10 AUGUST 1839, Page 18

TIIE LATE coLosEr, ron's TRAVELS IN WESTERN INDIA.

Arrau civil and military labours of nearly a quarter of a century, varied by eon amuse studies of' the literature and antiquities of Nast :him, ill-health, long struggled so ith, rendered a departure from India absolutely necessary to Colond Ton. The ruling pas- sion, however, overpowered the dread of death. Stationed at Ood!- poor, in latitude about 24 Nort:t and longitude 75,

course to Bombay was nearly in straight line to the South. Ile Colonel Tau s

prefiarred turning his back upon his deal ination, to visit various native tribes, to make a pilgrimage to the most celebrated shrines of the Iliudoos, and to hunt liar the site of' ruined cities, and any remains of hoar antiquity which might turn up in the shape of inscriptions, coins, or manuscripts. his first great feat was to ascend the Aboo mountain, the seat of the worship of the Deistical Joins, and the haunt, moreover, of the bestial and foul-feeding Aghori—a sect o,f monsters which might have furnished Othello with a true traveller s wonder whilst Ile was " bragging" to Desdemona and telling her " fantastical lies." The ruins of Chandravati the Colonel could not visit, though first discovered by him, on account of the ap- proaching rains; but he gives a sketch of its history, and some views of its once magnificent remains, from the pencil of his friend Mrs. Colonel WILLI AM HUNTER IlLaia, who subsequently jour• neyed thither. At Puttun he discovered the site of Nehrwalla, the of the East, which .had hafHed the acuteness of

-ancient Tyre EVANvit.r.n and ReNssr.r.. After illustrating the history of this

state, and at a somewhat wearisome length, from his " own annals," we are led by our devotee in the cause of Indian antiquities to Ahmedabad, the modern capital of Guzzerat, and to Cambay, the ancient port of the ancient Nehrwalla. Hence he made a circuit of the peninsula of Guzzerat, and crossing the Gulfof Cutch, visited 11Iendavic and Bhooj, whence he departed for Bombay,—which is much about the same as if a man starting from Paris for Dover should finally embark at Cadiz. The inland districts. through which Colonel Too travelled were peopled with the Rajpoot race, or some of the wilder tribes of Mils: the Guzzerat peninsula, from conquest, commerce, and pi-

rac seems to have a more mixed breed. The subjects which the yi author handles are very various,—sometimes men and manners, from characteristic sketches of the native chiefs over whom he was Viceroy, down to the wild races he met with in the fbrests and mountains, or the characters he encountered by the way ; some- times the features of the country, or descriptions of the temples and the nature of the worship carried on in them, occupy his pen. Too frequently, however, he neglects the living for the dead ; lillitig his yeres with elaborate disquisitions on Indian antiquities, the genealogies of deities or chieftains, accounts of fables without a moral, of myths without interest, and of remote annals which have little of history save its dry bones—and about whose identity, by the by, there is much doubt.

Except the sketches of living things, and some autobioe,Taphical allusions, which, if rather difiime and " auld AVarld " like, are dis-

tinguished by a pleasant animation and a nice perception Of cha-

racter, it cannot be denied that the volume has some of that pon- derosity which is held to belong to the nature of a quarto. Sonic

of this is owing to the subjects : it is impossible, or at least very

,difficult, to impart interest to disquisitions about sites, names, and dates. The character of the author, his want of art, mid his enthusiasm, have something to do with it ; for his method of treat- ment is too minute and discursive. The remote nature of the sub-

jects, however, is the main cause of this sense of heaviness. The majority of readers, when they open the bunk, will often meet with words which convey no ideas. It may be that such an Indian mountain is as distinguished as Sinai in its way ; that midi a Rajport noble was as celebrated for his robberies as Robin Hood, or any Scottish freebooter ; that a certain city was a rival of Tyre, and that a particular emperor distinguished himself by battles as bloody and conquests as rapid as those of the first C.Esan: but to European readers their names conjure op no associations, suggest no ideas, excite no interest. The pith and point of a series of actions, or a narrative of the actions themselves, if it fhithfully reflected

their essential character, would excite at ; but the reader must be led from general views to particular details—he can never be roused by the opposite proceeding. After all, however, it must be owned that there are intrinsic drawbacks in Oriental arclueology. The manners and modes of thought of the people are dissimilar to ours; and the periods within the reach of history, or even of conjecture, seem to coneist of events that had no effect beyond themselves. This is not the ease with nations less ancient or less curious; they not only produced results, but results which affected us. The Jewish history is familiarized to us in childhood, and it retains its interest in alter years, as originating the religion of the civilized world. We look to Greece as to the ibuntain whence modern Europe derived her letters, her arts, and the germ of her sciences : her surviving compositions are the models on which the taste of every reader has, directly or indirectly, been formed. To the gigantic empire of' Rome we are equally indebted : her laws, her municipalities, her policy, her antis, her archi- tecture, and her letters, albeit borrowed from Greece, have exer- cised an influeneeon every nation than the Elbe to the Mediterranean, and from the Bosphorus to the Isle of Man.'‘ The monuments of Egypt are befbre its : the vast antiquity and wisdom atilt: Egyp- tians have been impressed upon the minds of Europe by our classical teachers, and reason supports antiquity in pointing to them as to the originators of those arts and sciences which Greece per- fected. Even as regards the Egyptians, however, this is reasoning end cerinsity rather than a feeling of attachment : to what is visibly presented we of course apply ourselves ; the arts and usages of more than three thousand years agone, so strangely akin to our own, must rouse attention in a rational mind: but the names of their kings, or their conjectured exploits, are regarded with listless • floss. Any connexion with India is still remoter. Her high tide of civilization was at a point anterior to written history; the effects she might have had upon Egypt, or the Western world, or the North of Europe, seem to have been slight, and are a Matter of speculation ; and the degradation of her later days has been without results. :Nlahometans Of various races have invaded, devastated, and conquered her in succession, givitig ill (sic!' occasion an impetus to her descent ; but they have neither clian,,est nor hn- proved her character—they have only corrupted it. Nor have they had strength or ability to maintain by policy and the arts Of pence the territory they had won by arms. One dynasty in suceessien gave .way to another, till all at last fell before the power of the En.glish : and whether their rule will produce permanent and bene- ficial results, remains to be seen. It is useless to say that MA-

* It is a singular circumstance, that those nations are the most backward where the noniron never penetrated, or where the influence of their conquest wssrnost completely destroyed. In Turkey in Europe, the Toorkmuns—in Spam and Sicily, the Saracens—so overwhelmed the natives as in a measure to supersede them: to Ireland they never thought it worth while to go.

nosiver of' Gazna was a great conqueror, that the Mogul dynasty produced several accomplished princes, or that brave Mell lived befbre either. It is a law of our nature to disregard actions which do not realize something; and it operates everywhere: in every pursuit we turn from labour in vain. The philosopher, however eloquent, ingenious, or laborious, who forms a theory instead of interpreting nature, is neglected as soon as his unreality is dis- covered. l'he toils, privations, dangers, or deaths of the explorers, are forgotten in the finite of the discoreren CoLumnus would have been thought little of had he been drowned. The realization of an Pod is required to give an interest even to sports. Mere air and exercise at single wicket are obtained by a batman who cannot effectively strike a ball, or a bowler unable to hit the stumps ; but AVC SOCII turn away disappointed from players who cannot get it run or bowl out an opponent.

Let us not be misunderstood as decrying Oriental research. Too high praise cannot be awarded to 111C11 WhO expend labour and nioney end risk Ht.(' hi such inquiries; for it is only by those means that the raw materials Ibr any subject are produced. And Colonel

'Poo is not only entitled to the merit of what he has accomplished, but Ibr directing attention to the subject, and pointing out to others the ii Silt to pursue. As yet, he says, " the English have done nothing in exploring ancient India." Whole libraries of' the Jain sect are still in existence, which were carefully concealed from the first 31ahoinetan conquerors : to an inquiry conducted

with prudence and coeciliation they would be readily opened. If they throw any light open the early, history of India it would be difficult to estimate their importance ; and in any, case they would have a valet. in the hands of men capable of grasping a whole and of discriminating between character and mere old age.

Leaving learning and antiquity for Orientals, who will of course consult the volume, we will take some extracts from the parts which treat oi living man. Here he is in his most degraded shape.

Tutu AGIIORI.

I had often witnesqed, and more frequently read of, the revolting practices of numbers of the countless inhabitants of India, the slaves of a knavish hier-

archy ; hut it was reser% It me this day to discover the extent to which the debasement of man could lt0 carried without the intervention of' priest- craft, and %which, happily. was too lite below the attributes of human nature to he erected into a system. 1 idiotic to the Aghori, who finds a place in the in- terminable nomenclature of 1 liteln sectarian classification. 1 may style this outcast of human nature Ow jackal of his species; but even this midnight re. voiles tu»idst graves and impurities is cleanly in his habits compared with the Aghori. Thc !amt.. would turn away from putrefaction, and refuse to prey on the dead of I; .,li.ld kind : not so the A ghori, by whom a dead inail or a dead dog- i uiett .91 will, eltial indifference, or rather appetite ; and, di.,.eu,ting as is the relation. ht. doe, not ht ,:itate to feed on the excretions of nat ere. I had !ward tied sled. ,,,,elsless did exist, uot only in the sacred Aboo, tuiti ttoidst the

imienetralde vcc, the other mounts dedicated to the Jain faith, in the * * * penieseta er * Ineed the • cave of the most celebrated of these monsters of the present ags, e long the object of terror and loathing to Aboo and its 1iei;d1hoorlo,,I. I l ame was Eut telt Poori ; who, having " embowelled" to

an advanesd ;lee els' 1.:Ver CAM, I ii his way, took the extraordinary resolution of immuring himst-If in his cell. The commands of maniacs generally meet with ready lossfisee.; and, as he was regarded by many in this light, his de- sire wes i uhilhsl. '1'lle mouth of the cave was built up. and 1611 re- main se moil sons• mummy-hunting. Frank shall reopen it, or till phrenology form a part of the modern Monition or a Hindu ; when, douhtics,,, the organ of' destruction on t he entnium of Patch Poori will exhibit it high state of de- velopue•tit. I was inibrtned that there was still a considerable uumber of these wretci .. inhabitme the caverns of the mountain, from which they seldom emerged to open day, hut prowl, d about in search of fruits or whatever food the Bala is eoliVeyed to the paths they frequented. One of the Dears chiefs tom Ille that, a very short time since, when conveying the body of his brother to 1,0 bund, one of these monsters crossed the path of the funeral procession, and begged tit have the corpse, saying that it " would make excellent chatni" or condi:neut. 1Ie added, that they were not actually accused of killing people. It was strange to meet with the cave of a cannibal, if not within the pro- ducts, in the immediate vicinity of the shrines of' Jain km, whose first tenet is, " thou shalt not kill "—no: man alone, hut the smallest sentient being; pre- senting another anomaly in the history of Minh' superstition, which recog- nizes the gross,st incongrititie,. The orthodox, whether followers of Siva or Vision', seem tic consider their respertive tenets too stable to fear the contact of other creeds ; ;old cven the Jain I .nilarian, while the professes devotion to " the Spirit '• 0 cliii, hies not refuse the homage of a reverence to time symbol of " Wisdom,- to tie. lamelieent Amirante or Ceres, or the universal " De- stroyer." sects a iii edsils have no martyrs ; no relics of saints are required to keep their respective votaries fixed to the principles in which they were horn ; and !he ignorant, tie. superstitious, the timid, or tin humane, may supply food even to the hasest of his species, the Imrrid Aghori. In thi, tremendous Pan- fit-it, no ■Ille is C::!ictl to aCtallIllt fin* lietiOnS IlOi llGeting society.

sTRANGE, PLEDGE.

:nlecalote of Albuquerque is characteristic not only of the man but of the manners of Ilicke witit whom he had to deal. Being in want of an imme- diate supply of the #11;11111111 Malik In ambition, he coupled his demand upon the eity tbr a loan, with the singular pledge of' his moustache, which was en- closed in the letter. This guarantee was the most potent he could offer; and if Lot:it:11,1:in in its (origin, was in perfect keeping with the en,t out of these regioos, where honour and the witch(' are coeven »de terms, and stand or fall together.

On I ENTA I'. CIL% RACIII:IIISTICS.

The like inelmernites pervaded the durbar, when we paid our visit at the palace in the aft-cmam ; whether or things animate or inauimai 0, the con- clave was the most motley I ever beheld. Arabian and Rajpoot costumes were Into' commingled, and every thing had a sort of amphibious aspect. The hall of reception WaS einhellished hy handsome glass lustres ; but these were hoisted iv doehte-ideeks. evident iy isienieg to the dock-yard, and which might have reeved the halyards of a first-rate topgallant. sail. The ceiling was clustered with mirrors as close as they ovoid stow, in which were reflected from the walls portraits of prilice,, whose memory was associated with every thing English; among lucid, 1( korge the Third and hisQiuctit As I doffed my hat to the re- presentative of the ret ,•red mouarch, it did not escape the notice of the lord of the ( 1uhil,. The purtrait of George the Third, and id' his father Frederick Prince of Wales, are hy 110 iln•:las uncommon in Rajpootaua. The Rana of Oodipoor luni one of each; and he was not a little amused when, coming Oil- expectedly upon them, I made the salutation, so rare in these regions, of un- covering the head; but I remember well that, when the act was explained, he did not lose so good an occasion to testify to those about him, that neither time nor place shouli ever make a good subject forget " the majesty which hedges in a king." I might have said to him, had it occurred to me at the moment, that this homage to our good old Sovereign, especially in a foreign land, was instinctive, and part and parcel of every Englishman's national feel- ing, born in my time, when the royal birthday was a gala to all the youth of England.

A PREEROOTING CHIEF', AND A DISQUISITION.

Jesse, or with the more respectful post-fix, Jessagee, was a a fair specimen of his race. Ile said his age was fifty ; but had he mown the stubble upon his chin, which was of full a week's growth, his black Jnouche and clear complexion would have allowed a deduction of five good years. After sitting at his case for some time, indulging, like a true Cat'hi, in the most unrestrained freedom of speech,I turned the conversation to his past life, by asking whether he had not carried the honourable profession of arms to some distance beyond his own sequestered abode. " A mere trifle," replied the moss-trooper, with the great- est nonchalance ; " never further than Bhaenuggur, Puttun, and Jhalawur." If the reader will consult the snap, he will find that Jessajee's three points form a triangle, embracing the most remote quarters of the peninsula, cast, south, and west ; and that a trifle beyond, in either direction, both the horse and his rider must have gone into the sea. On pushing him a little further, by observing that these were very confined limits, and inquiringif he had never tried the Northern or continental portion, with the same simplicity of manner and tone, he replied, in his metaphorical diction, " Why, I have driven my lance into the gate of Ahmedabad." I wanted no more ; Jessajee, the suze- rain of Deolah, and of one dozen subjects, his township covering about as much soil as a good-sized mansion, had, single-handed, insulted the capital of G uzze- rat I was struck by the metaphor, which has since been more strongly im- pressed upon my mind by reading, amidst the scenes which gave films birth, the exploits of the early tribes who conquered Northern Italy ; the identical image used by the Cat'hi Jessa being applied by the Longobard Alboin to prove his successful prowess. From another of the same race with Alboin, we have nearly the same figure of speech for a similar purpose. When the successor of Runk, the tbunder of the empire of the Czars, for the first time crossed the Borysthenes, at the head of eighty thousand men, in a raid against that capital (still the object of ambi- tion)., in order to mark the humiliation of the city Mid his own glory, lie " nailed his shield to the gate of Byzantium, on whose emperor he imposed a treaty, sworn to by the Varangian guards of the conqueror on their shields and their arms." In this we have not only the metaphorical record of conquest, but the peculiar form of oath, a form entirely Rajpoot, and a common expression in the mouth of the nomadic. Cond. But the Longebaedic Alboin and the Varanbnan Czar were both Norman, of the same tribes who peopled the estuaries of the Weser and the Elbe, and were distinguished, even by the first chroniclers of Scandinavia, as the Asi, or Asiatics. Every doy is adding fresh proof that a primitive Eastern humane is plentifully mixed with the Teutonic, which has even obtained the distinctive epithet of lndo-Germauic, while their ancient superstitions and customs are parallel ; so that, wide as is the separa- tion in country, colour, religion, and manners, between the inhabitants of these regions at the present time, there is not only no impossibility, but no im- probability, that the Cat'hi of the Elbe and the ancestry of the Cat'hi oppo- nents of Alexauder may have migrated from the sante regions of Central Asia.

TIIE MILK OF EUROPE.

I have mentioned the patriarchal names of two of my crew, Ibrahim, "the lord of the boat," (ado Moda,) and Ayoub ; there was also an Ishmael. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the crew were entirely Mooslein. Ayoub was a garrulous, facetious sort of fellow; and though the types of wisdom had begun to diversify the honours of his beard, he preferred giving scope to his humours to assuming a virtue he did not possess ; he had a jest for everybody and every thing, and generally required to be told twice what the nakhoda required of Lim. Moreover, in spite of the commands of the Prophet, and though little better than a fresh-water sailor, he had acquired a taste for the " waters of life," regarding winch he introduced his first knowledge with considerable naivete and tact. While conversing with the nakhoda, Ayoub contrived every now and then to put in a word ; and, seizing his opportunity, he with great gravity observed, that he had heard wonderful stories regarding the Valaiti- cMood, or " milk of Europe," as a kind of axir, or balm against all ills of mind or body : " did I know what it was ? " and, as a smile of penetration passed over my face, "hind I any of it ?" quickly followed. I told bins I not only knew and possessed it, but, to satisfy his inquisitiveness, would give him some; though he must first tell me how he became acquainted with the virtues of a thing which it was forbidden him to touch. He replied, that, having conveyed the baggage of an officer Irons Bombay to Poorbunde, and landed it during a heavy lull of rain, the officer gave him and his comrades a glass each of an amc, or essence, which he called by the name Ayoub used when he propounded the question. I had forgotten him and this conversation, and was seated in my cabin reading by candle-light, when a voice called out for admittance ; it was .Ayoub with his cupra, or coco-nut cup, come to claim the perffirmance of my promise. I called a domestic to bring me the battle, and bad actually tilted it towards the copra, when it struck tile I was doing a very foolish thing, and might incapacitate our second in command, at this the first half of our voyage. The soldier about to sutler death could hardly have looked more stultified with surprise, when the word " recover onus," instead of " tire," was given, than Job when I restored to the perpendicular attitude the bottle of elixir, lie looked unutterable things: not a word did he speak, but, with the still out- stretched arm grasping the cup, be kept his eyes fixed on me for an explana- tion of the act. " Suppose Ayoub," said I, "this should make you tipsy, and a storm should arise ?" "Saheb! " was all the reply, but no change of atti- tude. " Supposing, Ayoub, I promised to give you a whole bottle on our arrival in the harbour of Bombay, would you not relinquish your cupful for to-night ? " The hand and cup were withdrawn, and though the expression still was in correspondence with the old adage of "a bird in the hand," &c. his features relaxed into a smile, and he brought himself to say lie thought I was right.