Part 9
[Sidenote: 60. Political Map of India.] Let us cast our eye over the map and enumerate the principal divisions of India. Under direct British rule are in the south Madras and in the east Burma. Then in succession through the plain at the foot of the Himalayas are Eastern Bengal and Assam; Bengal; the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; and the Punjab. In the east centre round Nagpur are the Central Provinces, and in the west is the Presidency of Bombay, with the detached territory of Sind on the lower Indus. On the Northwestern Frontier are British Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province, while in the midst of Rajputana is the little district of Ajmer, and away in the south amid the forests of the Western Ghats the little district of Coorg. Ceylon, as was said in the first lecture, though British, is not a part of India, but a separate Crown Colony. All these Provinces are directly administered by the British Civil Service.
Now consider the Feudatory States. In the far south, from Cape Comorin along the west coast, we have the two little countries of Travancore and Cochin, ruled by Hindu Maharajas. They are far removed from all the greater problems of Indian Government, remote homes of the caste system in its most stringent form, and also, curiously, of a most ancient form of Christianity introduced long centuries ago from Nestorian sources in Western Asia. Then, north of the Nilgiri hills and the hill station of Ootacamund, is the State of Mysore, high on the plateau, completely surrounded by British territory of the Provinces of Madras, Bombay, and Coorg. The Maharaja here is a Hindu in religion, and the people are chiefly Hindu. Northward again, and still on the Deccan plateau, is the largest and most important native State of India, ruled from Hyderabad by the Nizam, a Musulman, who administers a country largely of Hindu religion. Then we have the two great groups of States, whose relations with the Empire are conducted by the Agencies of Central India and Rajputana. The most important of the Central Indian chiefs are Holkar and Sindhia, Marathas in a Hindi-speaking country, though in faith Hindus like their subjects. In Rajputana are the Rajput States of which we have spoken in this lecture.
It will be observed that, with the small exceptions of Travancore and Cochin, all the States thus far enumerated lie inland and are surrounded by British territory directly administered. The remaining native states form a fringe along the northern and northwestern borders. To the northeast amid the foot hills of the Himalayas are in succession, from east to west, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. Of these, Nepal stands outside the Indian Protectorate in a special relation of independent alliance with the British Government. In the far north is the state of Kashmir, whose centre is a beautiful valley, with a lake in its midst, deeply sunk amid the Himalayan ranges proper. A part of the foot hills on the one hand and a length of the Tibetan Indus on the other hand are also included within the territory ruled by the Maharaja of Kashmir. To the northwest are the Pathan and Baluchi hill tribes in relation with the North West Frontier Province and British Baluchistan.
Such a survey as that which we have thus rapidly made gives perhaps the best idea of the complexity and vastness of the Indian Political System. The Indian Empire is in fact not a country but, as the inhabitants of the United States say of their own land, a sub-continent, and as regards everything but mere area the expression is far more true of India than of the United States, for in the United States a single race and a single religion are dominant, but in India a long history lives to this day in the most striking social contrasts, presenting all manner of problems which it will take generations to solve.
LECTURE VII.
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=DELHI.=
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THE MUHAMMADAN RELIGION.
LIST OF THE MOGUL EMPERORS FROM HUMAYUN TO AURANGZEB.
HUMAYUN 1530-1540 1555-1556 AKBAR 1556-1605 JEHANGIR 1605-1627 SHAH JAHAN 1627-1658 AURANGZEB 1658-1707
[Sidenote: 1. Map of Northern India.] Once more we look at the map of Northern India. We realise the great mountain wall of the Himalayas, four and five miles high, curving through fifteen hundred miles along the northeast frontier of the Indian lowland. Behind the Himalayas is the Tibetan plateau, three miles in average elevation. Northwestward of India there is another plateau, but a lower one than Tibet, and the mountain ranges which divide it from the Indian plain are lower than the Himalayas. Observe the great series of streams which emerge from the Himalayas, and gather on the one hand into the Indus River, flowing southwestward, and on the other hand into the Ganges, flowing southeastward. See the position of the Indian desert and the Aravalli Hills, and note the exact spot where stands the city of Delhi.
[Sidenote: 2. Map of the neighborhood of Delhi.] We turn now to a map on a larger scale of the region round Delhi. We see the Himalaya mountains, the Aravalli hills, and the Indian Desert. We see the streams of the Indus and Ganges systems turning away from one another, and we see Simla, the summer capital of India, high on a spur of the Himalayas, above the divide between the Indus and the Ganges tributaries. Just north of Simla is the valley of the Sutlej, tributary to the Indus, and where the Sutlej issues from the mountains we note the off-take of a great system of irrigation canals. It is true that the lowland northwestward of Delhi is not quite desert. Nevertheless it has but a sparse rainfall, and the result of the construction of the irrigation canals derived from the Himalayan waters is that great colonies have been established in this region, and wheat is grown on thousands of square miles that were formerly waste. India has a great population, but with modern methods of water supply, and more advanced methods of cultivation, there is still ample room for settlement within its boundaries. We see on the map that there are other irrigation canals derived from the Ganges where it emerges from the mountains at Hardwar, and from the Jumna.
Delhi is the Musulman capital of India. What Benares and Patna and Gaya were and are to the Brahman and Buddhist civilisations native to India, what Calcutta and Madras and Bombay and Karachi are to the English from over the seas, that are Delhi and Agra to the Musulmans entering India from the northwest. The Musulmans were not the first to come this way into India. The oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus tell of a people who came from the northwest and apparently founded the Hindu religion, accepting no doubt some of the religious beliefs of the earlier, the Dravidian, population. From these Aryan invaders, speaking Sanskrit, have been derived the languages of the peoples of Northern India. Southeastward, southward, and southwestward from Delhi as far as the centre of India, there spread the Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi languages, as evidence of the effective conquest made by those remote invaders entering through the Delhi passage between the desert and the mountains. So far, however, as their language was concerned, they failed to establish themselves in the Dravidian south. Long afterwards, but still some three hundred years before the Christian era, the Greeks under Alexander the Great traversed Persia and Turkestan and came over the Hindu Kush, the mountain backbone of what is now Afghanistan, down into the plains of the Punjab. Alexander advanced across the rivers of the Punjab, tributary to the Indus, apparently as far as the Sutlej, and then turned southward and followed the Indus to its mouth. Part of his troops returned through the Persian Gulf on board the fleet, and part he led back with great loss along the barren northern shore of the Arabian Sea. Alexander and the Greeks came therefore to the very threshold of India, and then turned aside towards the sea, leaving the desert of Rajputana between them and the great prize of the conqueror.
In the seventh century of the Christian era there arose in Arabia the prophet Muhammad, who in his youth had been influenced both by Christian and Hebrew teaching. He preached to the Arabs that there was but one God, and that Muhammad was his prophet.
Muhammad, “The Praised,” was born in Mecca, about the year 570. He belonged to one of the ruling families of the tribe of Arabs who held Mecca and the surrounding country, but his father died before he was born, and his mother when he was only six months old. From his earliest youth Muhammad was addicted to solitude and musing. In his wanderings he visited Syria, and in a Nestorian convent there learned many of the Hebrew and Christian ideas which he subsequently incorporated into his teaching. In his twenty-fifth year he married Khadija, a widow of noble birth and considerable wealth. This marriage placed him in a position of independence, for he had previously been very poor.
When Muhammad was forty years old there came to him a Divine Call, bidding him teach his people to abandon their idols, to worship God, and to accept him as God’s Prophet. At first Muhammad met with the most bitter opposition, and in the year 622 A.D. he had to flee from Mecca to a city called Yathreb, which received him and made him its chief magistrate. Ever since that event this city has been called Medinat-un-Nabi, the City of the Prophet; or, shortly, Medina. The flight of Muhammad from Mecca is called the Hegira, and it is from this event that the Muhammadan calendar dates. In the year 630 A.D. Mecca was conquered, and shortly after this all Arabia submitted to the claims of the prophet.
After Muhammad’s death the Arabs set forth to conquer the world and to convert it to Islam. They subdued Egypt and Syria and the plain of the Euphrates. They marched to the gates of Constantinople, and through Northern Africa to the Strait of Gibraltar, and beyond Gibraltar through Spain into France, there to suffer a great defeat at the hands of the Christian Franks, which saved the remainder of Christendom. All this was accomplished in little more than a hundred years from the Hegira.
But the Musulmans did not wage war only against Christendom. Their armies advanced from the Euphrates up on to the Persian plateau and down into the lowlands of Turkestan in the heart of Asia, and over the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan, and then down into the plain of the River Indus. Already in the seventh century there had been Musulman incursions into India overseas, by way of Sind. In the eleventh century after Christ the Musulmans entered Gangetic India, and took Delhi. They founded there a Muhammadan realm, which presently extended through most of Northern India.
[Sidenote: 3. The Mogul Empire at its greatest extent.] Five hundred years later a second Musulman invasion, more effective than the first, came into India by way of Delhi. The Moguls or Mongols of Central Asia had been converted to Islam, and in the time of our King Henry the Eighth they refounded the Musulman power at Delhi. For a hundred and fifty years, from the time of our Queen Elizabeth to that of our Queen Anne, the series of Mogul Emperors, from Humayun to Aurangzeb, ruled in splendid state practically the whole of India. This map shows the greatest spread of the Mogul Empire. Agra, a hundred miles down the Jumna from Delhi, became a subsidiary capital to Delhi, and in these two cities we have to-day the supreme examples of Muhammadan architectural art.
The Musulman, it must be remembered, came as an alien to India. He is no polytheist or pantheist, but a believer in the one God, and that a spiritual God, so that he holds it wrong to make any graven image, whether of man or of animal. Islam is the name which the followers of the prophet gave to their religion: it means primarily submission, and so peace, greeting, safety, and salvation, and in its ethical sense it signifies striving after righteousness. Islam is in its essence pure Theism coupled with some definite rules of conduct. Belief in a future life and accountability for human action in another existence are two of the principal doctrines of the Islamic creed. Every Musulman is his own priest, and, in theory at any rate, no divisions of race or colour are recognised among the followers of the Prophet. Musulmans are forbidden to take alcohol. The gospel of Islam is the Koran—The Book—in which are embodied the teachings and precepts of the Arabian Prophet. The Koran incorporates, as we have already seen, much that was drawn both from Hebrew and Christian teaching.
More than sixty millions of the Indian population hold the faith of Islam. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority, although that minority, as we have already learned, is frequently powerful, for it gives ruling chiefs to many districts which are dominantly Hindu. In two parts only of India are the Musulmans in a majority, namely, in the far east, beyond the mouths of the Ganges in the newly formed Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in the Indus Basin from the neighbourhood of Delhi through the Punjab into Sind. For this reason, and also because of its physical character—lying low beneath the uplands of Afghanistan, and separated from the greater part of India by the breadth of the desert—we may think of the Indus Valley as being an ante-chamber to India proper. In this ante-chamber, and in the Delhi passage, between the desert and the mountains, for more than nine hundred years the Musulmans have predominated.
When the decay of the Mogul Empire began in the time of our Queen Anne, the chief local representatives of the Imperial Rule, such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Nawabs of Bengal and Oudh, assumed an independent position. It was with these new dynasties that the East India Company came into conflict in the days of General Clive, and thus we may regard the British Empire in India as having been built up from the fragments into which the Mogul Empire broke. In one region, however, the Western Deccan, the Hindus re-asserted themselves, and there was a rival bid for Empire, as we have already learned, on the part of the Marathas. It was the work of General Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, to defeat the Marathas. In the north also, in the Punjab, there was a recrudescence of the Hindu race, due to the new sect of the Sikhs, who set up a power with which at a later time the British Raj came into conflict. But this was not until after Delhi, the very seat of the Mogul throne, had been taken.
[Sidenote: Repeat Map No. 2.] [Sidenote: 4. Simla, Viceregal Lodge—distant view.] [Sidenote: 5. Simla, Bazaar and Town Hall.] We are now prepared for the fact shown in this map, that the tract northwestward of Delhi, in the gateway between the desert and the mountains, is sown over with battle fields—ancient battlefields near Delhi, where the incoming Musulmans overthrew the Indian resistance, and modern battlefields near the Sutlej, where advancing British power inflicted defeat upon the Sikhs after severe contests. It is by no accident that Simla, the residence during more than half the year of the British Viceroy, is placed on the Himalayan heights above this natural seat of Empire and of struggle for Empire.
In the Mutiny of 1857 the Sikhs of the Punjab, and of the still continuing Tributary States of Nabha and Patiala, mentioned in the last lecture, remained loyal to the British rule, although they had been conquered in the terrible battles on the Sutlej less than ten years before. In no small measure this was due to the extraordinary influence wielded over them by Sir John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence, the brother of that Sir Henry Lawrence who defended the Residency of Lucknow. As a result of the Sikh loyalty some of the British forces in the Punjab were free to march to the re-capture of Delhi. Thus the Indian Mutiny was overcome from two bases, on the one hand at Lucknow and Cawnpore by an army from the sea and Calcutta, and on the other hand at Delhi by an army advancing from the Punjab over the track beaten by so many conquerors in previous ages. Let us visit Delhi and see its defences, its mosques, the palaces of its Emperors, and the memorials of the Mutiny. Then we will go to Agra to see other splendid monuments of the Musulman dynasty. After that we will turn to Hardwar, at the point where the sacred Ganges bursts from its Himalayan valley on to the plain. Hardwar is a pilgrimage centre of the Hindus, second in sanctity only to Benares itself.
[Sidenote: 6. The Kashmir Gate, Delhi.] East of Delhi, running almost due southward, is the river Jumna, crossed by the great bridge of the East Indian Railway, which carries the main line from Delhi through the United Provinces and Bengal to Calcutta. West of the city is the last spur of the Aravalli hills, the famous Ridge of Delhi, striking northeastward. The city lies between the Ridge and the Jumna. It may be divided into three parts. To the north is the European quarter. In the centre is Shahjahanabad, or modern Delhi, entered from the north by the Kashmir Gate. Between Shahjahanabad and the river is the Fort. The Jama Masjid (Great Mosque) stands in the centre of Shahjahanabad, and the Kalan Masjid (Black Mosque) is about half a mile further south. Passing out of the modern city southward by the Delhi Gate we enter Firozabad, or ancient Delhi, the capital of the earlier Mogul rulers. Further still to the south are even more ancient ruins.
[Sidenote: 7. Jama Masjid, Delhi.] [Sidenote: 8. View from halfway up a Minaret, Jama Masjid.] [Sidenote: 9. View from top of Minaret, looking south.] [Sidenote: 10. The Same, looking northeast.] [Sidenote: 11. Kalan Masjid, Delhi.] Let us begin our sight-seeing in the centre of the modern city, at the Jama Masjid, a great building of marble and sandstone. Its principal treasures are a hair of Muhammad, and some of his handwriting. Here is a view of the mosque from the balcony of a neighbouring house. Let us go up one of the minarets and look over the city. This is a view taken from a little gallery half way up. To the left is seen part of the large central dome of the mosque, and to the right the top of one of the columns which rise on either side of the main archway. Beyond, far below, can be seen part of the city. Next we have a view, due southward, from the top of the minaret. The Kalan Masjid is just visible in the foreground, but a smoke haze obscures the more distant part of the town. We turn round and look northeastward over the Fort. Notice on the ground the shadow of the other minaret of the mosque. In the distance can be seen the Jumna, and crossing it the great bridge of the East Indian Railway. Here we have a closer view of the Kalan Masjid, or Black Mosque, built in the original style of the mosques of Arabia with many small solid domes, unadorned by carving. It has a sombre appearance. We see in front one of these domes, and behind it the tops of two others.
[Sidenote: 12. The Lahore Gate, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 13. The Delhi Gate, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 14. The Pearl Mosque, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 15. The Hall of Public Audience, Delhi Fort.] [Sidenote: 16. The Orpheus Panel.] The chief glory of Delhi is, however, the Fort, and the group of palace buildings within its precincts. It is approached through the Lahore Gate, of which we have here a view. This gate is in the middle of the west side of the Fort. Along the east side flows the River Jumna. In the southern face there is another great gateway, the Delhi Gate, with a grey stone elephant on either side of the entry. Within the Fort, is the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, built by Aurangzeb, of white and grey marble. The finest of the buildings of the Fort is, however, the great Hall of Public Audience, the Diwan-i-Am. There is a raised recess, in the wall of this hall, where formerly stood the famous Peacock Throne of Aurangzeb, made of solid gold inlaid with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, and backed by two peacocks set thick with gems. This throne was carried off when the Persians under Nadir Shah sacked the city in 1739, and massacred most of its inhabitants. Above the entry to the recess of the Peacock Throne are a number of panels about nine inches high and six inches broad, made of inlaid stones. Here is a photograph of one of them. Some of these panels were injured, but, thanks to Lord Curzon, an expert artist from Florence has recently restored them and made new ones in the spirit of the earlier to fill the vacant spaces.
[Sidenote: 17. The Hall of Private Audience, Delhi Fort.] We pass next to the innermost court of the Fort-palace, the Hall of Private Audience, the Diwan-i-Khas, ninety feet long and seventy feet broad, built of white marble with many inlaid flowers of jewels. Beneath the cornice runs the famous inscription: “If there is a Paradise upon earth it is this, it is this.” Here we see one of the graceful arches, and beyond in the distance the towers of the Pearl Mosque, already described.
[Sidenote: 18. Mausoleum of Humayun, Delhi.] To see old Delhi we must drive from the modern city either by the Delhi Gate in the south wall of the Fort or by the Ajmer Gate in the southeast corner of the city wall, past great dome-topped temples, most of them in ruins, until a few miles out, not far from the trunk road leading from Delhi to Agra, we come to the Mausoleum of Humayun, of which we have here a view. The design, as will be realised presently, is very similar to that of the Taj Mahal at Agra, but the Mausoleum is the older building. Notice the terraced platform on which it stands. It is built of red sandstone and marble. Beneath the platform, and approached by a long dark passage, is the vault where Humayun is buried. Around the Mausoleum are a number of old ruins, and the debris and cactus remind one of Pagan in Burma, which we saw in the second lecture.
[Sidenote: 19. The Kutab Minar and Iron Pillar, Delhi.] We resume our drive, past ruined tombs and walls, and at last, about eleven miles south of Delhi, we come to the buildings of the Kutab Minar, where are some of the few remains of the Hindu period now visible in the neighbourhood, though the mass of the work is of Muhammadan date. The Kutab was begun at the end of the 12th century, on the site of an ancient Hindu temple destroyed by the Musulmans. The famous Iron Pillar stands in front of the mosque. It is one of the most remarkable of all the antiquities of India, for it consists of a solid mass of wrought iron, weighing probably more than six tons, and measuring some 24 feet in height, with an average diameter of a little over a foot. At the base is an inscription in Sanskrit, from which it appears that its probable date is the fourth century, A.D. This inscription runs thus: “As long as I stand so long shall the Hindu kingdom endure.” The Kutab mosque is the Moslem reply to this. The wrought iron of the Pillar has an almost bluish colour when seen against the warm sunlit red sandstone of the great Kutab Tower. In this photograph a man has climbed to the top of the Pillar, and stands there as though a statue, giving us the scale of the monument.
[Sidenote: 20. The Lat of Asoka, the Ridge, Delhi.] Now let us visit the district to north of the modern city, of deep interest in connection with the Mutiny. On the Ridge top, between the Flagstaff Tower towards its northeastern end and the Mutiny Memorial further south, is another curious pillar, this one of stone, called the Lat of Asoka. At its base is the following modern inscription: