Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official. William Sleeman
of Nāgpur,208 great efforts were made by him and all the European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the cholera morbus, which broke out among the multitude one season while they were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them. This seasonable visitation was, I believe, considered as an intimation on the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahādēo is the only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.209 He figures among the dramatis personae of the great pantomime of the Rāmlīlā210 or fight for the recovery of Sitā from the demon king of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether the fair has ever been revived, but [I] think not.
In 1829 the wheat and other spring crops in this and the surrounding villages were destroyed by a severe hail-storm; in 1830 they were deficient from the want of seasonable rains; and in 1831 they were destroyed by blight. During these three years the 'teorī', or what in other parts of India is called 'kesārī' (the Lathyrus sativus of botanists), a kind of wild vetch, which, though not sown itself, is left carelessly to grow among the wheat and other grain, and given in the green and dry state to cattle, remained uninjured, and thrived with great luxuriance.211 In 1831 they reaped a rich crop of it from the blighted wheat-fields, and subsisted upon its grain during that and the following years, giving the stalks and leaves only to their cattle. In 1833 the sad effects of this food began to manifest themselves. The younger part of the population of this and the surrounding villages, from the age of thirty downwards, began to be deprived of the use of their limbs below the waist by paralytic strokes, in all cases sudden, but in some cases more severe than in others. About half the youth of this village of both sexes became affected during the years 1833 and 1834, and many of them have lost the use of their lower limbs entirely, and are unable to move. The youth of the surrounding villages, in which the 'teorī' from the same causes formed the chief article of food during the years 1831 and 1832, have suffered to an equal degree. Since the year 1834 no new case has occurred; but no person once attacked had been found to recover the use of the limbs affected; and my tent was surrounded by great numbers of the youth in different stages of the disease, imploring my advice and assistance under this dreadful visitation. Some of them were very fine-looking young men of good caste and respectable families; and all stated that their pains and infirmities were confined entirely to the parts below the waist. They described the attack as coming on suddenly, often while the person was asleep, and without any warning symptoms whatever; and stated that a greater portion of the young men were attacked than of the young women. It is the prevailing opinion of the natives throughout the country that both horses and bullocks, which have been much fed upon 'teorī', are liable to lose the use of their limbs; but, if the poisonous qualities abound more in the grain than in the stalk or leaves, man, who eats nothing but the grain, must be more liable to suffer from the use of this food than beasts, which eat it merely as they eat grass or hay.
I sent the son of the head man of the village and another, who were among the young people least affected, into Sāgar with a letter to my friend Dr. Foley, with a request that he would try what he could do for them; and if he had any fair prospect of being able to restore these people to the use of their limbs, that measures might be adopted through the civil authorities to provide them with accommodation and the means of subsistence, either by private subscription, or by application to Government. The civil authorities, however, could find neither accommodation nor funds to maintain these people while under Dr. Foley's care; and several seasons of calamity had deprived them of the means of maintaining themselves at a distance from their families. Nor is a medical man in India provided with the means found most effectual in removing such affections, such as baths, galvanic batteries, &c. It is lamentable to think how very little we have as yet done for the country in the healing art, that art which, above all others, a benevolent and enlightened Government should encourage among the people of India.
All we have as yet done has been to provide medical attendants for our European officers; regiments, and jails. It must not, however, be supposed that the people of India are without medical advice, for there is not a town or considerable village in India without its practitioners, the Hindoos following the Egyptian (Misrānī), and the Musalmāns the Grecian (Yunānī) practice. The first prescribe little physic and much fasting; and the second follow the good old rules of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, with which they are all tolerably well acquainted. As far as the office of physician goes, the natives of India of all classes, high and low, have much more confidence in their own practitioners than in ours, whom they consider too reckless and better adapted to treat diseases in a cold than a hot climate. They cannot afford to give the only fees which European physicians would accept; and they see them, in their hospital practice, trust much to their native assistants, who are very few of them able to read any book, much less to study the profound doctrines of the great masters of the science of medicine.212 No native ventures to offer an opinion upon this abstruse subject in any circle where he is not known to be profoundly read in either Arabic or Sanskrit lore; nor would he venture to give a prescription without first consulting, 'spectacles on nose', a book as large as a church Bible. The educated class, as indeed all classes, say that they do not want our physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons. Here they feel that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid whenever they see any chance of obtaining it, as in the present case.213 Considering that every European gentleman they meet is more or less a surgeon, or hoping to find him so, people who are afflicted, or have children afflicted, with any kind of malformation, or malorganization, flock round them [sic] wherever they go, and implore their aid; but implore in vain, for, when they do happen to fall in with a surgeon, he is a mere passer-by, without the means or the time to afford relief. In travelling over India there is nothing which distresses a benevolent man so much as the necessity he is daily under of telling poor parents, who, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, approach him with their suffering children in their arms, that to relieve them requires time and means which are not at a traveller's command, or a species of knowledge which he does not possess; it is bitter thus to dash to the ground the cup of hope which our approach has raised to the lip of mother, father, and child; but he consoles himself with the prospect, that at no distant period a benevolent and enlightened Government will distribute over the land those from whom the afflicted will not seek relief in vain.214
CHAPTER 16
On the 3rd we came to Bahrol,215 where I had encamped with Lord William Bentinck on the last day of December, 1832, when the quicksilver in the thermometer at sunrise, outside our tents, was down to twenty-six degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The village stands upon a gentle swelling hill of decomposed basalt, and is surrounded by hills of the same formation. The Dasān river flows close under the village, and has two beautiful reaches, one above, the other below, separated by the dyke of basalt, over which lies the ford of the river.216
There are beautiful reaches of the kind in all the rivers in this part of India, and they are almost everywhere formed in the same manner. At Bahrol there is a very unusual number of tombs built over the ashes of women who have burnt themselves with the remains of their husbands. Upon each tomb stands erect a tablet of freestone, with the sun, the new moon, and a rose engraved upon it in bas-relief in one field;217 and the man and woman, hand in hand, in the other. On one stone of this kind I saw a third field below these two, with the figure of a horse in bas-relief, and I asked one of the gentlemen farmers, who was riding with me, what it meant. He told me that he thought it indicated that the woman rode on horseback to bathe before she ascended the pile.218 I asked him whether he thought the measure prohibiting the practice of burning good or bad.
'It is', said he, 'in some respects good, and in others bad. Widows
Nagpore (Nāgpur) was governed by Marāthā rulers, with the title of Bhōnslā, also known as the Rājās of Berār. The last Rājā, Raghojī, died without heirs in 1853. His dominions were then annexed as lapsed territory by Lord Dalhousie. Sir Richard Jenkins was Resident at Nāgpur from 1810 to 1827. Nāgpur is now the head-quarters of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces.
The Rāmlīlā, a performance corresponding to the mediaeval European 'miracle-play', is celebrated in Northern India in the month of Kuār (or Asvin, September-October), at the same time as the Durgā Pūjā is solemnized in Bengal. Rāma and his brother Lachhman are impersonated by boys, who are seated on thrones in state. The performance concludes by the burning of a wicker image of Rāvana, the demon king of Lankā (Ceylon), who had carried off Rāma's queen, Sitā. The story is the leading subject of the great epic called the Rāmāyana.
One of the tent-pitchers one morning, after pitching our tent, asked the loan of a small extra one for the use of his wife, who was about to be confined. The basket-maker's wife of the village near which we were encamped was called; and the poor woman, before we had finished our breakfast, gave birth to a daughter. The charge is half a rupee, or one shilling for a boy, and a quarter, or sixpence, for a girl. The tent-pitcher gave her ninepence, which the poor midwife thought very handsome, The mother had come fourteen miles upon a loaded cart over rough roads the night before; and went the same distance with her child the night after, upon the same cart. The first midwife in Europe could not have done her duty better than this poor basket-maker's wife did hers. [W. H. S.]
The 'present case' was of a medical, not a surgical, nature.
The Hindoo practitioners are called 'baid' (Sanskrit 'vaidya', followers of the Veda, that is to say, the Ayur Veda). The Musalmān practitioners are generally called 'hakīm'. The Egyptian school (Misrānī, Misrī, or Suryānī, that is, Syrian) never practise bleeding, and are partial to the use of metallic oxides. The Yunānī physicians approve of bleeding, and prefer vegetable drugs. The older writers on India fancied that the Hindoo system of medicine was of enormous antiquity, and that the principles of Galenical medical science were ultimately derived from India. Modern investigation has proved that Hindoo medicine, like Hindoo astronomy, is largely of Greek origin. This conclusion has been expressed in an exaggerated form by some writers, but its general truth appears to be established. The Hindoo books treating of medicine are certainly older than Wilson supposed, for the Bower manuscript, written in the second half of the fourth century of our era, contains three Sanskrit medical treatises. The writers had, however, plenty of time to borrow from Galen, who lived in the second century. The Indian aversion to European medicine, as distinguished from surgery, still exists, though in a degree somewhat less than in the author's time. Many municipal boards have insisted on employing 'baids' and 'hakīms' in addition to the practitioners trained in European methods. Well-to-do patients often delay resort to the English physician until they have exhausted all resources of the 'hakīm' and have been nearly killed by his drastic treatment. One medical innovation, the use of quinine as a febrifuge, has secured universal approbation. I never heard of an Indian who disbelieved in quinine. Chlorodyne also is fully appreciated, but most of the European medicines are regarded with little faith.
Since the author wrote, great progress has been made in providing hospital and dispensary accommodation. Each 'district', or unit of civil administration, has a fairly well equipped combined hospital and dispensary at head-quarters, and branch dispensaries exist in almost every district. An Inspector-General of Dispensaries supervises the medical administration of each province, and medical schools have been organized at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Agra. During Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty and afterwards, energetic steps were taken to improve the system of medical relief for females. Pandit Madhusadan Gupta, on January 10, 1836, was the first Hindoo who ventured to dissect a human body and teach anatomy. India can now boast of a considerable number of Hindoo and Musalmān practitioners, trained in European methods, and skilful in their profession. Much has been done, infinitely more remains to be done. Details will be found in
December, 1835. The name of the village is spelled Behrole by the author.
The Dasān river rises in the Bhopāl State, flows through the Sāgar district of the Central Provinces, and along the southern boundary of the Lalitpur subdivision of the Jhānsī District, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It also forms the boundary between the Jhānsī and Hamīrpur Districts, and falls into the Betwa after a course of about 220 miles. The name is often, but erroneously, written Dhasān. It is the Sanskrit Dasārna.
This emblem is a lotus, not a rose flower. The latter is never used in Hindoo symbolism. The lotus is a solar emblem, and intimately associated with the worship of Vishnu.