Chapter III · (continued 2)

Soon after the death of Ghazee-od Deen had placed the heir-apparent, her husband, on the throne, 20th of October, 1827, she fortified herself still further by high alliances: and her son, Mahommed Allee, was affianced to the daughter of Rokun-od Dowla, brother of the late King; and her daughter, Zeenut-on Nissa, to Moomtaz-od Dowla, the prince of whom I am writing. These two marriages were celebrated at a cost of about thirty lacs of rupees; Dolaree was declared the first consort of the King, under the title of "Mulika Zamanee," queen of the age, and received an estate in land yielding six lacs of rupees a-year for pin-money. Not satisfied with this, she prevailed upon the King to declare her son, Mahommed Allee, alias Kywan Ja, to be his own and eldest son, and heir-apparent to the throne; and to demand his recognition as such from the British Government, through its representative, the Resident. His Majesty, with great solemnity, assured the Resident, on many occasions during November and December, 1827, that Kywan Ja was his eldest son; and told him that had he not been so, his uncle would never have consented to bestow his daughter upon him in marriage, nor should he himself have consented to expend twenty lacs of rupees in the ceremonies. The Resident told him that the universal impression at Lucknow was, that the boy was three years of age when his mother was first introduced to his Majesty. But this had no effect; and, to remove all further doubts and discussions on the subject, he wrote a letter himself to the Governor-General, earnestly protesting that Kywan Ja was his eldest son and heir-apparent to the throne; and as such he was sent from Lucknow to Cawnpoor to meet and escort over Lord Combermere in December, 1827.

On the birth of Moonna Jan, the then King, Ghazee-od Deen Hyder, declared to the Resident that the boy was not his grandson, and that his son, Nuseer-od Deen, pretended that he was his son merely to please his imperious mother, the Padshah Begum, and to annoy his father, with whom they were both on bad terms. Ghazee-od Deen had, however, before his death declared that he believed Moonna Jan to be his grandson.* In February, 1832, the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, first through the minister, and then in person, assured the Resident that neither of the boys was his son, and requested that he would report the same to his Government, and assure the Governor-General "that both reports, as to these boys being sons of his, were false, and arose from the same cause, bribery and ambition, that Mulika Zumanee had paid many lacs of rupees to influential people about him to persuade him to call her son his, and declare him heir-apparent to the throne; and that Fazl Allee and Sookcheyn had done the same to induce others to persuade him to acknowledge Moonna Jan to be his son. But, said his Majesty, I know positively that he is not my son, and my father knew the same."

[* I believe that Ghazee-od Deen's first repudiation of Moonna Jan arose entirely from a desire to revenge himself upon his termagant wife, whose furious temper left him no peace. She was, from his birth, very fond of the boy; and to question his legitimacy was to wound her in her tenderest point. This was the "raw" which her husband established, and which his son and successor afterwards worked upon.]

The wary minister then, to clench the matter, remarked that his Majesty had mentioned to him that he had ceased to cohabit with Moonna Jan's mother for twenty-four months before the boy was born; and the King assured the Resident that this was quite true. Hakeem Mehndee was as anxious as Aga Meer had been to keep the King estranged from his imperious mother, and the only sure way was to make him persist in repudiating the boy or postponing his claim to the succession.

Mulika Zumanee's influence over the king had, however, been eclipsed, first, by Miss Walters, Mokuddera Ouleea, whose history has already been given; secondly, by the beautiful Taj Mahal; and, thirdly, by the Kuduseea Begum. She entered the palace as a waiting-woman to Mulika Zumanee, and, on the 17th of December, 1831, the King married her; and from that day till her death, on the 21st of August, 1834, she reigned supreme in the palace and in the King's affections.

On the King's paying a visit of ceremony to Mulika Zumanee one evening, he asked for water, and it was brought to him in a gold cup, on a silver tray, by the Kuduseea Begum, then one of the women in waiting. Her face was partially unveiled; and the King, after drinking, threw the last few drops from the cup over her veil in play. In return, she threw the few drops that had been spilled on the salver upon the King's robe, or vest. He pretended to be angry, and asked her, with a frown, how she could dare to besprinkle her sovereign; she replied—"When children play together there is no distinction between the prince and the peasant." The King was charmed with her half-veiled beauty and spirit, and he paid a second visit the next day, and again asked for water. He did the same as the first day, and she returned the compliment in the same way. He came a third time and asked for water, but Mulika Zumanee had become alarmed, and it was presented by another and less dangerous person. A few days after, however, the Queen was constrained to allow her fair attendant to attend the King, and receive from him formal proposals of marriage, which she accepted.

She was handsome and generous; but there was no discrimination in her bounty, and she is said to have received from the King nearly two millions of money out of the reserved treasury for pin-money alone. Of this she saved forty-four lacs of rupees. The King never touched this money, and it formed, in a separate apartment, the greater part of the seventy lacs found in his reserved treasury on his death, out of the ten krores or ten millions sterling, which he found there when he ascended the throne in 1827.

She is said to have been the only one of his wives who ever had any real affection for the King. She was haughty and imperious in her temper; and the only female, who had any influence over her, was a Mogulanee, who taught her to read and write. She assisted her mistress very diligently in spending her pin-money, and made the fortunes of sundry of her relations. Altercations between the Kuduseea Begum and the King were not uncommon; but, on the 21st of August, 1834, the King became unusually excited, and told her that he had raised her from bondage to the throne, and could as easily cast her back into the same vile condition. Her proud spirit could not brook this, and she instantly swallowed arsenic. The King relented, and every remedy was tried, but in vain. The King watched over her agonies till she was about to expire, when he fled in a frantic state and took refuge in the apartments of the race-stand, about three miles from the palace, till the funeral ceremonies were over. It is said, that in her anxiety to give birth to an heir to the throne, she got the husband, from whom she had been divorced, smuggled into her apartments in the palace in a female dress more than once; and that this was reported to the King, and became the real cause of the dispute.

The Mogulanee attendant, who had accumulated twenty lacs of rupees, was seized and commanded to disgorge. She offered five lacs to Court favourites on condition that they saw her safely over the river Ganges into British territory. The most grave of them were commissioned to wait upon his Majesty, and entreat him most earnestly to banish her forthwith from his territories, as she was known, in the first place, to be one of the most potent sorceresses in India; and, in the next, to have been exceedingly attached to her late mistress: that they had strong grounds to believe that it was her intention to send his Majesty's spirit after hers, that they might be united in the next world us they had been in this. The King got angry, and said, that he had no dread of sorceresses, and would make the old lady disgorge her twenty lacs. That very night, however, in his sleep, he saw the Kuduseea Begum enter his room, approach his bed, look upon him with a countenance still more kind and bright than in life, and then return slowly with her face still towards him, and beckoning him with her hand to follow! As soon as he awoke he became greatly agitated and alarmed, and ordered the old sorceress to be sent forthwith across the Ganges to Cawnpoor. She paid her five lacs, and took off about fifteen; but what became of her afterwards I have not heard.

One of the first cases that I had to decide, after taking charge of my office, was that of a claim to five Government notes of twenty thousand rupees each, left by Sultan Mahal, one of the late King, Amjud Allee Shah's, widows. The claimants were the reigning King, and the mother, brother, and sister of the deceased widow. She was the daughter of a greengrocer, and, in February 1846, at the age of sixteen, she went to the palace with vegetables. The King saw and fell in love with her; and she forthwith became one of his wives, under the name of "Sultan Mahal." In November, 1846, the King invested eighteen lacs and thirty thousand rupees in Government notes as a provision for his wives and other female relations. The notes were to be made out in their names respectively; and the interest was to be paid to them and their heirs. Of this sum, Sultan Mahal was to have one hundred thousand; and, on the 21st of November, she drew the interest, in anticipation, up to the 30th of December of that year. The five notes for twenty thousand each, in her name, were received in the Resident's Treasury on the 20th of April, 1847. On the 28th of August, she sent an application for the Notes to the Resident, but died the next day. The King, her husband, had died on the 18th February, 1847.

Nine days after, on the 6th of September, the new King, Wajid Allee Shah, sent an application to have these five notes transferred to one of his own wives; urging, that, as his father and the Sultan Mahal had both died, he alone ought to be considered as the heir. It was decided, that the mother, sister, and brother were the rightful heirs to the Sultan Mahal; and the amount was distributed among them according to Mahommedan law. The question was, however, submitted to Government at his Majesty's request; and the decision of the Resident was upheld on the ground that the notes were in the lady's name, and she had actually drawn interest on them; and, as she died intestate, they became the property of her heirs.

By a deed of engagement with the British Government, dated the 1st of March, 1820, the King contributed to the five per cent loan the sum of sixty-two lacs and forty thousand rupees, the interest of which, at five per cent, our Government pledged itself to pay, in perpetuity, to four females of the King's family. To Mulika Zumanee, ten thousand a-month; to her daughter, Zeenut-on Nissa, four thousand; to Mokuddera Ouleea (Miss Walters), six thousand; and to Taj Mahal, six thousand: total, twenty-six thousand rupees a-month. On the death of Mulika Zamanee, which took place on the 22nd December, 1843, her daughter succeeded to her pension of six thousand a-month.

The other portion of her pension—four thousand rupees a-month—went to her grandson, Wuzeer Mirza, the son of Kywan Ja, who had died on the 16th of May, 1838, before his mother.* Of this four thousand a-month, one thousand are given to Zeenut-on Nissa for the boy's subsistence and education, and three thousand a-month are invested in Government securities, to be paid to him when he comes of age. But, besides the six thousand rupees a-month which she inherits from her mother, Zeenut-on Nissa enjoys the pension of four thousand rupees a-month, which was assigned to her by the King in the same deed; so that she now draws eleven thousand rupees a-month, independent of her husband's income.** By this deed the stipends are to descend to the heirs of the pensioners, if they have any; and if they have none, they can bequeath their pensions to whom they please. Should they have no heirs, and leave no will, the stipends are to go to the moojtahids and moojawurs, or presiding priests of the shrine of kurbala, in Turkish Arabia, for distribution among the needy pilgrims.

[* Wuzeer Mirza is not the son of Rokun-od Dowla's daughter. Kywan Ja's marriage with that lady was never consummated.]

[** She takes after her mother, and makes her worthy husband very miserable. She is ill-tempered, haughty, and profligate.]

An European lady, who visited the zunana of the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, on the anniversary of his coronation, on the 18th of October, 1828, writes thus to a female friend:—"But the present King's wives were superbly dressed, and looked like creatures of the Arabian Tales. Indeed, one (Taj Mahal) was so beautiful, that I could think of nothing but Lalla Rookh in her bridal attire. I never saw any one so lovely, either black or white. Her features were perfect, and such eyes and eye-lashes I never, beheld before. She is the favourite Queen at present, and has only been married a month or two, her age, about fourteen; and such a little creature, with the smallest hands and feet, and the most timid, modest look imaginable. You would have been charmed with her, she was so graceful and fawn-like. Her dress was of gold and scarlet brocade, and her hair was literally strewed with pearls, which hung down upon her neck in long single strings, terminating in large pearls, which mixed with and hung as low as her hair, which was curled on each side her head in long ringlets, like Charles the Second's beauties. On her forehead she wore a small gold circlet, from which depended and hung, half way down, large pearls interspersed with emeralds. Above this was a paradise plume, from which strings of pearls were carried over the head, as we turn our hair. Her earrings were immense gold rings, with pearls and emeralds suspended all round in large strings, the pearls increasing in size. She had a nose ring also with large round pearls and emeralds; and her necklaces, &c., were too numerous to be described. She wore long sleeves, open at the elbow; and her dress was a full petticoat with a tight body attached, and open only at the throat. She had several persons to bear her train when she walked; and her women stood behind her couch to arrange her head-dress, when, in moving, her pearls got entangled in the immense robe of scarlet and gold she had thrown around her. This beautiful creature is the envy of all the other wives, and the favourite at present of both the King and his mother, both of whom have given her titles—See Mrs. Park's Wandering, vol. i., page 87. Taj Mahal still lives and enjoys a pension of six thousand rupees a-month, under the guarantee of the British Government. She became very profligate after the King's death; and after she had given birth to one child, it was deemed necessary to place a guard over her to prevent her dishonouring the memory of the King, her husband, any further by giving birth to more."

Of Miss Walters, alias Mokuddera Ouleea, the same lady writes:—"The other newly-made Queen is nearly European, but not a whit fairer than Taj Mahal. She is, in my opinion, plain; but she is considered by the native ladies very handsome, and she was the King's favourite before he saw Taj Mahal. She was more splendidly dressed than even Taj Mahal. Her head-dress was a coronet of diamonds, with a fine crescent and plume of the same. She is the daughter of a European merchant, and is accomplished for an inhabitant of a zunana, as she writes and speaks Persian fluently, as well as Hindoostanee; and it is said that she is teaching the King English, though when we spoke to her in English, she said she had forgotten it, and could not reply. She was, I fancy, afraid of the Queen Dowager, as she evidently understood us; and when asked if she liked being in the zunana, she shook her head and looked quite melancholy. Jealousy of the new favourite, however, appeared to be the cause of her discontent, as, though they sat on the same couch, they never addressed each other."

Of Mulika Zumanee, the same lady says:—"The mother of the King's children, Mulika Zumanee, did not visit us at the Queen Dowager's; but we went to see her at her own palace. She is, after all, the person of the most political consequence, being the mother of the heir-apparent; and she has great power over her royal husband, whose ears she boxes occasionally."