THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^ AMSTIROAM THE GARDEN OF INDIA. THE GARDEN or INDIA; OR CHAPTERS ON ODDH HISTORY AND AFFAIRS. BY H. C. IHWIN, B.A. OxoN., B.C.S. LOHf D N: VV. H. ALLEN <t CO., 13 WATERLOO TLACE. PUBLISH KUS TO THK INDIA OKKICK. 1880. Mil rtg/ito reMrvedij LONDON : PRINTP.D BT W. H. ALLKN AND CO , 13 iVATERLOO PLACK, S.W. D5 7a TO MI BROTHER OFFICERS OF THE OUDH COMMISSION I BEG LEAVE TO INSCRIBE THIS LITTLE BOOK WITH A PROFOUND SENSE OF ITS MANY DEFICIENCIES BUT IN THE HOPE THAT HOWEVER WIDELY SOME OP THEM MAY DISSENT FROM NOT A FEW OF THE OPINIONS I HAVE VENTURED TO EXPRESS THEY WILL AT LEAST BELIEVE THAT THESE ARE INSPIRED BY A SINCERE LOVE OF THE PROVINCE AND THE PEOPLE WHOSE WELFARE WE HAVE ALL ALIKE AT HEART. a 3 : ' GHrden of India I t'adinjj flower ! Withers thy bosom fair ; State, upstart, usurer devour What frost, flood, famine spare." A. H. H. "Ce que [nous voulonsj c'est que le pauvre, releve de sa longue decheance, cesse de trainer avec douleur ses chaines hereditaires, d'etre an pur instrument de travail, uue simple matiere exploitable Tout effort qui ne produirait pas ce resultat serait sterile ; toute reforme dans les choses presentes qui n'aboutirait point a cette reforme fonda- meutale serait derisoire et vaine." Lamennais. " " Malheur aux resignes d'aujourd'hui ! George Sand. " The dumb dread people that sat All night without screen for the night. All day mthout food for the day, They shall give not their harvest away, They shall eat of its frtiit and wax fat They shall see the desire of their sight, Though the ways of the seasons be steep, They shall climb mth face to the light, Put in the sickles and reap." A. C. Swinburne. — CONTENTS. PASK CHAPTER L—A Bird's-eye View . 1 CHAPTER II.—A PEW Facts and Figures 16 CHAPTER III.—Early Oudh History and Legend 62 CHAPTER IV.—The Nawabi [1720-1856] CHAPTER v.—Annexation . 156 CHAPTER VI. Fifteen Months op Zami'ndari Policy [1856-1867] .... 178 CHAPTER VII.—Ten Years of Taluqda'ri' Policy [1858-1868] .... 191 CHAPTER VIII.—Conclusions . 297 THE GARDEN OF INDIA, CHAPTER I. A BIRD S-EYE VIEW. If the reader were gifted with telescopic powers of vision, and could take his stand at sunrise some bright morning in early April on a certain wind-swept hill-side, almost exactly 82° E. longitude and 23° N. latitude, which is very vividly present before my mind's eye at this moment, he would see before him, sloj^ing gently southward to the Ganges, the great plain of Oudh. Behind him would rise in green, tumbled masses the pine-clad hills of Naipal, shutting out the distant glories of the snowy range. At his feet, and stretching far away on either hand to east and west, he would see a broad belt of primaeval forest—the shrunken remnant of that mighty wood, the great Gandharb Ban, which once covered the country north of the Sarj u. river up to the hills—intersected by a gleaming line where the waters of the Eapti glisten brightly in the morning sunlight. Here only in Oudh may still be tasted, though in diminished measure, the indescribable charm, which no one who has once known it can ever forget, of the wild, free, irresponsible life of the forest. Life has not many better things to offer in the way of piirely natural pleasure than it bestows on a hard-working 1 — ! 2 THE GARDEN OF INDIA. Anglo-Indian who, having fairly earned a month of holiday by eleven months of honest toil in court-house or in tent, can resort to these happy hunting-grounds, and abandon him- self for a season to the bliss of an existence such as Brown- " ing has sung of in " Saul : "Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up to rock. The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear. And the sultriness showing the [tiger] is couched in his lair." Think of the awakening in the early twilight from such slumber as only a couch in the forest, after a long day in the howdah, can afford, to see the morning star growing pale in the green sky before the gathering flush of the dawn, and to taste in anticipation the coming bliss of a long, ob- jective, irresponsible day ! Think, next, of the exquisite plunge into the blue dancing ripples of the river, as it comes racing down from the hills over tree trunk and boulder Hard to believe that it is the same stream whose steady murmur lulled us to sleep overnight, as we lay with half- closed eyes watching it shimmering past in the starlight. Strike out boldly, and lend yourself without fear to the cool fresh embrace of its mimic waves. No dread of crocodiles here to mar your rapture as you " Try the water with delighted limbs." Lower down the stream the elephants are enjoying to the uttermost their morning bath, lying stretched out in uncouth abandon, and uttering subdued grunts and^squeals of delight, while their mahouts clamber about their huge persons, and scrub their rugged hides. Then come the saunter through the camp, the inspection of the horses, and the alfresco breakfast, followed by the arrival of the wise old shikari who went out overnight, and has now returned with sure hhabar of a tiger's whereabouts. Then the long slow march of elephants in line, winding their way to the distant cover, through deep forest glades where the spotted deer scurry away unscathed by random bullet, skirting noble streams A BIRD .S-EYE VIEW. S wooded to the water's edge, crossing rugged ravines and sandy nullahs, over broad grassy plains with no sign of human presence save, at wide intervals, the gipsy camp, or the frail hut of the catechu gatherer, or the wandering herdsman with his buffaloes. And when the great swamp is reached, and the beat has begun, and every howdah is swaying to and fro like a ship at sea, as the labouring elephant ploughs his oozy way through the tall crackling reeds, in whose cool wet depths the jungle king lies dreaming of that succulent young heifer, the remains of whose tell-tale carcase are still lying not three hundred yards off—why, then, you must indeed be hlase if your heart does not beat quickly and your blood tingle as you grasp your favourite old smooth-bore and lean forward, eager to catch the first glimpse of the black and tawny stripes. And when the mighty game is afoot, and the low wooded hills all round echo to the quick peals of volleying thunder, the smoke of which hangs heavily among the reed-tops, and after a mad charge among the elephants that scatters half of them to right and left like rabbits, the great cat sinks with a sullen roar, never to rise again, and when—but, ah, well ! We must not linger too long " over the pleasant memories of this " simple and violent life, for it is with far other scenes, for the most part, and with other modes of being, that we have to deal in the pages that are to come. So let us transfer ourselves back to our perch on the breezy hill- side, and look forth again, resolutely dismissing all thought of the forest and its charms, or retaining them only as a cool green back-ground to the dusty, quivering heat and stress of the great panorama beyond. There it lies, the great plain ! with its dim myriad memo- ries dating back from before the earliest dawn of history, ancient home of strange long-forgotten dynasties of abori- ginal husbandmen, or Scythian nomads " ranging trackless fields," who here lived out their rude anarchic lives for many a slow far-off century, before the inroads of the Rajpiit hordes from the north and west, followed hard by the pur- suing armies of Islam, crushed their weaker organisations, 1 * 4 THE GARDEN OF INDIA. and made them bondsmen and herdsmen and hewers of wood and drawers of water, unto this day. There it lies, the great plain ! a land of narrow fields and wide rivers, of open barren tracts, and great single trees, and dense mango groves, of jungle patches, and shallow reedy lakes, and dry watercourses, and rugged ravines worn by the rushing rain- torrents. And what sort of life is it, you may ask, that is led by the scantily clad, dusky dwellers in those groups of mud- built, thatch-roofed, creeper-covered houses that dot the country so thickly—the men who are irrigating their fields from tank and channel, the children herding cattle on the bare-looking grazing-grounds, the women with their water vessels clustering round the village well ? And it must, I fear, be answered that theirs is, for the most part, a dim, slowly moving, and too often a poverty-stricken and hunger- bitten life, a life of small observances and petty supersti- tions, a narrow round of struggle with the rent-collector and the village usurer, enlivened only by the rare excitement of a marriage-feast, or a pilgrimage to some quasi-religious fail". They are a much-enduring, little-complaining race, these earth-tillers, " men to much misery and hardship bom," who, blessed indeed in that they expect little, yet even of that little too often disappointed, wear away their lives from hand to mouth and year to year, " Muttering across the barley bread In daily toil and drearihead." This is not a pleasant sketch of the condition of the rural masses of Oudh, but I do not think that it is, so far as it goes, an unfaithful one, or drawn in too sombre colours.