Part 10
“This pillar was originally erected at Meerut in the third century B.C. by King Asoka. It was removed thence, and set up in the Koshuk Shikar Palace by the Emperor Firuz Shah in A.D. 1356, but was thrown down and broken into five pieces by the explosion of a powder magazine A.D. 1713-1719. It was restored and set up in this place by the British Government A.D. 1867.”
[Sidenote: 21. The Flagstaff Tower, the Ridge, Delhi.] We will walk past the various memorials of the Mutiny struggle. Here is the Flagstaff Tower, in which were gathered at the outbreak of danger the women and children of the British garrison anxiously looking for relief from Meerut. But the relief did not come, and Delhi was stormed and captured by the mutineers. The refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were compelled to fly for their lives to Karnal, on the road to the Punjab, where gradually British troops and loyal natives were assembled. The British returned to the Ridge, and for two months the siege of the city was pressed, but unsuccessfully. A brigade and a siege train then arrived from the Punjab, commanded by General Nicholson. The struggle continued for yet another month. Our troops were not in sufficient force to surround and starve the city, and it was therefore necessary to bombard and storm the defences. Slowly the British won their way into the town, though with terrible loss. General Nicholson was himself wounded in one of the assaults, and died a week later. At last, on the 20th September, the Fort was taken, and next day the rebel King of Delhi was captured at Humayun’s Tomb, and was exiled to Rangoon. Two of his sons were shot in front of the Delhi Gate. The terrible nature of this siege may be realised from the fact that of the ten thousand British and loyal native troops who took part in it nearly four thousand were killed and wounded. Here is the statue of General Nicholson in the park named after him, just south of the cemetery, outside the Kashmir Gate, where he is buried. On the Ridge itself is the Mutiny Memorial, unfortunately not a very beautiful building.
[Sidenote: 22. General Nicholson’s Statue, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 23. The Mutiny Memorial, the Ridge, Delhi.]
[Sidenote: 24. Horse Fair, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 25. Dariba Street, Delhi.] Finally, we have two scenes of native life at Delhi. The first is a horse fair outside the Kashmir Gate, and the second a street view.
Let us travel to Agra, which stands on the right bank of the Jumna, about a hundred miles southeast of Delhi. The Jumna flows from north to south until beside Agra Fort, and then turns sharply eastward. About a mile and a half further on, on the same right bank, now the south side of the river, there stands the Taj Mahal, the most celebrated of all Muhammadan tombs. The building of Agra Fort was commenced by the Emperor Akbar in the middle of the 16th century, and was completed by Shah Jahan, the father of Aurangzeb, in the 17th century. It was this Shah Jahan who built the Palace within the Fort and also the Taj.
[Sidenote: 26. The Pearl Mosque, Agra Fort.] The Fort and the buildings which it contains rise by the side of the river and dominate the plain beyond it. Here within the Fort we have a view of the marble interior of the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by Shah Jahan in the middle of the 17th century. The floor is divided by inlaid lines of black and yellow marble into some six hundred separate divisions, called Masalas, used by the Musulmans for prayer. In the centre is a large marble tank. The effect produced on entering this mosque is profound. Outside, the city may be quivering in a haze of heat, but here the cool and soft light, and an entire absence of any discordant features in the architecture, combine to give a sense of rest and peace. Many Europeans have remarked that this mosque is a rendering in stone of the text “My house shall be called the house of prayer.”
[Sidenote: 27. Jehangir’s Throne, Agra Fort.] [Sidenote: 28. The Jessamine Tower, Agra Fort.] [Sidenote: 29. The Seat of the Jester, Agra Fort.] Let us go out on to the open space by the wall, and look over the moat which divides the main buildings of the Fort from the outer rampart by the river. Across the water the Taj Mahal can just be seen beyond the bend of the river. In front of us is Jehangir’s throne, set up in the time of Akbar. It consists of a single great slab of black marble. Close by, is the Jessamine Tower. Here we have another view in which we see the Throne from the back and a corner of the Jessamine Tower. Notice the lower slab opposite, which is called the Seat of the Jester. The effect of its presence is by contrast to enhance the beauty of Jehangir’s Throne itself. Between the wall in the foreground and the outer ramparts by the river there is a drop of some sixty feet, and in this ditch fights between lions and elephants used to be held in the days of the Mogul Emperors.
[Sidenote: 30. Jama Masjid, Agra.] Just outside the Fort, facing the west or Delhi Gate, is the Jama Masjid, of which we have here a view. We see the courtyard and one of the entries. The peculiarity of this mosque lies in the structure of the three great domes. They are without necks. We can just see the tops of two of them. They are built of red sandstone, and the encircling bands are of white marble.
[Sidenote: 31. Taj Mahal, Agra.] [Sidenote: 32. The Taj Gardens.] [Sidenote: 33. The Same, by moonlight.] We will now visit the Taj Mahal. It was built, chiefly of marble inlaid with precious stones, by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his queen. Here we have a view of the Taj taken from without the entrance gateway. Then we pass through the gateway and enter the Taj Gardens. The watercourse in the centre is of marble, and along each side is a row of cypresses. The original cypresses had grown to such a height that the view of the Taj was becoming obstructed. They were therefore removed, and those which we see in the picture were planted by Lord Curzon, when he was Viceroy. The Taj is perhaps most beautiful in the light of the setting sun, or by moonlight. We have here a photograph made from a painting of the Taj by moonlight.
[Sidenote: 34. The Bazaar, Agra.] [Sidenote: 35. Agra College.] [Sidenote: 36. Agra Jail—Wool spinning.] [Sidenote: 37. Agra Jail—Carpet making.] We will drive back through the native city. This is a typical scene in the Bazaar. Notice the Kotwal, or Chief of the Police, in the centre of the crowd. He is an Afghan, standing well over six feet in height and finely proportioned. On the awning over one of the shops an advertisement obtrudes, showing that even the native quarters of the cities of India are being permeated with European methods. Here is Agra College, endowed about a century ago by the then Maharaja of Gwalior. There are about a thousand students. Close by is the Jail. In this picture we see some of the prisoners spinning wool, and in the next they are making carpets.
The next series of pictures relates to the great Muhammadan anniversary of the Moharam, and in order to understand them it is necessary to say a few words regarding the history of Islam and the contending sects which have emerged from that history. Muhammad died in the year 632. He left no son; but one of his daughters, Fatima, was married to a cousin whose name was Ali. Abu Bakr, who had been a great friend and supporter of Muhammad, was elected Caliph or Vice-Regent of the Prophet. Abu Bakr died in 634, and was succeeded by Omar, who conquered Persia and Syria. To him Jerusalem capitulated. Omar was murdered in the same year, and was succeeded by Osman, who was killed in 656. Then Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was elected to the Caliphate. Ali was murdered in 661, and Hasan, his son, was elected Caliph in his place, but was induced to resign in favour of a Caliph of another family. Husain, the second son of Ali, never acknowledged the title of the Caliph who had superseded his brother Hasan, and when the Musulmans of Mesopotamia invited him to overthrow the usurping Caliph he felt it his duty to respond to their appeal. Accompanied by his family and a few retainers he left for Mesopotamia. On the way, at a place called Karbala, on the west bank of the Euphrates, they were overtaken by the Caliph’s army, and after a heroic struggle lasting several days were all slaughtered, save the women and a sickly child called Ali, who died soon afterwards. Thus ended the Republic of Islam. Up to this time the office of Caliph had been elective and the government essentially democratic. The seat of government was now moved from Medina to Damascus.
In the middle of the eighth century of the Christian era a great revolution took place in Western Asia. The revolt was headed by a descendant of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet, and the outcome of it was that the Abbassides, or members of the family of Abbas, established themselves as Caliphs, and ruled at Bagdad from the year 756 to the year 1258. When Bagdad was destroyed by the Mongols a member of the Abbassides family escaped to Cairo, where he was recognised as Caliph by the Sultan of Egypt. The eighth Caliph in succession from this man renounced the Caliphate in favour of Sultan Salim, the great Ottoman conqueror, and it is on this renunciation that the title of the Sultan of Turkey to the spiritual headship of Islam is based.
It will be seen from this short statement of the history that a great change took place in Islam when Husain, the descendant of the Caliph Ali and of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, was slain at Karbala, on the Euphrates. From that tragedy dates the chief division of Islam. The Shiah sect traces its foundation to the Caliph Ali and the immediate descendants of the Prophet, who are regarded as the rightful exponents of his teaching. Some twenty millions of the Indian Musulmans are Shiahs, and Shiahism is also the State religion of Persia. There are a large number of Shiahs also in other parts of the Muhammadan world, but nowhere, except in Persia, a majority. The Shiahs are advocates of Apostolic descent and lineal succession to the Caliphate.
The other of the two great divisions of the Musulmans are the Sunnis, who advocate the principle of election to the Caliphate. Almost all the Sunnis acknowledge the spiritual headship of the Sultan of Turkey, who is, of course, repudiated by the Shiahs. At the present time nearly 50 millions of the Musulmans of India are Sunnis, and there are Sunni Musulmans in China, Tartary, Afghanistan, Asiatic and European Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, Northern and Central Africa, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Russia, Ceylon, and the Malay Archipelago.
[Sidenote: 38. Moharam Time at Agra.] [Sidenote: 39. The Same.] [Sidenote: 40. The Same.] [Sidenote: 41. The Same.] [Sidenote: 42. The Same.] [Sidenote: 43. Shiahs burying Tazias.] We are now in a position to understand the significance of the anniversary of the Karbala. Annually there is held in the Muhammadan month Moharam a festival in memory of the death of Husain. The scenes of the battle are reproduced, and the tazia or tomb of Husain is carried in procession amidst cries of “Hasan, Husain!” Properly, this is a Shiah festival only, but in India both the Sunnis and Shiahs take part in it. Here are photographs representing the festival. The tazias are pagoda-like structures, made of a variety of materials. They are carried in long procession through the town, and finally the little biers—representative of the biers of Hasan and Husain—contained inside the tazias are buried at the Karbala, outside the city. We have first a street view in Agra showing the crowd at Moharam time. In the distance is Agra Fort. Next we have three views of the procession of the tazias, and then a view of the Karbala beyond the city, where the biers from the tazias are buried. The Shiahs, however, do not bury their tazias in the Karbala, but on the banks of the Jumna. Here we see them in the early morning conducting the ceremony with most solemn ritual.
[Sidenote: 44. Fields of Wheat and Barley.] [Sidenote: 45. The Public Audience Hall, Fatehpur Sikri.] [Sidenote: 46. The Great Capital, Fatehpur Sikri.] [Sidenote: 47. Gate of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri.] Let us drive out from Agra southwestward on the road to Fatehpur Sikri, the city erected by the Emperor Akbar, but abandoned by his successors in favour of Agra. On the way, we note fields of wheat and barley, separated by an irrigation channel. We pass villages amid mango trees, and occasional ruins, and arrive at Fatehpur Sikri. There we enter the great quadrangle and the Public Audience Hall of the Palace, built of red sandstone. It was in this hall that Akbar used to sit on certain days to see personally anyone who had grievances to lay before him. Notice in the quadrangle the stone pierced with a hole which is fixed in the ground. Criminals were put to death by being trampled upon by an elephant, and to that ring the elephant was tied. We pass on to the Private Audience Hall of Akbar, the Diwan-i-Khas. Note the huge capital of the column in the centre. Tradition says that Akbar used to sit on the top of this capital. Finally, here is the magnificent Gate of Victory.
[Sidenote: 48. Mausoleum of Akbar, Sikandra.] [Sidenote: 49. The Same—a Marble Inscription.] [Sidenote: 50. The Same—the Cloisters.] We leave Fatehpur Sikri, and drive back, past many other tombs, in the direction of the Cantonment at Agra until we come to the burial place of Akbar at Sikandra. This is the gateway of the great Mausoleum. Notice the cut marble inscriptions down the sides of the arch. They are quotations from the Koran. Here is a clearer photograph of a part of these inscriptions, and here we have the marble court above the tomb of Akbar. Round the Cloisters are verses celebrating his greatness. “Think not that the sky will be so kind as Akbar was,” is the tenor of one of them.
[Sidenote: 51. Hariki Piri, Hardwar.] [Sidenote: 52. Sarwan Nath Temple, Hardwar.] [Sidenote: 53. The Same, from above.] [Sidenote: 54. Camels at Hardwar.]
Finally we will travel away to Hardwar, some two hundred miles due north of Agra. It is on the Ganges, at the point where the river leaves the last foot hills of the Himalayas and enters the plain. Hardwar is a great centre of Hindu pilgrimage for the purpose of ablution in the sacred waters. At the annual fair are gathered hundreds of thousands of worshippers. So great has been the crush of people endeavouring to bathe that on occasion many have been trampled upon and drowned. The great day at Hardwar is towards the end of March, when the Hindu year begins, and when, according to tradition, the Ganges river first appeared from its source in the mountains. There was a town of Hardwar more than a thousand years ago, but its ancient buildings have disappeared. Here we have a view of the famous Bathing Ghat, a comparatively small flight of steps, where the river is considered to be specially sacred. The water is purer than at Benares in the plain. It flows swiftly and is as clear as crystal. Near by we have a temple, the Sarwan Nath, with great stone elephants, and here is a second view of the same temple seen from a neighbouring roof. Notice the Trisul, or bronze trident, the typical weapon of Siva, the Destroyer.
[Sidenote: 55. Sacred Cow at Hardwar.] Here is a string of camels at Hardwar, and then a sacred cow—especially sacred because deformed, for a freak of nature is miraculous.
[Sidenote: 56. The Road to Mussoorie.] [Sidenote: 57. The Same, Coolies carrying Baggage.] [Sidenote: 58. The Same, a Tree across the Road.] [Sidenote: 59. Mussoorie.] [Sidenote: 60. The Himalayas from Mussoorie.] Not far northward of Hardwar, among the foot hills of the Himalayas, is Mussoorie, a hill station supplementary to Simla. Mussoorie is about a mile above sea level. We have two views taken on the steep mountain road up to it; the second shows coolies carrying baggage. In the next view we realise something of the difficulties of travel in these hill districts of much rainfall, for the road is blocked by the fall of a great tree. Here we have a view of Mussoorie itself, and then the landscape from Mussoorie looking towards the Himalayan ranges to the north. Close by, but lower down, is Dehra Dun, the headquarters of the Gurkha Rifles, enlisted from Nepal, and also of the Imperial Cadet Corps, a small training force consisting wholly of the sons of ruling chiefs. We shall hear of the Gurkhas again in connection with the defences of India, which will be the subject of the next and concluding lecture of this Course.
LECTURE VIII.
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=THE NORTHWEST FRONTIER.=
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THE SIKHS.
In the British Empire there is but one land frontier on which warlike preparation must ever be ready. It is the Northwest Frontier of India. True that there is another boundary, even longer, drawn across the American Continent, but there, fortunately, only customs houses are necessary and an occasional police guard. The Northwest Frontier of India, on the other hand, lies through a region whose inhabitants have been recruited throughout the ages by invading warlike races. Except for the Gurkha mountaineers of Nepal, the best soldiers of the Indian Army are derived from the northwest, from the Rajputs, the Sikhs, the Punjabi Musulmans, the Dogra mountaineers north of the Punjab, and the Pathan mountaineers west of the Punjab. The provinces along the frontier, and the Afghan land immediately beyond it, are the one region in all India from which, under some ambitious lead, the attempt might be made to establish a fresh imperial rule by the overthrow of the British Raj. It would not be the freedom of India which would ensue, but an oriental despotism and race domination from the northwest. Such is the teaching of history, and such the obvious fate of the less warlike peoples of India, should the power of Britain be broken either by warfare on the spot, or by the defeat of our navy. Beyond the northwest frontier, moreover, at a greater or less distance are the continental Powers of Europe.
[Sidenote: 1. Political Map of Northwest India.] The Indian army and the Indian strategical railways are therefore organized with special reference to the belt of territory, extending from northeast to southwest, which lies beyond the Indian desert and is traversed from end to end by the Indus River. This frontier belt divides naturally into two parts. Inland we have the Punjab, where the rivers, emerging from their mountain valleys, gradually close together through the plain to form the single stream of the lower Indus; seaward we have Sind, where the Indus divides into distributaries forming a delta. Sind, as already stated, is a part of the Bombay Province, with which it is connected by sea from the Port of Karachi. Of late a railway has been constructed from Ahmadabad in the main territory of Bombay, across the southern end of the Desert, to Hyderabad at the head of the Indus delta. The Punjab is a separate Province with its own Lieutenant-Governor resident at Lahore. It was conquered from the Sikhs by a British army based on Delhi, and therefore ultimately on Calcutta.
[Sidenote: 2. Map of Lower Asia.] To understand the significance of the Northwest Frontier of India we must look far beyond the immediate boundaries of the Empire. We have here a map of Lower Asia. Upon it we see a broad tract of upland which, commencing in Asia Minor, extends through Armenia and Persia to include Baluchistan and Afghanistan. There is thus one continuous belt of plateau stretching from Europe to the boundary of India. The eastern end of this belt, that is to say, Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, is known as Iran. On all sides save the northwest and the northeast, the Iranian plateau descends abruptly to lowlands or to the sea. Southward and southwestward lie the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and the long lowland which is traversed by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Northward, to the east of the Caspian Sea, is the broad lowland of Turkestan, traversed by the Rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, draining into the Sea of Aral. Eastward is the plain of the Indus. The defence of India from invasion depends in the first place on the maintenance of British sea power in the Persian Gulf and along the south coast of Baluchistan, and in the second place on our refusal to allow the establishment of alien bases of power on the Iranian plateau, especially on those parts of it which lie towards the south and east.
[Sidenote: 3. Map of the Northwest Frontier.] In the next map we have on a larger scale the detail of that part of Iran which lies nearest to India. Here we see, west of the Punjab, a great triangular mass of mountain ridges which splay out westward and southward from the northeast. These ridges and the intervening valleys constitute Afghanistan. Flowing from the Afghan valleys we have on the one hand the Kabul river, which descends eastward to the Indus, and, on the other hand, the greater river Helmund, which flows southwestward into the depressed basin of Seistan, where it divides into many channels, forming as it were an inland delta from which the waters are evaporated by the hot air, for there is no opening to the sea. The valley of the Kabul river on the one hand, and the oasis of Seistan on the other, might in the hands of an enemy become bases wherein to prepare the invasion of India. Therefore, without annexing this intricate and difficult upland, we have declared it to be the policy of Britain to exclude from Afghanistan and from Seistan all foreign power.
Further examination of the map will show that there are two lines, and only two, along which an invasion of India might be conducted. On the one hand, the mountains become very narrow just north of the head of the Kabul River. There in fact a single though lofty ridge, the Hindu Kush, is all that separates the basin of the Oxus from that of the Indus. As we see from the map, low ground is very near on the two sides of the Hindu Kush. The way into India over the passes of the Hindu Kush is known as the Khyber route, from the name of the last defile by which the track descends into the Indian Plain.
If we now look some five hundred miles to the southwest of Kabul, we see that the Afghan mountains come suddenly to an end, and that a pathway leads round their fringe from Herat to the Indus Basin, passing along the border of Seistan. From Herat to beyond Kandahar, this way lies over an upland plain and is easy, but the last part of the journey is through a mountainous district down to the lowland of the Indus. This is the Bolan route, so called from the last gorge towards India. It will be noticed that the Bolan route debouches upon the Indus opposite to the great Indian Desert. Therefore it is that the Khyber route has been the more frequented. It leads directly between the desert and the mountain foot, upon the inner gateway of India at Delhi.
We conquered the Punjab from the Sikhs, but for many centuries it had been ruled by the Musulmans. In the break up of the Mogul Empire invaders had come, during the eighteenth century, from Persia and from Afghanistan, who carried devastation even as far as Delhi. Thus it was that with relative ease the Sikhs as contemporaries of the Marathas established a dominion in the helpless Punjab. They extended their rule also into the mountains of Kashmir, north of Lahore.