Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Appendix: Thuggee and the part taken in its Suppression by General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B., by Captain J. L. Sleeman Supplementary Note by the Editor Additions and Corrections

Before setting out on our journey towards the Himâlaya we formed once more an agreeable party to visit the Marble Rocks of the Nerbudda at Bherâghât.[1] It was the end of Kârtik...

2. The eighth month of the Hindoo luni-solar year, corresponding to part of October and part of November. In Northern India the year begins with the month Chait, in March. The m...

The Hindoo system is this. A great divine spirit or essence, 'Brahma', pervades the whole universe; and the soul of every human being is a drop from this great ocean, to which,...

The legend is that the Nerbudda, which flows west into the Gulf of Cambay, was wooed and won in the usual way by the Sôn river, which rises from the same tableland of Amarkantak...

We took a ride one evening to Gopâlpur, a small village situated on the same bank of the Nerbudda, about three miles up from Bherâghât. On our way we met a party of women and gi...

Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil...

Certain it is that no Hindoo will have a marriage in his family during the four months of the rainy season; for among eighty millions of souls[1] not one doubts that the Great P...

We left Jubbulpore on the morning of the 20th November, 1835, and came on ten miles to Baghaurî. Several of our friends of the 29th Native Infantry accompanied us this first sta...

Mîr Salâmat Alî, the head native collector of the district, a venerable old Musalmân and most valuable public servant, who has been labouring in the same vineyard with me for th...

7. 'Women . . . are most careful to preserve their hair intact. They pride themselves on its length and weight. For a woman to have to part with her hair is one of the greatest...

On the 23rd,[1] we came on nine miles to Sangrâmpur, and, on the 24th, nine more to the valley of Jabêrâ,[2] situated on the western extremity of the bed of a large lake, which...

The officers of the 29th had found game so plentiful, and the weather so fine, that they came on with us as far as Jaberâ, where we had the pleasure of their society on the even...

'Of course we do--do not we find instances of it every day? European gentlemen are too apt to believe that things like this are not to be found here, because they are not to be...

Poor old Salâmat Alî wept bitterly at the last meeting in my tent, and his two nice boys, without exactly knowing why, began to do the same; and my little son Henry[1] caught th...

Lieutenant Brown had come on to Damoh chiefly with a view to investigate a case of murder, which had taken place at the village of Sujaina, about ten miles from Damoh, on the ro...

On the 29th[1] we came on to Pathariâ, a considerable little town thirty miles from Sâgar, supported almost entirely by a few farmers, small agricultural capitalists, and the es...

The cantonments of Sâgar are about two miles from the city and occupied by three regiments of native infantry, one of local horse, and a company of European artillery.[1] The ci...

On the 3rd we came to Bahrol,[1] where I had encamped with Lord William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside o...

6. Dhamonî is in the Sâgar district of the Central Provinces, about twenty-nine miles north of Sâgar. The fort was taken by General Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Râjâ...

On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seorî. Soon after leaving Dhamonî, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the plains of Bundêlkhand. The face of this r...

On the 6th[1] we came to Sayyidpur, ten miles, over an undulating country, with a fine soil of decomposed basalt, reposing upon syenite, with veins of feldspar and quartz. Culti...

At Sayyidpur[1] we encamped in a pretty little mango grove, and here I had a visit from my old friend Jânkî Sewak, the high priest of the great temple that projects into the Sâg...

13. These Hindî verses are incorrectly printed, and loosely rendered by the author. The translation of the text, after necessary emendation, is: 'Tulasî, oppress not the poor; e...

Râm Chand Râo, commonly called the Sarîmant, chief of Deorî,[1] here overtook me. He came out from Sâgar to visit me at Dhamonî[2] and, not reaching that place in time, came on...

Sarîmant had been one of the few who escaped from the flames which consumed his capital of Deorî in the month of April 1813, and were supposed to have destroyed thirty thousand...

On the 8th,[1] after a march of twelve miles, we readied Tehrî, the present capital of the Râjâ of Orchhâ.[2] Our road lay over an undulating surface of soil composed of the det...

The present Râjâ, Mathurâ Dâs, succeeded his brother Bikramâjît, who died in 1834. He had made over the government to his only son, Râjâ Bahâdur, whom he almost adored; but, the...

Near Tehrî we saw the people irrigating a field of wheat from a tank by means of a canoe, in a mode quite new to me. The surface of the water was about three feet below that of...

In the evening, after my conversation with the cultivator upon the wall that united the two hills,[1] I received a visit from my little friend the Sarîmant. His fine rose-colour...

On the 11th[1] we came on twelve miles to the town of Bamhaurî, whence extends to the south-west a ridge of high and bare quartz hills, towering above all others, curling and fo...

Champat Râi. The correct date of the death of Chhatarsâl is Pûs Badi 3, Sanwat, 1788 = A.D. 1731. Hardî (Hirdai) Sâ succeeded to the Râj, or kingdom, of Pannâ, and Jagatrâj to t...

I had a visit from my little friend the Sarîmant, and the conversation turned upon the causes and effects of the dreadful blight to which the wheat crops in the Nerbudda distric...

On the 13th [December, 1885] we came to Barwâ Sâgar,[1] over a road winding among small ridges and conical hills, none of them much elevated or very steep; the whole being a bed...

On the 14th[1] we came on fourteen miles to Jhânsî.[2] About five miles from our last ground we crossed the Baitantî river over a bed of syenite. At this river we mounted our el...

On the 16th[1] we came on nine miles to Amabâi, the frontier village of the Jhânsî territory, bordering upon Datiyâ,[2] where I had to receive the farewell visits of many member...

On the 17th[1] we came to Datiyâ, nine miles over a dry and poor soil, thinly, and only partially, covering a bed of brown and grey syenite, with veins of quartz and feldspar, a...

The morning after we reached Datiyâ, I went out with Lieutenant Thomas to shoot and hunt in the Râjâ's large preserve, and with the _humane_ and determined resolution of killing...

Though no doubt very familiar to our ancestors during the Middle Ages, this is a thing happily but little understood in Europe at the present day. 'Bhûmiâwat', in Bundêlkhand, s...

The day before we left Datiyâ our cook had a violent dispute with his mother, a thing of almost daily occurrence; for though a very fat and handsome old lady, she was a very vio...

On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village of Antrî in the Gwâlior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial soil under spring crops. This plain be...

4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathurâ (Mattra) on the Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly sacred, and shooting one would be likely to...

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwâlior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and...

9. Bhîlsâ is the principal town of the Isâgarh subdivision in the Gwâlior State. The famous Buddhist antiquities near it are described at length in Cunningham, _The Bhîlsâ Topes...

Under the Emperors of Delhi the fortress of Gwâlior was always considered as an imperial State prison, in which they confined those rivals and competitors for dominion whom they...

The contest for the empire of India here described is very like that which preceded it, between the sons of Jahângîr, in which Shâh Jahân succeeded in destroying all his brother...

to the sovereign, and is minutely subdivided among those who farm and cultivate it--the great works in canals, aqueducts, bridges, roads, &c., are made by Government, and yield...

The foregoing historical episode occupies too large a space in what might otherwise be termed a personal narrative; but still I am tempted to append to it a sketch of the fortun...

The attempt of the Marquis of Hastings to rescue India from that dreadful scourge, the Pindhârî system, involved him in a war with all the great Marâthâ states, except Gwâlior;...

4. A small principality, about seventy miles equidistant from Agra, Gwâlior, Mathurâ, Alwar, Jaipur, and Tonk. The attack on Karaulî occurred in 1813. Full details are given in...

15. 'In 1886 the fort of Gwâlior and the cantonment of Morâr were surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the fort and town of Jhânsî. Both forts were...

On the morning of the 26th,[1] we sent on one tent, with the intention of following it in the afternoon; but about three o'clock a thunder-storm came on so heavily that I was af...

On the 30th and 31st,[1] we went twenty-four miles over a dry plain, with a sandy soil covered with excellent crops where irrigated, and a very poor one where not. We met severa...

finding the exact words in Sale's version of that chapter. I suspect that the words have been misread. Moîn-ud-dîn gives as the words at the north side of the tomb, _script char...

I crossed over the river Jumna one morning to look at the tomb of Itimâd-ud-daula, the most remarkable mausoleum in the neighbourhood after those of Akbar and the Tâj. On my way...

Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening, and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, 'What progress our religion was making among the people?'

On the 6th January we left Agra, which soon after became the residence of the Governor of the North-Western Provinces, Sir Charles Metcalfe.[1] It was, when I was there, the res...

Our old friends, Mr. Charles Fraser, the Commissioner of the Agra Division, then on his circuit, and Major Godby, had come on with us from Agra and made our party very agreeable...

On the 10th[1] we came on ten miles over a plain to Govardhan, a place celebrated in ancient history as the birthplace of Krishna, the seventh incarnation of the Hindoo god of p...

The people of Britain are described by Diodorus Siculus (Book V, chap. 2) as in a very simple and rude state, subsisting almost entirely on the produce of the land, but as being...

On the 18th[1] we came on ten miles to Sâhar, over a plain of poor soil, carelessly cultivated, and without either manure or irrigation. Major Godby left us at Govardhan to retu...

Kosî[1] stands on the borders of Fîrôzpur, the estate of the late Shams-ud-dîn, who was hanged at Delhi on the 3rd of October, 1835, for the murder of William Fraser, the repres...

criminal was taken possession of by Government, and the town of Fîrôzpur is now the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of the Gurgâon district in the Panjâb. The Delhi territo...

At Horal[1] resides a Collector of Customs with two or three uncovenanted European assistants as patrol officers.[2] The rule now is to tax only the staple articles of produce f...

What strikes one most after crossing the Chambal is, I think, the improved size and bearing of the men; they are much stouter, and more bold and manly, without being at all less...

My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees, and close to a handsome temple. There are...

On the 17th and 18th,[1] we went on twenty miles to Palwal,[2] which stands upon an immense mound, in some places a hundred feet high, formed entirely of the debris of old build...

At Palwal Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of the solitude to which they were condemned...

ON the 19th[1] we came on to Balamgarh,[2] fifteen miles over a plain, better cultivated and more studded with trees than that which we had been coming over for many days before...

On the 20th[1] we came to Badarpur, twelve miles over a plain, with the range of hills on our left approaching nearer and nearer the road, and separating us from the old city of...

On the 21st we went on eight miles to the Kutb Mînâr, across the range of sandstone hills, which rise to the height of about two hundred feet, and run north and south. The rocks...

On the 22nd of January, 1836, we went on twelve miles to the new city of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shâhjahân, and called after him Shâhjahânâbâd; and took up our quarters in t...

aide, and Aurangzêb, supported by his brother and dupe, Murâd Baksh, on the other, was fought on the 28th May, 1658 [O. S.], at the small village of Samûgarh (Samogar), four mil...

On the 26th[1] we crossed the river Jumna, over a bridge of boats, kept up by the King of Oudh for the use of the public, though his majesty is now connected with Delhi only by...

4. By the term 'the largest military station in the empire', the author means Meerut. At present the largest military station in Northern India is, I believe, Râwal Pindi, and t...

6. The members of the reformed police force, constituted under Act V of 1861, generally on the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary, have no reason to complain of insecurity of...

ON the 27th[1] we went on fifteen miles to Bêgamâbâd, over a sandy and level country. All the peasantry along the roads were busy watering their fields; and the singing of the m...

On the 30th,[1] we went on twelve miles to Meerut, and encamped close to the Sûraj Kund, so called after Sûraj-mal, the Jât chief of Dîg, whose tomb I have described at Govardha...

The country between Delhi and Meerut is well cultivated and rich in the latent power of its soil; but there is here, as everywhere else in the Upper Provinces, a lamentable want...

Meerut is a large station for military and civil establishments; it is the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, and all their a...

There is nothing which strikes a European more in travelling over the great roads in India than the vast number of pilgrims of all kinds which he falls in with, particularly bet...

On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the church built and endowed by the late Bêgam Sombre, whose remains are now deposited in it.[1] It was designed...

of 1796, in his memoirs of George Thomas, first published in 1803, describes her personal appearance as follows: 'Begum Sumroo is about forty-five years of age, small in stature...

The following observations on a very important and interesting subject were not intended to form a portion of the present work.[1] They serve to illustrate, however, many passag...

I have said nothing in the foregoing chapter of the invalid establishment, which is probably the greatest of all bonds between the Government and its native army, and consequent...