purchases of Epignomus, Babylonian coverlets and
needle-worked carpets : —

" Turn Babylonica peristromata consutaque tapetia."

Lucretius (95 to circa 52 B.C.), in Book iv, lines 75-6,
a passage of great interest to the scientific photographer,
speaks of the actors and audience in large theatres being
coloured by the yellow, and red, and dark blue awnings
spread over them : —

" Et volgo faciunt id lutea, russaque vela,
Et ferrugina."

Again, in line 1029, he refers to Babylonian coverlets
of surpassing splendour : —

" Cum Babylonica magnifico spendore rigantur " ;

and elsewhere to estates being " wasted on," literally
"turned into Babylonian textures " : —
" Babylonica fiunt."

Catullus (87 to circa 47 B.C.), in his poem on The Marriage

of Peleus and Thetis, devotes lines 50-266 to a minute

description of the coverlet of their nuptial couch, wrought

in threads of deftest sleight with the figures of the men of

yore and their heroic deeds : —

" Hsec vestis priscis hominum variata figuris,
Heroum mira virtutes indicat arte."

With wondrous art it depicted the tragic story of

Theseus and Ariadne, and thus splendidly decorated, the

spreading coverlet enfolded the couch with its drapery : —

" Talibus amplifice vestis decorata figuris,
Pulvinar complexa suo velabat amictu."

It was, in short, a curtain like the purda, or veil used
among the natives of India, to screen the women of a
family from the sight of the men. After the young men of
Thessaly had satisfied themselves with gazing on it,
they made room for the gods : —

" Quae postquam cupide spectando Thessala pubes
Expleta est, Sanctis coepit decedere Divis."
T

274 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Virgil, 70-19 B.C., in Georgics, iii. 25, sings of British
captives at a theatre, supporting an awning inwoven with
the scene of their own defeat : —

" Purpurea intexti tollant aulsea Britanni."

In Mneid, i. 697, he seats Dido on a throne, under " a
superb awning " (aulaeis superbis). In iii. line 467,
among the presents of Helenus to iEneas, he names a
corslet, wrought as a sort of chain armour, in " gold of
triple thrummed " (auroque trilicem, cf. v. 259, and vii.
639, and xii. 375) ; and in lines 483-5 of the same Book,
Andromache brings forth for Ascanius vestments wrought
in figures of gold, a Phrygian chlamys, and other labours
of the loom : —

" Pert picturatas auri subtemine vestes,

Et Phrygiam Ascanio chlamydem . . .

Textilibusque onerat donis. . . ."

In iv. 137, Dido appears attired in a Sidonian chlamys
(chiton), with an embroidered border : —

" Sidoniam picto chlamydem eircumdata limbo."

In vii. 277, the swift horses of the Trojans are capari-
soned with purple and embroidered tapestry : —

" Instratos ostro alipedes, pictisque tapetis."

In viii. 659-61, he describes the Gauls as golden-
haired, their vestments of gold, and shining in their gold
" striped " (virgatus) shags, and their white necks hung
with (torques of) gold : —

" Aurea csesaries ollis, atque aurea vestis ;
Virgatis lucent sagulis ; turn lactea colla
Auro innectuntur."

And in ix. 325-6, he represents Rhames, at the moment

Nisus slaughters him, as lying on high-raised carpets,

snoring out the night : —

" qui forte tapetibus altis
Exstructus toto proflabat pectore somnum."

Horace, 65-8 B.C., in his Satires, ii. 4, 83-4, exclaims :

"THE WEALTH OF IND " 275

" What, should you sweep mosaic pavements with a filthy
palm broom, and throw Tyrian carpets over your un-
washed couch ! "

" Ten' lapides varios lutulenta radere palma
Et Tyrias dare circum inluta toralia vestes " :

and in his Epistles, i. 5, 23-4, in inviting Torquatus to
dinner, informs him, that there shall be a clean carpet for
his couch, and a clean napkin for his hands : —

" Ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa
Corruget nares."

Tibullus, 54-18 B.C., in i. i. 65 (i. ii. 77-8) apostrophising

Delia, protests that without her favouring love, in vain is

it to lie on a Tyrian couch, and in vain are soft down and

richly dyed " tapestry " (stragula) to induce sleep : —

" Nam neque turn plumse, nee stragula picta soporem
Nee sonitus placidae ducere possit aquae."

Propertius, circa 51 B.C., in i. xiv. 19-22 sings of
Venus that, she scruples not to enter a house furnished
with Arabian1 [i.e. Indian] luxury, nor fears to invade a

1 Compare Propertius, n. i. 15, of Cynthia : — " Nee si qua Arabio
lucet bombyce puella." Here Arabia may be China or India ; but whether
the silk was from India or China, or came by way of Egypt [" Indici donum
maris "] or Persia, it was brought into the marts of the Eastern Mediter-
ranean through the intermediation of the Arabs. Similarly the Parthia
of the Latin writers often includes Persia ; and their Serica, Central Asia ;
and India, China ; their geography of all the Eastern countries to which
the arms, and direct commerce, of Rome had not extended being extremely
vague and vagrant. The jessamines are as characteristic of India as the
tiger, the peacock, and the cobra, but they are popularly known in Europe,
one as the Arabian jessamine, or the Tuscan, and another again as the
Arabian, and a third as the American myrtle, the Azorean jessamine, and
the Caffrarian jessamine. Thus not one of them is known as the Indian
jessamine, and simply because they were introduced at different periods
into Europe through the countries after which they are specifically named.
The botanical name of the genus is the Latinised form of the Arabic name,
yasmin, of one of the Indian species. Sir Thomas Browne gives Cambay
as a synonym of the American myrtle, but he has no thought, as one
might suppose, of its coming from Cambay in Western India, far less of
this seeming place-name of it being a corruption of its Indian name chambali.
These are not the only instances of how in her natural history, her folk-
lore, and arts, and philosophy, India has been inadvertently robbed of
some of her chiefest glories.

276 ORIENTAL CARPETS

couch of Tyrian dye ; and asks Tullus what relief do silken
garments of varied tissue afford : —

" Ilia neque Arabium metuit transcendere limen :
Nee timet ostrino, Tulle, subire toro !

Quid relevant variis Serica textilibus."

In ii. xiii. 22 (in. xiii. b 22) he prays that when dead
his bier may not be of ivory, nor his body laid on a
luxuriously covered couch : —

" Nee sit in Attalico mors mea nixa toro " :

and in xxxii. 12-13 (in. xxxii. 11-12) in imploring

Cynthia not to give up so much time to her devotions, and

to afford him some of her company, he adds, despitefully,

that perhaps Pompey's portico, with its shadowing

columns, and magnificently decorated purple awnings,

palls upon her : —

" Scilicet umbrosis sordet Pompeia columnis
Porticus auleeis nobilis Attalicis."

In in. vii. 49-50 (iv. vii.) he describes his young
friend Psetus, as lying in a chamber of cedar, or Orician
terebinth, his head supported on a downy pillow of many

colours : —

" Effultum pluma versicolore caput."

In iv. i. 15 (v. i. 15), he refers to the bellying awnings
of the Roman theatres : —

" Nee sinuosa cavo pendebat vela theatro."

In vii. 46 (v. vii. 46) to Nomas, once a common street-
walker, but now trailing her gold-wrought cyclas1 over the

ground : —

" Haec nunc aurata cyclade signat humum " :

and in viii. 23 (v. viii. 43) to Cynthia's " silk lined (or
curtained) eka " (serica carpenta).

1 This is the Persian saqlatun, and Mahratti sakla ; words derived
from the Sanskrit saklat, the bright circle of the moon ; a word connected
with the Greek kiSkXos. The English word scarlet comes directly from the
Mahratti suklat.

"THE TRIAL OF ARES" 277

Ovid (43 b.c.-a.d. 18) in his Metamorphoses, in the
fable, Book vi. of the contest in weaving between Arachne
(whose very name is the Semitic word arag,1 " to spin ")
and Minerva, gives, in lines 70-128, two of the most in-
teresting and instructive descriptions of tapestries that
have come down to us from classical times. Pallas covers
the field of her web with the scene of the trial of Mars on
the Areopagus at Athens, by " the twice six celestial
gods," on his accusation by Neptune of having slain Halir-
rhothius. And in each corner of the field she wrought an
ominous representation of some previous contest between
presumptuous mortals and the undying deities. The first
corner contained the story of the metamorphoses of
Rhodope and Hsemus ; the second of Gerane the queen
of the Pygmies ; the third of Antigone the daughter of
Laomedon, King of Troy ; and the fourth of Cinyras and
his daughters. And she surrounded it with a border of
olive leaves : —

" Circuit extremas oleis pacalibus oras."

The Maeonian nymph delineates her tapestry with the
symbolical amours of the gods ; to all of whom she gives
their own likenesses : and she bordered it with flowers,
interwoven with trailing ivy : —

" Ultima pars telae, tenni circumdata limbo,
Nexilibus flores hederis habet intertextos."

The "field" of the first tapestry with its "filling"
and corner " lozenges " is characteristically Persian ;
and the borders of both are in the purest style of classical
decorative art, and should be reproduced by modern
European carpet manufacturers of scholarly taste ; while

1 In the previous lines, 54-8, the whole process of weaving is fully and
accurately described : —

" Et gracili geminas intendunt stamine telas.
Tela jugo vincta est ; stamen secernit arundo :
Inseritur medium radiis subtemen acutis ;
Quod digiti expediunt, atque inter stamina ductum
Percusso feriunt insecti pectine dentes."

278 ORIENTAL CARPETS

the central pictorial scenes are not altogether objectionable
in textile fabrics intended to be hung between pillars, or
against walls, and thus to serve in part as paintings.

In the same book of the Metamorphoses, lines 576-7,
Ovid says of Philomela, that she skilfully hung a warp of
" barbarian design " in the loom, and interweaving purple
with white, discovered the villainy of Tereus to his sister

Procne : —

" Stamina barbarica suspendit callida tela :
Purpureasque notas filis intexuit albis."

In the Ars Amatoria, i. 103-4, the poet states that in

the time of Romulus, neither did curtains hang over the

marble theatre, nor was the stage suffused with liquid

saffron : —

" Tunc neque marmoreo pendebant vela theatro
Nee fuerant liquido pulpita rubra croco."

Pliny (a.d. 23-79) in book viii. chapter Ixxiii. (48)
writes : " Thick flocky wool has always been esteemed
for the manufacture of carpets [in tapetis] from the earliest
times. It is quite clear from what we read in Homer that
they were in use in his time. The Gauls embroider [pin-
gunt] them in a different manner from that in use among
the Persians [aliter Parthorum gentes, an allusion to pile
carpets]. The refuse of the wool [from weaving and
felting] is used for stuffing mattresses, an invention, I
fancy, of the Gauls." Again, in chapter lxxiv. (48) he
writes : " The royal waved toga worn by Servius Tullius,
now in the Temple of Fortune, was woven by Tanaquil.
She was the first who wove the straight tunic [rectam
tunicam], such as our young men wear with the plain toga ;
and newly married women also. Fenestella informs us that
smooth togas, and Phrygian togas [togas rasas Phry-
gianasque] began to be used in the latter part of the reign
of Augustus. The bordered toga [prsetexta] had its origin
among the Etruscans. I find the striped toga was first
used by the Kings [trabeis usos accipio reges]. Em-

BROIDERED WORK FROM BABYLON 279

broidered garments [pictae vestes] are mentioned by
Homer, and in this class originated our triumphal robes.
The Phrygians first used the needle for this purpose [that
is to say, in the opinion of the Romans], and hence this
kind of garment obtained the name of Phrygionian. King
Attalus, who also lived in Asia, invented the art of em-
broidering in gold, from whence these garments have been
called Attalic.1 Babylon was very famous for its em-
broidery in different colours [colores diversos picturae
intexere], and hence stuffs of this kind obtained the name
of Babylonian. The method of weaving cloths with more
than two threads [of the warp, i.e. julitos] was invented
at Alexandria ; these cloths are called polymita. It was
in Gaul [it was really in Egypt and Mesopotamia] that they
were first divided in chequers [scutulis dividere]. Metellus
Scipio, father of Cornelia [the beloved wife of Pompey],
stated that even in his time Babylonian coverings for
dining couches [tricliniaria Babylonica, the sets of three
carpets, one for the top, and one for each side of the
length of a room, used to this day in Persia] were selling
for 800,000 sesterces [? £4600], and the price of these of
late [in the time of Nero] had risen to 4,000,000 sesterces
[£23,000]. The pretexts of Servius Tullius, with which
the statue of Fortune, dedicated by him, was covered,
lasted until the death of Sejanus, and it is a remarkable
fact that, during a period of 560 years, they had never
become tattered, or received injury from moth."

Silius Italicus, a.d. 25-9, who elsewhere refers to
" the superb webs of the Arabians " (Indians) and the
" gold-striped tunics " of the Gauls, in Book xiv. lines
655-60, speaks of Syracuse at the height of her glory as not
needing to import bronzes from Corinth (Ephyra) nor
to look for rivals in the art of manufacturing gold brocades,

1 This is what the Romans supposed, but a second, and earlier,
etymology of the denomination of this enriched stuff may be suggested
in the Semitic atalus or atlas, originally some heavy brocade, and now.
almost exclusively, satin.

280 ORIENTAL CARPETS

whereon the Babylonians produced the faces of men that

seemed to breathe, nor to envy the purple of Tyre and

Attalic stuffs, nor the webs of Egypt : —

"Quae scirent Ephyren, fulvo certaret ut auro
Vestis, spirantes referens subtemine vultus,
Quae radio cselat Babylon, vel murice picto
Laeta Tyros, quseque Attalicis variata per artem
Aulaeis scribuntur acu, aut Memphetide tela."

Juvenal (circa a.d. 25-? 95) in iv. 122, refers to the
stage-machinery of his time, and the boys caught up by
it to the awnings : —

" et pueros inde ad velaria raptos."

In vi. 227-8, satirising the faithless bride, he says
she leaves the doors so recently adorned, the tapestry
(vela) still hanging on the house : —

" Ornatas paulo ante fores, pendentia linquit
Vela domus."

In the following lines, 259-60, after deriding the manly
airs such women often give themselves, he adds that these
same women perspire even in the cyclas, and are oppressed
by a slip of delicate silk : —

" Hse sunt, quse tenui sudant in cyclade, quarum
Delicias et panniculus bombycinus urit."

In ix. 105, he refers to the use of tapestry hangings
for keeping out draughts : —

" Vela tegant rimas " :

and in x. 38-9, describes the praetor, at the opening of

the Circensian games, bearing on his shoulders the Tyrian

(Sarra, now es Sur) hangings of his embroidered toga : —

" In tunica Jo vis, et pictse Sarrana ferentem

Ex humeris aulsea togae."

Martial, a.d. 43-104, in n. xvi., says of Zoilus that the

tapestries (stragula, cf. xiv. cxlvii.) on his couch are the

cause of his fever : —

" Zoilus aegrotat, faciunt hanc stragula febrem.
Si fuerit sanus, coccina quid facient ?
Quid torus a Nilo ? Quid Sidone tinctus olenti ? "

MARTIAL AND LUCAN 281

In viii. xxviii. 17-18, he says of the toga presented

to him by Parthenius, that he would not prefer to it the

embroidered stuffs of Babylon, decorated with the needle

of Semiramis : —

" Non ego praetulerim Babylonica picta superbe
Texta, Semiramia quae variantur acu " :

and in xiv. cl. occurs the couplet, already quoted, on an

ornamental coverlet : —

" Haac tibi Memphitis tellus dat munera ; victa est
Pectine Niliaco jam Babylonis acus."

Petronius Arbiter, a.d. 54-68, vi., describing Trimal-

chio's feast, says that presently the servants came in and

" spread tapestry on the couches " (toralia proposuerunt

toris) ; and, in viii. quotes a fragment from Publius

Syrus, comparing the glory of an embroidered Babylonian

shawl (amictus, cf. 1/uLariovy e7rl/3Xt]/uia) with that of a

peacock's tail : —

" Tuo palato oculosus pavo nascitur
Plumato amictus aureo Babylonico."

Lucan, circa a.d. 65, in ii. 354-64, writing of the
private re-marriage of Cato with Marcia, says that she
wore no girdle of gems, no necklace, no saffron veil, no
turreted crown, nor was the threshold of the house hung
with garlands, and the door posts with white fillets [torun
of Hindus of Bombay], nor were there the usual torches,
" nor did the couch stand on high with its ivory steps, nor
was its coverings variegated with embroidered gold "
(et picto vestes discriminat auro). In x. 125-6, of the
coverlets of the couches used, at the entertainment given
by Cleopatra to Caesar, he says " a part shines embroidered
[plumata] with gold, a part fiery with Kermes, as is the
manner of mingling the threads in Egyptian looms " : —

" Pars auro plumata nitet ; "pars ignea cocco,
Ut mos est Phariis miscendi licia telis."

Lines 141-3 of the same book, describing the appear-

282 ORIENTAL CARPETS

ance of Cleopatra herself, have already been quoted,1 but
will bear repetition here : —

" Candida Sidonio perlucent pectore filo,
Quod Nilotis acus percussum pectine Serum
Solvit, et extenso laxavit stamina velo."

Quintus Curtius, circa a.d. 100, in. iii. 18, states that
the robes of Persian nobles were adorned in gold, with
"hawks affronted" (pallam auro distinctam, aurei acci-
pitres, velut rostris inter se corruerent, adornabant).

Apuleius, a.d. 125-75, makes several references to
curtains, embroidered cushions, and other tapestries,
and to silken umbrellas, robes, and other articles of dress ;
but the only passages I shall here quote are two, both in
Book xi., illustrating the symbolical designs of the sump-
tuary textile manufactures of his time.

The first describes the vestments in which the goddess
Isis appears to Lucius : " Her robe [praetexta], woven
of fine flax [bysso tenui], was of many colours ; now
shining white [nunc albo candore lucida], now yellow as the
crocus [nunc croceo flore lutea], and now flaming in
crimson [nunc roseo rubore flammida]. But what fixed
my gaze most of all was her mantle of deepest black, and
resplendent glossy lustre [palla nigerrima, splendescens
arto nitore]. Glittering stars were dispersed along the
extremities of the garment and over its whole surface,
while in the midst a moon of two weeks old breathed forth
its flaming fires."

The second passage describes the mantle worn by
Lucius at his initiation as a priest of Isis : "A rich mantle
[pretiosa chlamyda] descended from my shoulders down
my back to my ankles, and on whatever part of it you
looked there was something to arrest your attention in the
animals with which it was embroidered in various colours
[colore vario circumnotatis insignibar animalibus]. Here
were Indian serpents, there Hyperborean griffins [hinc

1 At p. 253.

"THE RAPE OF PROSERPINE" 283

dracones Indici, hide Gryphes Hyperborei], which the
other world [mundus alter] generates in the form of a
beast with wings. The persons devoted to the service of
the divinity call this the Olympic stole."

Ammianus Marcellinus, a.d. 333-95, the last of the
classic Latin historians, writes, xiv. vi. 9, of the vices of
the Romans of his time : " Others glory ... in their
splendid apparel, . . . showing by the constant wriggling
of their bodies, and particularly by the waving of the
left hand, their anxiety the more conspicuously to show
off the multiform figures of animals embroidered [effigiatae
in species animalium multiformes] on their long fringed
tunics " ; and, xxiv. vi. 3, of Julian's invasion of As-
syria : " After our fatigues, that we might enjoy some
seasonable rest, we encamped in an open plain, rich with
trees, vines, and cypresses, in the middle whereof was a
shady and delicious pavilion, having all over it, according
to the fashion of the country, pictures of the king slaying
wild beasts in the chase ; for they never paint, or in any
way represent anything, except different kinds of slaughter
and war " (varias csedes et bella).

Claudian (circa a.d. 395), the last of the classic Latin

poets, in his Panegyric on the Fourth Consulship of

Honorius, says of the magnificent toga of the young

Caesar that, " Tyre provided its purple dye, China its

woof of silk, and India the gems that weighted it " : —

" Tribuere colorem
Phoenices, Seres subtemina, pondus Hydaspes " :

And in his Rape of Proserpine the description of a tapestry
recalls those immortalised by Virgil, and Catullus, and
Euripides. I am at present unable to give it in the original,
and translate it from memory. " She [Proserpine] illus-
trated on the web with her needle the movement of the
elements : Nature, the Mother of the Worlds, separating
form and order from the formless void, and everywhere
sowing the seeds of life in the ground yielding it ; the lighter

284 ORIENTAL CARPETS

particles floating upward, and the heavier falling down-
ward ; and the shining ether, and the stars revolving
round the pole, and the earth floating suspended in their
midst, its sea covered with waves. The stars are golden,
the sea swells in purple, the land rises in glittering gems,
while skilfully woven threads foam in waves against every
coast. One could see the seaweed being torn from the
rocks, and hear the resounding waves as they broke on
the beach. Five zones she drew with her needle : the
centre of heat, and on either side of this a temperate
zone ; and beyond these the poles heaped with palaeo-
crystic ice, and numbed with cold, and wrapped in eternal
gloom. She depicted also the realm of Hades, and, oh !
sad omen, her fated throne beside him."

Finally, Sidonius (C. Sollius Apollinaris), circa a.d. 500,
Bishop of Auvergne, on the eve of the Middle Ages of
the West, and of the Mahometan conquest of the East,
states in his Carmina, xxiii. 423-7, that at the Circensian
games, silks, with palms, and crowns with necklaces
(torques), were given to the successful competitors, and
to the rest carpets : —

" Hie mox prsecipit aequus Imperator,
Palmis Serica, torquibus coronas
Conjungi, et meritum remunerari,
Victis ire jubens, satis pudendis
Villis versicoloribus tapetas " :

And, in his Letters, ix. xiii. he thus describes a piece of
tapestry : " There we see Ctesiphon and Niphates, with
wild beasts tearing across the web, infuriated by their
skilfully pictured wounds, wherefrom the blood flows un-
real as the javelin that has pierced them. There also we
see the fierce Parthian on his swift steed, now retreating,
with his head turned back, and now advancing to hurl
the javelin, putting to flight the wild beasts whose simili-
tude he pursues."

THE TYPOLOGY OF ART 285

VI

Emblematic Art

The foregoing archaeological and literary survey makes
it clear that carpets were probably manufactured in
Egypt, and possibly in Chaldaea, long anterior to 2400 B.C. ;
that, from the date of their earliest representations and
descriptions to the present day there has been no material
modification in the artistic and technical character, or
even in the commercial denominations of Oriental carpets ;
that, from about 2400 B.C. to 800 B.C., the period of the
commercial and artistic ascendancy of Egypt in Syria and
Mesopotamia, and of the Egypto-Chaldaean art of the
Hittites in Asia Minor, Oriental carpets were already well
known in Eastern Europe ; that, from about 800 B.C. to
the close of the Persian wars against Greece, 480 B.C., the
Oriental carpets known to the Greeks were still of the non-
Hellenised archaic types of Egypt and Anterior Asia, dis-
playing under the now predominating influence of Assyria
over Syria and Egypt, the figures of the "Tree of Life,"
and the symbolical winged beasts of the Babylonians, in
wonderful harmonies of glowing primitive colours. We
have also seen that from 480 B.C., the date of the deliver-
ance of Greece from the terror of Persia, to 146 B.C., the
date of her subjugation by Rome, the period of the greatest
activity of the genius of the Greeks, and signalised by the
successive supremacies of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes
(480-331 B.C.), the conquests of Alexander and the Dia-
dochi (338-280 B.C.), and the brilliant reign of the Attalidse
at Pergamum (280-133 B.C.), during these 340 years the
stromaturgic art of the East, conforming more or less com-
pletely to the standards of Hellenic taste, attained its
highest excellence in design, as proved by the preference
during this period of the conventionalised forms of flowers
in decoration, to the strange monstrous shapes of winged
bulls and lions, and eagle-headed men, the " high "

286 ORIENTAL CARPETS

seraphim, and " mighty " cherubim1 of the Babylonians.
Finally, it is clear that, from the capture of Corinth, by
Mummius (146 B.C.), to the overthrow of the Western
Roman Empire by the barbarians (a.d. 476), and the
invasion of the Eastern Empire by the Saracens (a.d.
720-39), there occurred, under the materialising influence
of the supremacy of Rome in the Mediterranean and over
Anterior Asia, a gradual degradation in the manufacture
of Oriental carpets, not indeed in their technical character-
istics, including their superb colouring, but in their in-
trinsic artistic qualities ; for we now observe in their
decoration, not only the recrudescence of unnatural animal
forms that had already lost all their meaning, but the
wholly incongruous introduction of landscapes and even
portraits.

It is to the carpets of this, the debased Roman period
of classical art, that Philostratus, who lived in the third
century a.d., vividly refers in his Imagines, ii. 31 : " We
recommend the artist, not for his close imitation of the
king on his peacock throne — of his tiara, and robe, and
tunic — figured with the fanciful animals the barbarians
embroider on their clothes >/ Qrjplwv reparooSeig /uop<pas ola
ttoikiWovsl fiapfiapoi, but for the fine drawn gold so deftly
intertissued with the web."

The carpet manufacture of the West laboured down
to the middle of the last century under the disastrous
effects of this Roman corruption of sumptuary art ; but in
the East it was suddenly saved from further deterioration
by a most providential conjunction of circumstances,
namely, that in the seventh and eighth centuries a.d., the

1 See I. Kings vi. 29, 32, 35 : — " And he carved all the walls of the house
[Solomon's Temple] round about with carved figures of cherubims [winged
bulls, etc.] and palm trees [Trees of Life] and open flowers [knop and
flowers]"; and Ezekiel xli. 18: — "And it [the Temple of the Prophet's
vision] was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was
between a cherub and a cherub " [" seraph beasts affronted "]. Compare
also Ezekiel xl. 18-26, and II. Chronicles iii. 5-17.

SEMITIC RESTRICTIONS 287

Saracens rapidly overran the Sassanian Persian Empire,
and the Syrian and African provinces of the Eastern
Roman Empire, enforcing wherever they settled the
peremptory interdiction by their new faith of the use of
animal forms in decoration, and even of floral forms,
unless conventionalised to an almost bare geometrical
delineation ; and the facility with which the plastic Greeks
in Syria, Egypt, and Persia, at once, under compulsion of
their new masters, adapted the degenerated arts of the
Eastern, or Lower Roman (Byzantine) Empire to the
religious principles, and social and domestic necessities of
Islam.

There was, indeed, nothing sudden, any more than
accidental, in this happy association of apparently dis-
connected circumstances, for it is one of the most striking
illustrations to be found in human history, of " the long
results of time " directed to their patient and beneficent
fulfilment by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge
of God.

About the Christian era, the Greeks had been brought
in Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, into familiar
and uninterrupted contact with arts that had indeed
already been modified by themselves, through the estab-
lishment in the fourth century B.C. of the Macedonian
dominions of Alexander the Great, and the Seleucidae,
and the Lagidae, over Anterior Asia and Egypt, but which
still, particularly in the building style of these countries,
preserved traces, not to be found in Greece, or even in
Italy, of the vague and barbaric grandeur of the Egypto-
Mesopotamian temples and palaces of Chaldsea, Assyria,
and Babylonia ; wherein the architecture and subsidiary
decorative arts of sculpture, pottery, painting, mosaic,
tapestry, and furniture (>i Karaa-Kevri as opposed to ra €7rnr\a)
generally, have everywhere had their origin. Probably
it was not less to the intimate intercourse of the Greeks,
from the time of Alexander the Great and the Diadochi,

288 ORIENTAL CARPETS

with Anterior Asia, than to the universal influence of the
ostentatious magnificence of Rome under the Caesars, that
we owe the vulgarity of the rankly luxuriant arts, including
that of tapestry, of the Graeco -Roman period.

But at the time of this Asiatic reaction on Greece she
was in turn modifying, and far more widely and deeply
than under Alexander the Great, the local arts of every
nation brought under her influence in the course of the
conquests and the commerce of the Caesars. This inter-
action between the West and the East produced, between
480 and 146 B.C., the Graeco -Buddhistic, or pre-Byzantine
art of Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Punjab ; between
332 B.C. and a.d. 284, the Coptic or pre-Byzantine art of
Egypt ; and between 226 B.C. and a.d. 652, the Sassanian
or pre-Byzantine art of Persia.

Again, when classical art, in its later debased Roman
form, sought a refuge in Constantinople (a.d. 328) from the
barbarians who overthrew the Western Empire, it there,
in the service of Eastern Christianity, and under the in-
fluence of Coptic, Sassanian, and Graeco -Buddhistic art,
transformed itself, between the sixth and twelfth centuries
a.d., into the Byzantine art of Constantinople ; of which
a strong outpost was planted at Ravenna, in Italy (a.d.
568-752).

Then, on the Nestorian Greeks being driven in the
fifth and sixth centuries from Constantinople, they fled
into Syria, Persia, and Egypt, and from Persia (where,
as seceders from the Christian Church, now identified with
the Eastern Roman Empire, they were hospitably re-
ceived) they spread through Central Asia to the confines
of China, and into India and Arabia ; until in the four-
teenth century a.d., their further diffusion was cut short
by the incursions and persecutions of the Mongols, under
Timur. They had carried with them from the first the
fructifying germs of Greek art ; and, in the seventh and
eighth centuries, were everywhere accepted by the Saracen

THEIR DEGRADATION 289

Arabs as their architects and artisans. Limiting them-
selves, in conformity with the religious scruples of their
employers (in part shared by themselves) to the production
of floral and geometrical ornamentation, they, on the
foundations of Indo-Buddhistic, Sassanian, Coptic, and
Byzantine art, created Saracenic art as the ultimate
Oriental expression of Greek art.1

But if the keen perception of the Greeks for the beautiful,
particularly for purity, and delicacy, and grace of line,
served, at the critical moment, to deliver the sumptuary
carpets of the East from the indecorum and grossness by
which they were contaminated and oppressed during the
later imperial Roman period, the resuscitation of their
ritualistic status, which, of itself, powerfully contributed
to their artistic regeneration, was wholly the work of the
Saracens themselves. These carpets had lost much of
their religious character in originally passing from Egypt,
and Phoenicia, and Lydia, into Greece ; and, except for
their continued use as the outer and inner veils of temples,
they would appear, during the ascendancy of Macedon
and Rome, to have gradually become entirely secularised
in Europe.

The Saracen Arabs at once changed all this. They were
deeply imbued with the almost universal Asiatic sense of
the unity and absolute inseparability of the spiritual and
material lives of men ; and with the corresponding, al-
though not necessarily deducible feeling, that durable,
precious, and beautiful things can only be rightly used in
the service of man, in so far as they also are made to

1 Analogously in the West, on Leo III (Isauricus), a.d. 717, expelling
the image worshippers from Constantinople, they, followed by the
fugitives of 754, and of 830 and 869, sought a refuge in Italy. There under
the patronage of Charlemagne, 768 to 814, they gave that direction to the
architecture of the Christianised barbarians who had overthrown the
Western Empire which, notwithstanding the continuing vitality of the
traditions of classical art in Italy and France, resulted in the development,
between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, of the sublime Gothic art of
Mediaeval Europe.
U

290 ORIENTAL CARPETS

minister to the glory of God. To the devout Saracen Arab,
Nature — whether in its universality or its particularity —
is the city, the garden, the mountain, in a word, the Temple
of God ; and, like the men of every other Asiatic race that
has helped to civilise the world, he insisted that this fact
should be unequivocally recognised in all the arts that
sustained and adorned his newborn life in God ; so that
whether a mosque was built for him, or a carpet woven, or
a gem set in silver — or, as later, in gold — he required that
it should be a symbol of the consecration of the whole crea-
tion of things, seen and unseen, to the glory of God in the
Highest. In this instinctive identification of the
beautiful with the good (to ko\6v Ka\ ayaOov),1 of the
holiness of beauty with the beauty of holiness, we per-
ceive the ideal inspiration of the perfection of the Sara-
cens' own excellency in the arts, quite independently of
their obvious obligations to the masterful draughts-
manship and general manipulative dexterity of the
Greeks.

It thus happened that the pictorial and scenic type of
Oriental carpets of the Sassanian Persian Empire, and
Lower Roman Empire, rapidly, in the seventh and eighth
centuries, gave place to the new Saracenic floral type.
Not that the former were ever entirely superseded, for to
the present day they survive in Egypt, and yet more
numerously in Persia, where these thardwash (i.e. " beast

1 Plato roundly says [Republic, v. 452] that the man is a fool who
judges the beautiful by any other standard than that of the good ; and
Aristotle expresses the same opinion [Nicomachian Ethics, i. 6] with a more
limited application. The most animating enunciation of the principle
is made by Euripides in The Bacchce, as the refrain of the spirited Chorus,
862-910 : — "What is more beautiful than wisdom ? . . . the beautiful is
a joy for ever," 8 re naXdv <f>L\ov &ei, this line having, as suggested by Mr.
Gilbert Norwood, in his Riddle of the Bacchoe, undoubtedly inspired the
first line of Keats' Endymion : —

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," —
if not indeed his treatment of the whole poem. But Keats restricts the
principle as closely to aesthetic — almost sensuous — beauty, as Aristotle to
ethical.

THEIR INDIAN DESIGNATIONS 291

hunt "), or, as they are called in India,1 shikargah (i.e.
" hunting-ground ") carpets, are still known under the
traditional name of Susangird,2 that is, of Susiana (Khuzis-
tan), or again, the Persian Empire ; for the word, gird,
compare our " girdle," although it literally means
"suburb," as in gird-i-shehr, "the suburb of the city,"
here has the wider meaning of the " vicinage," " region,"
M province," " empire " ; as in Daoudgird — literally, " the
ward of David," Mount Zion, and again, Jerusalem — but,

1 The following are the designations of carpets known in India : —
basat (" spread "), farash (" spread "), gastardah (" spread "), these three
being general terms for carpets ; liar ami (" holy "), the chief carpet in a
room; sar-andaz ("head-placed"), the carpet placed at the head of a
room ; barikah (" narrow "), the " strips " of carpet extending on either
side of a room from the sarandaz to the opposite end of a room ; the
sarandaz, and two barikah, representing the " tricliniaria " of the Romans ;
galim or kilim, the large carpet (harami) placed in the centre of a room, and
of a mosque ; sajjadah (" place of prostration "), jai-namaz (" place of
prayer "), and masalla (" adoration "), all names of prayer carpets ;
susni, a quilt-like covering embroidered with lilies (susan), and probably
so called because originally imported into India from Susa, " the Lily,"
the summer capital of Achaemenian Persia ; thardwash (" beast hunts "), or
shikargah (" huntings "), carpets depicted, after the manner of those of
ancient Persia, with beast hunts and similar scenes, and generically desig-
nated Susangird ; namad, a felt carpet ; ru-farash, the linen covering for
carpets ; satrangi (" four-colours ") or jamkhana (" assembly-room," i.e.
sitting-room, or tent carpet), a chequered, or striped, carpet, generally of
cotton ; dari (literally " twill," by usage " door," i.e. dwar rug), a small
cotton carpet ; and tabsat, a coarse rug. Namad is a felted carpet,
takyanamad being a felted caTpet from Afghanistan, or Persia ; in which
latter country the sarandaz and barikah are usually felts. I am also told
that in Persia they distinguish between galim or kilim and gali or kili
carpets, the latter being a woollen pile carpet, and the former a woollen
pileless carpet, " the same on both sides." See Athenseus, pp. 270-1. Baluchi
is a term applied in India to carpets from Baluchistan, whether of wool
or cotton.

2 The Indian quilts embroidered with the conventionalised flowers of
the white water-lily are called Susni, a corruption, as I have already
inferred, of the Persian Susani, " of Susa." The term may not impossibly
be a corruption of the Persian suzani, meaning " needle " work, and, in
this instance, specifically " embroidery " : or at least it may have as much
of suzan, " a needle," in its entymology, as of susan, " lilies," here re-
ferring to the city of Susa. But in the phrase Susan-gird, always pro-
nounced by the Jews in Persia " Sushan gird," there is no reference to
" needlework " or embroidery ; that is to suzan-kar, or kar-i-suzan. The
phrase means simply carpets of the style of the (Sassanian, or of the
Achaemenian) Persian Empire. Suzan, a needle, is compounded of su,
" appertaining to," and zan, " woman."

292 ORIENTAL CARPETS

in its largest sense, the " realm " or " kingdom " of David.
But the new, and severely conventionalised floral type,
applied either as a diaper, or in the " Tree of Life " and
" knop and flower " patterns, gradually prevailed ; and
as modified in the freer drawing, and more natural
delineations of the Italianesque Abbasi carpets, it
characterises the predominant denominations of modern
Persian carpets ; which may again be described as
Susangird carpets, "cum floribus," instead of "cum
historia," as in the pre-Saracenic times of the Chosroes,
and Byzantine Caesars. The more strictly geometrical
patterns originally introduced by the Saracens, now linger,
in their crudest relics, only among the Turanian and Negroid
populations of the Central Asian and African limits of Islam ;
and simply through the incapacity of these races for the
higher, floral styles of decorative draughtsmanship.

Yet, whatever their type of ornamentation may be, a
deep and complicated semeiography originating in Baby-
lonia, and possibly India, pervades every denomination
of Oriental carpets. Thus the carpet itself represents
space and eternity, and the general pattern, or " filling "
as it is technically termed, the fleeting finite universe of
animated beauty. Every colour used has its significance ;
and the design, whether mythological or natural, human,
bestial, or floral, all has its connotative meaning. Even
the representations of men hunting wild beasts have their
emblematical indications. So have the natural flowers of
Persia their symbolism wherever they are introduced, and
generally following that of their colours. The very irregu-
larities, either in drawing or colouring, to be observed in
almost every Oriental carpet, and invariably in Turkman
carpets, are seldom accidental, the usual deliberate intention
of them being to avert the evil eye, and to assure good luck.1

1 See my " Introduction " to Mr.^Vincent] Robinson's book on Eastern
Carpets, (Sotheran) 1882, and (Quaritch) 1893 ; and for the full symbolism
of the " Tree of Life " my Industrial Arts oj India (Chapman and Hall), 1880*

"PRAYER CARPETS" 293

The noblest of these allusive carpets are everywhere the
harami carpets, made expressly to be placed under the
domes of mosques, and the sajjadah, of a much smaller
size, made chiefly in Syria and Kurdistan, for the
faithful of Islam to prostrate themselves on, when at
prayers.

The latter are always of the colour distinguishing the
order of dervishes, or faqueers, for whom they are primarily
intended ; as deep blue or black for the Rifaiyah, red for
the Ahmadiyah, green for the Bahramiyah, and white for
the Kadiriyah ; and they invariably have, at one end, a
well-defined representation of the mihrab,1 or niche, in the
centre of one of the walls of every mosque, marking the
direction of the kiblah ("opposite"), or sacred point,
towards which Orientals generally look when at their
devotions, and which for Mussulmans is Mecca. This mimic
mihrab, which usually enclosed a figure of the " Tree of Life,"
is always directed, when the carpet is in use, towards
Mecca. The Persian name of these carpets is jai-namaz,
or " the place of prayer " ; and their Arabic name, saj-
jadah, literally "prostration," meaning "the place of
prayer," and masalla, meaning "adoration."2 It is
radically the same word as masjid, or, in its corrupted
English form, mosque, "the place of (public) prayer";
and the prayer carpet is often found to be designed on the
general ground plan of the mosque, with its doorway, and
place for leaving the shoes of " the Faithful," and tank
for ablutions, and pulpit, and cloisters, all indicated, in
addition to the ever-present mihrab. In short, it would

1 Derived, like the niches in Hindu temples, from the niches in which,
in the ancient Buddhistic monuments of India, the image of Buddha
is found placed. The Saracenic arch also obviously had the same
origin, its characteristic curve being that of the cope of these niches
over the shoulders, and above the head, of the contained image of
Buddha.

2 The red sajjadah, jainamas, or masalla, is used in Mahometan
countries for the conjuration of genii, and the adjuration, or exorcism, of
demons.

294 ORIENTAL CARPETS

seem as if the mosque originated in the prayer carpet ;
and the first " house of God," apart from the overhanging
branches of the trees that were primitively worshipped as
gods, was possibly the carpet spread before some idol
image of general resort among the tribes of the vast rain-
less, treeless, desert solitudes lying between the valleys of
the Nile, and the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Diodorus
Siculus tells us that the Egyptians used carpets in this
way ; and stamped and hand-painted cotton cloths are
still similarly used by the Hindus.

Thus, notwithstanding that daily familiarity with
sacred things tends to dull the sense of awe that should
ever be inspired by their presence, the abiding feeling, at
the heart of hearts of every truly reverent Muslim, when
standing on the sajjadah, can only be fitly expressed in the
devout words of the patriarch, Jacob, at Bethel (Genesis
xxviii. 17) : " This is none other but the House of God,
and this is the Gate of Heaven."1

The spiritual exaltation of character whereby the Mussul-
mans are pre-eminently distinguished, is altogether owing
to their thus individually realising in everything around
them the directly felt presence of the Deity ; and nothing
is more remarkable than the immediate effect of this habit
of mind in developing the personality, and in every way
raising the condition, of the convert from Paganism to
their inexorable monotheistic faith. But we are here more
interested in its elevating and refining influences on the
arts inherited by them from their Saracenic prede-
cessors.

The religious sense of the indivisible unity of the spiritual
with the material world, of this perishing earth of ours
having also its part in the imperishable Paradise of God,
illuminates the whole temporal life of man with the
eternal light of heaven, and inspires every human work,
of even the humblest handicraft, with that illusion of a

1 Compare Exodus iii. 5 ; Joshua v. 15 ; and Acts vii. 33.

ART THE HANDMAID OF RELIGION 295

higher reality, wherein is found not only the true perfection
of art, but the most spontaneous, and the most congenial
expression the finite powers of symbolisation we possess
can give to our conceptions of infinite beauty and good-
ness.

In saying this, it is not meant that art, here limited
to " the fine arts " and " the applied arts," affords the
highest mode of denoting the ultimate conception of re-
ligious truth included in the creeds or verbal symbols of
Christendom and Islam ; if for no other reason, because
Christians for the most part, and Mussulmans universally,
have reached a level of culture above that at which graven
images, and pictures and other graphic representations can
be venerated, nay actually worshipped, as symbols of
Deity. But there is in the heart of man an instinctive
and imperative craving for communion — actual colloquy
— with God, that is to bring " the Word of Life " into
consciousness, that may, as it were, be seen, handled, and
tasted, and which he as instinctively seeks to satisfy by
the artifices of music, or painting, or sculpture, or language.
If it be admitted that language is the supreme medium of
intercourse with God, for that very reason it is the less
suited for the use of the generality of men, for whom
music, and painting, and sculpture, devoutly directed, will
always remain the most powerful means for drawing the
soul towards, and absorbing it in, the Deity. It would
have been more for the happiness of the world if, instead
of scientifically investigating, and logically wrangling over,
our religious conceptions, and embodying them in definite
verbal formulas, that after all are an implied denial of their
spirituality, and a ceaseless provocation to explicit ques-
tionings of their truth — it would have been far better to
have left them to the familiar symbolisation of the arts
that have been the great historical vehicle for their trans-
mission throughout the habitable globe, and everywhere
the best understood of mankind.

296 ORIENTAL CARPETS

Nor can it be denied that the supreme satisfaction of
art lies in its spiritual significance ; and that if this be
wanting in any art, it is all vanity ; the wretched vanity
of the realistic painters the Greeks aptly described as
"dirt painters" (pv7rapo-\pd<poi). The eye is not satis-
fied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, and art, void of
its supernatural typology, fails in its inherent artistic
essence, as well as in the divine sources of its sempiternal
joy and glory. It is indeed the whole secret of the fascina-
tion exercised over us by the arts of ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia, and of modern India — the India of the
Hindus — where the whole basis of life is still religious ; as
also by Saracenic art, for although the Muslims repudiated
the idolatrous symbolism of Paganism, they retained, and
indeed intensified, its insuppressable, quickening spirit.
It is the surpassing praise also of the ecclesiastical arts of
the West, the arts, that is, of the historical Catholic Roman
and Greek and schismatic Anglican Churches ; for in the
presence of these sacramental arts it is the majesty and
glory of the whole creation of things, visible and invisible,
that seems spread out before us, although it be but a
carpet on which we look.

Of this transcendental art was the mystic cestus
(Iliad, xiv. 214-19), or girdle of Alma Venus, which
we may imagine to have been a web of lightest sindon
[i.e. " Indian " muslin] broadly striped throughout its
length in diaphanous rose, and ivory white, and saffron,
and azure, as if "Iris had dipp'd the woof";1 and in-
wrought, at its ends, with conventional representations
of the allurements of the senses, and, over all its gossamer
ground with a delicate "filling" of flowers of the most
exquisite grace of form, and the most refreshing sweetness
of bloom, emblems of the eternal youth, and fragrance of
untainted natural love and beauty.

1 Milton's Paradise Lost, xi. 244. Compare Comus, 83 : — " These my
sky robes spun of Iris woof."

THEIR HIGHEST ARTISTRY 297

" Te Dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila coeli,
Adventum que tuum ; tibi suaveis daedala tellus,
Submittit flores ; tibi rident aequora ponti,
Placatumque nitot diffuso lumine coelum."1

Such also were the sacred veils of the ancient temples
of the gods commemorated by Euripides, and Josephus,
and Pausanias ; black, or purple, scintillating with the
silver and gold of the glittering moon and her circle of
radiant stars, each star in its own mansion revealing the
foldings of the veil, depths beyond depths through the
infinite abysses of space, filling the heart of man with awe
in the presence of the mighty rulers of the darkness and the
night ; or red, or saffron, or blue, dazzling with the golden
brightness of the sun emblazoned amid his twelve diurnal
and annual stations, shooting forth on all sides the light
of day, and in turn chasing from the mid-heavens the
Fishes, the Twins, the Balances, and Capricorn, leading
on Spring and Summer, Autumn and Winter, in his
triumphant train, and rejoicing the heart of man with the
sense of perennially renewed life, and immortality.

Thus antiquity, from its being nearer than we are to the
divine origin of things, was ever mindful to symbolise
in its sublime art the truth of the conviction that the
green circle of the earth, and the shining frame of the out-
stretched heavens, are but the marvellous intertexture of
the veil dividing between the world we see and the un-
seen, inscrutable beyond. This is the reason of the vitality,
the dignity, and the power of giving contentment, pos-
sessed by the arts of antiquity ; with which, alas ! the
arts of the modern world of the West will never be endued,
until they also become animated by the spirit of this pris-
tine faith of every historical race of the Old World. " Vani-

1 See the exquisite translation of these opening lines of the De Rerum
Natura of Lucretius in Spenser's Faerie Queene, x., iv., 44, 45 ; from which
I can here only quote the first two lines of stanza 45 : —

" Then doth the daedale Earth throw forth to thee
Out of her fruitful lap abundant flowers."

298 ORIENTAL CARPETS

tas est deligere quod cum omni celeritate transit, et illuc
non festinare ubi sempiternum gaudium manet " ; and
for all the technical instruction that may be given, and all
the luxurious illustrations of typical Eastern examples that
may be published, no truly great carpet will ever be pro-
duced in Europe, until the weaver's heart is attuned to
sing to the accompaniment of his ringing loom, and in
grateful unison with every con jubilant voice of praise in
heaven and on earth : —

"Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth ! x
Pleni sunt cceli et terra gloria tua ! Gloria in excelsis ! "

And this is the sum, and set seal of the whole matter : —
The beauty of holiness, and the holiness of beauty, in
their highest permonstration, are of one and the same
divine sanctity and pulchritude.

1 The Vulgate translation of this triumphal hymn {iirivliuos vfivos)
of the seraphim in Isaiah vi. 2, renders " sabaoth " by " exercitum," but
the older translation of the Missal more correctly retains the Hebrew word
(in its Hellenised form) " sabaoth," for it refers not to the armies of Israel,
but to the stars, " the host of heaven "(Isaiah xi. 26), " the camp of God "
(Genesis xxxii. 2).

INDIAN UNREST

From Sanj Vartaman (Bombay), the Parsi New Year's
Number, 12th September, 1913.

THE ultimate cause, within the limits of a long-
settled, well-governed, and wealthy country, of all
honest and earnest political discontents, is to be found in
the fact that the human kind — as indeed all organic life —
reproduces itself beyond the means of its maintenance.
Some thirty years ago, I went into the genealogical history
of the whole of the " landed gentry " of a county in the
south of Great Britain, and found that only one of these
44 County Families " had endured in it for more than
200 years. They had, for the most part, made their for-
tunes as manufacturers in the north, or as men of business
in London ; and had settled, to enjoy their wealth, in the
south ; where after three generations, or from 100 to 130
years, they had, and in spite of the law of primogeniture,
been gradually reduced to the poverty out of which they
had raised themselves, and then, for the most part, had
returned to the north — haply to recover their fortunes.
I found that this revolution in vicissitude was always
going on between the north and the south of Great Britain,
and that it was recognised by the north in the proverbial
phrase : — 44 Three generations [as gentlefolk], and back to
the clogs [i.e. to the factory and the mines]." In this, and
in other ways, in all countries, and throughout the ages
of human history, the hardening north has ever been sub-
jugating the softening south.

299

300 INDIAN UNREST

Now, although the exciting causes of " the Unrest in
India " are many, and lie on the surface, and its pre-
disposing causes are not far to find — the originating cause
of it, the causa causans of medical writers, is nothing other
than the physiological fact that the population of an old,
and peaceful, and prosperous country, invariably tends
to outrun the supplies for its sustenance ; a fact which
although well known to medical men and naturalists
generally, is for the most part ignored, and through sheer
ignorance, by politicians and philanthropists, and socialists ;
who seem to concern themselves only with " the trappings
and suits " of human woe ; that is with the patent symp-
toms of a disease, and not with its obscure, and, so to say,
secret, primordial cause.

Among the exciting causes of the unrest in India, is the
presence there of an ever-increasing number of Europeans
of no education, and strong prejudices, who seek a living
in India outside the Government services ; and again of
educated English people both within the Government
services and without them, who, knowing little or nothing
of the profound spiritual culture of the Hindus, and of the
Muslims, are over-zealous to impose on them our European
system of education, which, although excellent for in-
struction, is deficient as a means of mental discipline, and
altogether defective in its appliances for the promotion
of culture ; and seek, moreover, to impose it on their
Indian proteges and friends, not as a superadded accom-
plishment, but in substitution of their own traditional —
[in the case of the Hindus, immemorial] — and idiosyn-
cratic literatures, arts, and religions : in other words, to
the destruction of the souls of the Hindus and Muslims of
India.

Of the predisposing causes of this unrest the most effec-
tive is the " higher education," organised directly by the
Government of India, for the training of medical men,
lawyers, professors, etc. : an education which unfits a vast

BRAHMAN INFLUENCE 301

number of them, in particular the B.A.'s and M.A.'s, for
duly remunerative employment in India ; while our
colonists make it hopeless for them to seek employment in
the neighbouring and still inadequately populated Com-
monwealth of Australia and Union of South Africa. Again,
the terrible effect of our godless system of public educa-
tion in India on the Hindus, in destroying their faith in
their own religion, without substituting any other in its
place, has served seriously to alienate from us the loyalty
of the Brahmans ; to secure which should be the first and
the abiding solicitude of every Englishman in India. The
agricultural classes of India are perfectly indifferent as to
who rules over them, so they be left to sow and reap in
quietness of soul ; but the Brahmans are their gods, and
the redeemers and saviours of their souls. The Rajputs,
and other reigning Hindu Princes, are loyal from the ground
of their hearts toward us ; forasmuch as they have now
reigned for about 100 years in unclouded sunshine, under
the aegis of England as the paramount power in India :
but the paramount power over their souls are the Brah-
mans. And they deserve to be ; for it is their wary
wisdom, as embodied in the " Code of Manu," and other
cognate Hindu law books, that has kept India — India of
the Hindus — together in absolute communal and religious
unity for 3,000 years past, and through ceaseless political
revolutions : and if their conservative hold on the people
of India is ever undermined, and the missionaries of the
Catholic Roman Church are not there, prepared to take
their place, India will once again rapidly be reduced to
even a more ghastly chaos than under its Afghan and
Mongol conquerors ; who for the most part ruled the
country by plunderings and ruthless devastations.

The consequences of the pressure of the population of
India on the provision for its support is further aggra-
vated, especially for " English educated Indians," by the
reduction under our beneficent rule of the frequency and

302 INDIAN UNREST

severity of famines, and of visitations of plague and cholera,
by our now severely enforced sanitary regulations, by
our treatment of fever with quinine, and by the abolition
of widow burning, and female infanticide, and other
ritualistic murders ; and (to our shame) by the maleficent
closing of South Africa, and Australia, to the free immigra-
tion of Hindus and Muslims from India. Should this state
of things, evil and good alike, continue for another fifty
or sixty years, and there is no relief from war, famine, and
pestilence, and emigration, a fierce and deadly political
crisis — a revolution resolvable only in inexorable blood-
shed— must result. The welfare of India in the immediate
future, indeed, depends primarily on the Government of
India, and secondarily on the head of every family in India,
seeking, and strenuously, to keep a level balance between
the population of the country and the food for their liveli-
hood. As the Government of every civilised country in
the Old World has, mutatis mutandis, the same problem
before it, we need not despair of its solution in India —
the most scientifically governed country in the world, not
excepting Germany.

It is the consideration of the fact of this inherent law,
or property of nature, of reckless self-propagation, that
has led me from the first to be so lenient in judging of the
svadeshi agitation in India ; and of the no less idiotic
betiseries of our overswarming Suffragettes in America and
Great Britain.

II

"GENTES APERIMUS EOAS "

Letter to The Times, 4th March, 1910.

The Maharaja of Burdwan " hits the right nail on the
head " in saying, as reported the other day in The Times,
that he was perplexed by the proposal of a Press Bill for
India while newspapers from England, of the most sub-

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SCHOOLS 303

versive proclivities, were conceded a free circulation
throughout that country. The native Indian Press is an
exotic institution, affecting only a cruelly denationalised
and, in this sense, alienated class of Hindus, who know even
less than ourselves the things that belong to the peace of their
" Mother Land." What agitates the Hindus of any politi-
cal instincts — the mercantile and the ruling castes — is the
liberty of prophesying we permit to touring " Americans,''
and English demagogues in India, and the free circulation
of English newspapers of the most outrageous truculence
of language, whether published in this country or in India.
But the evil effect of even such provocative examples was
after all but as dust on the balances weighed against that of
the uncalculating and wholly worthless English education
given in the Government schools and colleges throughout
India. The Bible, the masterpiece of English literature,
and the bedrock of English character, — as modified by its
Semitic leaven, — because it is regarded as " the Word of
God," is rigorously excluded from the schools : while all the
rest of our classical literature is indiscriminately admitted.
A favourite piece for recitation in my time was Byron's
" Curse of Minerva," with its amazing stanza : —

" Look to the East where Ganges' swarthy race
Shall shake your tyrant Empire to its base ;
Lo, there rebellion rears her ghastly head,
And glares the Nemesis of native dead ;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish ! Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave ! "

Another was from Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope,"
with the climax of canto i. : —

" To pour redress on India's injured realm
The tenth Avatar comes ! At Heaven's command
Shall Saraswati wave her hallowed wand ;
And Camdeo bright, and Ganesa sublime,
Shall bless with joy your own [' swadeshi '] propitious clime."

304 INDIAN UNREST

It is not only the official authority, but the intrinsic
potency of such teaching that tells, and, I must insist,
justifies the discontent of the English-educated natives of
India ; and it is to suppress this reckless, feckless sort of
School Board education, which is as the laying of gins
and snares for the trapping of generous youths to their
destruction, that the Government should pass an Act,
rather than to handcuff the hobbledehoy native Press of
India.

Fortunately it is not by the alien agencies of our English
newspapers and State schools that disaffection can be
fomented and insurrection instigated in India ; where
when rebellion is really resolved on it is aroused altogether
differently. There is no overt organisation, even no
covert conspiracy, no corporate, and (unless the individual
be taken flagrante delicto) no personal responsibility. A
tree is daubed, a trumpet (sankya) sounded, and every
wayfarer of the four " twice-born " castes takes up the sign,
to bear it far and wide, — it may be but to the next grove
of trees ; or on to the next temple, ten miles off ; or to
some periodical religious fair in the great town 100
miles away ; or through the doubled length of some sacred
river, the Ganges or the Nerbudda, 1000 miles distant. It
is in connection with these pious wanderings that the
warnings to prepare for insurgence against an obnoxious
Government are most reproductively propagated. Some
time between 1890 and 1900 I directed attention through
the columns of The Times to the prophecy in the Rewah
Pur ana of the shifting, about the year 1895, of the super-
sanctity attached to the Ganges to the Nerbudda, and I
suggested that the process was likely to be attended by
considerable excitation among Hindus over all India. It
is worth while reconsidering this obscure and curious pre-
diction in connection with the present disquiets and dis-
turbances there ; and the possibility of the Mahrattas
becoming involved in them as a nation, and the para-

THE SACRED RIVERS 305

mount nationality of the Deccan. For the Nerbudda is
the traditionary boundary between the Deccan and
Hindustan, and if the holiest fasts, festivals, ministrations,
and other ordinal solemnities of Pan-Hinduism were to
become centred in the Nerbudda, in place of the Ganges,
augmented emoluments and endowments, as well as the
higher spiritual authority, would at once be passed to the
credit account of the Brahmans of Maharashtra ; while,
gradually, the political prestige of the Princes of Maharash-
tra would be proportionally cuperated (Sanskrit Kapatis,
" double -measure ") throughout Southern India.

The prophecy of the Rewah Pur ana notwithstanding, the
superior sanctity of the Ganges still holds good ; and the
greatest of all Pan-Hindu pilgrimages is still the perambu-
lation, or pradakshana, of the Ganges from its source near
Gangotri to its debouche at Saugor Island, and back — a
continuous sacrament of six years' duration ; the perambu-
lation of the Nerbudda, or " Grace-giving " Narmada,
from the harbour bar below Broach to its spring head in
the pellucid pool on the Amarkantaka plateau and back,
taking only one year to hymn and pray your way through
it. None the less, the prophecy is proving to be true.
Partly it is fulfilling itself; and partly it is becoming ful-
filled by the transfer of much of the olden export and im-
port traffic of the Ganges to the Great Indian Peninsula
Railway, — and so from Calcutta to Bombay. The Brah-
mans of the Nerbudda, indeed, have never yielded to the
claim of the superior sanctity of the Ganges. Their
retort to it is similar to that of Naaman to Elisha : "Is
not the strong and swift Narmada holier than all other
streams of Sri Bharata?" And it is the fact that while
bathing in the Ganges cleanses from sin, the mere sight
of the Narmada has the same ineffable efficacy. And,
most triumphant fact of all, the personified Ganges, the
siren goddess Ganga, has herself to dip in the Narmada
once a year to be throughly washed of her sins. You

306 INDIAN UNREST

may see her in vision mincing demurely up the right bank
of the Sone (a contributary from the south to the Ganges)
to the Amarkantaka " tank " as a young jet-black cow,
and then blithely trotting back by the left bank a milk-
white cow, comely and resplendent as the sculptor Myron's
marble " heifer." When I left Bombay in 1869-70 the
pradakshana of the Narmada was undertaken in any one
year by from eight to ten Hindus from the Presidency.
Now the number is from 800 to 1,000. Every temple, every
shrine, every bathing-place on the river frontages is, in
short, profusely profiting by the appropinquity of the
Great Indian Peninsula Railway.

Let it not be presumed that because mercenary con-
siderations are mixed up with these spiritual aspirations
they are the less sincere. The spiritual sensibility of the
Hindus is the quickest and the most impressive of any
Aryan peoples, and the devotional literature inspired by
it the most impassioned. Their whole being is sacramental,
and the perambulation of their sacred rivers an uninter-
rupted rapture of praise and adoration.

Let us hope that while the mahatmaya of the Narmada
may be magnified, that of the golden Ganges may never
be minished ; and that we English people, realising what
these rivers of Paradise mean in the lives of 300,000,000
human souls, if we do not with this enlarged knowledge
receive a new light into our own lives, we at least shall no
longer continue to be for a stone of stumbling and a rock
of offence to them, whereby they shall stumble and fall
and be broken, and be taken, — but for an unassailable
and abiding sanctuary. "Religione vita constat," and to
ignore it — that with Hindus, and that only, — "touches
the Ark."

St. Margaret's Day, 1910.

"SUPER FLUMINA EOUM" 307

III

Letter to The Times, 30th March, 1910.

I am being so questioned on my letter, " Gentes aperi-
mus Eoas," in The Times of the 4th inst., that I am led
to seek the opportunity of publishing through your
columns the replies I have to make to my correspondents.

The proverbial " Seven Rivers " of India held excep-
tionally sacred are the vanishing Sarasvati, the Jumna,
the Ganges, the Nerbudda, the Godavari, the Cauvery,
and the Kumardhan ; the Ganges being superlatively
sacred above them all. But in India all rivers, and their
waters, are sacred, and Ganga (" goer "), like Hindu or
Sindhu (" water "), are names in wide use for any river —
a fact that has contributed to the association, in mystical
confluence, of so many Indian rivers with the sacrosanct
Ganges. Again, all Indian rivers, of whatever sanctity, are
especially sacred at their sources ; at the places where
they wear their way through rocky obstructions, or over-
leap them in a waterfall ; in their permanent eddies ;
at their confluences with other rivers ; in their reaches,
and extended beaches, and any islets in their course ; and
at their debouches in the Indian Ocean, or Bay of Bengal.
Thus in the course of the Ganges the most holy of its holy
places are : Gangotri, near where is the snow-cave from
out of which the drops of water dripping from the over-
hanging icicles (" the tangles of the Lord Siva's hair ")
first trickle into the light of day — although it is but one of
a hundred similar sources of the Ganges, forming a sort
of capillary network of flowing fountains in and about this
region of the headsprings of the Ganges, the Jumna, and
other Gangetic rivers ; and Hard war (" the door " or
" pass " of the Lord Vishnu, in his name of Hari), whence
the Ganga flows out clear of the Himalayas ; and Allaha-
bad, the Hindu Prayaga (literally, " junction "), where is its

308 INDIAN UNREST

confluence, or sungam (o-Jyyctyuo?), with the Jumna, or
Yamuna, and (in pious fiction) with the lost Sarasvati, thus
forming a triveni ("triplebraid ") or thrice holy (tt po(pv\aKTrj-
piov) confluence ; and the incurved strand before Benares ;
and Ganga-Sagara ("Ganges-Ocean," Anglice "Saugor"),
the holy island at the Hugli debouche of the river, where
at last, swollen, along an unbroken eastward flow of 1,600
miles, by a hundred tributaries, " the golden Ganges " of
Apuleius, issuing by a hundred channels through the
Sandar bunds (" Moon's forests "), commingles its majestic
flood with the universal ocean stream.

Sanskritists say that there is no evidence of the superior
sanctity of the Ganges in the Vedas ; that there are inti-
mations of it in the Hindu Epics, the Mahabharata and
Ramayana ; and that it became accepted in the period of
the Puranas (a.d. 600 to 1600). But the fact that the
Augustan poets of the Roman Empire, Virgil, Ovid, and
the rest — who, I have always ventured to suggest, are " the
Seven Gems " of the Hindu legends of the Court of King
Vikramaditya — are so familiar with the " sevenfold
Ganges," and know none other Eoan rivers but " the
silent Ganges " and "the rapid Indus," is of itself proof
of the pre-eminent reputation in which the Ganges was
already held in the first century a.d. ; and this proof is
clinched by a passage in Lucan the Spaniard [iii. 292 et seq.]
well worth giving here in full : " And the East itself is
moved [' Movit et Eoos '] by the rumours of his wars
[Caesar's], where the Ganges is worshipped, sole [of all
rivers] on Earth, so audacious as to debouch itself in the face
of the rising sun." A century later, the African Apuleius,
in the passage alluded to above [Florida, ii. 5] seems to
have been equally impressed by the paramount position
of the Ganges among the rivers of India.

" Eois regnator aquis, in flumina centum

Discurrit ; centum valles illi, oraque centum,
Oceanique fretis centeno jungitur amni."

MOTHER GANGA 309

Obviously the predetermining cause of the unrivalled
veneration of the Ganga is its magnificent eastward
sweep ; and it must have been operative from the very
first instant the Vedic Aryas, as unsophisticated wor-
shippers of the rising sun, came upon the river at Prayaga,
also called Triveni, or Tribeni. To this day the rubrics of
the worship of Indian rivers direct you to bathe in them
with their flow, and not against it ; for it is with their
flow that the sin from one's soul, like the soil from washed
linen, is borne away into the overwhelming ocean's all-
absolving, all-sanctifying world of waters. Sevenfold then
would be the cleansing power, and sevenfold the renown
of any river that courses on for ever in a straight current,
as the Ganga does from Allahabad to Dacca and Calcutta,
into the light and, as it were, the celestial precincts of the
rising sun itself. Every morning, in an instant flash, the
whole length of the river between these cities runs in
molten gold ; and the irradiancy of rose madder, and
wThite, and lemon and chrome yellows, and black, and
turquoise blue, from the moving processions of pilgrims
and other worshippers ceaselessly passing between the
gleaming river and its green banks is, for the brief hour
the dews of the night lie unevaporated, that of the imagined
plains of Heaven in mediaeval Christian art.

In the vision of such a scene, one realises that although
the sanctities of the Narmada and the Godavari are sure
to be raised in the future with the growing material
prosperity of India under the British Raj, the transcen-
dent sanctity of the Ganga is never likely to be lowered ;
and this is what all devout English people should desire ;
since we seem incapable of our own initiative, or by our
own direct administration, of doing anything to promote
the spiritual joy of the peoples of India, for all the veritable
miracles we have worked out for their temporal security,
peace, and prosperity. Their joyous unity in the faith
of their forefathers, and in their devotion to the wise

310 INDIAN UNREST

and wary hereditary guardians of it, is in truth the greatest
political force in India, although at most times but a latent
force, and omnipotent and irresistible, once it becomes
nascent against a sacrilegious and execrated ruler. The
whole existence of these peoples is sacramental. Even in
lighting a casual fire by the wayside, if of wood, every stick
is first sprinkled with holy water ! In the perambulations
of their rivers their daily life seems, as I have observed it,
a continuous ecstasy ; while the language of their chants
and prayers, as they pass along the roads, or rest under
some tree, or beside some temple, is ever that of " The
Desire of St. Ignatius," attributed to St. Francis Xavier : —

" O Deus ego amo Te.
Nee amo Te ut salves me.

Sed sicut Tu amasti me,
Sic amo et amabo Te."

And again of the Seraphim worshipping in Festus

"God! God! God!

As flames in skies

We burn and rise
And lose ourselves in Thee ;

Years and years

And nought appears
Save God to be.

Save God to love."

Or of the ecstatic ending of Miss Morrison's Purpose of

the Ages : —

41 O River that makes glad the City of
Our God ! O Tree of Life whose leaves make whole
The Nations [of Sri Bharata].
O Holy Mountain, where nought hurts
And nought destroys !

Thy Kingdom come !

Thou Love !
All Love!"

A DEVOUT PEOPLE 311

These quotations are the closest translations I could
give of some of the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs
used by the Vaishnavas of Bombay in their devotional
communions among themselves, " making melody in
their hearts." It is a transfiguration for an Englishman
to be among them and to hear them on such occasions.
Imagine then the midsummer madness of teaching such
people English out of Byron's " Curse of Minerva," and
Campbell's rally of the gods of India against ourselves,
when they would really delight in reading Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress and The Imitation of Christ in John
Wesley's translations, and The Little Flowers of St. Francis
of Assist, as translated by Mr. T. W. Arnold, the Educa-
tional Adviser for Indian Students.

Still, I admit the infinite pleasure of having now and
again happened upon Indian gentlemen who, thoroughly
educated as English " gentlemen and scholars," have

remained devout Hindus —

" Skilled
To revive dead Lore, and magnify extinct
Arts, and extol Symbolic Wisdom " —

such men as were the late Dr. Bhau Daji and Rao Sahib
Vishvanath N. Mandlik, of Bombay, my lifelong guides
and faithful colleagues and unfailing friends.
St. Benedict's Day, 1910.

IV

« EST MODUS IN REBUS "
Letter to The Times, 31st October, 1913.

No one else having commented on the report in The
Times of the 22nd inst. of the speech addressed by the
Right Honourable the Secretary of State on the 20th inst.
to the young English and Indian gentlemen about to go
out to India in the various Civil Services of that country,

312 INDIAN UNREST

I hope 1 may be permitted to do so myself, as both for
praise and blame it is one that ought not to be left un-
adjudicated.

It was the practice of the Honourable East India Com-
pany never to select and nominate for probation the
applicants for their civil and military services without a
complete knowledge of them, and of either their families
or schoolmasters, and when at last he was found fully
qualified for the service for which he had been selected and
nominated, they systematically in every way reinforced
their knowledge of their protege by seeing as much as
possible of him in their houses and in Leadenhall Street
before he sailed for India ; the burden of all their advice
to him being, that his first duty to India and the Company
was diligently and sympathetically to study the manners,
customs, religion, and history of the people of India.
This was an incalculable help and support for all of us
young fellows in those days, and a not less advantage to
the Company, our patrons, for knowing us all intimately
they knew how each one of us would act in any great
emergency — a vital point in the case of their " Covenanted
Civil Servants," and scarcely less momentous in that of
their military officers ; and this was one of the reasons
why throughout all 1857 there was never an instant of
panic in Leadenhall Street. Again, when we ever came
" home " on sick leave, or furlough, or retirement, it was
our first duty, as clients of the Company, to call, and not
merely report ourselves in Leadenhall Street, but to see,
as an act of homage and personal gratitude, the several
directors constituting " the Court " at the time.

On the sequestration of India to the Crown [1858] all
this was changed. For some years, I believe, the practice
was continued of receiving officers returning from India
in Charles Street, Whitehall, but it soon fell into desuetude
and oblivion. The change was dramatically marked when
a most distinguished member of the Bombay Civil Service,

MEETING THE PROBATIONERS 313

a typical example of the English race, and Haileybury
" gens," calling on retirement on the contemporary Secre-
tary of State, after being formally received and most
graciously bowed into a comfortable chair, was blandly
asked : " And, Mr. X, have you ever been in India ? "
44 You may imagine," he said to me afterwards, " how it
took all the conceit out of me, of my forty years' service,
and splendid send-off from Bombay."

It is a matter of unqualified congratulation that the
present Secretary of State has revived the practice of the
Honourable East India Company ; and it is most devoutly
to be hoped that he will gradually enlarge it to the full
measure of the Company's modus vivendi with their ser-
vants. To this end the salaries of the members of Council
should be materially increased instead of diminished, as
they were some years ago. In particular, the salaries of
the Indian members of Council ought to be greatly in-
creased.1 They make a cruel sacrifice in serving on the
Council, for they have to keep up a house in India as
well as in this country ; and on their present salaries
they cannot possibly uphold their proper position here
as, so far as India is concerned, virtual members of
the Imperial Ministry, far less can they show the hos-
pitality toward probationers for the Indian Civil Services
it is so desirable, in the interests of India, that they
should be enabled to extend to them.

Now for the blame of it ; — of that story of "the young-
subaltern, and his bottle of whisky and two bottles of
soda-water, and packet of cigarettes," all buried in his
sequestered grave to appease his manes. Without know-
ing the date of it, I cannot say whether it is possibly true
or untrue ; but I knew something of the Malabar Coast

1 This suggestion was adopted by Lord Crewe in framing his Council
of India Bill, 1914, which proposed restitution of the original payment of
£1,200 per annum, with an additional allowance of £600 per annum to the
Indian members. These proposals were welcomed in the House of Lords
debates (June 30 and July 7, 1914), when the Bill was rejected on general
grounds. — Ed.

314 INDIAN UNREST

between 1854-5 and 1869-70, and I consider the traveller's
tale told in the report of Lord Crewe's speech apocryphal.
But that is not my point. In itself the story, as told
privately to young gentlemen appointed to the Indian
Civil Services, is harmless enough, and the blame lies in
its publication ; for it quite unintentionally, I am fully
aware, conveys to people, some thousands of miles away —
and the most of them still orthodox Hindus, who see
things, and hear things, and in every way regard things in
a widely different idiom from our own — the double impu-
tation to our Imperial officials in India of conduct not only
unbecoming in them, but offensive to the people of India ;
that is, let me repeat, to the orthodox Hindus ; for the
Hindus of the Arya Samaj, and the Muslims, and the
Parsis observe the same points of morality and honour
as ourselves ; the Muslims holding Hebrews and Christians,
equally with themselves, to be " Children of the Book,"
the heavenly source of both our Bible and their Koran.
I need say nothing in defence of the sobriety of young
educated Englishmen of all sorts and conditions serving
in India ; for to-day the British Army and Navy, and the
British police, etc., are recognised as most effective and
beneficent schools of temperance in the matter of indul-
gence in strong drink, while the " Boy Scouts " movement
is rapidly raising the standard of conduct generally among
all classes of our people at home and in the Colonies.

Even if it were not so, no offence could be given in
India among orthodox or heterodox Hindus, or to Muslims
and Parsis, by our habit of drinking wine and brandy and
whisky — Scotch or Irish. Every student of ethnology
knows that the high spirituality of the religious concep-
tions of the Eastern peoples has been largely due to
dreams, and the use, nay, the abuse, of intoxicating drugs
and drinks, and that this is one of the explanations of the
sacramental virtue imputed to intoxication in the earlier
stages of the evolution of religions. Drunkenness was

INTOXICATION AND WORSHIP 315

regarded as a state of the complete freedom of the drun-
kard's spiritual self from the trammels of his material self ;
and the songs of the drunkard in his cups as of divine
inspiration. Again, I once found that certain of my
class students were members of a sect that regularly every
lunar month, at full moon, visited a woman, whom they
worshipped by feasting with her until they were all more
or less inebriated, and then pouring wine on her ; — and so
through the whole ritual of the " celebration," — recalling
worship of " the Dindymenian Mother " ; and the inter-
pretation of it all given me was : " Were it not for women,
there were no men ; and if no men, no God : for God
exists only in the conceptions of men"; — these lunatical
young men, and a moonstruck young woman ! " Mystery
of iniquity," the ignorant may cry out ! Not a whit :
it is a stage of spiritual evolution.

Then, turning to etymology, the Sanskrit word for wine
is sura (compare the Arabic sharab, i.e. " sherbet "), from
su9 to distil, and cognate with sara, " essence," and sava,
libation. Our beverage, " punch," resembling the irevraTrXoa
of the Greeks, is the Mahratta word panch, " five,"
and refers to the five ingredients of this glorious
drink, first made known to this country by the H.E.I.
Company's servants in Western India in the seventeenth
century. In the name of the similar Scots beverage,
whisky " toddy," the word " toddy " is a corruption of
the Hindustani word tari, the wine of the coco-nut, date,
and Borassus palms, the most rapidly acting and exalting
of all wines ; and our word " rack " is a corruption of
the Arabic arak, " perspiration," applied by them to the
spirit distilled from tari, wine or sura, the most foul and
infernal of all native Indian spirits. Suradevi is the ex-
press " Wine Goddess " of the Hindus, and the name of
Sarasvati, the Hindu " Goddess of Learning " and of
Poetry, is translated by some as " the Goddess of ' flow-
ing ' water, and by others, of the ' flowing ' wine." The

316 INDIAN UNREST

name of the Hindu " God of the Sun," Surya, is literally
the Shiner, but would seem to be radically associated with
sura. Shiva, in his name of Someshwara, is " the God of
the Soma-wine." So of one dead the Hindus say : —

" He has drunk the Soma bright,
And has Immortal grown :
He has entered into Light,
And all the gods has known."

How different the religious and social idioms of the
orthodox Hindus are from our own may be well under-
stood from the fact that no high-caste Hindus, at least
in my happy life with them, ever shook hands with an
Englishman without afterwards undergoing ceremonial
ablution.

So, whether it be " a Britisher " or a Hindu we wish to
lecture on some point of etiquette or conduct, it is as well,
so far as possible, to make it " a curtain lecture."

St. Evaristas' Day, 1913.

THE COLOUR BAR
Letter to The Times, 26 November, 1913.

Every Englishman who would " keep judgment and
do righteousness " will have read with a lively sense of
public gratitude the letter in The Times of this morning
by Sir Francis Younghusband on the " untowardly
turned " predicament of our loyal Indian fellow-subjects
in South Africa.

I have for years past definitively sided with the Indians
against the European colonisers of the Union, but only
after the most deliberate consideration of the facts on
both sides of the controversy between them. The Indians
owe much to the latter for their holding and preparing
South Africa for them against immigrant Hottentots from

CASTE: A COLOUR BAR 317

Central Africa, whom Indians of the mercantile classes
would of themselves be powerless to resist. But, on the
other side of the account, the European colonists owe
much to India, for making it possible for them to settle as
traders and farmers in South Africa, through its service .as
an opportune " house of call " for the Dutch, and, later,
our own " Indiamen " [all through the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and down to 1813 in the nineteenth
century], freighted with the opulent traffic they carried on
between India and Western Europe. It was this trade
which, for us Englishmen, made not only the Cape Colony
— as it had made Holland — but " the East End " and the
greater part of " the West End " of London ; and also
"the West End " of Edinburgh, and virtually the whole
of Cheltenham and Bath and Clifton, and that, further-
more, enabled us to contend victoriously against the
European coalition with which " Buonaparte " threatened
our industrial ascendancy in the early part of the nine-
teenth century. To-day the peaceful possession of India is
our chief stay in sustaining the preponderating productive
power and maritime pre-eminence of these islands in the
crushing commercial competition, marking with ever-
increasing emphasis the unfolding years of the twentieth
century.

The great error of the Indians in this controversy has
been in their associating themselves, in any way, in South
Africa, with the Hottentot Negroes, or " Blacks," from
Central Africa, as in their complaint of " the colour bar "
being placed against them by the European colonists. The
Hindu caste-system is impregnably based on the principle
of " the colour bar " ; and to the strict observance of it
the Hindus wholly and solely owe the wonderful manner
in which they have maintained the integrity of their demo-
cratic domestic, social, and communal life, and of their
highly idiosyncratic literature, religion, and arts through
all the political revolutions that ceaselessly devastated

318 INDIAN UNREST

and desolated their country during the millennium before
the consolidation of " the British Raj," and the revindica-
tion of Aryan supremacy over the length and breadth of
India in 1857.

The literary Hindu term for caste is varna, " colour," and
for the four " twice-born " castes, chatur [cf. "quatuor "]
— varna, " four-colours " ; and these four castes are (1)
the Brahmans, or sacerdotal caste, proceeding from the
mouth of God, whose sacred thread is of cotton, twisted
right-hand-ways, and whose staff is of the wood either of
the Butea frondosa, or iEgle marmelos ; (2) the Kshat-
riyas, or regal caste, from the arms of God, whose sacred
thread is of hemp, and their staff of either Ficus indica, or
Acacia catechu ; (3) the Vaishyas, or caste of traders and
farmers, from the thighs of God, whose sacred thread is of
wool, and staff of Salvadora persica, or Ficus glomerata ;
and (4) the Sudras, or caste of servants of the Brahmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas, from the feet of God. Countless
admixtures of these four castes have arisen ; all of them
being disrated under the general head of vama-sankara,
" colour mixtures," that is " mongrels " ; with two great
sub-divisions : (1) Analoma [compare Xwfxa, " fringe,"
" border," and avaXw/ua, " loss," " destruction "], that is
" mixed-hair," including all the descendants of a higher
caste male, and lower caste female ; and (2) Pratiloma,
that is " Against -the-hair," or more intensely degraded
mongrels, including all the descendants of a higher caste
female, and a lower caste male. This is the general ground
plan of the Hindu caste system, — still as binding on all
Hindus as in the days of my childhood, and again of my
earlier manhood in India. And so long as the Hindus hold
to it, India will still be India ; but from the day they break
from it, there will be no more of India — India of the
Hindus. That glorious peninsula will be degraded to the
position of a bitter " East End " of the Anglo-Saxon
Empire, as were Shadwell and Limehouse and Bermondsey,

ARYAN-BORN 319

of London, by the abolition of the Honourable East India
Company, on September 1, 1858 ! My advice, therefore,
to our loyal Indian fellow-subjects in South Africa, has
from the first consistently been to observe " the colour
bar " there as scrupulously and religiously as in their
own Sri Bharata, and its " heart of heart," Aryavarta.
It is always a deadly error fighting a righteous fight on
false pretences.

The popular Hindu word for caste * is jati, literally " to
be born," with the imputation of being "well born"
— that is, " Aryan-born " ; and with this the inherent
" right " of the born " to be well born " ; whence the
use in India of this word as a name for " choice " and
" fragrant " flowers and fruits, jati being the Hindu name
for Myristica moschata, and jaiphal of " nutmeg " itself.
Our word " caste " is the Portuguese word casta, " chaste,"
" pure " ; here meaning of " pure race," " blue blood," etc.

St. Catherine's Day, 1913.

1 Hindu philosophy repudiates "caste," unfortunately as strongly,
albeit only "philosophically," as the Christian Churches in India: —
" Are not the 5 elements, one and the same element ? And are not the
5 senses but modifications of one and the same sense [ ' feeling ' ] ?
And is there any real difference in the distinctions made by the system
of ' caste ' ? " I have heard that argument used by Hindus, who at one
and the same time were practically the staunchest supporters of " caste."
They knew that without " caste " there would be no more India — India
of the Hindus. They count the colours also as 5 ; red, yellow or golden,
green (including blue) black and white. Red, as with us, is their
"Dominical" colour. One of their names for the alphabet is varna-
mala, literally, the "garland of colours."

THE CHRISTMAS TREE '

" The Tree of Life,
The middle tree, and highest there that grew."

Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 194, 195.

ONLY during the past fifty to sixty years has the
fashion become prevalent in England of setting up
" the Christmas Tree "2 as a Yuletide decoration and most
delightful vehicle for showering down gifts upon the young
in connection with domestic and public popular celebra-
tions of the joyous Christian Festival of the Nativity. It
is said to have been introduced among us from Germany,3
where it is regarded as indigenous ; and is probably a
survival of some observance connected with the pagan
Saturnalia of the Winter Solstice, in supersession of which
the Church, about the fifth century of our era, instituted
Christmas Day. It has, indeed, been explained as being
derived from the ancient Egyptian usage of decking
houses at the time of the Winter Solstice with branches of
the date palm, as the symbol of life triumphant over death,
and therefore of perennial life in the renewal of each
successive bounteous year ; and the supporters of this
suggestion point to the fact that pyramids of green paper,
covered all over with wreaths and festoons of flowers, and

1 In the original form this article was contributed to the first number
of the Asiatic Quarterly Review, January, 1886. — Ed.

2 Cassel, P., Weihnachten, Ursprunge, Brailche u. Aberglauben, Berlin,
1862, 8vo.

3 It is said in Cassell's Household Guide, vol. i., p. 151, to have been first
introduced into England in the household of George IV by a German
servant of Queen Caroline's. Reference is also made in this work to a tree
of gold, set before Henry VIII during some Christmas pageants at Rich-
mond.

Y 321

322 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

with strings of sweetmeats, and other presents for children,
are often substituted in Germany for " the Christmas
Tree."

Similar pyramids, together with similar trees — the latter
usually altogether artificial, and often constructed of the
costliest materials, even of gems and gold — are carried
about at the marriage of Hindus in India, and in other
of their religious processions, such as the " Hoolee "
[Hull] or annual procession of the Vernal Equinox. These
pyramids represent the Earth and Mount Meru, and the
trees, the Kalpadruma or " Tree of Ages," and the fragrant
Parajita, the " Tree of every Perfect Gift," growing on
the slopes of Mount Meru ; while in their enlarged signifi-
cance they symbolise the constellated splendour of the
outstretched spacious heavens, as of a tree deep-rooted in
the earth, and laden with golden fruit. Both the pyramids
and the trees are also phallic emblems of life — individual,
and terrestrial, and celestial. Therefore, if a relationship
exists between the Egyptian practice of hanging houses at
the Winter Solstice with branches of the date palm, and
the German, and now widespread English custom of using
gift -bearing and brilliantly-illuminated evergreen trees
(nearly always firs) as a Christmas decoration, it is most
probably due to collateral rather than to direct descent ;
and this is indeed indicated by the fact of Egyptians
having regarded the date palm as an emblem not only of
immortality, but also of the starlit firmament on high.

The Hindus derive the origin of their race from Ida-
varsha, the " Enclosure," or " Garden of Ida," the wife
of Manu,1 and the Mother of mankind. Here they place
their Olympus, the fabulous Mount Meru, the centre and
culminating point of the earth, and the support and pivot
of the heavens. Its slopes collect the celestial Ganges, that
is, the dews and rains of heaven, and run them off into the
lake Manasasarovara, " the most excellent lake of the

1 The " Thinker," i.e. Man.

" ARYANA-VAEGO " 323

Spirit." The terrestrial Ganges, having its reputed source
in this lake, as it circles seven times round Mount Meru,
forms the four lesser lakes wherefrom the four rivers of
Idavarsha flow out into the four quarters of the world ;
and it is about the head fountains of these four rivers that
the Hindus place the sacred Kalpadruma and Parajita
trees already named. Mount Meru, regarded geographi-
cally, may be localised in the Himalayan regions about the
Pamir steppe ; but it is quite impossible to identify the
Kalpadruma and Parajita trees with any known botanical
species ; and they are merely mythical "Trees of Life,"
the idea of them being inspired by the primitive worship
of trees as phallic divinities.

The traditions of the ancient Persians1 place the scene
of the creation of man in the Aryana-Vaego. In the first
Fargard of the Vendidad, it is the first -named of the
sixteen good lands, said to have been created by Ormazd
(Ahuramazda), and afterwards cursed by Ahriman (Angra
Mainyu). In the second Fargard it is described as the
country of the first man, " the fair Yima." Under his
golden rule 300 winters passed away therein ; when,
being warned that it had become overfull of the blazing
fires of human homes, and of herds and flocks, he, with the
assistance of " the Genius of the Earth," extended its size
to one -third more than it was at the first. Thus another
300 years passed away ; whenafter he again enlarged it
another third ; and this process was again repeated, so
that the Aryana-Vaego became double its original size.
Then Ormazd called all the celestial gods together, and
" the fair Yima " with them, and warned them that there
were about to fall on the earth " the final winters " of
fierce, foul frosts, with " snow fourteen fingers deep,"
before which all their flocks and herds would perish, alike

1 Sacred Books of the East, edited by Professor Max Miiller, vol. iv. ;
The Zend-Avesta, part i. ; The Vendidad, translated by Professor James
Darmesteter, Oxford, 1880.

324 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

those grazing over the open plains, and those browsing in
the deep bosoms of the leafy dales, and those that stood
sheltered within the stables of their homesteads. There-
fore, Yima was directed to make a four-square Vara, or
" Enclosure," two miles long on each side, and to bring
into it "the seeds of men and women," "the bravest and
best, and fairest on the earth," and " the seeds of fire,"
and of sheep and oxen and dogs ; and to settle them by
the green banks of the fountains of living waters that
sprang up within the Vara, and to establish therein this
renewed dwelling-place of men. All this the fair Yima
did ; and then he sealed up the Vara with a golden signet
ring, and made a door to it, and a window, " self -shining
within." None that was deformed, or diseased, or a lunatic,
or that was imbecile, or impotent, or a liar, or that bore
any of " the brands of Ahriman," might enter into it. And
the men and women admitted within the Vara, lived the
happiest life there, and they never died, but dwelt there
for ever before the presence of the Eternal Glory.

In the Zend-Avesta references are also made to the Hara-
Berezaiti, " the Heavenly Mountain " of Aryana-Vaego,
whereupon the crystalline expanse of the heaven rests, and
wherenigh the sun rises ; and to the bridge Kinvad, " the
Straight " [Sirat], " The brig o' Dread, na brader than a
thread," stretching from the Hara-Berezaiti over Hell to
Heaven ; and to " the Tree of Healing and Immortality,"
" the White Homa [cf. Soma] Tree," called also Gaokerena,
that grows by the Ardvisura fountain ; and to the two
rivers, the Arvand and the Daitya, flowing from this
source, and replenishing all the rivers and seas of the
earth. According to the latter Pehlvi texts, on the White
Homa Tree sits the Saena bird [cf. Simurg] and shakes
down from it the seeds of life in man, and beasts and birds
and fishes, and plants, which, as they fall, are at once seen
by the bird Kamros, as it watches for them from the top
of the Hara-Berezaiti mountain, and are carried off by it,

"THE WHITE HOMA TREE" 325

and scattered far and wide over the world. The tree is
protected by ten fish-like monsters, having their dwelling
in the Ardvisura lake.

In these details we have the same mixture of mythical
and actual geography as in the Puranic descriptions of the
Idavarsha. Thus the Aryana-Vaego, although it refers
to the original starting-place of the Iranian Aryas in Cen-
tral Asia, is also an ideal country, in some of its aspects
an earthly Paradise, and in others an Elysium, ruled over
by Yima ; who, as the first of men to die, is also the
personification of death. Among the Persians he always
remained, even as Death, the first bright consummate
flower of humanity gathered by the grave, the gentle King
of the Sinless Dead ; but in Hindu mythology he becomes
deformed into the terrible Yama, the god of Judgment
and Hell. The Aryana-Vaego, therefore, is at once the
original seat of the Iranian Aryas in High Asia, the Elysium
of their departed ancestors, and the legendary Eden of the
Aryan, and, indeed, of all the Caucasian races. The White
Homa tree has always been botanically identified with the
Sarcostemma vinimale, or Soma plant ; and I have always
also included under it both the vine and the date palm j1
but in its highest significance it is, like the Kalpadruma
and Parajita trees, the poetical symbol of cosmical life.

The original Hara-Berezaiti, and the Arvand and Daitya
rivers, must be identified with the Hindu Kush or Para-
panisus range, and some of the streams flowing from it ;
but their names, like that of Mount Olympus, reappear
again and again, variously modified, in the course of Aryan
migration westward ; that of the Arvand river being found
as an appellation of the Elwand mountain, the Mount
Orontes of classical geography, in Media, and of the River
Orontes in Syria. The Hara-Berezaiti mountain, both in
this primitive form of its name and the later form of
Alborj, has undergone still more frequent displacements

1 See " Aryan Flora and Fauna," pp. 144-58.

326 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

from east to west ; its name having been successively
attached to the Elburz mountains east of the Caspian Sea,
to the Elburz mountains south thereof, and to the Elburz
mountains of the Caucasus. In the Assyrian inscriptions
it is attached, in the slightly altered form of Allabria, to
the Gordysean, or Kurdish mountains, and it is on the
latter, under the name of Lubar, that St. Epiphanius places
" Noah's Ark." The name of Baris, assigned by Nicholas
Damascenus to Mount Masis [Aghridagh] in Armenia,
usually identified by Christian writers with the hara-
Ararat [" the mountain of Ararat "] of Genesis viii. 4,
whereon Noah's Ark rested after the Deluge, is supposed
to be a direct corruption of Berezaiti. This primitive
Iranian name certainly appears almost unaltered in that of
Mount Berecynthus in Phrygia, the abode of the Great
Earth-Mother, Rhea-Cybele. And wherever it travelled
and became fixed, there, we may be sure, was carried and
planted the evergreen legend of " the Tree of Life."

The legends of the Norse people, or Aryas of Northern
Europe, also point to the colossal semicircle of the Caucasian
range, stretching from the confines of China to the shores
of the Black Sea, and beyond them, until it ends at Cape
Finisterre in Spain, and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco,
as the earliest cradle1 of the human race ; for Borr, who
in their primitive mythology is the common progenitor
of gods and men, is but a personification of these moun-
tains. As-gard, that is, " God's-ward," while mythologi-
cally the starry firmament [" flammantia mcenia mundi,"
" The Citadel of Chronos "], is geographically and histori-
cally Azov, " The Ward of the Asir." The Norse Olympus
rises from the centre of Mid-gard, " The Middle-ward,"
the residence of mankind, separated by the circumfluent
ocean stream from Ut-gard, "The Outer-ward" of the

1 That is, earliest within the memory of man ; for we must distinguish
between the several historical Edens and the ethnographical centre, or
centres, of the evolution of the human species.

"MID-GARD" 327

Jotuns or " Giants." Below Mid-gard is the shadowy
underground world of the dead, Niflheim. From the centre
of Mid-gard, and the summit of As-gard, springs the
" Ash tree," Yggdrasil, with branches spreading out over
the whole earth, and reaching above the highest heavens,
and three great roots going down into the lowest hell,
where lies coiled round them the serpent Nidhogg, " The
Gnawer," Death, who, like the serpent Anunta of the
seventh Hell of the Hindus beneath Mount Meru, typifies
not only death, but the subterranean volcanic forces
whereby the destruction of the world itself is ever
threatened. Here the Paradisaical Yggdrasil is trans-
parently a symbol of the universal life and joy and glory
of Nature.

The inhabitants of Mid-gard are said to have been
created by Odin, and his brothers Wili and Wi, from two
pieces of wood, one of ash and the other of elm ; the first
being changed into a man called Askar, i.e. Ash, and the
second into a woman called Embla, i.e. Elm. It will be
remembered that the Greeks derived " the third race of
men," who may be identified with the Aryas of the Bronze
Age of Europe,1 "from the ash tree " [<f/c jueXiav, Hesiod,
Works and Days, 144]. They also made the Caucasus
mountains " the midmost part of the earth," " the be-
ginning and the end of all things " [Hesiod, Thecgony,
738], the seat of the punishment of Prometheus, the son
of Iapetus or Japheth, the mythical leader of the Aryan
immigration into Europe.2 Mount Olympus in Thessaly
was the abode of the gods of Greece, according to Homer,
and until the later poets translated them to the sky ; but
wherever the Greeks went they carried with them the

1 " Their houses brass, of brass the warlike blade,
Iron was not yet known, in brass they trade."

Hesiod, Works and Days, translated by Cooke.
2 Of course, Prometheus is a Sun-god also, and, therefore, naturally
associated with the Caucasus mountains, as the starting-point, viewed
from the West, of the sun's daily course round the globe.

328 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

name of this mountain, localising it in Bithynia, Mysia,
Lycia, Lesbos, Thessaly, Elis, Laconia, and Cyprus ; thus
also unconsciously associating the original habitat of their
race with some alpine region at the initial point of the line
of their exodus from the East.

The Semitic traditions1 differ from the Aryan in dis-
tinguishing between the birthplace of the human race,
Gan-Eden, " the Garden of Eden," and the mountain
whereupon Noah's Ark, containing the forefathers of the
renewed human race, rested after " the Deluge." Every
tree pleasant to be seen and useful for food grew therein,
and " the Tree of Life," and " the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil." It was watered by a river which, after
flowing through Eden, was parted into four heads. There
can be no question of Sir Henry Rawlinson's identification
of the Eden of Genesis ii. with the Gin-Dunish of an in-
scription of Assurbanipal or Sardanapalus (circa 668-640
B.C.) ; that is, with the country surrounding the city of
Babylon, watered by the Pallacopas [Pishon], Shat -el-Nil
[Gihon], Tigris [Hiddekel], and Euphrates [Perath].2
This district was familiarly known to the Babylonians as
Gan-Dunias, " the garden of (the god) Dunias " ; and the
city of Babylon itself was known also by the name of
Dintira, or Tintira, " the Divine Tree " ; as the counter-
part of the cosmic " Tree of Life," so often represented
guarded by a cherub on either side on Babylonian gems and

1 Les Origines de VHistoire d'apres la Bible, par F. Lenormant.

2 It is deeply interesting to find that, just as the Hindus try to repro-
duce Mount Meru everywhere, and in almost everything, so the Jews
would seem to have endeavoured to repeat the geography of the fabled
Eden in the plan of the city of Jerusalem, regarded by them as the centre
of the earth [Ezekiel v. 5]. The city was watered by four streams, one of
which always continued to be called Gihon (1 Kings i. 33, 38], and they
were reputed to issue, through underground channels, from the fountains
of fresh water beneath the Temple, whereto the Jews attached the pro-
foundest sanctity [Ezekiel xlvii. 1-12, Joel iii. 18, Zechariah xiii. 1 and
xiv. 8]. This sacred spring was associated, like the mythical Ganges and
Arvand and Daitya, with a mountain the Jews called Moriah, identified
by Lenormant, following the generally hazardous guidance of Wilford,

"GARDEN OF EDEN" 329

" the Nineveh marbles." Later, Rawlinson identified the
special spot wherein the terrestrial site of "the Tree of
Life " was originally localised with the town of Eridu, the
oldest seat of the worship of the Akkadian earth-god Enki,
the Assyro -Babylonian Hea.1 Nevertheless it is evident
that the Garden of Eden is also the same mythical Para-
dise as the Idavarsha of the Hindus, and the Aryana-
Vaego of the Iranian Persians, and the Asgard of the
Norse, but localised in Mesopotamia by the Semites (as
long before them by the Hamitic race), after they had
forgotten their primordial Caucasian home in High Asia,
or preserved the memory of it only in the tradition of a
fabulous garden watered by a heavenly fountain, the
source of all earthly streams. Then, as the Semites over-

with Mount Meru. Milton includes an anonymous mountain in his de-
scription of the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost, iv. 223-35 : —

" Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath engulfed ; for God had thrown
That mountain, as His garden mound high raised,
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst updrawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden, thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now divided into four main streams,
Run diverse, wandering many a famous realm,
And country, whereof here needs no account."

On this passage Bishop Newton observes : — " The river that watered
the Garden of Eden was, we think, the river formed by the junction of
the Euphrates and Tigris, and this river was parted into four main streams
or rivers ; two above the garden — namely, Euphrates and Tigris, before
they are joined — and two below the garden — namely, the Euphrates and
Tigris, after they are united again." This is the very conclusion forced
on us by modern topographical researches in Mesopotamia ; and that
Newton should have so exactly anticipated them shows the great value
of holding on hard by tradition in the investigation of such obscure
questions of the archaic history of mankind. — Paradise Lost, Ed. 1749.

1 The neighbourhood of Kurnah, at the confluence of the Tigris and
Euphrates in the Shat-el-Arab, about 100 miles from the head of the
Persian Gulf, has always been regarded by its present Arab inhabitants
as the site of the terrestrial Paradise ; a remarkable proof of the credibility
of the ethnical legends and historical traditions of the "immutable East."

330 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

spread Anterior Asia, and their survey of the countries
surrounding them was enlarged, their conception of Gan-
Eden was extended, like that of the Hindus of Meru, over
the whole habitable world known to them, as encircled
by the Oxus-Indus or Pishon, and the Nile-Indus or Gihon,
and traversed by the Tigris and Euphrates.

Assyriological science — of which, in succession to its
illustrious founder, Rawlinson, the Rev. Dr. Sayce, the
brilliant Professor of Philology at Oxford, has long been
the active exponent — has demonstrated in the fullest detail
that the Biblical myth of Eden was borrowed from the
cuneiform, brick-inscribed literature of the Akkads, or
primitive Chaldaeans, a Scythian or Turanian people allied
to the modern Turks. These, if they were not the actual
aborigines of Lower Mesopotamia, were the first to estab-
lish themselves in that country during the period of the
universal preponderance of the Scythians in Anterior Asia,
and to lay there the foundation of the characteristic
Hamito-Semitic culture of the Assyrian and Babylonian
Empires, to which the nascent religion and arts of Europe
are more directly, and far more intimately indebted than
even to the civilisation of ancient Egypt. The Hebrews
were probably vaguely acquainted with the myth from
the time when " Abram " went forth from " Ur of the
Chaldees," "to go into the land of Canaan " ; and after
the Captivity they must have become thoroughly familiar-
ised with it.

Monotheism is, indeed, conjectured to have originated
among the earlier Semitic immigrants into Chaldaea, who
settled in the city of Eridu, whence it is supposed to have
been communicated to the Iranian Aryas of Persia in the
east ; and is known to have been carried westward into
Syria by the Jews, through the instrumentality of whose
Sacred Scriptures it has become naturalised over all
Christendom and throughout Islam. If, therefore, Eridu
was the original seat in Mesopotamia of the monotheistic

"THE EARTH-GOD" 331

sect of primitive Semites, their descendants, including
the Hebrews, might well, for that reason alone, have for
ever associated the place with the primaeval Paradise of
the human race.

But long anterior to the advent of the Semites in Eridu,
it would seem to have been the centre of worship of the
Akkadian earth-god Enki [Earth], called Hea by the
Assyrians and Babylonians, who was also the double personi-
fication of the prehistoric introduction of civilisation into
Mesopotamia, and of the sun in his southern course through
the Indian Ocean ; just as Dionysos, " the Assyrian
stranger," is the double personification of the westward
course of the sun, and of Phoenician commerce and Chal-
dsea-Assyrian civilisation, through the Mediterranean Sea.
He was the great " deus averruncus " of the Chaldaeans,
who alone possessed the dread secret of the incommunicable
name of " the great gods " of the seven planetary spheres,
the mere threat of the utterance of whose name compelled
the submission of the whole impious array of the demoniacal
spirits of the underground world. As " Lord of the World "
his wife is Davkina, a female deification of the earth ; as
44 Lord of the Abyss [absu~\" and the " Lord of Sailors," his
wife is the goddess Bahu, i.e. Chaos [bohu of Genesis i.] ;
while as " Lord of the Great Land," i.e. Hades, the land
of the dead, he is associated with the goddess Mylitta or
Ishtar, under her chthonian title of Ninkegal. Like Dagon,
the fish-god of the Philistines, he is represented as a mer-
man ; and also as sailing with all " the great gods," in a
glorious ark of cedar wood, over the black water of the
traditional Deluge, a myth, as I believe, of the south-west
monsoon of the Indian Ocean.

His attributes are the Arrow Head, symbolising the
invention of cuneiform writing, ascribed to him ; the
Serpent, symbolising his general civilising influence, wor-
shipped in the garden at Eridu in connection with " the
Tree of Life " ; and the Disc of fifty fiery spokes, ob-

332 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

viously derived from his character as a Sun-god ; and
recalling to mind the chakra of the Hindu gods, and " the
flaming sword " of the Cherubim in the Biblical account
of the Garden of Eden, " which turned every way, to
keep the way of the Tree of Life."

On the Assyrian sculptures the sacred Tree of Life is
associated also with the symbols of Asshur, who gave his
name to, or took it from Asshur, now Kilah Sherghat, the
first capital of the Assyrians. He was originally no more
than the eponymous progenitor of their race, the
second son of Shem, but was afterwards identified by
them with the supreme God II [cf. Allah] of the Baby-
lonians, and substituted for him as head of the official
pantheon of Assyria. He is usually figured in the form
either of the Winged Solar Disc [" the Sun of Righteousness
with healing in his wings," Malachi iv. 2], or a Dove, the
prolific white dove of Syria, a universally recognised
symbol of the active or generative reproductive power of
Nature ; the Almighty being still believed throughout
Anterior Asia to manifest Himself in the form of this bird.

Frequently the Sun Disc is represented as shining down
upon, or the Dove [Hebrew yonah as in " Johna," and tor,
cf. " tur-tur," from its " note "], as overshadowing, the
ashera [" grove " of Old Testament, A.V.], or conventional
representation of the Tree of Life ; the Dove in this con-
nection being supposed to typify Nana, Mylitta, or Ishtar,
the common wife of all the Assyrian and Babylonian gods,
rather than Sheruba, the shadowy special consort of
Asshur. She was the only goddess known to the original
Akkadians, their universal Earth-Mother, by whose
divisional deification, and duodecimal distribution, the
Assyrians and Babylonians, who were very uxorious in
their notions, managed to provide a separate wife for each
of their twelve greater gods.1 But Nana always remained

1 These " wives " are but poetical figures, images, " idols of the nation
or tribe " of their worshippers, and simply signify the feminine force, or

"THE EARTH-MOTHER" 333

among the pagan Semites of Anterior Asia the highest and
only really individualised personification of the passive,
or receptive reproductive power of Nature, into whom
all the other goddesses, formed by the merely nominal
reduplication of herself, are at once resolvable. She is
regent of " the brilliant star " Venus, and, as her proper
self, of the month Ululu — August-September — of which
the Akkadian sign was the Virgin. Friday also, the seventh
day of the Akkadian week, was especially sacred to her,
and to marriage, over the rites of which she [cf . Lucina of
Romans and Ilithyia of Greeks] presided ; wherefore the
early Christians held this day of evil omen and accursed,
a superstition still carefully observed among the seafaring
populations of the Mediterranean, by whom, in archaic
times, she was regarded as their " divinest patroness and
midwife."

As the planet Venus appears sometimes as " the Morning
Star," and sometimes as " the Evening Star," so Nana
was correspondingly distinguished by the Assyrians as
" Ishtar of Arbela," " the Goddess of War," and " Ishtar
of Nineveh," " the Goddess of Love." In her chthonian
aspects she is the Assyrian Allat [" Goddess "], after whom
Queen Dido is called Elissa [Eliza]. Indeed, the story of
Dido, whose sister Anna became deified among the Romans
under the name of Anna Perenna,1 is supposed to be a
myth of the introduction of the worship of Venus into
Italy. She is also the Arabian Venus, called by Herodotus
Alitta and Alilat, and by the modern Arabians al Lat, who,
with the goddesses al Uzza2 [" the Mighty One "], and

energy [or sakti as the Hindus terra their goddesses] of the gods. Compare
Ausonius, De Deis : —

" Turn Iovis et Consi germanus, Tartareus Dis.

Et soror et conjux fratris, regina deum, Vis."

1 Anna Purna [literally, " Full of food "] is one of the names of the
Hindu Earth-Mother Parvati [literally, the " Mountaineer "], as the
provider of food.

2 Compare Uzziel [" The Mighty One of God "], the archangel, next
in rank, in Semitic angelology, to Raphael.

334 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Manat, " the three daughters of God," was worshipped
in Arabia, before the time of Mahomet, under the various
forms of graven images and phallic stones and trees ;
and it is not impossible that the stambhas, or inscribed
" posts," presumptively of phallic origin, set up by the
Buddhists in ancient India, and now represented by the
dipdans, or " lustral " columns placed before Hindu
temples, may have derived their more usual name of lat,
" a pillar," from the Arabian goddess Alilat. The Muslims
have always identified the phallic stone [lingam], destroyed
by Mahmoud of Ghazni at Somnath, a.d. 1024, with the
goddess Lat of Arabia.

In the East, Nana or Ishtar is again the Phoenician As-
tarte, the Canaanitish Ashtoreth, so often named in the
Old Testament in connection with the asherah [in plural
asherim], or conventional image of the Tree of Life, and
the Atargatis of the Phoenicians, whose worship was
diffused by them all over Asia Minor ; where the priestesses
who served her in her double capacity of " Goddess of
War " and " Queen of Love," were the martial courtesans
known to the Greeks as the mythical Amazons. Their
name is usually said to be compounded of a privative and
/uLa£6s " the breast," because according to the professed
explanation of this absurd etymology, they deprived them-
selves of the right breast that it might not interfere with
the use of the bow. But more probably it was derived
from the endearing Aramaic title of TJm or Umu, given
generally to the consorts of the Assy ro -Babylonian gods,
and particularly to Nana, or Ishtar, who was worshipped
under this very appellation, as Um-Uruk, " the [chthonian]
Mother of Uruk," at Erech, the great necropolis of Chaldsea,
and in its Aryan [Iranian] form of Ma -bog, " Mother of the
Gods," at Hierapolis, or Bambyce, now Balbec, in Syria;
and again of simply Ma, " the Mother," at Komana in
Cappadocia, and Pessinus in Phrygia. Her Amazons
may be compared with the Ambubaise, or Syrian dancing

"OUR LADY VENUS" 335

girls of the Roman circus, and with the Bayaderes or
dancing girls of the sacred1 Basvi, Bhavin, and Mahari
castes in India, whose Amazonian character I pointed
out in the official Handbook to the British Indian Section
of the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

About 500 B.C., Nana was introduced into the pantheon
of the corrupted Zoroastrianism of Persia under the name
of Thanata, Anaea, or Nansea, the Anaitis of the Greeks ;
and the statue of her at Cnidos, by Praxiteles, was re-
garded by antiquity as the masterpiece of that sculptor.
The eastward extension of her worship under the Achse-
menian kings of Persia is indicated by such names of places
as, for instance, of the Afghan town of Bebi-Nani, i.e. of
44 Our Lady Venus." We have a yet more interesting proof
of the ancient prevalence of her worship in the West, in
the Greek comedy of "Ndvviov, by Eubulus [circa 37 B.C.],
so called after its heroine, a courtesan ; that is, in the
original meaning of the word, a priestess of Nana. Nana,
or Ishtar, was, in fact, the ubiquitous " Asiatic Goddess,"
the great " Dea Syria," " Dea Phrygia," " Pessinuntia,"
44 Berecynthia," 44 Mater Dindymene," 44 Idsea Mater,"
and 44 Bona Dea," of the Greeks and Romans, called also
Ops, and Rhea and Cybele2 : —

" Renown'd for fruite of famous progenie,
Whose greatnes by the greatnes of none other,
But by herself e her equall match could see."

She is also historically identified with the Aphrodite of
Paphos and of Cnidos, and the Artemis of Ephesus ; while
in certain of her aspects she would seem to resemble
Athene. Her name of Rhea is said to be the Assyrian
word ri, for her sacred number, 15 : Cybele, I believe, means

1 Not of the secular Ramjani, Kanchani, and Naikan classes. Cf. the
kedesah, or " consecrated " and zonah of the ancient Semites, and iepodovXos
and irbpvt) of the Greeks.

2 " Mater cultrix Cybele" [Mneid, iii. Ill]; "Alma Cybele" [ix. 220].

" Alma parens Idsea Deum, cui Dindyma cordi,
Turrigerseque urbes, bijugique ad frsena leones " [iEneid, ix, 252-3].

336 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

simply " the Great " goddess [cf . al Kabir, " the Great,"
the thirty-seventh of the ninety-nine Muslim names of
God]. The mysterious Cabeiri associated with her rites
are, in my opinon, " the great gods " of the seven planetary
spheres reduced to little talismanic figures [cf. vawiov
and nanus], similar to those of the Dii Majorum Gentium
and Dii Selecti, seen in any Hindu temple, set round the
great image of the god or goddess to whom the temple
is more particularly dedicated.

The most ancient representations of her are as a naked
woman with a child in her arms, and it may be conjectured
that the sublime vision in the Book of the Revelation [chap,
xii.] of the woman clothed with the Sun and Moon, and
crowned with the Twelve Stars — " the twelve [phallic]
towers " [cf. arroix^a, " uprights," " first principles "]
of the Zodiac of the Arabs — was inspired by this concep-
tion of Ishtar as the divine harlot Mother of Nature. By
the Phoenicians she was represented as a robed goddess,
with four wings, and a conical, or a turreted, hat on her
head, and generally with a dove, either held in her hand
or perched on her shoulder. Sometimes she would appear,
as in Arabia, to have been symbolised simply by the
acacia tree, or by rude phallic stones ; and, judging from my
own observation in India, I have no doubt that such were
the forms under which she, and II, and Asshur, and the
rest of the pagan Semitic pantheon, were first worshipped
in Mesopotamia, and in which the conventional Tree of Life
[asherah] of Chaldaeo-Babylonian and Assy ro -Phoenician
religion and art originated.

Among all races religion,1 as the sense of Divinity in
Nature, exhibits itself in those degraded forms of poly-
theism that are generically described by ethnologists under
the term of animism, or the worship of the telluric powers

1 That is, religion in the sense of " relegens," fearing, reverencing, the
gods ; rather than of " religans," binding by creeds, rites, dogmas, customs,
morals, etc.

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS 337

of the upper [terrestrial] and lower [chthonian] earth ;
and it never rises above this low type of worship among
races permanently arrested in their mental growth ; al-
though animism seems to possess in itself the power of
indefinite development, being, indeed, the source of every
known system of religion, whether polytheistical or
monotheistical. Also within the proper limits of its
arbitrary definition it assumes many shapes, such as
fetichism, atavism, and phallicism. Fetichism is the
worship by incantations, enchantments, and fairie (fari,
to speak ; fatum, the word spoken, fate), that is, by the
intoning of magical formulse, of any natural or artificial
objects, under the conviction that the spirits imagined
to inhabit them, or rather to be identified with them, can
thereby be compelled to comply with the wishes of the
worshipper. It is, strictly speaking, a system of sacra-
mental conjuring, such as still flourishes among the
Negroes of Africa, and the Mongols of North-Eastern
Asia ; and was the primitive religion of Chaldsea.

Atavism is the worship of ancestors, as illustrated by
the worship of patriarchs, founders, and heroes (Euhemer-
ism) by the Greeks ; of the domestic Lar by the Romans ;
of the pitris and prajapatis [Penates, Patriique dii] of the
Hindus ; of the teraphim by the Hebrews [Gen. xxxi.
19, 30, 32, 34, and elsewhere throughout the Old Testa-
ment] ; and of totems, or representative family animals, by
the Red Indians. At first atavism was, as it still remains
among the Red Indians, a debased magical system of
divination by means of visionary communion with the
dead, or necromancy1 specifically ; but among the Aryas
it gradually passed into a comparatively pure service
rendered to graven and molten images, or idolatry proper ;
while among the Semites it became insensibly sublimed

1 From the corrupt spelling of which word [compounded of veKpds,
a corpse, and /nayreia, prophetic power], as negromantia, we get, by
translation, the phrase " black art,"

338 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

into the most uncompromising spiritual monotheism. The
name applied to the Deity by the Hebrews to distinguish
Him, as the term elohim1 [gods] could not, as the one
true God, they never, within their historical memory,
applied to any false god, During the period of their
earlier kings they used it henotheistically , 2 and not abso-
lutely monotheistically, but, after the Captivity, they
held the name too sacred to utter, always substituting
for it, when reading their Sacred Scriptures, the word
Adonai, " The Lord." The " separating name," this
terrible name of " Jehovah," would now appear to have
been transmitted to them from that of the family teraph,
or totem, of the tribe of Joseph, and the house of Moses.
In many of the armorial bearings and charges of noble
European families we have, on the other hand, examples
of the survival of totems as mere heraldic marks. Phallicism,
which grew up inevitably from fetichism and atavism, and
is in many of its aspects identical with atavism, is the
worship of the vital, active and passive procreative prin-
ciples of Nature ; under figures furnished by the rudest
stones, by mountains and valleys, by trees, by serpents,
by the sun, and by the poetical figment, common to all
the Caucasian races, of the Tree of Life.

Among the Caucasian races, the low animist worship
of the visible world was raised to the higher worship of
Nature, in the two principal forms of (1) sabaism [from
saba, " an host " — of heaven], or the worship of the seven

1 Where in the English A.V. of the Bible the word God is used, the
original Hebrew has elohim, " gods." This false translation, which is
followed in the R.V., is excused on the pretence of elohim being the
" plural of majesty " ; an explanation utterly untenable, at least in all
the earlier Biblical instances of the use of the word.

2 A word, I believe, first used in Max Muller's Hibbert Lecture,
compounded of iv6s (genitive of ets), one, and Qe6s, God, and signifying
the worship of one god for oneself, without denying the validity of the
god or gods worshipped by other nations. And it is clear that for a long
time the Jews regarded Javeh simply as the God of Israel, in contra-
distinction to Moloch the abomination of the Ammonites, and Ashtoreth,
the goddess of the Sidonians, and Chemosh, the obscene dread of Moab,

MONOTHEISM 339

planets, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the host of
heaven generally, originating with the study of astronomy
among the Hamites and Semites of Chaldaea, the special
stronghold in ancient times, as China is in modern, of
sabaism ; and (2) polytheism, or the worship of personi-
fications of the phenomena of Nature, that is, of " many
gods." The latter worship is specifically idolatry, or the
sacramental dramatisation of Nature, and is the intuitive
religion of the Aryan races. In the hymns of the Vedas,
we see this polytheism passing from its simpler forms of
direct worship of phenomena, to the deification of the very
adjectives [on the principle of " nomen numen "] qualify-
ing them. In the perfected polytheism of the Greeks, these
deities, invested with all the thoughts, passions, and actions
of human beings, are almost completely dissevered from
the phenomena they impersonate, and by the virtue of the
immortal beauty wherein they live and move and have
their being in the poetry of Homer, and in the sculpture of
Phidias and Praxiteles, they will remain divine for ever-
more.

Monotheism, the final and most elevated expression of
natural religious feeling, is the worship of a universally
postulated Supreme Being : —

" Father of All ! in every age,
In every clime, adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."

The minds of individual men of exceptional powers of
generalisation must, indeed, from the beginning, have been
lighted up, as by a supernatural illumination, with some
glimmering of the unity of the godhead. Polytheism, with
its hierarchies of " gods many and lords many," of itself
suggests the idea of some one superior god, to whom the
rest are subordinate ; and, particularly, when character-
ised by the predominating worship of a Sun -god into whom,
in every polytheistical system, all the other gods at last

340 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

become resolved, after the manner of the resolution of
every female deity into one all-absorbing Earth-Mother.
We are thus enabled largely to explain the inextricable
mixture of monotheistic doctrines with even the most
rudimentary forms of polytheism ; and, in fact, the
majority of polytheistical divinities are found to be co-
extensive in their mythology with the entire range of the
religious conceptions of mankind, being at once mere
fetich stocks and stones, and astral and phenomenal im-
personations, or idols, and more or less pure and beautiful
symbols of the eternally self-existing First Cause of all
things.

From this point of view, indeed, polytheism might
well be regarded as a practical application of monotheism,
if not a degradation from it ; and as justifying, in some
measure, the orthodox theological dogma of an original
revelation of monotheism to mankind in the generations of
Seth [Gen. iv. 26]. But modern ethnography has almost
conclusively demonstrated that the human race, regarded
collectively, has in reality been led very gradually through
animism, sabaism, and polytheism up to monotheism.
Judaism does not afford any exception to this law of
Nature, for it was only through the most painful experi-
ences, and by very slow degrees, that the Hebrews arrived
at the conception of the spiritual nature of the godhead,
and as a nation they do not appear to have completely
attained to it until after " the Captivity." The existence
of atavism among them, in the patriarchal age of their
history, has already been alluded to ; and, with other
forms of animism, it continued to subsist, and indeed pre-
vail, in both Judah and Israel to the seventh and eighth
centuries B.C. When Jacob took the stone on which
he slept on his way from Beersheba to Haran, and set it
up on end for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it, and
called it Beth-el, " the house of God," he performed a dis-
tinct act of phallic worship, such as may still be witnessed

THE PHALLICISM OF ISRAEL 341

every day, at every turn, in India ; although in his case
it may possibly have already been merging into the wor-
ship of the one true God. Seven hundred years later we
find that Absalom, not having " a son to keep his name
in remembrance," " reared up for himself a pillar which is
in the King's dale " [Shah-veh], and called the pillar after
his own name ; just as to this day, in India, a wealthy
Hindu, if certain of being sonless, will set up and endow
a lingam named after himself, or his father, in perpetual
witness of the family stock [stirps] and kin [gens].

Even Moses, the reputed author of the Decalogue, when
the Israelites were plagued with fiery serpents in the
wilderness, made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole.
It was a solar-phallic emblem, set upon a Priapian pole,
a combination of symbols constantly occurring in the
serpent- worship of India. Sometimes it is the image of the
disc of the sun, featured after the face of man, that sur-
mounts the supporting staff ; and it was probably in such
rude phallic posts and props [cf. ep/ma, /aW, crroixeiov]
that statuary everywhere originated. The " Serpent of
Moses " was an object of worship at Jerusalem down to
the eighth century B.C., when it was destroyed by King
Hezekiah, who derided it under the nickname of Nehustan,
that is "Brummagem." The Old Testament also bears
witness to the enduring vitality of phallicism among the
Hebrews in its frequent references to " high places,"
" groves " [asherah, pi. asherim, or conventional images
of the Chaldsean Tree of Life], " oracles," and votive
" pillars " ; and, so late as the sixth century B.C., Ezekiel
[xx. 28, 29] is found reproaching them for still presenting
the provocation of their obscene offerings to " every high
hill " and " all the thick trees."

Notable trees are always associated with the phallic
pillars1 and hills mentioned in the Bible, just as in all

1 Compare collis, clumen, columen, and also the word columna as used
by Martial, vi. 49. The Bible records no direct evidence of the worship

342 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

other records. Thus, Joshua [xxiv. 26] set up the stone
which was to bear witness to the covenant between Israel
and God [literally, " the gods "], under the famous oak at
Shechem [Gen. xxxv. 4], to be known thereafter as " the
oak of the pillar " [Judges ix. 6], and " the oak grove of
enchantments " [Judges ix. 37, where the English text of
the Authorised Version has " plain of Meoneim," and the
margin " the regarders of times " and seasons, i.e. astrolo-
gers]. Allah is the Hebrew word in Joshua xxiv. 6, trans-
lated in the English Bible by " oak " ; and it is the same
word as occurs in Joshua xix. 26, and is left untranslated
in the A.V., as the name of a place, Alammelech, i.e. " The
Royal Oaks." In Genesis xxxv. 4, the Hebrew word
translated " oak " is elah, and it is rendered by " oak "
also in Judges vi. 11, II. Samuel xviii. 14, 1. Kings xiii. 14,
I. Chronicles x. 12, and Ezekiel vi. 13 ; and by "elm" in
Hosea iv. 13 ; by " teil tree " in Isaiah vi. 13 ; and by
" plain " in Genesis xiii. 18. It is used also untranslated
as a proper name : " Valley of Elah," in I. Samuel xvii. 2,
19, and xxi. 9. The word is everywhere supposed to mean
the terebinth tree, and is so translated by the Septuagint.
On the other hand, the Hebrew allon of Joshua xi. 16,
translated by " plain," and of Genesis xxxv. 8, where it is
translated by " oak," is like allah undoubtedly the oak ;
and as the allon of Joshua xi. 16 would appear to refer
to the same tree as is indicated by the Hebrew elah in
Genesis xxxv. 4, great uncertainty is felt as to whether the
oak or the terebinth is meant by the Hebrew word elah as
it occurs in the Old Testament.

But the interesting point, never, I believe, before re-
marked upon by any English writer, is that all these words,
allah, elah, and allon, and the other Hebrew words, el, Hon,
and elan, translated in the English Bible (A.V.) by the

of trees in Old Testament times, but indirectly affords overwhelming
evidence of it, and its universality. See besides the passages noted in the
text — Jeremiah ii. 20, iii. 6, 13, xvii. 2 ; Ezekiel vi. 13, xx. 28, etc.

SANCTITY OF GROVES 343

words " oak," " plain," and " tree," are all really one word,
formed from the same root as the words el, eloah [Arabic
Allah], " God," and elohim, " gods " ; and it is just
possible that, as used in the Bible, they are not meant (or
were not originally) to distinguish the trees indicated by
them botanically, but simply as holy objects, the groves
of the autochthonous gods, and, indeed, the local gods
themselves, the places where they grew up, and which
became remarkable by their presence, and the centres of
the phallic worship the broad shadows of these trees at-
tracted ; and thenceforward, in every country, the centres
also of its special religious and artistic culture. This is
probably how Hellenic culture grew up round the oak
groves of the dale of Dodona, and in the shelter of the
pine woods of Mount Olympus ; and how the Seytho-
Semitic civilisation of Chaldaea and Assyria and Babylonia
had its beginnings at Eridu, under the date trees that still
wave in perennial verdure over the Tigris and Euphrates
at the auspicious confluence of these " waters of Babylon "
in the Shat-el-Arab.

These date trees are the antitypes of the Akkadian mysti-
cal Tree of Life ; and of all Paradisaical trees alike of
Hindus, Persians, and Norsemen. In the famous bi-
lingual, brick-inscribed text, from the library of Assur-
banipal [Sardanapalus, circa 668-40 B.C.] at Kouyunjik,
of the hymn on " The Seven Evil Spirits," the Akkadian
and Assyrian words used to designate the Edenic tree of
Eridu are translated [Records of the Past, ix. 1437] "dark
pine " by Professor Sayce : —

" [In] Eridu a dark pine grew, in a holy place it was planted,
Its [crown] was white crystal which towards the deep spread.
The [a lacuna] of Hea [was] its pasturage in Eridu, a canal full

[of waters].
Its seat [was] the [central] place of this earth,
Its shrine [was] the couch of [the primceval] mother Zicum.
The [a lacuna] of its holy house like a forest spread its shado ;

there was none who within entered not.

344 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

It was the seat of the mighty, the mother [Zicum], begetter of

Anu. ■
Within it [also was] Tammuz2 [a lacuna] the universe [a lacuna]."

If the Akkadian and Assyrian names of the tree really
mean " a dark pine," a very deep interest indeed attaches
to them, as indicating that the Akkadians [" Moun-
taineers "] of Chaldaea still preserved among themselves
the memory of a previous connection with some northern
country to which coniferous trees were indigenous : for no
species of them exists in the valley of the Tigris and
Euphrates, where the date palm is, however, everywhere
the most characteristic vegetable form. In Assyria, the
oak, poplar, walnut, plane, and sumach are also found ;
but in Babylonia, if I may judge from the banks of the
Shat-el-Arab, along which I botanised for more than a
week in 1856, the only true native tree is the date palm ;
the occasional acacias, poplars, and tamarisks seen along
with it being very dwarfed and scrubby. About Moham-
merah and Bussorah [Basrah], half-way between the head
of the Persian Gulf and the confluence of the Tigris and
Euphrates,3 the date palm attains the noblest proportions,
and occurs in dense groves extending for miles along both
sides of the river. The intermediate glades of grass are all
over enamelled with buttercups and deep blue pimpernels,
a combination of temperate with tropical vegetation per-

1 The Akkadian " Sky-god," and called " The Father of the Gods."

2 Or Duzzi, " The Sun of Life," the Biblical [Ezekiel viii. 14] Tammuz :

" Thammuz yearly wounded,"
and the Adonis of the Greeks, who is torn away from Ishtar in the flower
of his adolescence, and recovered by her from the gloom of Hades ; as
told in the Akkadian songs from the Idzubar Legend, entitled " The Descent
of Ishtar." These " amorous ditties " are an obvious myth of the sun in
his southern declination over the Indian Ocean, similar to the Deluge myth.

3 The junction of the two rivers is more like a portage than a con-
fluence, for it may be said to extend from Swaije on the west — in a pro-
longed reach of over GO miles, almost coincident with the thirty-first
parallel of northern latitude — due east to Kumah ; and this reach is the
river " that went out of Eden to water the garden." Eridu may be
identified with the present village of Abu-Shahrein, about 10 miles from
the right bank of the Euphrates, south of Swaije.

THE DATE PALM AND THE VINE 345

fectly enchanting to the eye, and that transported me
with the feeling of the ground whereon I stood being still
as fresh and bright as when first planted by God, with
what were, according to the Semitic legend, trees and
herbs of heaven before they became trees and herbs of
earth ; and indeed none other than " the Gate of Eden."
In the enclosed gardens also were the fruits both of northern
and southern climates, apples, and plums, together with
pomegranates, oranges, and vines, the latter often trained
up the stems of date palms, set in rows for the purpose.
The vine does not ripen its clusters where the mean tem-
perature of the year is higher than 84 degrees, and the date
will not flourish where it sinks below 84 degrees, and it is
remarkable that these conditions meet exactly in Palestine
and Mesopotamia, the only two countries wherein the vine
and the palm are found growing together in natural fruitful-
ness and luxuriance.

When we turn to the monuments of Babylonia and
Assyria, it becomes perfectly clear that the Tree of Life,
so universally adored, and, as I have elsewhere elaborately
demonstrated,1 so universally reproduced in decorative art
from the remotest ages in the East, is nothing but the palm —

" Encinctured with a twine of leaves,"

representing at once the Soma plant and the vine. Origin-
ally it was worshipped by the Turanian Akkads at Eridu,
as a phallic symbol, the palm representing the male prin-
ciple in nature, and " the fruitful vine," when trained
round it, the female. Afterwards, during the time of
Hamitic predominance in Chaldaea, a higher astronomical,
or rather astrological, significance was given to it ; while,
under the Semites, it became associated with Nana or
Ishtar, the Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, and with Asshur,
and, it may be presumed, also with the supreme deity of
the Babylonians, II [Hebrew Eloah ; Arabic, Allah] ; for

1 See "Oriental Carpets," pp. 225-98.

346 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Babil — " the Gate of God " — the Semitic name of Babylon,
is said to be an idomatic translation of its Akkadian name,
Ka-Tintira, Ka-Dingira, or Ka-Dimira, " the Gate of the
Divine Tree."

Thus, even if it never really was a symbol of abstract
deity, it was at once not only a phallic tree, but the mystic
emblem of cosmical life, terrestrial and celestial, in man
and beast and bird, and in trees and herbs, and in the sun
and moon and five lesser planets, and the twelve constella-"
tions of the Zodiac, and all the hosts of the fixed stars, for
ever shining beside the banks of the " Milky Way," the
heavenly Euphrates [cf. Eridanus], after the similitude of
the vine-clad palm of Hea, by the waters of Eridu. It is
identical, historically, with " the Tree of Life," and " the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," of the Hebrew
myth of Eden ; and it probably suggested " the Tree of
Life," of St. John's vision [Rev. xxii. 2], " which bare
twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruits every
month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of
the nations " ; and which, whatever it may typify in the
Apocalyptical sense, is a sublime poetical figure of the sun
as " the giver of life," moving in his annual circuit through
the twelve signs of the Zodiac. I believe also that the
conventional Assyrian representations of " the Tree of
Life " will be found to be directly connected with the
Thyrsus of Bacchus, and the Maypole.

Canon Rawlinson, in The Speaker's Commentary on the
Bible [vol. iii. 369], suggests the identification of Semele
with a hypothetical female form of an obscure Assyrian
god, Semel, whose name is said to occur several times in
the Bible, in the original Hebrew, as in Deuteronomy
iv. 16, where the English A.V. translates it " figure," and
II. Kings xxi. 7 and Ezekiel viii. 3, 5, where it is translated
" image," and II. Chronicles xxxiii. 7, where it is rendered
" idol." Again, Professor Sayce, writing in the Athenceum
of September 26th, 1885, of her identification as the wife of

"THE DARK PINE" 347

Semel, as quite independently suggested by himself in the
Athenceum of September 12th precedent, observes that
she seems to have been the goddess of the grape, among
some of the close neighbours1 of the Assyrians, who was
consumed by fierce heat of the sun in giving birth to the
wine-god Dionysos. The etymological meaning of the word
semel in Assyrian is really image, and Semel was probably
a local rural deity, analogous to the classical Priapus, and
worshipped with other divinities, into whom he would
appear to have been rapidly absorbed, under the form of
the asherim, or reduplicative images of " the Tree of Life "
of Eridu.

It seems to me from the elaborations of the topography
of Mount Meru by the Hindus, and of the Aryana-Vaego
by the Iranian Persians, that they must have been in some
degree directly suggested by the Chaldaean myth of Eden ;
but I do not think that there can be any direct connection
between the latter and the Norse myth of Asgard. Still
less is it probable that, even if the original Tree of Life of
the Akkadians was " a dark pine," " the Christmas Tree "
of the Germans and English was derived directly from it.
The latter, one would presume to be rather connected with
the Yggdrasil tree of the Norse myth, and to have been
substituted for the ash at Christmas by the converted
Germans, because its evergreen foliage made it a more
appropriate winter decoration. At the same time, Pro-
fessor Sayce's translation of the Akkadian verses on the
Tree of Life does suggest that the custom of using pine
trees in connection with religious observances may have
been introduced from the beginning by some Aryan or
Turanian tribe, coming into Europe direct from the Alpine
regions of Asia, where pines constituted the principal
vegetation. It must not be overlooked, in this connection,

1 The original habitat of the vine is the slopes of the mountain ranges
stretching from the Caspian Sea southward to the valley of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and in the Persian portion of this region its vernacular name
is divas.

348 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

that Gothic architecture1 has been as much influenced by
the pine form as classical architecture by the palm form ;
the Ionic column in particular, and all that is Ionic in
Greek architecture, being directly taken from the central
conventionalised palm shaft, and circumferential trellis
of vine leaves, of the Assyrian asherim, or images of the
" Tree of Life."

The Turanian architecture of Buddhism, as represented
more especially by the seven-roofed pagodas of Farther
India and China, seems also as if it might have been sug-
gested by different species of pine trees, as seen in sil-
houette ; although their sacramental construction in
seven stories betrays the direct inspiration received from
Chaldaea, whence all the now world-wide ideas of the
good and bad luck of certain numbers are derived ; these
ideas being originated in the astrological study by the
priests of that country of the different numeral aspects
of nature — such as day and night (2) ; heaven, earth, and
the underworld (3) ; the four (4) quarters of the sky ; the
seven (7) planets ; the twelve (12) signs of the Zodiac.2

For my own part, I was very early led to identify " the
Christmas Tree " with " the Tree of Life," and chiefly
from having been accustomed to entertain my native
Indian friends, of all religions, on Christmas Day. I have
always found them a good deal better Christians than
myself ; but, apart from that, I had to make my tree
a symbol of universal charity and religious reconciliation,
and of pan- Aryan brotherhood : and this is how I did it.

1 The German Christmas Baum-Kuchen, or " tree-cakes," modelled
after the fir tree, might be well synonymed " pagoda-cakes," so closely
do they take the shape of Chinese pagodas.

2 The most mystical of these numbers were, and, in India, still are,
3 and 7. Ausonius [Griphus, Idyll 11], running in 90 lines through the
notable triplices of his date, begins : —

" Ter bibe, vel totiens ternos ; sic mystica lex est,
Vel tria potanti, vel ter tria multiplicanti,"
and ends, line 88 : —

" Ter bibe ; tris numera super omnia ; tris Deus Unus."

"THE TREE OF LIFE" 349

I placed some green bush on a mound, resting on a coiled
serpent or dragon. The mound was Mount Meru, Hara-
Berezaiti, Olympus, Asgard, the anonymous Akkadian
mountain of Paradise, Mount Moriah — the world itself.
At the top of the tree I fixed the symbol of the universal
empire of Christianity, wherefrom flowed down all over
the tree seven differently-coloured streamers symbolising
the seven Christian virtues. Next in order came repre-
sentations, in their proper colours, of the seven planets i1
Saturn, black ; Jupiter, orange ; Mars, red ; the Sun,
gold ; Venus, " Neapolitan yellow " ; Mercury, blue ;
and the Moon, silver. Outside these I arranged the circle
of the Zodiac, the six signs representing obsolete southern
winter, or monsoon suns, viz. the Bull, the Crab, the
Virgin, the Scorpion, the Goat, and the Fish, in frosted
silver ; and the six signs representing obsolete northern
summer suns, viz. the Ram, the Twins (i.e. sun and moon),
the Lion, the Scales, the Archer, and the Water-bearer,
all in burnished gold. Then succeeded the Vedic Hindu
gods, the Greek gods, and the Egyptian and Assyro-
Babylonian gods, the tree itself representing the Turanian
phallic symbols. The tree was also loaded with fragments
of all the noblest products of the earth, and with gifts,

1 This is the order and colouring of the planets by the Chaldseans, who
were the inventors of the days of the week. It has always puzzled people
that the Chaldsean order of the planets — which is the natural one on the
supposition that the earth is the centre of the solar system — being as here
given, the order of the days of the week should be so different. The
explanation has been preserved in India. Not only each day of the week,
but every hour of each day was, and in astrology still is, sacred to one of
the above planets. Well, beginning with Saturday, the first day of the
Chaldsean week, its first, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-second hours are each
dedicated to Saturn, the twenty-third hour to Jupiter, the twenty -fourth
to Mars, and the first hour of the following day to the Sun, and, therefore,
the second day of the week is Sunday. Proceeding in the same way, the
third day is Monday, the fourth Tuesday, the fifth Wednesday, the sixth
Thursday, and the seventh Friday.- The Jews, to separate themselves
from the surrounding Gentiles, made Sunday the first day of the week,
keeping Saturday as their Sabbath, while the Christians, in commemora-
tion of the resurrection of our Saviour, made their Sabbath on Sunday.

350 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

and illuminated with 84 [7x12=84] lights, representing
the hosts of heaven in their 84 1 constellations. Returning
again to earth, I there set a group illustrating the terres-
trial scene of the Nativity ; while, from under the mound
supporting the tree, issued four silver-blue ribbons to the
four corners, or four sides of the table, whichever corre-
sponded with the four cardinal points, representing the
four rivers of Paradise. Before it stood, not the Cherubim
barring the way to the Tree, but the familiar image of
Father Christmas, welcoming all to it. Beneath all was
spread a sheet, patched, like " the ancient " of the P. and
O. Company, of red, yellow, blue, and white, the Hindu
coloration of, respectively, the East, South, West, and
North [sometimes rendered in black], " imagined corners "
of the Earth and Space ; the Hindus, as Sun worshippers,2
taking the four quarters of the compass in this circular,
right-hand order, and not in the cruciate order adopted
throughout " Christendy." And we English still in the
ritual of " the sacring " of our Sovereigns, still take the
four quarters of the compass in the order of " Heathen-
esse " !

This symbolism can be made of the simplest and cheapest
materials, or the costliest, and in either is equally interest -

1 In India, where everything in heaven has its duplicate on earth, the
rural villages have been popularly arranged from the very earliest traditions
of the people in groups of eighty-four [chaurasi], similar to our " hundreds,"
a very plain indication of a primitive connection between Chaldaea and
India. See Edward Thomas in Marsden's Numismata Orientalia, new
edition, part i., " Ancient Indian Weights," p. 20 (Triibner).

2 Most solemnising is the simple Hindu worship ["ad galli can turn,"
and " matutinus "] of sun-rise — as also of sim-set ["ad incensum lucernse"],
but I never saw a temple in Western India that appeared to be oriented
intentionally. They all seemed to face East, South, West, and even the
North indifferently. But when a temple happened to face the East, and
being well open to the East, the suddenness, due to the short twilight of
India, of the up-spring of the sun, and the impact of its beams on the
shrine, flashing like shafts winged from the golden bow of the god, Surya,
of " the thousand-rayed quiver," the effect was dramatically moving, and
only passed off as with the rapidly spreading illumination of the whole
heavens one's feelings and thoughts relapsed into their preoccupations
under " the light of common day."

RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION 351

ing : for, thus constructed, the Christmas Tree is no longer
an accidental, almost chaotic decoration, but is instinct
with meaning, understanded at a glance. The spectacle
was a little shocking at first to the orthodox. But its
charity is not strained. It is not only a tree of reconcilia-
tion, but an object-lesson in mythology, and in the history
of the evolution of religious ideas, learned at once, and
then accepted ungrudgingly. The effect on my Indian
friends was always electrical. They experienced an intel-
lectual sympathy with Christianity they never knew
before ; and when at parting I presented them with a
duly " teinded " Yule log, to carry away with them
wherever they went, the Promethean seed of fire, as the
living symbol of pan-Aryan unity, I knew they had spent
with me one of the very happiest days of their lives.

Primitive Christianity did not hesitate to accept not
merely the symbolism, but even the teaching of the
heathenism in the midst of which it gradually assumed its
present ecclesiastical organisations. Those, of course,
who regard the dogmatic creeds of Christendom as of
divine revelation, in the narrower technical sense of the
word, explain those obligations of ecclesiastical Christianity
to paganism, more especially to that of ancient Chaldsea
and Egypt, by the assumption of a primitive revelation,
wherefrom mankind at once fell away, and whereto they
had to be brought back by renewed special revelations.
But those who see in " the faith once delivered to the
saints " the results of historical evolution, or divine revela-
tion in the proper sense of the phrase, will recognise in
the cosmological fables and dark moral parables of the
demonolatrous Akkadian " psalmists " the first half-
articulated religious conceptions to which our technical
theology, as authoritatively codified by the Catholic
Roman Church, has merely given the more definite and
precise expression dictated at different dates by the circum-
stances determinative of the successive steps of the whole

352 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

course of the civilisation of the Old World throughout the
past four thousand years.

11 As little children lisp, and tell of heaven,
So thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given."

Christianity is essentially a chastening and redeeming
influence, inherently as independent of forms and dogmas
as it is reverently observant of all such as can be used for
working out the spiritual salvation of the world ; and
before a fixed organisation was imposed on it, and ex-
traneous events brought it into deadly conflict with im-
perial Rome, and infected it with a self -protective leaven
of exclusiveness, it associated itself, with the large-hearted
freedom prompted by an intuitive sense of its catholic
truth, with whatsoever was intrinsically honest, just, pure,
lovely, and of good report, or of any virtue and praise, not
merely in the latent doctrines, but also in the open, palpable
iconography of the surrounding heathen, giving to these
beautiful " spoils of Satan," as Keble, unconsciously
plagiarising the language of Akkadian dualism, terms
them, their highest significance : —

" And these are ours : Thy partial grace
The tempting treasure lends :
These relics of a guilty race
Are forfeit to Thy friends :
What seem'd an idol hymn, now breathes of Thee,
Turn'd by Faith's ear to some celestial melody."

The select races of mankind would probably have risen,
each independently, in the fullness of time, from the lowest
to the highest forms of religion ; but the advancement of
the historical Caucasian races from fetichism, atavism,
and phallicism, to sabaism and polytheism, and again,
through the idolatrous worship of the sun, as " the Ancient
[" Ensign "] of days," to monotheism, was actually due
to the direct reciprocation of religious ideas between them
in the course of that cosmopolitan commerce of antiquity

THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD 353

of which the countries of the Mediterranean Sea and the
Indian Ocean were the perennial fresh springs, and Egypt
and Mesopotamia the head centres of exchange. The
widespread comparison of religious ideas thus induced
resulted everywhere in a large absorption of countless
local deities into each other, and a further consolidation
of a selection from them into colleges of governing gods
under the presidency of one of their number, who was
regarded as above the rest. Thus, it was the worship of Bel,
or Baal, the predominant national god, under varying
forms and names, of the Semites of Anterior Asia, that
immediately led to the gradually-perfected conception
among all the Caucasian races, Aryan as well as Semitic,
of one universally supreme God, to the express [literally
" squeezed out "] exclusion of every other god. The com-
merce established between Chaldaea and the Indian Ocean
and Mediterranean Sea about 2000 B.C., a date closely
corresponding with that more precisely assigned by Rab-
binical chronology to " the Call of Abraham " [1921 B.C.],
and which became more and more intimate in the course
of every century, from about 700 b.c. down to the dissolu-
tion of the Western Roman and the Persian Empires,
generated more especially during the latter period those
humanising conceptions of the parental relations of God
with men to which the teaching of the Gospels of the New
Testament gives the highest contemporary, and — if we may
judge from its still unspent and unabated force — their
final expression.

This latter trade, as organised by Psammetichus I, in
Egypt, and by Nebuchadnezzar the Great, in Babylonia,
the far-reaching effects whereof were already realised by
the writer of the Book of Daniel, as he witnessed its wide-
spread operation in the second century B.C.,1 successively

1 Antiochus Epiphanes, against whom the Book of Daniel is directed
under guise of an attack on Nebuchadnezzar, reigned 175-164 B.C., and the
trade of which its author was the eye-witness is, as prophetically seen in

2 A

354 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

accomplished its inevitable moral consequences in every
country embraced by it, until about the Christian Era there
seemed the possibility, but for adverse circumstances that
subsequently supervened, of the whole world of antiquity
becoming of one cosmopolitan religion, based on a common
faith in the Fatherhood of God. In India, Hinduism be-
came internationalised as Buddhism, and Judaism as
Christianity in Syria and Egypt, while in Europe classical
paganism seemed also on the point of becoming trans-
formed, through neo-Platonism, into the purest of all
forms of Christianity. But then followed the overthrow
of Rome and of Persia — catastrophes that gradually broke
up, and in the end entirely destroyed, for three hundred
years, the immemorial overland commerce between the
East and the West. The East being thus, at the most
critical period of its Hellenisation, cut off from the West,
India rapidly relapsed into the strictest form of national
and exclusive Hinduism ; and the diffused humanitarian
Judaism of Anterior Asia became differentiated, as
Mahometanism, from the specific type it had already
assumed in the dogmatic Christianity of Europe, and
permanently established itself wherever, in Asia and
Africa, the vitalising Hellenic element was either deficient,
as in Syria and Egypt and Persia, or altogether wanting,
as in Arabia and Turkestan — inaccessible regions that to
the last will remain the most formidable refuges of Islam.
European Christianity, unfortunately, through the acci-
dent of the impatience of some of its early converts of the
military discipline of Rome, was at its beginning placed
in opposition to the general philosophical, literary, artistic,
and scientific culture of the Gentile world, and thence -

its spiritual results, "the fifth kingdom" of Nebuchadnezzar's dream
[ch. ii.], and the " kingdom of the saints " of Daniel's own dream [ch. iii.] ;
by the saints being meant the highly idealised Jewish supercargoes,
brokers, and commission agents, and capitalists, into whose hands the
inspired pamphleteer saw the whole contemporary commerce of the
Babylonians daily passing.

CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 355

forward in more or less marked antagonism also to the
modern secular life of the West.

Happily, in India there is no gulf fixed in the popular
belief between heaven and earth ; and the Brahmanical
religious life has never sundered itself from the daily
working life of the laity, but is a component part of it, and
indissolubly bound up with it ; and we may, therefore,
hope that in India, under the Pax Britannica, Christianity,
whether taught by missionaries of the churches, or, more
consistently with itself, through the administration of
equal laws, and the public and private example of our
righteous dealing, will have the exceptional opportunity
of drawing an ancient people into its fold, by its un-
strained spiritual influences, illumining in them what is
dark, raising what is low, and supporting and confirming
all their higher ideals of duty and amenity : — all without
desecration or defamation of their traditional beliefs and
worship, or the substitution of a foreign social system
and ecclesiastical organisation for their own indigenous
and sacrosanct family, municipal and national institu-
tions ; indeed, without involving any breach in the con-
tinuity of their civilisation, or any dislocation of the
relations between their priesthood and themselves, such
as has for a thousand years overshadowed and embittered,
where it has not altogether blighted — as in Spain — and
perverted — as in France and England — the progress of
the West.

Thus India, the inviolable sanctuary of archaic Aryan
civilisation, may yet be destined to prepare the way for
the reconciliation of Christianity with the world, and
through the practical identification of the spiritual with
the temporal life, to hasten the period of that third step
forward in the moral development of humanity, when there
will be no divisions of race, or creed, or class, or nationality,
between men, by whatsoever name they may be called,
for they will all be one in the acknowledgment of their

356 THE CHRISTMAS TREE

common Brotherhood, with the same reality, and sense of
consequent responsibility, with which, two thousand years
ago, they recognised the Fatherhood of God, and, again,
two thousand years before that an exceptionally en-
dowed tribe of Semites, in the very heart of Anterior Asia,
formulated for all men, and for all time, the inspiring and
elevating doctrine of His Unity.1

1 Psalms lxxi. [Ixxii.] vv. 18 and 19: "Benedictus Dominus Deus
Israel, qui facit mirabilia solus," and lxxxvii. [lxxxviii.], v. 17 : " Et sit
splendor Domini Dei nostri super nos," etc.

" What though they come with Scroll and Pen,
And grave as a shaven Clerk ;
By this Sign shall ye know them,
That they Ruin and make Dark.

" By God and Man dishonoured,

By Death and Life made vain, •

Know ye the old Barbarian,
The Barbarian come again.

"In what wise Men shall smite him,
Or the Cross stand up again,
Or Charity and Chivalry
My vision sayeth not ; and I see
No more."

G. K. Chksterton, Thp, Ballad of the White Horse.

INDEX

A

Abbasides, dynasty of the, 172

Abu, Mount, Jaina temples in, 95

Afghan invasions of India, and dynasties : Fifth and sixth dynasties,

122 ; fourth dynasty, 121 ; Mahmud of Ghazni's twelve expedi-
tions, 114-17; Muhammed Ghori, 117-20; Slave Kings, dynasty

of, 121
Afzul Khan, murder of. See Sivaji
Ahmed Shah Abdalli's invasions, 130-1
Ali, rightful Caliph, 162 ; Ayesha's opposition, 162-3 ; assassination of,

165
Arab invasions of India: Alor, battle of, 111; Bappa, Prince, defeat

of, 112 ; Caliph Muaiwah I., by, 109 ; expulsion by Prince Khoman

of Chitor, 112
Art. See Carpets, Hittite Art, etc.
— and Religion : In antiquity, 296-8 ; in Indian life, 144-5 ; inseparable

connection in Asiatic mind, 295 ; spiritual significance its supreme

satisfaction, 296-7
Aryas, Migration of : Effect on art culture, 233-4 ; to India, 100-2 ;

Jainas, the purest descendants, 105 ; segregation into castes, 102 ;

virility of both Eastern and Western branches, 141
Asirghar fort : Moonlight rights in, 138-9
AUM, mystic Hindu symbol : its significance, xxix-xxx.

Babylonia, art influence of, readily demonstrable, 232

Battlefields, Panipat and Staneshwara, suggested preservation of, 147

Bhils, the, f.n. 27

Bible, the, effect on American, British and German character, 143 ; ex-
clusion from Government schools in India, 303

Bird wood, Sir George : Affection for India, xi.-ii. ; botanical interests,
53-4 ; childhood in India, 138-9 ; Christmas entertainment of Indian
friends, 348-51 ; consent to, and measure of responsibility for, pub-
lishing Sva, xiv.-vi. ; helpfulness to other authors, x. ; int'macy
with Jugonnathjee Sunkersett, 17-20, with Premchund Roychund, 89 ;
literary work, ix.-xii. ; observations of natural phenomena, 11-13 ;
recollections of Mahratta Country, 29 ; results of his suggestions, xi.

Bombay, Town and Island, beauty of, 31-2 ; deriv. f.n. 31

Brahmans, The : Ascendency over other castes, xx., 102-5 ; British rule
and, 301 ; maintenance of an ideal social order by, 84 ; Chit-pavan,
38, their women, 39

359

360 INDEX

British rule and policy in India. See India ; also Unrest, Indian, etc.

Brotherhood, universal, India's contribution to, 356

Brown, F. H. (Editor) : preface, ix.-xii. ; acknowledgments, x.-xi. ;

author's stipulation for his editorship, xvi.
Buddhism and Christianity, xxiv.
Buddhistic Remains : Ajanta, 34 ; Bharhut, 36 ; Ellora, 35 ; Sanchi, 35 ;

Sopara, 33-4
Byron's " Curse of Minerva " in Indian schools, 3Q3
Byzantine Art, 223

Caliphate, the : " Battle of the Camel," for, 163-4 ; claimants to, at
Mahomet's death, 161-2 ; elections to, 162-3

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope in Indian schools, 303

Cancer and Capricorn, calms of, 3

Carpets, in Europe, 243-51 ; adaptation of English patterns, need for,
250 ; importations of Oriental manufactures, 245-6 ; influence of
Gobelins and Aubusson on manufacture, unfortunate, 249 ; manu-
facture introduced, 246-8 ; in France, 248-9 ; in Great Britain,
249-51 ; Roman influence, debasing, 286-9 ; Shakespeare's refer-
ences, 244-5 ; varied uses until nineteenth century, 243

— Oriental (art.), 225-98; Bangalore and Musulipatam manufactures,

superiority of, 243 ; conclusions summarised, 285-6 ; designations
of, in India, f.n. 291 ; Egyptian origin anterior to that of Assyria,
226-7 ; embroidery, Euphratean types of, employed, 237-9 ; his-
torical continuity, 235 ; manufacture, widespread, ancient and
modern, 236-7 ; Persian examples, 239-40 ; prayer carpets of Mus-
lims, 293-4 ; saved from debasement by Saracenic victories, 286-7

— See also Tapestries

Caste system : Brahmanical supreme authority under, 102-3 ; colour

distinctions, original basis of, f.n. 94-5, 318-19 ; Rajput divisions

into, 94, 100 ; deriv. (Hindu : Varna), 318-19
Cattle, Hindu reverence for, f.n. 76
Chaurasi (or number 84) significance, xxviii.-ix.

Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse quoted, title-page, viii. and 357
Christianity : Buddhism and, xxiv. ; primitive, relation to teachings of

heathenism, 351-2 ; prospects of extension in India, 355
Christmas Tree, The (art.), 321-56 ; as Yuletide decoration, origin of use,

231-2 ; symbolic decoration by author in India, 348-51
Colour Bar, the, in self-governing dominions, 316-19 ; error of Indians in

the controversy, 317. See also Caste
Cotton Tree, the Red Silk (Bombax Malabaricum), a first view of, 53-4
Creation, The, traditions of : Assyrian, 332-3 ; Hindu, 322-3 ; Norse,

326-8 ; Persian, 323-5 ; Semitic, 328-31

Deccan, The : Agricultural life, co-operative, in, 73-4, 76, 83 ; astrologers,
village, 82 ; divisions of, 26 ; domestic appliances, 73 ; geology of,
55-9 ; ploughing infrequent, 68 ; social life and worship, 78-83 ;
soils, richness, odour, and natural fertilisation of, 64-8 ; village oil-
mills, sugar-cane presses and wells, 72-3

INDEX 361

Deccan, The, Festivals in : Dasara, 79-80 ; Devali, 80-1 ; Gauri, 81 ;
Holi, 79 ; Nagpanchami, 81

— Sacred Cities : Jejuri, 42 ; Pandharpur, 42-3 ; Tuljapur, 43

— See also The Mahrattas, etc.
Deities, the Assyrian, 331-6

Desiccation from summer heat, 6 ; India's deliverance from, 7 ; in Uralo-
Caspian region, 157

E

Eden, Garden of, identification of, 328-30 ; Milton quoted on, 329

Education, Indian : Secularity of State system condemned, xi., xviii., 300-1,
303 ; unwise selection of English classics, 303-4

Egyptian civilisation, priority of, 226-31 ; due to geographical position,
230 ; reasons for small tangible evidences of influence on the arts,
321-2

Elephantiasis, 188, 191-3; prevalence in India, 193; sacrifice of incur-
able victims to remove Divine curse, 193-4

English social and political life, contrasted with Indian, 84-5

Families, English County, vicissitudes of, 297

Famines, India's comparative exemption from, 7 ; measures for reduc-
tion of frequency and severity, 301-2

Festing's, Miss Gabrielle, From the Land of Princes, 93, 99-100, 145-6

Festus quoted, 310

Flora and Fauna, Aryan (art.), 149-58

Flora : of Western Turkestan compared with Indian, west and south
of Indu?, 152-6 ; the five zones of, in Old World, 149-50 ; Soma plant,
deriv., 158

Fauna : Bactrian camel, the Western Turkestan type, 154-^5 ; Bengal
tiger, the Indian type, 156

Flowers, Sunni Muslims' delight in, as works of God, 241-2

German Emperor (William II), xxv.-ii. ; certain retribution, xxvi.

Germany. See War, the European, of 1914-15

Ghats, the Western (the Sahyadris), 8, 29 et seq. ; Bhor and Thai Ghats,

39-40 ; botanical charms, 54-5
Graham, John : grave at Khandala, 44
Greek Art: Evolution, 213-19; remains, 233; Roman period, 219-20;

influence in modifying local arts, 222

— Commerce, 220-1

H
Hanuman, the Monkey God, 78-9
Hasan, eldest son of Ali, elected to Caliphate, martyrdom and family,

165; celebration of martyrdom, 173-81. See Muharram in Bombay
Hastings, Warren, recent vindication of, f.n. 132-3
Hindus, The. See Caste, Brahmans, Rajputs, etc.

— Disintegration of social economy undesirable, 74

— History, neglect of, by, 105-6

362 INDEX

Hittites : Empire of the, in the history of Art (art.), 201-24 ; archaeologi-
cal remains of, in N.W. and Anterior Asia, 206-11, recent discoveries
of, f.n. 312; art, minor remains of, 211-13; civilisation, archaic, con-
tributions to, 202, and importance of, 224 ; influence, vast, on arts
of Old World, 213-24 ; Sargon II's defeat of, 206

— Kheta and Khatti of ancient inscriptions, identity with, 202 ; Baby-
lonian wars with Khatti, 205-6 ; Egyptian wars with Khata, 204-5

Hobson-Jobson, Sir Henry Yule's, 181

Husain, second son of Ali : Cufa, journey towards, 166-7 ; Kerbela, battle
of, 170 ; martyrdom and mutilation, 171 ; the origin of the ten days'
Miracle Play, 171, and celebration of, in Bombay, 173-81 ; Obaidal-
lah's message to, 166, and demand for unconditional surrender, 168 ;
piety and fortitude, 166-70. See Muharram in Bombay

Ignatius, St., The Desire of, quoted, 310

Implements, agricultural, in Deccan supplementing plough, 71-2

India. See Brahmans, Caste, Deccan, Hindus, Mahrattas, Muslims, etc.

— Ancient : Famous dynasties in, 107-8 ; Greek influence, 107-9

— British rule in, justification for, xvi.-xvii., errors of, xviii.-xix., 300-4 ;

general conclusions respecting, xvi.-xxi., 93, 147, 300-4

— Council, higher pay of Indian members urged, 313

— History of, continuous, dating only from Muslim times, 107

— Self-governing goal, xviii

Indian Peoples. See the Mahrattas, Muslims, Rajputs, etc. Brahmanical
dominance over, xx., 301, 309-10 ; competitive civilisation, unhappy
effects of, in, 86-8 ; devoutness, 49-50 ; indifference of masses to
political changes, 301 ; ordered happiness of, 84-6

Intoxicating drinks and drugs in India, 313-15 ; and worship, 315 ; derivs.
of wine, punch, toddy, 315-16

J

Jainas, purest Aryan caste, 105 ; their temples, Mount Abu. 95

K

Kolhapur hills, the, 52-3

Konkans, the : ascents from, to the Ghats, 39-40 ; local trade ports, 37 ;

natural beauty, varied, 59 ; rivers and estuaries, 34 ; view from

Mahabeleshwar, 48-9, from Matheran, 9

L

Leper in India (art.), 183-99

Leper : Biblical references to, 187-8 ; Britain, last recorded cases in, 197 ;
contagiousness, slight, 186 ; effect of British rule on prevalence,
193-4 ; lazrrettos for lepers in Europe, 195-7 ; importation to India
(also of syphilis) by Portuguese, 185-6; modern and antique forms,
fewproofs of identity of, 190-1 ; Manu's Code, references to, in, 188-9 ;
prescription for, G. de Glanville's eleventh century, f.n. 191 ; relation
to syphilis, 197-9, which was unknown in modern form to ancient
world, 184; segregated isolation and sanitation, best treatment, 195;
sufferers presumed to have offended Deity, 187 ; true leper, not in-
fectious, 183-4 ; varieties (eight) named, in Banishya Purana, 189-90

INDEX 363

M

Mahabaleshwar : Krishnabai temple at, 45 ; " Points," views from, 46-9 ;

Rotunda Ghat to, f.n. 47 ; source of sacred streams, 45
Mahratta Country, 26-7 ; black soil, fertility of, 30 ; boundaries, 27 ;
holy land of its people, 50-1 ; monsoon, break of, in, 61 ; seasons in,
60-1 ; trade by ancient waterways, 35-6
Mahrattas, The : Admixture of religious ideas, 36 ; alternate hold with
Muslims of puppet Delhi emperors, 131-4 ; daily life of villagers,
76-8 ; Goddard's (Colonel T.) march against, 178-9 ; nature-worship,
49-50 ; Panipat, in fourth battle of, 131 ; patriotism, 50 ; vaci lating
policy of Home Government, as t > relations with, 134-6 ; wars with,
and ultimate treaty of Mandeshwar, 134-8 ; women, 81
Manu, Code of, value of, xvii., 83-4 ; rules as to leprosy, 188-9
Matheran, A Sunset on (art.), 9, 17-23, 30-1 ; orgiastic worship, 19
Max-Miiller, Prof. Sir F., Biography of Words, quoted, f.ns. 149, 156
Miracle Play of Husain and Hasan, performances in Bombay, 173-81 ;
seaward procession, tenth day, 177-80 ; tabuts, or models of tombs
at Kerbela, immersed, 179-80 ; ten days' solemnity and daily per-
formances, 175-7
Mo(n)gols, the, in India : Akbar the Great, 124-7 ; Aurungzib, 129 ;
Baber's invasion, 123-4; Bahadur Shah, 129; decay of Empire in
eighteenth century, 130-2 ; Humayun's victory over Rajputs at
Fatehpur Sikri, 124 ; Jehanghir's reign, 128
Monotheism, 339-40 ; gradual elevation of Caucasian races to, 353-4
Monsoon, the South-West (art.), 1-15 ; mechanism, 1-8 ; observations of

bursting of, 1865, 11-13 ; other years, 13-15 ; phenomenon, 8-15
— North-East, 4

Morrison's, Miss, Purpose of the Ages quoted, 310
Muharram in Bombay, The (art.), 159-81. See Miracle Play, etc.
Muslims, The (Moslems, or Mahometans) : Arab tribes of, feuds, 160-1 ;
Kharegite (Separatist) sect, 184 ; Ismailians of Persia and Syria
(Boras and Cojas of India), f.n. 159-60 ; Persian, 172-3 ; sense of
Divine immanence, 294 ; Sunnis and Shiahs, 159-60, causes of the
schism, 171-2

N
Nadir Shah's sack of Delhi, 130
Naoroji, Mr. Dadabhai, f.n. 21
" Nellie, Poor" : grave at Khandala, 44

Numbers, Hindu ritual of lucky, xvi., xxviii. ; special significance of the
No. 84 (Chaurasi), xxviii.

O

Ommiades of Damascus : Rise of, 165 ; overthrow, 172

P

Pagoda (temple), deriv., f.n. 35

Panchayet System, late B. M. Malabari's efforts to revive, f.n. 84

Parsis, prominent in Bombay, f.n. 21

Peshwas, The, f.n. 28 ; destruction of their palace by fire, f.n. 259

364 INDEX

Pindari freebooters : In Rajputana under Amir Khan, 137 ; recollections

of, 138-9
Plough, English, deriv., f.n. 66

— The Mahratta (art.).. 25-88; Chaldean origin, 37, 71 ; cost, small, 63;

cultivator's share in making, 63 ; drill ploughs, 69-70 ; English
manufacturers' attempts to copy, 62 ; parts of, component, 69 ; les-
sons of, 88 ; symbol of the rural economy, 76

— Steam, introduced in Jamkhandi, 75 ; its useless share deified, 75, 88
Poona, 29, 42 ; palace at, f.n. 259

Premchund Roychund, Sett (art.), 89-92 ; characteristics and personal
appearance, 90-1 ; commercial speculations, 91 ; fascination of, 92 ;
Share Mania and its collapse, 89-92 ; speculations, his commercial,
91 ; spirituality, 89-91

Prithvi Raja, Chauhan Prince, 117 : escape with Sangagota, 118 ; final
defeat at Staneshwara, 119-20

Probationers, Indian Services, 311-16; former neglect of, contrasted with
action of East India Co., 312-13; Lord Crewe's reception of, com-
mended, 312-13

R

Rajputana (or Rajasthan) : British protectorate permanently constituted,
138; coanotations. f.ns. 94, 96; diversified scenery, 97 ; Jaipur and
Jodhpur, seven years' strife causing English intervention, 137 ;
limits and natural features, 95-8 ; Mewar and Marwar laid waste by
Sindhia and Holkar, 135-6

Rajputs, the, in the history of Hindustan (art.), 93-148

— Agnikulas, myth of origin of, 103-4 ; caste divisions of, 94, 100 ;

descendants of heroes of the Mahabarata and Ramayana, 94 ; ideals
of war — see War, European ; unconquerable spirit, 140 ; Johur
(self-immolation) ritual, 111 ; lessons of their heroism for Britons,
140-5 ; literature, their ancient, 142-3 ; virility, 141-2
Religions, primitive, 336-41

Religious effect of overthrow of Rome and Persia, 354
Returns, plague and famine, mistake of issuing, f.n. 96-7
Rice cultivation, methods of, 67-8 ; interdependent with brick and

pottery making, 68
Rig-Veda, hymn to toads and frogs, 14

Rivers, Indian : Ancient navigation of, 32 ; Bhima, 28 ; Ganges, causes
of special veneration for, 309, prophecy of transfer of its sanctity to
the Nerbudda, 147-8, 304-9 ; Gayatri, 45 ; Godavari, 308 ; Koyna,
45 ; Kistna, 45 ; Nerbudda (or Narmada) — prophecy of superior
sanctity, 147-8, 304-9, effect of improved railway communications
on, 305-6 ; Nira, 28, 42-3 ; perambulation of, sacramental, 305-6 ;
Sarasvati, the mystic, 6, f.n. 52 ; Savitri, 45 ; Sina, 28 ; TJhlas (or
Kalyan), 10-11 ; Yema, 45

Salsette, island of, 32

Saracens, the, deriv., f.n. 246 ; first weavers in Europe, 247 ; their de-
liverance of textiles from debasing Roman influence, 289 ; identifica-
tion of beauty with goodness, 290

Scythian conquests dividing Aryan civilisation, 112-13

INDEX 365

Sindh, deriv., f.n. 110

Sivaji : Afzul Khan, his murder of, 51-2 ; birthplace (Shivnar), 41 ;
grave, formerly neglected, xi., 44

Sivaji's Fortresses : Partabghur, 9 ; Rajgar, xi., 41, 43-4 ; Sinhgar, 41 ;
Torna, 41

Soma plant, the, 158, 316

Sopara, 33 ; Buddhist tope at, 33-4

Sunkersett, Hon. Jugonnathjee, 17-22 ; prayers for grandson, 19, an-
swered, 22

Sunset on Matheran (art.), 17-23

Sun spots, periodicity, 3

Sva, deriv., xiii. ; implication of title, xiv.

Swastika, the (Hindu symbol of blessing) : Author's association with, xxx ;
deriv., xxviii. ; place in Hindu sacramental life, xxviii. ; popular
use of, in the West, xxvii. ; use on cover, xvi.

T

Tapestries. See also Carpets, in Europe, and Oriental, etc.

— In Ancient Literature : ^Eschy.us, 264-5 ; Aristophanes, 267 ; Arrian,

269 ; Apulcius, 282-3 ; Arbiter, Petronius, 281 ; Athenaeus of
Naucratis, 270-1 ; Bible, the, 259-62 ; Catullus, 273 ; Claudian,
283-4 ; Curtius, Quintus, 282 ; Euripides, 265-7 ; Homer, 262-4
Horace, 274-5 ; Italicus, Silius, 279-80 ; Josephus, 268-9 ; Juvenal
280 ; Lucan, 281 ; Lucretius, 273 ; Martial, 280-1 ; Marcellinus
283; Ovid, 277-8; Pliny, 278-9; PausamVs, 270; Philostratus
272, 286 ; Plautus, 272 ; Plato, 290 ; Polybius, 268 ; Plutarchus
269 ; Propertius, 275-6 ; Siculus, Diodorus, 268 ; Sophocles, 265
Sidonius, 284 ; Theocritus, 267-8 ; Tibullus, 275

— on the monuments of Antiquity : Anatolian, 255 ; Babylonian, 254-5

Grecian, 256-8 ; Hittite, 255 ; Italian, 258 ; Persian, 256 ; Theban,

251-4
Tattooing, original significance and widespread practice, 235-6
Tod, James, historian of Rajputana, 93-4, 98 ; his Annals and Antiquities,

99 ; new edition suggested, 147
Tope (or Stupa), deriv., f.n. 33
" Tree of Life " : Legend of, widespread, 323, 326, 328, 343-8 ; identity

with Christmas Tree, 348-51 ; tapestry patterns, 292. See also

Christmas Tree
Trees and phallic worship, 341-3
Trimbakji Danglia, freebooter, 43
Turkestan, Western : Desiccation of, 157. See Flora and Fauna

U

Unrest, Indian (Letters to The Times, etc.), 299-319 ; causes of, xix.-xxi.,
300-3 ; education, secular and, xviii., 300-1 ; relation of European
residents in India to, 300

V

Vihara (Buddhistic Convent), deriv., f.n. 35

366 INDEX

w

War, the European, of 1914-15, xv., xxi.-iii. ; Allies, victory of, predicted,
xvi., xxvid. ; British neglect of preparations partly rosponsible for,
f.n. xxv.-i.

— German and Rajput ideals of, compared, xxi., xxv. ; German methods

contrary to humanity and classical Aryan teaching, xxii.-iii., xxvi. ;
certain Nemesis of, xxvi.-ii.

— and Peace : Bhagavat Gita, teaching of, xxv. ; Christian teaching —

Sermon on the Mount, xxiv.-v. ; Paley's Moral and Political
Philosophy, xxiii.-iv. ; enemies, speaking well of, xxvi. ; Raja, a
Southern India, result of disarmament, xxiv.-v.
Winds, trade, 2-3

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