The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
I found that it took me some years of hard study before I could walk into a bazar and distinguish the several castes, and know something of them, their manners and customs, religion and superstitions. I at once engaged a venerable Parsee, Dosabhai Sohrabji, also a mubid, or priest, as his white cap and coat showed, who had coached many generations of griffs, and under his guidance dived deep into the "Ethics of Hind" (Akhlak-i-Hindi) and other such text-books.
This was the year after the heir-apparent was born; when Nott, Pollock, and Sale revenged the destruction of some 13,000 men by the Afghans; when the Chinese War broke out; when Lord Ellenborough succeeded awkward Lord Auckland; and when Major-General Sir Charles J. Napier, commanding at Poonah, was appointed to Sind (August 25th, 1842), and when his subsequent unfriend, Brevet-Major James Outram, was on furlough to England; lastly, and curious to say, most important of all to me, was the fact that "Ensign Burton" was ranked and posted in the G. G. O. of October 15th, 1842, to the 18th Regiment, Bombay N.I.
Nor was I less surprised by the boasting of my brother officers (the Sepoys had thrashed the French in India and elsewhere, they were the flower of the British army, and so forth)—fine specimen of esprit de corps run mad, which was destined presently to change its tone, after 1857. Meanwhile this loud brag covered an ugly truth. We officers of the Indian army held her Majesty's commission, but the Company's officers were looked upon by the Queen's troops as mere auxiliaries, locals without general rank, as it were black policemen. Moreover the rules of the service did not allow us to rise above a certain rank. What a contrast to the French private, who carries a Marshal's baton in his knapsack!
Captain Cleland introduced me to his sister, the wife of a field-officer, and she to sundry of her friends, whose tone somewhat surprised me. Here and there a reference was made to my "immortal soul," and I was overwhelmed with oral treatises upon what was expected from a "Christian in a heathen land." And these ladies "talked shop," at least, so it appeared to me, like non-commissioned officers. After Shikar and the linguistics, the only popular pursuit in India is (I should think always was) "Society." But indigestible dinners are not pleasant in a Turkish bath; dancing is at a discount in a region of eternal dog-days; picnics are unpleasant on the "palm-tasselled strand of glowing Ind," where scorpions and cobras come uninvited; horse-racing, like Cicero's "Mercaturi," to be honoured, must be on a large scale; the Mess tiffin is an abomination ruinous to digestion and health; the billiard-table may pass an hour or so pleasantly enough, but it becomes a monotonous waste of time, and the evening bands, or meet at "Scandal Point," is open to the charge of a deadly dullness.
Visits become visitations, because that tyrant Madam Etiquette commanded them about noon, despite risk of sunstroke, and "the ladies" insisted upon them without remorse of conscience. Needless to say that in those days the Gym-hánah was unknown, and that the Indian world ignored lawn-tennis, even croquet.
Another point in Bombay Society at once struck me, and I afterwards found it in the Colonies and most highly developed in the United States. At home men and women live under an incubus, a perfect system of social despotism which is intended to make amends for an unnatural political equality, amongst classes born radically unequal. Abroad, the weight is taken off their shoulders, and they result of its removal is a peculiar rankness of growth. The pious become fanatically one-idea'd, pharisaical, unchristian, monomaniacal. The un-pious run to the other extreme, believe nothing, sneer at the holies, "and look upon the mere Agnostic as a 'slow coach.'" Eccentricity develops itself Bedlam-wards. One of my friends had a mania and swore "By my halidom." Another had an image of Gánpati over his door, which he never passed without the prayer, "Shri ganeshayá Hamahá" ("I bow to auspicious Janus"). A third, of whom I heard, had studied Aristotle in Arabic, and when shown the "Novum Organon," asked, indignantly, "who the fellow might be that talked such stuff." And in matters of honesty the social idea was somewhat lax; to sell a spavined horse to a friend was considered a good joke, and to pass off plated wares for real silver was looked upon as only a trifle too "smart." The Press faithfully reflected these nuances with a little extra violence and virulence of its own. By-the-by, I must not forget making the acquaintance of a typical Scot, Dr. Buist (afterwards Sir Charles Napier's "blatant beast of the Bombay Times"). He wrote much (so badly that only one clerk could read it) and washed little; and as age advanced he married a young wife.
After a month or so at Bombay, chiefly spent in mugging "Hindostani," and in providing myself with the necessaries of life—servants, headed by Salvador Soares, a handsome Goanese; a horse, in the shape of a dun-coloured Kattywár nag; also a "horsekeeper," a dog, a tent, and so forth—I received my marching orders and set out to "join" my own corps. The simple way of travelling in those days before steam and rail was by palanquin or pattymar. I have described the latter article in "Goa," and I may add that it had its advantages. True it was a "slow coach," creeping on seventy or eighty miles a day, and some days almost stationary; it had few comforts and no luxuries. I began by actually missing "pudding," and have often smiled at the remembrance of my stomach's comical disappointment. En revanche, the study of the little world within was most valuable to the "young Anglo-Indian," and the slow devious course allowed landing at places rarely visited by Europeans. During my repeated trips I saw Diu, once so famous in Portuguese story, Holy Dwarká, guarded outside by sharks and filled with fierce and fanatic mercenaries, and a dozen less interesting spots.
The end of this trip was Tankária-Bunder, a small landing in the Bay of Cambay, a most primitive locale to be called a port, where a mud-bank, adapted for a mooring-stake, was about the only convenience. It showed me, however, a fine specimen of the Ghora, or bore, known to our Severn and other rivers—an exaggerated high tide, when the water comes rushing up the shallows like a charge of cavalry. Native carts were also to be procured at Tankária-Bunder for the three days' short march to Baroda, and a mattress spread below made the rude article comfortable enough for young limbs and strong nerves.
Gujarat, the classical Gujaráhtra, a land of the Gujar clan, which remained the Syrastrena Regio of Arrian, surprised me by its tranquil beauty and its vast natural wealth. Green as a card-table, flat as a prairie, it grew a marvellous growth of trees, which stunted our English oaks and elm trees—
"to ancient song unknown,
The noble sons of potent heat and flood"—
and a succession of fields breaking the glades, of townlets and villages walled by luxuriant barriers of caustic milk-bush (euphorbia), teemed with sights and sounds and smells peculiarly Indian. The sharp bark of Hanu the Monkey and the bray of the Shankh or conch near the bowery pagoda were surprises to the ear, and less to the nose was the blue vapour which settled over the hamlets morning and evening, a semi-transparent veil, the result of Gobar smoke from "cow-chips." A stale trick upon travellers approaching India by sea was to rub a little sandal oil upon the gunwale and invite them to "smell India," yet many a time for miles off shore I have noted that faint spicy odour, as if there were curry in the air, which about the abodes of man seems to be crossed with an aroma of drugs, as though proceeding from an apothecary's store. Wondrous peaceful and quiet lay those little Indian villages, outlaid by glorious banyan and pipal trees, topes or clumps of giant figs which rain a most grateful shade, and sometimes provided by the piety of some long-departed Chief with a tank of cut stone, a baurá or draw-well of fine masonry and large dimensions. But what "exercised" not a little my "Griffin" thoughts was to note the unpleasant difference between villages under English rule and those belonging to "His Highness the Gaikwar" or cowkeeper; the penury of the former and the prosperity of the latter. Mr. Boyd, the then Resident at the local court, soon enlightened me upon the evils of our unelastic rule of "smart Collectors," who cannot and dare not make any allowance for deficient rainfall or injured crops, and it is better to have something to lose, and to lose it even to the extent "of being ousted of possessions and disseized of freehold," with the likely hope of gaining it again, than to own nothing worth plundering.
The end of the march introduced me to my corps, the 18th Regiment, Bombay Native Infantry, whose head-quarters were in Gujarat, one wing being stationed at Mhow, on the Bengal frontier.
The officer commanding, Captain James (C.V.), called upon me at the Travellers' bungalow, the rudimentary Inn which must satisfy the stranger in India, suggesting the while such sad contrast, and bore me off to