Among the other functions which succeeded the Durbar at Delhi
was one of almost startling originality. Major Dunlop Smith, an officer in the Political Department with a gift for the management of native Princes, induced thirty-six of them to bring up the " processions," some of them centuries old, with which on rare occasions they delight their subjects, and on Wednesday the whole were paraded before the Viceroy, making a show a mile long, almost more wonderful than that of the triumphal entrance into Delhi. Some of the retinues recalled the tournaments of mediaeval Europe, groups of " knights " in chain-mail passing on splendid horses, or in the case of Bikaner on swift camels ; but in others the instinc- tive love of the gorgeously grotesque which has never died out in India had the fullest play. A detachment from Baroda —we were wrong last week in believing the telegram which said that the Gaikwar and Holkar were too sick to be present—guarded two cannon, one of gold and one of silver, drawn by oxen with gilt horns and body-cloths of cloth-of-gold. Holkar's magnificent elephants followed with their howdahs of rare design, one being a gold couch, and their attendants in blazing liveries. The Rao of Cutch, "Lord of the Inner Sea.," sent banners with his device of a goldfish and Neptune's trident, attended by elephants and guards all clothed in yellow, and men on the 15 ft. stilts used in the marshes of his sea-threatened province, of which a large section covered with villages and temples was once suddenly submerged. The Prince of Rewah brought up a weird array of troops in varied colours surrounding a " Noah's Ark " in gold, and litters, of which one took the shape of a golden tiger, Datia, the leading chief in Bundelcund, showed an elephant whose howdah is surmounted by a dragon's head, and another all painted red, which reared on its hind-legs to salute the Viceroy. On they passed, six thousand of them in all, each sec- tion more bizarre than the last, the strange procession ending in the strangest display of all, that of the Maharajah of Kashmir, who exhibited among his troops two giants eight:feet high, and men in goblin masks representing figures from Thibet. All India, in fact, was there, as India if left to itself would display its glories.
Previous page
