CHAPTER VII.
THE CAUSES AND FAILURE OF THE SEPOY REBELLION.
THE hate and cruelty of these fearful scenes have now to be accounted for. To what cause are we to ascribe them? Next to the facts of the great Rebellion, men have sought for the explanation of its origin.
I. The earliest reason to account for it was that put forward by certain members of the British civil service—venerable men, who had long administered the rule of the East India Company, and reflected so exclusively its merely commercial and worldly spirit that they seemed to forget they were Christians, or from a Christian land. They so fully vindicated and illustrated their master's doctrine of “neutrality,” as in effect to discountenance Christianity and favor idolatry. Of such men the slang used to be that they “had left their religion at the Cape of Good Hope, to be resumed there on their return to England.”
Such men had become Hindooized from long contact with idolatrous usages and ceremonies, almost verifying in regard to heathenism the reality of the lines,
“Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
That to be hated, needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
They paid a certain deference to idol shrines, to caste prejudices, and heathenish customs; and very decidedly discountenanced all attempts at Bible or tract distribution, or legislation which aimed at abolishing even the cruel rites of Hindooism. They discouraged the incoming of missionaries or their preaching, and, if public sentiment would have permitted it, they would have persecuted and expelled them, as they once actually expelled Judson, and tried to
drive away Carey, Marshman, and Ward. Even their own countrymen were not welcome to enter India as traders or merchants. Up to the time when I reached it their ready nickname for all such persons was, “Interlopers.”
Long had they threatened that ruin would come if all such people as these were not kept out, and the inhabitants of India reserved for the exclusive manipulation of the East India Company and its servants. No one else was needed or desired there. These were the men who, thirty years ago, led the heathen to believe that “the English had really no religion.” Well might they think so. As the mutiny developed, these conservatives looked round for some specific act to which they could triumphantly point the people of England as a verification of their predictions, and an adequate and valid reason for the Sepoy Rebellion. They found it in the fact that the Governor General, Lord Canning, (fresh from home and not yet tainted with their Christless “neutrality,”) had so far forgotten the obligations of his high position before the people of India, that he had actually contributed money in aid of a Missionary Society!
By an American reader this statement must be thought simply ridiculous, and the writer be deemed trifling. But no, far from it; we are in sober earnest. This was, in all seriousness, solemnly put forward before the British people and Parliament as the cause of the Rebellion by these “most potent, wise, and reverend seigneurs” of the East India Company! They found a mouth-piece even in the House of Lords, in the person of one of their former associates, Lord Ellenborough, who rose in his place, and lifted his hands in horror as he announced the fact, and declared that nothing less than Lord Canning's recall could be considered an adequate penalty for so great a violation of the rules and traditions of the Honorable Court!
This “old Indian,” who thus made a fool of himself, and slurred the Christianity of the very crown before him in the presence of what has been called “the most venerable legislative assembly in Christendom,” was answered “according to his folly,” not so much
by his brother Peers, or by Christian clergymen, as by a man who is no Christian at all. God stirred up the spirit of a Hindoo in India to reply to it, and that far more effectually than any one else could have done it.
I have genuine pleasure in quoting this man's glowing words, and, from personal knowledge of him, I believe his utterance was the profound conviction of his heart. I commend the last paragraph of his speech to those who wish to know how one of the most intelligent men in India, speaking for himself and his fellows, regards Christian Missionaries.
This enlightened native is a gentleman by the name of Baboo Duckinarunjun Mookerjee, Secretary of the British Indian Association, a native club of considerable influence, with head-quarters in Calcutta. In regard to those mistaken views put forward in the House of Lords, the Baboo, at the next meeting of the association in Calcutta, repudiated any such idea, as a reflection upon the people of India, who, he alleges, can discriminate as well as other men between a personal and an official act. He said, “Lord Ellenborough, on the 9th of June last, in the House of Lords, was pleased to observe that the recent mutinies here are attributable to an apprehension on the part of the natives that the Government would interfere with their religion; that the fact of Lord Canning's rendering pecuniary aid to societies which have for their object the conversion of the natives, operates detrimentally to the security of the British Indian Government, which must be maintained on the principles of Akbar, [a tolerant ruler,] but never could be maintained on those of Aurungzebe, [an intolerant one,] and if it be a fact that the Governor General has subscribed to such societies, his removal from office would obviate the danger arising from the error. If the premises laid down by Lord Ellenborough be correct, there could be no two opinions as to the unfitness of Lord Canning to fill the vice-regal chair, and the urgent necessity of his Lordship's immediate dismissal from office; but in considering so momentous a question, it is requisite that the facts upon which Lord Ellenborough grounds his premises should be fairly inquired into,
and no place is more appropriate to institute that inquiry than Hindustan, nor any assembly more competent to decide upon that subject than the one I have the honor to address. First, let us then inquire whether the present rebellion has arisen from any attacks, made or intended, against the religious feelings of the people by the administration of Lord Canning? Secondly, What are the real circumstances that have caused this rebellion?
“Speaking, as I am, from the place which is the center of the scenes of those mutinies that have drawn forth the remarks of Lord Ellenborough, and possessing, as we do, the advantages of being identified in race, language, manners, customs, and religion with the majority of those misguided wretches who have taken part in this rebellion, and thereby disgraced their manhood by drawing their arms against the very dynasty whose salt they have eaten, to whose paternal rule they and their ancestors have, for the last one hundred years, owed the security of their lives and properties, and which is the best ruling power that we had the good fortune to have within the last ten centuries—and addressing, as I am, a society, the individual members of which are fully familiar with the thoughts and sentiments of their countrymen, and who represent the feelings and interests of the great bulk of her Majesty's native subjects—I but give utterance to a fact patent to us all, that the Government have done nothing to interfere with our religion, and thereby to afford argument to its enemies to weaken their allegiance.
“The abolition of the diabolical practice of infanticide by drowning children in the Ganges, by the Marquis of Hastings, of the criminal rite of Suttee suicide, by Lord Bentinck, and the passing of other laws for the discontinuance of similar cruel and barbarous usages, equally called for by justice and humanity, by Governors General, (though they existed among us for ages,) never for a moment led us to suspect that our British rulers would interfere with our religion, or weaken the allegiance of any class of subjects in India. And is it to be supposed that Lord Canning's subscription to the Missionary Societies has ignited and fanned the awful fire, the flame of which now surrounds the fair provinces of
Hindustan, and has changed the obedient and faithful native soldiers of the State into fiends who delight in plunder, massacre, and destruction? No, certainly not; our countrymen are perfectly able to make a distinction between the acts of Lord Canning as a private individual, and his Lordship's doings as the Viceroy of her gracious majesty Queen Victoria.
“Chiefs of all denominations, both Hindoo and Mohammedan, as well as the merchants and soldiers of both these races, possess enough of intelligence and shrewdness to know that what a person does in his Zaut Khass is quite a different thing to what he does in his wohdah; and Lord Ellenborough must have been misinformed as to the impression the Governor General's subscription to the Missionary Societies has produced in this country, when he surmised that that had occasioned the rebellion.
“Aware of the weight that would be attached by the British public to the views expressed by that personage, I feel it incumbent on me to point out his Lordship's mistake. Then, as to the Missionaries, a man must be a total stranger to the thoughts, habits, and character of the Hindoo population who could fancy that because the missionaries are the apostles of another religion, the Hindoos entertain an inveterate hatred toward them. Akbar of blessed memory, whose policy Lord Ellenborough pronounces as peculiarly adapted to the government of these dominions, (and which, no doubt, is so,) gave encouragement to the followers of all sects, religions, and modes of worship. Faugeers and Altumghas bearing his imperial seal are yet extant, to show that he endowed lands and buildings for the Mohammedan musjids, Christian churches, and Hindoo devasloys. The Hindoos are essentially a tolerant people; a fact which that sagacious prince did fully comprehend, appreciate, and act upon: and the remarks of Lord Ellenborough that Akbar's policy should be the invariable rule of guidance for British Indian Governors, is most correct—but in the sense I have just explained—and should be recorded in golden characters on the walls of the Council Chamber. When discussing an Indian subject, it should always be remembered that this country is not inhabited
by savages and barbarians, but by those whose language and literature are the oldest in the world, and whose progenitors were engaged in the contemplation of the sublimest doctrines of religion and philosophy at a time when their Anglo-Saxon and Gallic con- temporaries were deeply immersed in darkness and ignorance. And if, owing to eight hundred years of Mohammedan tyranny and misrule, this great nation has sunk into sloth and lethargy, it has, thank God! not lost its reason, and is able to make a difference between the followers of a religion which inculcates the doctrine that should be propagated at the point of the sword, and that which offers compulsion to none, but simply invites inquiry. However we may differ with the Christian Missionaries in religion, I speak the minds of this Society, and generally of those of the people, when I say that, as regards their learning, purity of morals, and disinterestedness of intention to promote our weal, no doubt is entertained throughout the land, nay, they are held by us in the highest esteem. European history does not bear on its record the mention of a class of men who suffered so many sacrifices in the cause of humanity and education as the Christian Missionaries in India; and though the native community differ with them in the opinion that Hindustan will one day be included in Christendom, (for the worship of Almighty God in his Unity, as laid down in the Holy Vedas, is, and has been, our religion for thousands of years, and is enough to satisfy all our spiritual wants,) yet we cannot forbear doing justice to the venerable ministers of a religion who, I do here most solemnly asseverate, in piety and righteousness alone are fit to be classed with those Rishees and Mohatmas of antiquity, who derived their support and those of their charitable boarding-schools from voluntary subscriptions, and consecrated their lives to the cause of God and knowledge.
“It is not, therefore, likely that any little monetary aid that may have been rendered by the Governor General, in his private capacity, to Missionary Societies, should have sown the germ of that recent disaffection in the native army which has introduced so much anarchy and confusion in these dominions.”
That will suffice. The East India Company is well, and forever, answered by one of its own Hindoo subjects.
II. Men outside of India, imperfectly acquainted with its people and the condition of the English administration there, had their theory to account for the rebellion, and supposed that it was owing to causes, among which was the preference of the natives for some other rule—say that of the Russians, whose incoming would be hailed by them as a deliverance from a yoke which galled them, and the misrule of which was crushing them down.
Here, too, let the natives speak for themselves. They know their own grievances best, and have no restraint upon their utterance. The few educated men among them have spoken. Any quantity of testimony might be given, but two or three will suffice. These men understand the difference of things; know what good government, and personal security, and equal rights mean; they appreciate fine roads, arrangements for irrigation, and provision for public instruction; they value peace, and law, and progress; and are well enough acquainted with their country's history to know that their land never had so much of all these as it has to-day. They know this, also, notwithstanding that they are equally alive to what they regard as the defects of the English rule, yet they have patience, and are aware that that too is fast improving in their interest.
One hundred and seventy years ago France contended with England for commercial and military supremacy in Southern India, but England won the rich prize then, as she did at the beginning of this century, when she destroyed the embryo French State which Perron was erecting in North India, on the banks of the Jumna. The Marquis of Wellesley smoked the French out of India by a vigorous use of his artillery, and the Land of the Veda was saved, in the mercy of Heaven, from becoming a French colony, from which freedom, and the Bible, and the missionary would have been excluded for ages, while the wealth of the conquered people might have been employed to inflate French vanity and extend her bigoted misrule over Europe and the world.
One of India's most intelligent sons, Baboo Bholanauth Chunder, remarks upon this escape of his country from French domination:
“It is well that an end was put to this French State in embryo. The fickle and freakish Frenchman has no genius for consolidating an empire which India wants. If he had stepped into the shoes of the Great Mogul, India would have been brought up in sans-culottism, under a galling chain of gilded despotism. Under French rule the staid Hindoo would have been a strange animal, with many a vagary in his head. How little could their own distractions have allowed Frenchmen the time to look after the welfare of two hundred millions of human beings. Doubtless the French acknowledge, but fail to act up to, the necessity of accommodating the institutions of government to the progress of information.”
He adds, as to the comparative value of the two civilizations which contended for supremacy in his country, “It may be questioned whether there is not more tyranny in France than in India. The conquered Indian is happy to have no bit in his mouth—to speak out his grievances. It is necessary for us to appreciate correctly the character either of the French or of the Russian. If it be the will of Providence to have a yoke upon the neck of our nation, our nation should, in the ripened maturity of its judgment, discriminate, and prefer the yoke of the English to be the least galling. Nothing less than British phlegm, and imperturbability, and constancy, and untiring energy, could have steadily prosecuted the task of consolidating the disjointed masses of India, and casting her into the mold of one compact nation. They want but ‘the high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy’ to attach us to their rule with a feeling of loyalty that, not merely ‘playing around the head, should come near the heart.’ ”
What the Hindoo mind thinks of its present masters, and of that possible Russian rule of which people outside of India sometimes prognosticate, may be understood from the utterance of such a native journal as “The Som Prukash” which, in its issue for December, 1870, in an article on Russia and England, remarks: “Other nations seem to think that the Indians are disaffected
toward England, but there can be no greater mistake than this. That there is dissatisfaction is true, but that the rule of Britain should pass away is not the desire of any. It is the dissatisfaction that seeks to prevent arbitrary measures, and to establish a more large-hearted policy. If Russia or Germany depend at all upon our dissatisfaction, they will soon find proof to the contrary. Should there be war with Russia, all the inhabitants of India would zealously come forward to support the Government.”
Their preference for English rule, and their appreciation of its advantages, is equally if not more fully entertained on the western coast. Mr. Satyendra Nath Tagore, a cultivated Parsee of Bombay, speaks for his class of the population in the following enlightened language:
“It is not for nothing that India has been placed under the British rule. It is impossible to think that her destinies have been ruled by blind, unsparing Fate, or that it is for the glory and power of England alone that such a wonderful bond of connection has been established by an inscrutable Providence between the two countries. There is one hope, one intense conviction from which no true patriot can escape; that is, that England and India are to be a mutual blessing; that our country, once famous in the world's history, is destined to be helped out of her present degeneracy and utter stagnation. And is there no reason for this hope? and are there no data to base this conviction upon? What was India a few years ago, and what do we now see around us? We see a marked progress, brought about by Western civilization. We see a nation domineered over by caste and idolatry—a nation of which the men are completely enslaved to custom, and the women kept down and tyrannized over by the men, by dint of sheer physical strength, which they cannot resist—a nation which has long ceased to be progressive, and of which inertia and stationariness is the natural condition. Even this nation, opening its eyes to the enormous evils around it, is gradually awakening to the influences of the bright light of thought and knowledge, before which millions of false stars are fading away. India sank down
under the weight of the accumulated corruption of ages; foreign influences were requisite to arouse her. These are being felt throughout her length and breadth. A steady, though slow, progress is perceptible. The tyranny of society is slowly succumbing to the gaining force of individuality and intellect. Superstition is losing its strongholds one after another. Ceremonial observances are being replaced by true principles of morality. There are many things still wanting, hideous defects to be remedied; but let us work and hope for a brighter future. May India be grateful to England for the blessing she has been enjoying under her benign rule! May England feel that India is a sacred trust and responsibility, which cannot be thrown away!”
In the same spirit, but with even a wider and more candid range of moral vision, (all the more remarkable from such a source,) Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen of Calcutta tells the world what he and his Brahmo Somaj think of English rule, and the Christian missions which it protects. The Baboo says, (and I would commend his words to the consideration of some of his Christian (?) and clerical admirers in New York and Boston, as a lesson which they certainly much need to learn :)
“It cannot be said that we in India have nothing to do with Christ or Christianity. Have the natives of this country altogether escaped the influence of Christianity, and do they owe nothing to Christ? Shall I be told by my educated countrymen that they can feel nothing but a mere remote historic interest in the grand movement I have described? You have already seen how, in the gradual extension of the Church of Christ, Christian missions came to be established in this distant land, and what results these missions have achieved. The many noble deeds of philanthropy and self-denying benevolence which Christian missionaries have performed in India, and the various intellectual, social, and moral improvements which they have effected, need no flattering comment; they are treasured in the gratitude of the nation, and can never be forgotten or denied. That India is highly indebted to these disinterested and large-hearted followers of Christ
for her present prosperity, I have no doubt the entire nation will gratefully acknowledge. Fortunately for India, she was not forgotten by the Christian missionaries when they went out to preach the Gospel. While, through missionary agency, our country has thus been connected with the enlightened nations of the West politically, an all-wise and all-merciful Providence has intrusted its interests to the hands of a Christian sovereign. In this significant event worldly men can see nothing but an ordinary political phenomenon; but those of you who can discern the finger of Providence in individual and national history will doubtless see here a wise and merciful interposition. I cannot but reflect with grateful interest on the day when the British nation first planted their feet on the plains of India, and on the successive steps by which the British empire has been established and consolidated in this country. It is to the British Government that we owe our deliverance from oppression and misrule, from darkness and distress, from ignorance and superstition. Those enlightened ideas which have changed the very life of the nation, and have gradually brought about such wondrous improvement in native society, are the gifts of that Government; and so, likewise, the inestimable boon of freedom of thought and action, which we so justly prize. Are not such considerations calculated to rouse our deepest gratitude and loyalty to the British nation, and her Majesty Queen Victoria? Her beneficent Christian administration has proved to us not only a political, but a social and moral blessing, and laid the foundation of our national prosperity and greatness, and it is but natural that we should cherish toward her no other feeling except that of devoted loyalty.”—Carpenter's Six Months in India, Vol. II, p. 73.
Such men, of course, deprecated the Sepoy Rebellion, and lament it to-day as the greatest mistake that their ignorant and fanatical countrymen could have made, and the success of which would have been the doom of India for ages. Bholanauth Chunder speaks the mind of every enlightened Bengalee Baboo when he says:
“In their infatuation they entered upon a bubble scheme, the
bursting of which no sane man could doubt. They raised the standard for national independence, and anticipated that event at least two centuries before its time. We have to learn much before we ought to hazard such a leap. India can no longer be expected to relapse into the days of a Brahmin ascendency or a Mahratta government. The advent of the Anglo-Saxon race was not merely fortuitous, but had been fore-ordained in the wisdom of Providence. First of all, our efforts should be to shake off the fetters which a past age has forged for us; to effect our freedom from moral disabilities; and not to stake the well-being of the country on the result of a contest with veteran soldiers who have marched triumphant into Paris, Canton, and Candahar.”
Another Hindoo testimony is to the same effect, only stronger in its satisfaction with the results:
“The mutiny was a fatal error; it once more plunged the country into the misrule of past ages. It jeopardized the vital interest of India, and was to have proved suicidal of her fate. The exit of the English would have undone all the good that is slowly paving the way to her regeneration. Rightly understood, to own the government of the English is not so much to own the government of that nation, as to own the government of an enlightened legislation, of the science and civilization of the nineteenth century, of superior intelligence and genius, of knowledge itself. Under this view, no right-minded Hindoo ought to feel his national instinct offended, and his self-respect diminished by allegiance to a foreign rule. The regeneration of his country must be the dearest object to the heart of every enlightened Hindoo; and it must be perfectly evident to him that the best mode of attaining this end is by striving to raise himself to the level of his rulers. What can the most patriotic Hindoo wish for better than that his country should, until its education as a nation is further advanced, continue part of the greatest and most glorious of empires, under a sovereign of the purest Aryan blood?”
Baboo Chunder, in the first volume of his Travels of a Hindoo, having twice lately gone over the extent of Hindustan Proper,
gratefully contrasts the present with the past in the peace, security, and prosperity of the people of the great Gangetic Valley, and ascribes it all to the beneficence of English rule. This impartial witness says:
“The public works of Hindoos were for the comfort only of the physical man. The Mohammedans exhibit but the same care for the material well-being, without any progress made by humanity toward the amelioration of its moral condition. Far otherwise are the public works of the English. Their schools and colleges, literary institutions, public libraries, museums, botanic gardens, are proofs of a greater intellectual state of the world than in any preceding age. Supposing the English were to quit India, the beneficence of their rule ought not to be judged of by the external memorials of stone and masonry left behind them, but by the emancipation of our nation from prejudices and superstitions of long standing, and by the enlightened state in which they shall leave India. In the words of De Quincey, ‘higher by far than the Mogul gift of limestone, or traveling stations, or even roads and tanks, were the gifts of security, of peace, of law, and settled order.’
“Nothing afforded me so great a pleasure as to pass through a country of one wide and uninterrupted cultivation, in which paddy-fields, that have justly made our country to be called the granary of the world, extended for miles in every direction. No such prospect greeted the eyes of a traveler in 1758. Then the annual inroads of the Mahrattas, the troubles following the overthrow of the Mohammedan dynasty, frequent and severe famines, and virulent pestilences, had thinned the population, and reduced fertile districts to wastes and jungles. It is on record that previous to 1793, the year of the English Permanent Settlement, one third of Lower Bengal lay waste and uncultivated. Never, perhaps, has Bengal enjoyed such a long period of peace without interruption as under British rule. From the day of the battle of Plassey no enemy has left a footprint upon her soil, no peasant has lost a sheaf of grain, and no man a single drop of blood. Under security
against an enemy from abroad, population has increased, cultivation has been extended, the country has become a great garden, and landed property has risen in value more than forty-fold in one province, nineteen-fold in another, and more than ten-fold throughout all Lower Bengal.
“The Mahratta freebooter, the murderous Patan, and the Jaut bandit, have settled down to an agricultural life, and honest labor has superseded lawless rapine as an occupation.”—Vol. I, p. 421, etc.
I can add my personal testimony to this general peace and security. Traveling for nearly ten years in a palankeen, alone and unprotected in the hands of the natives, I have slept in their serais and under their trees, often fifty miles from any white man, yet I moved in perfect security, was never molested, and never lost the value of a cent in all my peregrinations. So profound is the confidence in the power of law and the care of the Government, that ladies travel alone in this way every night in the year without hesitation or anxiety. Such is the security of person and property under English rule in India. It never was so before; and every honest and candid mind should give them credit for what they have there accomplished. The Hindoos do so frankly, and have even tried to make capital out of the wonderful fact, to the credit of their own system of idolatry, in the following singular fashion, as related by General Sleeman in his “Recollections.” He says:
“A very learned Hindoo told me in Central India that the oracle of Mahadeva (the Great God) had been at the same time consulted at three of his greatest temples—one in the Deccan, one in Rajpootana, and one in Bengal—as to the result of the government of India by Europeans. A day was appointed for the answer, and when the priest came to receive it, they found Mahadeva (Shiva) himself, with a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them ‘that their European government was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of himself, and that he had come among them in this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats, as they had been doing for
some centuries past; that these, his incarnations, appeared to have no religion themselves, in order that they might be the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of their gods.’ ”—Vol. II, p. 241.
Thus Brahmos, Bengalees, Parsees, and Hindoos, the educated, the agriculturists, and even the idolaters themselves, admit the mighty change, and rejoice in it. Instances are even found where candid men among them, and even Brahmins, will go further than all these have gone, as in the recent case at Arcot and its medical mission.
A reading-room had been opened at Madnapilly. At the dedication, the Rev. Jacob Chamberlain delivered an address, at the close of which a Brahmin requested permission to make some remarks. Without the least conjecture of what he was going to say, he was allowed to commence, when he proceeded to deliver a remarkable eulogy on the missionaries. He compared them to the mango tree, which, however beaten, and wounded, and stripped of its fruit, still goes on, year by year, to yield its wholesome fruit. He dwelt with enlargement and unction on this subject, and then added as follows:
“Now what is it makes him do all this for us? It is his Bible. I've looked into it a good deal at one time and another in the different languages I chance to know. It is just the same in all languages. The Bible—there is nothing to compare with it in all our sacred books for goodness, and purity, and holiness, and love, and for motives of action. Where did the English-speaking people get all their intelligence, and energy, and cleverness, and power? It is their Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us and say, ‘This is what raised us; take it and raise yourselves.’ They do not force it upon us, as the Mohammedans used to their Koran; but they bring it in love, and translate it into our
languages, and lay it before us, and say, ‘Look at it, read it, examine it, and see if it is not good.’ Of one thing I am convinced: do what we will, oppose it as we may, it is the Christian's Bible that will, sooner or later, work the regeneration of this land."
The missionary adds, “I could not but be surprised at this testimony thus borne. How far the speaker was sincere I cannot tell; but he had the appearance of a man speaking his earnest convictions. Some three years ago I had attended, in his zenana, his second wife, a beautiful girl, through a dangerous attack, and I knew that he felt very grateful; but I was not prepared to see him come out, before such an audience, with such testimony to the power and excellence of the Bible. My earnest prayer is, that not only his intellect may be convinced, but that his heart may be reached by the Holy Spirit, and that he may soon become an earnest follower of Jesus.”
These quotations, which are rather lengthy, are of high significance, as showing what is the condition of multitudes of the thinking classes of India, and what changes are imminent in that magnificent land, when leading men can be found thus to stand forth before their countrymen and utter such words. To all this can be added that England has given India the printing press, the telegraph, the iron horse, the Ganges canal, (which irrigates 3,380,000 acres of land, and makes famine impossible in the Doab,) and that these improvements are constantly on the increase. Allowing for her time and the circumstances, she has done wonders for the land she rules, and the immense majority of the people knew this well, and had no sympathy for, and lent no aid to, the Sepoy Rebellion, for they did not desire a change.
But England had her enemies. The Mohammedans generally, the Fakirs, most of the Brahmins, the Thugs, and the lawless and criminal classes, to a man hate her. These together amounted to millions. Circumstances gave them an imperial name for a rallying cry, a Peishwa's influence and a Sepoy instrumentality for the working power, and they made wonderful use of the peculiar combination. But why did they single themselves out, and in the
name of the people of India, which the immense majority never gave them the slightest authority to use, commence the work of extermination? We have already given the reasons which influenced the Mogul Court, the Nana Sahib, the Mohammedans, and the Fakirs. But there were other reasons which account for the Brahminical interest in the matter, as well as that of the Thugs and the lawless classes, which have not yet been presented, and a knowledge of which is essential to a full and complete view of the motives which originated the fearful combination against Christianity, and the English power which protected it.
Slowly, but surely, the better portion of the British administrators were urging on reforms and legislation in the interests of humanity. They had much to contend with in their noble aims between, on the one hand, the old civilians of the Company, who were still in the higher posts of the service, and on the other, from the men whose power and emoluments were derived from usages and institutions which they were striking down one by one. The abolition of female infanticide was allowed to pass with little resistance, because it brought no profit to priest or Fakir. But it was different with the far greater crime of deliberately roasting alive the beautiful and wealthy ladies of the land who had the misfortune to become widows, for there the ceremonies were splendid, the Brahmin exercised the height of awful power, and his perquisites were larger than in any other ceremony of his faith.
This extraordinary and (save in India) unparalleled crime, reduced to a system, sanctioned by their religion, and practiced for ages, is so wonderful in itself and its circumstances that the Western reader will desire to be more fully informed of its character, and the motives under which it was inflicted and endured, than he could be by a mere passing allusion, so we pause here to illustrate and describe it.
Preparing for the Immolation of a Hindoo Widow.
The suttee commemorated in this steel engraving took place in the neighborhood of Baroda, in the dominions of the Guicowar, during the period that Sir James Carnac was English Resident (Embassador) at that Court. The sketch was made and the whole
circumstance described, by Captain Grindley, as it was one of unusual interest. The suttee was a young Brahmanee woman. On her intention becoming known to the Resident, he went at once to her house with the humane intention of persuading her to abandon her purpose. Failing to produce any impression, the Resident waited on the ruling Prince, who kindly undertook to add his persuasion, but he was equally unsuccessful. Determined to prevent her burning herself, he surrounded her premises with his troops. He offered her the means of subsistence, and urged the duties she owed her family. The widow remained unmoved and unconvinced. On being told she would not be allowed to ascend the funeral pile, she drew a dagger from the folds of her dress, and, with all the vehemence that passion could add to fanaticism, declared that her blood—the blood of a Brahmin woman—should be upon the soul of him who offered to prevent her performing her duty to her husband. Intimidated, the Guicowar with his retinue withdrew. The unhappy woman rushed away to the river brink, and there, aided by her friends and the Brahmins, she quickly went through the ablutions and prescribed ceremonies, and ascended the steps to the fatal spot—immediately behind the domed arch in the engraving—and threw herself into the midst of the flames.
Christian women will wish to understand the reasons that could thus so strangely and determinately overcome, in one of their sex—a young and beautiful woman—the love of life, of friends, and of children, and lead her to dare death in one of its most awful forms, in obedience to what she regarded as a supreme duty.
Of suttee, or widow burning, the origin is unknown. But it must be very ancient, for it is alluded to by Diodorus Siculus as being then an established custom. Such a horrid rite should certainly be able to show the highest authority for itself. Accordingly, the Brahmins of India have asserted that the Vedas, which they hold to be their most ancient and divine writings, have expressly required this last evidence of a wife's devotion to her deceased lord. So long as these writings were unknown to the outside world, they might make their assertion with safety. But of late years
Christian men have mastered the ancient Sanscrit, and have read the Vedas, and demanded from the Brahmins the proof of a statement under which millions of women have been foully murdered during the past twenty-five hundred years. The depth of their villainy has been revealed by the appeal made to the highest authority of their own religion. The honor of demolishing the last Brahminical pretext for regarding suttee as an orthodox Hindoo practice belongs to Horace Hayman Wilson. In a paper read by the learned professor before the Royal Asiatic Society on February 4, 1854, he proved that the passage—and it was the solitary text from all the Vedas that the Brahmins could bring forward in its defense—the passage quoted had actually been corrupted by the substitution of a single letter, which changed the whole sense, agneh for agreh, the meaning being thereby perverted from, “let them [the widows] go up into the dwelling,” to “let them go up into the fire”—the r changed to n made this difference; and these cruel men were responsible for the flagrant corruption! Professor Wilson added, that he was supported in his opinion by Dr. Max Müller, and that Aswalayana, the author of the Grihya Sutras—a work little inferior in authority to the Vedas themselves—actually designates the proper person to lead the widow away at the conclusion of the funeral rites; so that so far from demanding her immolation, the text inferentially enjoins the widow's preservation. Suttee, therefore, with all its antiquity, is proved by the Vedas to be, like female infanticide, an accursed invention of modern Hindooism.
Next to the Vedas, the “Institutes of Menu” are the highest authority to a Hindoo conscience. I have carefully read this entire code of laws; but not one obligation to such a rite as suttee is to be found in it. The Brahmins have not dared to reply to the learned professor. They assert, of course, that it is recommended in the Shasters and Puranas; but these are all of more recent origin, and are far below the paramount authority of the Vedas, and no serious doctrine can be built on them alone; so that they stand convicted of teaching for doctrines novelties which are only “the commandments of men,” like the Jews of old, or the Romanists
of our own day. Exactly as the present Pope has done, when, eighteen hundred years after the canon of Scripture was closed, he dared to invent a new doctrine—that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary—and would fain make its belief binding on the consciences of Catholics, even so have these Brahmins acted at distances almost as great from the date of their own Vedas.
Every suttee, therefore, has been without what even they regard as the divine sanction, which alone could ordain it. Christian Orientalists and missionaries have pressed this position, to the utter discomfiture and confusion of these guilty Brahmins.
But while the Vedas and the Code are thus entirely silent, and even lay down the laws by which a widow's life is to be guided, the inferior authority of modern Hindooism—and any thing is “modern” in their view which dates within two thousand years of this time—are particular and definite enough, in prescribing the barbarous rites under which she is urged to yield her delicate body to the devouring flames; so that upon this fraud on the faith of India has been built up the greatest victory that priestcraft has ever achieved over the natural feelings and instincts of mankind in any age or nation.
The words of the Puranas, which commend this dreadful rite, are as follows: “The wife who commits herself to the flames with her husband's corpse shall equal Arundhoti, [the exalted wife of Vashista,] and dwell in Swarga, [heavenly bliss.] As many hairs as are on the human body, multiplied by threescore and fifty lakhs [each lakh, 100,000] of years, so many years shall she live with him in Swarga. As the snake-catcher forcibly draws the serpent from his hole in the earth, so, bearing her husband from hell, she shall with him enjoy happiness. Dying with her husband, she purifies three generations—her father and mother's side and husband's side. Such a wife, adoring her husband, enters into celestial felicity with him—greatest and most admired; lauded by the choirs of heaven, with him she shall enjoy the delights of heaven while fourteen Indras reign.”
In the event of her husband dying while absent from her, provision is made for her suttee in the following words of the Brahma-Purana: “If the husband be out of the country when he dies, let the virtuous wife take his slippers, or any thing else that belongs to his dress, and, binding them or it upon her breast, after purification, enter a separate fire.” The same Purana adds: “While the pile is preparing, tell the faithful wife of the greatest duty of woman. She is alone loyal and pure who burns herself with her husband's corpse. Having thus fortified her resolution, and full of affection, she completes the Pragashita, and ascends to Swarga.”
The circumstances are defined in which widows are excused from the obligation of suttee. For example, if a woman has recently become a mother, or expects soon to be, she may hold herself exempted; yet even she is at liberty, thirty days after childbirth, to assert her fidelity by dying amid the flames.
In case a Hindoo widow decides not to burn, then these priestly law-makers have prescribed her future condition under degrading obligations, that often prove but a little less terrible than death itself; but of this we shall speak more fully when we come to describe the condition to which Hindoo law reduces the afflicted widows of that land. Before considering the motives of this fearful sacrifice, and the extent to which it has prevailed, we will place before our readers a description of the rite of suttee as it is usually performed.
The husband is dead. In India the body must be disposed of within twelve hours. In the tumult of her grief, the Brahmins and friends wait upon the distracted widow to learn her intentions. There is no time for reflection or second thought. Within an hour it is usually settled. She agrees to mingle her ashes with her lord's. Opium or strong liquor is given to sustain her courage. Before the word is spoken the decision is with herself; but, once consenting to die, she may not recall her words. Millions, of course, have expressed a trembling preference for life, even with all its future gloom to them; but multitudes have consented at
once to burn, and, even in advance of being asked, they have, in the first spasm of their bereavement, uttered the fatal and irrevocable cry, “Suth! suth!” Orders are at once issued for the erection of the fatal pile, and the accustomed ceremonies; the widow, too, has to be prepared. Friends sometimes, with more or less sincerity, try to dissuade her from her purpose; but all her religious convictions and priestly advisers urge on the poor, infatuated—perhaps intoxicated—woman to her doom. On the banks of the sacred river, while she bathes in the Ganges, a Brahmin is coolly reading the usual forms. She is now arrayed in bridal costume, but her face is unvailed, and her hair unbound and saturated with oil, and her whole body is perfumed. Her jewels are now added, and she is adorned with garlands of flowers. Thus prepared, she is conducted to the pile, which is an oblong square, formed of four stout bamboos or branches fixed in the earth at each corner. Within those supports the dry logs are laid from three to four feet high, with cotton rope and other combustibles interlaced. Chips of odoriferous wood, butter, and oil are plentifully added, to give force and fragrance to the flames. The ends above are interwoven to form a bower, and this is sometimes decked with flowers. The husband's body has been already laid upon it. In the south of India the fire is first applied, and the widow throws herself into the burning mass; but the more general way is not to apply the fire till she has taken her position. The size of the pile is regulated by the number of widows who are to be burned with the body. Cases are well known, like the one at Sookachura, near Calcutta, where the pile was nearly twelve yards long, and on it eighteen wives, leaving in all over forty children, burned themselves with the body of their husband.
When the widow, thus prepared, reaches the pile, she walks around it, supported if necessary by a Brahmin. She then distributes her gifts, including her jewels, to the Brahmins and her friends, but retains her garlands. She now approaches the steps by which she is to mount the pile, and there repeats the Sancalpa, thus: “On this month so named—that I may enjoy with my husband the
felicity of heaven, and sanctify my paternal and maternal progenitors, and the ancestry of my husband's father—that expiation may be made for my husband's offenses—thus I ascend my husband's pile. I call on you, ye guardians of the eight regions of the world, sun and moon, air, fire, ether, earth, and water, my own soul, Yama, [god of the dead,] day, night, and twilight! And thou, conscience, bear witness, I follow my husband's corpse on the funeral pile!”
She then moves around the pile three times more, while the Brahmins repeat the Muntras—the texts on burning already quoted, and others—and then ascends to the corpse, and either lies down by its side, or takes its head in her lap. In some places ropes are thrown over to bind the living to the dead, or long bamboos are bent down upon them both, and the ends held firm by attending Brahmins. Sometimes she is left untied and loose. All is now ready: her eldest son, if she have one—if not, the nearest male relative—stands ready to discharge the cruel office of executioner by igniting the pile at the four corners quickly. The whole structure instantly blazes up, and the poor lady is at once enveloped in a sheet of flame. Musical instruments strike up, the Brahmins vociferously chant, the crowd shout “Hari-bal! Hari-bal!” [call on Hari—a name of the god Vishnu,] so that her moans or shrieks are drowned in the infernal din raised around her.
Just at this period of the proceedings is the dreadful moment when woman's courage has so often failed her, and nature has proved too strong for fanaticism. If not at once overwhelmed or suffocated, even though she knows that her attempt to escape will be resisted as a duty by her own friends, who would regard her as an outcast, the victim not unfrequently, when left untied, springs off the burning mass among the spectators and piteously pleads for life. Alas! it is too late; there is no mercy for her now! She is at once struck down by a sword or a billet of wood, and flung back again on the pile, her own son having been known to be one of the most forward to tie her hands and feet for this purpose.
The writer remembers to have heard of a case at Benares, where the poor woman was actually saved by a sudden and singular
thought of the English magistrate, a young gentleman of the name of Harding. On the death of the Brahmin, Mr. Harding was successful in persuading the widow not to burn; but twelve months after she was goaded by her family into the expression of a wish to burn with some relic of her husband preserved for the purpose. The pile was prepared for her at Ramnugger, two miles above Benares, on the other side of the Ganges. She was not well secured on the pile, and as soon as she felt the fire she jumped off and plunged into the river. The people ran after her along the bank; but the current carried her toward Benares, where a police boat put off and took her in. Her oiled garments had kept her afloat. The police took her to the magistrate, but the whole city of Benares was in an uproar at the rescue of a Brahmin's widow from the funeral pile. Thousands surrounded Mr. Harding's house, and the principal men of the city implored him to surrender the woman; among the rest was her own father, who declared that he could not support his daughter, and that she had, therefore, better be burned, as her husband's family would not receive her. The uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who felt all the responsibility upon himself in such a fanatical city as Benares, with a population of three hundred thousand people. He long argued the point with the crowd, urging the time that had elapsed, and the unwillingness of the woman, but in vain; until at length the thought struck him suddenly, and he said that the sacrifice was manifestly unacceptable to their god—that the sacred river itself had rejected her, as she had, without being able to swim, floated down two miles upon its bosom, in the presence of them all; and it was, therefore, clear that she had been rejected! Had she been an acceptable sacrifice, after the fire had touched her the river would have received her! This Hindoo reason satisfied the whole crowd. The father said, after this unanswerable argument, he would receive his daughter. So the poor woman was saved.
The question has been raised, To what extent has suttee prevailed? It is very difficult to reach even an approximate reply to this inquiry. Lord Bentinck's efforts for the abolition of the rite
led to the possession of the only reliable statistics that we have upon the subject. From these the rest must be inferred. The cruel custom has been almost restricted to the affluent and higher orders, as the poor are unable to bear the expense; so that it has been the most exalted, wealthy, and beautiful ladies of the land who have thus been immolated.
From statistics obtained by the magistrates of the district around Calcutta prior to 1829, a published list gives fifty-four cases in the months of May and June, 1812, where sixty-nine women, of ages from sixteen to sixty, were burned with these fifty-four dead bodies; leaving altogether one hundred and eighty-one children, who were, as in all such cases, thus deprived of both parents at once. Another list for the region within thirty miles of Calcutta, gives two hundred and seventy-five known cases for the year 1803. In the Bengal presidency, in the year 1817, there were seven hundred and six cases recorded—nearly two each day for that part of India alone. In ten years, from 1815 to 1825, these lists, for the localities where English magistrates took note of suttees, show that five thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven widows were thus immolated. These are only the more public instances coming to the knowledge of the magistrates within the limited portion of India then directly ruled by England. But what of those of all the rest of the country, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin? And, if they could be numbered and known, then, to obtain the sum total, you have to multiply them by the two thousand five hundred years during which these unwarranted and fiendish cruelties have been practiced on gentle women before the face of heaven in India! The blood of these millions of women has been crying to God from the ground all that time, against the Brahmins of Hindustan.
The origin of suttee, some have supposed, might be found in the cruel jealousy of husbands, reaching thus beyond the grave; while others refer it to the tradition that it was adopted as an expedient for the preservation of men's lives. Doctor Chever, in his recent work on Indian Medical Jurisprudence, traces the custom to this origin. He brings forward authorities to show that the Brahmins
themselves invented the law as a means of self-protection against their wives. Before its introduction, the wives were in the habit of avenging themselves on their husbands for neglect and cruelty by mixing poison with their food; and at last things came to such a height that the least matrimonial quarrel resulted in the husband's death. An easier remedy for the evil might have been found in compelling the wife to eat out of the same dish as the husband, but this would have involved too wide a departure from the customs of society; and it must be admitted that there is a peculiar refinement of cruelty in the expedient adopted, which would commend itself to the Asiatic mind. The Brahmins thus gave the matron an interest in the preservation of her lord's life, by decreeing that her ashes should mingle with his. If this were its origin, then the deepest insult was added to the most cruel wrong of which woman can be made the victim, when thus surrendered to a false religion, and into the hands of men as oppressive as their faith.
The motives which have perpetuated the rite are more easily found. So far as the priestly Brahmin is concerned, he has a direct pecuniary interest in the existence and increase of the cruel custom. Brahmins officiating at suttees are always well rewarded, both by fees and gifts; and quarrels among themselves about their earnings are no novelty. The family of the immolated woman are taught that to them belong the invisible and spiritual blessings of the suttee—that this doomed widow's agonies are to expiate the foulest sins of them and of her husband, and lift them all to heavenly bliss. The reader will remember the Puranas already quoted, where this is expressly taught. Hence the eagerness with which her consent to become a suttee is sought, and the barbarity which helps on, and even enforces, her destruction when her resolution has failed. The motives of the poor lady herself are still more manifest. There is, first of all, her obedience to her religious obligations. Her faith, like that of the Romanist, must be an unquestioning faith. Woman in India seems never to have thought of looking behind this Brahminical teaching, and demanding a “Thus saith the Lord” for the peculiar woes to which she submits.
Then there is the appeal to her love as well as her duty. She is told, and her uninstructed soul believes the lie, that her husband needs the attendance and care in the other world which she lavished upon him here; nay, more, that he is actually suffering for want of it. Her terrified imagination is appealed to, and he is pictured in a fearful intermediate hell—the counterpart of the Romish doctrine of Purgatory—out of which her merits alone can lift him; and her loving heart urges her to the great effort, which is to save and bless him, and herself with him. Again, there is the motive of fame. By it she can demonstrate the perfection of her conjugal devotion; she rises from obscurity, before her friends and the world, to the eminence of a heroine, a saint, a savior; she avoids a life of insult and misery, and the splendid monument on the spot where she suffers will keep her name and memory before her people in future ages.
I was intimate with a family in India, the head of which, a physician, gave the following description of a suttee at which he was actually present. It was in the city of Lahore, in June 1839, and was witnessed by this gentleman and some other Europeans. The occasion was the burning of the body of the Maharajah Runjeet Singh—he who was commonly called the “Lion of the Punjab,” and who was the last Oriental sovereign that wore the great Koh-i-noor diamond. (The father of the Prince represented on page 47.) On account of his special orders, the funeral pile was composed of an unusual quantity of the precious sandal-wood. It was also made large enough for his eleven wives to burn with his body. Early in the morning, an immense concourse attending to witness the ceremony, the body of the Maharajah, decorated and wrapped in Cashmere shawls, was brought out from the palace and the procession formed, the four Ranees (Queens) in order, unvailed, sitting in open palanquins, followed by the seven other wives on foot, barefooted—some of them, the doctor declared, being not more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Then came the court, the officials, the military, and the crowd. The ceremonies performed, the body was lifted to the top of the great pile; then the four Ranees ascended
in the order of their rank, seating themselves at the head; the other seven placed themselves around the feet. The chief widow, now sitting on the funeral pile, apparently as calm as any American mother on her dying bed, called to her Khuruk Singh, the son, and Dhian Singh, the favorite minister, of the Maharajah, and, placing the dead king's hand first in the hand of the royal heir, and then in the hand of the powerful minister, made them swear to be mutually faithful. They then retired, and a strong, thick mat of reeds was placed around and over the ladies, and oil plentifully poured upon it. There they cowered in silent expectation of the fatal moment The brand was applied quickly, and the roaring flames leaped up and enveloped them, and in fifteen minutes nothing remained of the eleven beautiful women but a heap of bones and ashes. Preparation was now made to convey part of their remains to the Ganges. Some of the bones and ashes of each were placed in urns; these were put in separate palanquins richly decorated, and attended with the same pomp and splendor as if the Maharajah and his wives were still alive. Surrounded by guards and attendants, and accompanied by costly presents, such as shawls, decorated elephants and horses, with money, etc., for the Brahmins, the procession passed through the Delhi gate, amid the last royal salute from the fort and ramparts of the city. Here the minister and chiefs returned, leaving the remains and presents to proceed under the care of the military. The Brahmins received the whole on its arrival at the Ganges. The bones and ashes they put into the river, the valuables they divided among themselves, and the guard returned. The whole ceremony was one of the most extravagant ever seen in India, and must, Dr. Honiberger thinks, have cost several millions of rupees.
That the subject maybe fully understood, I will add two cases of suttee where the victims were more than usually willing, and exhibited a resolution that will surprise the reader. The first is described by an intelligent young native, who was the nephew of the lady burned. He gives the facts from his Hindoo stand-point, yet with much simplicity and candor.
He says: “Fearing intervention from the British authorities, it was decided that this solemn rite, contrary to the usual practice, should be performed at a distance from the river-side. The margin of the consecrated tank was selected for the purpose. After ceremonies of purification had been performed upon the spot, strong stakes of bamboo were driven into the ground, inclosing an oblong space about seven feet in length and six in breadth. Within this inclosure the pile was built of straw, boughs, and logs of wood; upon the top a small arbor was constructed of wreathed bamboos, and this was hung with flowers within and without. About an hour after the sun had risen, prayers and ablutions having been carefully performed by all, more especially by the Brahmins and Lall Radha, the widow, who was also otherwise purified and fitted for the sacrifice, the corpse of the husband was brought from the house, attended by the administering Brahmins, and surrounded by the silent and weeping friends and relations of the family. Immediately following the corpse came Lall Radha, enveloped in a scarlet vail, which completely hid her beautiful form from view. When the body was placed upon the pile, the feet being toward the west, the Brahmins took the vail from Lall Radha, and, for the first time, the glaring multitude were suffered to gaze upon that lovely face and form; but the holy woman was too deeply engaged in solemn prayer and converse with Brahma to be sensible of their presence, or of the murmur of admiration that ran through the crowd. Then, turning with a steady look and solemn demeanor to her relations, she took from her person, one by one, all her ornaments, and distributed them as tokens of her love. One jewel only she retained, the tali, or amulet, placed around her neck by her deceased husband on the nuptial day; this she silently pressed to her lips. Then, separately embracing each of her female relatives, and bestowing a farewell look upon the rest, she unbound her hair, which flowed in thick and shining ringlets almost to her feet, gave her right hand to the principal Brahmin, who led her with ceremony around the pile, and then stopped, with her face toward it, on the side where she was to ascend. Having mounted two or three
steps, the beautiful woman stood still, and, pressing both her hands upon the cold feet of her lifeless husband, she raised them to her forehead, in token of cheerful submission; she then ascended and crept within the little arbor, seating herself at the head of her lord, her right hand resting upon his head. The torch was placed in my hand, and, overwhelmed with commingled emotions, I fired the pile. Smoke and flame in an instant enveloped the scene, and amid the deafening shouts of the multitude, I sank senseless upon the earth. I was quickly restored to consciousness, but already the devouring element had reduced the funeral pile to a heap of charred and smoldering timber. The Brahmins strewed the ashes around, and with a trembling hand I assisted my father to gather the blackened bones of my beloved uncle and aunt, when, having placed them in an earthen vessel, we carried them to the Ganges, and with prayer and reverence committed them to the sacred stream.”
The other, and the most determined instance of suttee, in view of her age, etc., that is on record, is described by an English gentleman who was governor of that part of the country, and in whose presence it took place. He says: “On receiving charge of the District of Jubbulpore in 1828, I issued a proclamation prohibiting any one from assisting in suttee. On Tuesday, November 24, 1829, I had an application from the heads of the most respectable family of Brahmins in the place to suffer an old lady, aged sixty-five years, to burn herself with the body of her husband, Omed Sing Opuddea, who had died that morning. I threatened to enforce my order and punish severely any man who assisted, and placed a police guard to see that no one did so. She remained sitting by the edge of the river with the body, without eating or drinking. The next day the body of her husband was burned to ashes in a small pit, about eight feet square and four deep, before thousands of people who had assembled to see the suttee. All strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed no prospects of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family, who, according to the rules of their faith, dared not touch food till she had
burned herself, or declared herself willing to return to them. Her sons and grandsons and some other relatives remained with her, urging her to desist; the rest surrounded my house, urging me to allow her to burn. She remained sitting upon a bare rock in the bed of the Nerbudda, refusing any subsistence, and exposed to the intense heat of the sun by day, and the cold of the night, with only a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut off all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on the dhujja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by which she became dead in law, and forever excluded from caste. Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her family. Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but all their entreaties were unavailing. I became satisfied that she would starve herself to death if not allowed to burn, by which her family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I rendered liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for no prohibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the formal sanction of the Government. Early on Saturday morning I rode out ten miles to the spot, and found the poor old widow still sitting with the dhujja around her head. She talked very collectedly, telling me that ‘she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and she would patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink.’ Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda River, she said calmly, ‘My soul has been for five days with my husband's near that sun; nothing but my earthly frame is left, and this I know you will in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or your usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman.’ I replied, ‘Indeed it is not; my object and duty is to save and preserve them, and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose, to urge you to live and keep your family from being thought your murderers.’ She said, ‘I am not afraid of their ever being so thought; they have all, like good children, done every
thing in their power to induce me to live among them, and if I had done so, I know they would have loved me and honored me, but my duties to them have now ceased. Our intercourse and communion here end. I go to attend my husband, Omed Sing Opuddea, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three times mixed.’
“This was the first time in her long life that she had ever pronounced the name of her husband; for in India no woman, high or low, pronounces her husband's name. She would consider it disrespectful toward him to do so. When the old lady named her husband, as she did with strong emphasis, and in a very deliberate manner, every one present was satisfied she had resolved to die. Again looking at the sun, she said with a tone and countenance that affected me a good deal, ‘I see them together under the bridal canopy!’ alluding to the ceremonies of marriage; and I am satisfied that she at that moment really believed that she saw her own spirit and that of her husband under the bridal canopy in paradise, and equally believed that she had been, in three previous births, three times married to him on earth, and as often had died with him, and must repeat it now again. I asked the old lady when she had first resolved to become a suttee? She told me that about thirteen years before, while bathing near the spot where she then sat, the resolution had fixed itself in her mind, as she looked at the splendid temples on the bank of the river erected by the different branches of the family, over the ashes of her female relatives, who had at different times become suttees. Two were over her aunts, and another over her husband's mother. They were very beautiful buildings, erected at great cost. She said she had never mentioned her resolution to any one, till she called out Suth! suth! suth! when her husband breathed his last, with his head in her lap, on the bank of the Nerbudda, to which he had been taken, when no hopes remained of his surviving the fever of which he died.
“I tried to work upon her pride and her fears—told her that it was probable that the rent-free lands, by which her family had
been so long supported, might be resumed by the Government, as a mark of displeasure against the children for not dissuading her from the sacrifice; that the temples over her ancestors on the bank might be leveled with the ground, in order to prevent their operating to induce others to make similar sacrifices; and, lastly, that not a single brick or stone should ever mark the place where she burned, if she persisted in her resolution; but that, if she consented to live, a splendid habitation should be built for her among these temples; a handsome provision assigned for her support out of these rent-free lands; her children should daily visit her, and I should frequently do the same. She smiled, held out her arm, and said: ‘My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed, and I have nothing left but a little earth that I wish to mix with the ashes of my husband. I shall suffer nothing in burning; if you wish proof, order some fire, and you will see this arm consumed without giving me any pain.’
“Satisfied that it would be unavailing to save her life, I sent for all the principal members of her family, and consented that she should be suffered to burn herself if they would enter into engagements that no other member of their family should ever do the same. This they all agreed to; and the papers having been drawn out in due form, about mid-day I sent down notice to the old lady, who seemed extremely pleased and thankful. The ceremonies of bathing were gone through with, the wood and other materials for a strong fire collected and put into the pit. She then rose up, and, with one arm on the shoulder of her eldest son, and the other on her nephew, she approached the fire. I had sentries placed all around, and no one else was allowed to go within five paces of it. As she rose up fire was set to the pile, and it was instantly in a blaze. The distance was about one hundred and fifty yards. She came on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once, and, casting her eyes upward, said: ‘Why have they kept me five days from thee, my husband?’ On reaching the sentries her supporters stopped; she advanced, walked once round the pit, paused, and, while muttering a prayer, threw some flowers into the fire. She
then walked deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the center of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst, as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed, without uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony!”
In another part of the country a most affecting instance occurred. A young princess named Mutcha Bae lost first her son and then her husband. She resolved upon being burned with the corpse of the latter, and met the remonstrance of her own mother, the excellent Alia Bae, who begged that she might not be left thus alone and desolate in the world, by saying, “You are old, mother, and a few years will terminate your pious life. My husband and my only child are gone, and when you follow, life, I feel, will be insupportable, and the opportunity of closing it with honor will then have passed.” Nothing could alter her purpose; and the royal mother, finding she could not prevail on her child to consent to live, resolved to witness her beloved daughter's suttee. She joined the cruel procession and stood close to the pile: two Brahmins held her by the arms. She bore it all till the flames rose round her beautiful child, when she lost all her self-control; she shrieked with anguish, while the crowd shouted; and her hands, which she could not liberate, she actually gnawed in agony. By great effort she so far regained her self-possession as, after the bodies were consumed, to join in the ceremony of bathing in the Nerbudda. Then she retired to her palace, and for three days she fasted in her deep grief, never uttering a word. She subsequently sought relief in erecting a beautiful monument to the memory of the dear departed. Such monuments, the tombs of suttees, varying in size and form, yet generally pyramidal, are seen along the banks of the different sacred rivers.
At length this terrible crime, which the edicts and energy of such emperors as Akbar and Aurungzebe could not restrain, trembled before the cross of Christ. The Protestant missionary entered India, and stood up to “plead for the widow.” Before the blessed Name which he invoked, the demon of suttee feared and fled from British India. What Veda, and Shaster, and Menu,
Mohammedan Emperor and European governor, all failed to prevent or terminate, in the long experience of twenty-five centuries, was effected by the beneficent religion of Him who, in every age and in every land, has proved himself to be woman's greatest and truest friend.
The honored man who signed the prohibitory edict which ended this awful crime was Lord William Bentinck. He bore unappalled the brunt of native and European opposition. The highest English functionaries expressed their forebodings of danger from its forcible suppression, and the Brahmins protested and defended it, as a religious rite that must not be meddled with. Amid this storm of opposition and fears, and sustained by the sympathy and prayers of the missionaries and other good men, his Lordship, on the 4th of December, 1829, signed the act which ended this outrage on human nature and the laws of God. Widow-burning prevails still, to some extent, in those provinces of India not under the direct government of England. Two notable cases were recorded while I was in India—one in March, 1858, in the city of Aurungabad, in the dominions of the Nizam, and the other in August, 1859, at Koonghur. But the flag of Britain no longer waves over a suttee, and the governors are doing what they can to induce the native Princes to complete its suppression.
Lord Bentinck visited Behrole in 1832, in company with General Sleeman, and, pointing to some magnificent tombs of suttees, asked what they were. When told, he remained silent; but he must have felt at the moment the proud consciousness of the debt of gratitude which India and India's daughters owe to the statesman who had the Christian courage to put a stop to the great evil in spite of the fearful obstacles that opposed him.
O, Christian women of America! amid your happy homes, and the exalted privileges and honor with which the Cross has surrounded you, remember your sisters who are still in the bonds of this cruel idolatry! Urge on and extend the missions that are toiling there, until they penetrate to the very last of “the dark places” of India, where “the habitations of cruelty” still erect the suttee; and there
let them, in Jesus's name, “relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow.”
Meanwhile, let us bless God for that wonderful victory of Christian civilization in 1857-58 over Brahminical rebels, who, had they triumphed, would most surely have rekindled the fires in which, as in former days, the daughters of India would again have had to mount their chariots of flame, to be borne, not to their Vedic heaven, but before the tribunal of Him who has forbidden self-murder, because he “will have mercy and not sacrifice,” and who declares to the deluded suttee, as to the wayward sinner, “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.”
In all lands, but especially in a country like India, with the millions utterly uneducated, and debased in conscience and morals, there are “dangerous classes,” who live by fraud and violence, and who are ever ready for any opportunity of plunder and crime that may occur.
But in India there exists what is not found elsewhere on earth, a class of men whose trade is blood, who follow murder as a profession, and even perform it as a religious duty! The Thugs for centuries have
“Laughed at human nature and compassion.”
Their organization was complete; they were bound to each other by oaths and engagements as relentless as death and as heartless as hell. Their accessions were from the worst of all classes; the perfection of villainy became a Thug.
A Group of Thugs. From a Photograph.
I present here seven members of this infernal association, whom I have seen in India. Every man of the group is a murderer, and a murderer, not by the heat of passion, or revenge, or the stimulus of strong drink, but a cool, sober, unexcited trader in human life, whose conscience knows no remorse, because he regards himself as rendering in the act the highest service to his chosen deity!
One day, at Agra, I had the opportunity of seeing these monsters. The English Government have a special police and staff—one of the most perfect detective systems in the world—for the capture of these wretches. At the head of this “Thuggee
Department” was Colonel Williams—he whom Government employed to take the evidence of the Cawnpore Massacre. A number of ladies, among whom was Mrs. Havelock, the General's sister-in-law, expressed a desire to visit the Taj that afternoon. The courteous Colonel offered to escort us, and on our return casually remarked, as we crossed the road from the Taj, “Come, and I will show you something else.” So he turned down an ominous-looking portal, and we followed him through the guarded gate into a square with high walls, and thence by a gloomy passage into another inclosed court, where were a group of some of the most awful-looking men that I had ever seen. The Colonel coolly remarked, “These are some of my pets.” In a moment we realized where we were standing, three gentlemen and a party of ladies unguarded, in the very presence of nearly two hundred Thugs! It made one's flesh creep. The feeling was dreadful, and the situation was not at all relieved, when, in retiring again through the long, dark passage, a number of these wretches came clanking close after us, to plead in the outer court for some concession from the Colonel. The ladies of the party could hardly forgive our gallant escort for the trick he played upon them in leading them into such a presence, and that, too, after coming out of the Taj. It seemed like leaving paradise and descending into hell among those who, in chains and darkness, await the judgment of the great day!
The Colonel permitted a photograph to be taken of some of the most notorious of his collection. They were unshackled, and brought into the parlor of the prison for the purpose. He pointed out one man (the one in front, on the left hand in the picture) who had confessed to having committed thirty murders, and who had given him the details of each! And yet every one of these heartless villains were let loose upon society when the Sepoys rose, and since the suppression of the Rebellion the Thuggee Department has had a busy time in ferreting them out and recapturing them.
Sixty years ago these men plied their dreadful trade almost unmolested. The native Governments could not cope with them.
They infested the public roads disguised as merchants, travelers, and Fakirs, but always in gangs, each man knowing his part of the service when the moment came for action.
If any thing further were possible to add a more damning character to these deeds of blood it is found in the fact that Hindoo Thuggeeism has dared to add a divine acquiescence to these practices; for their abominable creed has furnished a suitable patron to accept and delight in the groans and dying agonies of their wretched victims.
The consort of Shiva—the third member of the Hindoo Trimurti—the female Moloch, to whose horrid appetite for blood, and hunger for the human lives on which she is represented as feeding, with a desire that is insatiate, is the being to appease and gratify whom the benighted mothers of India have for ages sacrificed their daughters' lives, and her adorers, these Thugs, have strangled the thousands whom they have immolated. Her name is Kalee. She is the most popular deity of Bengal—the etymology of the name of the metropolis of India being derived from her designation and shrine—Kalee, and Ghat, a place of ablution—Kalee's-ghat—hence Calcutta.
Of this abominable idol the Kalika Purana declares, in describing her appetite for blood and carnage: “If a devotee should scorch some member of his body by applying a burning lamp, the act would be very acceptable to the goddess; if he should draw some of his blood and present it, it would be still more delectable; if he should cut off some portion of his own flesh and present it as a burnt-offering, that would be most grateful of all. But if the worshiper should present her a whole burnt-offering, it would prove acceptable to her in proportion to the supposed importance of the animated beings thus immolated—that, for instance, by the blood of fishes or tortoises, the goddess is gratified for a whole month after; a crocodile's blood will please her three months; that of certain wild animals nine months; a guana's, a year; an antelope's, twelve years; a rhinoceros's, or tiger's blood, for a hundred years; but the blood of a lion, or a man, will delight her appetite for a
thousand years! while by the blood of three men, slain in sacrifice, she is pleased a hundred thousand years!”
This is the patroness of these Thugs, these professional murderers, who, when their victim is in the agonies of strangulation beneath their knees, on the ground, are engaging in acts of prayer—offering to Kalee the life that is passing away—and to this abomination, thus said to feed on the human soul, have the mothers of India for ages immolated their daughters!
So popular is she and her worship, that even the English Government cannot keep the public offices open during the term of the “Durga-Poojah” holy days, from the first to the thirteenth of October, for all Calcutta then runs mad upon this idolatry. I have seen her image, larger than the human form, painted blue, with her tongue represented as dripping with gore upon her chin, her bosom covered with a necklace of human skulls, and her many arms each bearing a murderous weapon, carried in proud procession through the streets of Calcutta during those holidays, accompanied by bands of music and tens of thousands of frantic followers.
Of this teaching and worship Thuggeeism was the natural result, combining rapine with religion, the service of their goddess with love of plunder—the life for her, the booty for themselves. It raised ruffianism to the dignity of a fulfillment of duty, and swelled the numbers of these religious murderers to a fearful height, till the public thoroughfares were haunted by these wretches, as well as by the brigands and plunderers who imitated them in their lesser guilt. It was on the discovery of thirty dead bodies in different wells of the Doab, (when these assassins had grown to be so reckless in their work that they were ceasing to act with their usual caution in burying and concealing the bodies of their victims,) that Thuggeeism was first brought to the knowledge of the English Government in 1810; and so determined were the measures taken by them for its suppression, and so faithfully have they since been followed up, that the Thug had to disappear from the roads of British India, and confine his limited depredations within the
bounds of native States, where English law cannot penetrate. Hundreds of them were ferreted out, and are now confined for life within the walls of safe jails. The Government presses upon the rulers of native States the necessity of imitating English example in this regard. But, while willing to follow the friendly advice of the paramount power, they have not yet the nerve and energy of the Anglo-Saxon, to accomplish its complete extirpation.
Even as late as the days of Bishop Heber (1825) the common people went to market armed with swords and shields and spears and matchlocks. Just as I have seen the plowman in Oude, at the time of the annexation, with his sword by his side and his friends within view—such was the public apprehension of the lawless and violent, by whom life and property might at any moment be assailed. What a change has the presence of the English magistrate made all over the land, within twenty-five years! Very justly does a native writer remark: “The trader and traveler now pass along the loneliest highway without losing a pin. If a corpse were now discovered in a well, or found by the side of a jungle, it would cause a general uproar in the community, and create a greater sensation than the irruption of a Mahratta horde. The wicked have been weaned from their life of rapine, and taught to subordinate themselves to the authorities of society and the State.”
Over and above all these elements of wrath and hatred might be enumerated the “Budmashes,” “Dacoits,” “Goojurs,” and criminal classes generally, with all the disaffected elements of every kind, who only needed the sanction of their Brahmins and Fakirs, and the leading of the Sepoys, to be ready for every evil work against law, reform, and government. The reader, from these conditions of society, can easily divine for himself the causes and motives of the great Sepoy Rebellion. He can see what classes, and how many, regarded it with terror and detestation, and what classes reveled in its developments, and by what purposes they were actuated.
Can any just and adequate interpretation be put upon this terrible conflict, that does not acknowledge that its life and soul was the
religious question? The Rebellion was Heathenism—vile, selfish, and cruel—trembling for its very existence and goaded to retaliation, rising up in its hour of opportunity against the Christian civilization, whose increasing reforms and enlightenment manifestly knew no limit save the overthrow of every wrong, and the removal of every error, in India. It was the irrepressible and inevitable conflict of light with darkness; it was the Christian knowledge and saving faith of the nineteenth century mightily wrestling with venerable ignorance and licentious idolatry for the possession of the bright Land of the Veda, and for perpetual supremacy over its 200,000,000 of men! The prize and the agony for its possession were correspondent; and God defended the right.
III. Yes; for God and his providence must be acknowledged here as we search for the causes of this great conflict. On how many of its facts, as well as its precious results, is written, “This is the finger of God!” The permissive providence which allowed this terrible calamity to fall upon the English in India, was, even by their own subsequent, contrite acknowledgment, only what their sins deserved. It is consistent with all that we know of the divine government to suppose that the Almighty must have taken cognizance of their compromises of his truth, of their patronage of idolatry, of their repression of his Christianity, so as to keep it away from a people who needed it so much. He knew that if such a course was to continue unchecked India could not be saved for long centuries to come. He was resolved that caste and idolatry must be overthrown; and if Englishmen dared to prop up the God-dishonoring systems, they must feel the blow which dashed those systems to pieces.
I need not enumerate their national sins in India—they have done so themselves. As I write, the pamphlets are before me which contain their petitions to their Queen and Parliament, signed by multitudes of the best men of Britain, acknowledging before God and the world, in the hour of their national agony, how unworthy and responsible they felt themselves to be for the sins and shortcomings of their rule in India, and how earnestly
they pleaded with their Government to reform what was wrong in the administration of India, and act henceforth on Christian principles in the rule of that land. Here is what these people said in 1857 in their Memorial to Parliament:
“By professing to be neutral among the various religions of its Indian subjects, the Government has in effect denied the truth, and given a great moral advantage to those foolish, wicked, and degrading systems to which the great bulk of the people adhere. Nor has the advantage thus given been merely moral. Idolatry has formerly been, and to some extent still is, publicly patronized and subsidized. Its immodest and cruel rites have been honored with the attendance of Government officers, and paid for from funds under Government control. The system of Caste, which, in every part of it, contradicts and counteracts the Christian religion, has been recognized in Government arrangements for the administration of justice, as well as in the organization of the army, and selfish humanity and contempt of their fellow-men and subjects, have thus received the highest official sanction. The Government has discouraged the teaching of the Christian religion to certain classes of its subjects, and made the profession of it, in a sense, penal, by placing some who have been turned from idols to serve the living and true God under disabilities to which they were not, before their conversion, liable. And, while allowing the Koran and the Shaster to be freely used, it has forbidden the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, or even the answering of spontaneous inquiries respecting their contents, during school hours, in the educational institutions which it supports. In all these instances the Indian Government, though professing neutrality in matters of religion, has practically countenanced and favored falsehood and wickedness of the most flagitious kind.”
They here quote dispatches of the East India Company, who had ruled India for a hundred years, in proof of the foregoing statements, and also refer to facts well known in India—such as Lord Clive personally attending a heathen festival at Conjeveram, and presenting an ornament to the idol worth 1,050 pagodas, ($1,850;) Lord
Auckland, another Governor General, offering 2,000 rupees ($1,000) at the Muttra shrine, and being highly praised in a native newspaper for his piety! Lord Ellenborough, in 1842, ordering the gates of the Temple of Somnath (carried off by a Mohammedan conqueror eight hundred years ago) to be carried back hundreds of miles, with military honors, and his issuing a proclamation, announcing the heathenish act, “to all the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India.” They also refer to the conduct of Lord Dalhousie, later still, paying reverence to an idol, by changing his dress on entering the heathen temple of Umritsur, and making an offering to it of 5,000 rupees, ($2,500.) These things were done by Indian Viceroys, while Government servants were required to collect pilgrims' tax, administer the estates of idol temples, and pay allowances to officials connected with heathen shrines; and even military officers had to parade troops and present arms in honor of idol processions!
These things were so. The writer has seen (and could give the name of the place, and of the commanding officer responsible) British cannon loaned, and ammunition supplied, to fire a salute in honor of a heathen idol, and that on the holy Sabbath day! Christian Englishmen in India groaned over these acts, officers in the army threw up their commissions sooner than obey such orders, and men in high positions protested against them as sins of the deepest dye, fearing that God would “visit for these things,” and appealed to the British public to stop the madness of the East India Company and their servants in India. When I entered India there was not over one native Christian in Government employ in all the North-west Provinces. While that very year the only Sepoy who, up to that time, had ever become a Christian (save one, mentioned by Heber, who was also dismissed) was, by order of the Governor-General, removed from the army because he had become a Christian, and the commanding officer and the civil judge who attended at the baptism were reproved by his Excellency for doing so! His object, in this mistaken policy, was to prevent the discussion and prejudice which would result, and convince the Sepoy
army how fully his administration would sustain the doctrine of “neutrality.” But what must Almighty God have thought of such conduct, and that, too, on the part of men who went to Church on Sunday, and professed to be members of a State Establishment of Christianity!
The patience of Him who will “not give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images,” was about exhausted with that proud company and their policy, and the Parliament of England and its Christian people were already preparing the overthrow of both, and deliberately making up their minds to the introduction of a more Christian and manly administration of Indian affairs. The petitioners end their Memorial, earnestly pleading that these Government sins should cease, and India be henceforth ruled in a way more worthy of the duty which Christian England owes to that people.
Their confession and humiliation were candid and sincere, and in the hour of their deep distress God was entreated for the land. Defeat was soon after turned to victory. He saved them from among the heathen. God came to their aid, not in the infidel, Bonapartist sense, in which He is said to be “on the side of the strongest battalions,” for here he clearly was on the side of the weaker, and gave the victory to the “few” instead of the “many.”
No Government ever committed a greater mistake than the East India Company did when it adopted this “neutrality" policy. The result was, it laid itself open to the charge of underhand designs for the overthrow of the popular faith—for the people could not imagine a Government without a religion—and it was consequently disbelieved and distrusted, while the Christian missionaries, who boldly and openly denounced idolatry, and invited the people kindly and candidly to embrace Christianity, were understood, and even trusted, by the masses. So marked was this fact, that in the panic at Benares, and when the vanguard of Havelock's troops were passing through, and extra supplies were urgently required, the Government officials could not induce the villagers around to bring them in; a very serious condition of things was
arising. In the emergency a Christian missionary, Mr. Leupolt, could do what the commissariat officers failed to effect. He went out among the villagers—heathens, to whom he had often preached on the guilt and danger of their idolatry—and told them what the Government needed. The people asked him if he would give his word that they should be justly treated if they furnished what was needed? He said he would. Without more ado they loaded their hackeries, and accompanied him to the city, and furnished all that was required. This I know to be a fact. A similar instance is on record in the experience of Missionary Swartz in the south of India.
Honesty is the best policy. If the India Government had acted on it they would not have exposed themselves to the retort of Rajah Janaryan, of Benares, a liberal and wealthy friend of native education, who, when a Christian physician, who had raised him up from a severe illness, urged the claims of the Gospel upon his mind, the Rajah at first seemed disposed to yield; but presently, on reflection, he stifled his convictions by the remark, “Sir, had the Christian religion been true, the Company Bahadur [the Government] which has, in other respects, benefited my country, would not have withheld from at least commending this religion to our notice!”
Sir John Lawrence was Governor of the Punjab when the Rebellion broke out; the elements around him were as energetic, and some of them as dangerous, as any in India. He had been superior to the policy of his masters, and would insist on favoring Missionaries and the Bible in the schools. What was the result of this open and candid course, even in the hour when all around them had fallen? The missionaries waited upon him to say that, if their public preaching in the streets of Lahore was any embarrassment in the condition of the country, they were ready to pause for a season, if he thought it requisite to do so. His prompt reply, which will be a lasting honor to him, was, “No, gentlemen; prosecute your preaching and missionary enterprises just as usual. Christian things, done in a Christian way, will never alienate the heathen.” They acted on his advice, and did not preach a sermon
the less for the Rebellion. Though all India around them had “gone,” their Punjab stood firm, and even supplied the men and means for sustaining the siege of Delhi, till it fell, and the Government was fully restored. The East India Company was abolished, amid the contempt of all good men, and even of the candid heathen; while this very man, Sir John Lawrence, was chosen by the Queen to be Viceroy of India, to introduce that better and more Christian condition of things which prevails there to-day! What an illustration of the promise, “Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed!”
At the close of September the insurrection between Mooltan and Ferozepore suddenly stopped all mails, and we were left for a time without any further news. Just then our implacable foe, Khan Bahadur, made his last fierce effort for our destruction. For a few days our anxiety was terrible. The force at Bareilly had been augmented by the arrival there of the Nana Sahib, and their rage had risen with the spirit and character of their visitor, and the followers he brought to their aid. Of course he advised our destruction, and it was attempted by the largest force hitherto sent against us, consisting, it was said, of over one thousand cavalry and four thousand infantry. They came to the Huldwanee side of our position for their attack, but our trust was still in the “God of battles;” so there we stood, calmly awaiting the result. Few as we were, we knew that there was succor, in which “they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” (2 Kings vi.)
The help of Providence is not less certain or near because it is invisible. It was “a day of trouble, and of rebuke and blasphemy.” This modern Sennacherib had come up to cut off “the remnant that are left,” full of rage at Christ and his people. His blasphemies against the Lord's Anointed doubtless exceeded in bitterness the reproaches of the Assyrian king, and with similar pride and confidence he said, “With my multitude I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and I will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof, and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into
the forest of his Carmel.” (2 Kings xviii, 19.) He would, we knew, if God allowed him, but not otherwise. Yet this haughty spirit was the precursor of his own destruction.
Of course he kept us in distress and excitement, and this was intensified by the cutting off of our mails, so that we could get no information. For a few days we could but fear the worst. How we longed for the news of the fall of Delhi, and for the relief that would come when that was accomplished! But God was working out our salvation in his own way, and in the height of this very emergency one of his most manifest interpositions was developed. A few days after their arrival this powerful force, by some unaccountable influence, suddenly decamped, without doing us the smallest injury. Our spies brought us word that every one of them had fled, and, on some of us going down, we found that they had evidently left, not merely in a hurry, but in a panic, for the heel ropes of the cavalry horses, instead of being untied and taken with them, were all found cut and left fast to the stakes! The only way we could account for it was a report which was said to have reached them that we were going down to surprise them with immensely augmented numbers. Be this as it may, they left suddenly and went back to Bareilly.
The old Nawab was outrageous at their return, and insisted upon a renewal of the effort; but a terror from God seemed to have fallen upon them, and this was immediately followed by the news, so dreadful to them, of the capture of Delhi by the English troops, spreading consternation through their ranks. They received that information some days before we did; but at length it came to us at the close of September.
I was sitting that afternoon, writing in a very pensive mood, when the sudden roar of a cannon, from the little fort near our cottage, brought me to my feet, and a brilliant hope flashed across my heart. I snatched my hat and ran up the hill, while peal after peal thundered out, making the grand Himalayas reverberate. At last I gained the summit, and stood till I counted the “royal” twenty-one. I needed no one to tell me what it meant. Our
commanding officer had just received the message which announced that Delhi had fallen!
I stood there, wrapt in thoughts never to be forgotten, and a luxury of feeling flowed through my heart, which will make that moment a bright spot in my life and recollection forever.
How often before had the thunder of those British cannon proved the inlet of salvation to the oppressed and persecuted! I was not the first American missionary to whom they had announced “glad tidings of great joy.” I thought of Judson and his heroic wife, of Wade and Hough, on whose ears, in their melancholy captivity, those cheerful peals proclaimed approaching liberty.
None but those who, like ourselves, have been practically captive for months, not knowing but that any day our doom might be sealed by the hand of violence, can imagine how every gun seemed to ring the knell of the Moslem city and power, while it proclaimed liberty to the Christian and the missionary of the cross—none but those so situated can appreciate the luxury of an hour like that.
It was impossible, as I returned down the hill, to repress the tears that so freely flowed; yet they were caused by no craven love of life, nor coward fear of death. I had passed through sufficient ordeals to know “in whom I had believed.” No, my tears flowed, but they were for India's own sake; shed in joyful hope and largeness of heart, that God was once more setting free those Christian agencies which alone could redeem “her from her sins” and sufferings, and which would lead her to the possession of those untold mercies that even she shall yet enjoy in common with all Christian nations.
If time is to be measured by the magnitude of events that transpire within any given space, how long and how much we seemed to have lived during those past five months!
The capture of Delhi is too well known to the reader to require any thing more than mere references in these pages. It was the event on which our fate, and the fate of British India, seemed to hang during those long months; and its capture by a mere handful
of troops was one of the marvels of those stirring times. At length we breathed freely, and the hope of deliverance, rose brightly upon our horizon. The scattered Sepoy host had to be followed up through all parts of India, Rohilcund being left until the last. Lucknow could not be reoccupied till March of the following year, (1858,) and it was not till May the 5th that Bareilly was captured, and our way opened to return there.
We were thus free to go out on the north-west side, while we were to be shut up on the south-east for eight months more, so we concluded to leave for the plains, after most of our number had already gone. To remain longer where we were seemed out of the question. No money could reach us; I had exhausted every source, and to borrow any more was impracticable.
Ere the snow closed the road over the Himalayas for the winter, we concluded it was best for us also to go. At Meerut we could obtain the means required, and should also be on the “grand trunk road,” and, after the fall of Futtyghur could, if necessary, join the brethren expected at Calcutta, and decide with them what was best to be done for the present. We could also obtain requisites for the mission and for ourselves, and be ready to return with our brethren and sisters as soon as our field was again open.
Before starting, we had the joy of receiving a letter from Brothers Pierce and Humphrey, dated Calcutta, September 30, with the glad news of their safe arrival there in good health. They wrote in their letter: “We knew nothing of the fearful scenes transpiring in India until our pilot came on board on the morning of the 19th instant, bringing files of the latest papers. After we had recovered ourselves a little from the first blow, we turned to the account of the Bareilly tragedy. I read it aloud, trembling almost to read from line to line. Twenty-nine out of eighty-four Europeans escaped, and your name unmentioned! Our worst fears were excited. We saw, however, that only official names were given; but, after resolving the matter, could encourage ourselves but little to hope for your safety. We remained in this state of intense suspense until four P. M. on Monday, the 21st, when we
cast anchor at Calcutta. I hastened on shore, called on Mr. Stewart, and learned the joyful tidings of your escape to Nynee Tal. Our interest was all concentrated in the question, ‘Are Brother Butler and family safe?’ When we learned this, our gratitude and gladness were such that we scarcely thought, for the time, of your losses and sufferings: it seemed enough that you were saved. ‘O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!’ I returned to the ship; then were we glad, thanked God, and took courage.”
It seems a singular coincidence that the English and American Methodist missions to India should both have commenced their labors under afflictive circumstances connected in each case with their superintendent.
On the 3d of May, 1814, the leader of the first band of Wesleyan missionaries, Dr. Coke, suddenly died, almost within sight of India. His brethren, deprived of their zealous and devoted superintendent, landed in grief and sadness.
On the 19th of September, 1857, another ship neared the coast of India, this time bearing, not English, but American, Methodist missionaries. They also are the first band that this Church has sent to India; and they, too, are in anxiety and distress, for they fear that their superintendent has been murdered.
But this is not all. On Dr. Coke's death, the Rev. James Lynch was appointed to the superintendency. He labored nearly thirty years, and then returned to his native land, and was appointed to the Comber Circuit. Being feeble, the writer was sent to assist him. We traveled and labored together; God was with us, and sinners were converted. During the Sepoy Rebellion he was calmly awaiting his departure to a better world, full of years and the grace of God, while the boy preacher, whom he so kindly cherished and prayed for fifteen years before, was in that very India, and superintendent of the first American Methodist Mission established there!
The journey across to Landour was a wonderful one. We climbed mountains, forded rivers, clambered round frightful
precipices, often on narrow paths which, in places, were not more than twenty to thirty inches wide. At a gorge in the mountains we crossed the Ganges, there a roaring torrent between walls of rock, on a miserable rope bridge, which had been condemned as unsafe, and which swung in the wind, sixty feet above the water that foamed beneath it. It was a journey never to be forgotten for its magnificent views, its tall pine forests, the wildness of the scenery, the beauty and variety of its birds, and the singular sensation that we were moving over mountains and through forests infested by tigers and all sorts of savage animals, against which our only protection was the sunlight by day and the flaming log fire by night. But God guided us in safety. Though, to show how near we were to danger, and how much we required merciful care, I will state that one night we had camped in a lonely valley by a stream, having with us a goat which we had brought along to give milk for the little “Mutiny Baby.” The poor goat was left fastened, as usual, to the peg at the tent door, with the fire in front outside, and our lantern lighted within. The fire unfortunately went out, and in the middle of the night we were startled out of our sleep by a roar and a yell of agony, and, jumping up and opening the tent door, I found that the wild beasts had carried off the poor goat bodily, and were already clear out of sight with her!
Occasionally we slept five thousand feet higher, or lower, than where we rested the night before. Our “house and home” was a little tent eight feet square. A day's journey varied from seven to fifteen miles, according to the character of the road. It was generally four or five P. M. by the time we reached the camping-place. The tent was then set up, our dinner cooked, and there, beside our large log fire, sometimes ten or twenty miles from any habitation, we enjoyed the grand solitude. After this we would heap more logs on the fire for protection against the animals, and, commending ourselves to the care of God, would lie down and sleep tranquilly. The wild beasts, by which we were generally surrounded, disturbed us no further. So it went on for sixteen days and nights from the time we started, the whole distance being about one hundred and eighty miles.
The last day, when crossing the highest mountain of the range, the snow began to fall, so that we had to camp that night upon it, with a few boughs under us. But the next morning we crossed it, and began to descend to the plains, and soon were beyond the snow line.
Our last communication from America was dated several months before. How people over there felt about our position and circumstances, and in regard to our mission, we knew not. We could only hope that our beloved Church, far from being daunted or discouraged, was more than ever resolved and prepared to do her duty toward her great work in India.
We reached Dehra Doon December 5th. How calm and beautiful all things in the valley seemed to us, after being shut up so many months upon the mountains! But the Rohilcund rebels were across the Ganges, so we kept off by Saharunpore, and thence to Kurnal and the imperial city. It was two hours after midnight when we passed the outskirts of Delhi. We rolled down the empty street of the Subzee Mundee, rattled on to the bridge over the moat, and hailed the sentry, who, seeing a white face, asked no questions, but opened the ponderous gates, and—ten weeks after its capture—we were in Delhi!
There is something very solemn in passing through the deserted streets of a conquered city. We could dimly see that all was desolation and utter confusion. Having reached the lonely house assigned for travelers, and taken a cup of tea, my curiosity was too great for rest or sleep, so I procured a light, and wandered down the Chandnee Chowk, (the Street of Silver.) All was still as death; indeed the silence was dreadful; not a ray of light anywhere, except from the lantern which I carried. Not a human being to be seen. Every door, whether of store or private house, lay open. I entered five or six shops. No words could describe the wreck: even the floors had been torn up by the “loot” seekers. One was a native doctor's shop. The drawers were all out, half the bottles still on the shelves, and the rest overturned and smashed. Every thing valuable in each case had been carried off,
and there lay the worthless remnants, knocked to pieces on the floors. In some places a heavy fermentation was going on, causing an insupportable smell. The wretched cats were silently moping about, and the poor dogs howled mournfully in the desolate houses.
And this was Delhi, and this her recompense! Far rather would one see a city knocked down and covered with its own ruins, than to behold a scene like this. A tomb in Herculaneum can be contemplated with interest; but Delhi, that night, was like an open grave rifled of its ornaments, and its dishonored, reeking condition lying exposed to the gaze of the lonely visitor. No wonder that its excluded Mohammedan population, as they prowled around its vicinity, said, “This is a worse punishment than that of Nadir Shah. He gave up the city to massacre and pillage for a few days, then all was over, and the surviving inhabitants returned to their homes and employments, and every thing went on as before. The English took no such vengeance; but they drove us out, and week after week they kept us excluded, and will not let us return.”
No doubt, such language correctly represented their feelings. This decided exclusion of them; this calm and continued investigation by the civil and military authorities; this searching out, and bringing to justice, the perpetrators of the crimes of May and June giving them the opportunity of proving their innocence, (one trial alone having lasted ten days,) and then their prompt execution when found guilty of murder—all this, together with the disposition of the Government to acknowledge and reward fidelity where they found it, produced an immense impression. It was so contrary to the rash and indiscriminate mode of Oriental despotism.
When I reached the Kotwalie (the Mayor's office) in the square, a horror came over me as I remembered that I was then standing upon the very ground where, on the 12th and 13th of May, Englishwomen
“Perished
In unutterable shame;”
where good Rajib Ali, and many others with him, were tortured, not accepting the deliverance urged upon them by the raging crowd
on condition of apostasy; and where also the murdered and mutilated bodies of Christian men and women lay exposed and insulted, till at length, when no longer endurable, they were dragged away out of the city and flung to the jackals and the birds of prey; and here I was, standing alone at midnight amid the darkness which my lantern only made visible, in the very center of Delhi, with no sound to be heard save the sighing of the wind in the great, dark peepul trees above my head, till my excited fancy almost imagined that I heard them moan out, “How long, O Lord, how long!” The reminiscences of that moment were enough to chill the blood of the strongest man. They recur to me now like a dream of terror that can never be forgotten.
I walked on to the Emperor's gate, but it was shut; the walls frowned darkly down upon me, and all was silent as death. I turned back by the other side of the street to my lodging, a walk of more than a mile, without meeting a single human being.
As I stood that night in the midst of this stern desolation, I was forcibly reminded of the Lesson in the calendar for the 14th of September, which attracted our attention so much when reading it, and all the more when we heard afterward that it was the Lesson for the day on which the assault was given. It was in Nahum iii, and begins, “Woe to the bloody city!” etc.; as applicable to Delhi as ever it was to Nineveh—and here was her “woe.” She was “naked,” “a gazing stock,” and “laid waste;” her “nobles in the dust,” her “people scattered;” so that with equal truth it might then be said of her, “There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous; all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” (Verse 19.)
I picked up an Hindustanee account book lying at a merchant's door, and returned and went to bed absorbed in the thoughts of a retributive Providence, and the sad miseries of war among which I lay.
Early the next morning I was out again rambling through the streets. The people who had passes were admitted for trade and
market. The Chandnee Chowk, with a few of its leading tributaries toward the Palace, (inside the walls of which were the troops and the prisoners,) were the only portions of Delhi where I met any number of people. The rest of the city was a desert, where one might walk half a mile and not meet a human being, even at midday. Coming around to the Kotwalie, an awful sight presented itself. On a high gallows (which the darkness prevented me from seeing when I stood there a few hours before) were hanging by the neck, dead, eighteen of the “Shahzadas”—the king's seed—who had been found guilty of terrible crimes, many of them committed at this very place. They had been hanged at daybreak, and only a few persons were standing around.
I had, of course, heard the report of their fiendish deeds, but to come thus suddenly upon the authors of them, bearing their penalty on the very spot where their crimes were committed, was enough to chill the blood in one's veins. How dreadful is sin! The sight made me sick, and I turned hastily away.
During the day we called upon Lieutenant E., a military friend, who kindly gratified our wishes to be shown “the sights.” Mounting us on one of the government elephants, he took us over the battle-field, and described the siege and the assault, and the capture of the city at the different points. We lingered where General Wilson stood when the terrible assault was made, and seemed to realize the whole scene. It is doubtful if any commander in modern times has sustained a weightier responsibility than he did then.
Further delay was impossible; there was no room for any reverse. He must succeed or all was lost. A repulse would have involved consequences so terrible that the mind dare hardly contemplate them. If he failed, that little army, without a miracle, must have been annihilated, the wavering Punjab would have “gone,” and the undecided princes have been drawn into the current, which would probably, within a few weeks, have swept away every thing British and Christian from the soil of India.
We wandered over the battle-field, by the broad shore of the
Jumna, and saw that, notwithstanding the efforts to clear the ground, the sanguinary character of the contest was still manifest: dead horses and camels, and occasionally human remains, with portions of exploded shells, might be seen. The “Brahminee hawks” and vultures were still hovering around. I took up a human skull; it was that of a Sepoy for the marks of the pawn were still on the front teeth. A round shot or sword-cut had taken off the top of the head; death must have been instantaneous. I thought of the lines of the classic poet as I thus looked upon the most vivid realization of them I ever saw, or ever expect to see:
“The wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore!”
From the battle-field we went in the afternoon to Selim Ghur, and thence along the fortifications by the river. We were fortunate in falling in with Brigadier Jones, who took the Palace on the last day of the assault. He told us that he led 780 men into action, of whom nearly 450 were either killed or wounded, the proportion of officers being very large. This fact shows what a desperate service he had to perform. Personally he escaped untouched. The Brigadier commanded a few months afterward at the battle of Bareilly.
We went next to the magazine, the defense of which has rendered the name of Willoughby so famous. Here we were also favored in having as a guide Lieutenant Forrest, who was one of Willoughby's officers on that occasion. He conducted us over the place, and explained the details of the ever-memorable defense.
We next went to see the beautiful Jain Temple. The outward court reminded me of the description of Solomon's Temple, it was so rich and elegant. In the sanctuary there stood a shrine, which rose tier above tier, till it terminated in a dome on four pillars, the proportions of the whole being exquisite. Each part was richly carved in screen work in white marble, and inlaid with precious stones; but every thing movable had been carried off, including
the magnificent curtains, embroidered in gold, which were hung around the court, perhaps twenty in number.
In the sanctuary we found two Parisnaths, (or Parswanaths,) one of them as large as life, in black marble, with a genuine negro type of countenance, high cheek bones, thick lips, and curly hair. On asking the reason, the priest informed us that their god Parisnath was exactly like a negro, an idea which they hold in common with all Buddhists.
Both of the venerable deities had their noses smashed, and looked, in consequence, rather ridiculous. I asked the priest, “Who mutilated them?” He said, “The Mohammedan Sepoys did so, and then the Sikhs came afterward, and robbed us of every thing they could carry off.” This temple, for its size, is certainly the most splendid place of worship I ever saw. The Motee Musjid, in Agra, is more chastely elegant; but there was about the structure and appearance of this edifice something which, though “not worthy to be compared,” yet helped to a more adequate idea of that matchless “house of God” which the liberality of Jewish piety erected on Mount Zion.
From this we went to see the Jumma Musjid, the greatest Mohammedan “cathedral” of the East, and one of the very largest, if not the largest place of worship, in the world. The view from the top of the minarets was magnificent. These lofty towers were occupied by the leaders of the defense during the siege, and in that vast court below thousands of those blood-thirsty fanatics, from sunrise to sunset, during that long anxiety, implored God, for Mohammed's sake, to aid them in exterminating the followers of the hated Messiah. Here they “raged” and “took counsel together,” but God, instead of answering, rejected their prayers, confounded their devices, and “dashed them” and their government “in pieces like a potter's vessel,” and here was the center of the fearful wreck of all their purposes.
The whole place was desecrated. Native soldiers were cooking their food in the cloisters. The high priest's throne was smashed, and every thing valuable carried off. I entered their treasure room,
and on the ground, covered with broken boxes and rubbish, I found those marble slabs, (of the existence and use of which I had previously heard,) one professing to bear the impress of Mohammed's hand, and the other of his foot. Notwithstanding the boast of the Mohammedans as iconoclasts, they do pay these relics a certain religious veneration that is idolatrous. I found them where they kept their most venerated things. Those who sought only precious metals and other valuables had not considered them worthy of removal, but to me they were deeply significant, and, as “looting” was the order of the day, I carried them off, to the great amusement of the Beloochee soldiers, who laughed at the idea of the “Sahib” soiling his clothes to carry away “such useless things as those dirty stones.” As long as they last they will be an evidence of the debasement of Oriental Mohammedanism, furnished by the treasure room of its greatest mosque.
From the Jumma Musjid we went to the Hindoo Temple of Mahadeva, near the palace gate. Destruction had raged here also. The high priest was very civil, telling us “how thankful he was that our Raj (Government) had returned.” They confound all white men with the Government. We entered, and the little knot of priests looked sad and sorrowful enough. Seeing that the idols were all off their pedestals, I inquired where they were. They led us up to the place, and there, on the ground, covered reverently with a cloth, were nearly twenty of their gods, beautifully carved in white marble, about as large as little babies, all in a state of mutilation, not one whole one in the lot. Their legs, and arms, and heads were off, and their noses smashed, while the bright eyes of one and another looked up out of the pile as if they were astonished!
The poor priests looked down, with rueful countenances and heavy sighs, at the wreck and confusion. I had no condolence to offer, for the scene was such an illustration of the folly and impotence of idolatry that I felt like giving way to immoderate laughter, but refrained, as I knew it would annoy them to the last degree. We asked, “Who or what wrought all this destruction?” “Why, Sahib, the Budmash Mohammedans, of course. They came into
our temple, and with the butt ends of their muskets they knocked off their legs and arms, and smashed their noses, and flung them on the ground, and desecrated them.” I told them we had no pity for them. They had, with their eyes open, joined these “Budmash” Mohammedans, to expel a Government that had never outraged their religion, but always protected them in its exercise, and which they themselves had often declared was the best Government their country ever knew. They admitted the assertion; and when we asked them why they did so, they replied, “Because, Sahib, we were deluded. Those people told us, if we would only join them this once, they would give us perpetual deliverance from all fear of the growing power of Christianity, which, they said, was about to destroy our religion; and that they would also give us equal rights and privileges. Their war cry was, ‘Do deen ek zeen men,’ (two religions in one saddle;) but they soon gave us to understand that one of the two must ride behind; and when they came to decide which it should be, they settled that after their fashion.” He added, “I prayed to God for your return to this city, O, how thankful we are that your Raj has come back again!”
I asked if I might take two or three of the broken idols. They submissively replied, “What you like; you are master here.” They lent me a basket, and procured a coolie to carry the three which I picked out. I placed some money in their hands for them. They seemed surprised that I had not acted on my “right of conquest,” and taken them without payment. On asking them what they were now engaged in worshiping, as their other gods were destroyed, they seemed afraid to reply. We told them they need not be, and that we had heard of it, and knew what it was, and only wished to see it. After obtaining our promise that we would not demand that too, if they showed it, they led us into the sanctuary, and there it was, nothing more nor less than the upper and hinder part of a bull, (Nundee Davee,) carved and polished in black marble. The flowers and Ganges water were fresh upon it, showing that it had been worshiped that day. And this was Hindoo worship, in one of its chief temples in the imperial city!
Our kind guide now brought us to see the Emperor, Empress, and the Princes, who were awaiting trial; but before doing so, he led us up to that part of the palace where was the suite of apartments which had been occupied by the English Embassador, and into his reception-room, where he and the chaplain, and the two ladies, were murdered.
In the East a violation of hospitality is regarded as a crime of greater magnitude than it is with us. This is fully illustrated in the Scriptures; yet here, under the very roof of the Emperor, the Embassador, Hon. Mr. Fraser, (the second brother killed within those walls,) with the Rev. Mr. Jennings and his daughter. Miss Jennings, with her cousin, Miss Clifford—said to be one of the most beautiful Englishwomen then in the East—were ruthlessly cut to pieces in this very room. Their blood still stained its floor, the marks of the tulwars were in the plaster round about, and on the walls was the impress of some of their gory hands, made as they leaned after receiving their first wounds; while the head of another of the party had fallen back against the wall, and described part of a circle as it sank to the floor, leaving the blood and hair in the track of its passage!
There were bitter feelings expressed against the Empress, especially for these assassinations. It was considered that under her own roof, at all events, it was entirely in her power to have saved these ladies had she chosen to do so; but she made no effort for this purpose, and when her own hour of sorrow came, it was remembered to her disadvantage.
We were obliged to procure a written permission to see the Emperor. There had been no restriction on the public curiosity till a gentleman, who had lost several relatives by the mutiny, went lately to see the Emperor, and, losing control of his feelings, used such language as put the old man in “bodily fear” for his safety. This, with no doubt other reasons, led to his being kept a close prisoner, and interviews permitted only in the presence of the magistrate and the officer of the guard who had him in charge. The place of his residence was a small house of three rooms in his
own garden. Accompanied by the officer and Mr. Ommanney, we passed through the guard of the Rifles, and entered the room where the Emperor was sitting cross-legged, after the Oriental fashion, on a charpoy, with cushions on each side to lean upon, engaged in eating his dinner, using his fingers only, without knife or fork.
His dress was rich, his vest being cloth of gold, with a beautiful coat of Cashmere, and a turban of the same material. The figure of the old man was slight; his physiognomy very marked; his face small, with a hooked or aquiline nose; his eyes dark and deeply sunk, with something of the hawk aspect about them; his beard was gray and scanty, running down to a point. Notwithstanding his crimes, it was impossible to look upon this descendant of Tamerlane without emotion. My mind went back two hundred and forty years, to the time when England's Embassador humbly sought, in the splendid city of Jehangeer, a foothold for the East India Company. How different the scene before us from what Tavernier saw when he beheld Shah Jehan in that magnificent court, seated on his jeweled “Peacock Throne!” Here was his lineal descendant a prisoner, while two English soldiers, with fixed bayonets, stood guard over him. It recalled the astonished exclamation of a seraph to another potentate in guilt and captivity,
“If thou beest he; but O, how fallen!”
It was just twelve months that very week since I saw the “Princes of Delhi” at the Benares Durbar, in all their pomp and finery, presented in turn to that kingly-looking man, the late Governor Colvin, himself a sacrifice to this rebellion. What one short year had done! Many of those “Princes” were now filling the graves of traitors and murderers, while others of them were awaiting their trial and doom within a minute's walk of where I was standing. This wretched old man was then surrounded with imperial state, and living on his $900,000 per annum; and now, here he was a guilty, forsaken, penniless king—a gazing stock, awaiting his doom. What a change!
The feelings with which we contemplated him were a strange mixture of interest, pity, and contempt. The reader will remember the reflections of the Countess of Blessington when she met the mother of the fallen Napoleon leaning on the arm of the ex-king of Westphalia, as they wandered pensively amid the ruins of Rome.
This case added another illustration of the poet's thought:
“He who has worn a crown,
When less than king is less than other men;
A fallen star extinguished, leaving blank
Its place in heaven.”
But in the instance before us there seemed a lower depth of degradation than crowned head had ever reached before; a profound of folly and guilt that forbade human sympathy, as was very truly set forth in the speech of the United States Minister at the great meeting in London four months before.
As we entered, the Emperor looked up at us for a moment with a flash in his eye that was easily understood. We belonged to the white-faced race, and were of the religion that he detested; and the man must have keenly felt, as we stood in his presence and looked at him, how fallen he then was. He, before whom and his predecessors multitudes had bowed down in such lowly prostration and homage, had then to realize that there was
“None so poor to do him reverence.”
It was not possible, after all, to look at him without a measure of sympathy: “a star” that had shone for eight hundred years in this political “heaven” had fallen to the earth and was lying at our feet, its light extinguished forever.
I asked the soldiers why the old gentleman was so closely guarded in that inclosed place? They replied, “Sir, it is not for fear of his getting away, but to protect him from harm till he is tried.” On expressing my surprise at this explanation, the man added, “Well, you see, sir, people are coming here every day to look at him—wives, whose husbands were killed by his Sepoys, and husbands whose wives were worse than killed. You see, sir,
his was the name in which every thing was done, and when they look at him and realize it all their feelings get the better of them, and they feel like flying at him and revenging their wrongs upon him, so we have to protect him.” Yes, I saw it all; and the bitter remembrance of the cruel deaths of some precious friends of my own at Bareilly, and elsewhere, seven months before, banished all sympathy for this guilty author of their sufferings. In response to some remark which I made to this effect, I saw the blood mount to the cheek of the soldier as, drawing back his hand in which was the bayonet, he said, with deep feeling, “Yes, sir, it would give me the greatest satisfaction to put this through the old rascal!” The honest earnestness of the man provoked a smile; and I thought, what would Sir Thomas Roe—England's first Embassador to this Court—say, could he rise from the dead, and, after all the reverence he paid here to “the divinity which hedged” these gorgeous kings, hear a common soldier of his nation express his disgust at having to act the jailer over the Great Mogul!
A day or two previously my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside, Missionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He went to see the Emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was abrogated by the Koran—as Moses and the law were abolished by Christ and the Gospel—so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran had superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother Woodside calmly, but firmly, told him that, so far from this being the case, Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie; and that unless he repented and believed in Christ, and Christ alone, without doubt he must perish in his sins. He then proceeded to enforce upon his bigoted hearer the only Gospel sermon which he had ever heard. And Brother Woodside was the very man to utter it. Was not his Church entitled to that privilege by the sacrifice of the precious lives of four of their Missionaries at Futtyghur, as mentioned on page 151?
It was a just and significant providence that in such a moment,
when this blasphemous usurpation, arrested by the hand of God, and about to be hurled from all its aspirations of supremacy over the mind of India, a Minister of Jesus Christ should, in this presence, ring, as it were, the knell of its hopes, and utter those truths as the last Imperial representative of Oriental Mohammedanism was bidding a “long farewell to all his greatness,” and the political power of his system was falling,
“Like Lucifer,
Never to hope again!”
My wife went in to see the Empress, and found her, with two of her maids, very plainly dressed and but poorly lodged. When she came out, she was not at all enthusiastic about the Empress's present beauty. Still, competent evidence declares that Zeenat Mahal, as she appeared in 1846, is faithfully represented in the picture presented on page 111; but twenty years of such a life as she led in that Zenana, and the apprehension of guilt which she must then have felt, with the doom impending over her husband and house, all must have wrought sad changes in that once fair young face.
From the Emperor we went to the cells where the other prisoners were awaiting their trial. These cells were in a sort of offset from the palace grounds, in which stood the beautiful Dewanee Khass, and had doors of iron railing, through which the prisoners could glance across into the palace gardens beyond. It strikingly suggested the separation, and yet sight, of each other in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We walked past some of them, and it was sad to see within these iron doors, awaiting their fate, men like the Rajah of Dadree, the Nawab of Bullubghur, and others of their class. Twelve months before, these captives were occupying thrones, and governing their States in peace, under the protection of the paramount power of England; and here they were now, awaiting their turn to be tried for treason, and, some of them, for murder as well. They had sided with the Emperor, sending their troops and treasure to Delhi to aid him against the British, and his defeat and fall had dragged them down into the ruin which had
overtaken him. A few of them were very gentlemanly-looking men, and courteous, salaaming to us as we passed them. But it was too painful to complete the entire round, so we walked sadly away.
On the 27th of the following month the Emperor was put upon his trial in the Dewanee Khass, having counsel to aid in his defense, and, after a patient investigation lasting nineteen days, was found guilty on all the charges against him, and sentenced to be transported for life. Many thought the sentence too light; but it was probably sufficiently severe thus to pass from a throne to the deck of a convict ship, to end his days among strangers. Zeenat Mahal and one other of his wives shared his exile. He died at Rangoon in 1861. Two years after, when in Burmah for the benefit of my health, I had the opportunity of passing by his lonely grave behind the quarter guard of the English lines. But no Taj or Mausoleum will ever rise over the spot where rests, solitary and alone, on a foreign shore and in a felon's grave, the last descendant of the Great Moguls!
The closing words in the defense of one of his own nobles, the Nawab of Bullubghur, whom I saw tried and sentenced to die in that same Dewanee Khass, might well apply to his Imperial master. The Nawab was a noble-looking man, with dark, lustrous eyes, and fine figure, clad in the usual style of an Oriental prince. There he stood, during those long hours, before that commission of English Officers, making the best defense he could for his life.
He admitted the charge, but pleaded in extenuation, that in sending his wealth and troops to Delhi to help the Emperor he had acted under compulsion. This was known to be untrue, as it was well understood that he had acted freely and promptly, and had even submitted to circumcision, and forsaken his Hindoo faith, to curry favor with the rising Mohammedan power.
He evidently felt, as he closed his address, that he was not believed—that he was a doomed man. With considerable feeling, and in their figurative phraseology, he ended his defense with these words: “Gentlemen, one short year ago I sat on the topmost bough of prosperity and honor; in an evil hour I lent my ear to
other counsels—I sawed asunder the branch that sustained me, and this is the result!”
On Christmas day, 1857, I attended Christian worship in the Dewanee Khass—the first ever celebrated there. A crowded audience made its walls resound with the unwonted strains of Christian hymns; and there that day the Gospel was preached and prayer was offered in the blessed Name so long blasphemed beneath that roof. As I stood amid that throng, and remembered where I was, and what had there been said and done, and what was then transpiring, I realized that I was beholding one of the most wondrous victories ever consummated by the glorious Son of God over the enemies of himself and his holy religion. They had distinctly joined issue with Him on this very ground; and here he was, in his almighty providence, victorious amid the utter overthrow of the wealthiest, most powerful, and implacable foes of his divinity and atonement; expelling them from the “Paradise” which they had profaned, and asserting his right, ere he consigned it forever to degradation and to ruin, to use even their Dewanee Khass for his own worship, and thus answer, in divine vengeance, the blasphemies against himself inscribed upon its walls. “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints!”
The crystal musnud, (throne,) the last remnant of its glorious furniture, was carried away, a present to the Queen of England. All veneration for the place seemed to cease by common consent; the visitors and soldiers dug out the precious stones from the walls and pillars with their knives, and it was soon despoiled. A few weeks after, I saw its crenated arches built up with common sun-dried bricks, and the whole structure whitewashed and turned into a hospital for sick soldiers. Its destruction was at last complete! The rebels failed, and that failure was both miserable and total. We may endeavor, as has been attempted by various writers, to account for that failure by their want of concert as to the time of commencement; by the escape of nine tenths of those whom they intended to destroy; by their want of leaders of ability, (though the Rebellion developed Tantia Topee and Kooer Singh;) by the
fierce contentions of their chiefs for supremacy, rank, and power; by the fact that the Hindoos, disgusted and deceived, deserted the cause; by the perfidy of the Mohammedans in the hour of their triumph; by the heroism and endurance of the British soldiers, invincible not only against overwhelming odds, but over the difficulties of climate, season, sickness, and deficiency of resources of all kinds. Yet, after all, while gratefully and cordially admitting to the full every one of these considerations, and all the aid which they involved in the terrible struggle, even wicked men in India in 1857 and 1858 were constrained to admit, and were prompt to acknowledge, that any or all of these combined could not and did not rescue us;—that our salvation was, without a doubt, entirely due to the special interposition of Almighty God. It was the divine help that gave England's cause the victory, and gladly and gratefully did they, saint and sinner together, raise their private and public Ebenezers to Him who alone had saved them!
No attribute of the Almighty could take part with the Sepoy, the Brahmin, or the Mogul. Every hope for India was bound up with the defeat of their cruel, self-interested, and wicked purposes. Grateful India herself will yet place among her highest mercies the mighty overthrow of 1858.
Mr. Rees has truly shown that the merits of this contest, on the part of the natives, was a frantic fear and hatred of the growing influence of Christianity; that it was not a war of the oppressed against the oppressors, of a nation rising against their rulers, or of Hindustanees against Englishmen; on the contrary, that it was a war of fanatical religionists against Christians, of barbarism against civilization, of error and darkness against truth and light. Had it been different—had patriotism prompted the rebellion—had the natives, as one nation, determined to shake off the yoke of the foreigner, and had they conducted their war like soldiers and brave men, instead of acting the part of cowardly assassins, then indeed might they have enlisted sympathy for their cause among the civilized nations of the earth, and found defenders and advocates among the people of England themselves.
It is not easy to impart to an American reader a just idea of how far the people of India—nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of them—are from the knowledge of freedom, the appreciation of law, or the rights of constitutional government, as we understand such privileges. One of their own educated men speaks but the simple truth of them when he says:
“The Oriental mind is decidedly wanting in the knowledge of the construction of a civil polity. It has never known, nor attempted to know, any other form of government than despotism. Political science and political reform appear, like the oak and the elm, to be the plants of the soil of Europe and America. Never has any effort been made for their introduction to the plains of Persia or the valley of the Ganges. Though the most important of all branches of human knowledge, politics have never engaged the attention of the people of the East. They have never studied the theory and practice of a constitutional government, never conceived any thing like republicanism, never understood emancipation from political servitude, never known a covenant between the subject and the sovereign. They have never had any patriotism or philanthropy, any common spirit and unity for the public weal, or what it is to govern for the good, not of the fewest, but of the greatest, number.”—Travels of a Hindoo, Vol. II, p. 408.
Progress, preservation of order, the physical and moral well-being of the people, the advance the world has made in humanity—a humanity that is extended even to the inferior animals—they do not understand. They have only just begun to dream about them, and, even for the dream of the blessed day that is dawning, they are (as the evidences which I have furnished show) wholly indebted to the Christianity which has come at last and breathed the thought into their slumbering souls.