CHAPTER V

CHITORGARH AND UDAIPUR

From Ajmir there is a branch line to Chitorgarh and Udaipur, and no traveller in India should miss the opportunity of visiting both these highly interesting places. Leaving Ajmir, the railway runs south through a rather flat country, passing Naisirabad, an important British military station. The English “Tommy” in khaki, and white helmet and putties, or the sun-burned, brown-booted and spurred British cavalry officer, were in evidence at the railway station. Among the native crowd here we saw a turbaned man in pink carrying a very thin, aged woman, probably his mother, pick-a-back fashion.

A very dry and almost desert tract of country is traversed after this, though occasionally varied by irrigated fields and green crops. The irrigation wells, worked by oxen as before, and the native ploughing, were the chief incidents in the landscape. The plough is a very primitive-looking implement with a single shaft, with a cross handle fixed at right angles to the shaft, which consists of a sharpened piece of wood, tipped with iron. The plough is drawn by a pair of zebus, and is light enough for the man to lift up and turn at the end of the furrow, or even to be carried home on his shoulder at the end of the day. There were thick hedges of spikey sort of cactus, branching out from a main stem, something like candelabra, the fronds growing in a longitudinal, rigid form. These hedges fenced the railway line from the fields on the desert. Another plant of common occurrence, both here and all over India, was a broad-leaved shrub of symmetric order, having small, pale, lilac flowers, the stems rather a yellow, and the leaves a lightish blue green. We noted also a sort of wild laburnam. The prickly pear was common, and a sort of prickly acacia-like shrub much liked by camels. The trees were mostly various acacias, the banyan tree (Ficus), and the teak. In places we saw both date and cocoa palms. At one station (Mandal) the level plains, with pyramidal hills in the distance and a grove of palms and camels in the foreground, again recalled Egypt.

The cultivated crops we passed were cotton, tobacco, rice, wheat, and sugar cane.

At every station may be seen the water filter, a wooden tripod stand, holding three red earthen water-jars, one above the other. The natives drink quantities of water, and always carry a small drinking-vessel of bright brass, which they take every opportunity of filling. The water-bearer is a characteristic figure everywhere, and comes up to the train with his cry, “Panee! panee!” which (with an Italian prepossessed ear) is more suggestive of another, and solid, necessary of life. Bread, however, in Hindustanee, happens to be “roti.”

Having left Ajmir by the 9.20 A.M. train, we arrived at Chitorgarh about five in the evening, and put up at the station rooms for the night. There was a considerable crowd on the long, open, gravelled platform, mainly natives, with a small contingent of English and American tourists. European tourists in India, however, were generally few and far between, the United States being much more numerously represented. A picturesque group was formed by a native resident from Udaipur, with his retinue, waiting for their train on. The chief was a venerable and a kindly-looking man, with white hair and beard, reminding one rather of the late G. F. Watts. He was gaily dressed in a pink turban and a lilac silk coat, and was seated on a chair on the platform, surrounded by his attendants in scarlet; among these was his trumpeter, with a bugle slung around him, and a quad of four soldiers in khaki and turbans.

We found the Traveller’s Bungalow was about three-quarters of a mile or so away from the station. The bedrooms were all taken by the English and American parties, but we could feed there, so, retaining our quarters at the station, we walked to the Bungalow for our dinner. It was a lovely moonlight night, with bright stars, but there was a cold north wind as we were guided by our bearer with a lantern along a rather rough track, and crossed the railway to the Bungalow, a new stone building, bare and cheerless as they make them, standing all by itself in a stoney yard without a tree near it. The dinner, or supper, was not very rewarding, and we trudged back again to the station in the cold moonlight. The station we found quieter than usual. The servants of the resident had encamped upon the platform, and formed picturesque groups around fires, cooking and gossiping; their master sleeping in the train, which was drawn up ready to start for Udaipur early the next morning.

It seems highly necessary for travellers in India anywhere off the track of hotels to provide themselves with bedding of some sort, at least quilts, rugs, sheets, and pillows. The nights at this time of year in Rajpootana are quite cold, and warm wraps are welcome.

The next morning we engaged a large elephant—which waited at the station to take travellers to Chitorgarh—to carry us to the fort and deserted city on the height we could see from the station. This was a distance of some seven miles there and back, it was said.

The elephant was made by the driver to kneel while we mounted, by means of a ladder of bamboo, and seated ourselves on the flat, cushioned seat, having a low hand-rail and a foot board, slung by ropes. The elephant moved with a peculiar swaying, swinging movement, not unlike that of a ship, though regular. We started over a stretch of rough, common-like ground, broken into hillocks and hollows, overgrown with scrub bush, the track not being very definite. The elephant picked its way most carefully over the rough parts, especially when descending a hollow. We reached a roadway which led over a bridge across a river, and brought us up to the city of Chitor at the foot of the hill, and extending upon its lower slopes. We entered the city through a Moslem arched gateway, and threaded our way through the narrow streets, our elephant filling the whole of the roadway. Pottery, beads, glass bracelets, cheap lacquered ornaments, and small merchandise of various kinds were spread out on the ground, their proprietors squatting by their stock in trade. The native houses were small and low, for the most part hardly more than huts of mud, roofed with sun-baked tiles, laid scalewise over a trellis of bamboo, often very dilapidated. There were remains of better houses and older, with arcaded balconies, and here and there we passed a small white-washed temple, with quaint elephants with gay housings painted in profile on the white walls each side the entrance. These elephants are drawn in a very spirited manner, and are generally represented going at a trot, and full of action with trunk and tail in the air, decorated with bells on his feet and gorgeous red and yellow housings and domed howdah, set off by the solid black of the elephant and his ivory tusks, the turbaned driver flourishing his goad. From our commanding eminence, the elephant’s back, we could take a comprehensive survey of the life of the city, and see the people at work at various trades. The inhabitants did not take much notice of us; some would stare and others would salaam as we passed. I imagine the elephant with European travellers on its back not infrequently passed through Chitor, although we managed to startle a tethered camel in one of the streets considerably, and the animal tugged at its rope and plunged alarmingly at the sight of our elephant.

Leaving the city of Chitor, which seemed very poverty-stricken, we reached the first gate of the fortress, and began the ascent of some 200 or 300 feet. The road zigzags up the side of the rocky plateau, upon the summit of which the fort and ancient city were built, the ancient capital of Rajpootana. Massive walls protect this road on the outer side, and a continuous warder’s walk runs along it, with flights of stone steps to the roadway at intervals. We passed through five gateways on the way up, generally enriched with sculptured ornament—the last one, Ram Pol, being the richest, and this was finely carved with Hindu detail and symbols, having friezes of elephants. There have been extensive restorations at Chitorgarh. The whole length of the wall seems to have been gone over, and replastered, and in many places rebuilt with new stone. The tops of the gates were crenellated in a fashion which suggested a perpetuation in stone of an earlier type of wooden palisading, a horizontal band connecting the rounded or pointed stone heads, the divisions between each being continued below it. In many cases the old massive wooden gates were left under the archways, bound with old iron bands. By the way, at Ajmir we noted that the wooden doors of the gateways to the courts were covered with old horse-shoes nailed on, close together, in some instances actually over the old rich carved work, and apparently with the same idea of good omen as is associated with the same emblem in our country.

Arrived at the summit there were wonderful ruins to be seen. Scattered over the plateau, half overgrown, amid heaps of shattered stones and carved fragments, there were the remains of Mohammedan palaces and Hindu or Jain Temples, rich within and without with intricate carving.

The guides showed us where the Hindu Queen and the women of the city, all suffocated themselves in a subterranean chamber to escape their fate had they fallen into the hands of the Mohammedan conquerors, when Ala-ud-din took Chitor by storm in 1290.

The hand of the restorer was seen here again and had been in some parts rather too thorough. I noticed an arcade over the gateway of the Moslem Palace, which seemed to have been entirely rebuilt in a kind of pale green marble, almost the colour of jade, quite sharply cut and new, and out of keeping with the old work more or less battered and ruined around it. The famous Tower of Victory had been extensively restored, even the carving in parts recut. This is going too far, as it is impossible to unite modern workmanship with old, even in India. Watchful and careful, timely repair is the only way to preserve ancient buildings, but there should be no attempt made to replace lost carving and decoration by modern imitation.

We entered over broken steps a wonderful Jain temple, very richly carved, with a remarkable domed ceiling over the central chamber, arranged in a series of concentric circles, intersected by figures of dancing girls, with emblems radiating from the centre. Another Jain temple formed a most picturesque pile, and a delightful mass of light and shade filled in with intricate detail, in the full sunlight. In these temples a favourite deity is Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, whose carved image constantly appears.

In one part of the ancient city we came upon some natives preparing cotton yarn for hand-weaving. The yarn was stretched in long lengths across horizontal canes supported by vertical ones. They seemed to be cleaning the threads with combs and brushes. The little black-bristled hand-brushes placed on the top of the turbaned heads when not in use had a very quaint effect.

Having explored the ruins of Chitorgarh, we remounted our good elephant, which waited for us, and descended, moving rather joltingly down the long hill, and frightening a pony and a camel tethered in the main street of Chitor. The sun was now blazing, it being noontide, though tempered by the still cool wind from the north, which we had found really cold in the morning.

Returning the way we had come to our quarters at the station, after taking tiffin at the bungalow we arranged to go on to Udaipur in the morning, and were advised to sleep in the train, which waited in the station all night, and left at 6.20 A.M. for Udaipur. So we packed up and went on board and took our berths, which were on the whole more comfortable than the station beds.

In the morning our compartment was invaded by a young Indian who wanted a seat, but we had kept it to ourselves during the night, which was cold enough, and we were glad of all our wraps. The young Indian was a pleasant, bright, and intelligent young fellow who spoke English well, well clad in the style of a native gentleman, with plenty of wraps and overcoats. He was obviously curious about us, and wanted to know all we would tell him. He seemed to have a great wish to see London, and asked us about the cost of living there, and whether a Hindu could live there according to his religion without meat. He described India as “a poor country,” and wondered that we should journey so far to see it. He was bound for some town where his father lived, sixty miles by tonga from Udaipur, being under orders not to stop at the latter place, as his father had told him there was plague there, and wished him to come on.

The train passed through a very flat and rather cheerless country, exceedingly dry, and for the most part covered with long jungle grass, but varied here and there by green crops under irrigation.

Camels were occasionally seen, generally ridden by two men; also there were many herds of oxen and buffaloes. As usual, there were many interesting types and groups to be observed at the stations.

Approaching Udaipur, the country broke into hills and became more interesting. We reached Udaipur Station about 11.30, and bidding good-bye and exchanging cards with the young Hindu, we parted with our baggage into a little open cart called a “tum-tum,” and were driven some distance, along a dusty road, to the Udaipur Hotel, which looked like an expanded bungalow with a second storey added on. Here we found pleasant quarters and decent beds.

At the table-d’hôte there was a rather frigid Anglo-Indian family, a colonel on a tour of official inspection and his secretary and their ladies; also a voluble American lady, whom we had seen at Ajmir, and a rather lofty and superior English military man and his wife, who, we were afterwards informed, were the guests of the Maharajah.

In meeting one’s compatriots aboard or indeed anywhere without an introduction one is reminded by their manner strongly of the Oxford Don who could not do anything to save an unfortunate undergraduate from drowning because “he had not been introduced.”

Here, in a remote part of India, chance had thrown half-a-dozen English people together at the same table, and yet they would hardly speak to each other, that is to say to any new-comer outside their own party. Nothing, however, daunts the American traveller, especially the American lady. She ignores the social ice, or if she perceives it she boldly breaks it with a hatchet, as it were, rushing in under the guns of the most frigid and unapproachable personalities with a cheerful and persistent fire of conversation, popping in leading questions with the most artless and childlike confidence. This mode of attack generally succeeds, too, apparently. I have seen severe English official and military-looking men, after some show of resistance, unconditionally surrender, and presently empty their intellectual pockets on the demand of these light-hearted, table-d’hôte, globe-trotting inquisitors.

A picturesque feature of hotel life in India is the impromptu bazaar formed under the arcade, which always shades the rooms on the ground floor, by the travelling merchants, who spread out their wares to tempt the traveller.

In Rajpootana, the land of warriors, collections of arms, swords, sword-sticks, knives and daggers, and fearsome and wonderful blades of all sorts form a conspicuous part of the stock-in-trade of these native merchants, the glittering steel making a brave show with the bright-coloured stuffs, jewellery, and embroideries. At Udaipur they offered also native pictures, painted in tempera, somewhat crude but distinctly decorative, and complete with painted borders or frames. They represented elephants, tigers, maharajahs sabring wild swine, and such-like, painted in profile in frank flat colours, the animals singularly faithful in silhouette to nature. In dealing with these travelling traders, bargaining is, of course, expected, and usually they are willing to accept about half the price originally asked.

An impressive sight at Udaipur is the place of tombs, or the burning-place, which is a beautiful garden surrounded by a high wall, full of magnificent domed tombs and cenotaphs. This is the place where the Kings of Udaipur, since it became the capital of Rajpootana, have been buried, or rather cremated, with their wives. The city of Udaipur—a glimpse of which, with its crenellated walls and the huge pile of the Maharajah’s palace rising above the trees, is seen from the hotel—is entered, after a short drive through a fine double gateway. A huge old mango tree grows over the street just inside. Udaipur is a white town; the streets are very picturesque, having arcaded bazaars and pretty fantastic balconies here and there, and the native life is of course very varied and full of colour. The main street rises up to the eminence on which the palace stands. At an angle before this is reached, a steep flight of white steps leads up to the gate of the court of the great temple of Juggernath—a Jain temple dedicated to Vishnu—the second person in the Hindu Trinity. It was the finest of its kind we have yet seen. We were allowed to walk around the court and examine the carvings, but not inside the temple. Two great stone elephants stand facing one another at the entrance to the court—a similar arrangement to that noted at Ellora. There is an elaborate shrine over the gateway in which is a seated bronze or brass figure of Vishnu with his lotus flower, snakes, and other emblems. The exterior of the temple is a wonderful mass of carving. On the plinth was a continuous narrow frieze of elephants on a small scale, having the effect of a richly carved moulding; above this was a line of horses, all saddled and bridled but without riders; above this again was a band of human figures. Over these were carved on a larger scale a series of figures of dancing-girls in different attitudes. These dancers always form an important element in the carved decoration of Jain temples.

We next visited the palace of the Maharajah, which occupies the highest ground in the city of Udaipur. It is a vast, romantic-looking pile. The steep street leads the traveller up to a great arched gateway, and through this is entered a large oblong court. On the right, the vast white palace walls rise to a great height, with hardly any windows, but high up are seen fairy-like arcades, balconies, and domed minarets, glittering with blue tile-work and gold.

A native custodian conducted us over the Palace. Entering an inner court, we ascended a steep stone staircase at an angle, the treads rising about nine or twelve inches high. There were native paintings on the walls of richly caparisoned state elephants bearing maharajahs, tigers, and other figures. We passed through a succession of rooms and courts at different levels, the walls of white marble inlaid with a very fine sort of glass mosaic, not tessellated but let in in pieces cut large or small according to the forms to be expressed. These were generally figures always in severe profile, in elaborate costume, and jewels the details of which were carefully and richly rendered. Flowers and delicate palm trees varied the designs, done in the same way, the leaves and small component parts being cut complete in the glass. There were also formal floral borders outlining the arches of the arcades, and forming ceiling patterns in some of the rooms, and on the walls were hung in frames delicate paintings on vellum, heightened with gold, such as one sees in old Indian illuminated MSS. In some of the corridors it was rather a shock to see inserted in the windows pieces of crudely stained European glass, such as were in vogue in conservatories here in the “forties.” One room was entirely decorated with coloured glass, the walls being veneered with a zigzag pattern in red and white glass.

Other and smaller rooms in the Zenana quarters, which we had now reached, and all at the top storey of the Palace, were lined with old Dutch tiles, others again with Chinese blue and white tiles. These rooms had graceful, arcaded balconies which commanded extensive views. We had a bird’s-eye view of the palace courts and the stable yards, where elephants were tethered in long rows, the busy natives moving about with horses and oxen. Beyond were seen the clustering, small white houses with flat roofs, broken by domes here and there, the green wooded country and the hills far away, while on the other side of the palace the lake with its pavilioned islands mirrored the sunset framed in the blue mountains.

At night we frequently heard the weird cries of the jackals which prowl around most places in India after dark, and when all is quiet in human habitations. It is a very wild, shrill sound, rising almost to a shriek at times. We also thought we caught another note—the laughter of the hyena.

A charming excursion by boat may be made to the palace of Jagmandir, which occupies the whole of an island on the lake, a fairy-like pavilion enclosing luxuriant palms and fruit trees within its courts and gardens in which one realised the architecture and scenery of the Arabian Nights.

We reached the lakeside through a fine triple-arched gate which led to a flight of steps descending into the water. Here a striking scene burst upon us. A crowd of dark Hindu women thronged the steps, clad for the most part in rich red saris of different tones, varied by orange and purple drapery and the glitter of their silver bangles and anklets. They were busy cleaning their brass water jars, scrubbing and polishing them on the steps at different levels; some standing in the water, whilst others, filling their vessels and poising them on their heads, would move away stately and erect, like walking caryatids.

Presently a rather heavy boat with two native oarsmen, which had been summoned by our guide moved from the palace to the steps and we, with our bearer, embarked, and were rowed over to the enchanting island and the fairy-like palace of Jagmandir where Shah Jehan lived when in revolt against his father, Jahangir. On the way we rowed around another island showing white arcades and domes emerging from green bowery foliage of mangoes and palms.

Landing at the steps we found the Jagmandir a most lovely place, full of arcaded courts, and marble pavements, pointed windows and balconies and marble walls enclosing green gardens full of roses, and palms, and plantains, a kingly pavilion, displaying all the invention and refinement of Mogul art. Inside, too, the palace was full of interest. There was a charming little painted chamber, the walls treated in a sort of tapestry manner with Indian scenes and decorative landscapes rich with trees and varied with all the characteristic birds and animals (the white cranes on the mango tree which we had seen in reality at Ahmedabad were there) kites and crows, and antelopes, and the Maharajah and his horsemen hunting the tiger amid these painted forests and jungles. On one wall the Maharajah himself was painted at full length in profile in a white turban and dress also white embroidered with gold, with a gold nimbus about his head as he is supposed to be descended from Rama, and is considered a sacred person connected with the sun—a large sun face modelled and gilded appears on the palace wall.

Another room was said to have been painted by a French artist. He had taken the lotus as a motive and had tuned it into a formal scroll pattern in the frieze, but it was not a success, and had not the interest or the spirit or decorative instinct of the native artist.

The chief salon had Parisian carpets on the floor, and a dreadful blue glass chandelier, and other horrors in glass and furniture of Western origin. Opening out of this salon was a bedroom raised a step or two on a higher level and the principal feature here was a large bedstead in glass and silver! On the walls of one of the courts was a decoration in gesso inlaid with glass, which was both delicate and effective. There were figures decoratively treated in severe profile, combined with trees and flowers somewhat Persian in feeling and similar in style to some we had seen in the Maharajah’s palace.

From the landing-place I made a sketch of that palace in the sunlight reflected in the calm waters of the lake. Then, at noon we rowed back to the town and returned in our tonga to the hotel.

Another of the sights of Udaipur is to see the Maharajah’s wild pigs fed. He has an arena near the town for the cruel sport of pig-sticking, but keeps vast herds of pigs upon the mountain sides at the head of the lake. It is a beautiful drive to the spot through the city and out at a further gate, and through groves and along a terrace-like road by the lakeside, to a white building on a high ground overlooking the wooded and rocky mountain side, partially covered with low forest; there from a terrace we could see many swine feeding. They are like a small kind of wild boar, but differing in size, and very fierce, bristling their backs and charging one another over the food, which was Indian corn, scattered broadcast among them by two natives, one carrying the sack of grain and the other distributing it from a sort trencher. There was a sort of Brobdingnagian mouse-trap on the ground, presumably to catch the boars in, when wanted for the arena. There were but few boars at first to be seen, but they seemed to know the feeding time, and gradually gathered in large numbers, and when the grain was scattered, by their constant rushes after it and violent charges with each others soon raised such a thick cloud of dust that they became lost to view as in a thick mist, and could only hear their hoofs scraping over the rocky ground, and their savage grunts and squeaks. A number of peacocks hovered on the outskirts on the look out for stray grain as well as blue rocks and crows which often perched on the hogs’ backs! The terrace from which we surveyed this strange scene was really the parapeted flat roof of the keeper’s dwelling. A flight of steps led up to a higher terrace which surrounded a deep sort of bear-pit, where a select family of hogs seemed to be treated with peculiar distinction. Not for these the fierce struggle for grain upon the mountain side, when the battle was to the strong; no, these were fed upon a special food—a sort of large brown rissole composed of buttermilk and sugar-cane; but the hogs were fat and did not devour these attractive morsels, even with half the zest which their less favoured relatives outside ate up the scattered maize. The reason of the comparative luxury in which these selected hogs lived, we learned, was that they had fought with tigers, and thus were treated as superior beings, by order of the Maharajah.

The wooded shores of the lake and the mountains beyond were very beautiful in the still evening atmosphere, as we drove back to Udaipur, the road by the lake being so narrow that two carriages could not pass, and, meeting the Resident, we had to pull in to one side to let his carriage get by.

There was a charming view of Udaipur from our hotel seen through the trees, the massive Maharajah’s palace dominating the city, and bathed in the roseate early morning sunlight it looked particularly lovely. I worked at a sketch of this on Christmas morning; I remember, having to be up at seven o’clock in order to catch the effect, which soon changed. We had the most brilliant moonlight nights here, too.

We visited the Maharajah’s gardens where was a sort of Zoo. There were some handsome tigers in rather small cages, hogs, leopards, one lion, deer, guinea-pigs, geese, cockatoos, and other birds and beasts, including some melancholy dogs of various breeds, chained at intervals around a courtyard. These were supposed to be in hospital.

From the Zoo we drove through a fine wooded park to the Museum called the Victoria Institute, where a native curator showed us round. It was a white building in the Moslem style but quite new. It included a library in which was placed a bad statue of our late Queen. There were modelled heads in coloured plaster, ranged in cases numbered and ticketed, of all the Hindu castes, each with their proper caste mark upon their foreheads. There was a miscellaneous collection otherwise, native arts and industries and antiquities, as well as European, being represented very sparsely. The whole thing had a sort of forced and artificial character in such surroundings and was quite empty of visitors. We were, however, early there.

In driving through the gate of the city, a funeral passed us—a band of young men bearing on a stretcher the corpse which was swathed in red cotton and tightly bound up like a mummy. The bearers moved at a quick, almost jaunty pace, approaching a trot, and with them were other natives who chanted a sort of song. If it was an equivalent for a dirge it was quite a cheerful one—but then the Hindus, as well as the Mohammedans and Indians, look upon death as a happy translation to another existence, and the accompaniments of gloom to which we are accustomed in Christian countries have no existence here.

We departed, on Christmas Day in the morning, from Chitor and Ajmir again, returning by the way we came. Udaipur is at the end of the branch line from Ajmir which has not I believe been in existence many years.

On the way to the station I noticed some very primitive huts clustered in a group on a rising ground above the road. They almost exactly resembled the huts of the early Britons and Gauls as they appear on Trajan’s column, being circular in form, built of mud or sun-baked bricks and roofed with a sort of rude thatch laid over a bamboo trellis. In this land of wonders and contrasts truly, one sees everything both in customs and dwellings from the most primitive to the most elaborate and luxurious, from the most ancient to the most modern forms of life. It is sad to note, however, that at least as far as the outward aspects of life are concerned, all that Western contact seems to have done for the people of India is to introduce corrugated iron, Manchester cotton, and the kerosene can—with petrol and its smell!

At Udaipur station there was a great native crowd of every variety of type, wonderful in colour and costume. Many of the men carried sabres as well as walking-sticks which seem to be the marks of superior caste in Rajputana. There were, too, the usual crowd of poorer travellers with their extraordinary bundles and brown babies. A native woman stood on the platform with a huge sheaf of sugar-cane which she sold in pieces to the travellers, and, of course, there were the sweet stuff sellers, and the inevitable betel-nut.

Reaching Chitorgarh in the late afternoon the old fort with its zigzag walled road looked quite familiar, and at the station our elephant was in waiting again.

We could not get on to Ajmir until night, and so did not arrive there until about 5.30 in the morning. Coming from a plague-stricken district passengers were not allowed to leave the train until a medical inspection had taken place. An English doctor with a native attendant bearing a lantern came round and went through the farce of feeling everybody’s pulse before anybody was allowed to leave the station. We only stopped, however, to get some tea and await a train for Jaipur, our next destination.