INTRODUCTION
James Tod, the Author of this work, son of James Tod and Mary Heatly, was born at Islington on March 20, 1782. His father, James Tod the first, eldest son of Henry Tod of Bo’ness and Janet Monteath, was born on October 26, 1745. In 1780 he married in New York Mary, daughter of Andrew Heatly, a member of a family originally settled at Mellerston, Co. Berwick, where they had held a landed estate for some four centuries. Andrew Heatly emigrated to Rhode Island, where he died at the age of thirty-six in 1761. He had married Mary, daughter of Sueton Grant, of the family of Gartinbeg, really of Balvaddon, who left Inverness for Newport, Rhode Island, in 1725, and Temperance Talmage or Tollemache, granddaughter of one of the first and principal settlers at Easthampton, Rhode Island. He had been forced to emigrate to America during the Protectorate, owing to his loyalty to King Charles I. James Tod, the first, left America, and in partnership with his brother John, became an indigo-planter at Mirzapur, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.
James Tod, the second, was thus through his father and his uncles Patrick and S. Heatly, both members of the Civil Service of the East India Company, closely connected with India, and in 1798, being then sixteen years old, he obtained through the influence of his uncle, Patrick Heatly, a cadetship in the service of the East India Company. On his arrival at Calcutta he was attached to the 2nd European Regiment. In 1800 he was transferred, with the rank of Lieutenant, to the 14th Native Infantry, from which he passed in 1807, with the same rank, to the 25th Native Infantry. In 1805 he was appointed to the command of the escort of his friend Mr. Graeme Mercer, then Government Agent at the Camp of Daulat Rao Sindhia, who had been defeatedtwo years before at the battle of Assaye by Sir Arthur Wellesley. In more than one passage inThe AnnalsTod speaks of Mr. Graeme Mercer with respect and affection, and by him he was introduced to official life and Rājput and Mahratta politics. His tastes for geographical inquiries led him to undertake surveys in Rājputāna and Central India between 1812 and 1817, and he employed several native surveyors to traverse the then little-known region between Central India and the valley of the Indus.
At this period the Government of India was engaged in a project for suppressing the Pindāris, a body of lawless freebooters, of no single race, the débris of the adventurers who gained power during the decay of the Mughal Empire, and who had not been incorporated in the armies of the local powers which rose from its ruins. In 1817, to effect their suppression, the Governor-General, the Marquess of Hastings, collected the strongest British force which up to that time had been assembled in India. Two armies, acting in co-operation from north and south, converged on the banditti, and met with rapid success. Sindhia, whose power depended on the demoralized condition of Rājputāna, was overawed; Holkar was defeated; the Rāja of Nāgpur was captured; the Mahratta Peshwa became a fugitive; the Pindāris were dispersed. One of their leaders, Amīr Khān, who is frequently mentioned in Tod’s narrative, disbanded his forces, and received as his share of the spoils the Principality of Tonk, still ruled by his descendants.
In the course of this campaign Tod performed valuable services. At the beginning of the operations he supplied the British Staff with a rough map of the seat of war, and in other ways his local knowledge was utilized by the Generals in charge of the operations. In 1813 he had been promoted to the rank of Captain in command of the escort of the Resident, Mr. Richard Strachey, who nominated him to the post of his Second Assistant. In 1818 he was appointed Political Agent of Western Rājputāna, a post which he held till his retirement in June 1822. The work which he carried out in Rājputāna during this period is fully described inThe Annalsand in his “Personal Narrative.” Owing to Mahratta oppression and the ravages of the Pindāris, the condition of the country, political, social, and economical, was deplorable. To remedy this prevailing anarchy the States were gradually brought under British control, and their relations withthe paramount power were embodied in a series of treaties. In this work of reform, reconstruction, and conciliation, Tod played an active part, and the confidence and respect with which he was regarded by the Princes, Chiefs, and peasantry enabled him to interfere with good effect in tribal quarrels, to rearrange the fiefs of the minor Chiefs, and to act as arbitrator between the Rāna of Mewār and his subjects.
Tod was convinced that the miserable state of the country was chiefly due to the hesitation of the Indian Government in interfering for the re-establishment of order; and on this ground he does not hesitate to condemn the cautious policy of Lord Cornwallis during his second term of office as Governor-General. Few people at the present day would be disposed to defend the policy of non-intervention. “This policy has been condemned by historians and commentators, as well as by statesmen, soldiers, and diplomatists; by Mill and his editor, H. H. Wilson, and by Thornton; by Lord Lake and Sir John Malcolm. The mischief was done and the loss of influence was not regained for a decade. It was not till the conclusion of an expensive and protracted campaign, that the Indian Government was replaced in the position where it had been left by Wellesley. The blame for this weak and unfortunate policy must be divided between Cornwallis and Barlow, between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control.” But it was carried out in pursuance of orders from the Home Government. “The Court of Directors for some time past had been alarmed at Lord Wellesley’s vigorous foreign policy. Castlereagh at the Board of Control had taken fright, and even Pitt was carried away and committed himself to a hasty opinion that the Governor-General had acted imprudently and illegally.”[1]
Tod tells us little of his relations with the Supreme Government during his four years’ service as Political Agent. He was notoriously a partisan of the Rājput princes, particularly those of Mewār and Mārwār; he is never tired of abusing the policy of the Emperor Aurangzeb, and, fortunately for the success of his work, Muhammadans form only a slight minority in the population of Rājputāna. This attitude naturally exposed him to criticism. Writing in 1824, Bishop Heber,[2]while he recognizes that he washeld in affection and respect by “all the upper and middling classes of society,” goes on to say: “His misfortune was that, in consequence of his favouring the native princes so much, the Government of Calcutta were led to suspect him of corruption, and consequently to narrow his powers and associate other officers with him in his trust till he was disgusted and resigned his place. They are now, I believe, well satisfied that their suspicions were groundless. Captain Todd (sic) is strenuously vindicated from the charge by all the officers with whom I have conversed, and some of whom had abundant means of knowing what the natives themselves thought of him.” The Bishop’s widow, in a later issue of theDiaryof her husband, adds that "she is anxious to remove any unfavourable impressions which may exist on the subject by stating, that she has now the authority of a gentleman, who at the time was a member of the Supreme Council, to say, that no such imputation was ever fixed on Colonel Todd´s (sic) character."
Whatever may have been the real reason for the premature termination of his official career at the age of forty, ill-health was put forward as the ostensible cause of his retirement. He had served for about twenty-four years in the Indian plains without any leave; he had long suffered from malaria; and, though he hardly suspected it at the time, an attempt had been made by one of his servants to poison him with Datura; he had met with a serious accident when, by chance or design, his elephant-driver dashed his howdah against the gate of Begūn fort in eastern Mewār. In spite of all this, he retained sufficient health to make, on the eve of his departure from India, the extensive tour recorded in hisTravels in Western India. Neither on his retirement, nor at any subsequent period, were his services, official and literary, rewarded by any distinction.
During his seventeen years’ service in Central India and Rājputāna he showed indefatigable industry in the collection of the materials which were partially used in his great work. His taste for the study of history and antiquities, ethnology, popular religion, and superstitions was stimulated by the pioneer work of Sir W. Jones and other writers in theAsiatic Researches. He was not a trained philologist, and he gained much of his information from his Guru, the Jain Yati Gyānchandra, and the Brāhman Pandits whom he employed to make inquiries on hisbehalf. They, too, were not trained scholars in the modern sense of the term, and many of his mistakes are due to his rashness in following their guidance.
His life was prolonged for thirteen years after he left India. In 1824 he attained the rank of Major, and in 1826 that of Lieutenant-Colonel. Much of his time in England was spent in arranging his materials and compiling the works upon which his reputation depends:The Annals, published between 1829 and 1832; and hisTravels in Western India, published after his death, in 1839. He was in close relations with the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he acted for a time as Librarian. In this fine collection of books and manuscripts he gained much of that discursive learning which appears inThe Annals. He presented to the Society numerous manuscripts, inscriptions, and coins. The fine series of drawings made to illustrate his works by Captain P. T. Waugh and a native artist named Ghāsi, have recently been rearranged and catalogued in the Library of the Society. They well deserve inspection by any one interested in Indian art. He also made frequent tours on the Continent, and on one occasion visited the great soldier, Count Benoit de Boigne, who died in 1830, leaving a fortune of twenty millions of francs.
On November 16, 1826, Tod married Julia, daughter of Dr. Henry Clutterbuck, an eminent London surgeon, by whom he had two sons and a daughter. In 1835 he settled in a house in Regent’s Park, and on November 17 of the same year he died suddenly while transacting business at the office of his bankers, Messrs. Robarts of Lombard Street. The names of his descendants will appear from the pedigree appended to this Introduction.
The Annals of Rajasthan, the two volumes of which were, by permission, dedicated to Kings George IV. and William IV. respectively, was received with considerable favour. A contemporary critic deals with it in the following terms:[3]“Colonel Tod deserves the praise of a most delightful and industrious collector of materials for history, and his own narrative style in many places displays great freedom, vigour, and perspicuity. Though not always correct, and occasionally stiff and formal, it is not seldom highly animated and picturesque. The faults of his work are inseparable from its nature; it would have been almost impossible to mould up into one continuous history thedistinct and separate annals of the various Rajput races. The patience of the reader is thus unavoidably put to a severe trial, in having to reascend to the origin, and again to trace downwards the parallel annals of some new tribe—sometimes interwoven with, sometimes entirely distinct from, those which have gone before. But, on the whole, as no one but Colonel Tod could have gathered the materials for such a work, there are not many who could have used them so well. No candid reader can arise from its perusal without a very high sense of the character of the Author—no scholar, more certainly, without respect for his attainments, and gratitude for the service which he has rendered to a branch of literature, if far from popular, by no means to be estimated, as to its real importance, by the extent to which it may command the favour of an age of duodecimos.”
In estimating the value of the local authorities on which the history is based, Tod reposed undue confidence in the epics and ballads composed by the poet Chānd and other tribal bards. It is believed that more than one of these poems have disappeared since his time, and these materials have been only in part edited and translated. The value to be placed on bardic literature is a question not free from difficulty. “On the faith of ancient songs, the uncertain but the only memorials of barbarism,” says Gibbon, “they [Cassiodorus and Jornandes] deduced the first origin of the Goths.”[4]The poet may occasionally record facts of value, but in his zeal for the honour of the tribe which he represents, he is tempted to exaggerate victories, to minimize defeats. This is a danger to which Indian poets are particularly exposed. Their trade is one of fulsome adulation, and in a state of society like that of the Rājputs, where tribal and personal rivalries flourish, the temptation to give a false colouring to history is great. In fact, bardic literature is often useful, not as evidence of occurrences in antiquity, but as an indication of the habits and beliefs current in the age of the writer. It exhibits the facts, not as they really occurred, but as the writer and his contemporaries supposed that they occurred. The mind of the poet, with all its prejudices, projects itself into the distant past. Good examples of the methods of the bards will appear in the attempt to connect the Rāthors with the dynasty of Kanauj, or to represent the Chauhāns as the founders of an empire in the Deccan.
Recent investigation has thrown much new light on the origin of the Rājputs. A wide gulf lies between the Vedic Kshatriya and the Rājput of medieval times which it is now impossible to bridge. Some clans, with the help of an accommodating bard, may be able to trace their lineage to the Kshatriyas of Buddhist times, who were recognized as one of the leading elements in Hindu society, and, in their own estimation, stood even higher than the Brāhmans.[5]But it is now certain that the origin of many clans dates from the Saka or Kushān invasion, which began about the middle of the second centuryB.C., or more certainly, from that of the White Huns who destroyed the Gupta empire aboutA.D.480. The Gurjara tribe connected with the latter people adopted Hinduism, and their leaders formed the main stock from which the higher Rājput families sprang. When these new claimants to princely honours accepted the faith and institutions of Brahmanism, the attempt would naturally be made to affiliate themselves to the mythical heroes whose exploits are recorded in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana. Hence arose the body of legend recorded inThe Annalsby which a fabulous origin from the Sun or Moon is ascribed to two great Rājput branches, a genealogy claimed by other princely families, like the Incas of Peru or the Mikado of Japan. Or, as in the case of the Rāthors of Mārwār, an equally fabulous story was invented to link them with the royal house of Kanauj, one of the genuine old Hindu ruling families. The same feeling lies at the root of theAeneidof Virgil, the court poet of the new empire. The clan of the emperor Augustus, the Iulii, a patrician family of Alban origin, was represented as the heirs of Iulus, the supposed son of Aeneas and founder of Alba Longa, thus linking the new Augustan house with the heroes of theIliad.
One of the merits of Tod’s work is that, though his knowledge of ethnology was imperfect, and he was unable to reject the local chronicles of the Rājputs, he advocated, in anticipation of the conclusions of later scholars, the so-called “Scythic” origin of the race. To make up for the lack of direct evidence of Scythian manners and sociology to support this position, he was forced to rely on certain superficial resemblances of custom and belief, not between Rājputs, Scythians and Huns, but between Rājputs,Getae or Thracians, or the Germans of Tacitus. In the same way a supposed identity of name led him to identify the Jāts of northern India with the Getae or with the Goths, and finally to bring them with the Jutes into Kent.
A similar process of groping in semi-darkness induced him to make constant references to serpent worship, which, as Sir E. Tylor remarked, "years ago fell into the hands of speculative writers who mixed it up with occult philosophies, druidical mysteries, and that portentous nonsense called the ‘Arkite symbolism,’ till now sober students hear the very name of ophiolatry with a shudder."[6]He repeatedly speaks of a people whom he calls the “Takshaks,” apparently one of the Scythian tribes. There is, however, no reason to believe that serpent worship formed an important element in the beliefs of the Scythians, or to suppose that the cult, as we observe it in India, is of other than indigenous origin.
The more recent views of the origin of the Rājputs may be briefly illustrated in connexion with some of the leading septs. Dr. Vincent A. Smith holds that the term Kshatriya was not an ethnical but an occupational designation. Rājaputra, ‘son of a Rāja,’ seems to have been a name applied to the cadets of ruling houses who, according to the ancient custom of tribal society, were in the habit of seeking their fortunes abroad, winning by some act of valour the hand of the princess whose land they visited, and with it the succession to the kingdom vested in her under the system of Mother Right. Sir James Frazer has described various forms of this mode of succession in the case of the Kings of Rome, Ashanti, Uganda, in certain Greek States, and other places.[7]Dr. Smith goes on to say: “The term Kshatriya was, I believe, always one of very vague meaning, simply denoting the Hindu ruling classes which did not claim Brahmanical descent. Occasionally a rājā might be a Brahman by caste, but the Brahman’s place at court was that of a minister rather than that of king.”[8]This office in Rajputana, as we learn from numerous instances inThe Annals, was often taken by members of the Bania or mercantile class, because the Brāhmans of the Desert, by their laxity ofpractice, had acquired an equivocal reputation, and were generally illiterate. The Rājput has always, until recent times, favoured the Bhāt or bard more than the Brāhman.
The group denoted by the name Kshatriya or Rājput thus depended on status rather than on descent, and it was therefore possible for foreigners to be introduced into the tribes without any violation of the prejudices of caste, which was then only partially developed. In later times, under Brāhman guidance, the rules of endogamy, exogamy, andconfarreatiohave been definitely formulated. But as the power of the priesthood increased, it was necessary to disguise this admission of foreigners under a convenient fiction. Hence arose the legend, told in two different forms inThe Annals, which describes how, by a solemn act of purification or initiation, under the superintendence of one of the ancient Vedic Rishis or inspired saints, the “fire-born” septs were created to help the Brāhmans in repressing Buddhism, Jainism, or other heresies, and in establishing the ancient traditional Hindu social policy, the temporary downfall of which, under the stress of foreign invasions, is carefully concealed in the Hindu sacred literature. This privilege was, we are told, confined to four septs, known as Agnikula, or ‘fire-born’—the Pramār, Parihār, Chālukya or Solanki, and the Chauhān. But there is good reason to believe that the Pramār was the only sept which laid claim to this distinction before the time of the poet Chānd, who flourished in the twelfth century of our era.[9]The local tradition in Rājputāna was so vague that in one version of the story Vasishtha, in the other Visvāmitra, is said to have been the officiating priest.
In the case of the Sesodias of Mewār, Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar has given reasons to believe that Gehlot or Guhilot means simply ‘son of Guhila,’ an abbreviation of Guhadatta, the name of its founder.[10]He is said to have belonged to the Gurjara stock, kinsmen or allies of the Huns who entered India about the sixth century of our era, and founded a kingdom in Rājputāna with its capital at Bhilmāl or Srīmāl, about fifty miles from Mount Ābu,the scene of the regeneration of the Rājputs. This branch, which took the name of Maitrika, is said to be closely connected with the Mer tribe, which gave its name to Merwāra, and is fully described inThe Annals. The actual conqueror of Chitor, Bāpa or Bappa, is said in inscriptions to have belonged to the branch known as Nāgar, or ‘City’ Brāhmans which has its present headquarters at the town of Vadnagar in the Baroda State. This conversion of a Brāhman into a Rājput is at first sight startling, but the fact implies that the institution of caste, as we observe it, was then only imperfectly established, and there was no difficulty in believing that a Brāhman could be ancestor of a princely house which now claims descent from the Sun. As will appear later on, Bāpa seems to be a historical personage. These facts help us to understand the strange story inThe Annals, which tells how Gohāditya received inauguration as chief by having his forehead smeared with blood drawn from the finger of a Bhīl, a form of the blood covenant which appears among many savage tribes.[11]In those days no definite line was drawn between the Bhīls, now a wild forest tribe, and the Rājputs. The Bhīls were the free lords of the jungle, original owners of the soil, and though they practised rites and followed customs repulsive to orthodox Hindus, they did not share in the impurity which attached to foul outcastes like the Dom or the Chandāla. As the Bhīls were believed to be autochthonous, and thus understood the methods of controlling or conciliating the local spirits, by this form of inauguration they passed on their knowledge to the Rājputs whom they accepted as their lords. The relations of the Mīnas, another jungle tribe of the same class, with the Kachhwāhas of Jaipur were of the same kind.
According to the bardic legend given inThe Annals, the Rāthors, the second great Rājput clan, owed their origin to a migration of a body of its members to the western Desert when the territory of Kanauj was conquered by Shihābu-d-dīn inA.D.1193. But it is now certain that the ruling dynasty of Kanauj belonged, not to the Rāthor, but to the Gaharwār clan, and that the first Rāthor settlement in Rājputāna must have occurred anterior to the conquest of Kanauj by the Musalmāns. An inscription, datedA.D.997, found in the ruins of the ancient town of Hathūndi or Hastikūndi in the Bali Hakūmat of the JodhpurState, names four Rāthor Rājas who reigned there in the tenth century.[12]The local legend is an attempt to connect the line of Rāthor princes with the Kanauj dynasty. It has been suggested that the Deccan dynasty of the Rāshtrakūtas which, in name at least, is identical with Rāthor, reigning at Nāsik or Malkhed fromA.D.753 to 973, was connected with the Reddis or Raddis, a caste of cultivators which seem to have migrated from Madras into the Deccan at an early period. But any racial connexion between the Deccan Reddis and the Rāthors of Rājputāna is very doubtful.[13]
The Chandel clan, ranked inThe Annalsamong the Thirty-six Royal Races, is believed to be closely connected with the Bhars and Gonds, forest tribes of Bundelkhand and the Central Provinces. Mr. R. V. Russell prefers to connect them with the Bhars alone, on the ground that the Gonds, according to the best traditions, entered the Central Provinces from the south, and made no effective settlement in Bundelkhand, the headquarters of the Chandels.[14]But there was a Gond settlement in the Hamīrpur District of Bundelkhand, and the close connexion between the Gonds and the Chandels began in what is now the Chhatarpur State.
The results of recent investigations into Rājput ethnology are thus of great importance, and enable us to correct the bardic legends on which the genealogies recorded inThe Annalswere founded. Much remains to be done before the question can be finally settled. The local Rājput traditions and the ballads of the bards must be collected and edited; the ancient sites in Rājputāna must be excavated; physical measurements, now somewhat discredited as a test of racial affinities, must be made in larger numbers and by more scientific methods. But the general thesis that some of the nobler Rājput septs are descended from Gurjaras or other foreigners, while others are closely connected with the autochthonous races, may be regarded as definitely proved.
One of the most valuable parts ofThe Annalsis the chapterdescribing the popular religion of Mewār, the festival and rites in honour of Gauri, the Mother goddess. There are also many incidental notices of cults and superstitions scattered through the work. A race of warriors like the Rājputs naturally favours the worship of Siva who, as the successor of Rudra, the Vedic storm-god, was originally a terror-inspiring deity, a side of his character only imperfectly veiled by his euphemistic title of Siva, ‘the blessed or auspicious One.’ In his phallic manifestation his chief shrine is at Eklingji, ‘the single or notable phallus,’ about fourteen miles north of Udaipur city. The Rānas hold the office of priest-kings, Dīwāns or prime-ministers of the god. Their association with this deity has been explained by an inscription recently found in the temple of Nātha, ‘the Lord,’ now used as a storeroom of the Eklingji temple.[15]The inscription, datedA.D.971, is in form of a dedication to Lakulīsa, a form of Siva represented as bearing a club, and refers to the Saiva sect known as Lakulīsa-Pāsapatas. It records the name of a king named Srī-Bappaka, ‘the moon among the princes of the Guhila dynasty,’ who reigned at a place called Nāgahvada, identified with Nāgda, an ancient town several times mentioned inThe Annals, the ruins of which exist at the foot of the hill on which the temple of Eklingji stands. Srī-Bappaka is certainly Bāpa or Bappa, the traditional founder of the Mewār dynasty, which had at that time its capital at Nāgda. From this inscription it is clear that the Eklingji temple was in existence beforeA.D.971, and, as Mr. Bhandarkar remarks, “it shows that the old tradition about Nāgendra and Bappa Rāwal’s infancy given by Tod had some historical foundation, and it is intelligible how the Rānas of Udaipur could have come to have such an intimate connexion with the temple as that of high priests, in which capacity they still officiate.” This office vested in them is a good example of one of those dynasties of priest-kings of which Sir James Frazer has given an elaborate account.[16]
The milder side of the Rājput character is represented in the cult of Krishna at Nāthdwāra. The Mahant or Abbot of the temple, situated at the old village of Siārh, twenty-two milesfrom the city of Udaipur, enjoys semi-royal state. In anticipation of the raid by Aurangzeb on Mathura,A.D.1669-70, the ancient image of Kesavadeva, a form of Krishna, ‘He of the flowing locks,’ was removed out of reach of danger by Rāna Rāj Singh of Mewār. When the cart bearing the image arrived at Siārh, the god, by stopping the cart, is said to have expressed his intention of remaining there. This was the origin of the famous temple, still visited by crowds of pilgrims, and one of the leading seats of the Vallabhāchārya sect, ‘the Epicureans of the East,’ whose practices, as disclosed in the famous Mahārāja libel case, tried at Bombay in 1861, gave rise to grievous scandal.[17]The ill-feeling against this sect, aroused by these revelations, was so intense that the Mahārāja of Jaipur ordered that the two famous images of Krishna worshipped in his State, which originally came from Gokul, near Mathura, should be removed from his territories into those of the Bharatpur State.
Tod bears witness to the humanizing effect on the Rājputs of the worship of this god, whom he calls “the Apollo of Braj,” the holy land of Krishna near Mathura. He also asserts that the Emperor Akbar favoured the worship of Krishna, a feeling shared by his successors Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān. Akbar, in his search for a new faith to supersede Islām, of which he wasparcus cultor et infrequens, dallied with Hindu Pandits, Parsi priests, and Christian missionaries, and he was doubtless well informed about the sensuous ritual of the temple of Nāthdwāra.[18]
The character of the Rājputs is discussed in many passages inThe Annals. The Author expresses marked sympathy with the people among whom his official life was spent, and he expresses gratitude for the courtesy and confidence which they bestowed upon him. This applies specially to the Sesodias of Mewār and the Rāthors of Mārwār, with whom he lived in the closest intimacy. He shows, on the other hand, a decided prejudice against the Kachhwāhas of Jaipur, of whose diplomacy he disapproved. This feeling, we may suspect, was due in part to their hesitation in accepting the British alliance, a policy in which he was deeply interested.
The virtues of the Rājput lie on the surface—their loyalty, devotion, and gallantry; their chivalry towards women; their regard for their national customs. Their weaknesses—though Tod does not enumerate them in detail—are obvious from a study of their history—their instability of character, their liability to sudden outbreaks of passion, their tendency to yield to panic on the battlefield, their inability, as a result of their tribal system, to form a permanent combination against a public enemy, their occasional faithlessness to their chiefs and allies, their excessive use of opium. These defects they share with most orientals, but, on the whole, they compare favourably with other races in the Indian Empire. There is much in their character and institutions which reminds us of the Gauls as pictured by Mommsen in a striking passage.[19]Rājput women are described as virtuous, affectionate, and devoted, taking part in the control of the family, sharing with their husbands the dangers of war and sport, contemptuous of the coward, and exercising a salutary influence in public and domestic affairs.
Strangely enough, Tod omits to give us a detailed account of their marriage regulations and ceremonies. According to Mr. E. H. Kealy,[20]while male children under one year old exceed the females, “the excess is not sufficiently great to justify the conclusion that female babies are murdered, nor is the theory that female infants lost their lives by neglect supported by the statistics. Unhappily the returns show that a high proportion of married women is combined with a very low percentage of females as compared with males between the ages of ten and fourteen, the early stage of married life, and this defect is largely due to premature cohabitation, lack of medical attendance, and of sanitary precautions.” No one can read without horror the many narratives of the Johar, the final sacrifice by which women in the hour of defeat gave their lives to save their honour, and of the numerous cases of Sati. Both these customs are now only a matter of history, but so late as 1879 General Hervey was able to count at the Bikaner palace the handmarks of at least thirty-seven widows who ascended the pyre with their lords.[21]
Much space inThe Annalsis occupied by a review of theso-called ‘Feudal’ system in Rājputāna. Tod was naturally attracted in the course of his discursive reading by Henry Hallam’sView of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, which first appeared in 1818, four years before Tod resigned his Indian appointment. Hallam himself was careful to point out that “it is of great importance to be on our guard against seeming analogies which vanish away when they are closely observed.”[22]This warning Tod unguardedly overlooked. Hallam recognized that Feudalism was an institution the ultimate origin of which is still, to some extent, obscure. It possibly began with the desire for protection, therakhwāliof the Rājputs, but it seems to have been ultimately based on the private law of Rome, while the influence of the Church, interested in securing its endowments, was a factor in its evolution. In its completed form it represented the final stage of a process which began under the Frankish conquerors of Gaul. At any rate, it was of European origin, and though it absorbed much that was common to the types of tribal organization found in other parts of the world, it was moulded by the political, social, and economical environment amidst which it was developed. Hence, while it is possible to trace, as Tod has done, certain analogies between the tribal institutions of the Rājputs and the social organization of medieval Europe—analogies of feudal incidents connected with Reliefs, Fines upon alienation, Escheats, Aids, Wardship, and Marriage—these analogies, when more closely examined, are found to be in the main superficial. If we desire to undertake a comparative study of the Rājput tribal system, it is unnecessary to travel to medieval Europe, while we have close at hand the social organization of more or less kindred tribes on the Indian borderland, Pathāns, Afghāns, or Baloch; or, in a more primitive stage, those of the Kandhs, Gonds, Mūndas, or Orāons. It is of little service to compare two systems of which only the nucleus is common to both, and to place side by side institutions which present only a factitious similitude, because the social development of each has progressed on different lines.
The Author’s excursions into philology are the diversions of a clever man, not of a trained scholar, but interested in the subject as an amateur. In his time the new learning on oriental subjects had only recently begun to attract the attention ofscholars, of which Sir W. Jones was the prophet. Tod was a diligent student ofThe Asiatic Researches, the publication of which began at Calcutta in 1788. While much material of value is to be found in these volumes, many papers of Captain Francis Wilford and others are full of rash speculations which have not survived later criticism. Tod is not to blame because he followed the guidance of scholars who contributed articles to the leading Indian review of his time; because he was ignorant of the laws of Grimm or Verner; because, like his contemporaries, he believed that the mythology of Egypt or Palestine influenced the beliefs of the Indian people. It was his fate that many of his guesses were quoted with approval by writers like T. Maurice in hisIndian Antiquities, and by N. Pococke in hisIndia in Greece. It is also well to remember that many of the derivations of the names of Indian deities, confidently proposed by Kuhn and Max Müller a few years ago, are no longer accepted. Tod, at any rate, published his views on Feudalism and Philology without any pretence of dogmatism.
One special question deserves examination—the constant references to the cult of Bāl-Siva, a form of the Sun god. A learned Indian scholar, Pandit Gaurishankar Ojha, who is now engaged on an annotated edition ofThe Annalsin Hindi, states that no temple or image dedicated to this god is known in Rājputāna. It is, of course, not unlikely that Siva, as a deity of fertility, should be associated with Sun worship, but there is no evidence of the cult on which Tod lays special stress. It is almost useless to speculate on the source of his error. It may be based on a reference in theĀin-i-Akbari[23]to a certain Bālnāth, Jogi, who occupied a cell in a place in the Sindh Sāgar Duāb of the Panjāb. At the same time, like many of the writers of his day, he may have had the Semitic Baal in his mind.
It was largely due to imperfect information received from his assistants that he shared with other writers of the time the confusion between Buddhism and Jainism, and supposed that the former religion was introduced into India from Central Asia. His elaborate attempt to extract history and a trustworthy scheme of chronology from the Purānas must be pronounced to be a failure. Recently a learned scholar, Mr. F. E. Pargiter, hasshown how far an examination of these authorities can be conducted with any approach to probability.[24]
The questions which have been discussed do not, to any important extent, detract from the real value of the work. Even in those points which are most open to criticism,The Annalspossesses importance because it represents a phase in the study of Indian religions, ethnology, and sociology. No one can examine it without increasing pleasure and admiration for a writer who, immersed in arduous official work, was able to indulge his tastes for research. His was the first real attempt to investigate the beliefs of the peasantry as contrasted with the official Brahmanism, a study which in recent years has revolutionized the current conceptions of Hinduism. Even if his versions of the inscriptions which he collected fail to satisfy the requirements of more recent scholars, he deserves credit for rescuing from neglect and almost certain destruction epigraphical material for the use of his successors. The same may be said of the drawings of buildings, some of which have fallen into decay, or have been mutilated by their careless guardians. When he deals with facts which came under his personal observation, his accounts of beliefs, folk-lore, social life, customs, and manners possess permanent value.
He observed the Rājputs when they were in a stage of transition. Isolated by the inaccessibility of their country, they were the last guardians of Hindu beliefs, institutions, and manners against the rising tide of the Muhammadan invasions; without their protection much that is important for the study of the Hindus must have disappeared. To avoid anarchy and the ultimate destruction of these States, it was necessary for them to accept a closer union with the British as the paramount power. By this they lost something, but they gained much. The new connexion involved new duties and responsibilities in adapting their primitive system of government to modern requirements. Tod thus stood at the parting of the ways. With the introduction of the railway and the post-office, the disappearance of the caravan as a means of transport, the increase of trade, the growth of new wants and possibilities of development in association with theEmpire, the period of Rājput isolation came to a close. To some it may be a matter of regret that the personal rule of the Chief over a people strongly influenced by what they termswāmīdharma, the reciprocal loyalty of subject to prince and of prince to people, should be replaced by a government of a more popular type. But this change was, in the nature of things, inevitable. As an example of this, a statement made by the Mahārāja of Bīkaner, when he was summoned to attend the Imperial Conference in 1917, may be quoted. “In my own territories we inaugurated some years ago the beginnings of a representative assembly. It now consists of elected, as well as nominated, non-official members, and their legislative powers follow the lines of those laid down for the Legislatures of British India in the 1909 reforms. In respect to the Budget they have the same powers as those conferred on the Supreme and Provincial Legislatures in British India by the Lansdowne reforms in force from 1893 to 1909. When announcing my intention of creating this representative body, I intimated that as the people showed their fitness they would be entrusted with more powers. Accordingly, at the end of the first triennial term, when the elections will take place, we are revising the rules of business in the direction of greater liberality and of removing unnecessary restrictions.” It remains to be seen how far this policy will prove to be successful.
It was a happy accident that before the period of transition had begun in earnest, such a competent and sympathetic observer should have been able to examine and record one of the most interesting surviving phases of the ancient Hindu polity.
A soldier and a sportsman, Tod learned to understand the romantic, adventurous side of the Rājput character, and he recorded with full appreciation the fine stories of manly valour, of the self-sacrifice of women, the tragedies of the sieges of Chitor, the heroism of Rānas Sanga and Partāb Singh, or of Durgādās. Many of these tales recall the age of medieval chivalry, and Tod is at his best in recording them. No one can read without admiration his account of the attack of the Saktāwats and Chondāwats on Untāla; of Sūja and the tiger; the tragedy of Krishna Kunwāri; of the queen of Ganor; of Sanjogta of Kanauj; of Gūga Chauhān and Alu Hāra. In many of these tales the Rājput displays the loyalty and valour, the punctilious regard for hispersonal honour which in the case of the Spanish grandee have passed into a proverb.
While the Rājput is courteous in his intercourse with those who are prepared to take him as he is, when he meets an English officer he resents any hint of patronage, he is jealous of any intrusion on the secluded folk behind the curtain, and he is often rather an acquaintance than a friend, inclined to shelter himself behind a dignified reserve, unwilling to open his mind to any one who does not accept his traditional attitude towards men of a different race and of a different faith. When he makes a ceremonial visit to a European officer, his conversation is often confined to conventional compliments, or chat about the weather and the state of the crops.
To remove these difficulties which obstruct friendly and confidential intercourse, the young officer in India may be advised to study the methods illustrated in this work. But he will do well to avoid Tod’s openly expressed partisanship. He owed the affection and respect bestowed upon him by prince and peasant, and even by the jealously guarded ladies of the zenanah, to his kindliness and sympathy, his readiness to converse freely with men of all classes, his patience in listening to grievances, even those which he had no power to redress, his impartiality as an arbitrator between the Rāna of Mewār and his people or between individuals or sects unfriendly to each other. He studied the national traditions and usages; he knew enough of religious beliefs and of social customs to save him from giving offence by word or deed; he could converse with the people in their own patois, and could give point to a remark by an apt quotation of a proverb or a scrap of an old ballad.
When, if ever, a new history of the Rājputs comes to be written, it must be largely based on Tod’s collections, supplemented by wider historical, antiquarian, and epigraphical research. The history of the last century cannot be compiled until the recent administration reports, now treated as confidential, and the muniment rooms of Calcutta and London are open to the student. But it is unlikely that, for the present at least, any writer will enjoy, as Tod did, access to the records and correspondence stored in the palaces of the Chiefs.
For the Rājput himself and for natives of India interested in the history of their country, the work will long retain its value.It preserves a record of tribal rights and privileges, of claims based on ancient tradition, of feuds and their settlement, of genealogies and family history which, but for Tod’s careful record, might have been forgotten or misinterpreted even by the Rājputs themselves. In the original English text which many Rājputs are now able to study they will find a picture of tribal society, now rapidly disappearing, drawn by a competent and friendly hand. Its interest will not be diminished by the fact that while the writer displays a hearty admiration for the Rājput character, he is not blind to its defects. At any rate, the Rājput will enjoy the satisfaction that his race has been selected to furnish the materials for the most comprehensive monograph ever compiled by a British officer describing one of the leading peoples of India.