AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
Reading edition
MY DEAR SISTER,
Were any one to ask your countrymen in India what has been their greatest source of pleasure while there, perhaps nine in ten would say, the letters which they receive from their sisters at home. These, of all things, perhaps, tend most to link our affections with home by filling the landscapes, so dear to our recollections, with ever varying groups of the family circles, among whom our infancy and our boyhood have been passed; and among whom we still hope to spend the winter of our days.
They have a very happy facility in making us familiar with the new additions made from time to time to the dramatis personae of these scenes after we quit them, in the character of husbands, wives, children, or friends; and, while thus contributing so much to our happiness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens of the world, and servants of government, than we should otherwise be, for, in our 'struggles through life in India', we have all, more or less, an eye to the approbation of those circles which our kind sisters represent—who may, therefore, be considered in the exalted light of a valuable species of unpaid magistracy to the Government of India.
No brother has ever had a kinder or better correspondent than I have had in you, my dear sister; and it was the consciousness of having left many of your valued letters unanswered, in the press of official duties, that made me first think of devoting a part of my leisure to you in these Rambles and Recollections, while on my way from the banks of the Nerbudda river to the Himālaya mountains, in search of health, in the end of 1835 and beginning of 1836. To what I wrote during that journey I have now added a few notes, observations, and conversations with natives, on the subjects which my narrative seemed to embrace; and the whole will, I hope, interest and amuse you and the other members of our family; and appear, perchance, not altogether uninteresting or uninstructive to those who are strangers to us both.
Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollections, or the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of others I believe to be true; and what I relate upon my own you may rely upon as being so. Had I chosen to write a work of fiction, I might possibly have made it a good deal more interesting; but I question whether it would have been so much valued by you, or so useful to others; and these are the objects I have had in view. The work may, perhaps, tend to make the people of India better understood by those of my own countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, and inspire more kindly feelings towards them. Those parts which, to the general reader, will seem dry and tedious, may be considered, by the Indian statesman, as the most useful and important.
The opportunities of observation, which varied employment has given me, have been such as fall to the lot of few; but, although I have endeavoured to make the most of them, the time of public servants is not their own; and that of few men has been more exclusively devoted to the service of their masters than mine. It may be, however, that the world, or that part of it which ventures to read these pages, will think that it had been better had I not been left even the little leisure that has been devoted to them.
Your ever affectionate brother,
W. H. SLEEMAN.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
EDITOR'S PREFACES
MEMOIR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1 Annual Fairs held on the Banks of Sacred Streams in India
CHAPTER 2 Hindoo System of Religion
CHAPTER 3 Legend of the Nerbudda River
CHAPTER 4 A Suttee on the Nerbudda
CHAPTER 5 Marriages of Trees—The Tank and the Plantain—Meteors—Rainbows
CHAPTER 6 Hindoo Marriages
CHAPTER 7 The Purveyance System
CHAPTER 8 Religious Sects—Self-government of the Castes—Chimneysweepers—Washerwomen [1]—Elephant Drivers
CHAPTER 9 The Great Iconoclast—Troops routed by Hornets—The Rānī of Garhā—Hornets' Nests in India
CHAPTER 10 The Peasantry and the Land Settlement
CHAPTER 11 Witchcraft
CHAPTER 12 The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'—The 'Singhāra', or Trapa bispinosa, and the Guinea-Worm
CHAPTER 13 Thugs and Poisoners
CHAPTER 14 Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India—Suspension Bridge—Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley—Deification of a Mortal
CHAPTER 15 Legend of the Sāgar Lake—Paralysis from eating the Grain of the Lathyrus sativus
CHAPTER 16 Suttee Tombs—Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses
CHAPTER 17 Basaltic Cappings—Interview with a Native Chief—A Singular Character
CHAPTER 18 Birds' Nests—Sports of Boyhood
CHAPTER 19 Feeding Pilgrims—Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub
CHAPTER 20 The Men-Tigers
CHAPTER 21 Burning of Deorī by a Freebooter—A Suttee
CHAPTER 22 Interview with the Rājā who marries the Stone to the Shrub—Order of the Moon and the Fish
CHAPTER 23 The Rājā of Orchhā—Murder of his many Ministers
CHAPTER 24 Corn Dealers—Scarcities—Famines in India
CHAPTER 25 Epidemic Diseases—Scape-goat
CHAPTER 26 Artificial Lakes in Bundēlkhand-Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith
CHAPTER 27 Blights
CHAPTER 28 Pestle-and-Mortar Sugar-Mills—Washing away of the Soil
CHAPTER 29 Interview with the Chiefs of Jhānsī—Disputed Succession
CHAPTER 30 Haunted Villages
CHAPTER 31 Interview with the Rājā of Datiyā—Fiscal Errors of Statesmen—Thieves and Robbers by Profession
CHAPTER 32 Sporting at Datiyā—Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India—Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans
CHAPTER 33 'Bhūmiāwat'
CHAPTER 34 The Suicide-Relations between Parents and Children in India
CHAPTER 35 Gwālior Plain once the Bed of a Lake—Tameness of Peacocks
CHAPTER 36 Gwālior and its Government
CHAPTER 37 [2] Contest for Empire between the Sons of Shah Jahān
CHAPTER 38 [2] Aurangzēb and Murād Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain
CHAPTER 39 [2] Dārā Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated
CHAPTER 40 [2] Dārā Retreats towards Lahore—Is robbed by the Jāts—Their Character
CHAPTER 41 [2] Shāh Jahān Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzēb and Murād
CHAPTER 42 [2] Aurangzēb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murād, and Assumes the Government of the Empire
CHAPTER 43 [2] Aurangzēb Meets Shujā in Bengal, and Defeats him, after Pursuing Dārā to the Hyphasis
CHAPTER 44 [2] Aurangzēb Imprisons his Eldest Son—Shujā and all his Family are Destroyed
CHAPTER 45 [2] Second Defeat and Death of Dārā, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons
CHAPTER 46 [2] Death and Character of Amīr Jumla
CHAPTER 47 Reflections on the Preceding History
CHAPTER 48 The Great Diamond of Kohinūr
CHAPTER 49 Pindhārī System—Character of the Marāthā Administration—Cause of their Dislike to the Paramount Power
CHAPTER 50 Dhōlpur, Capital of the Jāt Chiefs of Gohad—Consequence of Obstacles to the Prosecution of Robbers
CHAPTER 51 Influence of Electricity on Vegetation—Agra and its Buildings
CHAPTER 52 Nūr Jahān, the Aunt of the Empress Nūr Mahal,[3] over whose Remains the Tāj is built
CHAPTER 53 Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India—Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages
CHAPTER 54 Fathpur-Sīkrī—The Emperor Akbar's Pilgrimage—Birth of Jahāngīr
CHAPTER 55 Bharatpur—Dīg—Want of Employment for the Military and the Educated Classes under the Company's Rule
CHAPTER 56 Govardhan, the Scene of Kriahna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids
CHAPTER 57 Veracity
CHAPTER 58 Declining Fertility of the Soil—Popular Notion of the Cause
CHAPTER 59 Concentration of Capital and its Effects
CHAPTER 60 Transit Duties in India—Mode of Collecting them
CHAPTER 61 Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government—Want of Trees in Upper India—Cause and Consequence—Wells and Groves
CHAPTER 62 Public Spirit of the Hindoos—Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for extending it
CHAPTER 63 Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes
CHAPTER 64 Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawāb Shams-ud- dīn
CHAPTER 65 Marriage of a Jāt Chief
CHAPTER 66 Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques
CHAPTER 67 The Old City of Delhi
CHAPTER 68 New Delhi, or Shāhjahānābād
CHAPTER 69 Indian Police—Its Defects—and their Cause and Remedy
CHAPTER 70 Rent-free Tenures—Right of Government to Resume such Grants
CHAPTER 71 The Station of Meerut—'Atālīs' who Dance and Sing gratuitously for the Benefit of the Poor
CHAPTER 72 Subdivisions of Lands—Want of Gradations of Rank—Taxes
CHAPTER 73 Meerut-Anglo-Indian Society
CHAPTER 74 Pilgrims of India
CHAPTER 75 The Bēgam Sumroo
CHAPTER 76 ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA Abolition of Corporal Punishment—Increase of Pay with Length of Service—Promotion by Seniority
CHAPTER 77 Invalid Establishment
Appendix: Thuggee and the part taken in its Suppression by General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B., by Captain J. L. Sleeman Supplementary Note by the Editor Additions and Corrections
Maps Showing Author's Route
INDEX
Notes:
1. A blunder for 'Sweepers' and 'Washermen'
2. Chapters 37 to 46, inclusive, are not reprinted in this edition.
3. A mistake. See post, Chapter 52, note 1.