Chapter 7

THE VICARIOUS MAHARAJAH OF JEYPORE

Thousands of travelers make the pilgrimage to India, a land hoary with age, and when weary of overwrought temples and tombs, when arid plains and malodorous towns lose their power to interest, they journey north to Rajputana to revel in Jeypore, the unique--at least, lovers of Kipling do. And the effect on jaded senses is like a cooling draught after a parching thirst. Kipling called Jeypore "A pink city, to see and puzzle over," It surely is pink, all of it that is not sky-blue, and for various reasons it is more satisfying than any other town in India.

For a land where time is calculated by century units, Jeypore is almost as recent as a "boom" city on an American prairie. As a fact, its first building was reared only a hundred and seventy-eight years ago; and this modernity explains thoroughfares of remarkable breadth that cross each other at right angles. Generations the senior of Jeypore, New York is no better exponent of the checker-board idea. Jeypore is but the setting of a scene harking back to medieval days, however, and is the capital of an independent state greater in area than Belgium, and from its palace and judicial chambers nearly three million souls are governed. Nowhere in India, outside the great Rajputana province, is it possible to view a picture of happy and contented life, and in the city of Jeypore this is seen in its perfection.

This ornate capital on the plains, hemmed in by fortress-crowned hills, is a veritable stronghold of feudal barons and armed retainers, of hermits and monasteries, and is dotted with palaces and public buildings pertaining to the Maharajah's rule. Many of the structures are new enough to suggest what Americans love to call "modern conveniences." The principal streets are broader than Broadway, as well paved, and illuminated by gas systematically enough installed to indicate the presence behind the scenes of European engineers. Strange to say, Jeypore is an Indian city wherein the lordly Briton in khaki is never seen: if the English functionary be here, his master is none other than the Maharajah. Through its streets surge a people almost childish in their happiness, some in ekkas drawn by matched pairs of bullocks, others mounted high on the backs of trotting camels, while bands of chattering Rajputs on foot are omnipresent--every grouping reminds of something witnessed on the stage, and the _tout ensemble_ might be the great scene of a realistic opera intended to glorify the people and the institutions of India.

Feminine adornment is carried in Jeypore to its extreme. The bright-hued skirts of the women are flare-fashioned and "fuller," in dressmakers' parlance, than anything dared by Fay Templeton. But the Jeypore beauty's real passion is for gold and silver jewelry, and she carries this to a degree unrivaled by the women of any other section of India. It is not trifling with fact to say that the average Rajput woman wears from eight to ten pounds in silver on ankles and toes, and bracelets enough to sheath arms from wrist to elbow. Every feminine Jeypore nose bears some metal ornamentation--gold studs through the nostrils, and generally a hoop of gold depending a full inch below the point of the chin. Their ears are deformed by the wealth of metal hanging from lobe or strung on the upper rim of that organ. It can be said of Jeypore's fair sex that they are bimetallists in the strictest sense. The argument of the savings-bank has probably never been brought to their attention, for when one of them has a little money ahead she purchases a silver ornament for her person; and if a windfall come to her by legacy or otherwise, she buys something of gold, most likely a necklace of barbaric design. When one of these women goes to the market-place or the public well, she wears everything of value she possesses, and for the best of reasons her home is never pilfered.

Rajput men and women look a visitor in the face, and by their smiling countenances seem to welcome you to their country. They lack the broken-spirited look and sullen servility of Indian peoples overlorded by Thomas Atkins. In Jeypore there are grandees and warriors, painted dogs, hunting leopards, bedecked horses, and hulking elephants in every street picture--and these pictures change with the facility of groupings of the kaleidoscope.

The open-air shops of the metal workers and enamelers, and of the dyers, whose favorite colors are magenta and yellow, are interesting. There, on the left, is the imposing facade of the Palace of the Winds, extolled by Sir Edwin Arnold as "a vision of daring and dainty loveliness," but which in reality is scarcely more than a mask of stucco erected to make a show from the street. The Maharajah's palace and grounds cover a seventh of the area of this finest of modern Hindu cities. A stone's throw from the palace portal is a temple wherein Jeypore women beseech the image of Siva to bless them with children: and elsewhere are a Gate of Rubies, and a Temple of the Sun. At scores of wayside shops tiny idols of the Hindu hierarchy, and silver bracelets and gewgaws, are sold to people almost infantile in their cheerfulness. Wedding processions pass and repass with a frequency proving an active matrimonial market, each led by joyous singers and drum-beaters.

An entrancing place is this seat of His Highness of Jeypore, and compensating for the tedious railway journey from Delhi landing one at the city's gates in the inky darkness of 4:30 in the morning. At his hotel a visitor learns that a formal request must be made for permission to inspect the Maharajah's palace and stables, and to go to the abandoned capital of the state, Ambir, five miles away. You make application through a deputy, usually the man-servant traveling with you, and an hour later comes formal notification that His Highness welcomes you to his capital, and that a state carriage will be sent for your use, as well as a state elephant to carry you up the hills to Ambir. This outburst of hospitality comes with a surprise and force that almost sweeps one off his feet, and you have instant misgivings for having troubled the august potentate at such an unreasonable morning hour. Then your brain almost reels as you recall books that had dwelt upon the limitless hospitality of Eastern princes, and you hope that His Highness will not insist upon your dining with him--with your evening dress and high hat awaiting you at a Bombay hotel a command to the palace would, to say the least, be awkward.

But you are spared this inconvenience, probably because the Maharajah is as familiar with deputed affairs as you are. Two gaudy chaprassis who have brought the desired permits are His Highness's deputies, and from them you learn that their master has been for a fortnight at Calcutta, but is expected to return in a day or two. They come into your room and assure you in fair English that they are detailed for your use as long as you honor Jeypore with your benevolent presence. They wear curious swords high under the left arm, and beautifully inlaid shields are belted to their right arms--these trappings are badges of office, but you wonder if they would sell them to be taken to America to become conspicuous adornments of somebody's cosy corner.

A person with a fondness for simplicity, or possessing scruples against kingly institutions, may escape the state carriage by despatching a firm and prompt declination of the honor. But the chaprassis remain; and the elephant, already trudging to the base of the Ambir hills to await your coming, cannot be countermanded or headed off. In this charming manner the great Maharajah entertains daily the handful of strangers within his gates--it is India's remaining relic of the hospitality of long ago. A distinction inordinately prized by native princes is the number of guns prescribed by the Indian government as their salutes. The Gaekwar of Baroda and two other feudatory rulers are entitled to twenty-one guns, while the hereditary right of the Maharajah of Jeypore is only seventeen. But the present Maharajah, as a reward for his enlightened administration, is made happy by having four additional guns--and no king or emperor can have higher acclaim from the cannon's mouth.

One cannot tarry a day in Jeypore without hearing redundant testimony that His Highness Sir Sewai Madho Singh is a fine man, devoted to his people and unswervingly loyal to his religion. His visitors are often lords and ladies of England, who find his hospitality as interesting as it is boundless. To the tips of his fingers he is a Hindu devotee with all that the term can mean. When he attended the coronation of Edward VII, in London, the preparations for his sea-voyage were unprecedented in orthodoxy. An ocean liner was specially chartered for him and his suite; in all one hundred and twenty-five people formed the escort. Six special kitchens were fitted up on the ship, including one to prepare food exclusively for His Highness. There was, as well, a special temple, paved with marble, for the family idol, before which the Maharajah prostrated himself many times daily. Drinking water from the sacred Ganges, and every article of food--enough to sustain the entire party for six months--were carried from India. So rigidly was the orthodoxy observed that even the sand for cleaning cooking utensils was placed on board at Bombay; and washermen, carpenters, blacksmiths, and others accompanied the party, that there be no necessity for purchasing anything in England, or having work done by persons not of the Hindu faith. That the august traveler's caste be untainted, extra tanks of water from Benares were subsequently sent to England by frequent steamers.

The Maharajah maintains a military force of nearly 4,000 cavalry and 16,000 infantrymen. Besides these soldiers, his retainers number thousands, and their right to wear a sword is a coveted distinction throughout Jeypore state.

The palace stables contain three hundred horses, but the equipages and trappings are more interesting than the animals. There are some superb Arab steeds, however. A visitor noting the army of grooms wonders that the management is not better systematized; but a word from your traveling companion, who knows the ways of maharajahs, is to the effect that an Indian nabob is forced by custom to support thousands whether there be work for them or not. His Highness's stables and carriage-houses somehow suggest a circus in winter quarters. The fact is that Jeypore's ruler takes little interest in horseflesh and carriagemakers' creations. His preference is for elephants--animals befitting a dynasty descended from the sun and moon.

"Will the sahibs visit the elephant stable!" The sahibs communicate their desire to do so. Mahouts with pikestaffs lead the way, and a myriad of hangers-on swarm in the train of the visitors. The accoutrements seen en route to the stable are interesting, surely, especially the howdahs. Some of these are of silver. One was used by the Prince of Wales; another was fashioned for the Maharajah's use at the Delhi durbar, and a gorgeous one is reserved for the viceroy whenever that mighty personage pays a state visit to Jeypore. A half-dozen howdahs are specially fitted for the Maharajah's favorite sport, tiger-hunting. Some of the howdah cloths represent a fortune in gold and silver bullion, while a few are saved from tawdriness by the skill of the embroiderer in silk.

The elephants are now trumpeting impatiently for inspection. Their compound is a series of roofless walled enclosures, and a visitor notes with grateful appreciation the strength of the chains anchoring the beasts to mother earth. A leviathan is straining at his tether in a mad effort to reach a vagabond who is tantalizing him with a pike, and your guide--one of the official messengers with sword and shield--says: "He no like Hindu people; last week he kill two." Beasts as docile as kittens take nuts from your hand, and evince disappointment when more are not forthcoming. Five magnificent tuskers, that promptly obey their keeper's command, are used by His Highness for tiger-hunting; and a bevy of complaisant elephants, quartered in a single stable, have grown old in carrying tourists up the Ambir hills, it is explained.

From the elephant stables the chaprassis scurry the visitors through fragrant gardens and under bizarre arches to the crocodile department, where a score of saurians are pastured in an enclosure that is half swamp and half lake and is acres in extent. Visitors are placed at the top of a staircase of masonry descending to the water, while two wild-eyed Hindus seek to rouse the crocodiles from their siesta on a grassy islet a hundred yards away by a series of shrieks that would disgust self-respecting animals and reptiles. In a leisurely manner the crocodiles seem to recognize the signal to mean that a new lot of tourists desire to see them fed. It requires a good quarter of an hour for the Indians to lure them to the foot of the staircase, and from the first it is plain that the crocodiles view with indifference your visit to Jeypore. The lower step is finally fringed with opened mouths which in a moment engulf a mass of slaughter-house refuse almost thrust down their throats by the wild-eyed showmen, whom you reward with a shower of rupees which they believe marks your appreciation of their efforts.

As you are whisked through the palace yard, on the way to the carriage, you espy through an open door a splendid room fitted with paraphernalia not associated with medieval pastimes. It is the Maharajah's billiard-room, sumptuously furnished, and filled with tables of the latest English make.

Probably because they are proud of the fact that a former ruler of Jeypore was a generous patron of science, the chaprassis pilot you to the park given over to the apparatus of the celebrated Hindu astronomer and mathematician, Jai Singh. It contains dials, azimuth masonry, altitude pillars, astrolabe, and a double mural quadrant of enormous size and height, on which the gradations have been marked. In a way this exhibit of obsolete paraphernalia refutes the idea that Jeypore's maharajahs have lived solely for the gratification of the senses by amusements. A few minutes later you are at the public tiger-cages, where a dozen bona fide "man-eaters" are lazily stretched in shaded corners of their prison cages. Thirty odd years ago the present King of England killed his first tiger near Jeypore, and the animal ever since has played an important part in the city's pleasures. One inmate of the cages has an authenticated record of ten Indians killed, before His Highness's retainers lured him into ambush and made him a prisoner. "Two days from now," explains one of the men carrying sword and shield, "that tiger there,"--indicating a sullen beast,--"is to fight a wild elephant for the Maharajah's entertainment. Would the sahibs care to witness the combat?" The visitors promptly regret that they have unbreakable engagements in another part of India. Cheetahs are then led forth for admiration. Zoos and menageries know them as leopards--in India they are cheetahs, and are trained to course deer and antelope. A huntsman releases a cheetah, whose gaze has been directed to a fleeing deer on the plain, and in a few minutes the deer is a captive.

So much for the diversions of Jeypore's autocrat.

A distinct touch of beauty is imparted to his capital by the peacocks of imperial strut and plumage. They are everywhere--on the crenelated city wall, in the hurly-burly of the streets and bazaars, even on the steps leading to temples and mosques. The peacock is sacred to Jeypore; it crowns in miniature the street lamps, and is sculptured in hundreds of places. Chattering parrots by the roadside may arrest attention, but are forgotten in a moment--a strutting peacock is beautiful enough to place the parrot family in eclipse. When blue-rock pigeons descend by thousands in the market-place to profit by an over-turned sack of grain, visitors marvel at their irridescent necks and breasts--but a beauteous peacock appearing on the scene attracts an admiration amounting to monopoly.

But the appointment with the state elephant--what of that?

Surely, Ambir must be seen. There it was that all the ancient splendor originated and dwelt for centuries, and until a practical maharajah decided that a mountain retreat was ill-suited to the needs of a capital. The possessor of this astute mind moved himself and his machinery of government to the plain below--and all his people followed. This explains why Ambir is now deserted, and why a court steeped in medievalism has a setting bristling with newness.

Every adjunct of a fortified residence is there in the hills. Miles of battlemented masonry, pierced every few feet for bowmen, surrounds the straggling mass of buildings. Terraces are set upon the mountainside like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails are of unusual length.

Some of the apartments in the old palace rival anything to be seen at Lucknow, Agra or Delhi. A gem of a temple, adjoining a public audience hall of marvelous richness in finish, is dedicated to the awful goddess Kali, and each morning a goat is sacrificed to this deity, ever craving blood, by Hindu priests attached to the Maharajah's court. This is a revolting blot on a series of majestic buildings that unite to make one of India's greatest sights.

"How blessed would it be," you meditate, "if the betel-chewing priest might be sacrificed in place of the innocent and helpless animal." But no, human sacrifices are no longer permitted in India; England stopped them years ago.

Oh, yes; the state elephant. Well, it was extremely useful, for it rescued four stalwart native servants, laden with tiffin basket and a dozen bottles of mineral water, from toiling up the hills on foot. Perched on his back like nabobs, they probably indulged in remarks disparaging of their masters, electing to walk, and mused maybe upon the theory that now and then man meets his deserts.