The Land of The Veda

THE
LAND OF THE VEDA

BEING
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
OE
INDIA
ITS PEOPLE, CASTES, THUGS, AND FAKIRS;
ITS RELIGIONS, MYTHOLOGY, PRINCIPAL MONUMENTS, PALACES AND MAUSOLEUMS:
TOGETHER WITH THE
INCIDENTS OF THE GREAT SEPOY REBELLION

AND ITS RESULTS TO CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION
TAJ MAHAL -AGRA.
THE
LAND OF THE VEDA

BEING
OF
INDIA
ITS PEOPLE, CASTES, THUGS, AND FAKIRS;
ITS RELIGIONS, MYTHOLOGY, PRINCIPAL MONUMENTS, PALACES AND MAUSOLEUMS
TOGETHER WITH THE
INCIDENTS OF THE GREAT SEPOY REBELLION

WITH A MAP OF INDIA, AND 42 ILLUSTRATIONS
ALSO, STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AND A GLOSSARY OF INDIAN

TERMS USED IN THIS WORK AND IN MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE.
REV. WILLIAM BUTLER
NINTH EDITION
ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES

NEW DELHI ★ MADRAS ★ 2002
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p*
First Published: Cincinnati, 1871

AES Reprint: New Delhi, 2002
ISBN . 81-206-1664-2
Published by J. Jetley
for ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
31, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi -110 016.
Processed by Gautam Jetley
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Printed at Chaudhary Offset Process, DELHI -110 051
THE
LAND OF THE YEDA:

BEING
OP
INDIA;
ITS PEOPLE, CASTES, THUGS, AND PAKIRS;
ITS RELIGIONS, MYTHOLOGY, PRINCIPAL MONUMENTS, PALACES, AND

MAUSOLEUMS:
TOGETHER WITH THE
Sno&Mts ai % drat j
With a Map of India, and 42 Illustrations,
ALSO, STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AND A GLOSSARY OF INDIAN
TERMS USED IN THIS WORK AND IN MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE.
By Rev. WILLIAM BUTLER, D.D.
NINTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
PHILLIPS & HUNT.
CINCINNATI :
WALDEN & STOWE.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18T1, bj
CARLTON & LANAHAN,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasningtor.

PREFACE.
HE writer of this book has aimed to act toward the reader in

the relation of a guide, as though he were going over the
ground again, and giving the benefit of his experience, in pointing
out the objects of interest with which years and study have famil¬
iarized his own mind. The thread of the narrative runs through
the work, and, so far as the subject permitted, its continuity has
been preserved.
In a theme like that of India, and after the reading and note¬
taking of fifteen years, it is a difficult task for an author to trace
every entry to its source, or adequately to discriminate between
what is original and what is borrowed. Every reasonable effort,
however, has been made to give proper acknowledgment wherever
it was found desirable to use the ideas or language of others.
While the denominational relation of the writer is evident enough,
he trusts that there will not be found on these pages a single sen¬
tence that can give offense to any member of Christ’s Church, but,
on the contrary, that their perusal may encourage and strengthen
the faith of God’s elect in that almighty Power which, even in the
idolatrous and conservative East, is so manifestly subduing all
things unto Himself. Here may be discerned the dawn of that
day, so long foretold, when all Oriental races shall be blessed in a
Redeemer who was himself Asiatic by birth and blood and the
sphere of His personal ministry—whose cross was erected on that
continent, and whose first ministers and members were taken
from among that people. The hundreds of millions of their de¬
scendants now await this redemption, and shall yet joyously unite
to crown him “ Lord of all.”
The writer has not concealed his conviction that human history,
4 PREFACE.
and the movements and changes of thrones, and powers, and

kingdoms, can be fully understood only in the light of the doc¬
trine of the Second Psalm. Jesus Christ, the divine and eternal
Son of God, who created and redeemed this world, is its “ Master
and Lord.” The number, the malignity, the counsel of his foes, are
lighter in his estimation than the chaff of the summer threshing-
floor, and as easily swept from the path of his almighty move¬
ments. He has not abandoned this world, with its thousand
millions of accountable and dying men, to be the victims of the
whims and caprice of selfish potentates, deceiving errorists, or
wicked spirits in high places, to be forever crushed down beneath
their tyranny and misdirection. He has undertaken, and will
accomplish, man’s redemption in every sense, temporal, spiritual,
and eternal.
That repose which the world, and particularly its Oriental por¬
tion, so much needs and has so long sighed for, is to be found
only in Him ; and it will come when He has overthrown the foes
of the world’s welfare, and rectified its many wrongs. Then, be¬
neath the benign administration of this “ Prince of Peace,” human¬
ity at length shall rest, each of them under his own vine and fig-
tree, and none shall make them afraid.
The government of Christ alone explains the condition and the
history of the world. We acknowledge him to be “ The blessed
and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords,”
whose scepter sways “ all power in heaven and in earth.” At his

feet, who is “ Prince of the kings of the earth,” and “ Head over
all things to the Church,” is laid this humble effort to illustrate
his high providence, as one more heartfelt tribute to be added to
the many which are already ascribing—“ Blessing, and honor, and
glory, and power unto Him who sitteth upon the throne, and unto
the Lamb for ever and ever ! ” W. B.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHIEFLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS.
The Taj Mahal—Agra (Steel). Frontispiece
Map—Land of the Veda (India). Opposite page 11
Page
Hindoos and their Teacher. 17
A Brahmin. 21
Brahmins at Prayer. 26
A Lady of India in Full Dress. 40
The Nautch Girl of India. 44
The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh. 48
The Mohammedans of India. 62
Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen Shah Gazee, Emperor of Delhi, the Last of
the Moguls. 106
Zenat Mahal, Empress of Delhi (Steel). m
The Dewan Khass, or Hall of Audience, Palace of Delhi. 117
Weighing of the Emperor in the Dewan Khass. 123
The Taj Mahal viewed from the River Jumna. 128
The Gate of the Taj. 132
The Taj Mahal—Agra. (See Frontispiece)
Tomb of Etmad-ood-Doulah—Agra (Steel). 130
The Kootub Minar. .
The “Nana Sahib,” the Author of the Cawnpore Massacre. 18c
The Fakirs of India.
A Self-torturing Fakir. ^6
The Yogee, or Silent Saint of India. 200

6 ILLUSTRATIONS.
Pa a
Wajid Ali Shah, the Last King of Oude. 209
Joel, Our first Native Preacher. 2,15
Peggy. 218
Nynee Tal as you enter it. 243
“The House of Massacre”. 304
“The Well”—Inside View. 31 (
“The Shrine”—Outside View... 3x1
“The Residency”—Lucknow, India. 317
Major-General Sir Henry Havelock (Steel). 334
The Relief of Lucknow by General Havelock. 348
Preparing for the Immolation of a Hindoo Widow (Steel). 375
A Group of Thugs. 396
The First House of Worship of the Methodist Episcopal Church in
India. 435
The Sheep-House Congregation. 438
Lord Wellesley, who made Female Infanticide Penal.474
Hindoo Woman Waiting on her Husband. 489
Hindoo Widow in her usual Dress. 499
Lord Bentinck, who Terminated the Suttee. 502
Boys’ Orphanage, School-house, and Chapel at Lodipore, India. 507
Theological Class of the Boys’ Orphanage. 513
The Mission-House and Female Orphanage at Bareilly. 517
Graduating Class of the Female Orphanage. 523

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
THE PEOPLE OP INDIA—CASTE AND ITS IMMUNITIES.
Great Emergencies of Christianity—Our Narrow Escape—Origin of Caste—The

Brahmin—Brahminical Devotions—Prerogatives and Investiture—Discriminations in
the Brahmin’s Favor by the Law—Four Stages of a Brahmin’s Life—Brahminism a
Dead Failure—The People of India—The Ladies of the Land—The Nautch Girls—
The Gentlemen of India—Conversion and Career of Maharajah Dhuleep Singh—Habits
of the Hindoo Aristocracy—Christianity alone Creates a Home—Hindoo Visits of
Ceremony—Marriage Expenses—Manners and Customs. Page II
CHAPTER n.
STATISTICS, MYTHOLOGY, AND YEDIC LITERATURE.
Civil and Religious Statistics of India—The Languages of India—India Compared

to Europe—Trade, Commerce, and Revenue—Railroads and Telegraphs—English
Empire—Value of India to England—The Higher Motives for English Rule—Mapping
out Eternity—Measurements of Time—Mythology, Geography, and Astronomy of the
Hindoos—The Vedas—Beef-eating Sanctioned by the Vedas—Manners of the Hindoos
at the Time of the Macedonian Invasion, (326 B. C.)—Vile Character of Vedic Wor¬
ship—Deception as to the Contents of the Veda—Hindoo Literature—The Ramayana
—The Temptation and Abduction of Seeta—The Mahabarata. 66
CHAPTER HI.
ARCHITECTURAL MAGNIFICENCE OP INDIA.
Personal Narrative of Appointment and Journey—Our Reception in India—Charac¬

ter of Mohammedan Rule—The Moslem Dynasty Passing Away—Zeenat Mahal—The
Khass and the Mogul Sinking Together—Architectural Taste of the Emperors—
Moore’s Blunder in Lalla Rookh—Paradise and its Privileges—The Dewanee Khass and
its Glorious Furniture—Interview of Nadir Shah and Mohammed Shah—Tact of the
Courtier—The First Sight of the Taj Mahal—View from the Gate—Inside of the Taj
—The Effect of Music over the Tomb—The Taj Matchless—Origin of the Taj—The
Lost Opportunity of Romanism at Agra—A Prayer which God will ever Refuse to
Answer—Cost of the Taj—Etmad-ood-Doulah’s Tomb—The Daughter of the Desert
—The Heroine of Moore’s Poem—The Kootub Minar—Its Origin and Style—The
Government of Jehovah Christ over Nations and Dynasties—The Unfinished Minar—
The Palladium of Hindoo Dominion. 101
CHAPTER IV.
ORIGINATING CAUSES OP THE SEPOY REBELLION.
Position of the Emperor of Delhi—Terms of the English Bargain with the Mogul-
Why the Munificent Provision Failed—The Pageant felt to be a Bore—Moslem Hate
8 CONTENTS.
of Christ and Christians—The Nana Sahib—His Agent Azeemoolah—A Hypocrite

who has no Equal—Mohammedan Monopoly of Place and Power—Sepoy Army and
its Disadvantages—Annexation of Oude—Dread of Christian Civilization—The Fakirs
of India—Humorous Anecdote of Self-torturing Fakir—The Yogees—Hindoo Rules
of Moral Perfection—Number and Expense of Saints in India—Militant Fakirs—Luck¬
now, its Beauty and Vileness—Those who Needed us Most—Our Mission Field—Joel,
our First Native Preacher—Peggy’s Sacrifice for her Saviour. Page 170
CHAPTER V.
“ IN PERILS BY THE HEATHEN, IN PERILS IN THE WILDERNESS.”
Reception at Bareilly—A Man who Never Heard of America—The Greased Car¬

tridges—Methods and Motives Employed to Foment Rebellion—Willoughby’s Gallant
Defense of the Delhi Magazine—Massacre of Meerut and Delhi—Providential Com¬
pensations—Our Warning to Flee—Declined to Leave—Reconsideration and Flight—
Left in the Terai at Midnight—God’s Answer to a Brief Prayer—Our First Sight of
Nynee Tal—The Massacre at Bareilly—Joel’s Narrative of his Escape and Flight--
Death of Maria—Bromfield-street and Bareilly on the Same Day—Massacre at Shah-
jehanpore—The Murdered Missionaries—“Tempering the Wind to the Shorn Lamb”
—Our Measures of Defense at Nynee Tal—The Value of Our Heads—“The Mutiny
Baby”—How we Lived, and our Commissariat—Mutilation of our Messengers—Hun¬
gry for News—Mrs. Edwards and the Garment of Praise—Lying and Blasphemous
Proclamations of the Rebel Authorities—The Spirit of the Moslem Creed—The Delhi
Battle of the 23d of June—Scarcity and Dearness of our Provisions—Our Rampore
Friend—Le Bas and the Nawab of Kurnal—The Fakir and the Baby—Our Sudden
Flight from Nynee Tal to Almorah—Again “in Perils in the Wilderness”—Light in
the Darkness—Almorah Reached at Last—The Fearful State of Things before Delhi
-Our Battle at Huldwanee. 221
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAWNPORE MASSACRE AND THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.
American Blood among the First Shed at Cawnpore—“ These are They which
Came Out of Great Tribulation ”—Authorities for the Story—Sir Hugh Wheeler’s
Preparation—The Beginning of the Long Agony—A Sorrow without a Parallel—The
Nana Sahib’s Infernal Treachery—Reserves the Ladies for Another Doom—The Dark¬
est Crime in Human History—The Nana Sahib Meets General Havelock—Totally
Routed—Havelock’s Soldiers at “The Well”—“I Believe in the Resurrection of the
Body”—The Shrine erected by a Weeping Country—Blowing Away from Guns and its
Motive—Siege ot Lucknow—Sir Henry Lawrence’s Preparation for Defense—The Dis¬
astrous Defeat of Chinhut—The Unequal Conditions of the Conflict—The Muchee
Bawun Blown Up—Sir Henry Lawrence’s Death—Determined Resolution of the Gar¬
rison—Value and Price of Stores—Soothing Influence of Prayer—The Omen of Coming
Liberty and Peace—Havelock’s Opportune Arrival at Calcutta—Military Services and
Career—Begins his Grand March with a Handful of Troops—The Battles of Futty-
pore and Pandoo Nuddee—Enters Cawnpore July 17th—Too Late after all to Save the
Ladies—Crosses the Ganges and Marches for Lucknow—Wins his Seventh Victory—
Obliged by Cholera and the Condition of his Troops to Wait for Reinforcements—
Sir James Outram’s Noble Concession—Reinforced and On his Way again—The Res¬
idency Reached and the Ladies Saved—Shut in Again—Sir Colin Campbell’s Approach
to Lucknow—Jessie Brown and her “ Dinnaye Hear the Slogan ? ”—Meeting of Camp¬
bell, Outram, and Havelock—Evacuation of the Residency—Havelock Dying—Recep¬
tion of the Ladies at Allahabad...... 20^
CONTENTS. 9
CHAPTER Vn.
THE CAUSES AND FAILURE OF THE SEPOY REBELLION.
England’s Misrepresentatives—The East India Company Answered by One of its

own Hindoo Subjects—Escape of India from French Rule—Young Bengal’s Opinion
of Christianity—Native Appreciation of English Government—Hindoo Estimate of
Missionaries and Christianity—The Interested Enemies of British Rule—Suttee with¬
out Vedic Sanction—The Mode and Extent of Suttee—The Motives of the Immolation
—Instances of Suttee—Abolished by Lord Bentinck—The Thugs of India—Our Inter¬
view with Two Hundred of Them—Divine Sanction for Thuggeeism^-What the Con¬
flict Involved—England’s Confession of her Sins—A Missionary Succeeds where a Gov¬
ernment Fails—Sir John Lawrence’s Christian Courage—Our Position again Assailed
—Another Divine Interposition in our Behalf—Delhi Falls at Last—Our Journey
Across the Himalayas—In Danger from the Wild Beasts—Arrival of our First Mis¬
sionaries at Calcutta—In Sorrow, Supposing us Killed—We Reach the Plains and Pro¬
ceed to Delhi—The Nakedness of the Captured City—Alone at Midnight at the Kot-
walie—The Sights of Delhi—Mohammedan Treatment of Hindoo Idols—Our Visit
to the Fallen Emperor—Other Royal Captives awaiting Trial—Attending Christian
Worship in the Dewanee Khass—Why the Sepoy Rebellion Failed—Constitutional
Freedom Foreign to Eastern Minds. Page 358
CHAPTER VIII.
RESULTS OF THE REBELLION TO CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
Meeting with One of the Bareilly Refugees—Colonel Gowan’s Munificence—Doctor

Wentworth’s Invitation to China—Sad Service at the Meerut Post-Office—Joined by
the Missionaries and their Wives—Lodged in the Taj Mahal—Proceed to Nynee Tal
and Commence our Work—The Sheep-House Congregation—The Battle of Bareilly—
The Grave of the Great Rebellion—Descent to Bareilly and Visit to my Ruined Home
—Conducting Worship for Havelock’s Heroes on their Last Battle-field—Visit to Khan
Bahadur in Prison—His Trial and How he Died—Journey to Futtyghur and Cawnpore
—Re-enter Lucknow—Reception by Sir Robert Montgomery—Marvelous Changes_
Results of the Rebellion viewed from the Residency—Effect on the Mohammedans_
The Irishman in the Lucknow Court—“One of You shall Chase a Thousand”—Abo¬
lition of the East India Company—Condition and Prospects of the Gospel_Martyr
Campbell’s Prayer Answered—Christianity Invincible and Inevitable. 430
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONDITION OF WOMAN UNDER HINDOO LAW.
Woman’s Wrongs in India are Legal—Female Infanticide—“ Dark Saugor’s impious

Stain”—Betrothal of Hindoo Girls—Courtship Unknown in India—Legal Age for
Marriage—Seclusion follows Betrothal—Education of the Hindoo Maiden—Subordi¬
nation of Woman Legally Enjoined—The Wife Prohibited from Eating with her Hus¬
band—Required to Serve him while he Eats—Illustration of Royal Tyranny_A
Woman’s Curse Dreaded—Polygamy Allowed by Law—Its Extent—Polyandry Its
Ancient Character illustrated from the Mahabarata—Widowhood in India—Its Condi¬
tion and Effect—Death and Funeral of the Hindoo Wife and Mother on the Banks of
the Ganges.. 468
IO CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
OUR CHRISTIAN ORPHANAGES IN ROHILCUND.
Wages in India—Causes of Famines—Famine of i860—The Calamity Turned to

Account—Condition of the Orphans received—Our Female Orphanage erected on the
Site of Maria’s Home—Aspect of our Congregations before i860—The First Female
Orphan—Present Condition of Efficiency and Hope. Page 506
CHAPTER XI.
STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.
Table No. I. Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church in India. 528

“ II. Missionary Societies Operating in India in 1872. 529
“ III. Summarizing the Results, and Showing the Progress, of Christian¬
ity in British India since 1852. 530
“ IV. Foreign Missionary Statistics of the Protestant Church throughout
the World. 531
“ V. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Societies. 532
“ VI. Home Missionary Societies. 532
“ VII. Tract Societies. 532
“ VIII. Bible Societies. 533
“ IX. Roman Catholic Missions. 534
“ X. Protestant and Roman Catholic Missions Compared. 536
Glossary of Indian Terms used in this Work and in Missionary Correspondence 541
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THE
LAND OF THE VEDA.
CHAPTER I.
THE PEOPLE OF INDIA-CASTE AND ITS IMMUNITIES.
I N my youth I read those amazing descriptions of Oriental

magnificence recorded by Sir Thomas Roe—England’s first
Embassador to India—and others, describing the power and glory
of “ The Great Mogul ” in such glowing terms that they seemed
more like the romance of the “Arabian Nights” than the real
facts, which they were, of the daily life witnessed in that splendid
Court. Europe then heard for the first time of “The Taj,” “The
Peacock Throne,” “ The Dewanee Khass,” “ The Weighing of the
Emperor,” when on each birthday his person was placed in
golden scales, and twelve times his weight of gold and silver,
perfumes and other valuables, were distributed to the populace;
but the statements seemed so distant from probability that they
were regarded by many as extravagances which might well rank
with the asserted facts of “ Lalla Rookh ; ” so that the Embassa¬
dor, who was three years a resident, and the Poet, who had never
been there at all, with their authorities, seemed alike to have
drawn upon their imagination for their facts, transcending, as their
descriptions did, the ability and the taste of European Courts.
How little I then imagined that it would fall to my lot at a
future day to be in that very Dewanee Khass, sitting quietly on
the side of his Crystal Throne, beholding the last of the Mogul
Emperors, a captive, on trial for his life, in that magnificent Audi-
12 TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
ence Hall of his forefathers, where millions have bowed down

before them in such abject homage! that I should be there to see
him, the last of their line, descending from that throne and $900,000'
per annum to a felon’s doom and the deck of a convict ship, to
breathe out the remnant of his miserable life upon a foreign shore ;
and then after his departure to behold, as I did, that costly Khass
given over to the spoiler’s hand, rifled by the English soldiers of
its last ornaments, and ruined forever !
Truly has it been said that ofttimes “faqt is stranger than fic¬
tion;” and the assertion has seldom received more impressive
illustrations than are found in the wonderful scenes which I wit¬
nessed in the Court of Delhi at the close of 1857.
In reading that stirring account of the great victory won for
Christianity near Poictiers on the 3d of October, A. D. 732—when
the brave Charles Martel, at the head of his Christian warriors,
had to meet Abder Rahman and his Arabian cavalry, 375,000
strong, and there to decide whether Europe should henceforth be
Christian or Moslem—one almost trembles as he thinks what would
have been the result had Charles failed that day ! The hosts of
the Arabian Antichrist had already extinguished the seven
Churches of Asia, almost swept North Africa of its Christianity,
had passed the pillars of Hercules and conquered Spain, crossed
the Pyrenees, and were now descending into France and Ger¬
many with the intention of completing the circuit of the Mediter¬
ranean, and making Europe as Mohammedan as they had made
Asia Minor and Palestine. Christendom was terrified, for the
Christian Church seemed pressed to the verge of ruin. On the
issue of that morning, so far as human eye can penetrate the future,
it was then and there to be decided whether Paris and London,
and, by consequence, New York and Boston, were to be like Bag¬
dad, Constantinople, and Damascus : whether, instead of the spires
of our churches and the sound of our Sabbath bells, our race was
to receive, at the sword’s point, another faith, whose outward
expression would be the Mosque and the Minaret, and the Muez¬
zin’s cry calling “the faithful” to the Koran and its prayers !
CHRISTIANITY rS GREAT EMERGENCIES. 13
Well did Christendom bestow the surname of the “ Hammer”

upon the heroic Charles! From the blows which he dealt out to
those foes of Gospel civilization they reeled back, stunned into the
keen conviction that for them and their hateful creed there was no
home in Europe. They recrossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and,
instead of the Gallic and Germanic races, sought an easier prey in
the enervated communities of Oriental heathenism. Thus, instead
of France and Britain and Germany, the Crescent of the False
Prophet subdued, and for nearly a thousand years waved over, Egypt,
Persia, Toorkistan, and India. But for the Providence which gave
Charles Martel that decisive victory, Arabic had been the classical
language, and Islamism the religion of our race and of Europe;
and “America and the Cape, the Compass and the Press, the
Steam-engine, the Telescope, and the Copernican System, might
all have remained undiscovered until the present day.”
When reading these thrilling events long years since, how free I
was from any anticipation that I should yet have to stand in the
center of Asia, amid a similar whirl of confusion and blood, organ¬
ized by that very creed, as it rose in its might to sweep the East¬
ern hemisphere of every vestige of the Gospel, and plant its
triumphant flag on the ruins of Christianity; that it should be my
lot to be lost to sight for months amid the rolling clouds of the
conflict, where Henry Havelock, victorious over Nana Sahib,
accomplished for Oriental Christianity what Charles Martel did a
thousand years before for the same faith, in the West; that at
length, emerging unscathed, I should have the high honor to be
invited by them to render their thanks to God for their victory, on
the last battle-field which his heroes won ; and, more wonderful
still, that there, amid the utter military downfall of that creed and
its chief dynasty, I should be privileged to plant the standard of
the Cross in the land of the Sepoy, and live to see Churches
founded and native ministers raised up from the very race who
sought our life and labored to destroy our faith!
How different would the East and the West have been to-day
had either Martel or Havelock failed! But God is great for the
14 THE LANE OF THE VEDA.
exigencies of his people, and has often, as in both these instances,

shown that he can save by few as well as by many. I am fully of
the opinion, and think this work will abundantly show, that Oriental
Christianity never passed through such an emergency as that of
1857-8. Even worldly men, ay, the very heathen themselves,
declared afterward that it was God alone who saved it from com¬
plete annihilation. By every law and rule of power, opportunity,
and purpose, it must have perished had it been merely human, and
true philosophy as well as Christian faith teaches us that it was
only saved by the special interposition of Almighty God, its
defender and keeper. During the long and weary months of our
siege on the summit of Nynee Tal, the handful of villagers there
declared that we were the last of the Christian life left in India—
that from where we stood, to the sea on either side, our religion and
race had been all swept away. We knew well that if this were so our
fate was but a question of time that would soon be consummated.
Cut off and excluded, there we stood, our anxious hearts trying
to ponder the terrible question, Could this be so f and if so, how
fearful must be the result! For we felt assured, if it were, that the
successful effort of the India Sepoy would have found cruel imita¬
tion in Burmah, China, and Japan, and that it was possible that, at
that hour—in those terrible days of July and August, 1857—Chris¬
tianity might have been extinguished in the blood of its last martyrs
on the Oriental hemisphere, and the clock of the world been put
back for centuries. We could only turn to God, a.nd “against
hope believe in hope,” while we ourselves “stood in jeopardy every
hour.” How serious that jeopardy was may be realized by turning
to the map, and describing a circle around the geographical center
of our mission at Shajehanpore, until its diameter would expand to
three hundred miles. That area would encircle nearly the whole
of Rohilcund, Oude, and The Doab, and would include the cities
of Moradabad, Futtyghur, Bareilly, Fucknow, Cawnpore, Rampore,
etc. It would represent the very heart of the great Rebellion.
Every city, town, and village within these limits “ fell,” so that, with
the exception of the handful with us at Nynee Tal, one little group
OUR NARROW ESCAPE. 15
that was closely hidden in a Hindoo home iq Rohilcund, those in

the “ Residency ” of Lucknow, and those in the intrenchments at
Cawnpore—not a white face in all that great valley was left alive.
Within that fearful circle on the 31st of May, 1857, were five
American missionaries. I am the only one of the number that
came out of the terrible vortex; all the rest, with their wives and
children, were ruthlessly murdered. We knew them well—Broth¬
ers Freeman, Campbell, Johnson, and M’Mullen, and their devoted
ladies and little ones, honored and beloved missionaries of the
American Presbyterian Church. We alone of the number are left
alive to tell the story of the circumstances under which they suf¬
fered, and of our own wonderful escape from a similar death !
How well we can appreciate the victory of Christian civilization
over heathen cruelty and purposes, as well as the amazing strides
made by the Gospel and by education since that fearful day!
The reader will well remember how the world stood horrified in
the fall of that year as mail after mail brought the tidings of cruelty
and massacre, in which neither age nor sex was spared, and also
with what anxiety they watched the progress of the feeble bands
of heroes who, under such leaders as the gallant and saintly
Havelock, fought their dreadful way to our rescue, too late to
save even one at Cawnpore, but in time to rescue us and those at
Lucknow.
The intervention of the civil war in this country necessarily for
the time turned away attention from the horrors which were fourteen
thousand miles distant; but the public interest in this subject has
not ceased, nor will the story of the “ Sepoy Rebellion ” ever be
forgotten while men admire and honor heroic sufferings, Anglo-
Saxon pluck, and sublime Christian courage, exhibited against the
most fearful odds and in the face of certain death, in the center of
a whole continent of raging foes, while the Prince of the powers of
the air marshaled the hosts of hell to annihilate the religion of the
Son of God. Doubtless “ the rulers of the darkness of this world ”
had more interest and part in that fearful struggle than was taken
by the poor, ignorant Sepoy or his crafty priest. It was earth
i6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
and hell combined. No other theory can account for its char¬
acter. Of this the reader will judge for himself from the facts
presented.
Fourteen years have passed since closed that great “wrestling
with flesh and blood, with principalities and powers, and wicked
spirits in high places.” Eight of those years were spent by the
writer amid the scenes of 1857-8, giving him occasion to verify
and examine the facts where they transpired, and correct his judg¬
ment by as good an opportunity as could be desired. I feel the
responsibility to see that such facts shall not drop into oblivion.
They should not be allowed to die, especially associated as they
are with the history of the Methodist Church in India, whose foun¬
dations were laid in such “ troublous times.”
It will assist the reader’s attention, and promote a more ade¬
quate understanding of our subject, to introduce to him at this
point the people of whom we are speaking, and also unfold some¬
what their character and peculiar civilization. The wood-cuts are
mostly from photographs brought from India, and of course are
faithful representations of the various classes as they appear there,
The first group are Hindoos, as they sit round a Brahmin to listen
to the reading of the Vedas.
The Hindoos constitute the great majority of the Empire, and
are of the same Caucasian race as ourselves. Their ancestors
moved southward from their original home more than three thou¬
sand years ago, and occupied the Valley of Scinde, probably on the
west bank of the Indus, while only Afghanistan and Persia lay
between them and the cradle of the race. There, in that valley,
their most ancient Vedas were written—manifestly so from the local
allusions—and from thence at a later period they migrated into the
richer Valley of the Ganges, driving before them the aborigines of
India, who sought shelter in the jungles and mountains, where
their descendants are found to-day. The Hindoos have long
ceased to be a warlike people. The rich land which they con¬
quered, its fertility, the abundance and cheapness of the means
of life, and their inclination to indolence, which a warm climate
Hindoos and their Teache
MOHAMMEDAN INVASION. 19
fosters, have all been promotive of the effeminacy into which they
have so generally sunk.
Their separation into castes and classes have tended to individ¬
ualism, and to an utter indifference to politics or the public good ;
so that you seek in vain for what we call patriotism or love of
country. The Hindoo, as a general fact, cares not who rules the
land if only he is allowed to cultivate his fields and eat his rice in
peace. If left to himself, the last thing he would have thought of
would have been rebellion ; indeed, the Hindoos, as a people, did
not rebel. They looked on in astonishment, and left the whole
affair to be carried on and fought out by the Sepoys and the Bud-
mashes (the thieves and vagabonds) of the cities.
In every respect they are a contrast to the Mohammedans among
them. No tendency to amalgamation with them has ever been
developed. They regard them as aliens and oppressors, and are
even thankful that they are no longer under their control.
About eight hundred years ago there came pouring down into India
from the countries of the North-west a hardy, large-boned, intoler¬
ant race of men, made up of various nations, who had heard of the
“barbaric pearl and gold ” of Hindustan, and who panted to extend
over its wide realms their religion and rule. Before this Moham¬
medan invasion the Hindoo race succumbed, though the strangers
were not one seventh of their number. But they were a unit; and,
taking the Hindoo nations in detail, they conquered. Then, filling
the positions of trust and the offices of Government with their own
creatures, and as far as they could making a monopoly of education,
they continued to compensate for deficiency of numbers by a poli¬
tic use of their opportunities, and left the Hindoo to till the soil
and pay the yearly tribute which they had laid upon him. The usual
alternative of the Mohammedan conquerors—conformity to their
creed or grinding taxation, or even death—had to be foregone in
this instance, as its attempted enforcement over a people so much
more numerous would have been too much for even Hindoo patience,
and have ended probably in the extermination of their iconoclastic
conquerors. The distinctive characteristics of each are religiously
20 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
kept up. One of them is in the fastening of the outer garment.

On meeting either party, though the dress is much the same, you
at once distinguish the Mohammedan from the Hindoo by the uni¬
versal fact that the latter has his tunic made to button on the right
side, while the Mohammedan hooks his on the left. There is abont
the Mohammedan a fierce, haughty aspect, which he takes no
trouble to conceal. He cannot forget that he had ruled in fndia
for seven hundred years, until the hated English came and broke
the rod of his strength, and he is all the more disposed to show his
bitterness of spirit because the Hindoo race, with the exception of
a few Brahmins, hailed the change with sincere gladness, and can
now set him at defiance. It was on this fact that Englishmen
relied for the perpetuity of their rule ; and on it they might have
depended for long centuries to come, had it not been for a combi¬
nation of peculiar circumstances which existed in 1857, and which
will be detailed in their place.
Taking individual portraits, for the sake of more distinctness, I
here present a Brahmin, as the acknowledged head of Hindoo
society, and an associate of the most exclusive and singular of all
earthly orders.
The man here introduced holds himself to be a member of the
most ancient aristocracy upon the earth. His dignity is one
entirely independent of landed possessions, wealth, or manorial
halls. Indeed, these have nothing whatever to do with it. The
man may have literally no home, and not be worth five dollars of
worldly property; he may have to solicit his next meal of food
from those who respect his order; but he is a Brahmin, and is
prouder of that simple string over his shoulder and across his
naked breast than any English Earl is of his coronet. These men
laugh at such a mushroom aristocracy as that of Britain or France,
created merely by the breath of a human Sovereign, whose word
raises the plebeian to the noble order; for the Brahmin holds tha*
his nobility is not an accident, but is in the highest sense “by the
grace of God.” It is in his nature, in his blood, by the original
intention and act of his Creator. He was made and designed by
ORIGIN OF CASTE.
God to be different from and higher than all other men, and that
from the first to last of time.
How they hate that republican Christianity which declares that
“ God hath made of one blood all nations of men,” and that Gospel
equality which announces that saints “are one in Christ Jesus,”
and that, having “all one Father,” “all we are brethren” in a
blessed communion, where no lofty pretensions or imprescriptable
rights are allowed to any, but he that would be greatest must be
the servant of all.
I have seen a person of this class, on approaching a low-caste
man, wave his right hand superciliously thirty yards before they
could meet, and so send him off to the other side of the road. The
poor despised man meekly bowed and obeyed the haughty inti¬
mation. No sacerdotal tyranny has ever been so relentlessly and
scornfully enforced as that of the Brahminical rule, and none
has been such an unmitigated curse to the nation where it was
exercised.
Caste is an institution peculiarly Brahminical. The Sanscrit
word is varna, which denotes color—probably the ancient distinc¬
tion between the Hindoo invaders and the aborigines. Caste, from
the Portuguese casta, a breed, exactly expresses the Brahminical
idea. Their account of its origin, abridged from the Institutes of
Menu., the oldest system of law extant save the Pentateuch, is as
follows :
“In order to preserve the universe, Brahma caused the Brahmin
to proceed from his mouth, the Kshatriya to proceed from his arm,
the Vaisya to proceed from his thigh, and the Sudra to proceed from
his foot. And Brahma directed that the duties of the Brahmins
should be reading and teaching the Veda ; sacrificing, and assisting
others to sacrifice ; giving alms if they be rich, and receiving alms
if they be poor. And Brahma directed that the duties of the
Kshatriyas should be to defend the people, to give alms, to sacri¬
fice, to read the Veda, and to keep their passions under control.
And he directed that the duties of the Vaisyas should be to keep
nerds of cattle, to give alms, to read the Shasters, to carry on
trade, to lend money at interest, and to cultivate land. And he

directed that the Sudra should serve all the three mentioned castes,
namely, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, and the Vaisyas, and that
he should not depreciate nor make light of them. Since the Brah¬
min sprang from the mouth, which is the most excellent part of
Brahma, and since he is the first-born and possesses the Veda, he
is by right the chief of the whole creation. Him Brahma pro¬
duced from his own mouth, that he might perform holy rites ; that
he might present ghee to the gods, and cakes of rice to the Pitris,
or progenitors of mankind.”—Code of Hindoo Law, I, pp. 88, 94.
The Bhagvat Gecta, their most sublime treatise, repeats the same
arrangement, and makes their observance a condition of salvation
and moral perfection. Each class had thus a separate creation,
constituting it, in fact, a distinct species, involving a denial of the
doctrine that “ God hath made of one blood all men.” The
Hindoos thus reject our common humanity, and hold it to be
heresy to believe that all men are fellow-creatures, scouting the
idea that we should “ honor all men,” or “ love our neighbors as
ourselves.”
Brahmin is a derivative from Bralnn, the Deity, and signifies a
Theologist or Divine. The caste is analogous to the tribe of Levi
under the Mosaic economy, but without the family of Aaron. All
the benefits of the Hindoo religion belong to this class, and the
code secured to them rights, honors, and immunities that no other
order could claim, so that their persons were to be considered
sacred and inviolate, and they could not be held amenable to the
penalties of law even for the worst of crimes. The intention of the
legislator was, that from this learned class alone the nation was to
take its astronomers, lawyers, prime ministers, judges, philosophers,
as well as priests. They were to hold the highest offices, and to be
supreme. The Brahmin is invested with that sacred string of
three cotton strands, and the ceremony is called regeneration, and
gives the Brahmin his claim to the title of the “twice born.” For
him, and for him alone, has the law-giver laid down in detail the
duties of life, even to his devotions. Each morning he may be
Brahmins at Prayer.
BRAHMINICAL PRAYING. 27
seen, as here represented, on the banks of the Ganges or other

“holy” stream.
Any thing more singular and whimsical than the forms pre¬
scribed for him were never enjoined upon humanity as religious
ritual. In illustration of this, from a paper in the “ Asiatic
Researches,” by Mr. Colebrook, as quoted by Dr. Duff, we ask the
reader’s attention to the following extract. Speaking of the duties
of morning worship, one of which is the religious ablution, as here
represented, “the Sacred Books” strictly enjoin as follows:
“He may bathe with water drawn from a well, from a fountain,
or from the basin of a cataract; but he should prefer water which
lies above ground—choosing a stream rather than stagnant water,
a river in preference to a small brook, a holy stream before a
vulgar river, and above all the water of the Ganges. If the
Ganges be beyond his reach he should invoke that holy river,
saying, ‘ O, Gunga, hear my prayers! for my sake be included in
this small quantity of water with the other sacred streams.’ Then,
standing in the water, he must hallow his intended performance by
the inaudible recitation of certain sacred texts. Next, sipping
water and sprinkling some before him, the worshiper throws
water eight times on the crown of his head, on the earth, toward
the sky; again toward the sky, on the earth, on the crown of his
head; and lastly on the ground, to destroy the demons who wage
war with the gods. During the performance of this act of ablu¬
tion he must be reciting these prayers : ‘ O waters ! since ye afford
delight, grant us present happiness and the rapturous sight of the
Supreme Being. Like tender mothers, make us here partakers of
your most auspicious essence. We become contented with your
essence, with which ye satisfy the universe. Waters, grant it to
us.’ Immediately after this first ablution he should sip water with¬
out swallowing it, silently praying. These ceremonies and prayers
being concluded, he plunges thrice into the water, each time repeat¬
ing the prescribed expiatory texts.
“ He then meditates in the deepest silence. During this moment
of intense devotion he is striving to realize that ‘ Brahma, with foui
28 THE LANT) OF THE VEDA.
faces and a red complexion, resides in nis bosom ; Vishnu, with

four arms and a black complexion, in his heart; and Shiva, with
five faces and a white complexion, in his forehead !’ To this sub¬
lime meditation succeeds a suppression of the breath, which is thus
performed : Closing the left nostril with the two longest fingers of
his right hand, he draws his breath through the right nostril ; and
then, closing that nostril likewise with his thumb, he holds his breath,
while he internally repeats to himself the Gayatri, the mysterious
names of the three worlds, the triliteral monosyllable, and the
sacred text of Brahma; last of all, he raises both fingers off the left
nostril, and emits the breath he had suppressed through the right.
This process being repeated three several times, he must next
make three ablutions, with the following prayer : ‘ As the tired man
leaves drops of sweat at the foot of a tree ; as he who bathes is
cleansed from all foulness ; as an oblation is sanctified by holy
grass, so may this water purify me from sin.’ He must next fill
the palm of his hand with water, and, presenting it to his nose,
inhale-the fluid by one nostril, and, retaining it for a while, exhale
it through the other, and throw away the water to the north-east
quarter. This is considered as an internal ablution which washes
away sin. He then concludes by sipping water with the following
prayer: ‘ Water! thou dost penetrate all beings ; thou dost reach
the deep recesses of the mountains ; thou art the mouth of the
universe ; thou art sacrifice ; thou art the mystic word vasha;
thou art light, taste, and the immortal fluid.’”
After a variety of genuflections and prayers, of which these are
but a mere sample, he concludes his devotions by worshiping the
rising sun. The veneration in which the Brahmin is to be held
by all classes, the privileges which he is to enjoy, his occupations
and modes of life, are laid down with wonderful minuteness in this
Code of Hindoo Law. A mere sample of his assumptions, under
the head of Veneration, will suffice: “The Brahmin is entitled to
the whole of the universe by the right of primogeniture. He pos¬
sesses the Veda, and is alone permitted to teach the laws. By his
sacrifices and imprecations he could destroy a Rajah in a moment.
PREROGATIVES OF THE BRAHMINS. 29
together with all his troops, elephants, horses, and chariots In

his wrath he could frame new worlds, with new gods and new
mortals. A man who barely assaulted a Brahmin, with the inten¬
tion of hurting him, would be whirled about for a century in the
hell termed Tamasa. He who smote a Brahmin with only a blade
of grass, would be born an inferior quadruped during twenty-one
transmigrations. But he who should shed the blood of a Brahmin,
save in battle, would be mangled by animals in his next birth for
as many years as there were particles of dust rolled up by the
blood shed. If a Sudra (a low-caste man) sat upon the same seat
with a Brahmin, he was to be gashed in the part offending.”—
Institutes of Menu, I, 94, etc.
Thus a body of men, supposed to number not more than a few
hundred thousand, have held the two hundred millions of their
fellow-countrymen for thirty centuries in the terrors of this sacer¬
dotal legislation, enforcing its claims to the last limit of endurance,
though at the fearful price of the utter ignorance, degradation, and
slavery of their nation. The reader can well appreciate the indig¬
nant feelings with which this greedy, proud, and supercilious order
of men contemplated the incoming of a Christian Government,
which would make all men “ equal before the law,” and the advent
of a Religion whose great glory it is to vindicate the oppressed and
“ preach the Gospel to the poor.”
The Kshatriya caste (derived from Kshetra, land) and the Vais-
yas (traders) had the privilege of the investiture with the sacred
string; but to the Sudras there was to be no investiture, no sacri¬
fice, and no Scriptures. They were condemned by this law to perpet¬
ual servitude. Yet this class, with the Outcasts, were necessarily
the great majority of the nation, and those who might have been
their instructors and guides, heartlessly took away the key of
knowledge, made it a legal crime to “teach them how sin might be
expiated,” and deliberately degraded them for time and eternity.
The Vedas expressly state that the benefits of the Hindoo religion
are open only to three of the four castes ! The fourth-caste man
could have no share in religion and hold no property. He was a
bondsman, and that forever. No system of human slavery ever

equaled this; for it was intense, unalterable, and unending, by the
act of God himself.
The distinctions of society, by the ordinances of the Hindoo
Lawgiver, were thus indicated : Brahmins, or Priests; Kshatriyas,
or Soldiers and Rajahs; Vaisyas, or Merchants and Farmers;
Sudras, the servile class.
The arrangements indicate a pastoral condition of society, far
removed from the stirring scenes of the life of the nineteenth cen¬
tury. The ordinances made no preparation for the wider wants of
men or intercommunication of other nations, or the development
of our race. They had no provision for manufacturing, mining, or
commercial life, but expected the world to move on forever in their
limited conservative methods. These four castes were subdivided,
according to the theory, into sixty-four, and in the grooves thus
opened the divisions of labor were expected to run, so that even
trade should become hereditary ; and thus, whatever the genius or
ability developed in any man, he was expected to be content to
remain in the profession of his father. He might have the germ
and the buddings of a mind like Newton’s, but, according to “their
cast-iron rules of social life, if his father made shoes he too must
stick to the last.”
No man of one caste can eat, smoke, marry with, or touch the cook¬
ing-vessels of a person of another caste. The prohibition is fear¬
fully strict, and guarded with terrible sanctions. And it is as des¬
titute of humanity as it is singular ; so that, were a stranger of their
own nation, coming into one of their towns, to be taken suddenly
ill, and unable to speak and explain of 'what caste he was, he would
certainly be liable to perish, for the high-caste people would be
afraid to touch him, lest they should break their caste, and those of
the low-caste would be unwilling, lest their contact (on the suppo¬
sition of his superior order) might irrecoverably contaminate him
In their hands the man would perish unaided.
This unique masterpiece of Brahminism was intended by its
framers to be a wall of brass around their system, to secure its unal-
BRAHMINICAL INVESTITURE. 31
terable permanency. But, its own heartless selfishness and cruel

tendencies had so far overdone the work that it was found practi¬
cally impossible to sustain the integrity of the arrangements. Inno¬
vations crept in and conflicts ensued, and, despite the desperate
efforts of the Brahmins, confusion has marred Menu’s strange
designs, while the introduction of Western civilization, the teach¬
ings of Christianity, and the light of true knowledge, have delivered
such severe and repeated shocks that the venerable and hideous
monstrosity is tottering to its final fall.
Four Stages of Life are marked out by Menu for the Brahmin :
I. The Brahmachari, or Studentship of the Veda; 2. The Grihas-
tha, or Married State ; 3. The Vanaprastha, or Hermit Life ; 4. The
Satmyasi, or Devotee Condition.
The Brahmachari stage begins with the investiture of the sacred
thread, which act signifies “ a second birth.” The investiture takes
place in his eighth year in case of a Brahmin, the eleventh year
for a Kshatriya, and the twelfth for a Vaisya. The investiture
introduces the “ twice-born ” Brahmin boy to a religious life, and is
supposed to sanctify him for the study of the Veda.
The thread of the Brahmin is made of cotton and formed of
three strings ; that of the Kshatriya is made of hemp, and that of
the Vaisya is of wool. It is termed the “ sacrificial cord,” because
it entitles the wearer to the privilege of sacrifice and religious
services. Certain ceremonies are observed for girls as well as for
boys, but neither girls nor women are invested with the sacred
thread nor the utterance of the sacred mantras. They have con¬
sequently no right to sacrifice. Indeed, the nuptial ceremony is
considered to be for woman equivalent to the investiture of the
thread, and is the commencement of the religious life of the
female, (Menu, II, 66, 67.) So that, a lady remaining unmarried,
has nothing equivalent to their “ second birth ” here, and can look
forward to no certainty of a happy life hereafter. The poor Sudra
is entirely excluded. Thus, the Servile Man and the unmarried
woman of any, even the highest, caste are equally left outside the
pale of Brahminical salvation—exactly that condition to which
High-Church Puseyism consigns all “ Dissenters ” when they hand

them over to “ the uncovenanted mercies of God.”
In addition to the exclusion of woman and the lower caste, this
terrible Code proceeds to sink still deeper vast multitudes of their
fellow-creatures. The “ Outcasts ” are numbered by the million.
Some of these are called “ Chandalas,” and concerning them this
heartless and cruel Lawgiver ordains: “ Chandalas must dwell
without the town. Their sole wealth must be dogs and asses ; their
clothes must consist of the mantles of deceased persons ; their
dishes must be broken pots, and their ornaments must consist of
rusty iron. No one who regards his duties must hold any inter¬
course with them, and they must marry only among themselves.
By day they may roam about for the purposes of work, and be dis¬
tinguished by the badges of the Rajah; and they must carry out
the corpse of any one who dies without kindred. They should
always be employed to slay those who are sentenced by the laws to
be put to death ; and they may take the clothes of the slain, their
beds, and their ornaments.”—Code, X, 51-58.
Can the Western reader wonder that, tame and subdued though
the Asiatics may be, these aristocratic ordinances should have
proved too much for human nature, or that the introduction of
English rule and fair play, elevating these long-crushed millions to
legal equality with these proud Brahmins, was an immense mercy
to nearly one sixth of the human family ?
As a sample of how this sacerdotal law, framed for his special
glorification, discriminated in favor of the Brahmin, it may suffice
to quote a sentence or two. On the question of his privileges when
called to testify in a Court of Justice, he must be assumed to be
the “very soul of honor,” and his oath, without exposure to pen¬
ally, was to be held sufficient. The Code decreed that “A Brah¬
min was to swear by his veracity ; a Kshatriya by his weapons,
horse, or elephant ; and a Vaisya by his kine, grain, or gold ; but
a Sudra was to imprecate upon his own head the guilt of every
possible crime if he did not speak the truth.”—VIII, 113. “To
a Brahmin the Judge should say, ‘Declare;’ to a Kshatriya he
DISCRIMINATIONS IN THE BRAHMIN'S FAVOR. 33
should say, ‘ Declare the truth to the Vaisya he should compare
perjury to the crime of stealing kine, grain, or gold ; to the Sudra
he should compare perjury to every crime in the following lan¬
guage : ‘ Whatever places of torture have been prepared for the
murderer of a Brahmin, for the murderer of a woman, or child,
have also been ordained for that witness who gives false evidence.
If you deviate from the truth you shall go naked, shorn, and blind,
and be tormented with hunger and thirst, and beg food with a pot¬
sherd at the door of your enemy ; or shall tumble headlong into
hell in utter darkness. Even if you give imperfect testimony, and
assert a fact which you have not seen, you shall suffer pain like a
man who eats fish and swallows the sharp bones.”—Menu, VIII,
79 95
- -
The scale of punishments in the case of a Brahmin (in the few

instances where he was at all amenable to the law it could only
touch his property, never, under any consideration, his person) was
equally drawn in his favor, and was all the lighter in proportion to
the inferiority of caste of the man whom he had injured ; while, on
the other hand, it was equally to be increased in severity (for the
same crime in both cases) in proportion to the same distinction.
Says the law, “ A Kshatriya who slandered a Brahmin was to be
fined a hundred panas ; for the same crime a Vaisya was to be
fined a hundred and fifty or two hundred panas ; but a Sudra was
to be whipped.” On the other hand, if a Brahmin slandered a
Kshatriya “ he was to be fined fifty panas ; if he slandered a Vaisya
he was to be fined twenty-five panas ; but if he slandered a Sudra
he was only to be fined twelve panas. If, however, a Sudra insulted
any man of the twice-born castes with gross invectives, he was to
have his tongue slit ; if he mentioned the name and caste of the
individual with contumely, an iron style, ten fingers long, was to be
made red-hot and thrust into his mouth ; and if, through pride, he
dared to instruct a Brahmin respecting his duty, the Rajah was to
order that hot oil should be poured into his mouth and ear.”—
Menu, VIII, 266-276.
The “ pana ” was then nearly equal to our cent, so his privilege
of slandering a Sudra could at any time be exercised with impunity

for a dime, while, if it was so done unto him, the law took good care
that the plebeian wretch should never repeat the offense, for his
tongue was to be slit. How truly could the Almighty, whose
name they blasphemously invoke for their outrageous legislation,
say of them, “ Are not your ways unequal ? ”
Even in salutations the Code ordained the forms, and gave them
a religious significance. “ A Brahmin was to be asked whether
his devotion had prospered, a Kshatriya whether he had suffered
from his wounds, a Vaisya whether his wealth was secure, and a
Sudra whether he was in good health.”—Menu, II, 127.
The food, the privileges, the duties, of this pampered monopolist
are all minutely laid down in the Code, but they are too diffuse and
too childish to place before the reader, and would not be worth the
space occupied. In proof of this I quote one sentence from the
fourth chapter, merely remarking that the whimsical injunctions
are left without any rhyme or reason. They are as unaccountable
as they are singular. “ He (the Brahmin) must not gaze on the
sun while rising or setting, or eclipsed or reflected in water ; he
must not run while it rains ; he must not look on his own image
in water; when he sees the bow of Indra in the sky he must not
show it to any man ; he must not step over a string to which a
calf is tied ; and he must not wash his feet in a pan of mixed
metal.”
In these stages of its development and claims, Brahminism is
nothing less than a system of supreme selfishness, and was worthy
of the express teaching with which the Brahmin was directed, in an
emergency, to sacrifice every thing to his own precious self, in the
following rule : “ Against misfortune let him preserve his wealth ;
at the expense of his wealth let him preserve his wife ; butjet him
at all events preserve himself, even at the hazard of his wife and
riches.”
How little can such a religion or such a law know of disin¬
terested affection, or of that devotion which would risk every thing
for the safety and happiness of its beloved object ?
THIRD STAGE OF THE BRAHMIN'S LIFE. 35
His student life ended, the Brahmin commences his married

existence with forms and rules which will be referred to when we
come to speak of the condition of woman under Hindoo law. In
this second stage of his life he is required to have “ his hair and
beard properly trimmed, his passions subdued, and his mantle
white ; he is to carry a staff of Venu, a ewer w-ith water in it,
handful of Kusa grass, or a copy of the Vedas, with a pair of
bright golden rings in his ears, ready to give instruction in the
sacied books, or political counsel, and to administer justice.”
Then in order would come the third and fourth stages of his life,
the rules of which are so unique. Such an amazing contrast to
the unbounded privileges of the previous stages, and withal so
little like what ordinary humanity would impose upon itself, that
we must quote them for the information of the reader. These two
stages express the very essence of Brahminism. In the Hermit
stage, the theory is a course of life that will mortify the passions
and extinguish desire ; this being accomplished, the last order, or
Devotee stage, is religious contemplation with the view to final
beatitude.
Menu says, “ When the twice-born man has remained in the
order of Grihastha, or householder, until his muscles become flaccid
and his hair gray, and he sees a child of his child, let him abandon
his household and repair to the forest, and dwell there in the order
of Vanaprastha, or Hermit. He should be accompanied by his
wife if she choose to attend him, but otherwise he should commit
her to the care of his sons. He should take with him the conse¬
crated fire, and all the domestic implements for making oblations
to fire, and there dwell in the forest, with perfect control over all
his organs. Day by day he should perform the five sacraments.
He should wear a black antelope’s hide, or a vesture of bark, and
bathe morning and evening ; he should suffer his nails and the
hair of -his head and beard to grow continually. He should be
constantly engaged in reading the Veda ; he should be patient in
all extremities ; he should be universally benevolent, and entertain
a tender affection for all living creatures ; his mind should be ever
intent upon the Supreme Being ; he should slide backward and

forward, or stand a whole day on tiptoe, or continue in motion by
rising and sitting alternately ; but every day, at sunrise, at noon,
and at sunset, he should go to the waters and bathe. In the hot
season he should sit exposed to five fires, namely : four blazing
around him, while the sun is burning above him. In the rainy
season he should stand uncovered, without even a mantle, while
the clouds pour down their heaviest showers. In the cold season
he should wear damp vesture. He should increase the austerity
of his devotion by degrees, until by enduring harsher and harsher
mortifications he has dried up his bodily frame.”—Code, VI, 22 ;
Vishnu Purana, III, 9, etc.
As regards the life to be pursued by a Sannyasi, Menu lays
down the following directions :
“ When a Brahmin has thus lived in the forest during the third
portion of his life as a Vanaprastha, he should for the fourth por¬
tion of it become a Sannyasi, and abandon all sensual affections,
and repose wholly in the Supreme Spirit. The glory of that
Brahmin who passes from the order of Grihastha to that of San¬
nyasi illuminates the higher worlds. He should take an earthen
water-pot, dwell at the roots of large trees, wear coarse vesture,
abide in total solitude, and exhibit a perfect equanimity toward all
creatures. He should wish neither for death nor for life, but
expect his appointed time, as a hired servant expects his wages.
He should look down as he advances his foot, lest he should touch
any thing impure. He should drink water that has been purified
by straining through a cloth, lest he hurt an insect. He should
bear a reproachful speech with patience, and speak reproachfully to
no man ; and he should never utter a word relating to vain, illusory
things. He should delight in meditating upon the Supreme Spirit,
and sit fixed in such meditation, without needing any thing earthly,
without one sensual desire, and without any companion but his
own soul.
“ He should only ask for food once a day, and that should be in
the evening, when the smoke of the kitchen fires has ceased, when
LAST STAGE OF A BRAHMIN'S LIFE. 37
the pestle lies motionless, and the burning charcoal is extinguished;

when people have eaten, and when dishes are removed. If he fail
to obtain food he should not be sorrowful; if he succeed in obtain-
irg it he should not be glad. He should only care to obtain a suf¬
ficiency to support life, and he should not be anxious about his
utensils.”
As to the character of his thoughts : “ A Sannyasi should reflect
on the transmigrations of men, which are caused by their sinful deeds ;
on their downfall into a region of darkness, and their torments ii.
the mansions of Yama, (the God of the dead ;) on their separation
from those whom they love, and their union with those whom thej
hate ; on their strength being overpowered by old age, and their
bodies racked with disease ; on their agonizing departure from this
corporeal frame, and their formation again in the womb ; on the
misery attached to embodied spirits from a violation of their duties,
and the imperishable bliss which attaches to embodied spirits who
have abundantly performed every duty.
“ The body is a mansion, with bones for its rafters and beams,
with nerves and tendons for cords, with muscles and blood for
mortar, with skin for its outward covering, and tilled with no sweet
perfumes, but loaded with refuse. It is a mansion infested by age
and by sorrow, the seat of diseases, harassed by pains, haunted with
the quality of darkness, and incapable of standing long. Such a
mansion of the vital soul should always be quitted with cheerful¬
ness by its occupier.”—Institutes of Hindoo Law, VI, 76, 77.
When you look around and inquire for these self-denying re¬
cluses, with their sublime superiority to the things of earth and the
wants and wishes of the human heart, you will not find them ; cer¬
tainly not among the Brahmins. Few of these have ever adopted
in reality a life so like that of the Yogee, or Self-torturer. All
testimony goes to show that Menu’s ordinances for the third and
fourth stages of the Brahmin’s life have lain in his law-book with
not one Brahmin in ten thousand even commencing to make them
a reality of human experience. It was too much for humanity, and
could only be embraced by some fanatic of a Fakir, who would
voluntarily assume such a condition for self-righteous and self-

glorifying ends. Such men can and will do, for such reasons, what
other men have not nerve enough to adventure merely in obedience
to the theoretic rules of their order.
The Brahmins would fain be regarded as the learned class of
India. Of course there was a time when, in the earlier ages of
the world, they were so, as compared to men in other nations.
No scholar can doubt this for a moment. But the world and
education are no longer what they once were ; both have advanced
amazingly, while the Brahmin has not only stood still, but he
has retrograded. The ruins of India’s colleges, observatories,
and scientific instruments, especially in Benares, (once “ the eye
of Hindustan,”) convince the traveler too painfully of this fact.
Even there, in that renowned city, there is not a single public
building devoted to, or containing, the treasures of India’s arts,
sciences, or literature ; no paintings, sculptures, or libraries ; no
colleges of learning, no museums of her curiosities ; no monuments
of her great men ; only beastly idolatry, filthy fakirs, shrines of
vileneSs without number, and festivals of saturnalian license, all
sustained and illustrated by a selfish and ignorant Brahminhood.
Their learning is in the past, and little remains save their great
Epics and the magnificent dead Language in which they were writ¬
ten. Their chronology is a wild and exaggerated falsehood, their
geography and astronomy are subjects of ridicule to every school¬
boy, their astrology (to which they are specially devoted) a humbug
for deluding their countrymen; they had no true history till
foreigners wrote it for them, and could not even read the Pali on
their own public monuments till such Englishmen as Princeps and
Tytler deciphered it. Native education to-day owes more to
Macaulay, Dr. Duff, and Trevelyan, than to all the Brahmins of
India for the past five hundred years. Every improvement intro¬
duced, and every mitigation of the miseries in the lot of woman,
and of the lower and suffering classes, has been introduced agamst
their will and without their aid as a class. They feel, they know,
that their system is more or less effete ; that they are being left
' Nx
v'>v\x\^
V "\ \ '
■' V\\i V'
'V rr
A Lady of India in Full Dress.

BRAHMINISM A DEAD FAILURE. 41
behind in the march of improvement on which their country has

entered. But there they stand, scowling and twirling their Brah-
minical string; while the Sudras and the very “ Chandalas,” whom
they tried so hard to doom to eternal degradation, are obtaining in
Government and Missionary schobls a sanctified scholarship, which
is soon to consign the claims and pretensions of this venerable,
hajghty, and heartless aristocracy to the everlasting contempt
which they deserve! One by one, in their ridiculous helplessness,
they behold their strong places taken and wrested from their
grasp. The very Veda in which they gloried, and behind which
they falsely defended the vileness and cruelty of their system, has
been magnificently collated and published in eight volumes by
the scholarship of Max Muller, and then rendered, with equal
ability, (the last volume having been published within the past
five years,) into English by Wilson & Cowell. So that all the
world may now know what the Veda is, and what it teaches, and
thus hold these unworthy guardians of it to the fearful responsi¬
bility which they have incurred, in pretending to quote its authority
for the abominations which characterize their modern Hindooism,
with all its grievous wrongs against woman in particular, and
against the interests of their own nation, as well as its violation of
the common sense and judgment of mankind, for whose opinions,
however, the Brahmins of India never showed the least respect.
We now turn from them to introduce the reader to one of the
ladies of the land.
The opposite picture is from a photograph for which this lady,
Zahore Begum, of Seereenugger, consented to sit. As her face
had to be seen by the artist, the concession was a very singular
one for any lady of her race. It was done to gratify the Queen of
England, who, on the assumption of the direct sovereignty of India
—on the abolition of the East India Company in 1859—requested
that photographs of the people, and their various races, trades, and
professions, might be taken and sent to her. Her Majesty gra¬
ciously consented to have her valuable collection copied, and by
the courtesy of Captain Meadows Taylor, the Oriental author, the
3
writer obtained copies of this and several others of much value,

which will appear in these pages.
My readers have, therefore, before them a faithful picture of a
Hindoo lady of the highest rank, as she appears in her Zenana
home, under the best circumstances, having made herself as attract¬
ive as silk, and muslin, and cashmere cloth, and a profusion of
jewelry, can render her. In the jewel on the thumb of the left
hand there is inserted a small looking-glass, of which the fair lady
makes good use. The usual gold ring, strung with pearls, is in her
<nose, lying against her left cheek ; and her forehead, ears, arms,
fingers, ankles, and toes are crowded with jewelry and tinkling
ornaments, the sounds of which proclaim her presence and ap¬
proach always.
The wood-cut does no justice to her warm olive color, many of
them being even almost fair. Most of them have a figure of great
beauty, and a natural elegance of movement which their drapery
and rich clothing well become. But the mind is totally neglected.
In fact, until lately, when a gleam of light has begun to shine for
women in the Land of the Veda, it might be said, without qualifica¬
tion, that no part of an American definition of education would
apply to the culture under which a daughter of India is fitted for
future life. It does not, for her, include reading, or writing, or his¬
tory, or science, or aught else which we include in its meaning.
Education, in its proper sense, is denied to the females of India;
denied on principle, and for reasons which are unblushingly avowed,
and all of which are reflections upon her womanly nature—one of
them being the position that education in the hands of a woman
would most likely become an instrument of evil power. She is
deliberately doomed by modern Hindooism to a life of ignorance
because she is a woman.
We have mentioned the present dawn of a better day. It is but
the dawn. Dr. Mullen’s statistics tell us that already there are
now thirty-nine thousand six hundred and forty-seven women and
girls receiving an education in the Zenana schools in India. The
number is by this time larger and still increasing. Yet it is but
-
Tt->e Nauch Girl of India.
THE LADIES OF INDIA. 45
the commencement; for the above number, dividing the one hun¬
dred millions of women in India, gives but one in two thousand
five hundred and twenty-two who are receiving instruction, a num¬
ber equal only to what this country would have to-day were but
one American lady in five hundred and four blessed with education.
What need is there, then, to urge on the glorious toil of rescuing
India’s daughters from the intellectual abominations which desolate
their soul and mind in this fearful manner!
The sad story of the wrongs of woman in India will be told after
we have traced the rise and fall of the great Rebellion ; for the
mitigations of her condition, which Christian law had in mercy
enforced, were then put forward by her Brahminical oppressors as
one of the reasons why they had renounced their allegiance to
Brit:sh rule.
But there is one class of women, and it is a very large class, in
India, who are under no such restrictions and jealous seclusion as
the lady on the former page. These court publicity, and you can
see them every-where. This order of females are released from
the doom of an illiterate mind. They can read, write, and quote
the poets, and jest with the conundrums and “wise saws” of the
land. The writer has known of attempts made by this class of
girls to enter our schools in order to add the English tongue to
their acquisitions, to be used by them for the worst of purposes.
These are the “Nauch Girls,” a portrait of one of whom, from a
photograph, is here given as she appears in public.
Their title means dancing-girls. No man in India would allow
his wife or daughter to dance, and as to dancing with another man,
he would forsake her forever, as a woman lost to virtue and mod¬
esty, if she were to attempt it. In their observation of white
women, there is nothing that so much perplexes them as the fact
that fathers and husbands will permit their wives and daughters to
indulge in promiscuous dancing. No argument will convince them
that the act is such as a virtuous female should practice, or that its
tendency is not licentious. The prevalence of the practice in
“Christian” nations makes our holy religion—which they suppose
must allow it—to be abhorred by many of them, and often it is cast

in the teeth of our missionaries when preaching to them. Bui
what would these heathen say could they enter our operas and
theaters, and see the shocking exposure of their persons which our
public women there present before mixed assemblies? Yet the}
would be ten times more astonished that ladies of virtue and repu¬
tation should be found there, accompanied by their daughters, to
witness the sight, and that, too, in the presence of the other sex!
But, then, they are only heathens, and don’t appreciate the high
accomplishments of Christian civilization ! Still, Heaven grant that
the future Church of India may ever retain at least this item of the
prejudices of their forefathers ! Dancing forms, then, no part of a
daughter’s education in India, and it probably never will, that is,
unless they become corrupted by “Christian” example.
All of that sort of thing that they ever desire, on occasions of
festivals and ceremonies, they hire from the temples and bazaars.
Four or five of these women, tricked out in all their finery and
jewelry, and tinkling ornaments on arms, necks, and feet, will, for
four or five dollars, dance and jest, and sing India’s licentious songs
for hours ; but even they don’t dance except with their own sex.
They are prostitutes, and yet they are undoubtedly the only intel¬
ligent and cultivated class of Hindoo women. So that the profane
and debased have a monopoly of education, while the virtuous and
retiring ladies of the land are condemned to a life of ignorance.
Such is woman in India as to her mind.
Until within a few years this fearful barrier to woman’s educa¬
tion stood sternly across the path of the missionary. A change, in
the great mercy of Heaven, is dawning at last even upon India ;
but as recently as ten years ago, when you spoke to a Hindoo
father about educating his daughter, the ideas that are here clearly
enough intimated at once presented themselves to his mind, and
your proposal seemed to him to be almost profane, as he thought,
“Would you make my daughter a Nauch girl ?” The Temple of
Knowledge, with its sacred flame, no longer guarded by the Vestal
Virgins, seemed resigned absolutely to the control and occupation
'V' ill if!
The Maharajah Duleep Singh.

THE NAUCH GIRLS. 49
of those polluted beings, whose profession and blandishments are

exerted to
“ Make vice pleasing and damnation shine,”
but whose guests are in the depths of hell.

We next present to the reader one of the upper class of Hindoo
society just as he would appear at a “ Durbar,” or State ceremonial,
or in receiving guests at his palace, or in connection with some
public display.
The dress of a gentleman in India is regulated as to its quality
by his wealth and position, and in its variations of form by his
creed and locality ; but the Maharajah costume here shown may
be regarded generally as that of his countrymen.
Their dress is free and flowing, adapted to the climate, and
leaving to the limbs a greater freedom of action, with more circula¬
tion of air, than the American style of dress can ever know. Al¬
though to our imagination it appears somewhat effeminate in its
aspect, yet it is eminently graceful and becoming to the wearers,
as any one who has seen a company of Hindoo gentlemen together
will have observed. There is something so conservative and bib¬
lical in the aspect of it, that you feel at once that the fluctuations
of the fashions can have no influence upon it. Here is something
that is at once suitable and unchanging—a style of comfort and
elegance which the past five hundred years has not varied, and
which will probably remain unaltered when five hundred more
years have passed away.
The dress here represented shows a vest of “ Kinkob ”—cloth of
gold—slightly exposed at the breast ; a loose-fitting coat falling
below the knees, made of rich yellow satin from the looms of
Delhi, bordered with gold embroidery ; a Cashmere shawl of great
value encircles the loins, and the usual “'Kummerbund” binds all to
the waist of the wearer. The turban is made of several yards of
fine India muslin, twisted round the head, heavily adorned with
chains of pearls, and aigrettes of diamonds and precious stones.
These, with the pearls encircling his neck, are of large size and
extraordinary beauty and value, the heir-looms of many generations.
He holds by his side his State sword, the hilt of which is studded
with precious stones. To all this “ glory ” might have been added
the matchless Koh-i-noor diamond, for this prince was the heir
of “The Mountain Light,” his father, the Maharajah Runjeet
Singh, having been its last possessor ; but the great diamond was
sent as a present to Queen Victoria, and he himself is handsome
and happy enough without it.
How significant of the resources of India is the fact that every
article on the person of this princely man, from the gold and gems
on his head to the embroidered slippers on his feet, is the produc¬
tion of his own country, and all of native manufacture! How
quietly in this respect he outshines the Broadway “ exquisite ” or
Parisian belle, whose finery must be sought for in a score of climes
and imported from many lands !
The Maharajah is considered one of the handsomest of his coun¬
trymen. The excellent wood-cut here representing him does not,
however, do justice to his black, lustrous eyes, or his finely formed
features and intelligent look.
The education of the gentlemen of India is sadly deficient.
Conducted in the Zenana, among ladies ignorant of the most
elementary knowledge, their mental training and acquisitions are
usually of the most superficial sort, and destitute of healthful stim¬
ulus. But the gentleman here represented is one of the exceptions
to this rule ; and as he has had the moral courage to separate him¬
self from heathenism and receive the Christian faith, the reader
may be pleased with some further notice of him.
He is the first royal person in India who has become a follower
of Jesus Christ. His highness is the. son and heir of the Maha¬
rajah Runjeet Singh, who, from the ferocity and valor with which
he conducted his wars and ruled his people, was called “ The Lion
of the Punjab.” The old gentleman’s policy left his nation in con¬
fusion, and the English power, in the wars that resulted, found his
forces to be the sturdiest foe with whom they had ever measured
swords in India. Runjeet died in 1839, and his son, this Duleep
Singh, then only four years old, was placed upon the throne. His
THE MAHARAJAH'S CONVERSION. 51
uncles ruled in his name, but the ten years which followed were
times of anarchy and bloodshed, the Regents being assassinated in
succession, and the country one vast camp. The army superseded
the civil power, and in their folly actually crossed the frontier, and
in 1845 invaded British India. They were repulsed, but only to
renew the effort four years later, when they were overthrown, and
the Punjab—the country of the five rivers, as the word means,
the rivers named in Alexander’s invasion, and which unite to form
the Indus at Attock—was annexed to the British Empire. The
young Maharajah was pensioned, and placed for education under
the care of the Government. God mercifully guided the Governor-
general in the selection of guardian and tutor for the little prince.
Dr. (now Sir John) Logan, of the medical service, and a member
of the Presbyterian Church, was appointed his guardian, and Mr.
Guise, of the civil service, was selected as his tutor. To Mr.
Guise’s other high qualifications for his duties was added a beau¬
tiful Christian character. He had need of all his fitness, for the
little ex-king had never been used to any restraint, much less to
study or to books, and claimed the right to run wild and neglect
all mental acquisitions. But the patience and conscientiousness
of the faithful tutor overcame every difficulty ; good habits and a
taste for reading were at length formed. Their home was at Fut-
tyghur, on the Ganges, where the American Presbyterian Church
has a Mission, (the missionaries being mentioned by name on a
previous page,) in which many young men were receiving a Chris¬
tian education. The prince expressed a desire to have some one
of good birth and talents for a companion, and a young Brahmin,
by name Bhajan Lai, who had been educated in the mission-school,
and had there, though unconverted, contracted a love for the Chris¬
tian Scriptures, was chosen for the position. He soon enjoyed the
entire confidence of the young Maharajah. Bhajan was in the habit
of studying the Bible in his leisure moments, and the prince two or
three times having come upon him thus engaged, was led to inquire
what book it was that so interested him. He was told, and at his
request Bhajan promised to read and explain the Word of God to
him, but on condition that it should not be known. The priests

of his own religion that had accompanied him from the Punjab,
and were training him in the tenets of their faith, were soon seen
by him in a new light as he continued to read the Scriptures.
When he began to compare them, in all their mummery, immorality,
and covetousness, with the purity and spirituality of the Christians
around him, whose lives and examples he had carefully noted, a
feeling of disgust with heathenism, and a preference and love for
the religion of the Bible, sprang up in his heart, to which he soon
gave expression. Thus the reading of God’s holy Word, taught
and explained even by a heathen youth and Brahmin, led the
Maharajah to give up idolatry, and to express a desire to break his
caste and be baptized.
The priests were amazed and confounded, and offered what
resistance they could. But the guardianship of the prince effect¬
ually shielded him from all persecution. Yet, as he was so young,
and the step contemplated so important, his guardian, though
rejoiced at his purpose, and ready to aid it in every proper way,
suggested delay till he could more fully study the religion of Jesus
and act with fuller deliberation. He accepted the advice, drew
nearer to the missionaries, attended the services, and enjoyed the
association of the Christians. He was led to embrace Christ as
his Saviour, and on the 8th of March, 1853, was baptized and
received into the Christian Church, The Rev. W. J. Jay, the
chaplain of the station, administered the holy ordinance in the
presence of all the missionaries, the native Christians and Europe¬
ans at the station, and the servants of the Maharajah. He was
clad as here represented, and when- he took off his turban, and
with much firmness and humility bowed his head to receive the
sacred ordinance, every heart in the assembly was moved, and
many a prayer went up that he might have grace to fulfill his vows
and honor his Christian profession.
He has faithfully done so to the present time. Immediately
after his baptism he established relief societies at Futtyghur and
Lahore, placing them under the control of the American missions
SETTLES IN ENGLAND. 55
at both places. Besides assisting in the support of the missions,

he established, and still sustains, a number of village schools for
the education of the people, and has been a liberal contributor to
every good object brought to his notice. When the writer was at
Futtyghur he had the opportunity of witnessing the results which
were being accomplished by the Christian liberality of the Maha¬
rajah in and around that station. He was then aiding the cause of
Christ and the poor to the extent, probably, of fully one tenth of his
whole income annually, and I presume his liberality is no less now.
Some time after his baptism, with a desire to improve his mind
by foreign travel, he visited England. He took with him a devoted
Christian, who had formerly been a Hindoo Pundit, named Nil
Knath, by whose instructions he was more fully established in the
doctrines of the Gospel, and with whom he enjoyed daily prayer and
other religious privileges. On his arrival in London the Government
placed a suitable residence in Wimbledon at his disposal, and the
Queen and Prince Albert showed him much attention and kindness.
The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 distressed him exceedingly, and
probably alienated him from his native land. His entire severance
from the religion of his countrymen, and, most of all, probably,
reasons of State in view of the English rule in his country, which
he would not wish by his presence there to disturb in any way, led
him to prefer England as a residence. A magnificent home has
been provided for him near London, and there, on the allowance
of his rank paid yearly by the British Government, he is spending
the present portion of his life, honored and respected by all around
him. He has probably ere now come to the conclusion that the
loss of the throne of the Punjab may have been for him a good
providence. During the rebellion his life might have been sacri¬
ficed In the peace and honor that surround him he is not only
entirely free from the evil influences of an Oriental court, and the
distractions of irresponsible government, but he may reflect, judg¬
ing the present from the past, that, had he remained and reigned,
he might very probably, like his uncles and predecessors, have met
a violent death.
*>4 TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
Gentlemen in other lands having the means and leisure of the

higher classes of Hindoo society would be cultivating their minds,
enlarging and enriching the literature of their times by theii
authorship, by foreign travel, by collections of books and works of
art, and institutions for developing the resources of their great
country. But there are no authors in India, no libraries in its
homes ; not one in a thousand of its aristocracy ever saw the out¬
side of his native land. Learned societies, museums, or fruits of
genius are not to be found there. Education, when acquired, is
restricted mostly to the mere ability of reading and writing and
talking in courtly style, while there are multitudes of wealthy men
that cannot do that much ; nay, there are even kings without the
power to write their own names, who can give validity to State
documents only by stamping them with “ the signet on their right
hand.” The sovereign of the Punjab—father of the Maharajah
here represented—was one such. He was unable to write or read
his own name, and to the day of his death could not tell one figure
from another.
The little information of general news which they acquired from
time to time had been obtained by a singular arrangement. Each
great family, or king’s court, had its “ editor.” He was expected to
furnish the news daily, or as often as he could. So he collected
from any source within his reach, and got his newspaper ready.
But he had no press, nor type, nor office, nor newsboy to aid him.
He simply enters on his broad sheet, in writing, one after another,
all the news or gossip he could collect, until his paragraphs fill his
pages, and he sallies forth in the morning to circulate the news,
commencing with the members of the household, and thence to
the servants, and so on to the neighbors, reading for each circle
the news he had previously collected and written out, and receiv¬
ing his fees from each company as he goes round the neighborhood.
Of express trains, telegraphs, associated press, pictorial papers,
and all our Christian appliances for collecting and distributing the
news of the wide world, he is utterly ignorant. But the poor editor
is on a par with the education of his patrons, and he can rest
HABITS OF TEE INDIA ARISTOCRACY. 55
assured they are not likely to outstrip him in the race for knowl¬
edge. And so it goes on from generation to generation, until now,
when this wonderful innovator, Christianity, has walked right into
the midst of this venerable ignorance, and, to the horror of these
editorial oracles, has lifted many even of the Pariah youth of their
bazaars to a plane of education and knowledge up to which millions
look with amazement as they wonder what is going to happen
now, when boys “ whose fathers they would have disdained to set
with the dogs in their flocks ” are actually becoming possessed of
an education which even their Pundits do not enjoy!
The habits of the India aristocracy are in many respects de¬
cidedly peculiar. The residence, for instance, is usually very
mean, as compared with the wealth of the parties. While they
will spend millions upon a temple or tomb, they are content to
dwell in a house which a man in America, with one fiftieth of
their income, would scorn to inhabit. A Rajah with a rent-roll
of say fifty thousand dollars or more per annum will sometimes
pass his life in a residence built of sun-dried brick, with a tiled
roof, that cost less than two thousand dollars, surrounded on all
sides with mud hovels, and in the midst of a bazaar where the
din and smoke and effluvia would be intolerable to any decent
American.
No doubt this want of appreciation of surrounding circumstances
in their life is caused by their inability while heathens justly or
truly to estimate that idea of home which Christianity has created
for man, especially in the “honorable estate” of the married life
which she ordains and blesses, and to which she leads the grate¬
ful, loving husband to bring his means and ingenuity to adorn it,
to make it a convenient, cheerful, happy dwelling for the blessed
wife whom he loves and the dear children whom God has given
them. Such a home, with its joy and honor, the heathen or polyg¬
amist can never know or appreciate. His residence is but a con¬
venience, not the sanctuary of the affections, and his estimate of
home must be, and is, defective and perverted.
They eschew furniture, in our sense of the word—tables, chairs,
knives and forks. They eat with the fingers alone, and generally
sleep on a charpoy or mat. When you enter a Hindoo home you
are at once struck with the naked look of the room—no chair or
sofa to sit upon, no pictures on the walls, no piano or musical
instrument, no library of books, no maps, no table with the newspa¬
per or periodical or album upon it, and you wonder how they can
bear to live such a life ; to you it would be a misery and a blank.
But you are a Christian, and your holy religion has made you to
differ, and taught you the nature and value of a Christian home
and its conveniences and joys.
Nothing would more surprise them in visiting our Western
world than to see how generally, according to the ability of each,
we beautify and adorn our residences, and surround them with
fiowers and verdure and neatness. They would think this all very
artificial, and perhaps unnecessary, and could not enter into the
feelings of those whose constant effort seems to be to make their
abode on earth, in its purity, companionship, and peace, a type of
the home in heaven.
Woman alone in heathenism, even where she has possessed
peculiar wealth and power and opportunity for the effort, cannot
make this earthly paradise; she requires Christianity to be success¬
ful. Cases have occurred where European ladies have been induced
—in Delhi, Lucknow, etc.—to enter even royal zenanas as wives.
But though knowing the difference, and probably fondly hoping they
could by their presence and ability constitute a happy social state,
they soon realized that the very atmosphere forbid the development
of the home they hoped to cultivate, and the fair experimenters
had, in utter despair, to abandon their efforts and their hopes, and
not only so, but themselves to sink to the sad level of the heathen¬
ish community into which they had ventured !
“ Home is the sacred refuge of our life.”
True, but India’s sons can never learn the sentiment and experi¬
ence which Dryden’s line thus expresses till the daughters of India
receive the Christianity which alone can cultivate their minds and
CHRISTIANITY ALONE CREATES HOME. 57
hearts, and take under its divine guardianship their sacred mission
in India, as in America, to
“Give to social man true relish of himself.”
The men of India have never known woman’s high power as “ a

helpmeet ” in mind, heart, social life, or usefulness, and until they
do they cannot enjoy the blessed home which only honored and
elevated women can create.
If there be any one thing, short of salvation, in which America
and India contrast each other most vividly, it is woman’s high posi¬
tion in her home, and man’s consequent happiness resulting there¬
from—as wife, living for the husband whom she loves ; as mother,
making her abode a nursery for the Eden on high ; the friend and
patron of all that is lovely, virtuous, and of good report; her plas¬
tic influence of mind and heart and character molding those within
her sphere into sympathy with her own goodness, while she thus
sweetly
“ Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way.”
In presence of this excellence—and, thank Heaven! Christianity

has thousands such—every thing beautiful on earth brightens.
The holiest and happiest men in this world bask in this blessed
social sunshine, and are led by it to the contemplation and earnest
hope of those “ better things ” which it typifies ; their sanctified
domestic joy becoming a sign and promise of the felicity that will
be endless when they come to realize at last what they so often
sing below—
“My heavenly home is bright and fair.”
The food and manner of eating is quite Oriental, with the pecul¬
iarity on the part of the stricter Brahminical caste that they never
touch flesh of any kind ; but the rich variety of fruits and vegeta¬
bles, and other products of the field and garden, with milk, butter,
etc., enables them to enjoy a full variety. The favorite dish of
India is the “ curry,” and natives and foreigners alike seem to
agree that it is the king of all dishes. If it was not the “ savory
meat” that Isaac loved, the latter was probably very like it; but
the dish itself is never equal, in piquancy and aroma out of India
to what you receive there. The eating is done without the aid of
knives or forks, the fingers alone being used. This is the mode
for all, no matter how high or wealthy. The writer saw the
Emperor of Delhi take his food in this way. When they have fin¬
ished, a servant lays down a brass basin before them and pours
water on their hands, and presents a towel to wipe them, remind¬
ing one of Elisha “ pouring water on the hands of Elijah,” acting
as his attendant in honor of the man of God.
The amusements of the India aristocracy are very limited. The
enervation of the climate may have something to do with this, but
it is probably more due to a want of that developed manliness and
self-assertion which belongs only to a higher civilization. They
hardly ever think of going out hunting, or fishing, or fowling. Of
the chase they know nothing, and I presume there is not one
base-ball club in the country; gymnastic exercises they never take,
their music is barbarous, and they do not play. When a feast or
marriage requires entertainment they hire professional musicians,
dancers, jugglers, or players to perform before their guests, but
take no part whatever personally. Operas and theaters and pro¬
miscuous dancing they hold in abhorrence, as too immoral for them
or their families to witness. They are fond of formal calls upon
their equals, or social and civil superiors, and like display and
exhibitions of their standing and wealth. They are regularly
scientific in the art of taking their ease, being bathed and sham¬
pooed, fanned to sleep and while asleep. They love to be deco¬
rated with dress and jewelry, enjoy frequent siestas, and divide the
remainder of their leisure time in the society of women whom they
choose to entertain in their zenanas ; but of public spirit and
efforts, disinterested devotion to the welfare of others, intellectual
enjoyments, the culture and training of their children’s minds or
morals, or the exalting influence of communion with a refined and
intelligent wife or mother, they know but little or nothing, because
they are utter strangers to the inspiration of the holy religion
whose fruits these joys and virtues are.
THEIR VISITS OF CEREMONY. 59
When they undertake to pay a visit of ceremony it is, to oui

views, very singular what form and punctiliousness they deem to
be indispensable. The whole establishment seems turned out for
the purpose, for the larger the “ following ” so much the more
you are expected to be impressed with the standing and dig¬
nity of the great man who has come to honor you with his call.
An outrunner or two reaches your door in advance, and announces
the master’s approach ; then come an armed squad, and his confi¬
dential servant, or “ vakeel,” and behind them the great man him¬
self on his elephant, or in his palanquin ; another crowd of retain¬
ers bring up the rear, the whole train numbering from thirty to
sixty persons, or even more. Often, as I have looked at them,
have I been reminded of the figure in the Revelations, where the
blessed dead are represented as accompanied on their way into the
kingdom of heaven by the escort of the good deeds of their faithful
lives, which rise up to accompany them as so many evidences of
their devotion to God—“ Their works do follow them.” The inter
view is merely a ceremony. The lady of the house is not expected
to make her appearance ; but where the visit is to a missionary
family the lady generally does show herself, and, joining in the
conversation, watches the opportunity to say a word for the truth
of the Gospel. The native gentleman is evidently amazed, though
he conceals it as well as he can, at her intelligence and her self-
possession in the presence of another man than her husband, so
unlike the prejudices that fill his mind about the female members
of his own household. No doubt, amazing are the descriptions he
carries home of what he has seen and heard on such an occasion.
But it is in connection with “ durbars,” governmental levees and
marriage festivals, that the whole force of the native passion for
parade and ostentation develops itself. As a sample: At the dur¬
bar some time ago in the Punjab, Diahn Singh, one of the nobles,
came mounted on a large Persian horse, which curveted and
pranced about as though proud of his rider. The bridle and sad¬
dle were covered with gold embroidery, and underneath was a
saddle-cloth of silver tissue, with a broad fringe of the same mate-
6o THE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
rial, which nearly covered the animal. The legs and tail of the
horse were dyed red—the former up to the knees, and the latter
half-way to the haunches—an emblem, well understood b) the
crowd, of the number of enemies which this military chief was
supposed to have killed in battle, and that their blood had covered
his horse thus far. The chief himself was dressed with the
utmost magnificence, loaded with jewels, which hung, row upon
row, round his neck, in his turban, on the hilt of his sword and
dagger, and over his dress generally, while a bright cuirass shone
resplendent on his breast. Add to this a face and person hand¬
some and majestic, and you have the man as he delighted to be
seen on the occasion.
But even this was outdone a few months ago on the occasion of
the visit of one of Queen Victoria’s sons, the Duke of Edinburgh,
to India. A part of the pageant was the procession of elephants.
These animals, one hundred and seventy in number, and the
finest in size and appearance in India, were each decorated in the
richest housings, and ridden by the Nawabs and Rajahs who
owned them, each trying hard to outvie the other. Perhaps the
Maharajah of Putteallah carried off the palm. The housings of his
immense elephant were of such extraordinary richness that they
were covered with gold and jewels. The Maharajah, who rode on
him, wore a robe of black satin embroidered with pearls and emer¬
alds. The howdah—seat on the elephant’s back — in which the
Rajah of Kuppoorthullah sat, was roofed with a triple dome made
of solid silver.
This passion of ostentation and show breaks over all bounds on
the occasion of their marriage ceremonies, and is permitted to know
no limit but their means, nor sometimes even that. Sleeman nar¬
rates of the Rajah of Bullubghur—whom the writer saw in such
different circumstances twenty years after these events, on trial for
his life in the Dewanee Khass of Delhi, in 1857, as will be described
hereafter—that on the occasion of his marriage in 1838 the young
chief mustered a cortege of sixty elephants and ten thousand fol¬
lowers to attend him. He was accompanied by the chiefs ot
The Mohammedans of India.
MARRIAGE EXPENSE. 63
Ludora and Putteallah, with forty more elephants, and five thou¬
sand people.
It was considered necessary to the dignity of the occasion that
the bridegroom’s party should expend at least six hundred thou¬
sand rupees—$300,000 gold—during the festival. A large part of
this sum was to be distributed freely in the procession ; so it was
loaded on elephants, and persons were appointed to fling it among
the crowds as the cavalcade passed on its way. They scattered
copper money all along the road from their home till within seven
miles of Bullubghur. From this point to the gate of the fort they
scattered silver, and from the gate of the fort to the door of the
palace they scattered gold and jewels. The son of the Putteallah
chief, a lad of about ten years, had the post of honor in the
distribution. He sat on his elephant, and beside him was a bag
of gold mohurs — each mohur is worth eight dollars gold —
mixed up with an immense variety of gold ear-rings, pearls, and
precious stones. His turn for scattering began as they neared the
palace door. Seeing some European gentlemen, who had come to
look at the procession, standing on the balcony, the little chief
thought they should have their share, so he heaved up vigorously
several handfuls of the pearls, mohurs, and jewels, as he passed
them. Not one of them, of course, would condescend to stoop to
take up any, but the servants in attendance upon them showed no
such dignified forbearance.
The costs of the family of the bride are always much greater
than that of the bridegroom. They are obliged to entertain, at
their own expense, all the bridegroom’s guests which go with him
for his bride, as well as their own, as long as they remain.
From this running description of the superficial, self-glorifying,
and aimless lives which these men follow, the reader may easily
imagine what must be the condition of their minds, their morals,
and their characters.
The Mohammedans, a picture of whom we present here, are a
more energetic people than the Hindoos. Their aspect is haughty
and intolerant, and in meeting them you are under no liability to
4
mistake them for the milder race whom they have so long crushed
down and ruled. They are descended from original Asiatics of
Persia, Arabia, etc., while the Hindoos are of western stock.
“ The natives of India attach far more weight to form and cere¬
mony than do Europeans. It is considered highly disrespectful to
use the left hand in salutation or in eating, or, in fact, on any other
occasion when it can be avoided. To remove the turban is disre¬
spectful ; and still more so not to put off the shoes on entering a
strange house. Natives, when they make calls, never rise to go till
they are dismissed, which among Mohammedans is done by giving
betel and sprinkling rose essence, and with Hindoos by hanging
wreaths of flowers around the visitor’s neck, at least on great occa¬
sions. Discourteous Englishmen are apt to cut short a long visit
by saying Ab jao—‘Now go!’ than which nothing can be more
offensive. The best way is to say, ‘ Come and see me again soon,’
or, ‘ Always make a practice of visiting my house,’ which will be
speedily understood. Or to one much inferior you may say,
Rukhsat lena—‘ Leave to go,’ or, better, Rukhsat lijiye—‘ Please to
take leave.’ A letter closed by moistening the wafer or the gum
with the saliva of the mouth should not be given to a native. The
feet must not be put upon a chair occupied by them, nor must the
feet be raised so as to present the soles to them. One must avoid
touching them as much as possible, especially their beards, which
is a gross insult. If it can be avoided, it is better not to give a
native three of any thing. Inquiries are never made after the
female relations of a man. If they are mentioned at all it must be
as ‘house.’ ‘Is your house well?’ that is, ‘Is your wife well?’
There are innumerable observances to avoid the evil eye; and
many expressions seemingly contradictory are adopted for this pur¬
pose. Thus, instead of our ‘ Take away,’ it is proper to say, ‘ Set
on more ;’ and for ‘ I heard you were sick,’ ‘ I heard your enemies
were sick.’ With Mohammedans of rank it is better not to express
admiration of any thing they possess, as they will certainly offer it;
in case of acceptance they would expect something of more value
in return. To approach a Hindoo of high caste while at his meal is
MANNERS OF THE HINDOOS. 6c;
to deprive him of his dinner; to drink out of his cup may deprive
him of his caste, or seriously compromise him with his caste-fellows.
Leather is an abomination to Hindoos ; as is every thing made from
the pig, as a riding-saddle, to the Moslem. When natives of a
different rank are present you must be careful not to allow those
to sit whose rank does not entitle them, and to give each his
proper place.”—Murray's Handbook.
Such are the people of that land toward whom for ages the atten¬
tion of outside nations has been directed with so much interest.
We will now consider briefly their composition and numbers, and
some of those singular chronological, historical, and religious views
which they have entertained so tenaciously, and so long.
CHAPTER II.
STATISTICS, MYTHOLOGY, AND VEDIC LITERATURE.
TT'VEN among educated men there is a very inadequate idea

-■—J of what India really is. It is spoken of as though it were
one country, with one language and one race of men, just as per¬
sons would speak of England or France; whereas India ought to
be regarded as a number of nations, speaking twenty-three differ¬
ent languages, and devoted to various faiths and forms of civilization.
During the long period from the time of William the Conqueror
till Clive fought the battle of Plassey in 1756, the Hindoos and
Mohammedans maintained their diversity, and were as far from
any unity or amalgamation when England entered the country, as
they were when Mahmoud of Ghizni conquered Delhi. While the
nations of Europe tended to unity, and fused their tribes and clans
into homogeneous people, who gloried in a common faith and father-
land, these millions of hostile men have retained the sharp outlines
of race, religion, language, and nationality as distinctly as ever.
The diversity of race is shown in the Coles, the Jats, the San-
thals, the Tartars, the Shanars, the Mairs, the Karens, the Affghans,
the Paharees, the Bheels ; in religion, we have the Mohammedans,
the Hindoos, the Buddhists, the Jains, the Parsees, the Pagans, and
the Christians. While in nationality, there are the Bengalese, the
Rohillas, the Burmans, the Mahrattas,. the Seikhs, the Telugoos
the Karens, and many others.
India is thus, in fact, a congregation of nations, a crowd of
civilizations, customs, languages, and types of humanity, thrown
together, with no tendency to homogeneity, until an external civili¬
zation and a foreign faith shall make unity and common interest
possible by educating and Christianizing them.
In regard to the real numbers of these wonderful people we are
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS STATISTICS OF INDIA. 67
now able, from a census taken by the English Government last

year, and also from Missionary Reports and other authorities, to
furnish reliable civil and religious statistics of the Indian Empire.
A few items are approximations, but tney come as near to accuracy
as is now necessary. India has an area of 1,577,698 square miles.
It is nearly 2,000 miles from North to South, and 1,900 miles from
East to West. The country is divided into 221 British Districts,
and 153 Feudatory States, with a population of 212,671,621
souls.
The average density of this population to the square mile is 135
persons. But in Oude and Rohilcund (the mission field of the
Methodist Episcopal Church) the density is 474 and 361 respect¬
ively, and is therefore probably the most compact population in the
world. England has 367, and the United States only 26, persons
to the square mile. As to race, this vast multitude of men are
divided as follows:
The English army. 58,000
Europeans and Americans (civil, mercantile, and missionary life).. 89,585
Eurasians (the mixed races). 40,789
Asiatics. 212,483,247
In religion the native population are distributed, as nearly as we

can approximate them, into
Parsees (followers of Zoroaster). 150,000
Jains (Heterodox Buddhists). 400,000
Syrian and Armenian Christians. 140,000
Protestants (attendants on Worship).. 350,000
Roman Catholics (attendants on Worship). .. 760,000*
Karens (in British Burmah).•. 500,000
Seikhs (in the Punjab). 2,000,000
Buddhists (in British Burmah and Ceylon). 3,280,000
Aborigines, and undefined. 11,000,000
Mohammedans. 30,000,000
Hindoos. 165,000,000
* The Roman Catholic Bishop of Madras in 1869 estimated the whole number of
native Romanists in their communion at 760,623, supervised by the Bishops, and 734
priests, in addition to 124,000 with 128 priests under the jurisdiction of the almost
schismatic and Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. But Dr. George Smith, one of the
highest authorities on India statistics, regards these figures as unworthy of trust, and
sets down the numbers for both as not over 700,000.—Friend of India, May 10, 1871.
P- 554-
There are a few Jews, Chinese, Portuguese, French, Armenians,

Nestorians, and others in the country, but of these we make no
account here.
The vastness of this wonderful country may be further illustrated
by the amazing number of languages spoken throughout its wide
extent; and these are living languages, separate and distinct from
each other, so that even the characters of their alphabets have no
more similarity than the Greek letter has to the Roman. Nor do
I include dialects of tongues, or languages of limited and local use,
but those which are well known and extensively employed. Of
such there are not less than twenty-three spoken in the various
provinces of India. They are
i. The Urdu, (the Hindustanee proper,) the French of India, the
language of the Mohammedans, of trade, etc. ; spoken in Oude and
Rohilcund, the Doab, and by traders generally; 2. The Bengalee,
spoken in Bengal and eastward; 3. The Hindee,. used in Oude,
Rohilcund, Rajpootana, Bundlecund, and Malwa by the agricultural
Hindoos, etc. ; 4. The Punjabee, in the great Indus valley ; 5. The
Pushtoo, in Peshawar and the far West; 6. The Sindhee, in the
Cis-Sutlej States and Sinde ; 7. The Guzerattee, in Guzerat, and
by the Parsees ; 8. The Cutchee, in Cutch ; 9. The Cashmerian, in
Cashmere; 10. The Nepaulese, in Nepaul; 11. The Bhote, in
Bootan ; 12. The Assamese, in Assam; 13, 14. The Burmese and
Karen, in Burmah and Pegu; 15. The Singhalese, in Ceylon;
16. The Malayalim, in Travencore and Cochin; 17. The Tamid,
from Madras to Cape Comorin ; 18. The Canarese, in Mysore and
Coorg; 19. The Teloogoo, in Hydrabad, and thence to the East
Shore ; 20. The Oorya, in Orissa ; 21. The Cole and Gond, in Berar;
22. The Mahratta, in Bombay, Nagpore, and Gwalior; and 23. The
Khassiya, in the North-east. Add the English, and there are
twenty-four living languages extensively spoken in India to-day!
Nor is this all: the great classics of the leading tongues, the
ancient and venerable Pali, the Sanscrit, the Persian, and the
Arabic are studied and used by the scholarship of India, because
they hold in their charge the venerable treasures of their volumi-
GREATNESS OF INDIA. 69
nous literature, and are as important to their faiths as sacred Greek
is to Christianity.
Compare India with Europe, leaving out Russia, and she has
more States, languages, and people. The principal tongues of
Europe are the English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian,
German, Russ, Polish, Turkish, Greek, Dutch, Danish, Swede,
Norwegian, and Finn—15. There were (according to the Census
of 1861) in Europe 52 States, 15 languages, and 198,014,432 people ;
but, in India, there are 374 States, 23 languages, and 212,483,247
people. Giving India more States, more languages, and more pop¬
ulation than all the great Western nations combined!
To understand what India is, and what was the force and impor¬
tance of her great Sepoy Rebellion, and what is likely to be her
relation to Christianity, and to the magnificent future which awaits
her Hemisphere, the reader needs to understand and bear these
facts in mind.
Of course, such a people are not destitute of national conceit.
Indeed, the Hindoos hold up their heads with a sovereign sense
of superiority above all other people on the earth. Admit their
claims, and their system of chronology, and the assumptions of
their history, and all other nations must hang their heads as mod¬
ern novelties, and bow down in humility in the presence of a civili¬
zation of divine origin and a venerable aristocracy that counts its
life and honors by millions of years ! No Hindoo doubts but that
his country is, or has been, the fount of all the blessings which have
spread over the world, and in this rich conceit they hold it as a
maxim that
“ Min-as-shark talata ba kudrat ar-rahman,
Anwar-ud-din wa al-ilm, wa al-umran.”
That is,
“ From the East, by the power of the Merciful One,
Lights of Science, Religion, and Culture have shone.”
The name India is apparently derived from the river Indus, and
may have originated in the fact that that river divided this then
unknown land from Persia and the world of ancient classical litera¬
ture. The country is called in Sanscrit Bharatkund, from a
dynasty of ancient kings ; Punya Dhurma, “ The Holy Land,” and

also Djam-bhu-dwip, the “ Peninsula of the Tree of Life.”
The trade of India is immense. The Imports are cotton cloth,,
jewelry, watches, stationery, hardware, metals, salt, silk, books,
woolens, American ice, bullion, etc., etc.; and the Exports are coffee,
tea, raw cotton, (in 1861 to England alone 3,295,000 cwt., producing
there $47,500,000,) indigo, opium, ($50,000,000 annually,) saltpeter,
jute, seeds, sugar, wool, (23,432,689 lbs. in 1865,) rice, raw silk,
ivory, lac, oils, etc. The balance of trade is in favor of India, and
the difference has to be paid in cash ; so that the specie of England,
Germany, and America is drained off to the East, and wealthy
India grows richer all the time on a foreign commerce which has
now risen to $577,000,000 (gold) per annum. The tonnage is at
present 4,268,666 tons, and the revenue $249,646,040, which is
only about $ 1 18 per head—an easier rate of taxation than is levied
upon its people by any other civilized Government, while the pro¬
portion of the revenue spent on the Administration itself is equally
economical. Deduct the annual charges for roads and bridges,
police, jails, and courts of justice, education, canals, reservoirs, and
irrigation, army, navy, telegraphs, public works, interest on Gov¬
ernment securities, and it seems remarkable that the scanty
remainder could meet all the charges of the Administration. The
Hindoos well know that they were never so well and so cheaply
governed as they are now. Their own testimony to this fact will
be presented further on. If it were not for the extent to which the
cultivated land is almost exclusively made to bear the burden, with
its uncertain tenure, (though this is the practice in most Oriental
Governments,) and the growth and sale of that vile opium, there
would be little now to rebuke in the government of British India.
Yet none are more earnest than some of the English themselves
for the abolition of this reproach upon their fair fame.
There are seven railroads now running in different parts of the
country, with an entire extent of 4,039 miles, and the total traffic
receipts of which for the week ending April 22, 1871, was
140,220 iu. 4d., or $701,102, gold. Other lines are in process
ENGLISH EMPIRE. 7'
of construction. The telegraphs, 14,000 miles long, run all through

India, while roads as feeders to the railways are being made over
the land. But all has been done or furthered by the Government,
and the whole has been accomplished during the past fifteen years.
The wealth of India has been proverbial since the time of Solo¬
mon, who imported therefrom his “ ivory, apes, and peacocks.” It
has also seemed to be inexhaustible. From the earliest antiquity,
the merchants of Persia, Arabia, Syria, and Egypt sought to
enrich themselves by her commerce; and when Europe awoke from
her sleep of ages, and entered upon her career of improvement, her
first efforts were directed toward gaining a share of the trade of
the East. England, at length, entered the field, and soon out¬
stripped all her rivals, Dutch, Portuguese, and French. Agreeably
to the policy of the times, the East India Company was chartered
by Queen Elizabeth, and vested with the monopoly of the com¬
merce of the East. And advancing by a steady progress, this giant
Company, under the patronage of the Imperial power, at length
held and governed, or protected, all that immense region.
A leading American journal very justly remarked on this sub¬
ject, at the time of the great Sepoy Rebellion, that “ the achieve¬
ments by which these stupendous results have been effected are
among the marvelous realities of history, compared with which the
tales of romance are tame and spiritless. In future times they
will, perhaps, constitute the most deeply-interesting portion of the
history of our age. We believe that in the present troubles the
cause of Great Britain, notwithstanding the many and grave abuses
which have been practiced or tolerated by the East India Com¬
pany, is nevertheless the cause of humanity and Christian civiliza¬
tion. It is this fact, no doubt, which has awakened no small share
of the fierce invectives against the proceedings of the English in
India. For a long time that region has been the field of an exten¬
sive and successful missionary enterprise, to which the British
rulers have extended, at least, a protection from Hindoo and Mos¬
lem violence, and so afforded an opportunity for the free exercise
of Christian philanthropy. This is, doubtless, the head and front
of their offending in the minds of many of those who are loudest

in their outcries against British cruelty and reckless ambition. We
are very far from approving all that has been done by British
agents in India, but we are equally clearly convinced that it is
much more for their good deeds than their faults that they are
most intensely disliked.”
Any man who has resided in India, and known the condition of
the people and the actions of that Government in regard to them,
and the encouragement extended to efforts for the welfare of the
natives, especially of late years, will be prepared to accept these
words as a fair, and yet generous, statement of the situation. The
position of England in India was a very peculiar one, and, in all
candor, should be clearly understood before forming an opinion
upon the merits of the case. For instance, in India there is no
such thing as patriotism, no capability of self-government. If the
English rule were withdrawn to-morrow, the last thing the natives
would think of would be to unite and form a general Govern¬
ment. Each Rajah and Nawab would simply set up for himself,
hold all he had, and take all he was able to seize. Then would
begin a renewal of those religious and national contentions
which form such a sad part of India’s history, and the bloody
exercise of which Britain terminated when she took control of
the country, ever since holding the peace between those hostile
elements.
The natives, especially the more military races, caring little for
love of country, are willing to fight for compensation, and to serve
any master ; so they were found very ready to wear the livery of
England, to bear her weapons, and receive her pay. These men
were called “ Sepoys,” (the Hindustanee for soldier,) each regiment
being officered by English gentlemen. By degrees this force rose
up to be an immense power, so that in 1856, there were two hun¬
dred thousand of them, constituting the regular Sepoy army,
besides as many more called “ Contingents,” maintained by native
courts under treaty, having English officers in command. Then
there were the armed police ; making altogether a force of about
VALUE OF INDIA TO ENGLAND.
73
four hundred thousand trained men, with the best weapons of
England in their hands.
The total of British troops in all India in 1856 was not much
over forty thousand, and they were scattered on the frontier and in
a few of the leading cities, seldom more than one regiment in a
place, and sometimes only half a regiment.
By degrees the Sepoy army, especially that of Bengal, became
what might be called “ a close service,” a high caste Brahminical
force, to whose notions constant concessions were made by the
Government. They were a fine body of men, invincible to any
thing in the East so long as they were led by their English offi¬
cers, these officers and their ladies and children being afterward
the first victims of the Rebellion. The Sepoys were utterly unedu¬
cated, as superstitious as they were ignorant, and entirely under
the control of their Fakirs and Priests. This weak-minded and
fanatical body of men had won for England her Oriental empire,
and she chiefly relied on them for its defense and preservation.
She could well do so, as long as they were faithful to her rule, but
not a day longer. By degrees her policy changed, and, instead of
maintaining a mixed army of all castes and creeds and nationali¬
ties, the “ Bengal Army,” as it was called, grew more and more
Brahminical, united, and fanatical.
It has been asked, Why did not England let India go when she
threw off her allegiance, and free herself from the care and risk of
governing a people who thus disdained her rule? Two answers
may be given to this question. One would be the secular reason
of men who valued India for what she was to England in the way
of profit and power. Millions of British money were invested in
the funds and reproductive works of India; then, there was the
vast, increasing, and lucrative market for English goods, one item
alone of which will express its importance. The clothing of the
Hindoo is not very voluminous, yet, what a business was it for
Lancashire to have the right to supply cotton cloth for one sixth of
the human family! But, besides the merchant and the manufac¬
turer, the politician, the military and the educated man had a deep
interest in the retention of this “brightest jewel of the British

crown,” for here was furnished the most splendid patronage that
ever lay in the gift of a statesman. Hundreds of the cultured
classes of England had careers of position and emolument as civil
servants of the Government, under “ covenants ” that secured them
munificent compensation, and which enabled them, when their
legal term of service expired, to retire on pensions equal to
about one half their splendid pay ; so that Montgomery Martin
estimates that the money remittances to Great Britain from India
averaged five million sterling ($25,000,000) per annum for the past
sixty years. Landed property in England has been largely
enhanced in value by the investments of fortunes, the fruit of civil,,
military, and commercial success in Hindustan. A nation con¬
trolling the resources of such a dependency, with such a noble
field in which to elicit and educate the genius of its youth and
display the ability of its commanders, with the profitable employ¬
ment of its mercantile shipping in the boundless imports and
exports of such a country as India, could not lightly resign, or
throw it away without a mighty struggle for its retention.
But, the man who would present no further reasons than these
for British resolution to keep India in its control, would do injus¬
tice to the better section of English society, and to many of her
noble representatives in the East. There is another and a better
reason than what was measured by the pounds, shillings, and
pence of mere worldly men, underlying the determination of
England in this matter. The Christians of Britain hold firmly
that, the Ruler of heaven and earth, in so wonderfully subjecting
that great people to their rule, has done so for a higher than secu¬
lar purpose ; that he has given them a moral and evangelical mission,
to fulfill in that land for him ; and that it is their high and solemn
duty to maintain that responsibility until, by education and Chris¬
tianity, they shall attach those millions by the tie of a common creed
to the English throne, or fit them for assuming for themselves the
responsibilities of-self-government. For such men Montgomery
Martin (one of their most voluminous Oriental writers) speaks-
THE HIGHER MOTIVES FOR ENGLISH RULE. 75
when, in his last edition of his “ Indian Empire,” (4 vols. octavo,)

dedicated by permission to the British Queen, he so distinctly
declares to his Government and countrymen their high accounta¬
bility before God and man in this respect, when he asks, “On what
principle is the future government of India to be based ? Are we
simply to do what is right, or what seems expedient ? If the for¬
mer, we may confidently ask the Divine blessing on our efforts for
the moral and material welfare of the people of India, and we may
strive, by a steady course of kind and righteous dealing, to win
their alienated affections for ourselves as individuals, and their
respect and interest for the religion which inculcates justice,
mercy, and humility as equally indispensable to national as to indi¬
vidual Christianity.”
Those who know India best, know that I speak the truth when
1 assert, that these words are represented by deeds as honorable in
the lives, and devotion to India’s welfare, of many of the men who
represent Great Britain there. I do not know a community of
public men where you can find a greater number of “ the excellent
of the earth,” than among the civil and military officers of England
in India; men who have stood up for Jesus and for humanity,
loving the poor, degraded race whom they ruled, and pleading,
toiling, and giving munificently for their elevation to a better con¬
dition. Such names as Bentinck, Lawrence, Herbert Edwards,
Havelock, Muir, Tucker, Ramsay, Gowan, Durand, and scores of
others, amply justify this- statement. The Annual Missionary
Reports of the Methodist Episcopal Church (and this is equally true
of the other missions as well) bear witness to this fact for many
years past. During that time, such was the sympathy for the
work which we attempted, in helping them to educate and enlighten
the people of our own mission field, that noble-hearted Englishmen
in all stations of life, from the Governor-General down to the pri¬
vate soldier, have aided us as freely as though we were of their
own nation or Church, so that their contributions since 1857
will be found to aggregate over $150,000 in gold to our mission
alone ; while this assistance is all the time increasing, and is
;6 THE LAND OF THE VELA.
also equally extended by these good men to the missions of any

Church or nation which goes there, and whose labors are aiming
to elevate the benighted natives, and prepare them by education
and a public conscience for self-government.
The Hindoo Chronology and division of time are very singu¬
lar, and even whimsical. They hold to four great Ages of the
world, called Yugs. Each of these Yugs is inferior to its irrfme-
mediate predecessor in power, virtue, and happiness. These
divisions are denominated the Satya, the Treta, the Dwarper,
and the Kali Yugs, whose united length amounts to the pro¬
digious sum of 4,320,000 years ; yet this sum of the Ages is
but a Kalpa, or one “ Day of Brahma,” at the end of which this
sleepy deity wakes up to find the universe destroyed, and which
he has then to create anew for another “ Day ” ere he goes to
sleep again.
The Satya Yug, they tell us, lasted 1,728,000 years, and was the
Age of Truth—the Golden Age—during which the whole race was
virtuous, and lived each of them 100,000 years, and men attained
the stature of “21 cubits” (37 feet) in height!
The Treta Yug lasted 1,296,000 years ; this was the Silver Age,
(using the same figures as the Greek and Roman poets,) during
which one third of the race became corrupt, the human stature was
lowered, and its life shortened to 10,000 years.
The Dwarper Yug extended to only 864,000 years—their Brazen
Age—when fully one half of the race degenerated, and their height
was again reduced, and their lives shortened to 1,000 years
each.
The Kali Yug is the one in which we now live, and is regarded
by them as the last—the Iron Age—in which mankind has become
totally depraved, and their stature further reduced, and their life
limited to 100 years. This Yug, according to them, began 4,950
years ago, and is to last exactly 427,050 years longer, which will
close this Kalpa, or “ Day of Brahma.”
They assert that one patriarch called Satyavrata, or Vaivaswata,
had an existence running the whole period of the Satya Yug,
MAPPING OUT ETERNITY. 77
(1,728,000 years !) and that he escaped with his family from a uni¬
versal deluge, which destroyed the rest of mankind. He is regarded
by Indian archaeologists as the same person as the Seventh Menu,
and by Colonel Tod, in his “ Annals of Rajasthan,” as designating
the patriarch of mankind, Noah.
The “Night of Brahma” is held to be of equal length with his
“ Day,” and that in the life of Brahma there are 36,000 such nights
and days. At the end of each “ Day” there is a partial destruction
of the universe, and a reconstruction of it at the close of each
“Night.” During that long night, “sun, moon, and stars are
shrouded in gloom ; ceaseless torrents of rain pour down; the
waves of the ocean, agitated with mighty tempests, rise to a pro¬
digious height—the seven lower worlds, as well as this earth, are
all submerged. In the midst of this darkness and ruin, and in the
center of this tremendous abyss, Brahma reposes in mysterious
slumber upon the serpent Ananta, or eternity. Meanwhile the
wicked inhabitants of all worlds utterly perish. At length the
long night ends, Brahma awakes, the darkness is instantly dis¬
pelled, and the universe returns to its pristine order and beauty.”
This amazing chronology further states, that when these 36,000
“days” and “nights” (each of them 4,320,000 solar years in dura¬
tion) have run their course, Brahma himself shall then expire,
amid the utter annihilation of the universe, or its absorption into
the essence of Brahm. This they call a Maha Pralaya, or great
destruction. After this, Brahrq, (the original spirit,) who had
reposed during the whole duration of the creation’s existence,
awakes again, and from him another manifestation of the universe
takes place, all things being reproduced as before, and Brahma,
the Creator, commences a new existence. Each creation is co¬
extensive with the life of Brahma, and lasts over three hundred
billions of years, (311,040,000,000 years,) and the people of India
believe that thus it has been during the past eternity, and thus it
will continue to be in the eternity to come, an alternating succes¬
sion of manifestations and annihilations of the universe at regular
intervals of this inconceivable length. Truly does Wheeler call
this daring reckoning “a bold attempt of the Brahmins to map

out eternity /”
Trevor has remarked that the present age (the Kali Yug) being
432,000 years, the other three Yugs are found simply by multiply¬
ing that number by 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The number itself is
the tithe of the sum total of the four Yugs. The “divine year,”
being computed like the prophetic, at a year for a day, (counting
360 days to the year,) is equal to 360 ordinary years ; and these,
multiplied by the perfect number 12,000, makes 4,320,000 years,
the sum of the Ages, and a Kalpa, or “ Day of Brahma.”
Trevor supposes, that as this chronologic scheme is too absurd for
reception, it must have been originally designed as a sort of arith¬
metical allegory, expressing the character, rather than the duration,
of the periods referred to ; while the descending ratios of 100,000,
10,000, 1,000, and 100 may indicate only the gradual shortening of
the term of human life since the creation of man, as the correspond¬
ing proportions of the virtuous and vicious denote the spread of
moral evil, till in the present age “ they are altogether become
filthy.” This theory I leave to the learned reader, having intro¬
duced the topic chiefly to illustrate the mental characteristics of
the people of India, and to show into what vagaries the human
intellect, albeit cultivated and subtile, can be drawn in the day¬
dreams of a people on whom the light of Revelation never dawned.
“ Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Their divisions of time are singular: 18 Mimeshas (twinkling of
an eye, the standard of measure) are equal to r Kashta; 30 Kash-
tas to 1 Kala; 30 Kalas (48 of our minutes) to 1 Muhurtta;
30 Muhurttas to 1 day and night; 1 Month of Men to 1 day and
night of the Pitris, (ancestors ;) 1 Year of Men to 1 day and night
of the Gods. The Hindoos have four watches of the day, and the
same at night; these are called Pahars, and are three hours long,
the first commencing at six o’clock in the morning. The day and
night together are also divided into sixty smaller portions, called
Ghurees, so that each of the eight Pahars consists of seven and a
half Ghurees. They have twelve months in the year, each month
MEASURING TIME. 79
having thirty days. Half the month, when the moon shines, is
called Oojeeala-pakh, and the other half, which is dark, they call
Andhera-pakh, and these distinctions they recognize in writing and
dating their letters. They reckon their era from the reign of
Bikurmaditt, one of their greatest and best kings, the present year
of their era being 1934. The Mohammedans date their era from
the Hejira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca, which took place
in A. D. 622 ; this is therefore their 1249th year.
I saw a very primitive method of measuring time, or ascertaining
the “ghuree,” in India. It was a small brass cup, with a hole in
the bottom, immersed in a pan of water, and watched by a servant.
When the cup sinks from the quantity of water its perforation has
admitted the ghuree is completed, and the cup is again placed empty
on the top of the water to measure the succeeding ghuree. Great
attention is, of course, required to preserve any moderate degree of
correctness by this imperfect mode of marking the progress of
the day and night, and establishments are purposely entertained
for it when considered as a necessary appendage of rank. In
most other cases, the superior convenience and certainty of our
clocks and watches are making considerable strides in superseding
the Hindustanee ghuree.
A brief glimpse at the wonderful Mythology, Geography, and
Astronomy of these people will be expected here, as also some
notice of their venerable Vedas and their voluminous literature.
Their “ Sacred Books ” gravely teach as follows :
“ The worlds above this earth are peopled with gods and god¬
desses, demi-gods and genii—the sons and grandsons, daughters
and granddaughters, of Brahma and other superior deities. All the
superior gods have separate heavens for themselves. The inferior
•deities dwell chiefly in the heaven of Indra, the god of the firma¬
ment. There they congregate to the number of three hu7idred and
thirty millions. The gods are divided and subdivided into classes
or hierarchies, which vary through every conceivable gradation of
rank and power. They are of all colors : some black, some white,
some red, some blue, and so through all the blending shades of the
5
8o THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
rainbow. They exhibit all sorts of shape, size, and figure : in forms
wholly human or half human, "wholly brutal or variously compounded,
like many-headed and many-bodied centaurs, with four, or ten, or a
hundred or a thousand eyes, heads, and arms. They ride through the
regions of space on all sorts of etherealized animals : elephants, buf¬
faloes, lions, deer, sheep, goats, peacocks, vultures, geese, serpents,
and rats ! They hold forth in their multitudinous arms all manner of
offensive and defensive weapons : thunderbolts, scimetars, javelins,
spears, clubs, bows, arrows, shields, flags, and shells ! They dis¬
charge all possible functions. There are gods of the heavens
above, and of the earth below, and of the regions under the earth;
gods of wisdom and of folly ; gods of war and of peace ; gods of
good and of evil; gods of pleasure, who delight to shed around
their votaries the fragrance of harmony and joy; gods of cruelty
and wrath, whose thirst must be satiated with torrents of blood,
and whose ears must be regaled with the shrieks and agonies of
expiring victims. All the virtues and the vices of man, all the
allotments of life—beauty, jollity, and sport, the hopes and fears of
youth, the felicities and infelicities of manhood, the joys and sor¬
rows of old age—all, all are placed under the presiding influence
of superior powers.”—Duff's India.
The Geography and Astronomy of the Hindoos are on a par with
their Theology. It would be a waste of time and patience to
crowd these pages with their wild, ridiculous, and unscientific
nonsense upon these topics. Yet it may be a duty to say some¬
thing in order to convey a general idea of the subject to such per¬
sons as have not made their system a study. Dr. Duff has had the
patience to epitomize it; and from him .we quote a passage or two,
which the reader will deem to be all sufficient, and which he may
be assured is only a sample of the monstrous extravagances of
Hindoo “science,” falsely so called.
Speaking of the constitution of the physical universe, as revealed
in the Sacred Books of the Brahmins, he says: “ It is partitioned
into fourteen worlds—seven inferior, or below the world which we
inhabit, and seven superior, consisting—with the exception of our
HINDOO GEOGRAPHY. 81
own, which is the first—of immense tracts of space, bestudded

with glorious luminaries and habitations of the Gods, rising, not
anlike the rings of Saturn, one above the other, as so many concen
trie zones or belts of almost immeasurable extent.

“ Of the seven inferior worlds which dip beneath our earth in a
tegular descending series, it is needless to say more than that they
are destined to be the abodes of all manner of wicked and loath¬
some creatures.
“ Our own earth, the first of the ascending series of worlds, is
declared to be 1 circular or flat, like the flower of the water-lily, in
which the petals project beyond each other.’ Its habitable portion
consists of seven circular islands or continents, each surrounded
by a different ocean. The central or metropolitan island, destined
to be the abode of man, is named Jamba Dwip, around which rolls
the sea of salt water ; next follows the second circular island, and
around it the sea of sugar-cane juice ; then the third, and around
it the sea of spirituous liquors ; then the fourth, and around it the
sea of clarified butter ; then the fifth, and around it the sea of sour
curds ; then the sixth, and around it the sea of milk ; then the sev¬
enth and last, and around it the sea of sweet water. Beyond this
last ocean is an uninhabited country of pure gold, so prodigious in
extent that it equals all the islands, with their accompanying oceans,
in magnitude. It is begirt with a bounding wall of stupendous
mountains, which inclose within their bosom realms of everlasting
darkness.
“ The central island, the destined habitation of the human race,
is severa. hundred thousand miles in diameter, and the sea that
surrounds it is of the same breadth. The second island is double
the diameter of the first, and so is the sea that surrounds it. And
each of the remaining islands and seas, in succession, is double the
breadth of its immediate predecessor; so that the diameter of the
whole earth amounts to several hundred thousand millions of miles
—occupying a portion of space of manifold larger dimensions than
lhat which actually intervenes between the earth and the sun!
YTa. far beyond this ; for, if we could form a conception of a circu-
lar mass of solid matter whose diameter exceeded that of the orbit
of Herschel, the most distant planet in our solar system, such a
mass would not equal in magnitude the Earth of the Hindoo
Mythologists !
“ In the midst of this almost immeasurable plain, from the very
center of Jamba Dwip, shoots up the loftiest of mountains,
Su-Meru, to the height of several hundred thousand miles, in the
form of an inverted pyramid, having its summit, which is two hun¬
dred times broader than the base, surmounted by three swelling
cones—the highest of these cones transpiercing upper vacancy
with three golden peaks, on which are situate the favorite resi¬
dences of the sacred Triad. At its base, like so many giant senti¬
nels, stand four lofty hills, on each of which grows a mango-tree
several thousand miles in height, bearing fruit delicious as nectar,
and of the enormous size of many hundred cubits. From these
mangoes, as they fall, flows a mighty river of perfumed juice, so
communicative of its sweetness that those who partake of it exhale
the odor from their persons all around to the distance of many
leagues. There also grow rose-apple trees, whose fruit is ‘ large as
elephants,’ and whose juice is so plentiful as to form another
mighty river, that converts the earth over which it passes into
purest gold ! ”—Duff’s India and India Missions, p. 116.
Such is a brief notice of the Geographical outline, furnished by
their sacred writings, of the world on which we dwell. In turning
to the superior worlds we obtain a glimpse of some of the revela¬
tions of Hindoo Astronomy.
“ The second world in the ascending series, or that which imme¬
diately over-vaults the earth, is the region of space between us and
the sun, which is declared, on divine authority, to be distant only a
few hundred thousand miles. The third in the upward ascent is
the region of space intermediate between the sun and the pole star.
Within this region are all the planetary and stellar mansions. The
distances of the principal heavenly luminaries are given with the
utmost precision. The moon is placed beyond the sun as far as
the sun is from the earth. Next succeed at equal distances from
HINDOO ASTRONOMY. 83
each other, and in the following order, the stars, Mercury, (beyond
the stars,) Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ursa Major, and the Pole
Star. The four remaining worlds (beyond the Pole Star) continue
to rise, one above the other, at immense and increasing intervals.
The entire circumference of the celestial space is then given with
the utmost exactitude of numbers.
“ In all of these superior worlds are framed heavenly mansions, dif¬
fering in glory, destined to form the habitation of various orders of
celestial spirits. In the seventh, or highest, is the chief residence
of Brahma, said by one of the “divine sages” to be so glorious that
he could not describe it in two hundred years, as it contains, in a
superior degree, every thing which is precious, or beautiful, or
magnificent in all the other heavens. What then must it be, when
we consider the surpassing grandeur of some of these ? Glance,
for example, at the heaven which is prepared in the third world,
and intended for Indra—head and king of the different ranks and
degrees of subordinate deities. Its palaces are ‘all of purest gold,
so replenished with vessels of diamonds, and columns and orna¬
ments of jasper, and sapphire, and emerald, and all manner of
precious stones, that it shines with a splendor exceeding the
brightness of twelve thousand suns. Its streets are of the clearest
crystal, fringed with fine gold. It is surrounded with forests
abounding with all kinds of trees and flowering shrubs, whose
sweet odors are diffused all around for hundreds of miles. It is
bestudded with gardens and pools of water ; warm in winter and
cool in summer, richly stored with fish, water-fowl, and lilies, blue,
red, and white, spreading out a hundred or a thousand petals.
Winds there are, but they are ever refreshing, storms and sultry
heats being unknown. Clouds there are, but they are light and
fleecy, and fantastic canopies of glory. Thrones there are, which
blaze like the coruscations of lightning, enough to dazzle any mortal
vision. And warblings there are, of sweetest melody, with all the
inspiring harmonies of music and of song, among bowers that are
ever fragrant and ever green.’ ”—P. 118.
The reader will remember that these descriptions are not to be
taken as figurative and emblematic, as is appropriate to a state of

glory of whose nature and details the heart of man cannot con¬
ceive, but that they are to be understood, as they are taught, in
the strictest literality.
The Vedas are undoubtedly the oldest writings in the woild,
with the exception of the Pentateuch. Colebrook supposes that
they were compiled in the fourteenth century before Christ. Sir
William Jones assigns them to the sixteenth century. They are
certainly not less than three thousand years old. Veda is from the
Sanscrit root vid, to know, the Veda being considered the foun¬
tain of all knowledge, human and divine. A Veda, in its strict
sense, is simply a Sanhita, or collection of hymns. There are
three Vedas, the Rig- Veda, the Yajur Veda, and the Sama- Veda.
The fourth, the Atharva Veda, is of more modern date and doubt¬
ful authority. The Hindoos hold that the Vedas are coeval with
creation. As to their several contents, the Rig-Veda consists of
prayers and hymns to various deities ; the Yajur Veda, of ordi¬
nances about sacrifices and other religious rites ; the Sama- Veda
is made up of various lyrical pieces, and the Atharva Veda chiefly
of incantations against enemies.
The Rig- Veda is the oldest and most authentic of all, and many
scholars consider that from it the others were formed. The Hin¬
doo writers attach to each Veda a class of compositions, chiefly
liturgical and legendary, called Brahmanas, and they have besides
a sort of expository literature, metaphysical and mystical, called
Upanishads. They have also an immense body of Vedic literature,
including philology, commentaries, Sutras or aphorisms, etc., the
study of which would form occupation for a long and laborious life.
The remote antiquity of the Vedas is indicated, among other rea¬
sons, by the entire absence of most of the modern doctrines of
Hindooism, such as the worship of the Triad, the names of the
modern deities, the doctrines of transmigration, caste, incarna¬
tions, suttee, etc., which are now the cardinal points ol Hindooism,
and the personified Triad of divine attributes, Brahma, Vishnu,
and Shiva, in their capacities of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer.
THE VEDAS. 85
with the popular forms of the two latter, Krishna and the Linga,
and all the manifestations of the bride of Mahadeva certainly were
utterly unknown to the primitive texts of the religion of the
Hindoos.
The Rig-Veda Sanhita (a complete copy of which is before us
as we write) was translated from the original Sanscrit by Horace
H. Wilson, and published in English in four volumes, the first
being issued in 1850, and the last in 1866. The learned Intro¬
duction which the translator attached to the first volume, and an
extensive and discriminating notice in the Calcutta Review for 1859,
assist us in our description of these venerable writings.
The Rig-Veda is a miscellaneous collection of hymns. Each
hymn is called a Sukta. The whole work is divided into eight
books, or Ashtakas. Each Ashtaka is subdivided into eight
Adhyayas, or chapters, containing an arbitrary number of Suktas
The whole number of hymns in the Rig-Veda is about a thousand.
Each Sukta has for its reputed author a Rishi, or inspired teacher,
by whom, in Brahminical phraseology, it has been originally seen,
that is, to whom it was revealed ; the Vedas being, according to
mythological fictions, the uncreated dictation of Brahma. Each
hymn is addressed to some deity or deities.
Who are the gods to whom the prayers and praises are ad¬
dressed ? Here we find a striking difference between the mythol¬
ogy of the Rig- Veda and that of the heroic poems and Puranas,
which come so long after them. The divinities worshiped are not
unknown to later systems, but they there perform very subordinate
parts, while those deities who are the great gods—the Dii Majores
—of the subsequent and present period, are either wholly unnamed
in the Veda, or are noticed in an inferior and different capacity.
The names of Shiva, of Mahadeva, of Durga, of Kali, of Rama, of
Krishna, never occur, and there is not the slightest allusion to the
form in which, for the last ten centuries at least, Shiva seems to
have been almost exclusively worshiped in India, that of the Linga
or Phallus ; neither is there any hint of another important feature
of later Hindooism, the Trimurti, or Triune combination of Brah-
ma, Vishnu, and Shiva, as typified by the mystical syllable Om,

although, according to high" Brahminical authority, the Trimurti
was the first element in the faith of the Hindoos, and the second
was the Linga.
The deities mentioned in the Vedas are numerous, and of differ¬
ent sexes. The leading ones are Indra, Agni, and Surya; and the
female deities are Ushas, Saraswati, Sinivali, etc. “The wives of
the gods” are spoken of as a large number, and arc often invoked.
The operations and powers of nature are deified, as the Murats, the
winds ; the Aswins, the sons of the sun ; and even the cows are
invoked in a special Sukta.—Vol. iii, p. 440. In fact, the deities,
inferior and superior, of the Vedas may be counted by the dozen,
and the work is manifestly polytheistic to the core in its teaching
and tendencies. The evidence of this is on every page.
For the general reader, the mystery that covered the Vedas is a
mystery no longer ; all that they contain stands out for public view
in the common light of day. Except as to grammatical construc¬
tion and translation into modern words, we are far abler to discover
and understand what story these ancient documents tell than is any
of the Pundits. For, in ascertaining their sense, we have to deal
with questions of race, of language, of history, of chronology, and
external influences ; questions unknown, and therefore unintelligi¬
ble, to the Hindoo mind. Forbidden to the Sudras, inaccessible
from their rarity and high price, to most of the Brahmins, for that
very reason they are the objects of a more profound and supersti¬
tious veneration ; and, if any thing can be supposed, a priori, to
startle and excite all Hindustan, it is surely the announcement that
the Vedas have become public property, and that Sudra and
Mlechcha (barbarian) may read them at his will.
It was almost entirely from such writings as these that European
scholars had to undertake the compilation of a true chronology and
history for India. The task was certainly not an easy one. It
was like this : Given the Psalms of David, to discover from these
alone the manners, customs, religions, arts, sciences, history, chro¬
nology, and origin of the Jewish nation ; to classify the hymns too,
BEEF-EATING SANCTIONED BY THE VEDA. 3/
and assign to each its time and author, with no other help than the
heading to each Psalm, added by a later hand. Knowing, as we
do, that they range almost from Moses till after the captivity—at
least seven hundred years—the later parts of the task alone would
demand all the resources of scholarship. It is true that the Vedic
hymns are ten times more numerous than the Psalms, but they are
at the same time ten times more monotonous, and full of wearisome
repetitions, under which even Professor Wilson’s patience giv5s
way. In our Sacred Books the Code precedes, and the history
precedes, accompanies, and follows the Psalms. With the Hindoo
the Code comes after the hymns, and has to do with a different
stage of society, and the history never comes at all! Nevertheless,
the Vedas, with all their difficulties, throw a flood of light upon
the origin and early state of the Hindoos.
The people among whom the Vedas were composed, as here
introduced to us, had evidently passed the nomadic stage. Their
wealth consisted of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and buffaloes.
Coined money, and indeed money in any shape, was unknown.
We meet but two allusions to gold, except for the purpose of orna¬
ments. The cow was to the Vedic Hindoo at once food and
money. It supplied him with milk, butter, ghee, curds, and
cheese. Oxen ploughed his fields, and carried his goods and chat¬
tels. He preserved the Soma-juice in a bag of cow-skin, {Rig- Veda,
vol. I, p. 72,) and the cow-hide girt his chariot. (Vol. Ill, p. 475.)
No idea of sacredness was connected with the cow; and it is quite
clear, however abhorrent and revolting the truth may appear to
their descendants, that in the golden age of their ancestors the
Hindoos were a cow killing and beef-eating people, and that cattle
are declared in the Vedas to be the very best of food! Yet modern
Hindooism holds it to be a deadly sin to kill a cow, or eat beef, or
to use intoxicating drink, and they dare to assert that this was
always their creed. We quote texts which leave no room for a
doubt on this, to them, important fact:
“ Agni, descendant of Bharata, thou art entirely ours when sac¬
rificed to with pregnant kine, barren cows, or bulls.”
“ Agni, the friend of Indra, has quickly consumed three hundred

buffaloes.”
“When thou hast eaten the flesh of the three hundred buffaloes.’
“ Bestow upon him who glorifies thee, divine Indra, food, the
chiefest of which is cattle.”—Vol. II, p. 225 ; III, p. 276.
“ Sever his joints, Indra, as butchers cut up a cow.”—Vol. Ill,
p. 458 ; I, p. 165.
What an amount of beef-eating is implied in a sacrifice of three
hundred buffaloes! the greater part, as usual, being devoured by
the assistants. The cooking is very minutely and graphically
described in vol. II, pp. 117, etc. Part was roasted on spits, while
the attendants eagerly watched the joints, sniffing up the grateful
fumes, and saying, “ It is fragrant.” The queens and wives of the
sacrificers assisted in cooking and preparing the banquet, which,
on particular occasions, alluded to in the text, consisted of horse¬
flesh ! All was washed down with copious libations of a strong
spirit, made from the juice of the soma plant. Rishi Kakshivat
had in every way most unclerical propensities. He thanks the
Aswihs most cordially for giving him a cask holding a hundred
jars of wine, (vol. I, p. 308 ;) and Rishi Vamadeva, who was taken
out of his mother’s side, solicits Indra (vol. Ill, p. 185) for a hun¬
dred jars of soma-juice. Rishi Agastya also, in a queer, half-crazy
Sukta, (vol. II, p. 200,) writes of “a leather bottle in the house of
a vender of spirits.” These were the men that fought Alexandei
the Great. After-such a feast of the gods, Indra puts forth all his
might, and destroys the fiercest of the Asuras, (the evil spirits.)
The social position of woman, this Veda demonstrates, was con¬
siderably higher than it is in modern India. She is spoken of
kindly and pleasantly as “ the light of the dwelling.” The Rishi
and his wife converse on equal terms, go together to the sacrifice,
and practice austerities together. Lovely maidens appear in a
procession. Grown-up unmarried daughters remain without re¬
proach in their father’s house. Now, all this is the reverse of the
Hindooism of the present day. On the other hand, we have a case
■of polygamy of the most shameful kind. Kakshivat, one of the
THE WORSHIP OF THE VEDA. 89
most illustrious of the Rishis, married ten sisters at once, (vol. II,
p. 17 ;) and, if the tone of female society is to be judged of from the
wife even of a Rishi, or from *a lady who is herself the author of a
Sukta, women in those days were no better than they should be.
A gallant, deep-drinking, high-feeding race were the wild war¬
riors of the Indus, and very unlike their descendants.
The picture of Hindoo life and manners, at the time of the Mace¬
donian invasion, (326 B. C.,) was darkly shaded. The Hindoo even
then had degenerated ; and the “ Life of an Eastern King” on the
banks of the Indus differed little in its shameless details from that
of his modern successor at Lucknow, on the banks of the Goomtee.
Rufus Curtius Quintus, the historian of Alexander, writes of the
Hindoos thus: “ The shameful luxuries of their prince surpasses
that of all other nations. He reclines in a golden palankeen, with
pearl hangings. The dresses which he puts on are embroidered
with purple and gold. The pillars of his palace are gilt; and a
running pattern of a vine, carved in gold, and figures of birds, in
silver, ornament each column. The durbar is held while he combs
and dresses bis hair; then he receives embassadors, and decides
cases. . . . The women prepare the banquet and pour out the
wine, to which all the Indians are greatly addicted. Whenever he,
or his queen, went on a journey, crowds of dancing girls in gilt
palankeens attended ; and when he became intoxicated they carried
him to his couch.”—Liber VIII, 32. And, if we are to believe his
biographer, into such a vile, sensual thing as this the great Alex¬
ander himself was rapidly degenerating at that very time!
The religion of the Vedas, then, was Nature worship; light,
careless, and irreverent, utterly animal in its inmost spirit, with
little or no sense of sin, no longings or hopes of immortality,
nothing high, serious, or thoughtful. There was no love in their
worship. They cared only for wealth, victory, animal gratification,
and freedom from disease. The tiger of the forest might have
joined in such prayers, and said, “ Grant me health, a comfortable
•den, plenty of deer and cows, and strength to kill any intruder on
my beat!” “ The -blessings they implore,” says Professor Wilson,
9o TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA
“are for the most part of a temporal and personal description—

wealth, food, life, posterity, cattle, cows, and horses ; protection
against enemies, victory over them, and sometimes their destruc¬
tion. There are a few indications of a hope of immortality and of
future happiness, but they are neither frequent, nor, in general, dis¬
tinctly announced. In one or two passages Yama, and his office
of ruler of the dead, are obscurely alluded to. There is little
demand for moral benefactions.”—Vol. I, p. 25.
So merely fanciful, so wearisome and monotonous, so contempt¬
uously irreverent are the great bulk of these Vedic prayers, (to-
Indra especially,) that Professor Wilson, with all his patience, can
scarce believe them to be earnest. Take, for instance, the following
Hymn. It is addressed to the goddess Anna Devata, personified
as Pitu, or material food, and is recited by a Brahmin when about to
eat. Pitu is also identified with the Soma juice, mentioned below.
The Rishi is Agastya, and the reader can judge if any utterances
(and this, too, professing to be sacred and inspired) that he has ever
seen, more fully illustrates the words of Holy Writ, “ Whose God is
their belly, whose glory is their shame, who mind earthly things
“ 1. I glorify Pitu, the great, the upholder, the strong, by whose
invigorating power Trita slew the mutilated Vritra.
“ 2. Savory Pitu ; sweet Pitu ; we worship thee: become our
protector.
“ 6. The thoughts of the mighty gods are fixed, Pitu, upon thee:
by thy kind and intelligent assistance Indra slew Ahi.
“ 8. And since we enjoy the abundance of the waters and the
plants, therefore, Body, do thou grow fat!
“9. And since we enjoy, Soma, thy mixture with boiled milk or
boiled barley, therefore, Body, do thou grow fat!
“ 10. Vegetable cake of fried meal, do thou be substantial, whole¬
some, and invigorating ; and, Body, do thou grow fat!
“ 11. We extract from thee, Pitu, by our praises, the sacrificial
food, as cows yield butter for oblation ; from thee, who art exhila¬
rating to the gods ; exhilarating also to us.”—Rig- Veda, Vol. II, p.
194. Sukta viii.
DRUNKEN WORSHIP OF THE VEDA. 91
In a similar strain the Soma-plant is addressed.
It was bruised between two stones, mixed with milk or barley
juice, and, when fermented, formed a strong, inebriating, ardent
spirit—probably not very unlike the whisky of the present day.
It appears that the Rishis of the Vedas introduced this custom,
or belief, into religion. Indra and all the other gods are every¬
where represented as unable to perform any great exploit without
the inspiration, of the Soma, or, in plain English, until they were
more or less drunk ! Hear the Veda :
“ May our Soma libation reach you, exhilarating, invigorating,
inebriating, most precious. It is companionable, Indra, enjoyable,
the overthrower of hosts, immortal.
“Thy inebriety is most intense: nevertheless thy acts are most
beneficent.”—Vol. II, p. 169.
“ Savory indeed is this Soma ; sweet it is, sharp, and full of flavor
no one is able to encounter Indra in battle, after he has been
quaffing this—by drinking of it Indra has been elevated to the
slaying of Vritra,” etc.—Vol. Ill, p. 470.
“ The stomach of Indra is as capacious a receptacle of Soma as
a lake.”—Vol. Ill, p. 60. “The belly of Indra, which quaffs the
Soma juice abundantly, swells like the ocean, and is ever moist, like
the ample fluids of the palate.”—Vol. Ill, pp. 17, 231, 232. “ Indra,
quaff the Soma juice, repeatedly shaking it from your beard.”—Vol.
II, p. 233. What common revelry is expressed in the following
verse: “ Saints and sages, sing the holy strain aloud, like scream¬
ing swans, and, together with the gods, drink the sweet juice of the
Soma.”—Vol. Ill, p. 86.
This license runs riot, and “ the goddesses, the wives of the
gods,” (Vol. III. p. 316,) with earthly ladies, one of them (Viswa-
vara) herself a Rishi and compiler of a Sukta (Vol. Ill, p. 273)
in which she prays for “concord between man and wife,” all are
joined—gods, goddesses, and “divine Rishis”—in high carousal.
But, then, mark what Rishi Avatsara says of this lady, Viswavara,
and of his brother Rishis, and the rest of the boisterous crew, all
“ gloriously drunk” together:
92 THE LANE OF TEE VEDA.
“II. Swift is the excessive and girt-distending inebriation ot

Viswavara, Yajata, and Mayin: by drinking of these juices they
urge one another to drink: they find the copious draught the
prompt giver of intoxication !”—Vol. Ill, p. 311.
And this was the worship of Ancient India ! Jolly and easy are
the terms on which deity and worshiper meet together for their
wassail! Prajapate addresses his god thus : “ Indra, the showerer
of benefits, drink the Soma offered after the other presentations,
for thine exhilaration for battle ; take into thy belly the full wave
of the inebriating Soma, for thou art lord of libations from the
days of old!” (Vol. Ill, p. 75.) But the Rishi Viswamitra evi¬
dently thought that, under the circumstances, there was no use in
standing upon even Hindoo ceremony, so he says to his deity :
“ Sit down, Indra, upon the sacred grass—and when thou hast
drunk the Soma, then, Indra, go home!" finishing up the address
by reminding him that the hungry steeds in his car at the dooi
need consideration, and require their provender !—Vol. Ill, p. 84.
How melancholy and degrading is all this—god, worshiper, and
the traffic between them ! But one grade above the beasts that
perish ; yet these are the teachings of the most sacred of the so-
called “ Holy Vedas ? ” This drunken worship realizes and sur¬
passes Dionysius and the Bacchanals themselves.
These besotted mortals had evidently reached that stage of
debasement when men can suppose that the Almighty “ was alto¬
gether such a one as themselves,” and when they can “call evil
good ” and “ put darkness for light.” Well might the reviewer
exclaim, from the abundant and fearful evidence before him that,
“ No worship ever mocked the skies more miserable and contemptible
than the religion of the Veda ! ”
But, what are we to think of professedly enlightened Hindoos,
like Rajah Rammohun Roy, or this modern Baboo, Keshub Chun-
der Sen, who, if they ever read the Vedas, of which they talk so
glibly, must surely have dared to presume upon the ignorance of
their auditors, when they had the temerity, in a day like this, and
before a London audience, to assert that “ the worship of Almighty
DECEPTION AS TO CONTENTS OF THE VEDA. 93
God in his unity,” and “ a pure system of theism ” are taught in

the Vedas?—Men, who after all this have the impertinence to
assume a patronizing aspect toward Christianity, and superciliously
inform us that, however good or pure our faith is in itself, its doc¬
trine and services are not needed in India, because “the Holy
Vedas” contain all that is requisite for the regeneration of their
country ! Yet this is said and repeated, and Miss Carpenter and
her Unitarian friends clap their hands, applaud the assertions, and
lionize the man who utters them, and commend the Brahmo Somajy
of which he is the High Priest! Do not such people deserve to be
deceived ? and is it really a violation of Christian charity to fear that
such persons must be given over to “ strong delusion ” when they
can believe such “ a lie ” as this ?
After a careful examination, from beginning to end, of this ven¬
erable and lauded work, (the doors of which have so lately opened
for the admission of mankind,) with the remembrance in my
mind of the long years when men have listened to the reiterations-
of its holiness, as the very source of all Hindoo faith—the oracle
from which Vedantic Philosophy has drawn its inspiration, the
temple at whose mere portal so many millions have bowed in such
awe and reverence, with its interior too holy for common sight,
containing, as it was asserted, all that was worth knowing, the
primitive original truth that could regenerate India, and make
even Christianity unnecessary—well, with no feelings save those
of deep interest and a measure of respect, we have entered and
walked from end to end, to find ourselves shocked at every step
with the revelations of this mystery of iniquity and sensuality,
where saints and gods, male and female, hold high orgies amid the
fumes of intoxicating liquor, with their singing and “ screaming,”
and the challenging by which “ they urge one another ” on to
deeper debasement, until at length decency retires and leaves them
“ glorying in their shame ! ”
The sad samples which we have presented are taken at random,
and can be matched by hundreds of passages equally contemptible;
while we have purposely avoided quoting Suktas and verses whose
94 THE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
indelicacy is even worse than these ; nor have we found, because

it is not there, any thing pure, sublime, or good, with which to
offset the vileness here laid before the reader. Coming out again
from the gloomy scenes of these “ works of darkness ” into the
fight and purity of our blessed Bible, with all its “ fruits of the
Spirit,” never before were we so thankful for our holy religion, nor
have we ever felt as deep a compassion for the millions so shame¬
fully and so long deluded by the false and hollow pretensions of
the Vedic teaching.
Before dismissing the subject I will, for the sake of such readers
as may not have seen an entire Sukta of the Veda, quote one in
full, so that he may have a complete view of the “ holiest ” and
most venerable of all India’s “ Scriptures,” selecting one, however,
that may be regarded as respectable in its ideas and language. I
take the fifth Sukta, on page 38 of volume I of the Rig-Veda. The
Rishi (or author) is Medhalithi, the son of Kanwa, and the hymn
is addressed to Indra, their God of the Heavens :
“ Sukta V.
“ 1. Indra, let thy coursers hither bring thee, bestower of desires,

to drink the Soma juice ; may the priests, radiant of the sun,
make thee manifest.
“ 2. Let his coursers convey Indra in an easy-moving chariot
hither, where these grains of parched barley, steeped in clarified
butter, are strewn upon the altar.
" 3. We invoke Indra at the morning rite, we invoke him at the
succeeding sacrifice, we invoke Indra to drink the Soma juice.
“4. Come, Indra, to our libation,.with thy long-maned steeds;
the libation being poured out, we invoke thee.
“5. Do thou accept this our praise, and come to this our sacrifice,
for which the libation is prepared ; drink like a thirsty stag.
“6. These dripping Soma juices are effused upon the sacred
grass ; drink them, Indra, to recruit thy vigor.
“ 7. May this our excellent hymn, touching thy heart, be grateful
to thee, and thence drink the effused libation.
THE RAMA TANA. 95
“ 8. Indra, the destroyer of enemies, repairs assuredly to every

reremony where the libation is poured out, to drink the Soma
juice for exhilaration.
“ 9. Do thou, Satakratu, accomplish our desire with cattle and
horses : profoundly meditating, we praise thee.”
As the Greeks and Romans had their Homer and Virgil, so the
Hindoos have had their Valmiki and Vyasa. The great epics of
India are the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. These stand peer¬
less in their voluminous literature, and have held control of the
minds of the people since long before the Incarnation.
The Ramayana is probably the most ancient and connected
epic poem in the Sanscrit, and exceeded only by the Vedas in
antiquity. It contains the mythical history of Rama, one of the
incarnations of the god Vishnu, and was written by the great poet
Valmiki. For a very brief epitome of this wonderful and venera¬
ble development of Hindoo literature we are indebted to Speir’s
“ Ancient India.”
The style and language of the Ramayana are those of an early
heroic age, and there are signs of its having been popular in India
at least three centuries before Christ. The original subject of the
poem is sometimes considered as mythological, and sometimes as
heroic; but the mythological portions stand apart, and have the
air of after-thoughts, intended to give a religious and philosophical
tone to what was at first a tale rehearsed at festivals in praise of
the ancestors of kings. The mythological introduction states that
Lanka, or Ceylon, had fallen under the dominion of a prince named
Ravana, who was a demon of such power that by dint of penance he
had extorted from the god Brahm a promise that no immortal should
destroy him. Such a promise was as relentless as the.Greek Fates,
from which Jove himself could not escape; and Ravana, now invul¬
nerable to the gods, gave up the asceism he had so long practiced, and
tyrannized over the whole of Southern India in a fearful manner.
At length, even the gods in heaven were distressed at the destruc¬
tion of holiness and oppression of virtue consequent upon Ravana’s
6
tyrannies, and they called a council in the mansion of Brahma to

consider how the earth could be relieved from such a fiend. To
this council came the “god Vishnu, riding on the eagle Vain-a-taya,
like the sun on a cloud, and his discus and his mace in hand.” The
other gods entreat him to give his aid, and he promises, in conse¬
quence, to be born on earth, and to accomplish the destruction of
the terrific Ravana. Vishnu therefore became incarnated (his
Seventh Avatar) as Rama or Ramchundra, and his life and exploits
as the celebrated King of Ayodhya, form the subject of this,
the earliest epic poem of India. According to this work, Rama
was born as the son of Dasharatha, King of Ayodhya, the modern
Oude. In early life Rama married Seeta, the lovely daughter of
the King of Mithili. But domestic trouble, caused by the intrigues
of his mother-in-law in behalf of her own son, caused Rama and
Seeta to retire to the forests, and there they lived the lives of her¬
mits for years, till the time for his action should come. While in
this seclusion, Ravana, the demon King of Lanka, (Ceylon,) who
had heard of the beauty of Seeta, resolved to steal her from Rama.
Finding it in vain to hope to succeed without the aid of stratagem,
he took with him an assistant sorcerer, disguised as a deer; and as
Rama took great pleasure in the chase, it was not difficult for the
deer to lure him from his cottage in pursuit. He did not leave his
beloved Seeta without requesting Lakshman, his brother, to remain
in charge ; but the wily deer knew how to defeat his precaution, and,
when transfixed by Rama’s arrow, he cried out in the voice of
Rama, “ O, Lakshman, save me!” Seeta heard the cry, and
entreated Lakshman to fly to his brother’s rescue. He was un¬
willing to go, but yielded to her -earnestness, and she was left
alone. This being the state of affairs which Ravana desired, he
now left his hiding-place, and came forward, disguised as an Ascetic
Brahmin, in a red, threadbare garment, with a single tuft of hair
upon his head, and three sticks and a pitcher in his hand. In the
rich, glowing poetry all creation is represented as shuddering at
his approach; birds, beasts, and flowers were motionless with
dread ; the summer wind ceased to breathe, and a shiver passed
THE TEMPTATION OF SEETA. 97
over the bright waves of the river. Ravana stood for awhile look¬
ing at his victim, as she sat weeping and musing over the unknown
cry; but soon he approached, saying, (we quote the metrical trans¬
lation here,
“O thou that shinest like a tree
With summer blossoms overspread,
Wearing that woven kusa robe,
And lotus garland on thy head,
Why art thou dwelling here alone,
Here in this dreary forest's shade,
Where range at will all beasts of prey,
And demons prowl in every glade ?
Wilt thou not leave thy cottage home,
And roam the world, which stretches wide—
See the fair cities which men build,
And all their gardens and their pride ?
Why longer, fair one, dwell’st thou here,
Feeding on roots and sylvan fare,
When thou might’st dwell in palaces,
And earth’s most costly jewels wear?
Fearest thou not the forest gloom,
Which darkens round on every side ?
Who art thou, say ! and whose, and whence,
And wherefore dost thou here abide ? ”
Even a lady alone is not supposed to be necessarily alarmed at

meeting “a holy Brahmin,” and the fiend’s disguise was so com¬
plete that only a temporary flush of excitement followed his sudden
address. So the poet continues :
“ When first these words of Ravana

Broke upon sorrowing Seeta’s ear,
She started- up, and lost herself
In wonderment, and doubt, and fear;
But soon her gentle, loving heart
Threw off suspicion and surmise,
And slept again in confidence,
Lull’d by the mendicant’s disguise.
‘ Hail, holy Brahmin ! ’ she exclaimed ;
And, in her guileless purity,
She gave a welcome to her guest,
With courteous hospitality.
Water she brought to wash his feet,
And food to satisfy his need,
Full little dreaming in her heart
What fearful guest she had received."
She even tells him her own story, how Rama had won her for
his bride and taken her to his father’s home, and how the jealous
Kaikeyi had cast them forth to roam the woods ; and after dwell¬
ing fondly on her husband’s praise, she invited her guest to tell his
name and lineage, and what had induced him to leave his native
land for the wilds of the Dandaka forest, inviting him to await her
husband’s return, for “ to him are holy wanderers dear.” Suddenly
Ravana declares himself to be the demon monarch of the earth,
“ at whose name Heaven’s armies flee.” He has come, he says,
to woo Seeta for his queen, and to carry her to his palace in the
island of Ceylon! Astonished and indignant at his character and
proposal, the wrath of Rama’s wife burst forth in these words :
“ Me would’st thou woo to be thy queen,

Or dazzle with thy empire’s shine ?
And didst thou dream that Rama’s wife
Could stoop to such a prayer as thine ?
I, who can look on Rama’s face,
And know that there my husband stands,—
My Rama, whose high chivalry
Is blazoned through a hundred lands !
What ! shall the jackal think to tempt
The lioness to mate with him ?
Or did the King of Lanka’s isle,
Build upon such an idle dream ? ”
But vain was poor Seeta’s indignant remonstrance. Ravana’s

only answer was to throw off his disguise, and, “with brows as
dark as the storm-cloud,” he carried off the shrieking Seeta as an
eagle bears its prey, mounting up aloft and flying with his burden
through the sky. The unhappy Seeta calls loudly upon Rama, and
bids the flowery bowers and trees and rivers all tell her Rama that
Ravana has stolen his Seeta from his home. In Rama’s time the
woods were inhabited by demons and monkeys. On returning and
ascertaining his great loss, Rama did not feel strong enough to
recover Seeta single-handed. He therefore entered into an alliance
with the monkeys. First, the monkey-king Sugriva dispatched
emissaries in all directions to ascertain where Seeta was concealed ;
and when the monkey-general Hunocnna7t (the Mars of India) ascer-
THE MAHABABATA. 99
tained that she was in a palace in Ceylon, Rama and all the allied
monkey forces marched down to the Coromandel coast, and, mak¬
ing a bridge by casting rocks into the sea, passed quickly into
Lanka. After fighting a few battles the Rakshasas (demons) were
defeated, Ravana was put to death by Rama, and Seeta rescued
from her palace prison. Rama will, however, have nothing to say
to his recovered wife until she has gone through “ the ordeal of
fire; ” but as she passed through the blazing pile unhurt, and
Brahma and other gods attested her fidelity, her husband once
more received her with affection, and, the term of exile over, the
whole party returned in happiness to Ayodhya. Such, in brief,
is the story of the Ramayana, which is spun out into details and
episodes of great length. It is read very extensively to listening
crowds in India, who believe every word, no matter how improba¬
ble, as we would the most authentic records of our own history or
our Holy Bible.
The Mahabarata is the second famous epic of India. We have
only room to say that it describes a contest between the two
branches of the Chundra, or Moon dynasty, for the sovereignty of
the Ganges territory. The “ Great War ” (as the word Mahabarata
expresses) is generally regarded as having taken place about two
hundred years before the siege of Troy.
Princes are enumerated as taking part in the struggle from the
Deccan, and the Indus, and even beyond the Indus, especially the
Yarases, thought to be Greeks. Fifty-six royal leaders were assem¬
bled on the field of battle, which raged for eighteen days with pro¬
digious slaughter — another proof of the division of India into
many separate States, though occasionally combined, as in this
poem, under the leadership of some great general on either side.
The contest was waged between the sons of Pandu, the deceased
Rajah, and their cousins the Kooroos, who denied their legitimacy
—a never-failing subject of dispute in Hindoo successions. It
ended in the victory of the Pandus ; but what they gained by arms
they lost through gaming. Yudisthira, the Agamemnon of the
poem, departs with his brothers and the beautiful Draupadi into
IOO TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
exile on the Himalayas. Their evil deeds prevailing, they drop

dead, one after another, by the way-side. Yudisthi'ra is the last,
and when Indra comes to admit him to Swarga (Paradise) he
demands to be accompanied by his faithful dog. The poem follows
the hero into the other world. Arrived in Indra’s paradise, and
finding his enemies there before him, with none of his party, he
refuses to stay, and, descending to the shades in quest of Draupadi
and his brothers, succeeds in rescuing them from torment. The
gods applaud his virtue, and he is permitted to convey himself
and all his party to Swarga. The hero of this poem is Krishna,
the great ally of the Pandus, and generally regarded as the eighth
incarnation of Vishnu. — Trevor's India, p. 52.
ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. IOI
CHAPTER III.
ARCHITECTURAL MAGNIFICENCE OF INDIA
' I 'HE missionary authorities of the Methodist Episcopal Church

-*• resolved, in the year 1854, to found a mission in India, and
they advertised during that year and the next for a man to go
forth and commence the work. The writer, after waiting in the
hope that some one else, better suited for the duty and less cum
bered with family cares, would answer to the call, offered himself
for the service. This involved one of the keenest trials through
which himself and wife had ever passed—no less than a separation
from their two elder boys. The necessity for this, in the case of
children over the age of seven years exposed to the climate and
moral influence in India, as well as the educational need, are all
understood.
Having no personal friends to whose care they could be in¬
trusted, they had to be placed at a boarding-school in the hands
of strangers. God only knows the feelings with which we
resigned them, fearing (what proved too true in the case of one
of them) that we might see them no more on earth ; but, so far as
we could understand, it was either this, or for our Church to fail of
her duty to perishing men in India. We understood that such
sacrifices were contemplated by the Head of the Church when he
instituted a missionary ministry for the salvation of the world.
He was well aware what this would involve to the souls of many
parents in the future, and therefore, to sustain them under the
peculiar cross, he had put on record one of his most glorious
promises. There can be no mistake as to the circumstances con¬
templated. “ Peter said, Lo, we have left all and followed thee.
And He said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, There is
no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or
children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive mani¬
fold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlast¬
ing.” With hearts bleeding at the sacrifice which we were called
to make, we clung to the precious and appropriate promise of our
divine Master, committed our little ones to his care, and went
forth to fulfill his commission to the best of our ability.
With my wife and two younger children I sailed from Boston or.
the 9th of April, 1856. I was instructed to proceed by way of
England, and there obtain from the secretaries of the different
missionary societies all the information available in regard to those
unoccupied portions of India where we might labor without in¬
terference with existing missions, “ to preach the Gospel, not
where Christ is named, lest we should build upon another man’s
foundation,” and there labor for the enlargement of the kingdom
of God.
Having attended to this duty, and obtained all the light that the
secretaries and returned missionaries could impart, I resolved to
proceed to Calcutta, and from that to move westward into the
heart of the country and examine the Valley of the Ganges.
We left Southampton on the 20th of August in the steamship
Pera. Just as we were departing, the consort ship of the same
line, the Ripon, came in with the mails and passengers from India,
and on board of her was the Queen of Oude, coming to place
before the British Queen her protest against the annexation of
Oude, and to plead for the restoration of the sovereignty to her
family.
Apart from the singularity of the fact that she was probably the
first lady of her race who had ever come to a western clime, her
presence there occasioned me no particular interest; yet, as God
looked down upon the objects of each, how much she and I, thus
meeting casually for a moment, really depended upon each other’s
movements ! Had she succeeded in her mission, I must neces¬
sarily have failed in mine, so far as our present mission field is
concerned, for I was unconsciously going to the kingdom which
she had ruled, and to the very capital whose gates she had left ajar
OUR RECEPTION IN INDIA. 103
five weeks before—gates that had been closed by Mohammedan

oigotry against Christianity for ages. Her success on this expe¬
dition would have closed them again indefinitely, and I should have
had to go elsewhere ; but He whose holy providence guided my
steps took care of the issues. She failed, and I succeeded, yet
not without “a great fight of afflictions,” as the sequel will show.
We landed at Calcutta on the 23d of September, and were most
cordially welcomed by the missionary brethren there, and aided by
their opinions and advice in regard to the unoccupied territory of
the country. We soon realized, in the brotherly kindness of their
intercourse, and the gladness with which they regarded the incom¬
ing of another mission, what real evangelical union, and what free¬
dom from sectarianism, exist among Christians in a heathen land.
Dr. Duff was especially kind to us. He seemed so thankful that
the Lord was sending more help to redeem the India he loved
so well, and for which he had labored so long and so faithfully.
As we parted from the great and good man, I little imagined that
within a year, counting us among the slain, he would write a
sort of biography of me, (in his work “ The Indian Rebellion,”) or
that I should live to thank him, at his own table, for the peculiar
piivilege of knowing what my friends would say of me when I was
dead. Yet so it proved.
Proceeding at once up the country, we reached the city of Agra,,
the seat of government for the North-west, and soon realized that
we were now amid the splendid evidences of the power and glory
of the “ Great Moguls.” This imperial city, and the adjoining one^
of Delhi, were full of those reminiscences, and the interest which
they at once awakened was something intense and peculiar.
We were in blissful ignorance of any cause for anxiety—knew
not what a volcano of wrath was quietly preparing beneath our
feet, or how surely the titled and decorated “ Nawabs,” whose
courteous salaams we returned, were thirsting for our blood, and
resolving to have it, too ; but we will let that subject rest here, until
we share with the reader our interest and delight as we survey some
of those magnificent, those matchless, monuments of Patan skill
and wealth with which we now found ourselves surrounded. This

will also give him a better idea than any thing else could do as to
what those imperial people risked in their desperate enterprise,
when pensions, palaces, titles, ancestral monuments, and mauso¬
leums, with all their gorgeous traditions, were the mighty stakes
ventured in the frantic and final struggle of their dynasty with a
superior civilization and the strength which accompanies it. We
were, though we knew it not, contemplating many of these glories
for the last time in which men could gaze in admiration upon
them, for most of them, save the Taj and the Kootub, were des¬
tined to destruction by the ruin which war was so soon to bring.
When we saw them again, one year afterward, “ the glory had
departed,” save in the cases given. The Taj, especially, seemed as
though self-protected by its own purity and loveliness ; even ravag¬
ing war respected it, friend and foe alike agreeing that its beauty
should remain unsullied forever.
The first permanent conquest by a Mohammedan sovereign in
India was that made by Mahmoud of Ghuznee in the year 1001.
Sixty-five rulers of that faith, during the following eight centuries,
tried to maintain their authority over the great Hindoo nations. It
may be doubted whether any part of the world was ever so cursed
by a line of bigoted, ferocious wretches as, with two or three excep¬
tions, were these Mohammedan despots of India during that time.
To many of them may be truly applied the terrible lines of Moore:
“ One of that saintly, murderous brood,
To carnage and the Koran given,
Who think through unbelievers’ blood
Lies their directest path to heaven;
One who will pause and kneel unshod
In the warm blood his hand hath poured,
To mutter o’er some text of God
Engraven on his reeking sword ;
Nay, who can coolly note the line,
The letters of those words divine,
To which his blade, with searching art,
Had sunk into its victim’s heart ! ”
And all this transacted by these “ bloody men ” under the pro¬
fessed sanction and authority of a holy and merciful God, whose
' .
Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen Shah Gezee, Emperor of Delhi, the Last of the Moguls
CHARACTER OF MOSLEM RULE. 107
special favor and reward they asserted awaited them in Paradise for
blasphemous cruelties like these ! The reference in the lines is to
their habit of engraving texts from the Koran upon their swords.
What millions, during the past eight centuries, have been destroyed
by Mohammedanism and Romanism in the name of religion, till
hi manity sighs to be relieved of their baneful presence, and the
true Christian looks forward solemnly to the awful hour when He
“ to whom vengeance belongeth ” will call “ the beast and the false
prophet ” to their dread account—partners in punishment as they
have been in guilt!
The character and cruelties of Popery recorded in Motley’s recent
histories are equaled in India’s records by those Moslem scourges,
Hyder Ali, Tippoo, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, and Aurungzebe.
The creed of the Koran is utterly unfit for civil government. It is
a system of moral and political bondage, sustained only by military
power and despotic rule, naturally corrupting those who adminis¬
ter it, while it has ever pauperized and demoralized the people who
have been subjected to its sway. The Moguls have done in India
what the Turks have accomplished in Asia Minor ; and yet, while
destroying and impoverishing, neither race have taken root in either
land. In the former the power of the Moguls crumbled to pieces,
and in the latter that of the Turks is now “ready to vanish away.”
The last century closed upon Shah Alum—the grandfather of the
monarch whose portrait we here present—engaged in a terrible
struggle with the Rohillas of the North and the Mahrattas of the
South. The long examples of perfidy and blood were then bearing
their fruit, and had made these once subject-races the remorseless
and inveterate enemies of the Mogul rule. Their power had been
rising as that of the Emperor was in its decadence. Destitute of
the means, which were once so abundant, to repress these conflicts,
the aged Emperor had to witness these fierce and powerful parties
contending with each other for the possession of his person and his
capital, and the power to rule in his name.
In 1785, Sindia, the Mahratta, became paramount; but a few
years after, while engaged in a war with Pertalo Sing, of Jeypoor,
/o8 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
advantage was taken of his absence by Gholan Kadir Kahn, the

Rohilla, to obtain possession of Delhi and the Emperor. This he
accomplished by the treachery of the Nazir, or chief eunuch, to
whom the management of the imperial establishment was intrusted.
The inmates of the palace were treated by the usurper with a
degree of malicious barbarity which it is hardly possible to con¬
ceive any human being could evince toward his fellow-creatures*
unless actually possessed by Satan.
After cruelties of almost every description had been practiced, to
extort from the members and retainers of the imperial family every
article of value that still remained in their possession, Gholan
Kadir continued to withhold from them even the necessaries of
life, so that several ladies perished of hunger, and others, mad¬
dened by suffering, committed suicide. The royal children were
compelled to perform the most humiliating offices; and when at last
the wretched Emperor ventured to remonstrate indignantly against
the atrocities he was thus compelled to witness, the fierce Rohilla
sprang at him with the fury of a wild beast, flung the venerable
monarch to the ground, knelt on his breast, and, with his dagger,
pierced his eye-balls through and through !
The return of Sindia terminated these terrible scenes. Gholan
Kadir fled, but was followed and captured by the Mahratta chief,,
who cut off his nose, ears, hands, and feet, and sent him in an iron
cage to the Emperor—a fearful, though not uncommon, example of
Asiatic retributive barbarity. He perished on the road, and his
accomplice, the treacherous Nazir, was condemned, and trodden to
death by an elephant—a mode of execution long practiced at Delhi.
The condition of the imperial family, though ameliorated,
remained barely tolerable during the supremacy of Sindia ; foi
the stated allowance for the support of the Emperor and his thirty
children, though liberal in its nominal amount, was so irregularly
paid that the imperial household often wanted the necessaries of
life.
The real authority of the Moguls had passed away, and it now
became a question, Who shall seize the fallen scepter—some one
TEE FALLING DYNASTY. 109
of these contending chiefs, or the English power, which had already

established itself in the South and East of the country ? The lat¬
ter alone had the ability to give peace to the distracted land, and,
at the same time, might be relied upon to grant the most generous
terms to the falling dynasty. Accordingly, on the 10th of Septem¬
ber, 1803, Shah Alum, the last actual possessor of the once mighty
throne of the Moguls, thankfully placed himself and his empire
under the protection of the British commander, Lord Lake, and
thus delivered himself from the cruelty and tyranny of his enemies,
The General, on his entrance to the palace, found the Emperor
u seated under a small tattered canopy, his person emaciated by
indigence and infirmity, his countenance disfigured by the loss of
his eyes, and bearing marks of extreme old age and settled melan¬
choly.” The arrangements made with him, under the directions
of the Marquis Wellesley, then English Governor ^General, were,
no doubt, far beyond in liberality what the poor old man could have
expected. Of this more hereafter, in its place.
The gigantic genius of Tamerlane, and the distinguished talents
of the great Akbar, with the magnificent taste of Jehan, have
thrown a sort of splendor over the crimes and follies of their
descendants ; and men kept reverence for the ruins of such great¬
ness, and for the ideas which we have all associated in our child¬
hood with the boundless wealth and glory suggested by the title of
“ The Great Moguls.”
Under the new rule India began to return to peace, and such
prosperity as was possible, with a still brighter day dawning upon
her. Shah Alum enjoyed his honors and emoluments till 1806,
when he was succeeded on his titular throne by his son, Shah
Akbar, who held it until 1836, when its last possessor—the man
whose portrait is here given—commenced his occupancy, and
retained it till 1857, when a mad and hopeless infatuation led him
to violate his treaty, and defy the power of the actual rulers of his
empire, and precipitated him from the height to which his ambition
had for a few weeks soared, into the depths of ignominious and
unpitied exile.
I IO TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
A few facts in explanation are necessary here. This monarch,

Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen, succeeded his father in 1836. The
father, at the instigation of one of his wives, the favorite Begum,
had done his best to deprive his son of his inheritance, and to have
her own son, Mirza Saleem, acknowledged as his successor by the
British Government. To this injustice that Government would
not consent; so his rights were protected, and he mounted the
throne of his ancestors.
The beautiful steel engraving on the opposite page gives a faith¬
ful picture of the wife, or, rather, one of the wives, of this old
gentleman—the last of “ The Great Moguls.” Her name is Zeenat
Mahal—the Ornament of the Palace—which was conferred on her
when she was married to the Emperor in 1833. She was then six¬
teen years of age,''and he was sixty—a disparity by no means
uncommon in a land where polygamy prevails, and where such
prejudice exists against marrying a widow, no matter how young
or fair she may be. Her sexagenarian husband had other wives
than Zeenat Mahal, but the beautiful and ambitious girl soon
gained a complete control over the mind and heart of her aged
lord, and this was made all the more influential when she had
added the claims of a mother to the attractions of a wife.
Then commenced those intrigues, which she carried on up to the
year 1856, to secure the succession to the throne for her child,
Mirza Jumma Bukht, to the exclusion of Mirza Furruk-oo-deen,
the elder son, whose prior claims the English Government recog¬
nized and sustained, as in duty bound. Her hostility to British
influence, therefore, became intense ; and her hopes of gaining her
object were identified with the efforts of the Sepoy conspiracy to
overthrow the English power in India. Poor lady ! she utterly
failed ; and she and the son for whom every thing was risked are
to-day wanderers in a foreign land, with the bitter reflection of the
utter desolation which has overwhelmed the dynasty of which she
thus became the last empress. She is the daughter of the Rajah
of Bhatneer, a territory about one hundred and eighty miles north¬
west of Delhi.
I~7 '—I
NAT MAHAL. EMPRESS OF DLL
THE KHASS AND THE MOGUL SINK TOGETHER IIJ
The pictures of the Emperor and Empress here presented were

painted on ivory by the Court portrait-painter twenty years ago,
and are beautiful specimens of native art, and very correct like¬
nesses of them both.
We will now turn from these royal persons to their home, and
some of their splendid surroundings ; and, first of all, let us look at
■heir historical and beautiful Dewan Khass. There was something
remarkably significant in the fact that the magnificent and famous
Audience Hall of the Moguls should sink to ruin with the dynasty
which had so long adorned it. For two hundred and fifty years
they had shed luster upon each other; but, when we remember
the crimes which had so long cried to Heaven for vengeance from
the polished floor of this marble hall, it did seem fitting that the
Most High, who ruleth in the kingdoms of men, in the hour when
their judgment came should, with the same blow, strike down both
the Mogul line and their magnificent memorial. When their cup
of iniquity was full, and their hands were red with Christian blood,
then came the day of vengeance.
It was my lot to be a witness of the wondrous ruin—to behold
this imperial head of Oriental Mohammedanism, this “ Light of the
Faith,” as he was designated, sinking into utter ruin and darkness;
“Falling, like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.”
When I reached the Mogul capital of Hindustan, in the autumn

of 1856, the Dewan Khass was still the center of state and pagean¬
try, and its imperial master living in Oriental style on his salary of
eighteen lakhs of rupees—$900,000 gold—per annum. Within one
year from that day I was again in the Dewan Khass, where he
used to sit in his gorgeous array, to witness his trial, and that of
his princes and nobles, before a military commission of British
officers, by whom he was condemned to be banished as a felon to
a foreign shore for the remnant of his miserable life, there to sub¬
sist on a convict’s allowance ; and within a few weeks after, when
I again visited the once magnificent Dewan Khass, I found it
despoiled of its glory, its marble halls and columns whitewashed,
i 14 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
and the whole turned into a hospital for sick soldiers! Has the
world ever witnessed a ruin more prompt, more complete, more
amazing than this ?
For seven hundred years the Mohammedan dynasties—of whom
this wretched old man was the last representative—had tried to
hold the reins of power over India, alien alike in race, language,
and religion from the people whom they ruled. Mahmoud of
Ghuznee—a contemporary for five years of William the Con¬
queror—was the founder of this line of monarchs ; and yet such
was their character, that when these long centuries of selfish and
bigoted misrule were ending, and this old man was in circumstances
that might well have evoked compassion and sympathy from those
around him, he was allowed to sink out of sight, not only without
regret or condolence, but amid the expressed sense of relief of the
race over whom he and his ancestors had dominated—a people
with whom they had ever refused to amalgamate, whom they had
never tried to conciliate, and from whom his race never realized
either loyalty or affection.
It may be doubted if any royal line on earth has had such a sad
record to present to the historian. Of the sixty-five monarchs who
thus conquered and ruled India, only twenty-seven of the numbet
died a natural death ; all the rest were either exiled, killed in battle,
or assassinated, while the average length of each reign was only
eleven years. Truly has it been said, “Delhi has been the stage
of greatness—men the actors, ambition the prompter, and centuries
the audience.” It was my opportunity to come in at the close, and
behold destruction drawing the curtain over the scene, and writing
upon it the realized sentence, and the warning to the nations :
“Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them
in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings:
be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord wfifb fear,
and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and
ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.”
This was all the more significant, because the men by whose
instrumentality God wrought out his purposes were the very race
ARCHITECTURAL TASTE OF THE EMPERORS. 115
whose new monarchy opened with their own in the tenth century ;
but a race who received the faith which those Mohammedans
repelled and persecuted, and who have consequently risen to
supremacy among the nations ; so that, while one portion of them
rules the New World, the other inherits the empire of the fallen
Moguls, and are there with confidence expecting that the promise
of the Almighty shall ere long be made as true as his threatenings
now consummated : “ Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen
for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy
possession.” How expressively does the history of these eight hun¬
dred years declare, “ Blessed are all they that put their trust in
Him!”
True religion was the only thing this guilty but magnificent race
needed for perpetuity. No dynasty ever had a grander oppor¬
tunity than they—a rich land, the sixth of the world’s population,
boundless wealth, almost a millennium of time for the trial, with a
civilization all their own, and a splendid cultivated taste, which they
had the will and the ability to gratify to the utmost, as its memori¬
als in Agra, and Delhi, and elsewhere, attest, to the surprise and
delight of the traveler and tourist from many lands.
The Emperor Shah Jehan—A. D. 1627—alone, for his portion,
laid out in Alipoor the celebrated Gardens of Shalimar, at a cost
of $5,000,000. They were about two miles and a half in cir¬
cumference, and were almost like Paradise in beauty. He then
built the world-renowned Taj Mahal, expending upon it nearly
$60,000,000, the present value of money. He also erected the
Dewan Khass, the most gorgeous audience hall in the East. This
latter we here illustrate.
This imperial hall was a gorgeous accessory of the Palace of
Delhi. The front opened on a large quadrangle, and the whole
stood in what was once a garden, extremely rich and beautiful.
This unique pavilion rested on an elevated terrace, and was formed
entirely of white marble. It was one hundred and fifty feet long,
and forty in breadth, having a graceful cupola at each angle. The
roof was supported on colonnades of marble pillars. The solid and
1
polished marble has been worked into its forms with as much deli¬
cacy as though it had been wax, and its whole surface, pillars,
wads, arches, and roof, and even the pavement, was inlaid with the
richest, most profuse, and exquisite designs in foliage and aia-
besque ; the fruits and flowers being represented in sections of
gems, such as amethysts, carnelian, blood-stone, garnet, topaz,
lapis lazuli, green serpentine, and various colored crystals. A bor¬
dering ran around the walls and columns similarly decorated, inlaid
with inscriptions in Arabic from the Koran. The whole had the
appearance of some rich work from the loom, in which a brilliant
pattern is woven on a pure white ground, the tracery of rare and
cunning artists. Purdahs (curtains) of all colors and designs hung
from the crenated arches on the outside to exclude the glare and
heat. (These purdahs are omitted in the engraving for the sake
of the interior view.)
In the center of the hall stood the Takt Taous, or Peacock
Throne, of Shah Jehan, on the erection of which Price’s History
tells us he expended thirty millions sterling, ($150,000,000.) This
wondrous work of art was ascended by steps of silver, at the sum¬
mit of which rose a massive seat of pure gold, with a canopy of the
same metal inlaid with jewels. The chief feature of the design
was a peacock with his tail spread, the natural colors being repre¬
sented by pure gems. A vine also was introduced into the design,
the leaves and fruit of which were of precious stones, whose rays
were reflected from mirrors set in large pearls. Beneath all this
“glory” sat the Great Mogul.
No wonder that the fame of this wealth and extravagance should
attract the notice and cupidity of a man like Nadir Shah, the Per¬
sian, who, in 1739, invaded Hindustan, and carried off this Pea¬
cock Throne among his trophies. His estimate of it may be
understood from the fact that he had a tent constructed to contain
it, the outside of which was covered with scarlet broadcloth and
the inside of violet-colored satin, on which birds and beasts, trees
and flowers, were depicted in precious stones. On either side of
the Peacock Throne a screen was extended, adorned with the fig-
OS-A/0SC7&P//a/i/' 7Z7SS/W-
THE BLUNDER IN LALLA ROOKH. 119
ures of two angels, also represented in various colored gems.

Even the tent-poles were adorned with jewels, and the pins were
of massive gold. The whole formed a load for several elephants.
The gorgeous trophy was afterward broken up by Adil Shah, the
nephew and successor of the captor. Its place in the Dewan
Khass was afterward supplied by another of inferior value, and by
the Crystal Throne, which the writer saw in 1857.
Inside of the entrance of the Khass, inscribed in black letters
upon a slab of alabaster, is the Persian couplet, in the hyperbol¬
ical language of the East, quoted by Moore in his Lalla Rookh,
“ If there be an elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this.”
Moore introduces it in “ The Light of the Harem,” where the

Emperor Jehangeer and his beloved and beautiful Nourmahal, in
their visit to the Valley of Cashmere, happen to fall into a sort of
lovers’ quarrel, and in the evening she vails herself, and takes her
place among the beautiful female singers who have come to enter¬
tain the reclining Emperor—one of whom seems disposed to avail
herself of the opportunity to attract the wounded and wandering
love of Jehangeer in a wrong direction, when the vailed Nourma¬
hal, at the pause, strikes her lute and sings sweetly :
“ There’s a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told,

When two that are linked in one heavenly tie,
With heart never changing, and brow never cold,
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die!
One hour of a passion so sacred is worth
Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss;
And O, if there be an elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this ! ”
Jehangeer’s heart is touched, and there ensues a happy recon¬

ciliation. Unfortunately, however, for the poet, there is an anach¬
ronism here, and a violation of historic truth, as well as an inade¬
quate translation, for Shah Jehan, who built the Dewan Khass, and
inscribed the words on the slab of alabaster over the entrance, was
the son of Jehangeer, and it is not likely that his father’s wife
could quote the words before they were composed. Moore’s
120 THE LAND OF THE VEDa.
picture of Jehangeer and Nourmahal is the very reverse of wha-

truthful history, corroborated by the personal observation of Sn
Thomas Roe, tells us of that cruel sot and his talented but unprin¬
cipled Empress. And she could cherish but little true love for
the man that had her noble husband, Sheer Afghan, so basely
assassinated in order to gain possession of her person.
It is a pity that poetry should be so often perverted and its ele¬
gancies made to adorn the unworthy and the vile. Nevertheless,
we know that “the judgments of God are according to truth,” and
we see here that no wealth, or power, or magnificence, or human
adulation, can shield the guilty when the inevitable hand of the
Divine verdict has come.
“Elysium” is too European, too Northern, a term to express
Shah Jehan’s word. But Moore, for a good part of his life a
Romanist, may have thought the term over-biblical for his use, and
chose the heathen phrase “ elysium ” in preference to the plain
rendering of the word. The inscription runs exactly as follows,
expressed in English letters :
“ Ugur Firdousi ba-roo-i-zameen ust,

Ameen ust, ameen ust, ameen ust.”
And the rendering is :
“If there be a paradise on the face of the earth,

This is it, this is it, this is it ! ”
(The original Persian may be found quoted by Dr. Clarke in his

Commentary on Nehemiah i, verse 8.)
In or near Persia was the region of Paradise, and the fame of
the first garden, planted by God, near the banks of the Euphrates,
lingered as a tradition in its own vicinity for four thousand years,
and led to those imitations of it in the “ paradises of Oriental des¬
pots.” Most of the invasions of India were from the regions of
the ancient Eden, and the invaders carred with them their ideas
of paradise to the land of the Ganges, and tried to reproduce them
there. This Dewan Khass was the central object of the most
costly one ever planted in India, or perhaps anywhere else.
PARADISE AND ITS PRIVILEGES. 121
Standing in the midst of it, how easy it seemed to transport

one’s self in thought to that similar scene mentioned in the book of
Esther i, 4, 7, where, nearly five hundred years before Christ,
Ahasuerus, the Persian, “ who reigned from India even unto Ethi¬
opia,” displayed his magnificence during the seven days’ feast “ in
the court of the garden of the king’s palace, where were white,
green, and blue hangings fastened with cords of fine linen and
purple to silver rings and pillars of marble ; the beds [or seats]
were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and
white, and black marble.” Verses 5 and 6.
As Dr. Clarke has remarked, the term paradise “ is applied to
denote splendid apartments, as well as fine gardens ; in a word, any¬
place of pleasure and delight.” And is not this exactly the idea
of the paradise described in the twenty-first and twenty-second
chapters of Revelation — the golden city, with its jasper walls
and gates of pearl, in the midst of the garden of God, with the
river of the water of life, clear as crystal, and the tree of life yield¬
ing its fruit every month ?
In speaking of it Jesus says, “ In my Father’s house are many
mansions.” “ I go to prepare a place for you.” “They shall walk
with me in white.” “ To him that overcometh will I give to eat of
the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
H ow Oriental are all these thoughts ! I have seen the princely
Asiatic host, with his guests around him in their white flowing
robes, moving through his beautiful garden, as he entertained them
with his fellowship, with music, and the freest use of the bounties
around them ; and the earthly scene has been a vivid image of
what the heavenly paradise will be to the redeemed, when they
shall find themselves at last in the garden of God, with Jesus as
their host, having the right of entrance to his glorious audience
hall, and the amazing honor of sitting down with him upon his
sapphire throne, in the presence of the host of heaven! See
Exod. xxiv, 10; Ezek. i, 26; Rev. iii, 21.
The crown worn on the head of the Great Mogul was worthy of
the Khass and the throne on which he sat. It was made by the
great Akbar, in the fashion of that worn by the Persian kings, and
was of extraordinary beauty and magnificence. It had twelve
points, each surmounted by a diamond of fhe purest water, while
the central point terminated in a single pearl of extraordinary size,
the whole, including many valuable rubies, being estimated at a
cost equivalent to j£2,070,000 sterling, or $10,350,000. Add one
thing more, the Koh-i-noor diamond, on his brow, and you have
the Mogul “in all his glory,” as he sat on the Peacock Throne in
his Dewan Khass, surrounded by Mohammedan princes, by tur-
baned and jeweled rajahs, amid splendor which only “the gorgeous
East ” could furnish, and the fame of which seemed to the poor
courts of Europe of that day like a tale of the Arabia?i Nights.
Soon the Portuguese were found making their way around “ the
Cape of Storms” into the Indian Ocean, and thence to the capital
of the Moguls. James I. of England, in 1615, sent as his embas¬
sador Sir Thomas Roe whose chaplain has left us a record of the
embassy in A Voyage to the East Indies. Sir Thomas felt keenly
the contrast afforded by the unpretending character of the presents
and retinue with which his royal master had provided him, to the
magnificent ceremonial which he daily witnessed, and in which he
was permitted to take part. He remained two years at Jehan-
geer’s Court. One of the greatest displays occurred on the Em¬
peror’s birthday, when, amid the ceremonies, the royal person was
weighed in golden scales twelve times against gold, silver, per¬
fumes, and other valuables, the whole of which were then divided
among the spectators. His description of the splendors of the
scene sounds like the veriest romance.
On one of the pillars of the Audience Hall is shown the mark of
the dagger of the Hindoo Prince of Chittore, who, in the very pres¬
ence of the Emperor, stabbed to the heart one of the Mohammedan
ministers, who made use of some disrespectful language toward him.
On being asked how he presumed to do this in tne presence of his
sovereign, he answered in almost the very words of Roderic Dhu,
“ I right my wrongs where they are given,

Though it were in the court of Heaven.”
ghing of the Emperor in the Dewan Khass.
INQUISITION FOR BLOOD. 125
Alas ! what scenes of perfidy and blood have been witnessed

within the walls of this Dewan Khass ! Sleeman and others have
narrated some of them, but the half has not been told, and all are
only known to Heaven. The last of them, in 1857, exhausted the
patience of the Almighty, and the dynasty and their Khass were
destroyed by that “stone” which then fell upon them, and ground
them to powder.
Here in this hall, which he himself had built, sat the great Shah
Jehan, obliged to receive the insolent commands of his own grand¬
son, Mohammed, when flushed with victory, and to offer him the
throne, merely to disappoint the expectations of the youth’s rebel
father. Here sat Aurungzebe—Shah Jehan’s fourth son—when
he ordered the assassination of his own brothers, Dara and Morad,
and the imprisonment and destruction by slow poison of his own
son Mohammed, who had so often fought bravely by his side in
battle. Here, too, stood in chains the graceful Sooleeman, to
receive his sentence of death, with his poor young brother, Sipeher
Shekoh, who had shared all his father’s toils and dangers, and wit¬
nessed his brutal murder. And here sat the handsome, but effem¬
inate, Mohammed Shah, in March, 1739, bandying compliments
with his ferocious conqueror, Nadir Shah, the Persian King, who
had destroyed his armies, plundered his treasury, appropriated his
throne, and ordered the murder of nearly one hundred thousand of
the helpless inhabitants of his capital, men, women, and children,
in a general massacre. The bodies of these people lay unburied
in the streets, tainting the air, while the two sovereigns sat here
sipping their coffee in the presence of their courtiers, and swearing
to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God, prophet, and
Koran !
Sleeman relates that on this occasion the coffee was brought
into the Dewan Khass upon a golden salver, and delivered to the
two sovereigns by the most polished gentleman of Mohammed
Shah’s Court. Precedence and public courtesies are, in the East,
managed and respected with a tenacity and importance that to us
of the Western world seems positively ridiculous.
Nevertheless, they are vital to the Oriental, and life or death

have often hung upon their manifestations. All present on this
occasion felt its significance. The movements of the officer, as he
entered the gorgeous apartment, amid the splendid trains of the
two Emperors, were watched with great anxiety ; if he presented
the coffee first to his own master, the furious conqueror, before
whom the sovereign of India and all his courtiers trembled, might
order him to instant execution ; if he presented it to Nadir first,
he would certainly insult his own sovereign out of fear of the
stranger. To the astonishment of all, he walked up, with a steady
step, direct to his own master. “ I cannot,” said he, “ aspire to the
honor of presenting the cup to the king of kings, your majesty’s
honored guest, nor would your majesty wish that any hand but
your own should do so.” The Emperor took the cup from the
golden salver, and presented it to Nadir Shah, who said with a
smile as he took it: “ Had all your officers known and done their
duty like this man, you had never, my good cousin, seen me and
my Kuzul Bashus at Delhi. Take care of him for your own sake,
and get around you as many like him as you can.”
All these are now dust—the oppressor and the oppressed gone
to their account before God ; but the spirit of bigotry, and reckless¬
ness of human suffering and life, engendered by the Moslem creed,
clung to the place until its gems ceased to shine, and its glory was
extinguished forever. For here, too, sat its last occupant—this
man whose portrait we present, Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen—on the
12th of May, 1857, and issued those orders under which England’s
embassador and his chaplain, with every Christian whom they
could find in Delhi, male and female, native or European, were
butchered amid barbarities the enormity of which has never been
exceeded by any of the edicts of cruelty which have gone forth,
even from the Dewan Khass.
Humanity heaves a sigh of relief to know that this is the last.
The house of Tamerlane is no more ; their Dewan Khass is in
ruins ; their pomp, and glory, and power, have gone down to the
grave forever.
The Taj Mahal viewed from the River Jumna.
THE FIRST SIGHT OF THE TAJ. 129
From these, with all their crimes, changes, and sufferings, we

turn now to the peaceful and lovely monument which is India’s
architectural glory, and one of earth’s great wonders—the exist¬
ence of which is probably the only valid apology remaining for the
vast revenues squandered by these irresponsible despots during so
many hundred years.
About six miles before the traveler reaches the city of Agra the
dome and minarets of the world-renowned Taj Mahal burst upon
his view from behind a grove of fruit-trees near the road. The
effect is wonderful! The long-anticipated pleasure of beholding
earth’s most beautiful shrine is now within his reach, and the grat¬
ified and delighted sight rests upon this first view of its harmony
of parts, its faultless congregation of architectural beauties, with a
kind of ecstasy. Of the thousands who have traveled far to gaze
upon it, it may safely be asserted that not one of the number has
been disappointed in the examination of its wondrous beauty. The
Queen of Sheba would probably have admitted, had she seen it,,
that the “ half had not been told her.”
We first look at it from the north side, on the river bank, where
the scene is fully presented. The building to the right of the Taj
is a Mosque for religious services, and that to the left is a Travelers’'
Rest House, where visitors can be accommodated. We next go
around to the gate of entrance on the other side. The central
avenue runs from the gate to the Taj, as shown in the steel engrav¬
ing, with a system of fountains, eighty-four in number, the entire
length, having a marble reservoir in the middle about forty feet
square, in which are five additional fountains, one in the center,,
and one at each corner. On either side of this beautiful sheet of
water, into which are falling the silvery jets of spray from the fount¬
ains, are rows of dark Italian cypress, significant of the great design
of the shrine. The river Jumna flows mildly by, as the garden is
on its banks, and the birds, encouraged by the delicious coolness
and shade of the place, forget their usual lassitude, and pour forth
their songs, while the odor of roses, and of the orange, and lemon,,
and tamarind trees, perfume the air.
[30 TILE LAND OF THE VEDA.
Amid all this loveliness the Taj rises before your view, upon an
elevated terrace of white and yellow marble, about thirty feet in
height, and having a graceful minaret at each corner. On either
side are the beautiful Mosque and the Rest House, facing inward,
and corresponding exactly with each other in size, design, and
-execution. That on the left side is the one used for service, as it
allows the faces of the worshipers to be set toward the tomb* of
their prophet, to the west, at Mecca. The one to the right is used
for the accommodation of visitors who come from various parts of
the world to enjoy this great sight, and who here receive free quar¬
ters as long as they choose to remain.
From the center of this great platform springs up the Taj itself.
A detailed description of its general appearance is rendered unnec¬
essary, as our readers have that before them in the beautiful
engraving here given. The mausoleum itself, the terrace upon
which it stands, and the minarets, are all formed of the finest white
marble, inlaid with precious stones. The marble was brought from
the Jeypore territory, a distance of nearly three hundred miles,
and the sandstone for the walls, from Dholepore and Futtehpore
Secree. A Persian manuscript, preserved in the Taj, professes to
give a full account of the stones and materials used in its construc¬
tion. The white marble was brought from Jeypore, the yellow
marble from the Nerbudda, the black from Charkoh, crystal from
China, jasper from the Punjab, carnelian from Bagdad, turquoises
from Thibet, agate from Yemen, lapis lazuli from Ceylon, diamonds
from Punah, rockspar from the Nerbudda, loadstone from Gwalior,
amethyst and onyx from Persia, chalcedony from Villiat, and sap¬
phires from Lanka—and this does not exhaust the list.
The dome, “shining like an enchanted castle of burnished
silver,” is seventy feet in diameter, the Taj itself is two hundred
and forty-five feet in altitude, and the cullice, or golden spire on
the summit, is thirty feet more, making a height of two hundred
and seventy-five feet from the terrace to the golden crescent.
It is asserted that the whole of the Koran is inlaid upon tne
building in the Arabic language, the letters being beautifully formed
-JtUSlUL -RqUAADStN-SC
TEE TAJ A MAUSOLEUM. 133
in black marble on the outside, and in precious stones within.
Nearly all the external ornamentation which the reader sees in the
engraving are these texts.
The writer’s earnest desire is, that his description may in some
measure be worthy of the pictures ; yet, though conscious of
having done his best, and venturing to assert that he has here
brought together the most complete account of the Taj that’ has
yet appeared, still he realizes to himself how tame and imperfect is
any effort to convey to those who never had the privilege of seeing
it an adequate idea of what its beauty really is, or of the effect it
produces upon the mind of the beholder as he stands within its
sacred inclosure and realizes its loveliness as fully displayed before
him. Like piety, or like heaven, it may be said of the beauty of
the Taj, that “ no man knoweth it save him that receiveth it.” Let
our readers judge of this enthusiasm by the views before them, and
by what follows.
The beautiful wood-cut opposite, presenting the view of the gate
of the Taj, and the steel engraving which follows, are both made
from photographs of the originals, taken in India, so that our
readers may be assured that they have here before them the most
perfect and worthy representation of this matchless structure that
has ever appeared.
The Taj is a mausoleum, built by the Great Mogul, Shah Jehan,
over his beautiful Empress. It is situated in the midst of a garden
of vast extent and beauty, three miles from Agra. The entrance
to the garden is through the gateway here shown. This superb
entrance is of red sandstone, inlaid with ornaments and with texts
from the Koran in white marble, and is itself a palace, both as
regards its magnitude and its decoration. The lofty walls that
surround the garden are of the same material, having arched colon¬
nades running around the interior, and giving an air of magnifi¬
cence to the whole in closure. The garden is laid out with rich
taste. Its paths are paved with slabs of freestone, arranged in
fanciful devices. Noble trees, affording a delightful shade and
pleasant walks, even in the middle of the day, are planted in sufifi-
J 34 THE LAND OF TIIE VEDA.
cient number through the various spaces, while the fruit-trees, with
the graceful palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo, mingle
their foliage, and are ornamented by the sweet-scented tamarind
and by flowers of the loveliest hue, which bloom in profusion
around.
It is difficult to determine whether the exterior or the interior is
the more fascinating; each has its own matchless claim, and each is
perfect in its loveliness. Externally, the best times to see the Taj
are by sunrise or by moonlight. The midday sun shining upon its
polished surface is too brilliant for the eye to bear with satisfaction :
for a position from whence to view it, the gallery on the top of
the entrance-gate inside is decidedly the best point of observation.
An hour before the sun rises you may see persons taking their
places in that gallery, and there, elevated about sixty feet, they
wait for the opening day, and the effect produced is thus well
described : “ The gray light of morning had not yet appeared when
we reached the Taj and made our way up to the top of the gate, to
look upon it as it gradually grew into shape and form at the bid¬
ding of the rising sun. The moon had just hidden her face beneath
the western horizon, and the darkness was at its deepest, presaging
the approaching break of day. We looked down upon the immense
inclosure crowded with trees mingled together in one undistin-
guishable mass, gently surging and moaning in the night breeze.
Above rose, apparently in the distance, a huge gray-blue mass,,
without shape or form, which rested like a cloud on the gloomy sea
of foliage. Soon a faint glimmer of light appeared in the eastern
horizon ; as the darkness fled away before its gradually increasing-
power, the cloud changed first to a light blue, and then developed
into shape and proportion ; and the minarets, and the cupolas, and
dome defined themselves in clearer lines upon the still dark sky
beyond. Soon the first rosy tint of the dawn appeared, and as if
by magic the whole assumed a roseate hue, which increased as the
sun made its appearance, and the Taj stood before us, dazzlingly
brilliant in the purest white, absolutely perfect in its fairy propor¬
tions. It is impossible to describe it. I had heard of perfection.
TAJ MAHAL -AGRA.
THE TAJ SEEN BY MOONLIGHT. 137
of outline and of graceful symmetry of proportion, but never real¬
ized the true meaning of the words until the morning when I
watched the Taj burst into loveliness at the touch of the sun’s
magic wand.”
Under the softened light of the moon the beautiful structure
develops fresh beauties. The dazzling effect has ceased, and you
gaze upon every part of it as it appears bathed in a soft amber
light that seems to enter your own soul, and impart its peace and
serenity till you wonder that outside these walls there can be a
world of sin, and strife, and sorrow. You are conscious of aban¬
doning yourself to the delightful, if brief, enjoyment of that poetic
and mental peace which the charming scene was designed to pro¬
duce upon the beholder.
Let us now enter the wonderful shrine itself, and gaze upon
its internal beauty. Before entering the central hall we descend
to the vault below, where the real sarcophagi are, in which lie the
remains of the Emperor and Empress. Her tomb occupies the
very center, and his is by her side. The light is made to fall
directly upon her tomb, which is of white marble and beautifully
decorated. But the especial splendor is reserved for the tombs in
the rotunda above, directly over these, and which, as it were, offi¬
cially represent them.
We ascend to them, and stand amid a scene of architectural
glory which has no equal on earth. Above us rises the lofty dome,
far up into the dim distance. The floor on which we tread is of
polished marble and jasper, ornamented with a wainscoating of
sculptured marble tablets inlaid with flowers formed of precious
stones. Around are windows or screens of marble filigree, richly
wrought in various patterns, which admit a faint and delicate
illumination—what Ritualists would love to call “a dim, religious
light ”—into the gorgeous apartment. In the center are the two
tombs, surrounded by a magnificent octagonal screen about six feet
high, with doors on the sides. The open tracery in this white
marble screen is wrought into beautiful flowers, such as lilies,
irises, and others, and the borders of the screen are inlaid with
precious stones, representing flowers, executed with such wonder¬

ful perfection that the forms wave as in nature, and the hues and
shades of the stems, leaves, and flowers appear as real almost as
the beauties which they represent.
These ornamental designs are so carefully and exquisitely exe¬
cuted that several of the flowers have as many as eighty different
stones entering into their composition, all polished uniform with
the marble, into which they are so delicately inserted that you can
hardly trace their joinings. They seem as though they had grown
there, instead of being separately prepared and placed in their
positions by the hands of the “ cunning workman,” who designed
and executed this imperishable and magnificent memorial of human
love.
But the richest work of all is on the cenotaph of the Empress
within the screen. Upon her tomb—according to universal Moham¬
medan usage—is a slate or tablet of marble, while on the Emperor’s
is a small box representing a pen-holder. These always distin¬
guish a man’s or a woman’s grave among these people ; the idea
being that a woman’s heart is a tablet on which lordly man can
write whatever pleases him best. And this mark of feminine
inferiority was not spared even the beloved occupant of the Taj
Mahal.
But her tomb—how beautiful! The snow-white marble is inlaid
with flowers so delicately formed that they look like embroidery on
white satin, so exquisitely is the mosaic executed in carnelian,
blood-stone, agates, jasper, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and other precious
stones. Thirty-five different specimens of carnelian are employed
in forming a single leaf of a carnation ; and in one flower, not
larger than a silver dollar, as many as twenty-three different stones
can be counted. Yet these are but specimens of the beauties that
are spread in unparalleled profusion over this entire chamber.
Indeed, Long asserts that he found one flower upon her tomb to
be composed of no less than three hundred different stones.
Her name and date of death, with her virtuous qualities, are
recorded in the same costly manner, in gems of Arabic—the sacred
REMARKABLE EFFECT OF SOFT MUSIC. 139
language of the Mohammedans—on the side of her tomb. There

are other inscriptions upon it, which we will hereafter refer to when
we come to examine who this lady was that was thus honored in
death beyond all her sex.
The Emperor’s tomb is plainer than the other, has no passages
from the Koran, but merely a similar mosaic work of flowers, and
his name, with the date of his death, upon it.
Over all this richness and beauty rises the magnificent dome,
which is so constructed as to contain an echo more pure, and pro¬
longed, and harmonious than any other in the world, so far as
known. A competent judge has declared, “Of all the complicated
music ever heard on earth, that of a flute played gently in the vault
below, where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose,
as the sound rises to the dome amid a hundred arched alcoves
around, and descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who
sit or recline on the cenotaphs above, is perhaps the finest to an
inartificial ear. We feel as if it were from heaven, and breathed
by angels. It is to the ear what the building itself is to the eye ;
but unhappily it cannot, like the building, live in our recollections.
All that we can in after life remember is, that it was heavenly and
produced heavenly emotions.” An enthusiast thus more glowingly
describes it: “Now take your seat upon the marble pavement
beside the upper tombs, and send your companion to the vault
underneath to run slowly over the notes of his flute or guitar.
Was ever melody like this ? It haunts the air above and around.
It distills in showers upon the polished marble. It condenses into
the mild shadows, and sublimes into the softened, hallowed light
of the dome. It rises, it falls ; it swims mockingly, meltingly
around. It is the very element with which sweet dreams are
builded. It is the melancholy echo of the past—it is the bright,
delicate harping of the future. It is the atmosphere breathed by
Ariel, and playing around the fountain of Chindara. It is the spirit
of the Taj, the voice of inspired love, which called into being this
peerless wonder of the world, and elaborated its symmetry and
composed its harmony, and, eddying around its young minarets
and domes, blended them without a line into the azure of

immensity.”
Let us imagine, if we can, the effect produced here when the
funeral dirge was chanted over the tomb of the lovely Empress, and
the answering echoes, in the pauses of the strains, would seem to
fall like the responses of angel choirs in paradise!
Princely provision was made by the gifted originator of the Taj
for its care and services. The light that fell upon that tomb day
and night was from perfumed oil in golden lamps; fresh gar¬
lands of nature’s flowers were laid upon it daily; Mogul musicians
furnished appropriate music ; five times in each twenty-four hours
the Muezzin’s cry to prayers resounded from these minarets; and a
•eunuch of high station, with two thousand Sepoys under his orders,
held watch and ward without ceasing over the entire place and all
its approaches. None but men of Mohammedan faith were per¬
mitted to come within these precincts, or to draw near her tomb ;
and the entire shrine was by the Emperor’s orders expressly held
sacred from the approach of any Christian foot.
Arrangements were made for occasionally exhibiting its loveli¬
ness by light adequate to bring out its perfect beauty. Rests were
provided on the eight corners of the shrine for blue or Bengal
lights, and when these were simultaneously fired, as the writer has
seen them, the effect was magical. The candles had been pre¬
viously extinguished and the building left in total darkness, when,
at the signal, the brilliant illumination burst forth, and every point
and ornament, even to the top of the rich dome itself, was dis¬
played more gloriously than the light of day could ever have exhib¬
ited their rich colors. The inlaid ornamentation and filagree of
the scenes, now like transparent and delicate lace-work, all seemed,
to the astonished vision, like a palace of enchantment, and the
mind of the beholder was awed into homage of that rare intellect
which could devise and execute this the most beautiful monument
on which the human eye can ever gaze on earth!
Perhaps no one has ever rendered such perfect justice to the
beauty of this mausoleum as the unnamed author quoted by
TEE TAJ MATCHLESS. 141
Stocqueler. He thus sketches it: “I have been to visit the Taj.

I have returned full of emotion. My mind is enriched with visions
of ideal beauty. When first I approached the Taj, eleven years
ago, I was disappointed. In after days, when my admiration for
the loveliness of this building had grown into a passion, I
often inquired why this should have been? And the only answer
I can find is, that the symmetry is too perfect to strike at first. It
meets you as the most natural of objects. It, therefore, does not
startle, and you return from it disappointed that you have not been
startled. But it grows upon you in all the harmony of its propor¬
tions, in all the exquisite delicacy of its adornment, and at each
glance some fresh beauty or grace is developed. And, besides, it
stands so much alone in the world of beauty. Imagination has
never conceived a second Taj, nor had any thing similar ever before
occurred to it.
“View the Taj at a distance! It is as the spirit of some happy
dream, dwelling dim, but pure, upon the horizon of your hope, and
reigning in virgin supremacy over the visible circle of the earth and
sky. Approach it nearer, and its grandeur appears unlessened by
the acuteness of its fabric, and swelling in all its fresh and fairy har¬
mony until you are at a loss for feelings worthy of its presence.
Approach still nearer, and that which, as a whole, has proved so
charming, is found to be equally exquisite in the minutest detail.
Here are no mere touches for distant effect. Here is no need to
place the beholder in a particular spot to cast a partial light upon
the performance; the work which dazzles with its elegance at the
coup d'ceil will bear the scrutiny of the miscroscope ; the sculpture
of the panels, the fretwork and mosaic of the screen, the elegance
of the marble pavement, the perfect finish of every jot and iota, are
as if the meanest architect had been one of those potent genii who
were of yore compelled to adorn the palaces of necromancers and
kings.
“ We feel, as our eye wanders around this hallowed space, that
we have hitherto lavished our language and admiration in vain.
We dread to think of it with feelings which workmanship less
8
exquisite has awakened, and we dare not use, in its praise, lan¬
guage hackneyed in the service of every-day minds. We seek for
it a new train of associations, a fresh range of ideas, a greener and
more sacred corner in the repository of the heart. And yet, where¬
fore should this be, since no terms applying to other works of beauty,
excepting the most general, can be appropriated here? For those
there be phrases established by usage, which their several classifi¬
cations of style render intelligible to all acquainted with similar
works of art. But in the Taj we fall upon a new and separate cre¬
ation, which never can become a style, since it can never be imi¬
tated. It is like some bright and newly discovered winged thing,
all beauteous in a beauty peculiar to itself, and referable to no class
or order on the roll of zoology, which the whole world flocks to
gaze upon with solemn delight, none presuming to designate the
lovely stranger, nor to conjecture a kindred for it with the winged
things of the earth. Suffice it—Love was its author, Beauty its
inspiration.”
There never was erected in this world any thing so perfect and
lovely, save Solomon’s Temple. In gazing down upon the scene,
as the writer did in the closing days of the terrible rebellion in
1858, the effect was wonderful, and akin to those emotions that
must thrill the soul which looks out for the first time upon the
plains of heaven. Every thing that could remind one of ruin and
misery seemed so far away, that as we sat, and the delighted eyes
drank in the scene before them, terminated by the gorgeous fane
as it rose up toward the blue and cloudless sky, we thought, if John
Bunyan could have shared the opportunity, he would surely have
imagined his dreams realized, and believed himself looking over the
battlements of the New Jerusalem, and viewing that “region of
eternal day ” where holiness and peace are typified by pearls and
gold, and all manner of precious stones, with the fountain of life,
clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and the Lamb !
Two questions now remain to be answered: Who was the lady
to whom the Taj was erected ? and, Who was the architect who
designed and executed it ?
FOR WHOM WAS THE TAJ ERECTED? 143
There has been much misunderstanding upon these subjects.

The wrong lady has been named by authors who might have
understood better, had they consulted the proper authorities, and it
has also been asserted that the architect was unknown. Bayard
Taylor, for instance, in his India, China, and Japan, informs his
readers that “Shah Jehan—the ‘Selim’ of Moore’s poem—erected
it as a mausoleum to his Queen Noor Jehan, the ‘ Light of the
World,’ ” and he several times repeats this blunder. Mr. Taylor is
not profound in Indian history. Every statement in <?he above
quotation is incorrect. The Selim of Moore’s poem was not Shah
Jehan, but his father ; Noor Jehan was not Shah Jehan’s wife, but
his stepmother; and Noor Jehan was not buried in the Taj, but
beyond the Attock, in the North-west, where her tomb is to-day a
mere ruin. That Bayard Taylor should write in this superficial
style is not very unusual with him : but that such authors as Mont¬
gomery Martin and Bishop Heber should say it was for Noor
Jehan is indeed surprising: for they had acquaintance with the
history of India, and had not to depend upon ignorant guides and
guide books for the information they would give their readers
Our description of Etmad-od-Doulah’s Tomb will present the
facts, showing that the infant born in the desert afterward became
the wife, first of Sheer Afghan, and then of Prince Selim, after he
mounted the throne, taking the name of Jehangeer, when he con¬
ferred upon her the title of Noor Jehan. These were the hero and
heroine of Moore’s poem. Shah Jehan, who built the Taj, was the
son of Jehangeer by a different wife than Noor Jehan. Noor
Jehan’s brother, Asuf Jan, had a daughter whom Shah Jehan
married, and to whom he gave the title of Moomtaj-i-Mahal, and it
was to her memory that he built the Taj, long after his father was
dead, and while he held his stepmother, Noor Jehan—who died in
1646—in a state of honorable captivity. Moomtaj-i-Mahal died in
1631, fifteen years before her aunt, Noor Jehan.
The history of Moomtaj is very interesting, and we may give a
few of the facts here. She was very beautiful, and obtained an
unbounded influence over the mind of the Emperor, exhibiting
144 THE LANL OF THE VEDA.
such capacity for the management of State affairs, that her husband
seems for years to have resigned the reins of government into
her hands, while he was consuming his time over the wine bottle
in the company of a favorite French physician.
From this dream of pleasure, the history tells us, Shah Jehan
was suddenly awakened by the fatal illness of his beautiful Empress.
She died in giving birth to a daughter, who is said to have been
heard crying in the womb by herself and her other daughters.
She sent for the Emperor, and told him that she believed no
mother had ever been known to survive the birth of a child so
heard, and that she felt her end was near. “She had,” she said,
“ only two requests to make: first, that he would not marry again
after her death, and have children to contend with hers for his
favors and dominions ; and, secondly, that he would build for her
the tomb with which he had promised to perpetuate her name.”
Both her dying requests were granted. Her tomb was commenced
immediately. No woman ever pretended to supply her place in the
palace, nor had Shah Jehan children by any other.
But Moomtaj might well, in her dying hours, make the request
she did, for she could not be ignorant that Shah Jehan had secured
the throne to himself, from the other children of his father, by the
use of the dagger and the bow-string. And it was not without
reason; for before she was many years laid in the Taj her own
children, even, contended for the throne ; and the magnificent Shah
Jehan, realizing that “as he had done so God rewarded him,” died
in prison in 1666, a captive in the hands of his son, Aurungzebe,
who had already followed the example of his father in hunting
down and destroying his brothers and nephews in order to secure
the throne undisputed to himself.
But we return to the peaceful Taj. The Empress Moomtaj was
a Khadija in her day, a Mohammedan devotee, and a bitter foe of
Christianity—such Christianity as she knew. She took care that
this animosity should go with her to the grave, and even be inserted
on her tomb ; and there it is to-day, in the Taj, amid the flowers and
inscriptions on her cenotaph—a prohibition and a prayer against
ROMANISM'S LOST OPPORTUNITY. MS
Christ’s followers, which her race has now forever lost the power
to enforce, and which God Almighty has taken providential care
shall not only remain unanswered, but be reversed to the very
letter.
The circumstances were these: Prior to the days of Shah Jehan
and his wife, the Portuguese, attracted by the fame and the wealth
of the great Akbar and his sons, had found their way to India,
establishing themselves as traders and merchants, on the west coast
at Goa and on the east at Hooghly, near the present Calcutta.
Some, who were artisans, reached Agra, the imperial city, where
they were employed by the Government chiefly in the duties of the
artillery, the arsenals and founderies, and a few as artists. The
emoluments of office, for arts which they were thus introducing,
were very large, and soon attracted great numbers to Agra, so that
Monsieur Thevenot, who visited Agra in 1666, tells us that the
Christian families there were estimated to have been about twenty-
five thousand—an exaggeration doubtless. Still their number
must have been large; and among them were some Italians
and Frenchmen, as is evident from their tombs, which are still
extant in the Roman Catholic cemetery at Agra, where the dates
of several are still visible on the head-stones, ranging from the
year 1600 to 1650.
Akbar and Shah Jehan allowed these people the free exercise of
their religion. Indeed, the former built them a church, and used
to take pleasure in presiding at discussions where he matched the
Romanist priests against his Pundits and Moulvies, and seemed to
enjoy the theological battles between them. Feeble as the light
was which thus penetrated the imperial household, it did not shine
in vain, for some of Akbar’s household were actually baptized and
professed the Christian faith.
Roman Catholicism never had a grander opportunity than it
enjoyed at Agra during those sixty years. Had it been a pure
Christianity it might have won over the house of Tamerlane to
the faith, and perhaps have saved all India long since. But it
failed utterly, and won only a grave-yard at Agra. These thousands
of families soon vanished away and left no succession, for Hindoos

and Mohammedans learned to perform duties which they saw
bringing to the Christians so much honor and profit, and, as they
did so, they necessarily hastened the removal of a religion which
they detested. What is needed in India is a Christianity inde¬
pendent of the emoluments of office—one that shall take rod n
the soil, and be self-sustaining. But Romanism failed, and not
from this cause alone, or even chiefly ; its weak point was the
fearful charge of idolatry which the Moulvies triumphantly urged
against its priests on all occasions. The skeptical but honest
Akbar—the Oriental head of a faith iconoclastic to the core—was
confused, as well he might be, when he saw his own Moulvies able
to quote the Christian Bible against professed Christian ministers
to sustain this terrible charge. Denial of it would not avail; there
were their own teachings and acts : worship and prayers to the
Virgin Mary, invocation of saints, and prostrations before pictures
and images. The subterfuge of a qualified homage was rejected in
view of the prohibition of the Second Commandment of Almighty
God, forbidding not only the act, but also its semblance, “ Thou
shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” The priests were
worsted ; and Akbar and his people, knowing no Christianity but
this, concluded that the religion of the Son of God was on a par
with Paganism, and that Christians were idolaters. A revulsion
set in, which the Empress Moomtaj afterward fully shared. In her
case, the hatred- of the Christian name was intensified by the
remembrance of some insolence shown by the Portuguese at
Hooghly, several years before her husband ascended the throne,
and when he was a fugitive, after an unsuccessful rebellion against
his father. When the power passed into her hands her hatred
against “ the European idolaters,” as she called them, led her to
demand their expulsion, at least from Hooghly.
Accordingly, the Governor of Bengal received from Shah Jehan
the laconic command, “Expel those idolaters from my dominions.”
It was done. Hooghly was carried by storm, after a siege of
three months and a half, involving a terrible destruction of life on
A PRAYER WHICH GOD REFUSES TO ANSWER. 147
the side of the Portuguese, whose fleet was almost entirely anni¬
hilated. The principal ship, in which about two thousand men,
women, and children had taken refuge, with all their treasure, was
blown up by her captain sooner than surrender to the Moguls.
From the prisoners five hundred young persons of both sexes,
with some of the priests, were sent to Agra. The girls were
divided among the harems of the court and nobles, the boys cir¬
cumcised, and the priests and Jesuits threatened with torture if
they refused to accept the Koran. After some months of impris¬
onment, however, they were liberated and sent off to Goa, and the
pictures and images, which had excited the ire of the Empress,
were all destroyed by her orders. Such wrong did Romanism do
Christianity in India, and the name of our God and Saviour was
blasphemed among the heathen through its idolatry.
The Empress Moomtaj, even in death, could not forget her en¬
mity to every form of Christianity, and secured that it should be
expressed upon her very tomb, and there it remains to-day, and
will remain while the world stands or the Taj exists. The inscrip¬
tion on the tomb, translated, is as follows : “ Moomtaj-i-Mahal,
Ranee Begum, died 1631 and on the end of the tomb which faces
the entrance, so that all may see it as they approach, are these
words : “And defend us from the tribe of unbelievers"—Kafirs ; the
word “ Kafirs ” being a bitter term of contempt for Christians and
all who lack faith in Mohammed and the Koran.
Heaven would not answer thp fanatical prayer of this mistaken
woman ; but, instead, has placed even her shrine in the custody of
those she hated ; and that very “ tribe ” now gather from all parts
of the civilized world, to enter freely and admire the splendors of
the tomb which was raised over her remains, and smile with pity
at the impotent bigotry which asked Heaven to forbid their ap¬
proach ! The writer had the privilege, with a band of Christian
missionaries, of standing around her tomb, and, in the presence of
these words, of joining heartily in singing the Christian Doxology
over her moldering remains, while the echo above sweetly repeated
the praise to “ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
An article on the Taj, without some account of its arckitect,

would be indeed incomplete. But the record, assuming its cor¬
rectness, enables us to supply this information also. The wonder¬
ful man whose creation the Taj is, was, it is believed, a French¬
man, by the name of Austin de Bordeux, a man of great ability.
The Emperor, who had unbounded confidence in his merit and
integrity, gave him the title of “ Zurrier Dust”—the Jewel-Handed
—to distinguish him from all other artists ; but by the native
writers he is called “ Gostan Esau Nadir ol Asur”—the Wonder
ful of the Age. For his office of “ Nuksha Nuwes,” or architect, he
received a regular salary of one thousand rupees per month—
$6,000 gold per annum — with perquisites and presents, which
made his income very large. He built the palace at Delhi and the
palace at Agra, as well as the Taj.
Tavernier, the traveler, who saw this building commenced and
finished, tells us that the Taj, in its erection, occupied 20,000 men
for twenty-two years. Its cost, we are told, was “ threescore, seven¬
teen lakhs, forty-eight thousand and twenty-six rupees that is,
,£3,174,802 sterling, or, in American money, $15,874,010 gold, of
the money of that time, equal to about $60,000,000 of our money !
But many of the precious stones in the mosaic were presented by
different tributary powers, and are not included in the above esti¬
mate. Having finished the Taj, the architect was engaged in
designing a silver ceiling for one of the galleries in the palace at
Agra when he was sent by the Emperor on business of great
importance to Goa. He died at Cochin on his return, and is sup¬
posed to have been poisoned by the Portuguese, who were jealous
of his influence at Court. Shah Jeha'n had commenced his own
tomb on the other side of the Jumna, and it and the Taj were to
have been united by a bridge ; but the death of Austin de Bor¬
deux, and the wars between Shah Jehan’s sons, which then broke
out, prevented the completion of these magnificent works, and so
the Emperor was laid beside his consort, when he died in 1666,
and the Taj contains the remains of both.
The Empress’s title, translated, is, The Ornament of the Palace,
I
£NGRA.VED BT HE WELLSTOOD
K Til AD OL-DOTJLAH'S TOMB. l51
for so Shah Jehan esteemed her. The name of the tomb, Taj
Mahal, means, The Crown of Edifices, or Palaces — from Taj, a
crown, and Mahal, a palace. It is worthy of its title, and is under
the special care of the English Government, and will no doubt be
preserved in its present perfect and stainless condition for its own
sake, and because it is and must ever remain—notwithstanding
the sins and frailties of the couple who beneath its dome await the
call to judgment—the most perfect and beautiful testimonial to the
virtues of a wife ever raised by an affectionate husband.
Among the thousands of her sex who have visited the Taj, and
felt its peculiar fascination over the susceptible heart of sentiment¬
al women, Lady Sleeman was not the first, as she certainly will
not be the last, to realize the emotion which is recorded of her.
Retiring from the Taj, lost in reflection and admiration, she was
asked by her husband what she thought of the Taj ? Her prompt
reply was, “ I cannot tell you what I think, for I know not how to
criticise such a building ; but I can tell you what I feel—I would
die to-morrow to have such another put over me ! ”
A'short distance from the Taj we reach the beautiful tomb of
the Premier of the great Emperor Akbar. This splendid pile of
white marble, delicately carved into fret-work, its screens and tes¬
sellated enamels being very fine, is situated on the right hand of
the road as you enter the city of Agra.
The tomb is not only beautiful in itself, and one of the most inter¬
esting specimens of Mogul architecture to be met with, even in a city
so replete with artistic triumphs as was once imperial Agra, the
creation of the renowned Akbar ; but there is a history connected
with it so romantic, illustrated by Sleeman and Martin, that it is
worthy of its high place among the curiosities of Oriental life.
This structure was raised by the famous Noor Jehan, in loving
remembrance of her father, Khwaja Accas, one of the most prom¬
inent characters in the history of India during the reign of Akbar.
The liberality and fame of the greatest monarch that ever ruled
India, and the patronage he extended to men of genius and worth,
attracted to his Court from Persia and the adjacent nations those
who in his service found wealth and honor. Khwaja Accas was a
native of Western Tartary. He had some relations at the Imperial
Court of India who encouraged him to join them, under the expec¬
tation that they could secure his advancement in life. He was of
good ancestry, but of reduced means, and possessed of abilities which
needed only a fair opportunity for development to insure his suc¬
cess. He left Tartary for India at the close of the sixteenth cten-
tury, accompanied by his wife and children ; their only means for
their journey having been provided by the sale of his little prop¬
erty. The incidents of their long and weary emigration are given
with much simplicity. Their stock of money had become ex¬
hausted, and, in crossing the Great Desert, they were three days
without food, and in danger of perishing. In this fearful emer¬
gency, the wife of Khwaja Accas gave birth to a daughter ; but,
worn out with fatigue and privation, the miserable parents con¬
cluded to abandon the poor infant. They covered it over with
leaves, and toward evening pursued their journey. One bullock
remained to them, and on this the father placed his wife, and tried
to support her on their way, in hope to reach the cultivated coun¬
try and find relief. They had gone about a mile, and had just lost
sight of the solitary shrub under which they had left their child,
when Nature triumphed, and the mother, in an agony of grief,
threw herself from the bullock upon the ground, exclaiming, “ My
child, my child ! ” Accas could not resist the appeal. He re¬
turned to the spot which they had left, took up his infant, and
brought it to its mother’s breast.
Shortly after a caravan was seen in the distance coming toward
them ; their circumstances were made known, and a wealthy mer¬
chant took compassion upon them, relieved their necessities, and
safely conducted them to their destination ; he even lent his influ¬
ence to advance them in life when they reached Lahore, where the
Emperor Akbar was then holding his Court.
That little group of five persons," the father and mother, the babe
and her two brothers, were destined to fill a place in the page of
history more influential than that of any family that ever emigrated
THE DAUGHTER OF THE DESERT. 153
to India ; for, leaving out of view for the present the high positions
afterward attained by the father and his sons, that babe of the
desert became, a few years subsequently, Empress of India, and
bore the famous title of “Noor Jehan”—the Light of the World—
while her brother, Asuf Jan, became the father of the equally cele¬
brated Moomtaj-i-Mahal — to whose memory her husband, Shah
Jehan, built the matchless Taj Mahal—the noblest monument ever
erected to woman.
Asuf Khan, a distant relative of Khwaja Accas, held a high place
at Court, and was much in the confidence of the Emperor. He
made his kinsman his private secretary. Pleased with his ability
and diligence, Asuf soon brought his merits to the special notice
of Akbar, who raised him to the command of a thousand horse, and
soon after appointed him Master of the Imperial Household. From
this he was subsequently promoted to that of Etmad-od-Doulah, 01
High Treasurer of the Empire, and first minister. His legislative
ability soon produced beneficial results in public affairs, while his
modest yet manly bearing conciliated the nobility, who learned to
appreciate the value of the control which he exercised over the
ill-regulated mind of the Emperor.
His daughter, born in the desert, developed into one of the most
lovely women of the East, as celebrated for her accomplishments
as she was for her beauty, and ultimately she became the wife of
the Prince Selim, known afterward by his title of Jehangeer, by
whom she was raised to the throne, and had lavished upon her
honors and power never before enjoyed by the consort of an
Oriental potentate, even to the conjunction of her name with that
of Jehangeer on the coins of the realm.
On the death of her venerable and honored father she erected
this tomb over his remains. The building, rising from a broad
platform, is of white marble, of quadrangular shape, flanked by
octagonal towers, which are surmounted by cupolas on a series of
open columns. From the center of the roof of the main building
springs a small tomb-like structure, elaborately carved and deco¬
rated, the corners terminating in golden spires. Immediately
below this, on the floor of the hall, is the tomb inclosing the body
of Etmad-od-Doulah. Interiorly and exteriorly this fairy pile is
covered, as with beautiful lace, by lattice-work, delicately wrought
in marble, covered with foliage and flowers, and intermingled with
scrolls bearing passages from the Koran. Every portion of the
mausoleum is thus enriched, and all that wealth could furnish, or
Oriental art suggest, or genius execute, in the completion of the
structure, was devoted to its adornment. The original idea in
the mind of the Empress, as Martin and others relate, was to con -
struct her father’s shrine of solid silver; and she was only dis¬
suaded from this purpose by the assurance that if marble was not
equally costly, it was certain to be more durable, and less likely to
attract the cupidity of future ages.
The photograph of this building, when examined by a good glass,
brings out its singular loveliness as no mere engraving can present
it. Each slab of white marble is wrought in rich tracery in the
most delicate manner, pierced through and through so as to be the
same when seen from either side ; the pattern of each slab differs
from the next one, and the rich variety, as well as beauty of the
designs, fixes the attention of the beholder in amazement at the
taste and patient skill that could originate and execute this vision
of beauty, which seems like an imagination rising before the fancy,
and then, by some wondrous wand of power, transmuted into a solid
form forever, to be touched, and examined, and admired. Standing
within the shrine, it seems as though it was covered with a rich
vail, wrought in curious needle-work, every ray of light that enters
coming through the various patterns. You approach and touch it,
and find it is of white marble, two inches in thickness ! What
mind but that of a lady could have suggested a design so unique
and feminine ?
According to the usages of the Moguls, a lovely garden was
planted around the fair shrine, and ample provision made for its
care and preservation in the future. Rare and costly trees, fla¬
grant evergreens, shady walks, and tanks and fountains, all added
their charms to set off the central pile. A small mosque was
THE HEROINE OF MOORE'S POEM. 155
added, and such religion as they knew lent its influence to the
sacredness of the locality ; while the beautiful birds of India, their
plumage bearing
“ The rich hues of all glorious things,”
made the calm and sweet retreat more gorgeous by their presence.
The Daughter of the Desert, forgetting forever the unnatural
desertion of him whom she so lavishly honored, thus made a para¬
dise of the abode of the dead. Let her have the credit of whatever
estimable qualities the great act expressed ; she needs this, and
every other allowance that fairly belongs to her history, as some
offset to the sadder parts of a life and character that, two hundred
and fifty years ago, surprised all India by its singularity, its mag¬
nificence, and its less worthy qualities—a fame that lingered in
their legends and history, and which, after such long interval, set¬
tled so fascinatingly on the imagination of Tom Moore, and came
forth in his romance of Lalla Rookh. But the poet left out more
than half the life of his heroine ; he gave her loves and fascina¬
tions, but omitted her labors, and those brilliant exploits which,
quite as much as her beauty, commended her to the admiration of
Jehangeer and his subjects.
Looking at such persons, and their brilliant, yet abused, oppor¬
tunities, one may well say, “ I have seen an end of all perfection.”
How transitory, at best, is the fame that rests on such foundations !
While we admire the taste, accomplishments, and achievements of
this magnificent woman, we seek in vain for any evidence of benev¬
olence or goodness in what, she did. She seems to have left God and
humanity entirely out of her calculations. In all the tombs and pal¬
aces built by her and for her, personal glory and selfish ends—for self
and family—alone appear. On these the revenues of a whole people
were squandered, and their hard earnings demanded to enable her
1o exhibit, on this lavish scale, her magnificent caprices. But no
hospitals, or schools, or asylums for suffering humanity, exist to
■call her blessed, or to hand down her name as a pattern or pro¬
moter of purity and goodness. How much more “honorable and
.glorious” is the character, or the lot, of the humblest saint of God
who lives to do good to her fellow-creatures ! Her grave may be

as lowly and lone as that of Ann Hazeltine Judson, on the rock at
Amherst, and without a stone to mark it, as I saw it in 1864; but,
when Noor Jehan’s marble edifices have returned to the dust, those
who have thus employed their time and abilities to save the per¬
ishing will be “ had in everlasting remembrance,” and “ shine as
the stars for ever and ever.”
Few men have visited the East who possessed so highly as did
Bishop Heber the capacity to appreciate the taste and skill exhib¬
ited in the gorgeous buildings of India. Truly and appropriately
does he exclaim, while contemplating their wondrous works,
“These Patans built like giants, and finished their work like
jewelers.” The highest illustration of this eulogium is found in
the matchless Taj Mahal.
We present one more evidence of their taste and skill in the
wonderful Kootub Minar.
It has been well observed that this Minar is, among the towers
of the earth, what the Taj is among the tombs, something unique
of its kind, that must ever stand alone in the recollection of him
who has gazed upon its beautiful proportions, its chaste embellish¬
ments, and exquisite finish. About eleven miles south-west of
the modern city of Delhi stands the desolate site of ancient Delhi.
This city is supposed to have been founded about 57 B. C. The
height of prosperity to which it rose may be imagined from its
only memorials—the tombs, columns, gateways, mosques, and
masonry, which lie. strewn around in silent and naked desolation.
Where rose temple and tower now resounds only the cry of the
jackal and the wolf; for the voice of man .is silent there, and the
wanderings of the occasional tourist alone give any sign of human
life or presence in the once “ glorious city.” The ruins cover a
circle of about twenty miles in extent.
In the midst and above all this wild ruin, like a Pharos to guide
the traveler over this sea of desolation, rises the tall, tapering cyl¬
inder of the Kootub Minar. To archaeologists like Cunningham,
travelers like Von Orlich, and learned observers like General Slee-
The Kootub.—From a Photograph
TEE KOOTTJB PEERLESS. 159
man, Mr. Archer, and Bholanauth Chunder, and the pages of the
“ Asiatic Researches,” we are indebted for the best descriptions of
this wonderful relic of antiquity. These authors have necessarily
borrowed largely from each other in representing this city of the
dead and its wonderful and unequaled pillar, the towering majesty
of which has looked down for centuries only upon ruin and the
wild jungle which now grows where once stood the great center of
India’s glory—its magnificent metropolis.
The Kootub forms the left of two minars of a mosque, which, in
size and splendor, was to be peerless on the earth as a place of
worship, and from the character of this single shaft it is evident
that, had the design been completed, it would have been all that its
imperial founder intended in that respect. But death, war, and
human vacillation make sad havoc of men’s hopes and intentions,
and this great memorial stands in attestation of the fact.
For nearly a century a controversy has existed in India as to the
architectural honors of the wonderful Kootub. The Hindoos
would fain claim that they built it, and Bholanauth Chunder, on
their behalf, makes the best case he can to prove that the honor of
its design and creation belongs to his race, and not to the hated
Moslem ; yet even he has to concede that the evidences of its
Mohammedan origin are so decided that the Hindoos must give up
the claim to the glory of its origination. The Baboo’s description
is very vivid, and as he corrected the measurements of General
Sleeman and others, and has made his examinations within the
past five years, and was also well qualified for the task which
he undertook, we quote him with confidence in the following
description :
“ The Kootub outdoes every thing of its kind—it is rich, unique,
venerable, and magnificent. It ‘ stands as it were alone in India ; ’
rather, it should have been said, alone in the world; for it is the
highest column that the hand of man has yet reared, being, as it
stands now, two hundred and thirty-eight feet and one inch above
the level of the ground. Once it is said to have been three hun¬
dred feet high, but there is not any very reliable authority for this
t6o THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
statement. In 1794, however, it had been actually measured to be

two hundred and fifty feet eleven inches high. The Pillar of
Pompey at Alexandria, the Minaret of the Mosque of Hassan at
Cairo, and the Alexandrine Column at St. Petersburg, all bow their
heads to the Kootub.
“The base of this Minar is a polygon of twenty-four sides, alto¬
gether measuring one hundred and forty-seven feet. The shaft is
of a circular form, and tapers regularly from the base to the sum¬
mit. It is divided into five stories, round each of which runs a
bold, projecting balcony, supported upon large and richly-carved
brackets, having balustrades that give to the pillar a most orna¬
mental effect.
“ The exterior of the basement story is fluted alternately in
twenty-seven angular and semicircular faces. In the second story
the flutings are only semicircular ; in the third they are all angular.
The fourth story is circular and plain ; the fifth again has semicir¬
cular flutings. The relative height of the stories to the diameter
of the base has quite scientific proportions. The first, or lower¬
most story, is ninety-five feet from the ground, or just two diame¬
ters in height; the second is fifty-three feet farther up, the third
forty feet farther. The fourth story is twenty-four feet above the
third, and the fifth has a height of twenty-two feet. The whole
column is just five diameters in height. Up to the third story the
Minar is built of fine red sandstone. From the third balcony to
the fifth the building is composed chiefly of white Jeypoor marble.
The interior is of the gray rose-quartz stone. The ascent is by a
spiral staircase of three hundred and seventy-six steps to the bal¬
cony of the fifth story, and thence are three more steps to the top
of the present stone-work. Inside it is roomy enough, and full of
openings for the admission of light and air. The steps are almost
‘ lady-steps,’ and the ascent is quite easy. The ferruginous sand¬
stone has been well selected to lend a rich, majestic appearance to
the column. The surface of that material seems to have deepened
in reddish tint by exposure for ages to the oxygen of the atmos¬
phere. The white marble of the upper stories sits like a tasteful
ORIGIN OF THE KOOTTJB. 161
crown upon the red stone; and the graceful bells sculptured in the
balconies are like a ‘cummerbund’ around the waist of the majestic
tower. The lettering on the upper portions has to be made out by
using a telescope.” The Kootub does not stand now in all the
integrity of its original structure. It was struck by lightning, and
had to be repaired by the Emperor Feroz Shah in 1368.
In 1503 the Minar happened to be again injured, and was
repaired by the orders of Secunder Lodi, the reigning sovereign, a
man of great taste and a munificent patron of learning and the
arts.
Three hundred years after its reparation by Secunder Lodi, in the
year 1803, a severe earthquake seriously injured the pillar, and its
dangerous state having been brought to the notice of the British
Government on their taking possession of the country, they liber¬
ally undertook its repair. These repairs were brought to a close in
twenty-five years. The old cupola of Feroz Shah, or of Secunder
Lodi, that was standing in 1794, having fallen down, had been sub¬
stituted by a plain, octagonal red-stone pavilion. To men of artistic
taste this had appeared a very unfitting head-piece for the noble
column, so it was taken down by the orders of Lord Hardinge in
1847, and the present stone-work put up in its stead. The con¬
demned top now lies on a raised plot of ground in front, as shown
resting on the platform on the right-hand side in the engraving.
Now, as to the origin of the Kootub, a subject on which much
speculation has been wasted.
Theories professing a Hindoo origin are maintained by one party:
theories professing its Mohammedan origin are propounded by the
other. The Hindoo party believes the Minar to have been built by
a Hindoo prince for his daughter, who wished to worship the rising
sun and to view the waters of the Jumna from the top of it every
morning. The Mohammedan party repudiates this as an outrage¬
ous paradox, and would have the Kootub taken for the unmistaka¬
ble Mazinah of the Musjeed-i-Kootub-ul-Islam. “No man who
sees the Minar can mistake it for a moment to be any other than
a thoroughly Mohammedan building—Mohammedan in design, and
Mohammedan in its intents and purposes. The object is at once

apparent to the spectator—that of a Mazinah for the Muezzin to
call the faithful to prayers. The adjoining mosque, fully corre¬
sponding in design, proportion, and execution to the tower, bears
one out in such a view of the lofty column, and there is the recorded
testimony of Shams-i-raj and Abulfeda to place the fact beyond a
doubt.”
In addition to its structure, and the vast mosque near which it
stands, and of which it so manifestly forms a part, we have the
conclusive fact that the history of the Kootub is written in its own
inscriptions. None dares to impeach these records, and the
Kootub thus seems to have been commenced in about 1200 A. D.,
and finished in 1220.
In the “Asiatic Researches” (vol. XIV, p. 481) is given the fol¬
lowing translation of the fourth inscription upon the Minar : “ The
erection of this building was commenced in the glorious time of
the great Sultan, the mighty King of kings, the Master of mankind,
the Lord of the monarchs of Turkestan, Arabia, and Persia, the
Sun of the world and religion, of the faith and of the faithful, the
Lord of safety and protection, the heir of the kingdoms of Suliman
—Abu Muzeffa Altemsh Nasir Amin ul Momenin.”
Such was the style and title affected by these high and haughty
sovereigns of Oriental Mohammedanism when, reveling in pride
and power, like Nebuchadnezzar, they looked around at the “great
Babylons” which they had built. How little they imagined with
what utter desolation their works would be overthrown, to leave
behind only a name and a ruin, and that so nearly undistinguisha-
ble that men in future ages could only ascertain the shadowy record
by making it a special study!
For six hundred and forty-six years has the gigantic Kootub
weathered the rude assaults of the elements, and thousands of
strangers from distant lands have come to gaze upon the mighty
monument of a departed glory and a dying faith. How many, as
they have stood in its shadow, have realized that there must be an
adequate supernatural cause to account for all this wondrous.
RUIN AND DEATH. 163
decadence and death, which so quietly, but effectively, has pros¬

trated its hopes and heaped confusion upon its intentions (despite
its boundless wealth, military power, and fierce religious fanaticism)
to defend and diffuse Is dominating faith! Yet, after all, thus
it sinks and thus it dies in its chosen homes.
The instability and the doom that seems ever impending over
w
the institutions and structures raised by the worshipers of Allah,

of Vishnu, of Buddha, or the Virgin Mary, come not causeless.
They are Heaven’s maledictions upon the fearful crime of false
religions, which, while they defy God, degrade and dishonor men—
cursing their conditions by poverty, miserable homes, and wretched
compensation for their toil ; wasting their revenues, sinking them
in ignorance, destroying their morals, depriving them of liberty,
and ruining their souls ; till at length, when they have filled up
their measure of iniquity, it turns the very centers and cradles of
their faiths into the abodes of material or moral ruin, “ the hold of
every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.”
Whether the religion be utterly false or only a perversion of the
true, its influence is equally pernicious and manifest. He who
runs may read this on its very face in India and in Ireland, in
Egypt and Burmah, in Delhi and Rome, in Benares and Mexico ;
in the Sepoy, the Gazee, and the Jesuit; in Tamerlane, Cesare
Borgia, and the Nana Sahib ; in Cawnpore, Canton, and St. Bar¬
tholomew. All equally evince the direful influence of false religions
upon the conditions of men and nations.
On the other hand, the holy, living faith of a divine Jesus regen¬
erates the hearts and the communities which yield themselves to
its influence—confers freedom, light, education, equal rights, tem¬
poral prosperity, moral purity, domestic joy, and every thing lovely,
virtuous, and of good report—rears up the temples of a true Chris¬
tianity, and, without a stain of decadence upon its bright prospects
of final universality, presents no ruins or desolations amid its evan¬
gelical conquests or their results.
Those once powerful religions and nations that marched so
proudly and resolutely to conquest and ascendency under their
Antichristian banners, and raised their vainglorious monuments on

the sites of their cruel victories, and then looked forward to such
perpetuity of power and glory—where are they now? “ flow are
the mighty fallen!” How fast they rushed on to their inevitable
ruin, while those behind are to-day sinking into the same desola¬
tion ! And why ? Because there were higher laws than their own
which they dared to violate—an authority against which they vainly
dashed themselves—a power which they had the temerity to oppose,
but which, nevertheless, numbered their kingdoms and finished
them, by the terrible penalties which they had incurred, and the
fearful evidences of which are strewn around in India and so many
other localities.
How can these facts and results be understood or explained save
on the New Testament assumption that Jehovah Christ has all
power in heaven and on earth—that he has a dominion here which
he must maintain and vindicate, though earth and hell oppose him,
till his enemies are put beneath his feet, and He, the blessed and
only Potentate, shall stand at last, amid the overthrow of all oppo¬
sition, the Conqueror of the world !
“In righteousness he doth judge and make war” upon these
enemies of his faith. Before his Holy Word the Veda and the
Bana, the Koran and the Missal, must fall. Until that is done he
will make good his own awful declaration, that “ out of his mouth
goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations ; and
he shall rule them with a rod of iron. He treadeth the winepress
of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God, and he hath on his
vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and
Lord of lords.”
The Kootub Mosque stands deserted ; snakes and lizards now

crawl in its ruins, amid which the Mazinah yet stands, solitary,
grand, and majestic, as though heaven spurned the attempt to rear
up and perpetuate a peerless sanctuary, where Moslem blasphemy
against the Christ of God might be continually uttered in a grand
center toward which all Oriental Islamites might turn, and in
which they might glory. God dashed their hopes to pieces like a
THE UNFINISHED MINAR. 165
potter’s vessel, and changed their ambition and glory into a tomb
and a ruin.
The unfinished Minar to the right hand has twice the dimen¬
sions of the Minar here shown. This column was evidently
intended for a second mazinah, without which a Mohammedan
mosque is essentially defective.
The second Minar—or Minaret, to use the modern phrase—is
considerably larger in the base than the one shown in the engrav¬
ing. It stands at a proper distance from the first, and was carried
up about thirty feet above ground, and then discontinued. Anti¬
quarians have been greatly puzzled to account for the variations from
the dimensions of the first and finished one ; but it is not neces¬
sary to trouble the reader with their theories or debates, as Slee-
man’s solution has been accepted as highly probable and satis¬
factory.
His explanation is, that the unfinished minaret was commenced
first, but upon too large a scale, and with too small a diminution
of the circumference from the base upward. It is two fifths larger
than the finished minaret in circumference, and much more per¬
pendicular. Finding these errors, when the builders had gone up
with it thirty feet from the ground, the royal founder began the
work anew, and on qualified and corrected dimensions, and this is
the finished one before the reader. Had he lived he would no
doubt have carried up the second minaret in its proper place on
the same scale, and so completed his mosque; but his death occur¬
ring, and being followed by fearful revolutions—so that five sover¬
eigns sat upon the throne of Delhi in the succeeding ten years—
works of peace were suspended in the presence of war, while the
succeeding monarchs sought renown in military enterprises, and
thus the building of the second minaret was never proceeded
with.
The great mosque itself, with that exception, seems to have been
completed. Nearly all the arches are still standing in a more or
less perfect state. They correspond with the magnificent minaret
in design, proportion, and execution, it evidently having been the
intention of the founder to make them all sustain and illustrate the
matchless grandeur of the finished work. It was in this condition
when Tamerlane invaded India A. D. 1398. That “firebrand of
the universe,” as he was called, was so enchanted with the great
mosque and its minar that he had a model of it made, which he
took back with him, along with all the masons that he could find
in Delhi, and it is said that he erected a mosque exactly upon this
plan at his capital of Samarcund, before he again left it for the
invasion of Syria.
The west face of the quadrangle, in which the minar stands, was
formed by eleven large alcoves, the center and greatest of which
contained the pulpit.
The court to the eastward is inclosed by a high wall, bordered
by arcades formed of pillars carved in the highest style of Hindoo
art. Those on the opposite side are dissimilar, and the fair infer¬
ence is, that the Moslem monarch built his mosque, in part, by
materials taken from the great Hindoo temples, which he must
have desecrated for the purpose. This was after their fashion, and
laid the foundation for those bitter feuds and hatreds of the one
people against the other, which have lasted to this day.
Close to the minar are the remains of one of those superb port¬
als, so general in the great works of the Patans. The archway of
this gate is sixty feet high, and the ornaments with which it is
embellished are cut with the delicacy of a seal engraving, retaining,
after the lapse of six hundred years, their sharp, clear outlines.
Few who visit the Kootub, if they have strength for the toilsome
ascent, fail to go to the summit, and well does it repay the effort. It
is sublime to look up to the unclouded heavens, to which you seem
so near, while beneath and beyond, the eye wanders over not
merely the city beneath, but across to modern Delhi, with its
white and glittering mosqqes and palaces, the silvery Jumna
gently pouring along, the feudal towers of Selimghur, and the
mausoleums of Humayun and Suffer Jung, all in the soft light of
the India sunset ; but what must that view have been when impe¬
rial splendors, and cultivation like earthly paradises, or “ the gar-
TEE IRON PILLAR. 167
dens of God,” combined all their wealth of beauty beneath its

shadow, and then away as far as the eye could reach on every
side!
The writer visited the Kootub, on the last occasion, in 1864, in
company with Bishop Thomson. The Bishop’s description may
be found in his “ Oriental Missions,” Vol. I, p. 65. He justly calls
the Minar “ the grandest column of the world.” It is so. Except
the tower of Babel, probably nothing ever erected by human
hands has produced the same effect, as one stands awe-struck at
its base and gazes up upon its majestic form towering to the
skies.
It has not been without its tragic incidents. General Sleeman,
writing in 1844, tells us that five years previously, “while the
Emperor was on a visit to the tomb of Kootub-ad-deen, an insane
man got into his private apartment. The servants were ordered
to turn him out. On passing the Minar he ran in, ascended to
the top, stood a few moments on the verge, laughing at those who
were running after him, and made a spring that enabled him to
reach the bottom without touching the sides. An eye-witness told
me that he kept his erect position till about half-way down, when
he turned over, and continued to turn till he got to the bottom,
where his fall made a report like a gun. He was, of course, dashed
to pieces.”
Close to the Kootub stands the famous Iron Pillar—the palla¬
dium of Hindoo dominion—and which, there is evidence for believ¬
ing, has stood there for fifteen hundred years.
The Iron Pillar is a solid shaft of mixed metal resembling bronze,
upward of sixteen inches in diameter and about sixty feet in length.
The greater part of it is under-ground, and that which is above is
less than thirty feet high. The ground about it has marks of exca¬
vation, said to have been carried down to twenty-six feet without
reaching the foundation on which the pillar rests, and without
loosening it in any degree. The pillar contains about eighty cubic
feet of metal, and would probably weigh upward of seventeen tons.
The Iron Pillar, standing nearly in the middle of a grand square.
168 TEE LAND OF TEE V%DA.
“ records its own history in a deeply-cut Sanscrit inscription of six

lines on its western face.” Antiquaries have read the characters,
and the pillar has been made out to be “ the arm of fame—Kirt-
ibhuja—of Rajah Dhava.” He is stated to have been a worshiper
of Vishnu, and a monarch who “ had obtained with his own arm an
undivided sovereignty on the earth for a long period.” The letters
upon the triumphal pillar are called “ the typical cuts inflicted
on his enemies by his sword, writing his immortal fame.” “It is a
pity that posterity can know nothing more of this mighty Rajah
Dhava than what is recorded in the meager inscription upon this
wonderful relic of antiquity. The characters of the inscription are
thought to be the same as those of the Gupta inscriptions, and the
success alluded to therein is supposed to have been the assistance
which that Rajah had rendered in the downfall of the powerful
sovereigns of the Gupta dynasty. The age in which he flourished
is, therefore, concluded to have been about the year 319 A. D., the
initial point of the Balabhi or Gupta era.”
Antiquarians have tried very earnestly to solve the mystery of
this metallic monument. The most probable conclusion is, that it
marked the center of the great Rajah’s city, and stood in a splen¬
did temple. But on the invasion and conquest of Delhi by the
Mohammedan power the Emperor chose that center for his own
purposes, and threw his great mosque across the very site of that
temple, taking its marble columns for his colonnades, permitting
the Iron Pillar to remain, but erecting the Minar near it, forever to
dwarf its proportions and interest. But all are alike in ruin now—
their rage, contention, and emulation in the dust, while the Pillar
and the Minar alone remain.
How little did either the proud Rajah or the fierce Emperor
anticipate what a wreck the Ruler of heaven and earth would make
of their hopes, and that where they built and embellished, and set
forth their glory, would yet be as naked as ruin itself, and that the
wild beasts of the forest would howl in their desolate palaces!
That desolation is the more marked, when we remember that
very probably, after all these high anticipations, carried out so des-
HEAVEN'S CONFUSION ON THE INTENTION. 169
potically, and with the lavish expenditure of such untold millions,

this mosque and minar may never have answered, even in a single
instance, the purposes for which they were so proudly intended.
According to their customs and rules, the mosque would probably
not be used till completed. The second minar, being unfinished,
would very likely prevent the dedication ; so that ere another hand
rould consummate the great design, the death of the founder, the
long and fierce wars that followed, and finally the imperial fickle¬
ness which chose the banks of the Jumna, eleven miles away, as
the site of new Delhi, leading to the utter forsaking of the grand
old city, with all its monuments, temples, mosques, and palaces, con¬
signed the Kootub forever to desolation, and after all left it, very
likely, a mosque where no prayer was ever offered, and a minaret
from whose lofty summit no muezzin’s voice ever called the sons-
of the Koran to their vain devotions.
Though fifteen hundred years have gone over it, the Iron Pillar
shows no sign of decay ; it is smooth and clean. The metal of
which it is composed was so fused and amalgamated that it defies
all oxidation, while the characters engraven upon it remain to-day
clear and distinct as when they were first cut by the hand of the
engraver.
The great antiquity, the enormous size, and the interesting,
inscriptions upon the pillar of Rajah Dhava have led to great rev¬
erence toward it by all Hindoos, and legends are not wanting to-
account for its origin and position. One tradition is, that it is the
veritable club that great Bheema wielded in the battles of the Mah-
abharata, and which was left standing there by the Pandus after
their contest. But the more popular story is, that it is a pillar so
long that it pierced the entire depth of the earth, till it rested on
the head of the gigantic snake called Vasuki, who supports the world
—that its stability was the palladium of Hindoo dominion in India.
Such were some of the magnificent and unique surroundings of
the Mogul Court in 1856; and all this, with much more that
might be mentioned, they were then about to risk the possession
of in a fearful struggle with the white-faced race.
CHAPTER IV.
ORIGINATING CAUSES OF THE SEPOY REBELLION.
W 7TIILE moving amid the gorgeous scenes of the previous

Y ’ chapter, we were happily unconscious of the circumstances
of danger by which we were surrounded, and which could so easily
have victimized us all. We knew not then of that peculiar combi¬
nation and concurrence of favoring circumstances for the accom¬
plishment of the purposes which are now well understood and
can be explained, and a knowledge of which is essential to those
who would comprehend the great Sepoy Rebellion. We will now
state them, and, in doing this, will show how it was possible for
such a rebellion to be then originated and carried out.
1. The first and most important fact was the position of the
Emperor of Delhi—he in whose name and for whose interests it
was inaugurated. We have already noticed the circumstances
under which the alien power of the Mogul entered India, and at
last came to rule from Calcutta to Cabul. With the sense of
cruelty, injustice, and wrong that rankled in the hearts of the Hin¬
doos against these foreigners, no length of time had ever reconciled
them to their presence in their country. Thus, the last thing we
could have imagined possible in 1857 was, that these two peoples
could find a common ground of agreement on which they hould
stand together ; and that expectation was the confidence of English¬
men in India. They leaned with confidence upon the Hindoos,
whom they had elevated from the rule of Mohammedan injustice,
believing that so long as they were content and satisfied the
English empire was safe, no matter how the Mohammedans might
rage. So they thought, and did not even dream that these ancient
and inveterate foes were finding a ground of agreement, and were wide
111E ENGLISH BARGAIN WITH THE MOGUL. 171
awake, plotting the terrible arrangements that were so soon to burst

in fire and bloodshed over the land.
In the East, where there are no constitutions or popular gov¬
ernments, personal influence in a sovereign is every thing; the
despotic powers have only their individual adaptation and prestige
to depend upon to commend their rule. It is a maxim with them,
that “ a king who has no eyes in his head is useless.” In refer¬
ence to the poor, old, mutilated Emperor of Delhi, (grandfather of
the one whose portrait is herein given,) it had much more than a
metaphorical meaning. Its literal truth led to that state of general
conviction of Mogul imbecility, and the necessity of having the
paramount power of India in hands able to maintain its peace, and
which would at the same time respect the rights of the falling
dynasty, and all others concerned, which led soon after to the con¬
summation of that Treaty between the Emperor and the English
Government, in which his Imperial Majesty consented to surrender
to them his authority and power (a poor show it then was) for certain
considerations. That is, he agreed that the British were to assume
the government of the country, and rule in his name, on condition
that they would guarantee to himself and his successors forever the
following compensations :
(1.) He was to be recognized as titular Emperor. His title was
sounding enough to become a higher condition. How absurd it
seems, when we quote its translation in full: “ The Sun of the
Faith, Lord of the World, Master of the Universe and of the Hon¬
orable East India Company, King of India and of the Infidels, the
Superior of the Governor-General, and Proprietor of the Soil from
Sea to Sea ! ” This is surely enough for any mortal, especially
when it is connected with a safe salary nearly as large as itself!
(2.) He was still to be the fountain of honor, so that all the sun-
nuds (patents) of nobility, constituting Rajahs, Nawabs, etc., were
to be made out in his name, and sealed with his signet.
(3.) An embassador of England was to reside at his Court, to
be the official organ of communication between himself and the
English Government.
l72 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
(4.) He was to retain his royal residences, the one in Delhi

being regularly fortified, and occupying probably one fourth of the
area of the city. And,
(5.) His imperial revenue was to be made sure, and punctually
paid from the British Treasury.
He was asked how much that revenue must be? He replied,
“Thirteen and a half lakhs of rupees annually”—$675,000 per
annum. And as matters go in the East, where kings are supposed
to own the soil, and can levy their own jumma (tax) upon every
cultivated acre of it, this was not considered an unreasonable or
unusual demand.
The terms were accepted, and the British moved their authority
west of the Kurrumnasa, assumed the civil, political, and military
control of Hindustan proper, and the Mogul Emperor resigned the
heavy cares of State and went to house-keeping on his $675,000
per year. He assuredly might think that he had made a good
bargain for himself and his family with his commercial patrons, the
East India Company, while the whole resources of Great Britain
were pledged to every item of the engagement—and he certainly
might have done tolerably well under the circumstances. But one
thing stood in the way. He and his outraged the laws of Heaven;
the result was a ruin which in its completeness has had hardly a
parallel in the history of any earthly dynasty.
With idleness and fullness of bread came mischief and vileness
for three generations, increasing in their terrible tendencies, as the
sins of the fathers were shared by, and visited upon, their children,
until hideous ruin engulphed the whole concern, and left not a
wreck behind.
To the American reader it must seem amazing to state that the
$675,000 per annum proved utterly insufficient to enable the last
Emperor to live and keep out of debt; yet so it was. He-really
could not “make ends meet” from year to year on this splendid
allowance, paid to the day, and paid in gold. But the explanation
is at hand.
Had the duality of the marriage relation been recognized at the
WHY THE MUNIFICENT PROVISION FAILED. 173
Court of Delhi, it is very probable that it might have escaped the

guilt and misery which hastened its destruction. Men in high or
low station cannot violate the laws of God, even when their creed
sanctions that violation, without incurring the penalty which is
sure to come, sooner or later. Of this truth there never was a
more marked example than was exhibited within these high and
bastioned walls. The three generations during which this wrath
was “ treasuring up” its force but made it more overwhelming when
its overthrow of desolation came. It was expressly stipulated in
the treaty that the munificent provision made for the Emperor
was to cover all claims. Out of the $675,000 per annum he was
required to support the retinue of relations and dependents col¬
lected within the walls of the imperial residence. But fifty years
of idleness, and the license of a sensual creed, which permitted
unlimited polygamy, made that which would have been easy to
virtue impossible to vice.
The Eden of God had but one Eve in it, and she reigned as
queen in the pure affections of the happy and noble man for whom
God had made her. Within the walls of that Delhi palace Shah
Jehan could inscribe the words,
“ If there be a paradise on the face of the earth,
It is this—it is this—it is this ! ”
For he loved one only, and was faithful to her, and has enshrined
her memory while the world stands in the matchless Taj Mahal.
Few, if any, of his race imitated his virtue in this regard ; and least
of all his last descendants. Fifteen years ago the Delhi “para¬
dise” had become changed into a very pandemonium. Here were
crowded together twelve hundred kings and queens—for all the
descendants of the Emperors assumed the title of “Sulateens”—
with ten times as many persons to wait upon them, so that the
population of the palaces were actually estimated at twelve thou¬
sand persons. Glorying in their “royal blood,” they held them¬
selves superior to all efforts to earn their living by honest labor
and fastened, like so many parasites, upon the old Emperor’s
yearly allowance. “ But what was that among so many,” and they
*74 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
so constantly on the increase ? So here the “kings” and “queens"

of the house of Timour were found lying about in scores, like broods
of vermin, without sufficient food to eat, or decent clothing to wear,
and literally eating up each other. Yet, notwithstanding, their
insolence and pride were exactly equal to their poverty; so that
one of these kings, who had not more than fifty shillings per month
for his share wherewith to subsist himself and his family, in writing
to the Representative of the British Government at the Court,
would address him as “ Fidwee Khass,” our particular slave; and
would expect to be addressed in reply with, “ Your Majesty’s com¬
mands have been received by your slave !”
Living in royalty on twenty-five dollars per month, or less, each
of these worthies, on choosing a wife, or adding another to those
he had before, would feel it necessary, for his rank's sake, to settle
upon her a dowry of five lakhs of rupees, (two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars,) while actually the royal scamp did not own fifty
dollars in the world. His only accomplishment or occupation was
playing on the “ Sitar,” and singing the King’s verses, for this king
was ambitious of a poet’s title, and they flattered the old gentle¬
man’s whim. Did the world ever witness such a farce!
Perhaps at the time I first saw the palace of Delhi, with this
state of things then in full operation, the eye of God did not look
down upon a mass of humanity more dissatisfied, more vile, more
proud, and more mean, than the crowd of hungry Shazadahs who
pressed against each other for subsistence within the walls of that
fortification. All being royal blood, of course they could not soil
their hands to gain an honest living; every man and woman of
them must be suppoited out of the imperial allowance.
It was a simple impossibility for the English Government to
meet the necessities of this case, or satisfy the demands of this
greedy, hungry, and rapidly increasing crew. Twice had the
Emperor’s appeal been yielded to, and the grant increased from
thirteen and a half, to eighteen lakhs, so that in 1857 they were
receiving $900,000 per annum ; but the limit had been reached at
last. The English would neither pay the debts which they con-
THE PAGEANT FELT TO BE A BORE. 175
tracted nor increase the yearly allowance. The country would not
endure it.
The humiliating ceremonies, so tenaciously required by the
Emperor on receiving any member of the English Government,,
had become increasingly irksome and annoying as time rolled on
and this condition of things developed, until it began to be felt that
the Great Mogul pageant was a bore. Lord Amherst, a former
Governor-General, at length refused to visit the Emperor if ex¬
pected, according to Delhi court etiquette, to do so with bare feet,
bowed head, and joined hands. He declared he would only visit
him on terms of honorable equality, and not as an inferior. Both
he and Lord Bentinck refused any longer to stand in “ the Pres¬
ence,” but demanded a State chair on the right hand of the Em¬
peror, and to be received as an equal. This shocked the Emperor’s
feelings, but he had to give in. Then came the suspension of the
“ Nuzzer ”—the yearly present—a symbol of allegiance or confession
of suzerainty. The value was not withheld, but added to the
yearly allowance ; but the Emperor refused to accept it in this
form.
In 1849, on the death of the heir apparent, Lord Dalhousie,
then Governor-General, opened negotiations designed to abolish
this pageant of the Great Mogul, and offered terms to the next heir
to abdicate the throne, vacate the Delhi Palace, and sink their
high titles, retiring to the Kootub Palace and a private position, so
that the large family might be placed under proper restrictions
and required to obtain education, and fit themselves for stations
where they could earn their living. But the merciful and wise pio-
posal was misapprehended by them : instead of appreciating it, it
thoroughly alarmed them. They chose to consider that their very
existence was attacked. They would rather continue to fester and
starve together within those walls than to separate and rouse them¬
selves to action and honest employment; so they began to talk
louder than ever about their “ wrongs,” and the “ insults ” offered
them by the English Government, prominent among which was
the refusal any longer to give to each of these princes, whenever
iy6 THE LANE OF THE VEDA.
he chose to show his face in public, the royal salute of his “rank.”
But the English had deliberately come to the conclusion that this
was a foolish and ridiculous waste of the national powder, and
ought to cease forever.
Thus the Court — Emperor Begums, Sultans and Sultanas,
Shazadas, Eunuchs, and followers, all in a ferment of dissension
and hatred of English rule—became a centei to which all disaf¬
fected elements naturally tended.
These men became the life and soul of the great conspiracy for
the overthrow of the English power and the expulsion of Chris¬
tianity from India, and for the elevation once more of Moham¬
medan supremacy over the Hindoo nations. Yielding to their
influence, and that of the Sepoys, as will be narrated in our next
chapter, the old Emperor committed himself fully, without count¬
ing the cost, to the fearful struggle.
The reader can well understand what an “ elephant ” the En¬
glish Government had here on its hands, and in what perplexity
they were as to what they should do with it.
This “ high-born ” population thus pressed for the means of sub¬
sistence within these walls, instead of being required to shift for
themselves and quietly sink among the crowd without. When the
writer reached India, in 1856, this state of things was ripening to
its natural consummation. The different members of the Em¬
peror’s great family circle were fast becoming rallying points for
the dissatisfied and disaffected. Let loose upon the community,
they were every-where disgusting people by their insolence and
knavery, so that the English magistrates in Delhi had to stand
between them and their victims. The prestige of their names was
fast diminishing, and they were falling into utter insignificance
and contempt. This was true even of the highest of them. It
was these “ idle hands ” that Satan employed to do much of the
“ mischief” wrought during the fearful rebellion of 1857—an event
which consummated their own ruin, and sent scores of them to the
gallows.
In the “ good old days ” of their rule they had their own way ol
MOSLEM HATE OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANS. 177
relieving any financial pressure, as soon as it was felt, by “ loans ”

which were never paid, or by exactions from which there was no
appeal or escape. But in 1857 it was no longer possible to prac¬
tice in this way. The palace people had to let other men’s money
alone, and were required to live within their means, and those who
trusted them had now to do so on their own responsibility. The
Government of England refused to pay a dollar of their debts or
grant any further increase to their allowance. How they raged
over this resolve! Exhortations to do something, or fit them¬
selves for positions which would support them, were all thrown
away upon them, or, worse, they held the advice to be an insult.
They were royal, and could not think of work ; so they raged
against the Government that stood between them and those whom
they used to victimize, and sighed for the days when they could
have relieved their necessities at the expense of other men. It
need not be wondered at that such people hated English rule,
and resolved that, if ever the opportunity came within their reach,
they would be revenged upon the race who compelled them to be
honest.
Just in proportion to this impotent rage, of which the Govern¬
ment was well aware, most of the Hindoo princes around were
exultant to think that the Great Mogul had found a master at last
—that there was a strong hand on the bridle in his jaws, to hold
him back from trampling on the rights of other people. The
Shroffs (native Bankers) and moneyed men in the bazaars were in
high glee, knowing that the rupees in their coffers were all safe
under the protection of England’s power, and that none could
make them afraid.
To all this, if you add the religious hate, you have the entire
case of the Delhi Court. How these men raged as they remem¬
bered that their Crescent had gone down before the hated Cross ;
that where they had ruled and tyrannized for seven hundred years
Christianity was now triumphant. They detest England : they
will always do so : not because of her nationality, but for her faith.
They would hate Americans all the same if we were there. To
10
Christianity they are irreconcilably antagonistic. They detest the

doctrine of a divine Christ, and his followers have to share his
odium at their hands. Alas, it is simple truth to say, that if the
Lord Jesus were to come down from heaven to-day, and put him¬
self in their power, they would as assuredly crucify him afresh in
the streets of Delhi for saying he was “ the Son of God,” as did
the Jews in Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago. You have
only to read their “ Sacred Kulma ” to be assured of this spirit,
and understand their rage against him ; while their fearful deeds in
1857-8 upon his followers were a commentary on the Kulma, writ¬
ten with Christian blood ; a record over which they gloat, and in
the extent of which they still glory. Sad and abundant evidence
of this fact is to follow in these pages ; yet all this hatred and
determination would have been utterly powerless had it stood
alone—had the Hindoos not so strangely and unexpectedly united
themselves with it.
2. This leads us to the consideration of the peculiar fact which,
for once, brought the Moslem and Hindoo elements of the country
into union and a common interest.
Lord Lake, the English General, had defeated the Mahratta
chief, Bajee Rao, whose title, the Peishwa, was derived from a
Brahmin dynasty founded at Poonah by Belajee Wiswanath.
This title formerly meant Prime Minister, but its holders rose
from that position to sovereign authority by usurpation and oppor¬
tunity, and, in view of the high-caste assumptions of the Mahratta
nation, their sovereign seems to have laid claim to a sort of head¬
ship in Hindooism, and so “Peishwa” became a religious as well as
a secular title, and carried a great influence with it in the estima¬
tion of the Hindoos.
Duff, the historian of the time, gives a fearful picture of the
licentiousness which prevailed at Bajee Rao’s capital in 1816, and
of his perfidy in attempting the assassination, by treachery, of Mr.
Elphinstone, the English Embassador, and in the death of several
Europeans whom he caused to be killed in cold blood, as well as
the families of the native troops in their service. His ferocious
THE NANA SAHIB. 181
and vindictive orders, issued on the 5 th of November, 1817, fore¬

shadowed too truly other orders of a similar nature issued in July,
1857, by him to whom he transferred his home and fortune. The
adopted son was worthy of his putative father. That son was
Nana Sahib. The name of the author of the Cawnpore massacre
is, of course, well known.
The picture of him here presented was drawn by Major O’Gan-
dini, and sent home from India. He was fat, with that unhealthy
corpulence which marks the Eastern voluptuary, of sallow complex¬
ion and middle height, with strongly marked features. He did
not speak a word of English. His age at the time of the massacre
was about thirty-six years. As this man will ever be identified
with the sanguinary fame of Cawnpore, it seems appropriate to give
the reader a more definite account of who he was, and his ante¬
cedents, as furnished by Trevelyan.
His full name was Seereek Dhoondoo Punth, but the execration of
mankind has found his cluster of titles too long for use, and prefers
the more familiar appellation of “ The Nana Sahib'.'
Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poonah, was the last monarch of the
Mahrattas, who, for many years, kept Central India in war and con¬
fusion. The English Government being driven by his faithlessness
and treachery to dethrone the old man, assigned him a residence at
Bithoor, a few miles from Cawnpore, which he occupied until his
death, in 1851. With his traditions, his annuity of eight lakhs of
rupees ($400,000) yearly, and his host of retainers, Bajee Rao led a
splendid life, so far as this world was concerned. But the old Mah-
ratta had one sore trial: he had no son to inherit his possessions,
perpetuate his name, and apply the torch to his funeral pyre. This
last office, according to the Hindoo faith, can only be performed
properly by a filial hand. In this strait he had recourse to adop¬
tion, a ceremony which, by Hindoo law, entitles the favored indi¬
vidual to all the rights and privileges of an heir born of the body.
His choice fell upon this Seereek Dhoondoo Punth, who, according
to some, was the son of a corn merchant of Poonah, while others
maintain that he was the offspring of a poor Konkanee Brahmin,
and first saw the light at Venn, a miserable little village near Bom¬
bay. The Nana was educated for his position ; and, on the death
of his benefactor, he entered into possession of his princely home
and his immense private fortune. But this did not satisfy the
Nana. He demanded from the British Government, in addition,
the title and the yearly pension which they had granted to his
adoptive father. His claim was disallowed, as the pension was
purely in the form of an annuity to the late King. But the Nana
was not to be foiled. Failing with the Calcutta authorities, he
transferred his appeal to London, and dispatched an agent to
prosecute it there. This opens another amazing chapter in the his¬
tory of this man. The person selected) and who had so much to
do afterward with the massacre of the ladies and children, was his
confidential man of business, Azeemoolah Khan, a clever adven¬
turer, who began life as a kitmutgar—a waiter at table. He thus
acquired a knowledge of the English tongue, to which he afterward
added French, and came at length to speak and write both with
much fluency. Leaving service to pursue his studies, he afterward
became a school-teacher, and in this latter position attracted the
notice of the Nana, who made him his Vakeel, or Prime Agent, and
sent him to London to prosecute his claims. Azeemoolah arrived
in town during the height of “the season” of 1854, and was wel¬
comed into “ society ” with no inquiry as to antecedents. Passing
himself off as an Indian prince, and being abundantly furnished
with ways and means, and having, withal, a most presentable con¬
tour, he gained admission into the most distinguished circles, mak¬
ing a very decided sensation. He speedily became a lion, and
obtained more than a lion’s share of the sweetest of all flattery—
the ladies voted him “ charming.” Handsome and witty, endowed
with plenty of assurance, and an apparent abundance of diamonds
and Cashmere shawls, the ex-kitmutgar seemed as fine a gentleman
as the Prime Minister of Nepaul or the Maharajah of the Punjab,
both of whom had been lately in London.
In addition to the political business which he had in hand, Azee¬
moolah was at one time prosecuting a suit of his own of a more
HIS AGENT AZEEMOOLAH. 183
delicate nature; but, happily for the fair Englishwoman who was
the object of his attentions, her friends interfered and saved her
from becoming an item in the harem of this Mohammedan polyga¬
mist. He returned to India by Constantinople, and visited the
Crimea, where the war was then raging between England and
Russia. He bore to his master the tidings of his unsuccessful
efforts on his behalf, but consoled him with the assurance that the
youthful vigor of the Russian power would soon overthrow the
decaying strength of England, and then a decisive blow would be
sufficient to destroy their yoke in the East. Subtle and blood¬
thirsty, Azeemoolah betrayed no animosity until the outburst of
the Rebellion, and then he became the presiding genius of the
assault and final massacre. Meanwhile he moved amid English
society at Cawnpore with such deep dissimulation as to awaken no
suspicion ; and he was even the whole time carrying on correspond¬
ence with more than one noble lady in England, who had allowed
herself, in her too confiding disposition, to be betrayed into
a hasty admiration of this swarthy adventurer: so that, on the
first day of Havelock’s entrance, when he and his men came
straight from “the Slaughter-House” and fatal Well, to the Palace
of Bithoor, they discovered, among the possessions of this scoun¬
drel, the letters of these titled ladies, couched in terms of the most
courteous friendship. How little they suspected the true character
of their correspondent! and how bitter and painful were the emotions
which, under such circumstances, their letters raised in the breasts
of Havelock’s men! And yet this sleek and wary wretch was edu¬
cated and courtly, even to fascination, while the heart beneath his
gorgeous vest cherished the purposes of the tiger and the fiend.
So much for education and refinement without religion or the fear
of God.
Dr. Russell, “ the Times’ Correspondent,” mentions having met
Azeemoolah in the Crimea, seeing with his own eyes how matters
were going on there. He was fresh from England, where, a few
weeks before, he might have been seen moving complacently in
London drawing-rooms, or cantering on Brighton Downs, the
center of an admiring bevy of English damsels ; but in the Crimea

the secret of his soul was betrayed when, one evening, in a large
party, he was incautious enough to remark that the Russians and
the Turks should cease to quarrel, and join and take India. The
remark caused some feeling, but aroused no suspicion of the lurk¬
ing vengeance. India could gain nothing by such a change of
masters. He knew this well enough ; but such a change would
humble England, and probably suspend or annihilate Christian
missions there: and these results would be to him a full compensa¬
tion for the change.
The sensual and superstitious Maharajah of Bithoor—as Nana
Sahib was called—had thus found an agent after his own heart to
work out his will. Bithoor Palace, where the Nana resided, was
spacious, and richly furnished in European style. All the recep¬
tion-rooms were decorated with immense mirrors, and massive
chandeliers in variegated glass, and of the most recent manufac¬
ture ; the floors were covered with the finest productions of the
Indian looms, and all the appurtenances of Eastern splendor were
strewed about in amazing profusion ; but it would be impossible to
lift the vail that must rest on the private life of this man. No¬
where was the mystery of iniquity deeper and darker than in this
Palace of Bithoor. It was a nest worthy of such a vulture. There
were apartments in that palace horribly unfit for any human eye,
where both European and native artists had done their utmost to
gratify the corrupt master, who was willing to incur any expense
for the completion of his loathsome picture-gallery.
In the apartments open to the inspection of English visitors
there was, of course, nothing that could 'shock either modesty or
humanity, though a person of fastidious taste might take exception
to the arrangement of the heterogeneous collection of furniture and
decorations with which the Nana Sahib had filled his house when
he aimed to blend the complicated domestic appliances of the
European with the few and simple requirements of the Oriental.
The Maharajah had a large and excellent stable of horses, ele¬
phants, and camels ; a well-appointed kennel ; a menagerie of
A HYPOCRITE WHO HAS NO EQUAL. 185
pigeons, falcons, peacocks, and apes, which would have done credit
to any Eastern monarch from the days of Solomon downward.
His armory was stocked with weapons of every age and country ;
his reception-rooms sparkled with mirrors and chandeliers that had
come direct from Birmingham ; his equipages had stood within a
twelvemonth in the warehouses of London. He possessed a vast
store of gold and silver plate, and his wardrobe overflowed with
Cashmere shawls and jewelry, which, when exhibited on gala days,
were regarded with longing eyes by the English ladies of Cawn-
pore : for the Nana seldom missed an occasion for giving a ball
or a banquet in European style to the society of the station,
although he would never accept an entertainment in return,
because the English Government, which refused to regard him as
a royal personage, would not allow him the honor of a salute of
twenty-one guns. On these occasions the Maharajah presented
himself in bis panoply of kincob and Cashmere, crowned with a
tiara of pearls and diamonds—as here represented—the great ruby
in the center, and girt with old Bajee Rao’s sword of State, which
report valued at three lakhs of rupees, ($150,000.) The Maharajah
mixed freely with the company, inquired after the health of the
Major’s lady, congratulated the Judge on his rumored promotion
to the Supreme Court, joked the Assistant Magistrate about his
last mishap in the hunting-field, and complimented the belle of the
evening on the color she had brought down from the hills of
Simla.
All this was going on when the writer was in Cawnpore in the
fall of 1856. These costly festivities were then provided for and
enjoyed by the very persons—ladies, children, and gentlemen—
who were, before ten months had passed, ruthlessly butchered in
cold blood by their quondam host. Till his hour arrived nothing
could exceed the cordiality which he managed to display in his
intercourse with the English. The persons in authority placed
implicit confidence in his friendship and good faith, and the young
officers emphatically pronounced him “ a capital fellow.” He had
a nod, a kind word, for every Englishman in the station ; hunting
186 THE LAND OF THE VELA.
parties and jewelry for the men, and picnics and Cashmere shawls
for the ladies. If a subaltern’s wife required change of air the Ma¬
harajah’s carriage was at the service of the young couple, and the
European apartments at Bithoor were put in order to receive them.
If a civilian had overworked himself in court, he had but to speak
the word, and the Maharajah’s elephants were sent to the Oude
jungles for him to go tiger hunting; but none the less did he
ever, for a moment, forget the grudge he bore the English people.
While his face was all smiles, in his heart of hearts he brooded
over the judgment of the Government, and the refusal of his de¬
spised claim.
The men who, with his presented sapphires and rubies glitter¬
ing on their fingers, sat there laughing around his table, had each
and all been doomed to die by a warrant that admitted of no appeal.
He had sworn that the injustice should be expiated by the blood
of ladies who had never heard his grievance named, of babies who
had been born years after the question of that grievance had
passed into oblivion. The great crime of Cawnpore blackened the
pages of history with a far deeper stain than Sicilian vespers or
St. Bartholomew massacres, for this atrocious deed was prompted
neither by diseased nor mistaken patriotism, nor by the madness
of superstition. The motives of the deed were as mean as the
execution was cowardly and treacherous. Among the subordinate
villains there might be some who were possessed by bigotry and
class hatred, but Nana Sahib was actuated by no higher impulses
than ruffled pride and disappointed avarice.
The Hindoos, and particularly the military class of them, looked
up to this man as their Peishwa. His position gave him immense
influence. They would go with him to the side which he espoused.
It is understood that he was tampered with, and made a tool of, by
the Delhi faction under promise that when the English were ex¬
pelled the country the Emperor would recognize his claims, and
give him the throne of his reputed father at Poonah ; so he threw
in his lot with the conspiracy and bided his time.
3. The Mohammedan monopoly of place and power is another
THEIR NUMBERS AND ADVANTAGE. 18J
consideration to be remembered in understanding the character

and extent of this vast combination against Christian civilization.
This gave them their opportunity to organize their plans and
work up the conspiracy. The Sepoy army, with the “ Contingents,y
at native courts, native police, and, we may also add, the armed
followers of the Rajahs and Nawabs who favored the rising, con¬
stituted an armed body of men fully five hundred thousand strong
—the life and soul of the whole being the native “ Bengal Army,”'
very largely Brahminical. Over these ignorant, superstitious, and
fanatical forces, whether as military, commissariat, civil, legal, or
financial subordinate officers, were these Mohammedan officials, so-
that a perfect organization, from Delhi throughout the whole land,,
was being formed, and it only now needed safe means of commu¬
nication between the several parts, so that the central conspiracy
could receive information or send its arrangements through men
whom it could entirely trust, and who were its willing and ready
agents. But this, too, was supplied, as we shall see.
The Sepoy army mounted guard upon the forts, the magazines,
and the treasuries of India; and when their hour had come, and all
was prepared, they held in their own hands the key of the coined
millions of the public money, its vast stores of munitions of war,
and its strong places. The total of European troops then in India
was exactly 45,522, of all arms ; but of these 21,156 were away in
Madras and Bombay, leaving only 24,366 for the East, center, and
Punjab, and more than two thirds of these were off on the West¬
ern frontiers and in Burmah, so that in the entire Valley of the-
Ganges there were but two half regiments, one with Sir H. Law¬
rence in Lucknow, and the other at Cawnpore.
4. India was then not only without railroads, but was even desti¬
tute of common roads, while the rivers were unbridged, and there-
was every natural difficulty in the way of an army of white men
moving through the land, with the heavy impedimenta which they-
require in such a climate, and in which respect the native troops,
being so much less encumbered, so much more at home in the
heat, and so well acquainted with the country, had their enemy at
every disadvantage, and especially as they sprung the struggle

upon them in the very midst of the hot season, when sun-stroke
would be sure to lay low more than were prostrated by the bullet.
To show the importance of one aspect of this difficulty: In
1856 there was but one made road in North India—“the Grand
Trunk,” so called, from Calcutta to the Punjab. General Anson,
the English Commander-in-chief, on the first alarm on the 10th of
May, commenced to collect his forces and march upon Delhi. The
distance was under four hundred miles ; but so wretched were the
roads, and having to drag his artillery through rivers, it was the
8th of June when his army reached Delhi, and nine tenths of all
the massacre and mischief were accomplished during those twenty-
eight days. On the other side the river the conditions of travel
were equally bad. The Soane River is crossed by this Grand
Trunk Road. There was, in 1856, no way but to drag through its
deep sands and widespread waters with bullocks—I have been four
hours going from one side to the other; and the wise Government,
that for one hundred years had neglected to build a bridge, had
erected a dak Bungalow (Travelers’ Rest House) on either bank, to
meet the clear necessity that if you had breakfasted on one side
you would need your dinner when you reached the other ! What
it was to take troops, artillery, and commissariat through such a
country the reader can imagine.
It is a consolation to add, as a sign of that wonderful progress
toward a better state of things on which India has since entered,
that I had the satisfaction of crossing that same Soane River in
1864 in a few minutes on a first-class railroad bridge, and to-day
General Anson could come from Umbal-la to Delhi in twenty-four
hours.
5. The annexation of Oude—the home of the Sepoy—and where,
while it was under native administration, the military classes that
took service under the British Government had peculiar privileges
that annexation would annul, leaving them equal before the law
with the rest of the people : this, with the turbulent character of
the Talookdars (or Barons) of Oude, who held themselves above
DREAD OF CHhibTIAN CIVILIZATION. 189
law, and defied their King to collect revenue from them, or exact
their obedience, along with the thousands of persons who made
a living by the Court, and their relation to its duties, intrigues,
necessities, and vices, and whose occupation would be gone were
the country annexed and British rule introduced—all these were
aroused to a pitch of frenzy when the plot was actually consum¬
mated, and were ready to join in any enterprise, no matter how
wild or desperate, that promised an overthrow of the new condi¬
tion of things. And, finally,
6. To these elements of disturbance and eager watchfulness for
a change, has to be added the great fact of the growing fear of the
extension of the Christian religion, and the founding of new Mis¬
sions in the land, with the consequent and widespread fear that
their own faiths were in imminent danger of overthrow Confound¬
ing every white man with the Government, and regarding him as
most certainly in the service and pay of the English, they looked
upon each Missionary as an emissary, backed up by the entire
power and resources of the Administration, and to be correspond¬
ingly feared. This was the general view, (of course the more
enlightened knew better,) and the interested parties took good care
to intensify it to the utmost of their ability.
The very pains taken by the English officials to deny it, and
present the Government doctrine of “Neutrality,” only made mat¬
ters worse ; for Hindoos and Mohammedans could not imagine a
ruling power without a religion, or without zeal for diffusion of its
own faith. The denial, therefore, was not believed ; it only intensi¬
fied the conviction of the people that these words were used to
conceal the truth, and could only be used as a pretext to blind
them for the present, till the English were fully prepared for the
most determined action against their castes and their faiths. So
that every movement was watched, and every act misinterpreted ;
and those in high places were distracted by prejudices which were
too blind and fanatical to allow them to listen to reason.
My own appearance in Lucknow and Bareilly as a Missionary,
and the pioneer of a band soon to follow, caused a great deal of
[90 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
talk and excitement, and was pointed to as a part of the plan which
the Government was maturing against their religions.
They could also refer to the steady encroachments of Christian
law upon their cherished institutions. Suttee had been prohibited,
female infanticide made penal, the right of a convert to inherit
property vindicated, the remarriage of widows made lawful, self-
immolation at Juggernaut interdicted, Thuggeeism suppressed,
caste slighted—and they dreaded what might come next, ere they
should be entrapped into an utter loss of caste, and forced to em¬
brace the Christian faith.
Such was the peculiar combination of circumstances that in 1856
gave to the disaffected portion of the people of India the opportu¬
nity to concentrate their energies, under the most favorable condi¬
tions of success, to strike a blow that would at once overthrow
Christianity and English rule forever, and restore, as they thought,
native supremacy and the abrogated institutions of their respective
faiths. They really imagined that if they could but wipe out the
few thousand English in the land their work would be done, and
that Great Britain either could not, or would not, replace them,
especially in view of the resistance to a re-occupation which they
could then present.
In addition to the elements of preparation which have been
already presented, there was needed, for their safety and success in
their terrible enterprise, that the conspirators should have a medium
of communication between the various parts of the country and
those who were working with them, as, also, an agency to win over
the wavering and consolidate the whole power, so that it might be
well in hand when the time for action should come.
The post-office was soon distrusted as a medium of communica¬
tion ; nor did it quite answer their purpose. They needed a living
agency. This was essential, and one, too, whose constant move¬
ments would occasion no surprise ; but just such emissaries as they
required were ready at hand in the persons of the Fakirs, or wan¬
dering saints of Hindustan.
No account of India, or of the Sepoy Rebellion, would be com--
THE FAKIRS. I9I
plete which did not include a proper description of these Fakirs.

They are the saints of the Mohammedan and Hindoo systems.
These horrible looking men, with their disheveled hair, naked bod¬
ies, and painted breasts and foreheads, are constantly roving over
the country, visiting shrines, making pilgrimages, and performing
religious services for their disciples. The Sepoys greatly honored
and liberally patronized these spiritual guides. The post-office
failing them, the chiefs of the conspiracy linked these Fakirs into
the enterprise as the medium of communication ; and they were so
stationed that the orders transmitted, or the information desired,
could be forwarded with a celerity and safety that was amazing.
It may be desired, for the sake of the information on this singular
topic, to digress a little just here, before proceeding with the narra¬
tive. Of all the curses under which India and her daughters groan,
it may safely be said that this profession of the Fakirs is one of the
heaviest and most debasing. The world has not often beheld a
truer illustration of putting “darkness for light” than is afforded in
the character and influence of these ignorant, beastly-looking men
—fellows that in any civilized land would be indicted as “common
vagrants,” or hooted out of society as an intolerable outrage upon
decency. But they swarm in India, infesting its highways, crowding
its ghats and temples, creeping into its homes, and leading captive
its poor, silly women. They hold the general mind of India in such
craven fear that the courtly Rajah, riding in his silver howdah on
the back of his elephant, and surrounded by his retinue, will often
rise from his seat and salaam to one of these wretches as he goes by.
The Law-giver of India, while so jealously providing for the
seclusion of the ladies of the land, expressly relaxes the rules in
favor of four classes of men—Fakirs, Bards, Brahmins and their
own servants—in the following section of the Code : “ Mendicants,
encomiasts, men prepared for a sacrifice, cooks, and other artisans
are not prohibited from speaking to married women.”—Sec. 360,
chap. viii. They can exercise their discretion how far they shall
unvail themselves before them, though in their intercourse with
Brahmins and Fakirs all restriction is usually laid aside. They are
as absolutely in their power as the female penitents of the Romish

Church are in that of their priesthood, and even more so.
This state of things has lasted for long ages past. Alexander
the Great, in his invasion of India, 326 B. C., found these very men
as we see them there to-day. The historians of his expedition give
us accurate descriptions of them. The Greeks were evidently
amused and astonished at the sight of these ascetics, and, having
no word in their language to describe them, they invented a new
term, and called them Gymnosophists, (from gumnos, naked, and
sophos, wise.) The patient endurance of pain and privation, the
complete abstraction of some, the free quotations of the Shaster
Slokes and maxims of their philosophy by the others, led the
amazed Alexander and his troops to designate them as “Naked
Philosophers,” more literally so than the pictures here presented, for,
though in my possession, I did not dare to have those engraved
whose nudity would have more fully justified the Greek designa¬
tion ; but they are still there, and of that class of the Fakirs a few
words farther on will be in place.
The word “Fakir” (pronounced Fa-keer, with the a broad) is
an Arabic term signifying “ poor,” or a “ poor man,” because they
profess to have taken the vow of poverty, and, in theory, hold them¬
selves above the necessity of home, property, or money, realizing
their living as a religious right from the people wherever they
come.
Some wander from place to place, some go on pilgrimages, and
others locate themselves under a great banyan tree, or in the
depths of a forest in some ruinous shrine or tomb, or on the bank
of a river, and there receive the homage and offerings of their
votaries.
I have often stood and looked at them in the wild jungle, miles
away from a human habitation, filthy, naked, daubed with ashes
and paint, and thought how like they seemed to those wretched
creatures whom a merciful Saviour released from the power of evil
spirits, and so compassionately restored to decency, to friends, and
to their right minds.
The Fakirs of India.—From a Photograph.
SELF-TORTURING FAKIRS. 195
Some few of these Fakirs are undoubtedly sincere in their pro¬

fession of giving up the world, and its social and domestic relations,
to embrace lives of solitude, mortification, or self-torture, or to
devote themselves to a course of religious contemplation and
as:eticism ; others of them do it from a motive of vain-glory, to be
honored and worshiped by their deluded followers ; while both of
these classes expect, in addition, to accumulate thereby a stock of
merit that will avail them in the next transmigration, and hasten
their absorption into Brahm. But no one who has seen and
known them can doubt that the great majority of the Fakirs are
impostors and hypocrites.
A glance at the picture will enable the reader more fully to
understand the descriptions which follow. These wear some
clothing, but not much. The hair of the head is permitted to
grow—in some cases not cut, and evidently not combed—from the
time when they enter upon this profession. It grows at length
longer than the body, when it is wound around the head in a rope¬
like coil, and is fastened with a wooden pin. The figure on the
left hand of the picture in front is one of these. Having some
doubts whether there was not some “ make-believe ” in the huge
roll, I questioned a Fakir one day about it. Seizing the big pin,
he pulled it out, and down fell the long line of hair trailing after
him. It was, sure enough, all his own hair.
But even these are not the worst of the class. Quite a number
of them give up wandering and locate, and engage in the most
amazing manifestations of endurance and self-torture. A few must
be mentioned. One will lash a pole to his body and fasten the arm
to it, pointing upward, and endure the pain till that limb becomes
rigid and cannot be taken down again. The pole is then removed.
I saw one of them with both arms thus fixed, his hands some eight¬
een inches higher than his head, and utterly immovable. Some of
them have been known to close the hand, and hold it so until the
nails penetrated the flesh, and came out on the other side. Taver¬
nier and others give engravings of some who have stood on one leg
for years, and others who never lie down, supported only by a stick
196 THE LAND Op THE VEDA.
or rope under their armpits, their legs meanwhile growing into hid¬
eous deformity, and breaking out in ulcers. Sticking a spear
through the protruded tongue, or through the arm, is practiced, and
so is hook-swinging—running sharp hooks through the small of the
back deep enough to bear the man’s weight—when he is raised
twenty or thirty feet into the air and swung around. Some will lie
A SELF-TORTURING FAKIR.
for years on beds of iron spikes, like the one here represented, read¬
ing their Shaster and counting their beads ; while their ranks furnish
many of the voluntary victims who have immolated themselves be¬
neath the wheels of Juggernaut. But there are tens of thousands
of them who take to the profession simply because it gives them a
living off the public, and who are mere wandering vagabonds.
Many of them are animated by another class of motives. These
hunger for fame—they have become Fakirs for the honor of the
thing—are willing to suffer that they may be respected and adored
by those who witness in wonder the amazing self-tortures which
they will endure. An instance which may be worth relating will
illustrate this aspect of the subject. It was turned into verse by a
numorous Englishman when the case occurred, and we present it
here. One of these self-glorifying Fakirs, after graduating to saint-
THE SELF-GLORIFICATION MOTIVE. 19 7
ship by long years of austerities and extensive pilgrimages, took it
into his head that he could still further exalt his fame by riding
about in a sort of Sedan chair with the seat stuck full of nails.
Four men carried him from town to town, shaking him as little as
possible. Great was the admiration of his endurance which awaited
him every-where. At length (no doubt when his condition had
become such that he was for the time disposed to listen to some
friendly advice) a rich native gentleman, somewhat skeptical as to
the value and need of this discipline, met him and tried very ear¬
nestly to persuade him to quit his uncomfortable seat, and have mercy
upon himself. But here let Mr. Cambridge give the reasoning of the
kind-hearted native, and point the moral of the story. He says to
the Fakir:
“ ‘ Can such wretches as you give to madness a vogue ?
Though the priesthood of Fo on the vulgar impose
By squinting whole years at the end of their nose—
Though with cruel devices of mortification
They adore a vain idol of modern creation—
Does the God of the heavens such a service direct ?
Can his Mercy approve a self-punishing sect?
Will his Wisdom be worshiped with chains and with nails.
Or e’er look for his rites in your noses and tails ?
Come along to my house, and these penances leave,
Give your belly a feast, and your breech a reprieve.’
This reasoning unhinged each fanatical notion.
And staggered our saint in his chair of promotion.
At length, with reluctance, he rose from his seat,
And, resigning his nails and his fame for retreat.
Two weeks his new life he admired and enjoyed;
The third he with plenty and quiet was cloyed;
To live undistinguished to him was the pain,
An existence unnoticed he could not sustain.
In retirement he sighed for the fame-giving chair,
For the crowd to admire him, to reverence and stare:
No endearments of pleasure and ease could prevail,
He the saintship resumed, and new-larded his tail.”
The reference in the third line—to “squinting whole years at

the end ol his nose,” is a serious subject, and will be explained
hereafter.
Sometimes Fakirs will undertake to perform a very painful and
lengthened exercise in measuring the distance to the “sacred” city
of Benares from some point, such as a shrine or famous temple,
even hundreds of miles away, though months or years may be

required to complete the journey. I had once the opportunity of
seeing one of these men performing this feat. When I met him he
was on the Grand Trunk Road, over two hundred and forty miles
from Benares. He had already accomplished about two hundred
miles. A crowd accompanied him from village to village, as men
turn out here to see Weston walk. He was a miserable-looking
object, covered from the crown of his head to his feet with dust
and mud. He would lay himself down flat on the road, his face in
the dust, and with his finger would make a mark in front of his
head on the ground ; then he would rise and put his toes in that
mark, and down he would go again, flat and at full length, make
another line, rise, and put his toes in that, and so on, throughout the
live-long day. When tired out he would make such a mark on the
side of the road as he could safely find next morning, and then
go back with the crowd to the last village which he had passed,
where he would be feted and honored, and next day would return
to his mark and renew his weary way. I could not find out how
much progress he usually made. It must have been very slow
work—certainly less than one mile per day ; and what weary months
of hard toil lay between him and Benares is apparent. These
wretches thus choose, and voluntarily lay upon themselves, penal¬
ties that no civilized government on earth would venture to inflict
upon its most hardened criminals.
Some of these Yogees, in view of their supposed sanctity and
superiority to all external considerations, hold themselves above
obedience to law or the claims of common decency. I have myself
seen one of them in the streets of Benares, in the middle of the
day, when they were crowded with men and women—a man evi¬
dently over forty years of age—as naked as he was born, walking
through the throng with the most complete shamelessness and
unconcern! And if it were not for the terror of the English
magistrate’s order and whip, instead of one in a while, hundreds
of these “naked philosophers” would scandalize those streets
every day in the year, and “ glory in their shame.”
'
Yogee, or Silent Saint of India.—From a Photograph.
THE RULES OF HINDOO PERFECTION. 201
There is a further aspect of this subject, and one so singular and

serious that the reader will be as much surprised at the alleged
divine law which requires it, as the sole and only path to moral
purity and ultimate perfection, as he will be that men have ever
been found who would undertake to conform themselves to the
amazing and unique discipline by which it is to be attained. W
may talk of self-denial and cross-bearing, but did the history of
human endurance ever present any thing equal to the requirements
of the following teachings ?
In all the wide range of Hindoo Literature it is conceded that
there is nothing so sublime, and even pure, as the disquisitions con¬
tained in the Bhagvat Geeta, (Bhagvat, Lord, Geeta, song—“ the
Song of the Lord.”) This book is an episode of the celebrated
Mahabarata, and consists of conversations between the divine
Kreeshna, (the incarnate God of the Hindoos, in his last avatar,
or descent to earth in mortal form,) and his favorite pupil, the
valiant Arjoona, commander-in-chief of the Pandoo forces.
Arjoona is religious as well as heroic, and in deep anxiety to
know by what spiritual discipline he may reach perfection and
permanent union with God. His Incarnate Deity undertakes to
enlighten him in the following instructions.
To assist the reader in comprehending the teachings of this
whimsical method of reaching “the higher life,” as practiced by
the most sincere and yearning of India’s religion devotees, I pre¬
sent a faithful picture of one of the class described, and who is at the
same time one of the most celebrated of the Yogee order, just as I
have seen him in Delhi, where the photograph was taken. The
Yogee is the central figure. The Fakir standing is his attendant;
the man to the right is one of the Yogee’s devotees or worshipers,
come to pay him the usual homage, expressed by his clasped hands.
The Saint is silent, engaged in the meditation and abstraction, the
rules of which we are going to present. His body is daubed with
ashes till he looks as if covered with leprosy ; the marks on his
forehead are red, as they are on the face, and breast, and arms of
his attendant. He holds no converse with mortal man, nor has he
done so for years. The Governor-General of India might pass by,

but he would not condescend to look at him, nor deign a word of
reply were he to speak to him. He is supposed to be dead to all
things here below, and to have every sense and faculty absorbed in
the contemplations enjoined in the following words of the Deity :
Kreeshna says to Arjoona : “ The man who keepeth the outward
accidents from entering his mind, and his eyes fixed in contempla¬
tion between his brows—who maketh the breath to pass through
both his nostrils alike in expiration and inspiration—who is of sub¬
dued faculties, mind, and understanding, and hath set his heart
upon salvation, and who is free from lust, fear, and anger—is for¬
ever blessed in this life; and being convinced that I am the cher-
isher of religious zeal, the lord of all worlds, and the friend of all
nature, he shall obtain me and be blessed.
“The Yogee constantly exerciseth the spirit in private. He is
recluse, of a subdued mind and spirit, free from hope, and free from
perception. He planteth his own seat firmly on a spot that is
undefiled, neither too high nor too low, and sitteth on the sacred
grass which is called Koos, covered with a skin and a cloth. Here
he whose business is the restraining of his passions should sit, with
his mind fixed on one object alone, in the exercise of his devotion
for the purification of his soul, keeping his head, his neck, and
body steady without motion, his eyes fixed on the point of his nose,
looking at no other place around. The peaceful soul released from
fear, who would keep in the path of one who followed god, should
restrain the mind, and, fixing it on me, depend on me alone. The
Yogee of an humble mind, who thus constantly exerciseth his soul,
obtaineth happiness incorporeal and supreme in me.”—Bhagvat
Geeta, pp. 46-48.
It was one of these men, sitting thus naked, filthy, and supercili¬
ous, upon the steps of the Benares Ghat, receiving the homage and
worship of the people, that drew from Bishop Thomson that strong
remark which made such an impression upon those who heard him
utter it.
The reader will bear in mind that Yog means the practice of
NUMBERS AND EXPENSE OF HINDOO SAINTS. 203
devotion in this special sense, and a Yogee is one devoted to God

and such a man as the one here presented is the highest style of
saint that Hindoo theology or its Patanjala (School of Philosophy)
can know. The demands of these tenets, and the amazing suprem¬
acy which their practice confers on such a devotee as this, are so
extraordinary and beyond belief, that, instead of'my own language,
I prefer to state them in the words of Professor H. H. Wilson, the
translator of the Veda. Describing the discipline of the Yogees,
and the exaltations which they aim at, he says: “ These practices con¬
sist chiefly of long-continued suppression of respiration ; of inhaling
and exhaling the breath in a particular manner ; of sitting in eighty-
four different attitudes ; of fixing their eyes on the tips of their
noses, and endeavoring by the force of mental abstraction to effect
a union between the portion of vital spirit residing in the body and
that which pervades all nature, and is identical with Shiva, consid¬
ered as the supreme being, and source and essence of all creation.
When this mystic union is effected, the Yogee is liberated in his
living body from the clog of material encumbrance, and acquires an
entire command over all worldly substance. He can make himself
lighter than the lightest substances, heavier than the heaviest; can
become as vast or as minute as he pleases ; can traverse all space ;
can animate any dead body by transferring his spirit into it from
his own frame; can render himself invisible; can attain all objects;
become equally acquainted with the past, present, and future; and
is finally united with Shiva, and consequently exempted from being
born again upon earth. The superhuman faculties are acquired in
various degrees, according to the greater or less perfection with
which the initiatory processes have been performed.” All this is
implicitly believed of them by their devotees, and they are honored
accordingly with a boundless reverence.
The number of persons in the various orders of Yogees and
Fakirs all over India must be immense. D’Herbelot, in his Biblio-
tfteque Orientale, estimates them at 2,000,000, of which he thinks
800,000 are Mohammedan Fakirs. Ward’s estimate seems to sus¬
tain this. But the influence of the British Government and its
laws, and the extension of education and missionary teaching, are

steadily tending to the reduction of the number, by lowering the
popular respect for the lazy crew that have so long consumed the
industry of the struggling and superstitious people.
The expense of supporting them, at the lowest estimate—say two
rupees per month for each Fakir—involves a drain of $12,000,000
per annum upon the industry of the country—a sum equal to what
is contributed for the support of all the Christian clergy of the United
States. Yet this is only one item of what their religion costs the
Hindoos. Besides this come the claims of the regular priesthood,
then of the Brahmins, then of the astrologers, encomiasts, etc.,
which this system creates—and Ward âys they, with the Fakirs,
make up in Bengal about one eighth of the population—millions
of men year after year thus sponging upon their fellows, and
engendering the ignorance, the superstition, the vice, the men¬
dicity, the sycophancy, that necessitate a foreign rule in their
magnificent land, as the only arrangement under which the major¬
ity could know peace, and be safe in possession of the few advan¬
tages which they enjoy. Truly heathenism—and above all Hindoo
heathenism—is an expensive system of social and national life for
any people. Error and vice don’t pay. They are dearer far than
truth and virtue under any circumstances.
Welcoming to their ranks, as they did, every vagabond of ability
who had an aversion to labor, before the introduction of the British
rule, these Fakirs, under pretenses of pilgrimages, used to wander,
like the Gypsies of the West, over the country in bands of several
thousands, but holding their character so sacred that the civil
power dare not take cognizance of their conduct; so they would
often lay entire neighborhoods under contribution, rob people of
their wives, and commit any amount of enormities. In Dow’s
“ Ferishta,” Vol. Ill, there is a singular account of a combination
of them, twenty thousand strong, raising a rebellion against the
Emperor Aurungzebe, selecting as their leader- an old woman
named Bistemia, who enjoyed a high fame for her spells and great
skill in the magic art. The Emperor’s general was something of
MILITANT SAINTS. 205
a wit. He gave out that he would resist her incantations by written

spells, which he would put into the hands of his officers. His proved
the more powerful, for a good reason : a battle, or rather a carnage,
ensued, in which the old lady and her Fakir host were simply anni¬
hilated. Aurungzebe met his general, and, the historian tells us,
had a good laugh with him over the success of his “ spells.” Even
as late as 1778 these militant saints thought themselves strong
enough to measure swords with English troops, attacking Colonel
Goddard in his march to Herapoor. But the Colonel, though much
more merciful than the Mohammedan General, taught them by the
sacrifice of a score or more of their number that they had better
let carnal weapons alone. Though still saucy enough to the weak,
they have ceased to act together in masses, or carry a worse weapon
than a club in their peregrinations.
Usually each wandering Fakir has a religious relation to the
high priest of some leading temple, and to him he surrenders some
portion of the financial results of each tour at its termination. In
view of this fact, they claim free quarters in all the temples which
they pass. Their wide range of intercourse tends to make them
well acquainted with public affairs—they hear all that is going on,
and know the state of feeling and opinion, and communicate to
their patron priests the information which they gather as they go.
This, then, was “the secret service” organized by the conspirators
of the Sepoy Rebellion to convey their purposes and instructions—
when they concluded that the post-office was no longer safe to
them—and a very efficient and devoted “ service ” it proved to be
for their objects.
One of Havelock’s soldiers gave me a string of praying beads
which he took from one of these Fakirs before they executed him.
They intercepted him on his way to a Brigade of Sepoys, who had
not yet risen, with a document concealed on his person from the
Delhi leaders, directing the brigade to rise at once and kill their
officers and the ladies and children of their station, and march
immediately for Delhi to help the Emperor against the English.
With this missive upon him, the Fakir—a stout, able fellow—was
20 6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
passing Havelock’s camp, when his movements attracted attention,

and he was stopped. The interpreter was sent for, and the man
interrogated. He gave a plausible account of himself—was a Holy
Fakir, on his way to a certain shrine beyond, to perform his devo¬
tion— all the time twirling his beads in mental prayer, and so
abstracted he could hardly condescend to reply to their inquiries.
Some were for letting him go ; others, who did not like his looks,
thought it better to search him before doing so, when the terrible
missive that was to plunge into a. sudden and cruel death some
forty English people, more than half of them ladies and children,
was found upon him, and he was at once told to prepare for death.
They gave him five minutes, and then dropped him by the road¬
side with the bullet. He held his beads to the last, and the soldier
who took them from his hands gave them to me. But there were
thousands of such agents at their command, and the loss of a few
made little difference to the enterprise.
Out of the Presidency cities (Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay)
there were then no hotels, and, save the Dak Bungalows (Travelers’
Rest Houses) on the leading roads, a stranger was thrown entirely
upon the hospitality of the civil and military officers of the English
Government as he moved through the country. Freely and cor¬
dially was this hospitality extended to all comers, our kind hosts
seeming to regard each visitant as conferring a favor rather than
receiving it. On his departure they furnished him with a note of
introduction to a friend in the next station, and there the same
courtesy and attention was repeated.
Thrown thus so much and so constantly into the society of these
gentlemen and their families, we were especially, as American
strangers and missionaries, regarded with considerable interest,
and our future success discussed from a variety of stand-points,
according to the degree and character of the religious views and
feelings of our kind entertainers. We had gone to India under the
idea that it was a country whose tranquillity was fully assured, and
whose peace could not be disturbed by any events likely to arise
from any quarter. Our amazement may be imagined when we
ANNEXATION OF OUDE. 20 7
discoveied, as we so soon did, that there were apprehensions in the

minds of many of these gentlemen of the existence of something
unsafe, and even dangerous, around them ; but as others of them
treated the matter very lightly, and even ridiculed the idea of any
necessity for anxiety, we, on our part, concluded’ that it was no par¬
ticular business of ours, so we went on with our duty, leaving the
future to be guided and controlled by che great Protector whom we
were serving.
On reaching Lucknow, November 29, 1856, we found, rather to
our surprise, that our note of introduction was to billet us in the
“ Residency,” (so famous for its siege and relief by General Have¬
lock ten months later.) Lucknow was the splendid capital of the
kingdom of Oude, whose sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah, had just been
removed to Calcutta, and his dominions annexed by the British
Government, on account of the long-continued misrule and oppres¬
sion that had made Oude a neighborhood of misery and rapine to
all the country around it. What the condition of its King and
Court were is stated, without exaggeration, in a work issued from
the American press about 1854, entitled “The Private Life of an
Eastern King,” and also in Sleeman’s “Recollections,” and other
publications. Few sovereigns have ever been so utterly forgetful
of the duties of a governor of men, or more thoroughly steeped in
selfishness and sensuality, than was Wajid Ali Shah. His terri¬
tories at length, from his misrule and neglect, became an unequaled
scene of outrage and bloodshed, and a refuge for the dacoits (rob¬
bers) of Northern India, who would cross the Ganges at night and
plunder in the British Territories all around, making good their
retreat into Oude before daylight. Complaints were presented for
years, and threats of annexation were served upon him, till they
ceased to be heeded by the besotted and reckless man, whose cruel¬
ties and neglect of his people (in which, however, he only imitated
each of his predecessors) led at last to his being removed from the
throne he disgxaced. He was transferred to Calcutta in the spring
of 1856, and there, on a pension about equal to his royal reve¬
nues, he prosecutes his debaucheries without ruining: a kingdom
any longer. The British Government annexed Oude to their terri¬

tories, greatly to its relief and advantage. I present a picture of
this royal sot, as he loved to display himself in all his jewels and
finery.
During the week that we remained at Lucknow we were kindly
entertained by a member of the new Government, (at the head of
which was the celebrated Sir Henry Lawrence.) Every facility
was afforded me in prosecuting my inquiries, and all information
that I needed about the country, its condition and statistics, were
freely communicated.
Lucknow then well deserved the character, so far as its external
aspect was concerned, which Bayard Taylor gives it in his “ India,
China, and Japan,” when, standing on the iron bridge which spans
the Goomtee, he exclaims, “ All was lovely as the outer court of
Paradise!” But, in what moral corruption were its five hundred
thousand inhabitants seething! I had never before seen any
thing approaching its aspect of depravity and armed violence.
Every man carried a weapon—even the trader’s sword lay beside
his goods, ready to defend them against the lawless. I had not
supposed there was a community of men in this woiid, such fero¬
cious Ishmaelites, as I saw in that city. It was not safe for an
unarmed man, black or white, to move among them. And, indeed,
when I wanted to see the city thoroughly, it was considered essen¬
tial to my safety that I should not go alone or unattended, so they
kindly mounted me on the back of an elephant in a Government
howdah, and gave me a Sepoy escort; and thus elevated, so that I
could see every thing on the flat-roofed houses, and in the courts
and streets below, I made my first acquaintance with the city of
Lucknow, and saw heathenism and Mohammedanism in their unut¬
terable vileness. I returned to the Residency in the evening sick
at heart, and, for the moment, discouraged at the fearful task which
we were undertaking, to save and Christianize such people.
Outside the city the whole country was a sort of camp. The
Sepoy army was drawn chiefly from this military class of men.
Indeed, the city of Lucknow was the capital of the Sepoy race.
Wajid All Snah, last King of Oude.
THOSE WHO NEEDED US MOST. 211
The Talookdars (barons) of Oude (each in his own talook, setting

up for himself, holding all he had, and taking all he was able to snatch
from his neighbors) often defied their King, and refused to pay
the jumma, (revenue,) and he could not obtain it unless by force of
arms; and even here he was frequently defeated by their combining
their forces against him. Mr. Mead has fully shown in his work—
“The Sepoy Revolt”—how truly Oude had been for generations
the paradise of adventurers, the Alsatia of India, the nursing-place
and sanctuary of scoundrelism, almost beyond a parallel on earth.
Sir William Sleeman’s work on Oude is probably the most fearful
record of aristocratic violence, perfidy, and blood, that has ever been
compiled ; yet it is written by one who opposed the annexation of
the country to the British dominions, and who was regarded by the
natives as their true friend. When I entered Oude there were
known to be then standing two hundred and forty-six forts, with
over eight thousand gunners to work the artillery on their walls,
and connected with them were little armies, or bands of fighting
men, to whom they were continually a place of shelter and defense.
Annexation involved the razing of these forts, and the incorporation
of a large amount of those blood-thirsty freebooters, and of the
King’s troops, into the Sepoy Army—for Lord Dalhousie, the
Governor-General, did not know what else to do with them—but
what elements of fierceness and lawlessness were thus added to
the prejudice and fanaticism of the high caste Brahminical army
can be well imagined. Thousands of these mercenaries who
could not be employed, and who, with arms in their hands, were
sent adrift to seek their fortunes, became the ready instruments of
the Talookdars’ tyranny and power, when His Excellency an¬
nounced to them his intention of introducing the British system
of land revenue into their country, for they well knew that these
public improvements could be established only at the cost of their
personal prerogatives and opportunities. The result is before the
world.
Yet it was in such a country and among such a people, after
months of careful inquiry and inspection of unoccupied fields, that
I concluded the Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church

should be established. We, with our gospel of peace and purity,
had evidently found “ those who needed us most and I had
faith to believe that this warlike race, with all their force of char¬
acter, could be redeemed, and would yet become good soldiers
of Jesus Christ. Long after the hand which traces these lines
shall have crumbled into the dust will the wide range of that beau¬
tiful valley, dotted with Christian churches, and cultivated by
Christian hands, be bearing the rich fruition of these hopes.
Satisfied of the suitability of Lucknow to become the head¬
quarters of our new Mission, I sought from a member of the Gov¬
ernment (not Sir Henry Lawrence, however) some statistics of the
kingdom, to be incorporated in my Report to the Board at New
York. I shall long remember his surprise when he found that we
seriously contemplated planting the standard of the cross there. He
asked me to look at the people, to consider their inveterate preju¬
dices, and the venerable character of their systems, and say if I
thought any thing could ever be done there ? So far was he from so
believing that he considered it was madness for us to try, nor would
our life be safe in attempting it. His mind was so made up on that
question that he could lend no countenance to such an effort :
in fact, he was no friend to Christian missions, and he intimated
pretty plainly that he considered I would manifest more good sense
were I retrace my steps to Calcutta, and take the first ship that left
for America! I received no better encouragement when I after¬
ward called on Sir James Outram—a good man, and one of the
bravest generals that ever commanded an army. He could lead
the advance that so gallantly captured that city; but to stand up
for Jesus alone and unprotected, exposed to the rage of the Moham¬
medan and the Hindoo in their bazaars, seemed to the military hero
something that ought not to be attempted in such a country as
Oude. He shrugged his shoulders when I reminded him that, as
to our safety, Christ our Master, whose commission we obeyed,
would look to that; while our success was in the hands of the Holy
Spirit, and duty alone was ours. But he could not see it, and
OUR MISSION FIELD. 213
•*ve parted never to meet again. The gallant man, so justly desig¬
nated “ The Bayard of India,” sleeps to-day in Westminster Abbey
among the illustrious dead whom England delights to honor.
Satisfied that we should end our wanderings, and regard Oude
and Rohilcund as our mission-field, we sought for a house in Luck¬
now, but none could be found—all spare accommodation of the
kind had been engaged by the officers connected with the increased
civil and military establishments of the Government. So we were
necessitated, as the next best thing, to go on to Bareilly, where a
residence could be obtained, and wait for the future to open our
way into Lucknow. We thus escaped the honor and risk of being
numbered with those whom the relieving General, speaking for a
sympathizing world, was pleased to designate “ the more than illus¬
trious garrison of Lucknow,” who for one hundred and forty-two
days were shut up and besieged within the walls of the Residency
and the adjacent buildings, and whose story we shall illustrate in
its place.
With many of the survivors, male and female, I was intimately
acquainted for years afterward, while my home subsequently was
within fifteen minutes’ walk of the ruins of the Residency itself.
After full examination and inquiry, I had chosen this Kingdom
of Oude and Province of Rohilcund (with the hill territory of
Kumaon subsequently added) as our parish in India. In a full
report to the Board in New York our reasons for the preference
were fully given, and the fact was noted in the correspondence that
the field chosen was one of those commended to my attention,
before leaving America, by the Rev. Dr. Durbin, as one that might
probably, on examination, be found pre-eminently suitable. His
opinion and sagacity have been fully justified by the unqualified
satisfaction of all concerned with the choice thus made. Our field,
then, is the Valley of the Ganges, with the adjacent hill range
bounded by the river Ganges on the west and south, and the great
Himalaya Mountains on the north—a tract of India nearly as large
as England without Scotland, being nearly four hundred and fifty
miles long, and an average breadth of say one hundred and twenty
miles, containing more than eighteen millions of people, who are

thus left in our hands by the well-understood courtesy of the other
Missionary Societies in Europe and America, who respect our occu¬
pation, and consider us pledged to bring the means of grace and
salvation within the reach of these dying millions. (The reader’s
attention is asked to the Map which is at the beginning of the
volume for the localities intimated within or near the scenes of the
Ramayana and Mahabarata, and its central position, in the very
“ throne land of Rama,” amid the most important of India’s “ holy
shrines,” and where our Christianity can tell so powerfully upon
the entire country.)
On my way to Bareilly I called to see the Missionaries of the
American Presbyterian Church at Allahabad ; and, after explaining
my plans and our proposed field, I stated to them how much I felt
the need of some native young man who knew a littie English—
one whom I could fully trust, and by whose aid I might do some¬
thing while awaiting the arrival of the brethren to be sent to me
from America. They had one such whom they thought, under the
circumstances, they might spare for such a purpose, though he was
very dear to them. His name was Joel. They kindly introduced
me to him, and at once my heart went out toward him as just the
person I needed. I introduce him here to my readers—my faithful
helper, destined to become the first native minister of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in India.
Joel had been taken when an orphan boy by the missionaries,
and by them was educated and trained. He was at this time about
twenty-two years of age, married to Emma, a lovely, gentle girl,
four years younger than her husband. They had one little babe,
and lived with Emma’s widowed mother, a good Christian woman
called “ Peggy,” who doted upon her daughter, all the more, I sup¬
pose, because she was so fair and delicate. I remember them dis¬
tinctly, because they were the first Christianized Hindoo household
beneath whose roof I had yet sat down, and they seemed such a
happy family. Joel had then gained so much of the English lan¬
guage that, by speaking slowly and using simple words, I could
JOEL. 215
Joel—-Jrom a Photograph.)
make him understand me with tolerable clearness. He seemed

just the kind of native assistant that I needed, if I could but obtain
him. But I was going three hundred miles farther into an unex¬
plored region, in the heart of the country, and where all was new
and untried. The proposition to take him away from the friends
of his youth, and from Christian services, among utter strangers
.2j6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
And heathens, did seem rather trying, particularly in view of the

general native timidity to go far from home—for that distance, and
into another kingdom, seems to them almost equal to changing
their nationality.
The case was laid before God, and his direction sought. It was
then intimated to Joel himself, and, to my encouragement, he said
he would be willing, but that he did not know how Emma would
feel about it, or—which seemed to him a greater difficulty—what
Emma’s mother would say to the proposal. I feared that the
mother’s objection would be insuperable. However, I sent Joel to
•consult Emma first, and the faithful, brave little wife at once con¬
sented to go where he would go. Then came the test on which all
depended for success. I resolved to accompany Joel to Peggy’s
residence, to be present when the proposal was made through
Brother Owen, who interpreted for me.
When we entered her humble home and sat down, she greeted
us with her sweet smile, and there was a pause. Joel looked at me
and I at him, but for a few minutes I could not begin. The lonely
wido\v would be so much more lonely when the dutiful and affec¬
tionate daughter who sat there would be far away. This, with the
possibility that she should see her no more, and that the sacrifice
was almost too much to ask, seeming as it did, in some humble
sense, to rank with the class of self-sacrifices which required him
of old to take his son, his “ only son Isaac,” whom he loved, to give
him up to duty and to God, made my task a painful one. The
hesitation to speak was embarrassing, but it had to be done; so,
with an anxious heart and some serious doubts, I began and told
her where I was going; that I had no aid of any kind with which
to begin God’s work in the great Valley of the Ganges, and what
a treasure and help some suitable young man would be to me,
enabling me to speak to the people at once about Christ, and aid¬
ing me to gain the language, and assisting in every way. Then,
her attention and interest being fixed, I ventured to make the pro¬
posal which was tixlacerate her feelings and to try her faith ; and 1
said to her, “Joel is my choice ; I have met no one who can help
PEGGY'S SACRIFICE FOR HER SAVIOUR. 217
me as he can ; he is willing to go with me, and so is Emma, if you

can only give your consent.”
Woman has made many and great sacrifices for Jesus, and
largely by such sacrifices has the cause of truth and purity been
advanced among men. Since holy Simeon said to the mother of
the Lord’s Christ, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own
soul also,” how many mothers, especially in resigning their chil¬
dren for the service of God at home or in distant lands, or those
again in parting with their little ones that they might go there, or
stay there—how many such in these Christian sacrifices have felt
this anguish pierce their maternal sympathies when, as true follow¬
ers of the Divine Father, “who spared not his own Son, but freely
delivered him up for us all,” they have surrendered their loved ones
to the Lord’s work, enduring their pungent sorrows, and trying to
say, “ My Saviour, I do this for thee!”
Compared with such offerings, how poor and small, and easily
parted with, were the sacrifices of Jewish saints! They had only
to surrender their corn, or wine, or oil, the best of their barn-yards
or their flocks, or a money equivalent, for their first-born. None
of these, save in such a case as Hannah’s, went deeper than the
purse. They were only property ; they left the heart unscathed ;
they cost no tears, and inflicted no anguish. But it is different
with Christian saints, who follow a self-denying Saviour, and who
for his sake are willing to bear this peculiar cross. How amply
•compensated will such mothers feel when, in the presence of Him for
whom they made these sacrifices, they shall see the sons or daugh¬
ters whom they resigned to the work of God, after having turned
many to righteousness, “ shine as the stars for ever and ever! ”
A spark of this Christ-like grace in the soul of a humble woman,
■once a heathen, can produce the same blessed spirit of self-sacrifice
as that which animates the breasts of the most cultured ladies of
Christendom ; while her prompt and noble reply puts to the blush
the selfishness of some mothers in this land, who have dared to
stand between their children and convictions of duty to God and a
■dying world.
12
When the painful question was presented to Peggy, after a

momentary natural struggle, showing how conscious she was of
the sacrifice, she answered me with tears—and I would write the
poor widow’s words in letters of gold if I could : “ Sahib, (Sir, a
title of respect,) the Saviour came down from heaven to give him
self for me, and why should not I give my daughter to his work ?*
JOEL'S EXPERIENCE. 219
It is a pleasure to introduce here the likeness of the devoted

woman whose words I have quoted, and whose conduct so encour¬
aged my heart that day.
Joel and Emma and their babe accompanied me to Rohilcund.
As we were starting, the good missionaries by whom he had been
educated, and who appreciated the gift they were conferring, play¬
fully intimated that Joel had been trained a Presbyterian, knew the
Westminster Catechism, and was sound on the Five Points of Cal¬
vinism, and that they would naturally expect him to continue in
the faith, even though he was going with a Methodist missionary!
In reply, I told them that I was more concerned for his religious
welfare than for his special theological opinions—a clear conversion
was of more moment to me than a creed ; but that his views I
would not, under the circumstances, interfere with in any way.
Nor did I ever do so. I felt assured these things would regulate
themselves thereafter.
On our arrival at Bareilly I commenced a little class-meeting,
but soon found that Joel did not seem quite at home, and had but
little to say in the exercise. So I drew him into private conversation,
explained what we meant by the witness of the Holy Spirit, and
put into his hands the “ Memoir of William Carvosso,” telling him
that it was composed in very easy English, and was regarded by us
as one of the best books ever written to illustrate the faith that
saves, advising him to read it through twice, and then tell me what
he thought of it. He did so ; but before he finished the second
reading told me there was something described there which he had
not experienced. He had feared God from his youth, respected
the Christian religion, attended the means of grace, was moral and
upright, and would stand up for Christ and advocate his cause, but
to say that he knew God as his reconciled Father was what he had
never been able to profess. He now saw its necessity, ancl began
to seek it with all earnestness. Before long he found it, and was
enabled to testify.that the “ Spirit witnessed with his spirit that he
was a child of God.” Of course the class-meeting was now appre¬
ciated, and from that hour to the present, firm and faithful has been
the character which he has borne among his brethren. Called by

God to preach his Gospel, he has done so in its own spirit. I have
often seen him antagonized by bitter-minded Brahmins and Moon-
shees, using harsh and vexatious language toward him and his
cause, but never ruffled or thrown off his guard. “The meekness
and gentleness of Christ” has been his protection on these occa¬
sions, while, with his Bible in his hand—just as represented in the
picture—he is ready for all comers ; and in the battles of the Lord
with the enemies of the truth he has never turned his back oi
sounded a retreat—“a good soldier of Jesus Christ” truly.
As to his Calvinism, Joel had read Watson on “General Re¬
demption,” and sustained his Conference examination upon the
theme, and when Bishop Thomson laid his hand upon his head he
ordained a true preacher of the Gospel, who believed as cordially
as did the Bishop himself that the Lord Jesus, in the same sense
and with the same intention, died for every human being. His
fidelity and his progress must be an occasion of gratitude to those
who gave him his early training, and toward whom he will ever
entertain the gratitude that is justly due.
IN PERILS. 221
CHAPTER V.
IN PERILS BY THE HEATHEN, IN PERILS IN THE WILDERNESS.”
O N our arrival at Bareilly in January, 1857, we were most

kindly received by the Judge—Mr. Robertson—a member
of the Free Church of Scotland. He took us into his home, and
entertained us until we could obtain a house and furnish it. He
was greatly delighted at our coming, for he believed in Missions,
and in the power of the Gospel to reach the hearts of the heathen.
For more than thirty years he had been in the civil service, knew
the people well, and spoke their language with great fluency. His
advice and opinions on our work were freely given and gratefully
accepted, and it was evident that we might ever count him among
the truest friends of our Mission.
We entered our own home just ten weeks before the Rebellion
occurred ; settled all things for our work, put up my valued library
in its place, and began to study the language, little dreaming that
so soon our comfortable arrangements would be consigned to the
flames, and we be homeless and hunted for our lives on the adjoin¬
ing mountains !
Yet, we might have been awakened from our sense of security
by many events around us. In particular, one day a native gentle¬
man called at our house and held a conversation, Joel interpreting,
in which I was given to understand that my coming among them
was regarded by the people of Bareilly with considerable anxiety;
that for some time they had been led to believe the English Gov¬
ernment had hostile intentions toward their faith, and really
intended, by force or fraud, to break their caste and destroy their
religion ; and the supposition was, that I had been brought there
by the Government to be ready, when their caste was broken, to
baptize them, and so complete their Christianization !
My earnest denial of any connection with the Government was

received with a look of suspicion, for they confounded every white
man (then few and far between in India) with the Government;
and when I proceeded to assure him that I was not even an English¬
man, the Hindoo looked at me and exclaimed, “Why, Sahib, your
face is white, you talk the English language, and are by religion a
Christian ; what else can you be but an Englishman ?” I told him
I was an American ; but, more confused still, he asked, “A what ?”
“Why, an American.” He had never heard the word before, nor
perhaps one in ten thousand of his race, and he inquired what “an
American” meant. He had no idea there was any other nation
than England talking the same language and as white as they, and
who were also Christians. This was generally true of his country¬
men then. But when, five years after, “the cotton famine” raised
so wonderfully the value of their staple, and the Hindoo farmer
began to receive two, and even three, rupees for the same quantity
of cotton for which he obtained only one the year before, men
opened their eyes and began to study geography, to find out that
there was a nation, and a great one, beyond England, whose faces
were white and who spoke the English language, and were Chris¬
tians too. So that our civil war in this country woke up the
dormant intellect of ten thousand homes in the depths of India,
and led men to inquire and study, and so far stimulated education,
and showed its value, as no foreign event for hundreds of years pre¬
viously had done.
But in 1857 the cotton famine had not occurred, and my Hindoo
visitor was perplexed. Notwithstanding the general confidence
they have in the truthfulness of the white faces, I have reason to
think that this man left my dwelling under the conviction that I
had tried to deceive him ; that I was what he supposed, and had
denied it to screen myself and my purpose. It is probable that
that interview and its impressions exposed my family and myself
to their more special vengeance when the day came.
With Joel’s aid I commenced the work, hoping to have some¬
thing done by the time the first party of our brethren should reach
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES. 223
us from America. On the Sabbath we had two services—at eleven

o’clock in the Hindustanee language, conducted by Joel, at which
our family and a few natives attended ; after this service we had
our class-meeting, led by myself, six persons (Mrs. B., Joel and
his wife, Ann, and Isaac, and Maria) being present, Joel translat¬
ing for me what had to be said in Hindustanee. In the afternoon
I held a little English service, at which a few of the officers and
civilians attended. On Tuesday evening, also, we had an Hindus¬
tanee service, and an English one on Thursday. Thus our work
opened, but it was truly “ the day of small things.”
The year in which I arrived in India saw the introduction of new
arrangements for arming the Sepoy army. Instead of the old
“ Brown Bess,” or regulation musket, with which they had hitherto
fought the battles of the British, the rulers of India concluded to
arm their Sepoys with the new Enfield rifle. For this weapon a
peculiar cartridge had to be prepared, samples of which had been
sent out from England to be manufactured at the arsenal of Dum
Dum, eight miles from Calcutta. The rifles were distributed to the
forces, and the wily Fakirs, ever on the look-out for something new
to foment disaffection and distrust, at once declared that these, too,
were a part of the insidious plan to injure their faith. The Sepoys
received them with suspicion. Lock, stock, and barrel were taken
asunder and carefully scrutinized, but nothing dangerous to their
faith could be discovered. Yet the Fakirs had assured them there
was danger, and that settled the matter.
Then came the intense excitement about the “greased cartridges”
for these guns, the purpose being, I suppose, to lubricate the bore
of the rifle. It was given out that this grease was “a compound
of hogs’ lard and bullocks’ fat.” Only those who have lived among
these people, and realized what a horror the Mohammedan has of
the hog, and what a reverence the Hindoo has for the cow, can
appreciate the storm of excitement and frenzy this simple an¬
nouncement caused through the whole Bengal army. The Fakirs
exultantly pointed to the alleged fact as corroborating all they had
asserted of the designs of the English against their religions.
224 TEE LAND OF THE VEDA .
It has never been definitely settled whether the charge as to the
composition of the unguent was correct or not. The Government
did what it could to allay the excitement and fears of the Sepoys,
even to the withdrawal of the obnoxious cartridges, offering the
men the right to make them up themselves with such grease as
was not offensive to them. But it was all too late ; midnight meet¬
ings now began to be held and plans of resistance discussed, and
immediate and open mutiny was proposed.
General Hearsey at Barrackpore, by a well-timed and judicious
address to the Sepoys of his command, in which he showed them
the folly of supposing the Government inclined to attempt their
forcible conversion, and the Governor General by proclamation to
the whole army, tried to arrest the fearful tendency of affairs, and
tranquilize the troops ; but the effect was temporary. The lull was
only the prelude to the storm. The General’s manly and straight¬
forward address to the men, with whom he had served nearly forty
years, ought, if any thing could have done so then, to have satisfied
and appeased them. He told them, among other things, that “ the
English are Christians of the Book, (that is, Protestants,) and
Christians of the Book admit no proselytes, and baptize none,
except those who fully understand and believe in the tenets therein
inculcated.”
But rebellion was a foregone conclusion with these infatuated
men; so they dissembled and professed to be “koosh” (pleased)
with his address, yet they only awaited their hour. Twenty days
after this, on that same parade ground, a Brahmin Sepoy named
Mungul Pandy turned out armed, and in the presence of his regi¬
ment, not a man of whom interfered to save their officers or to arrest
the Sepoy, shed the first blood of the Rebellion by firing on and
wounding Adjutant Baugh and Sergeant-Major Hewson. The firing
drew General Hearsey and his son to the spot. Mungul took aim
at the General, who drew his sword, and with the words, “John, if
I fall, rush upon him and put him to death,” spurred his horse for¬
ward. The man was overpowered, and after attempting suicide was
tried and executed, and died refusing to make any statement to
METHODS EMPLOYED. 225
implicate his comrades, who were known to sympathize with

him.
We heard all this, and as the toils closed around us, began fully
to realize how helpless we were, and how entirely in the power of
those people and their instruments. In addition to the officials
connected with the public offices already mentioned, there were
any number of Moulvies and Moonshees, connected with t*he
mosques and with tuition, available for their purposes. These men
could control the consciences of the Moslem servants in our fam¬
ilies—the servants, of course, had eyes and ears—so that, while we
lived in entire ignorance of what they said, oi did, or purposed, our
whole life lay open to our enemies, and our domestic conversations
could be reported to them daily. The influence of the Nana Sahib,
and other Hindoo authorities, could equally operate through their
Pundits and Priests, and we were helpless between the two, as the
full glare of observation and suspicion fell upon us, while those who
watched every movement, and waited for our lives, could stand
back in the shade and work in darkness.
One of the methods employed was the fabrication and diffusion
of false news and prophecies. All that they required was tem¬
porary effect to rouse the fanaticism of the fighting class to a
white heat of fury, until they committed themselves. As the
Sepoys were utterly ignorant, and their minds entirely under the
influence of their Fakirs, whom they believed implicitly, nothing
promulgated by them was too monstrous for belief. For instance,
it was asserted that “ the English had imported several cargoes of
flour mixed with bones, which had been ground fine, and one mor¬
sel of which would destroy the caste of any man that “ this flour
had been covertly introduced, and was then on sale in all the lead¬
ing bazaars, but so well disguised that even those who bought and
sold it could not discover the difference!” All this was believed.
It was no use denying it, or asking them to trace it, or name the
ship that brought it, or who had landed it; it was enough that the
Fakirs had said it; it was certainly so. Thus Brahmin and Sepoy
bought their food with suspicion, and eat it with fear. Another
report was, that there was a plan for transporting to India the
numerous widows of the Englishmen slain in the Crimea. The
principal zemindars (landholders) of the country were to be com¬
pelled to marry them, and their children, who would not of course
be Hindoos, were to be declared the heirs of the estates ; and thus
the territorial rights of the people of India, as well as their religion,
were to be annihilated ! With much more of the same sort.
Prophecies were invented, and arrangements made to fulfill them.
The leading one was, that “ the power which rose on the battle-field
of Plassey should fall on the centennial anniversary of that great
day.” Another form of it, that better suited the Mohammedan
mind, was, that “ on the hundredth anniversary of Plassey the
power that rose should fall, and the power that fell should rise.”
The meaning of all this is clear enough.
Allegorical expressions in letters and remarks were much used,
such as “ Pearls (that is, white-faces) are quoted as low in the mar¬
ket ; Red Wheat (that is, colored-faces) is looking up.” Then in
February came that singular movement, the circulation of the
“ Chupatties,” (small unleavened cakes,) the full significance of
which has never been explained. Each recipient of two cakes was
to make ten others, and transmit them in couples to the Chokey-
dars (constables) of the nearest village, and they to others, so that
in a few days the little cakes were distributed all over the country,
causing amazing excitement. It was known that sugar had been
used as a signal for the Vellore mutiny, (July, 1806.) And the
idea of thus conveying a warning to be in readiness for a precon¬
certed rising, had precedent enough in the “ I'east of the Moon
Loaves,” still held in commemoration of a similar device, in the
conspiracy by which the Mogul dynasty was overthrown five hun¬
dred years ago in China, as the reader will find narrated in Gabet
and Huq’s ‘‘Travels in Tartary,” chapter iii. No other explana¬
tion has ever been given of this singular transaction.
Every supernatural means to which they looked for aid and
direction were invoked and propitiated to lend their help in the
coming struggle. Hunooman’s assistance was confidently expected
TEE MOTIVES USED. 227
to render them invincible when they should cross bayonets with the
dreaded white-faces. So they sharpened their weapons, lawful and
unlawful, and awaited the day
Meanwhile the more intelligent and elevated of the conspirators
cautiously sounded the native princes of the semi-independent
States, to enable them to understand what part they would proba¬
bly take in the great effort. Suitable motives were carefully
held out to them, and also to the nobles and military classes,
founded upon freedom from annexation, restoration of ancient
dynasties, the bitter payment of old grievances, with patronage
and rank when the Mogul should have “ his own again,” and be
once more paramount in India. The Sepoys were promised pro¬
motion, higher pay, and better times generally ; the Priests were
assured of a deliverance forever from the growing power of Chris¬
tianity, or even its presence, with a swift reversal of those enact¬
ments which had so seriously curtailed their dignity and perquisites,
in usages and rites which humanity had swept away. The loose
and vagabond classes (called “Budmashes”) were linked in with
the enterprise by promises of license and plunder; and it was not a
secret that they disputed together in advance as to the particular
shares to which they should become entitled. Even the criminals
in the jails were to become personally interested in the results.
In Bareilly, where we lived, was the great central jail, containing
nearly three thousand, the convicts of the province of Rohilcund,
with its eight millions of people. These wretches, confined there
for all crimes, from murder downward, understood that their time
would come to be avenged upon the Government and the race that
were punishing them. None can say now how we gained the
information, only that “a bird of the air” would carry such a mat¬
ter ; but weeks in advance of our flight from Bareilly, the English
ladies had heard that those wretched criminals, in their chains and
cells, understood that they were to be let loose upon the day of the
mutiny, receiving their liberty on condition of consummating the
.atrocities which the high caste of the Sepoys prohibited them from
perpetrating. And, accordingly, let loose they were on that dreadful
31st of May; but, thank Heaven! we had been led by a merciful

Providence to anticipate the infernal intention, and removed to a
place of safety nearly all of those whom they intended to victimize.
Alas ! for the few women and children who, tardy in their flight,
did fall into their fiendish hands on that ever memorable afternoon.
Incendiary fires in the officers’ quarters, which Sepoys refused to
aid in extinguishing, now became matters of nightly occurrence in
different stations. Partial mutinies took place at Fort William,
Berhampore, and Lucknow, until, on the 10th of May the three
regiments stationed at Meerut (near our position at Bareilly) rose
and set fire to the houses, shot some of their officers, and then
ruthlessly murdered all the Europeans on whom they could lay
their cruel hands, men, women, and children, over forty in number.
All this was done in a station where there were European troops
within one mile of this scene of blood, and yet the miserable old
General who commanded was so stupefied that he would not
permit his men either to attack or pursue them ! So the Sepoys-
hurried up their work undisturbed, and marched off to Delhi.
They reached that city the next day. Here the other Sepoy troops,
five thousand in number, joined them, and, taking their artillery,
they proceeded to the palace of the Emperor, where they hauled
down the old flag of England, ran up the green standard of the
Moslem, and fired a royal salute in honor of the resumption
of Mohammedan sovereignty in India. They then began one
of the most ruthless and fiendish massacres of the Europeans
which even Delhi (the city of cruelty) had ever witnessed. The
Shazadahs were foremost in this devilish work, which was done
chiefly in public, before thousands of raging foes, at the Kotwallee
(Police Station) of the city. All the Europeans within the palace
were slaughtered, with the concurrence, if not by the orders, of the
Emperor, including the English Embassador, the Chaplain, Mr.
Jennings and his daughter, and Miss Clifford—the latter said to be
one of the most beautiful English ladies then in the East.
Amid the record of these horrors, it makes one feel proud of his
Anglo-Saxon blood to think of some of the daring deeds which
WILLOUGHBY'S DEFENSE. 229
were done against such fearful odds, and in the face of almost
certain death. One of the most notable of these was Lieutenant
Willoughby’s defense of the Delhi magazine on that dreadful day.
I know the place, and enjoy the honor of a personal acquaintance
with some of the brave men whom he commanded then. I have
also had the privilege, in company with one of the survivors, to
wander over the ruins into which he blew the whole structure when
he found he could not save it for his country.
There were no European troops in Delhi to oppose the entrance
of the red-handed Sepoys that day ; none, except the nine men in
charge of the magazine, and which it was of the first moment to
Sepoy success that they should seize. In the Lieutenant’s judg¬
ment it was of equal importance to his nation that they should
never have it, and his resolution was promptly taken, that, if it cost
his life and the lives of those under his orders, it never should be
surrendered. The names of the eight heroes whom he commanded
were Lieutenants Forrest and Raynor; Conductors Buckley, Shaw,
Scully, and Crow ; Sergeants Edwards and Stewart. He first put
his guns and howitzers in position for the defense of the place, and
then, so as to be prepared for the worst, laid his trains to connect
all parts of the magazine. A handful of native assistants happened
then to be with them in the magazine, whom they could not open
the gates to turn out, for they soon discovered that they were play¬
ing them false ; so they had to watch them also. The firing and yells
resounded all over the city, coming nearer and nearer to them.
But there these men stood, with one hope in their hearts, that the
European troops whom they knew to be at Meerut would follow
up the mutineers, and that they might be able to hold out till they
arrived, and so save the magazine and Delhi too. Vain hope—
they came not. Soon the Palace Guards were thundering at the
gates, and, in the name of the Emperor, demanded the surrender of
the magazine. No reply was given. The mutineers then brought
scaling ladders from the Palace, and the Sepoys swarmed up upon
the high walls all around them.
One of the bastions commanded a view of the country toward
Meerut—a long reach of the road could be seen from it. There
Willoughby took his position. Conductor Scully had volunteered
to fire the train, should the last emergency come. There he stood,
with his lighted port-fire in his hand, watching every movement of
his chief. Seeing all was lost, and chafing with impatience, in
presence of the raging foes around upon the walls, he would now
and then cry out, “Shall I fire her, sir?” But the Lieutenant,
who still hoped for the sight of help from Meerut, would reply,
“ Not yet, Scully—not yet.” The despairing but brave man would
again look along the road and sigh, while Scully watched for the
signal.
Lieutenant Forrest, with the other six men, worked the guns.
The gallant little band never once thought of betraying their trust
by capitulation. The escalade from without was the signal for a
similar movement from the traitorous natives within. In the confu¬
sion they managed to hide the priming pouches ; they then deserted
the Europeans, climbing up the sloped sheds on the inside of the
magazine, and descending by the ladders without. The insurgents
had by this time swelled into multitudes upon the walls, pouring a
deadly musketry discharge upon them at less than fifty yards, but
the brave besieged kept up an incessant fire of grape, which told
well. At length Conductor Buckley—who had been loading and
firing with the same steadiness as if on parade—received a ball in
his arm ; and Lieutenant Forrest was at the same time struck by
two balls. Further defense was hopeless. No help from Meerut.
Lieutenant Willoughby saw that the supreme moment had arrived.
He lifted his hat, which was the signal, and Conductor Scully
instantly fired the trains, and with an explosion that shook all
Delhi, up went the magazine into the air, and its vast resources
were annihilated. From five hundred to one thousand Sepoys on
the walls were killed, and every thing around destroyed. Wil¬
loughby, Forrest, and Buckley, though wounded, actually escaped
death, and managed to crawl from beneath the smoking ruins
under cover of night, and retreated through the sally-port on the
river-face, and Forrest and Buckley lived to tell the story of their
PROVIDENTIAL COMPENSATION. 231
great deed. Lieutenant Willoughby himself was killed in a village

ciose to Delhi. No trace of Scully or the rest was ever found.
This was a great service for the English cause, but could not
turn the tide for them. Unfortunately, there was an arsenal and
an immense park of artillery in another part of the city, both which
fell into the hands of the mutineers ; while the sixty thousand Sepoys
who soon found their way to Delhi brought with them from other
cities abundant munitions for its defense.
After the destruction of the magazine, the murder of the officers,
and missionaries and other Europeans, the violation of their wives
and daughters, and the spoliation and burning of their homes,,
was proceeded with. Then followed the demolition of the courts
of law, the church, the college, and the printing-office, and deeds
were done that day which devils themselves might blush to own.
It was an unutterable woe; yet it was not without its great
compensation.
There is a permissive providence of our God which sometimes
allows a limited calamity to fall upon individuals and communities
in order to preserve them from a sorrow that would be overwhelm¬
ing and unmitigated: in the sense of Caiaphas’s words, “ It is expe¬
dient that one man die for the people,’’ etc. But in such cases, and
indeed in general, it requires that we patiently wait until time gives
the Almighty the requisite opportunity to be his own interpreter.
We could not then understand God. In the midst of these agonies
it seemed as if he had “ forgotten to be gracious, and in anger had
shut up his tender mercies.” But what light the succeeding events,
and the history of the last dozen years, have shed upon‘his over¬
ruling providence and his wise designs !
Two facts of this class belong just here: one general, and one
particular to ourselves. But for the anticipation on the part of the
Meerut mutineers of the contemplated universal rising, it seems to
me that not a Ghristian life could have been preserved in all India.
Had they patiently waited till the 31st of May, and all had risen, as
was intended, so that on the same day and hour, in every place,
they had commenced their work of blood, not a lady nor a babe
could have been saved. All must have been overwhelmed in one
common ruin, and none left to tell the tale.
But those demented Sepoys of Meerut struck twenty-one days
too soon, thus throwing the whole country into such an excitement
and effort to meet the hour, which was then manifestly inevi¬
table, that every expedient that men could adopt, to remove the
’adies, children, and non-combatants to some, to any, place of safety,
and the best possible measures for their defense and preserva¬
tion, were taken. So that to that three weeks of opportunity each
lady owes her life, and the world was saved the agony of a tale of
horror that would have been even a hundred fold greater than the
terrible tragedy which horrified them in 1857-8.
The other fact was personal to ourselves, yet having a kindred
significance in its results. Our commanding General in Bareilly
was a gentleman of the name of Sibbald. Like many other old
officers, he had an infatuated confidence in his Sepoy troops. If
he had been at home when the news of the Meerut massacre
reached us, the probability is that not a soul of us would have
escaped. But, just before the event took place, he was led to pro¬
ceed upon a tour of military inspection of the province under his
authority, and was most providentially away in the mountain dis¬
trict when the news arrived.
He left in command our brave friend, Colonel Troup—a man
who knew the Sepoys well, and who did not trust them. Acting
on his own judgment and discretion, though he knew the old Gen¬
eral would probably disapprove his action, he took that course, in
the houi* and opportunity afforded him by his temporary command,
which proved the salvation of all those under his care who obeyed
his orders.
In our flight to Nynee Tal, myself and family brought up the
rear. I met General Sibbald half-way down, at Bahari Dak Bunga¬
low, and he was wild with excitement, declaring that Colonel
Troup’s head was turned to do such a thing as to send away the
ladies and children out of Bareilly, and he swore that if he had
been at home not one of them should have left. He knew, he
OUR WARNING TO FLEE. 233
said, that his Sepoys were staunch and true, and could be depended
upon to defend them! I looked after the old man as he hurried
awav from me, with the sad presentiment that he was mistaken.
He “ blew up” Troup, and was so firm in his reliance on the Sepoys
that, had it not been for the influence of his officers, he would,
in older to show his confidence in his troops, have yielded to
their request to order back the ladies to Bareilly. On such a
thiead as this our fate hung. Yet this very man, to whom his
Sepoys swore such fidelity and made such promises, was the first
person whom they shot on that Sabbath morning, May 31st. In
his dying hour, if he thought of them, he must have felt that the
safety of his own wife and daughters was due to the precaution of
the officer he had blamed! But we are anticipating what follows.
Forty-eight hours after the Meerut massacre (and three days
before the account of that of Delhi reached us) a mounted horse¬
man entered Bareilly, with a letter from the English Governor of
the North-west, Mr. Colvin, to the commanding officer, narrating
the terrible deeds done at Meerut, and suggesting that every pre¬
caution should be taken to provide for the safety of the ladies and
children. Colonel Troup, being in command, received the letter
and acted as we have stated. The telegraphs had been cut all over
the country, and the mails on the Delhi side stopped ; so that had
it not been for the precaution of Mr. Colvin in sending a message
direct, we should have been in ignorance of what had been done.,
and of our own fearful danger. Many such facts might be given to
show the merciful Providence which watched over us to save us.
But these may suffice here.
I now turn to our personal narrative, and, in presenting it, have
•carefully looked over the letters addressed to the Corresponding
Secretary of our Missionary Society, in various dates from May 26
to July 10, 1857, when I gave the facts as they occurred ; and in
the light of the explanations which subsequent years have devel¬
oped, I find only a few words that I need at all to qualify ; so that
the facts and impressions are given in the form in which they came
from an anxious heart, which, in the midst of danger and in the
13
face of death, tried to trust in God for all events, and yet looked for
a happy issue out of these afflictions, and for the life and extension'
of the mission which we had begun.
On Thursday, May 14, the commanding officer kindly sent his
Adjutant over to our house with a serious message. Not knowing
what he specially wanted, we engaged for nearly an hour in relig¬
ious conversation. But I thought from his manner that he looked
anxious. With gentlemanly delicacy he was unwilling to mention
his message before Mrs. Butler, lest it might injuriously affect her,
as she was in circumstances where any shock was undesirable. He,
accordingly, asked to see me alone, and then communicated the
intelligence of the mutiny at Meerut, stating that word had arrived
from the Governor that the insurrection was spreading to Delhi and
other places, and that fears were entertained as to the intention of
the Sepoys at Bareilly. Under those circumstances, the command¬
ing officer felt it his duty to request that all ladies and children
should be sent off quietly, but at once, to the hills, and also that he
considered it prudent, from the reports in circulation concerning us-
and our objects, that I also should accompany Mrs. B. and the chil¬
dren, as he considered me in rather special danger in the event of
a mutiny. I promised the Adjutant that I would prayerfully con¬
sider the message, and let my conclusion be known to the com¬
manding officer that evening. As soon as the Adjutant had gone,
I communicated the message to Mrs. Butler. She received it with
calmness, and we retired to our room to pray together for divine
direction. After I had concluded my prayer, she began, and I
may be excused in saying that such a prayer I think I never heard ;
a martyr might worthily have uttered it, it was so full of trust in
God and calm submission to his will. But when she came to
plead for the preservation of “ these innocent little ones,” she
broke down completely. We both felt we could die, if . &uch-were
the will of God ; but it seemed too hard for poor human nature to
leave these little ones in such dreadful hands, or perhaps to see
them butchered before our eyes ! We knew that all this had been
done on Sunday last in Meerut, and we had no reason to expect
CONCLUDED NOT TO GO. 235
more mercy from those in whose power we were, should they rise
and mutiny. But we tried hard to place them and ourselves, and
the mission of our beloved Church, in the hands of God ; and he
did calm our minds, and enable us to confide in him. On rising
from our knees I asked her what she thought we ought to do?
Her reply was that she could not see our way clear to leave our
post; she thought our going would concede too much to Satan and
to these wretched men ; that it would rather increase the panic, that
it might be difficult to collect again our little congregation if we
suspended our services, and, in fact, that we ought to remain and
trust in God. I immediately concurred, and wrote word to the
commanding officer. He was not pleased at all with our decision.
The evening wore on, and we held our usual weekly English serv¬
ice. I tried to preach from Deut. xxxiii, 25, “As thy days, so
shall thy strength be,” and administered the holy Sacrament. The
commanding officer was present. I felt much for him. His re¬
sponsibility was great, for on his discretion and judgment our
entire safety, under God, depended. We passed a restless night,
startled at every sound, feeling that we slept over a volcano that
might burst forth at any moment, and scatter death and destruc¬
tion on every side.
Before going to bed we arranged our clothes for a hasty flight,
should an alarm be given. But we beheld the morning light in
safety, and the mail brought me the Christian Advocate of
March 19, and one of the first things I saw was the little para¬
graph which was headed with the words “Pray for your lonely
William Butier!” How much I needed to be prayed for! Before
that simple sentence my heart gave way, and I could not resist the
tears that came. The past and the present were such contrasts!
But God graciously soothed my feelings, till I wondered why I had
ever doubted for a moment, or failed to see that God, who had
brought us hitherto, would not now forsake us, or allow our mission
to be broken up. I felt assured that thousands in this happy land
did pray for their “lonely William Butler.” Three times between
that and Saturday evening did my kind friend send to warn me to
leave, as did also other friends among the military By that time
nearly all the ladies and children had left. The place looked ver)
desolate, and I began to question whether I was right in resisting
advice any longer. My Moonshee told me candidly he thought I
“ ought to go.” Being a Mohammedan, and having a pecuniary
loss in the suspension of my lessons in the language, his warning
had much weight with me. I had then to settle the question,
raised by the commanding officer, whether our resistance to going,
under those circumstances, was not more a tempting of, rather than
a trusting in, Providence ? I hated to leave my post, even for a
limited time. Yet to remain looked, as he argued, should an insur¬
rection occur, and I become a victim, like throwing away my life
without being able to do any good by it; and the Missionary Board
would probably have blamed me for not taking advice, and acting
on the prudence which “ foreseeth the evil,” and takes refuge “ till
the indignation is overpast.” Still, had I been alone, or could I
have induced Mrs. B. to take the children and go without me, (a
pioposition she met by declaring she would never consent to it,
but would cling to her husband and cheerfully share his fate, what¬
ever it might be,) I would have remained. But when to all the
preceding reasons, the reflection was added that Mrs. B.’s situation
required that, if moved at all, it must be then, as a little later
flight would be impossible, and she and the children and myself
must remain and take whatever doom the mutineers chose to
give us, I consulted Joel, and asked his advice as to what had
better be done. He thought it safest that we should go, say for
three or four weeks, to Nynee Tal, and, if all remained quiet, we
could then return. Meanwhile he promised to sustain our humble
service, and keep every thing in order. How little he or I then
imagined that he himself, or any native Christian, would be in
peril, or that before we again stood together on that spot, events
would transpire around him that would fill the civilized world with
horror!
I, therefore, arranged to suspend my English service, (indeed
most of those who attended were already gone,) hoping soon to
OUR FLIGHT. 237
return and resume it. Saturday night we lay down to rest, not to
sleep. The mounted patrols that went round every fifteen minutes
would call out to the watchman attached to each house in such
boisterous tones that sleep was impossible ; and it almost became
distracting, from the manner in which it made the poor children
startle and cry until daylight broke. It was a solemn Sabbath.
We had but ten persons at the native service, and less at the
English one ; people seemed afraid to come out. A rumor got
afloat that Sunday was to be our last day; that the Sepoys
intended to murder the Europeans on that Sabbath.
Our class-meeting was a solemn, but profitable, time. We used
it as if it were our last. Had it been, I think each of that little
band (seven in number) would have been found of God in peace.
We lay down again to seek rest, but it was short and disturbed
repose. Monday morning came; I tried to find palankeens for our
journey, but all were away ; so I obtained some bamboos and rope,
and took three charpoys, (an article like what our Lord referred to
when he bid the man “ take up his bed and walk,”) turned the feet
uppermost, put on the bamboos, and threw a quilt on each, and we
were equipped. I left three native Christians in the house with
Joel, besides two watchmen for night. That evening, at six o’clock,
the news arrived that the Sepoys had risen in Delhi, murdered the
Europeans, and proclaimed the Emperor. The details were fright¬
ful. Just then Judge Robertson appeared upon the scene, and
inquired if I too was yielding to the panic ? I told him all. He
was incredulous. I asked him why he thought so confidently that
there would be no rising ? He told me he was so advised by Khan
Bahadur, the native judge, who assured him there was no cause for
alarm, and guaranteed him personal protection under the hospital¬
ity of his own roof. Judge R. expostulated with me for leaving,
and had not my arrangements been made for going, the influence
of his words might have prevailed to lead me to put it oft', and we
should have shared his sad fate. We were ready when our bearers
came at nine o’clock, and I went into my study once more. I
looked at my books, etc., and the thought flashed across my mind
that perhaps, after all my pains in collecting them, I should never

see them again ! I took up my Hindustanee Grammar, two volumes
of manuscript Theological Lectures, a couple of works on India,
my Passport, my Commission, and Letter of Instructions, with my
Bible, Hymn Book, and a copy of the Discipline, and sorrowfully
turned away, leaving the remainder to their fate. The children, poor
little fellows, were lifted out of their beds and placed in the dooley.
Quietly, and under cover of the night, we started, leaving the
keys of our house and all things in Joel’s charge. Shaking hands
with him and the others, we moved off by the light of the Mussal-
chee’s torch, crossed the Bazaar, but no one molested us ; they
simply asked the men, “Whom have you ?” The reply was, “The
Padre Sahib,” (the missionary,) and we passed through the crowd
unmolested. We moved on in the silent darkness, having seventy-
four miles to go. About midnight I happened to be awake, and
saw we were passing a gig with two ladies in it, and a native lead¬
ing the horse. It seemed hazardous to stop, but I became so
uneasy that I did, and walked back. The ladies knew my voice.
There I found them, on that wretched road, twenty miles from
Bareilly, in the middle of the night; the ladies, scantily dressed,
and crowded, with an Ayah, (a native nurse,) into a small gig,
one of them holding up (for there was no room for it to lie down)
a poor little sick child. In that posture they had been for nearly
eight hours. They were just sitting down to dinner when the
news of the massacre of Delhi arrived, and such was the panic
produced that the gig was instantly brought to the door, and they
put into it and sent off. They must go alone, for their husbands
were military officers and must remain. ■ I have witnessed desolate
scenes, but never saw any thing so desolate looking as those two
ladies and that child on that road that night. I took the lady with
the child out of the gig and put them into my dooley, and it did
my heart good to see them lying down. I then sent them on and
took charge of the other lady and the gig. We overtook them, and
about five ladies more, next morning, at the travelers’ bungalow at
Behari. There they remained, as directed, until dooleys overtook
AN ANSWER TO PRAYER. 239
them next evening. Here I met General Sibbald, as already stated,

hurrying down in a fury ; too late, thank God ! to carry out his
purpose to prevent the departure. We rested till the heat of the
day subsided, and then I started with my family again. We
reached the first Chowkee safely, changed bearers, and then entered
the Terai—a belt of deep jungle, about twenty miles wide, around
the Himalayas, reeking with malaria, and the haunt of tigers find
■elephants. The rank vegetation stood in places like high walls on
either side. At midnight we reached that part of it where the
bearers are changed. The other palankeens had their full comple¬
ment of men ; but, of the twenty-nine bearers for whom I paid, I
■could only find nine men and one torch-bearer ;• and this, too, in
.such a place! Darkness and tigers were around us ; the other
palankeens were starting one after another, each with its torch to
frighten away the beasts, the bearers taking advantage of the
rush to extort heavy “ bucksheesh.” All but two had gone off, and
there we were with three dooleys and only men enough for one, and
no village where we could obtain them nearer than twelve miles.
What to do I knew not. I shall never forget that hour. At length
I saw there was but one thing to be done ; I took the two children
and put them into the dooley with Mrs. Butler; a bullock-hackrey,
laden with furniture, was about a quarter of a mile ahead, with its
light fading in the distance ; desperation made me energetic ; at
the risk of being pounced upon, I ran after the hackrey, and by
main force drove round the four bullocks and led them back, sorely
against the will of the five men in charge of it. But I insisted that
they must take Ann (our servant) and me, with what little baggage
we had with us. I put her and the luggage up, the driver grum¬
bling all the while about his heavy load and the delay. I then
turned around to see Mrs. Butler off, but her bearers did not stir.
I feared they were about to spoil all. They were exhausted by
extra work, and might have even fairly refused to carry two chil¬
dren with a lady; and to have taken either of them on the hackrey
was impossible. I dreaded the bearers would not go. Delay seemed
ruinous to the only plan by which I could get them on at all. If
the men refused the burden and left, they would take with them,
for their own protection, the only torch there was, which belonged
to them, and we should have been left in darkness, exposed to the
tigers and the deadly malaria. Mrs. C. and Miss Y.’s bearers had
laid them down, and were clamoring for larger “ bucksheesh.”
My ten men looked on. The hackrey-driver turned his bullocks
around, and, out of all patience, was actually putting his team in
motion. But, in spite of urging, there stood my men. It was an
awful moment. For a few minutes my agony was unutterable ; 1
thought I had done all I could, and now every thing was on the
brink of failure. I saw how “vain” was “the help of man,” and
I turned aside into the dark jungle, took off my hat, and lifted my
heart to God. If ever I prayed, I prayed then. I besought God
in mercy to influence the hearts of these men, and decide for me in
that solemn hour. I reminded him of the mercies that had hith¬
erto followed us, and implored his interference in this emergency.
My prayer did not last two minutes, but how much I prayed in
that time! I put on my hat, returned to the light, and looked. I
spoke not; I saw my men at once bend to the dooley; it rose, and
off they went instantly, and they never stopped a moment, except
kindly to push little Eddie in, when in his sleep he rolled so that
his feet hung out.
Having seen them off, I turned around, and there were our two
dooleys. I could do nothing with them, so left them for the tigers
to amuse themselves with,-if they chose, as soon as the light was
withdrawn. I ran after the hackrey and climbed up on the top of
the load, and gave way to my own reflections. I had known what
it was to be “ in perils by the heathen,” and now I had had an idea
of what it was to be “ in perils in the wilderness.” But the feeling
of divine mercy and care rose above all. The road was straight,
and what a joy it was to see the dooley-light grow dim in the dis¬
tance, as the bearers hurried forward with their precious burden.
We moved on slowly after them, owing to the rugged road, the
swaying furniture^ .and the wretched vehicle; but we were too
grateful for having escaped passing the night in the miasma and
NYNEE TAL. 241
danger of the jungle to complain, though every movement swung

as about till our bones ached.
We were ten hours going those fifteen miles. At last day broke,
and our torch-bearer was dismissed. “ Hungry and thirsty, our
souls fainted in us” indeed. But at last we reached Katgodan, and
found the mother and babes all safe. They had slept soundly the
whole distance, and at daybreak were laid safely down at the door
of the travelers’ bungalow. It was twenty-two hours of traveling
and exposure since we had tasted food, and when it was served up
it was indeed welcome.
Mrs. C. and Miss Y. did not arrive for some hours after my wife,
having lost the difference of time on the road in contentions with
their bearers, and extra bribing to induce them to go on. On my
arrival, one of the first remarks I met was from Miss Y. : “ Why,
what could have happened to Mrs. Butler’s bearers, that they
started so cheerfully and arrived here so soon, without giving her
the least trouble ! ” Ah ! she knew not, but I knew, there is a God
who heareth and answereth prayer ! O for a heart to trust him as
.1 ought! The divine interposition in the case will appear all the
more manifest when I add that even the “bucksheesh” for which
the bearers were at first contending, (and which I was only too
willing to pay them,) they started off without staying to ask for or
receive ; nor did they even require it from Mrs. B., when they
safely laid her down at the end of their run. I shall never forget
the experience and the mercy of that night in the Terai!
We stopped all night at the bungalow, which was crowded, and
the heat was beyond any thing I ever felt before. Major T. had
kindly sent down jampans (a kind of arm-chair with a pole on
each side, carried by four men) to bring us up the mountain. We
began the ascent at three o’clock next morning, having eleven
miles to go to reach Nynee Tal. As soon as day broke the view
was sublime—something of the Swiss scenery in its appearance,
but more majestic. The road (a narrow path) wound round and up
one mountain after another, by the brink of precipices and land¬
slips. As we rose the cold increased, till we came to a region
■where trees and shrubs of European growth were flourishing, bil¬

berries and raspberries made their appearance, and the cuckoo was
heard. The last two miles was up the face of a mountain as
nearly perpendicular as was possible and yet permit a very zigzag
path to be cut on it. At length, after seven hours’ toiling, we
•gained the summit, 7,000 feet above the plains below. What a
prospect ! In the bosom of those cool mountains lay the sani¬
tarium of Nynee Tal, with its beautiful lake, while behind it rose
up the “snowy range,” 21,000 feet higher still.
Those who may visit the place for health or pleasure in the days
to come can have little idea with what feelings the panting fugi¬
tives of 1857 caught this first glimpse of it on that morning.
Nynee Tal occupies a high upland valley or gorge in the Gaghur
range, south and east of the point where that range attains its
highest elevation at Cheenur Peak, 8,732 feet above the sea. This
peak sends off a spur to the south and south-east, called Deoputta
and Ayar Pata, and the hollow between the spur and the main
range of the Gaghur—here called Shere ke Danda and Luria—is
occupied by the flat portion of the station, by the bazaar, and by
the lake which gives its name to the place, and which forms the
principal feeder of the Bulleah River.
The valley is half land and half water, the lower end being occu¬
pied by the lake, and it is only open to the south-east, where the
outlet for the water is situated. The length of the whole hollow is
a mile and a half, and its average breadth is under half a mile.
The length of the lake is a few yards less than one mile. The
water is at all times beautifully clear and transparent, and in calm
weather reflects the surrounding scenery like a mirror.
The place is approached by two narrow paths from the foot of
the hills on the Moradabad and Bareilly sides. The ascent is in
places very steep and on the verge of fearful precipices. It had
been used for a few years past as a sanitarium by the English resi¬
dents, and was chosen now for us because the military men be¬
lieved that it could be easily defended.
All looked so peaceful and felt so delightfully cool! After some
ynee Tal, as you ente" it
ITS VALUE AS A SANITARIUM. 245
searching, I was fortunate enough to find a little furnished house

of four rooms still unengaged, which i gladly hired for $225 for “ the
season.” A bachelor Captain was in it as a day tenant, but he
most kindly turned out and let us in at once, and within five hours
of our arrival we laid our weary little ones to rest in our new and
strange home, not knowing for how long a time we should be
able to occupy it. Yet we were even then deeply impressed with
the value of such a place for a sanitarium for our mission in the
better days of the future, when the brethren and sisters, whose
health would require the change, would feel thankful to have with¬
in their reach such a refuge from the heat. But under what dif¬
ferent feelings and circumstances is it now visited by them from
those with which their fugitive superintendent first entered it !
Immediately on reaching Nynee Tal I wrote a few words to Dr.
Durbin, and as they express the feelings of the hour, and an un¬
shaken faith in God in the future of our mission, they may be
quoted here: “ I had hoped by this mail (which closes here to-day)
to have sent you a full account of our situation ; but this is imprac¬
ticable until the next mail. We have only just arrived here, and
are all in confusion. I can, therefore, only write a few lines. The
commanding officer required all non-combatants to leave Bareilly
and take refuge here until the Government has put down this
insurrection. We delayed till the last moment, but had to leave.
Our experiences on the way up were, in many respects, trying
enough, but God preserved us in safety, so we
“ ‘ —praise him for all that is past,
And trust him foi all that’s to come.’
“ What awaits us we know not ; but should any thing happen to

us, tell our beloved Church that we had prepared ourselves
through grace for all results, and that our last thoughts were
given to our mission in the confident hope that the Methodist
Episcopal Church would do her part faithfully in redeeming India.
Beyond this we had no anxiety except for our poor children. Doc¬
tor, you will think of them if I fall ! We need now, O how much !
the prayers of God’s people.”
This note worked its way through all the dangers to which the
mails, then rapidly breaking up, were exposed, and managed to
reach the seaside, and so on to its destination ; a better fate than
many of its successors had.
For more than ten days all moved on as usual ; the mails came
and went ; Joel wrote and kept me informed how matters pro¬
gressed till, seeing no further sign of danger, some of our party
became impatient, asking ourselves why did we leave at all, and
even proposing to return to Bareilly. It was, however, only the
lull before the storm.
On the 25th we heard of the mutiny at Allyghur. Sabbath, the
31st of May, I preached twice (the first Methodist sermon's ever
uttered on the Himalaya mountains) from Acts xx, 21, and Rom.
viii, 16. I tried to preach as “a dying man to dying open.” At
the-same hour in Bareilly Joel was conducting the service. He
preached—for he had already begun to take a text—the very morn¬
ing of the mutiny from the words, “ Fear not, little flock, for it is
your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” when, in
the midst of his closing prayer, the guns opened fire, and the
slaughter of the Europeans commenced. But we knew it not.
Our Sabbath passed peacefully over, while many of the ladies of
our party were widows, and the mangled bodies of their husbands
were then lying exposed to every form of insult in the streets of
Bareilly.
Monday came, and no mail from Bareilly. We feared some¬
thing must be wrong, and our fears were all verified by the arrival
of the first of the fugitives in the evening, bearing the terrible
news that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning the Sepoys had
risen and commenced shooting their officers. An understanding
had existed among the officers that, in case of a rising, the rendez¬
vous should be the cavalry lines ; so, as soon as the firing began,
each officer that could do so jumped on his horse and galloped to
where the cavalry were drawn up, Brigadier-General Sibbald being
killed on the way there. As Lieutenant Tucker, of the Sixty-eighth
Native Infantry, was flying on horseback, he saw the Sepoys firing
TEE ESCAPE. 247
into the houses of the English sergeants ; and calling out to one of
them, “Jennings, jump up behind me,” he was shot dead by the
Sepoys, and fell from his horse. Jennings mounted it. They
shot the horse under him. He jumped off, ran for his life, and
-escaped. Captain Patterson, with other officers, was fired on in
the orderly room. They escaped by the opposite door, ran to their
stables, got their horses, and fled. Colonel Troup heard the firing,
and was leaving his house when his own orderlies tried to stop him.
He got out by another door, and escaped on foot, but was followed
by his syce (groom) with his horse. Dr. Bowhill, of the Eight¬
eenth, was in his bath when he heard the firing. He jumped out,
drew on his clothes, got out his watch and one hundred rupees,
ran to the stable to order his horse, returned, and found that his
rascally bearer had made off with money and watch too. I have
only heard of one who had time to save a single thing except the
clothes they had on them. Captain Gibbs had to ride across the
parade ground through a volley of musketry, and the artillery men
fired on him with grape. He escaped unhurt. All was so sud¬
den, so unexpected, there was no time for preparation—nothing but
to mount and fly. Two minutes after Colonel Troup left his house
he saw it in flames; and before ten minutes every bungalow in the
cantonments seemed on fire. The road to Nynee Tal was direct
through the city. A band of officers and gentlemen, about forty
in number, evaded the city, took a by-road for a couple of miles,
and escaped. Those who tried the city I believe all perished. Of
Lieutenant Gowan (our good friend of the Eighteenth Native
Infantry) we could hear nothing ; but he was saved by his own
Sepoys, who liked him. Under cover of night, when it came, they
took him out of a house where they had concealed him, and
escorted him, with their Sergeant-Major Belsham and his wife and
five children, and conducted them two miles beyond Bareilly to the
south, giving the sad party what money they could spare, and
theii good wishes for their escape. They were joined during the
night by four officers that had escaped the massacre, and they
resolved to keep together for mutual protection ; but the slow
24S THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
pace at which the poor woman and her infants could move soon
irritated the officers, and they resolved to leave them behind.
Lieutenant Gowan would not listen to the proposal. His human¬
ity saved his life. The four officers pushed on and were murdered,
while the little party with the Lieutenant were all saved by the
wonderful generosity of a Hindoo farmer, who found them con¬
cealed in his field, and who hid them for seven months within his
own house at the risk of his life. This was at Khaira Bajera,
a place now on our Minutes, and where good Lieutenant (now
Colonel) Gowan has built and endowed Christian schools as a
memorial of his gratitude to the Thakoor who sheltered him, and
to God who inclined him to do so. They are under the charge
of our mission.
When the firing first began, at eleven o’clock, some of the officers
when they reached the lines of the native cavalry suggested a
charge on the artillery and infantry, hoping the cavalry would
prove true, as they all professed great loyalty. It was attempted,
but the rascals, after going a few paces, hoisted the “green flag”
and deliberately rode over to the infantry, leaving the officers in a
body, with about twenty-five of the cavalry, who stood faithful.
The artillery then opened upon them with grape, and they had to
fly. Poor fellows ! they rode the seventy-four miles without re¬
freshment or a change of horses ; and when they came up the h HI
to us next morning they were all sun-burned and ready to drop
from sheer exhaustion. Some of them had nothing on but shirt
and trousers ; few of them were completely dressed, as the hour of
mutiny was the general hour for bath and breakfast, and they had
to spring to their horses without losing a moment to look for any.
Fully one half of our little English congregation were murdered.
Two of the sergeants who used to attend escaped, and got half
way to Nynee Tal, but were attacked by the people of Bahary.
One of them, who had become very serious, was there murdered ;
he fell with his hands clasped and calling upon the Lord. The
other was left for dead, but managed to crawl to the foot of our
hill, and recovered from his wounds. Mr. Raikes, the chief
TEE NUMBER KILLED. 249
magistrate, Mr. Orr, and Mr. Wyatt, were all murdered, and Dr.
Hansbrow, the Governor of the jail, was killed by the convicts, the
native jailer helping them. Mr. Laurance, a widower with four
children, was made to sit in a chair while his children were exe¬
cuted before his eyes, and then he was killed. Mrs. Aspinall, who
lived next to us, with her son and his wife and child were mur¬
dered in their garden. It is said the murderers flung the baby,
five weeks old, into the air, and cut at it with their swords as it
fell. Some of the accounts are too dreadful to repeat. We cannot
but hope that many of them were exaggerated. In all they killed
forty-seven Christian people, men, women, and children, in Bareilly
that day.
As soon as the officers fled, the Sepoys fired their houses, after
which they broke open the treasury and took the money ; and then,
as if possessed with the demon of madness, they went to the jail,
broke open the gates, and let loose the criminals. These wretches
completed what the Sepoys had begun. The homes of the civil¬
ians were sacked and burned. All the gentlemen that had not
flea, or were overtaken, were either killed or taken prisoners. The
Sepoys then proclaimed the Emperor of Delhi ; elected as Nawab
Khan Bahadur Khan, who had held the office of Deputy Judge under
our friend Judge Robertson, and who so deceived him, as already
noticed. It is understood that the prisoners were all brought before
the new Nawab next morning, (Judge Robertson, Dr. Hay, and
Mr. Raikes being of the number,) and this wretch deliberately con¬
demned them to death by the law of the Koran : “They were infi¬
dels, and they must die ! ” He ordered them to be publicly hanged
in front of the jail.
The rebels went to my house, and expressed great regret at not
finding me. They are said to have declared they specially wanted me.
They then destroyed our little place of worship, and burned my
house with its contents. All was lost, save life and the grace
of God ; but the sympathy and prayers of our beloved Church
were still our own, so the loss was not so great after all.
It would be affectation if I were to profess that I was unmoved
at my loss. So far from it, I felt overwhelmed by it. Every thing

was so complete and well arranged for my work. But all was
destroyed, and some things gone that could never be restored.
All my manuscripts ; my library, (about one thousand volumes, the
collection of my life, and which, perhaps, I loved too well,) so com¬
plete in its Methodistic and theological and missionary depart¬
ments ; my globe, maps, microscope ; our clothes, furniture, melo
deon, buggy, stock of provisions—every thing, gone ; and here we
were, like shipwrecked mariners, grateful to have escaped with life.
But we tried to say, “ The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I had the consola¬
tion to know that my goods had been sacrificed for Christ’s sake.
When we looked around us and saw the anguish that wrung the
hearts of the bereaved of our number, we felt that our loss was
%
light, and could be easily borne. So we were “cast down, but not
destroyed.”
When the Sepoys had thus slaughtered all the Europeans on
whom they could lay their hands, they remembered that there were
a few native Christians, and they eagerly sought them out, resolved
not to leave a single representative of the religion of Jesus- in
Bareilly when the sun of that day should set. Their full purpose
thus became apparent, and God alone could prevent them from
consummating it.
We had in all six Christians, of whom two or three were then
regarded as converted, the rest were seekers ; but all were equally
exposed to the dreadful rage which that noon burst so unexpectedly
upon them. In the cloud of darkness and terror which settled
over them they were at once hidden from my view. Where they
were, or whether alive or dead, I could not find out. Those Euro¬
peans who escaped and joined us could tell me nothing at all about
them, though I anxiously questioned all who might by any possi¬
bility know. I also succeeded in bribing two natives, who remained
faithful to us and came up with the ladies, to venture down and
seek for Joel and the rest, promising a large reward for any intelli¬
gence of him or them ; but the messengers did not return to us,
JOEL'S ESCAPE. 25 r
and we were left to suppose that they—our Christians—were

nowhere to be found in or around Bareilly. Of the death of any
of them we received no information ; so we kept on hoping that
heathen rage had confined itself to the Europeans, and that the
others, though scattered, were uninjured. How little we knew
what they had suffered !
Though at the risk of anticipating events which date further on,
I must here give the facts as I was enabled to ascertain them.
As soon as any communication was established between Calcutta
and the Upper Provinces on the south side of the Ganges—for all
north of that river was still held by the Sepoys—I sent off letters
to every place to which I thought it likely Joel could have escaped.
He also was trying to reach me by letters, but could not. One of
my communications at last found him, as I had hoped, in Allaha¬
bad, and, in response to my request, he gave me a narrative of
what befell him and the rest on that dreadful day. All his state¬
ments we afterward confirmed together on the spot in every
particular.
Instead of giving the facts myself, I prefer to present his deeply
interesting letter, assured that the reader will kindly excuse its occa¬
sional imperfect English and Hindustanee idioms, rendering some
words in a few places when it is necessary to give his meaning. I
had told him that we had heard of the arrival at Calcutta of the first
party of our missionaries, and that if he were outside the circle of
danger and at Allahabad, and could communicate with Calcutta, to
try and have them come where he was, as the seat of the North¬
west Government had been fixed at Allahabad, and all was safe
there then ; also, that I felt assured, as the armies were rapidly
breaking up the Sepoy forces, we at Nynee Tal who were still pre
served, though besieged, would soon be relieved, and our mission
Be once more established at Bareilly. I tried to cheer him, and
sustain his faith in God. My letter took twelve days to reach him,
having to go out through the mountains behind us, and then along
their crest till it could reach the Ganges, and get beyond the range
.of the rebels in Rohilcund. In reply he writes :
14
“Allahabad, February 4, 1858.

“My Dear Sir,—Your long-expected letter, dated the 18th
January, reached me on the 1st instant. Though the interval is
very long, still it was a source of very great consolation to me. It
has given fresh vigor and courage. I became happy, exceedingly
happy, from its perusal. And nothing could exceed my joy then
to hear of the safety and welfare of self and Mrs. Butler, and the
little bachchas, (children ;) increased more by the joyous news that
another precious little darling [our daughter Julia, born after our
flight] has been added to the number of the family, for which I
must congratulate you. You ask in your letter why I did not
write to you ? True, I knew you were in Nynee Tal ; but I could
see no way of safety for months and months. I could not know
whether communication with Nynee Tal was open or not. The
whole country was in such a dreadful disorder I was conscious
that it would never reach you ; but the moment that I was assured
communication was open, and my letter would fall in your hands,
I immediately addressed you two letters in succession, but I am
sorry to see it did not reach you. According to your request, I sit
down with the greatest pleasure to give you an account of how I
escaped. It was on the memorable 31st of May, on Sunday, that
the mutiny of the Bareilly troops took place. I was busy with
prayers with the other Christians after a sermon on ‘ Fear not,
little flock,’ etc., and about the middle of the closing prayer I was
informed of the outbreak. I instantly closed, and began to look
out for the safety of my wife and child. The Chowkeydar (watch¬
man) aided me in getting the Christian women concealed. I then
returned to the Bungalow, (my residence.) By this time it was
partly looted and in flame. Seeing it on fire, I threw down the
keys, thinking no use to keep keys now, [a very innocent and just
conclusion of poor Joel’s.] Palwansing and Isaac [two”-of the
native Christians] disguised themselves as gardeners. I went to
see if the women were safe, and returned, when I saw Tuggu and
another man attacking Isaac with a tulwar to rob him. Palwan¬
sing signaled me not to come near, as Tuggu had just said they
JOEL'S ESCAPE. 253
were searching for me to kill me. They went off, and I came for¬
ward, and then I saw Maria [our first female member in Bareilly,
and a good Christian girl] coming, running through the trees, but
before any of us could reach her a Sowar [mounted Sepoy] caught
sight of her and turned, and with his tulwar he struck her head
off.
“ Seeing all was over, Isaac fled toward Budaon. I heard he
was killed on the road. How providential that Emma was a
brand plucked out from burning, for in the house where she was
going afterward to hide herself a good many Europeans were con¬
cealed, and not long after the house was burned by the Sowars,
when, with a few exceptions—who were afterward killed—all per¬
ished. Emma escaped. Your Dhobin (washerwoman) caught her
hand as she was entering, and said, ‘You must not go in there.’
Again, as Emma was sitting with these women, disguised as one
of them, she was remarked by a Sepoy to be a Christian woman,
[her bright, intelligent face might well betray her,] and here again
the Dhobin’s intercession saved her. [This faithful creature also
buried Maria’s body under the rose hedge. I had the gratification
afterward of meeting her on the spot, and rewarding her for the
humanity she showed our Christian people.] As soon as it was
dark I went to the store-room, where I had, on the first alarm,
hidden my Bible, and money, and clothes, under the charcoal, but
they were all gone ; so we started on foot, and, not knowing where
to go, directed our steps toward Allahabad. The Chowkeydar came
with us. We did not arrive here till after various wanderings and
troubles, tasting the bitterness of death as it were at every step—
night and day walking—with my wife, who before could not rough
it for half a mile, [she was delicate and weak,] doing some
twenty-four or twenty-six miles a day, suffering the pangs of hun¬
ger, thirst, and fatigue, and pressed with dangers and difficulties ;
in perils often, Budmashes [thieves and ruffians] scattered every
place. I carried the child, but after the first twelve miles Emma
gave out, said she could go no farther, so we had to stop and rest
her, resuming our walk at three o’clock in the morning, and going
on till nine. Fearing the Budmashes, we left the road and took
side paths, which brought us to a village. We had nothing to eat
since Sunday morning, but could get nothing there except parched
gram, (pulse for horses.) Eat a little and pushed on again.
“ By this time Emma’s poor feet gave out with soreness, so we
bound them up with soft rags to make it easier to walk. We
reached Mohumdee, which was infested, and were soon surrounded ;
but the Hindoo Jamedar (police officer) rescued us out of their
hands, and asked who we were. I told him, * Give food and shel¬
ter, for we are strangers, and I will tell you who we are, and where
going.’ He did, and then asked, ‘ Are you Hindoos or Moham¬
medans ? ’ I said, ‘Neither; we are Christians.’ He advised us
not to stop there, but to push on at once. We did, and on near¬
ing Shahjehanpore I saw a Hindoo that I knew. Took him aside,
and asked him if any Europeans in S. The man said, ‘ Not one :
all killed.’ So we turned off and made for Seetapore. Seeing a
man watering fields I asked him if any Sahib logs [white gentle¬
men] at Seetapore. He said he ‘ had heard that they were all
killed or gone.’ We entered and passed through, and rested under
a tamarind-tree beyond. Two Hindoos came by, and told of their
own accord how the Sahibs were killed there, and added, ‘ We are
hunting for a native Christian.’ I asked why they should search
for him. They replied, ‘ He has defiled himself by eating with
Christians.’ I said, ‘Nothing that a man eats can defile him.’
Then they asked, ‘Who are you?’ The Chowkeydar was afraid,
and tried to put off the question. But I replied, ‘ I am a Christian.’
They were not pleased, but went on. Soon meeting with two
other men they pointed back to our party. For fear of mischief
we rose and went on our way, and escaped them. My crying
toward God was, ‘ O that my head were waters, and mine eyes
fountains of tears, that I might weep day and night for the $lain
of the people of the Almighty ! ’ At length we reached Lucknow,
which had not yet fallen, and there saw Sir Henry Lawrence and
other Englishmen. One of them asked me all about Bareilly.
After resting we went on toward Allahabad. In two days reached
JOEL'8 ESCAPE. 255
Cawnpore. Stopped on the east bank of the Ganges to find out

what was the state of C. Found it surrounded on all sides by the
rebels under Nana Sahib, and the bridge guarded by two cannon ;
so we kept on the east bank two days’ journey more, till we saw a
ooat, and the man took us over for a rupee.
“ Nearing Futtehpore we met crowds of people hurrying away,
and asked, ‘ What is the matter ? ’ They said, ‘ O the English are
coming and sweeping all before them ! ’ They were in great ter¬
ror, but we rejoiced now, though we did not tell them so. Not
fearing the English, we went on through the flying crowd to meet
them. Just then came to the Ten Commandments and Mr. Tuck¬
er’s house at F. [Mr. T. was a noble Christian—a magistrate—
who had had the Commandments cut on two large stone slabs in
the native language, and set up by the road-side near his gate, that
all persons passing by might read them. They were very large
and prominent.] I stood near and read them to our party, then
went into Mr. T.’s fine house and took possession, for all was
empty. Mr. T. was killed the day of the mutiny. Found good
mangoes in the garden and eat them. Started next morning.
The villages were deserted. In the evening we lay down in a serai
all alone, and slept comfortably, knowing the English must be
near. Next morning we were rejoiced to see a white man’s face—
a man with a party repairing the telegraph. We told him all, and
he told us about Allahabad, and that Mr. Owen and all were in
the fort there.
“ We soon met the army ; they did us no harm ; my health and
spirits revived ; we slept near them that night. It was either Neil
or Havelock. [It was probably General Neil, with the vanguard of
Havelock’s force.] Reached Allahabad next day, so happy to find
my friends again. God had heard and saved us, though we had
been robbed of every thing except a single covering for our bodies;
yet here we are at last, joined to our people once more. Thanked
and praised be God’s holy name, who not only supported and gave
us strength, but enabled us to endure all the changes of nature, and
safely brought us thus far ; and now additional joy has been afforded
2K6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
us by the receipt of your letter, to find you all in health and coni'
fort. How I long to see you, and wish I was with you!
“ The fatigue and trouble so overtook Emma, that even up to
this time she is in very delicate health. [No wonder. It makes
me now shudder to imagine what such a gentle and tender creature
must have endured in that dreadful walk of three hundred and forty
miles, in the raging heat of an India June, without nourishment,
and exposed to insult and even death all the time.] The Allaha¬
bad Mission is a heap of ruins. Mr. Owen’s bungalow was burned
to ashes, and all the furniture and books of the mission and the
college destroyed ; the church sadly mutilated, though, thank God !
no serious damage done to it that cannot be restored with a little
outlay ; the press, too, and every thing connected with it, all ruined.
Mr. Munniss and Mr. Owen had both to escape to Calcutta. But
Mr. Owen has now returned. You must have heard of the deaths
of the Futtyghur missionaries. They were murdered either at
Bithoor or at Cawnpore. [And it occurred about the very time
that Joel passed in the vicinity of these places on his way down
How'little he imagined that those he knew and loved so well were
there, within probably a mile of where he passed, enduring the
agonies of Christian martyrdom !] All the houses of the native
Christians here were burned and destroyed.
“You write wishing Messrs. Pierce and Humphrey, with their
wives, to join me ; but I think it impossible. The ladies at any
rate cannot go up with them, at least for some months hence, and
it is not the orders of the Commander-in-Chief that ladies may go
to the upper provinces. I have written to Messrs. Pierce and
Humphrey to come here and learn something of the language till
the time when Bareilly is retaken.
“ I am really very much obliged to you for your kind care of me
during these troublesome times ; but as I am at present working
on the railway here, and earn something to support myself and
family, I do not see any necessity of your taking any further trouble
about me in regardTo money, until such time as I shall be with
you again. But whenever, if I will require, I will tell you ; and,
CONTRASTED SCENES. 2$7
over and above, I think you can hardly spare any thing, yourself
being in trouble.
“ I am not at all discouraged with this trouble ; on the contrary,
I hope it has been sanctified to my good. God forbid that I may
oe discouraged! but may he grant me that grace which may make
my hope strong and my faith firm ; and would to God that new
vigor should be afforded me in the path of duty! My wife joins
with me in sending her remembrance and regards to Mrs. Butler,
Mr. Gowan, [whom he supposed to be with our party,] and to all
others acquainted with me, and in prayers for our speedy restora¬
tion in the field of our labor. My mother-in-law and Jonas and
wife offered their best regards to you both. Emma says, ‘ Give
my salaam [the prayer for peace and blessing] to my motherthat
is to say, to Mrs. Butler.
“ Believe me to be your most obedient servant,
“Joel T. Janvier.”
I communicated again with Joel, sending money, and requested

him to stand ready to release himself from his situation, and join
me as soon as I should call him to his higher work. I knew his
heart and could rely upon him. General Havelock’s progress was
necessarily slow, the fall of Delhi was delayed ; but the hour of
relief, on the south-west of our position, came at length, and I was
enabled to reach the plains on the Dehra Doon side, and have him
join me once more.
Every thing English in Bareilly—people, houses, furniture—was
ruthlessly destroyed, all save the house which the English officers
had used as a Freemasons’ Lodge. The poor superstitious Sepoys
understood that there was something mysterious transacted there,
and it might not be safe or lucky to interfere with it in any way.
So there it stood in its integrity, when we returned to Bareilly,,
alone and unharmed amid the ruins of the English station.
After their carnival of blood and ruin had been consummated in
Bareilly the Sepoys began the work of dividing the plunder, and
strange and fantastic were the scenes as they were afterward
described to us. The newly-elected Sepoy officers, who were now

to fill the places of their superiors, were decked out, according to
their new rank, in the clothes and equipments of the murdered
officers, strolling about or riding in their carriages, and doing what
they could to enforce the same salutes and honors that were for¬
merly paid to the English officers. Their fellows would grin and
ridicule their demands, so that the prospects of discipline or Sub¬
ordination were very poor, and from the first intimated that defect
which was one of the causes of their failure.
How strange it seems now to remember that, on that very Sab¬
bath-day, and at the very hours when these deeds were done, and
hell seemed to run riot in Bareilly, in the city of Boston there was
being held one of the most holy and impressive services ever wit¬
nessed there. Bromfield-street Methodist Church was crowded that
day to witness the consecration of Messrs. Pierce and Humphrey
to the missionary work—Bareilly being their destination ! God
never looked down at the same hour upon two greater contrasts
than he gazed upon that day and night—the one worthy of heaven
and its joy, the other—but we forbear. How would ten minutes’'
service of the telegraph (had it been then in use as it is to-day)
have changed that holy, joyous scene in Bromfield-street into
mourning and woe! But the friends dreamed not of our sorrows,
and God honored their faith and devotion, notwithstanding our
sufferings and the suspension of our work.
This dreadful 31st of May was, with few exceptions, the general
day for rising all over the land. The scenes of Bareilly were
repeated in all the cities of Rohilcund, Oude, the Doab, and the
North-west Provinces. Volumes might.be filled with the sad recit¬
als. But we have no heart for their repetition. One alone, till we
come to speak of Cawnpore and Lucknow, must suffice ; and we
give it because it was the station next our own—Shahjehanpore—
forty-three miles east of Bareilly. The atrocities committed there
were so cruel and complete that no Europeans escaped ; so we rely
for our account of their sad fate upon the testimony of the natives
themselves, as drawn out by subsequent Government inquiry.
THE MASSACRE AT SHAEJEHANPORE. 259
With well-dissembled enmity, the Sepoys at Shahjehanpore went

through their duties until the morning of the rising. They waited
until their officers and their families had gone to church. This was
the opportunity which they preferred. They rose en masse, and,
having armed themselves fully—though those whom they were to
overcome were entirely unarmed and defenseless worshipers in
the house of God—stealthily proceeded in a body to the church.
They must have taken their measures very quietly and quickly, for
they entered while the congregation knelt in prayer, without caus¬
ing the least alarm, and in some instances dealt their deadly blows
on the prostrate suppliants before their presence was known or
their purpose feared. Young Spens was on his knees in prayer
when his shoulder was laid open by the savage lunge of a tulwar
wielded by one of the murderous mutineers. The attack being
simultaneous, the people were instantly on their feet, struggling in
mortal combat with their assailants. The heart-rending scene that
ensued I cannot describe. Words seem too feeble to convey its
horrors. It is believed that not one of the number of men, women,
and children in that sanctuary ultimately escaped.
Particulars have been ascertained concerning the sad fate of
twenty-six of their number. These succeeded, by some means,
in getting out of the furious fray and reaching the doors of the
church, and, befriended by their syces, or coachmen, reached their
carriages and drove off, scarcely knowing or caring whither. They
only drew up at a place called Mohumdy, after a drive of many
miles. Here they were well received by the Theeselder, or local
officer, who seemed sincerely disposed to shield and serve them.
The strongest defense at his disposal was a mud fort, and there he
placed the fugitives, who began to breathe in hope. It was only
for a brief interval. A part of the Forty-first Sepoy Cavalry sud¬
denly appeared, and, having discovered the refugees, demanded
their surrender. The remonstrances and resistance of the friendly
Theeselder were in vain.
On being given up they were put into their own carriages and
driven off under the escort of their captors. Before starting, how-
26o THE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
ever, the disabled and bandaged condition of young Spens, who

was one of the party, excited the notice of one of the troopers, who
stepped up and cleft him in pieces, coolly remarking that it was
useless taking a wounded man with them to cumber them.
Whether they had any specific intention concerning their cap¬
tives on starting it is impossible to say ; but it is certain that, after
proceeding for some time, they halted, as if in accordance with a
pre-arranged purpose. Opening the carriages, they ordered the
ladies and children to step out. The unhappy husbands and fathers
entreated to be taken in their stead. Impatient of the slightest
resistance, they dragged the babes and their mothers to the ground,
and, with a refinement of cruelty, dismembered and mutilated
them in the presence of their powerless protectors. Having fin¬
ished with them, they fell upon the men and butchered them also,
and then drove off with the empty carriages, leaving the mangled
bodies dishonored and exposed upon the road, to be devoured by
the jackals and birds of prey. Some friendly villagers, however,
soon after they had gone, dug a pit near the spot and buried the
outraged remains.
A leading American journal very justly remarked at the time:
“ Horrible are the atrocities which mark the progress of the pres¬
ent rebellion. The North American savage need no longer be con¬
sidered the monster of human cruelty, as the red man has found
his match in the Sepoys, who cut off women’s ears, eyes, and noses,
destroying them by tortures worthy of the diabolical rage and
malignity of Satan himself.” Indeed, one may venture to go fur¬
ther, and say that history may be searched in vain to find a parallel
to the riot, plunder, and murder of those dreadful days. The num¬
ber of the slain and mutilated will probably never be known.
Inquiry has ascertained, however, that, apart from the relieving
army, not less than fifteen hundred Englishmen and Englishwomen
must have perished, not half of whom probably found the rest of
the grave: their bodies lay upon the waste, or were dragged out
of the bazaars, or left amid the wreck of their own homes, to lie
neglected and become the food of dogs and jackals, or the foul birds
THE MURDERED MISSIONARIES. 261
of prey. How sad were the cases of which I had personal knowl¬
edge, as well as the histories to which I have listened during the
subsequent years, particularly of the trials and tortures to which
ladies were subjected ! Volumes might be filled with the dreadful
details of these shameful atrocities : we can, however, name a few
of the sufferers.
Of the Missionaries of the various societies within the circle
around our position, the following suffered a cruel death at the
hands of the Sepoys in the cities named :
Rev. W. H. and Mrs. Haycock, and Rev. H. and Mrs. Cockey,
at Cawnpore, of the English Gospel Propagation Society.
Rev. J. E. and Mrs. Freeman, Rev. D. E. and Mrs. Campbell,
Rev. A. O. and Mrs. Johnson, and Rev. R. and Mrs. Macmullin,
at Futtyghur, of the American Presbyterian Mission.
Rev. T. Mackay, at Delhi, Baptist Missionary Society.
Rev. A. R. Hubbard and Rev. D. Sandys, at Delhi, English
Gospel Propagation Society.
Rev. R. and Mrs. Hunter, at Sealcote, Scotch Kirk.
Rev. J. Maccallum, at Shahjehanpore, Addit. Clergy. Society.
Some of these had children, who suffered with them.
Several Chaplains also were killed : Mr. Jennings in Delhi, Mr.
Polehampton in Lucknow, Mr. Moncrieff at Cawnpore, and Mr.
Copeland.
The mission property destroyed was estimated at the value of
$344,400. Of this heavy loss, by far the greater portion fell upon
the English Church Missionary Society, and the American Pres¬
byterian Missions. The former lost $160,000, and the latter about
$ 130,000.
Thus the mission of the' Methodist Episcopal Church to India
was, in the first year of its establishment, covered with a cloud, and
the faith and patience of our Church was severely tested. It became
a solemn question, how the Church would take this dispensation of
Providence. Will she recede at the first difficulty ? Will she
give way because earth and hell have roused themselves up to
resist her? Nay, “Greater is He that is for us than all that can
be against us.” Besides, our experience is not singular. Many

missions that have been eminently successful have had very unpro-
pitious beginnings ; and God eminently honored the faith that did
not shrink from difficulties. We recollect with what interest the
Church of Scotland sent forth her first missionary, Dr. Duff, to lay
the foundation of her mission in India. But seldom has a voyage
been more protracted or disastrous than Dr. Duff’s first voyage to
India in 1830. His ship went down off the coast of Africa, and
he lost all he possessed in the world, (including a valuable library,
too,) except one copy of the word of God, he and his devoted wife
barely escaping with their lives. They made their way to the Cape
of Good Hope, and sailed again ; but, off the Mauritius, came near
foundering, and actually were a second time shipwrecked in the
Bay of Bengal: so that their disastrous voyage lasted eight months
from the time they left England till they reached Calcutta. But
what a glorious work of God has sprung from that perilous and
untoward commencement! God grant that the Methodist Mission
to North India, notwithstanding “the fight of afflictions” in which
it was begun, may find its sufferings, and its faith and patience,
honored by similar success ! And why not ? I thank God we were
not discouraged. Notwithstanding all we had passed through, or
might pass through, we lost neither heart nor hope ; we still held
on to the expectation that India had a bright future before it, and
that our mission would live, and “ triumph in Christ,” among the
very people at whose hands we had suffered.
The refugees from Moradabad reached us by the southern pass,
within a couple of hours of those from Bareilly., We went to
meet them ; and how hearty was each congratulation upon their
escape and safe arrival! Each man, too, added to the force for our
defense, and so strengthened us. One officer, as he came over the
brow of the hill, and caught his first view of Nynee Tal;-'looked
delighted, as he rested his loaded rifle by his side, till a sudden
thought flushed his face with anxiety, and, turning to us, he asked,.
“But are we safe here ?” We dared not answer ; for we had been
asking that question of our own fears for many previous hours, as-
TEMPERING THE WIND. 263
the fearful emergency in its character and extent opened out so

seriously before our view.
A wonderful circumstance occurred in connection with the flight
of these people from Moradabad, which illustrates the idea so often
expressed of that tender mercy which
“ Tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”
The English Government requires a constant supply of elephants

for carrying forage, drawing and handling cannon and timber, and
other heavy work for the army and commissariat. As these huge
creatures do not breed in captivity, the required supply can only be
kept up by constant additions from the herds of wild elephants
which roam the great Terai forest surrounding the Himalaya
Mountains. To accomplish this a regular department is organ¬
ized, which trains the more docile of the female elephants to aid in
capturing the wild ones in the Terai, and they lend themselves to
the work with a sagacity and a fidelity that is truly wonderful.
At the head of this “Elephant Department” was a Major Baugh,
whose residence was at Moradabad. On the very morning of the
mutiny his lady was confined, and in less than four hours after that
event the Sepoys rose. The Major’s feelings may be imagined when
he rushed into his home and broke the dreadful news to his wife as
she lay in her chamber with her baby by her side. The agonized
husband looked at them, and was almost speechless with horror in
anticipation of the destruction that would be at their door in a few
moments. But the heroic lady, notwithstanding her situation, was
equal to the emergency. With a word of cheer to the sad husband,
she made the astounding proposal to him to bring the buggy at
once to the door. It was done. She then told him to take a bed
and put it in the buggy, and to lift her up and carry her and her
baby out, and lay them on the bed, and try to escape. Then com¬
mending themselves to Heaven’s help, the husband, having his sword
in one hand and the horse’s bridle in the other, they commenced the
dreadful and uncertain march for the foot of the mountains, fifty
miles distant, over a rough road, crossed by numerous rivers, not
one of which was then bridged. Twenty miles oi the road lay
through the malarious Terai ; while they were liable at any hour
to be overtaken and cut to pieces, yet not daring to go faster than
a walk, for the poor lady's life could not bear more than the strain
it was at that rate enduring—and all this beneath that blazing sun
of May!
I leave it to those who may read these facts to imagine, if they
can, what must have been that husband’s feelings during those
thirty-six hours of sympathy and fear! But the dear lady went
through it all, reached the foot of the hills, was carried up the
remaining eleven miles in a jampan, and was received and wel¬
comed by us with the tender commiseration and respect that were
due to one who had gone through such an experience. We hardly
dared to hope that she could really survive it, but thought it must
kill her and her babe too. But no ! a merciful Providence carried
her safely through. Her recovery was rapid, and in three weeks
after her escape she made her appearance upon the Mall which runs
around the lake, looking, though pale, so cheery and grateful as
each gentleman she met lifted his hat in homage to one who haa
drawn so deeply upon our sympathies, and whose appearance again
gave us as much pleasure as if she had been a personal friend or a
sister of ours.
Had our enemies only followed us up at once, instead of waiting
to burn, and plunder, and dispute about rank and methods of action,
they could most certainly have been upon us before we were pre¬
pared for resistance. But we made good use of the forty-eight
hours which their wrangling allowed ; and when they reached the
foot of the hills our measures were taken, and we stood ready for
them—so far as a handful could be ready for a host of Sepoys and
Budmashes. With a good glass, from certain points we could
catch a glimpse of their out-lying pickets when they pushed up to
Julee.
As soon as the last refugee had reached us we held a “ council
of war,” to see what could be done. The first thing was to ascer¬
tain our numbers ; so we counted heads, and found that we
THE ILLUSTRIOUS GARRISON OF NYNEE TAL. 265.
were eighty-seven gentlemen, with one hundred and thirteen ladies

and children to protect. By general consent Major Ramsay, the
Commissioner, was elected Commandant. We voted ourselves a
sort of militia in her Majesty’s service, and pledged the Major our
full duty and obedience to defend the place to the last extremity.
Somehow or other all of us were supplied with arms ; those who
had more than enough divided with those who had none. Here
was a case where “ he who had no sword ” would willingly “ sell
his garment and buy one,” for “ the days of vengeance ” were upon
us, and we had a duty to fulfill on behalf of ladies and little ones
that admitted of no hesitation, in view of the relentless enemy who
now hemmed us in on every side.
Having elected our Commandant and distributed our arms, the
worthy Major asked us to stand up in line, that he might address
us a few words. Each shouldered his weapon, and the line was
formed. The Commandant looked at his little force. He could
not help smiling, serious as he and we felt, for a more “ awkward
squad ” than we appeared no commandant ever inspected. Among
the eighty-seven, as they then stood, each “ a high private,” were
three generals, grayheaded and bent with years ; a number of
colonels, majors, and captains ; some doctors, judges, and magis¬
trates ; a few Indigo planters, merchants, and shopkeepers ; two
English chaplains, and myself, the only American in the party—
from the man of fourscore down to the boy of seventeen : yet half
of the number had probably never fired a shot in anger, if at all,,
and had to learn every thing in their new profession.
Our commander’s speech was a very brief one. Its burden was
the duty that we owed to the ladies and children, with the assur¬
ance that, far-off and isolated as we were, England would find us
out and rescue us if we could only hold on till her forces arrived
that, whatever came, the last man must fall at his post ere one of
those wretches should cross our defenses. Our hearts were sad
enough, but we cheered the speech. We were, to a man, willing
to fight, and, if necessary, to die to defend the ladies.
I walked home with my musket on my shoulder and my pockets
full of ball cartridges and caps, greatly to my wife’s surprise, who

met me at the door and declared there must be some mistake:
she had married a Methodist preacher, and not a soldier.” But
I took that gun as a religious duty, and intended to use it, too, if I
had a chance ; for surely these were circumstances in which a
Christian could pray God to “ teach his hands to war and his fin¬
gers to fight.” Before one of those bloody men below should burst
our bounds, or lay a finger on one of the ladies who relied upon
our protection, as, under God, their only hope, I should certainly
have fired my last charge, and then laid around me with the butt-
end, and, having done all, have “ died at my post.” So would
every man of our number.
But the rascals below were not very anxious to give us a chance
to show how valiant we were, so we rested on our arms and awaited
their pleasure.
The twenty-five faithful Sowars who had stood firm and come
up with their officers were quite a help to us ; but in spite of what
the brave fellows had risked for their fidelity, (for word had reached
them that their fellow-Sepoys would kill their children, whom they
had to leave behind in Bareilly, if they did not forsake us,) yet we
secretly dreaded to trust them fully, so they were placed down the
hill a mile or two to guard that pass, and our “ munition of rocks ”
was defended by our own right arms alone. The hill men, called
Paharees, being probably aborigines, hate the plains’ men, and the
dislike is returned with equal cordiality. We made no effort to
heal this breach, but rather fomented it. The Commandant hired
and trained as many of these Paharees as he could. We had thus
done all we could for our own preservation—placed a small force
at the bottom of the hill, then posts every mile or two, which could
fall back on each other if overpowered. Half-way we had a small
cannon planted, the grape of which would mow down any advanc¬
ing party ; then on convenient turns and narrow places great
heaps of stone and trees, denuded of their branches, were ready to
be rolled down upon any foe that would venture to come up these
passes; then the road had been cut so narrow in places that
THE VALUE OF OUR HEADS. 267
only two men could walk abreast on the verge of the precipice ; we
had also undermined the road in several places, so that an invad¬
ing party could be so isolated that they could neither go back
nor forward. In addition, we were well armed, and ready, by day
or night, when the signal gun was fired, to rush to the top of the
pass, and die there sooner than the enemy should force it, or that
a single one of those one hundred and thirteen ladies and children
should fall into the hands of those vile wretches. We felt assured,
as we looked at our work, that a handful could hold the place
against multitudes if their ammunition only held out and their
provisions lasted ; but that was the question just then.
Our congregation was a sad one. With the exception of my
wife and another person, every lady of the party wore some badge
of mourning, showing that either relatives or near friends had been
killed. Of course house and property were utterly destroyed in
every case, while the enemies of our Lord and Saviour were raging
and blaspheming below, thirsting for our blood, and vowing, by all
their gods, that they would soon have it, and thus finish up their
fiendish work. In such circumstances what a significance many
parts of the word of God had for us ! “ The denunciatory Psalms,”
which in a calm and quiet civilization seem sometimes to read
harshly, were in our case so apposite and so consistent that we
felt their adaptation and propriety against these enemies of God as
though they had been actually composed for our special case.
How we used to read them with the new light of our position, and
how they drew out our confidence in God for the final issue!
Khan Bahadur, the new Nawab of Rohilcund, strengthened his
force to hem us in, and issued his list of prices for our heads,
beginning with Mr. Alexander, the Commissioner. Five hundred
rupees was, if I recollect rightly, the price he put upon my poor
head. Every expedient was used to urge his men to storm our
position ; but their spies (for they had such) considerably cooled
their ardor by the representation of our resolution and prepara¬
tions ; so they came to the conclusion that if they could not get up
to kill us, they would do the next best thing for them, by starving
15
us out, which would answer about as well. But we as decidedly

resolved that we would not be starved, so we set to work to make
the best commissariat arrangements of which the case admitted.
There was a very sparse population of the Paharees sprinkled
about in the valleys between us and the higher Himalayas, and
every thing these people had to spare we bought up ; the lake fur¬
nished some fish, and the forest around had game. The latter,
however, was not much aid to us, as it was not prudent to waste
our ammunition, nor, in view of our signals, was it desirable to
have much firing in our neighborhood. We did as well as we
could ; but as week after week went over we felt the pressure more
sensibly. Money grew scarce, and clothing, shoes, and other ne¬
cessities, became harder to obtain.
In about two weeks after our flight the terrible jungle fever,
which we hoped we had escaped the night when we were detained
in the Terai, began to develop itself, (taking about that time to do
so,) and soon our little home was a scene of sickness, while help
and medicine were so very scarce. Every one of us had to go
through it, four out of the five being down with it at the same time.
In the midst of this scene of weakness and sorrow our daughter
Julia was born. The day she came was the darkest we had ever
seen. Illness, tropical rains, want of help, a scarcity of proper
nourishment for the poor mother, with the uncertainty as to the
moment when we might be assailed, and my liability to have to
leave the sick household to go to my post at the pass, all consti¬
tuted a strain upon the soul of one anxious mortal that I feel
thankful does not often fall to the lot of a husband to endure.
But, notwithstanding, the dear babe brought the light with her,
A father’s heart may be allowed to say that her presence helped to
disperse some of the gloom of the dark days that followed, and
added a new motive for vigilance and courage. Yes, let the 30th
ot J une stand as “ a red-letter day ” in the life of one so deeply in¬
debted as I am to the ruling providence of my God ! Our “ part¬
ners in distress” were pleased to designate her “The Mutiny
Baby,’ and many a kind word and act were lavished upon her.
HUNGRY FOR NEWS. 269
Of course our mails were cut off—we were completely isolated

from all the world. We could stand on our magnificent elevation
and look out upon the plains of India, the horizon stretching for a
hundred miles from east to west—could trace the courses of the
rivers, and see the forests and towns in the dim distance—but could
only imagine what was being done down there. The handful of
villagers around us told us that we were the last of Christian
life left in India ; that from where we stood to the sea, nearly a
thousand miles on each side, every white man had been murdered,
and the last vestige of our religion swept away. We well knew if
this were so our fate was but a question of time ; yet “ against
hope ” I “ believed in hope.” I felt that this could not be true, for
Jesus Christ was still on the throne which governs this world, and
he would not thus allow the clock of progress to be put back for
centuries, nor yield to earth or hell the conquests won on the
oriental hemisphere.
Our “ raging foes ” kept up their alarms, but we estimated them
at their worth, and stood on our guard day and night with unre¬
laxed vigilance. How we longed for news ! A letter or a news¬
paper would have been more precious than rubies ; but we were
destined to know for weary months what “ hunger for news ”
meant. Our food was often scanty ; but we would willingly have
done without it, even for days, to have received instead a feast of
information, more particularly about those whom we left below,
and of whose fate we were so uncertain.
We tried hard to establish some means of communication, but
they were all failures. The few natives that remained faithful
were offered the largest bribes which our means afforded, to go
down and bring us news of how matters stood—whether any of
our friends survived, and if there was any prospect of relief.
Four or five were induced to go, but only one returned, and he was
mutilated. The rebels cut off his nose and ears, and the poor man
was a frightful spectacle. Government afterward liberally pen¬
sioned him. We were indeed “ shut up life hung in uncertainty,
and we “ stood in jeopardy every hour.” The outside world lost
27 o THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
sight of us, and some of our number were published as among the
dead.
In the midst of these vicissitudes the question was discussed
whether we had not better, for the ladies’ sake, try to cross the
Himalayas and strike the Brahmapootra behind them, and so make
our way by that river to Burmah ; a proposition that would have
been madness to have attempted, situated as we were, without
resources, and which would have involved our destruction. The
fact of the proposition, however, shows the extremity to which we
were reduced when intelligent men could seriously propose such a
mode of escape.
The English judge at Budaon, near Bareilly, was a pious gentle¬
man of the name of Edwards. Before the rebellion I had gone, at
his earnest request, to visit that place and hold divine service with
his family on a Sabbath day. Two or three natives had been led
to embrace Christianity, one of whom, named Wuzeer Singh, had
resigned his position in a Sepoy regiment to join the little band
whom Mr. E. cared for. The “mutiny” broke out soon after.
Judge Edwards had sent his wife and child to Nynee Tal, but
resolved, to use his own words, “ to stick to the ship as long as
she floated,” and he remained, the only European officer in charge
of his district, with 800,000 people within its bounds. “ I went,”
he says, “ into my room and prayed earnestly that God would pro¬
tect and guide me, and enable me to do my duty.”
At six o’clock on Monday morning the Sepoys broke into open
mutiny. . . . Mr. Edwards, revolver in hand, forced his way
through the crowd, and approached a “ fine, powerful Patan, about
fifty years of age,” named Moottan Khan, one of the leaders. Mr.
E. rode up to him, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said,
“Have you a family and little children?” The Patan nodded
“Are they not dependent on you for bread?” “Yes,” was the
answer. “ Well, so have I,” said Mr. E., “ and I am confident you
are not the man to take my life, and destroy their means of sup¬
port.” Moottan Khan hesitated a moment, then said, “ I will save
your life ; follow me and he escorted him out of the city.
TEE GARMENT OF PRAISE. 271
Mr. E. reached a place of safety, a village owned by Hurdeo

Buksh, a Talookdar, a man of wealth and influence, near Futty-
ghur, one hundred and forty miles from Nynee Tal. For many
months this noble, friendly Hindoo, at great peril, sheltered him,
though constantly threatened by the rebels of Futtyghur. Mr.
E. after some time succeeded in finding a man who, by the prom¬
ise of a large reward, was induced to venture to carry a message
to Mrs. Edwards, in Nynee Tal.
She, poor lady, was mourning for her husband in the bitterness
of uncertainty and woe unspeakable, supposing that, like the rest,
he had been murdered.
Judge E. procured a small piece of paper, and wrote on it that?
he was still alive, and even well, and in a village named-. Here
he wrote the name of the village in Greek, lest the note should
be discovered. He then, with a small knife, slit a bamboo walk¬
ing stick, inserted the tiny missive, and withdrew the knife. The
slit closed so completely as to defy the skill of any seeker, though
the messenger was often searched by the rebel police, but they
never imagined that there was a letter in the walking-stick. The
faithful native reached our position after a variety of adventures,
and when challenged by our guards, declared he was a friend, and
that he had a letter for delivery to Mem Sahib (Lady) Edwards.
They conducted him to her. He found her dressed in mourning,
supposing herself a widow. He told her his bamboo stick had a
letter in it from her husband. He broke it, and there it verily
was, in his own handwriting. In addition to expressing her own
joy at the discovery, she knew the native mind and character well,
and how to impress it, and that it was necessary that her
action now should be significant, as she feared her reply might be
lost, or would have to be destroyed by the messenger to save his
life, and she must do something which would show him the joy
which she felt ; so, telling him to wait, she retired, and soon came
back again, and stood before him arrayed from head to foot in white
clothing. He understood her perfectly, and started back by night
on his dangerous journey to Judge Edwards.
2 72 THE LANE OF THE VEDA.
“ Did you see the Mem Sahib ?”

“Yes, Sahib,” said the good fellow, “ I saw herself in person.”
“ Well, and how did she look, and what had she to say to you ?”
In his estimation, how she looked, and what she said, were all
summed up in one fact.
“ Sahib, when I gave her your chittee (letter) she was clothed in
black, but when she read the chittee she immediately went into
another room, and soon came back to me dressed all in white!'
The affectionate wife and husband fully comprehended each
other’s feelings in that action, and we at Nynee Tal rejoiced with
her that day that so providentially gave her “ the oil of joy for
mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”
It was six months and more before they were able to meet, but
they could henceforward live in the hope of being again united in
life and love together. There was one less on our mall from that
day forward who wore mourning.
Coming down the hill from our Thursday afternoon prayer¬
meeting one day, a military officer who had been present sought
the opportunity of a private interview, and with much feeling he
said to me :
“ O, sir, permit me to thank you from my heart for the earnest
prayers which you put up to God this afternoon for the victory of
my country’s arms !”
I looked at the man and smiled ; asked him if we were not in
“the same boat” just then, or whether he thought it likely that
those wretches down there would pay more respect to my Stars
and Stripes than to his English ensign ?
So we lived, and watched, and prayed. Meanwhile the terrible
news of the Sepoy Rebellion had reached the shores of Europe
and America. England was nerving her energies for our relief.
Troops and munitions of war were being prepared as fast as possi¬
ble. A General, supposed equal to the emergency, was found in
Sir Colin Campbell, for two Commanders-in-Chief had already
fallen, (Generals Anson and Barnard,) and the little English army
in India was without a head. The Queen telegraphed to Sir Colin,
HELP AT LAST. 273
after his acceptance of the position, requesting to be informed when

he could be ready to leave England for the East ? His prompt and
Spartan reply was telegraphed back, “To-morrow!” The old
chief’s promptitude reminds one of another “to-morrow” in India’s
history. At the battle-field of Bidera, when Lord Clive, who founded
the British Empire in the East, was Governor-General, Forde, who
commanded, applied for written authority to begin the attack. His
note reached Clive as he was playing cards with his company, and
without quitting his seat, he took a pencil and wrote—
“Dear Forde: Fight them immediately, and I will send you

the order in council to-morrow !”
Sir Colin, of course, outran his army, for they could not, like
him, start “ to-morrow.” But a merciful Providence had provided
a vanguard of help in the army from Persia, (with which peace had
just been concluded,) on their return to India. With this little
force was that great and good man, General Havelock, whose
promptitude and wonderful valor did so much to turn the dreadful
tide, and rescue the besieged long months ere Sir Colin Campbell
or his troops could reach India. General Havelock, returning vic¬
torious from Persia, landed at Bombay with his Highlanders on
the very day before the massacre at Bareilly. Unable to cross the
country, he went around by sea to Calcutta as rapidly as possible,
reaching there June 17, having been delayed on the way by the
total shipwreck of the vessel which carried him. His troops fol¬
lowed, and all that could be done to prepare for pushing up the
country was accomplished by this indefatigable man, whom God
had brought so opportunely to our aid.
Not a day too soon did his succor come. Up to that hour the
Sepoys had it all their own way ; one post after another had fallen
before them ; they were gaining ground every week, and the hor¬
rors of the situation for the English were deepening daily. Sepoy
success was followed by more desperate resolutions and more ter¬
rible measures, falsehood and blasphemy being added in any quan¬
tity for their purpose. The measures and spirit of these men may
274 THE LAND OF THE YEDA.
be judged from a sample of their public proclamations, issued from

Delhi and Cawnpore to the whole Sepoy army, and the officials
and people.
The first proclamation was issued in the name'of the Emperor’s
army defending Delhi, which the little English army was then try¬
ing to besiege ; and the Mogul Court desired to draw the whole
Sepoy force in that direction to annihilate them. The glaring
falsehoods in the following proclamation are manifest enough :
“ To all Hindoos and Mussulmans, Citizens and Servants of Hin¬

dustanthe Officers of the Army now at Delhi send greeting:
“It is well known that in these days all the English have enter¬
tained these evil designs—first to destroy the religion of the whole
Hindustanee army, and then to make the people Christians by
compulsion. Therefore we, solely on account of our religion, have
combined with the people, and have not spared alive one infidel,
and have re-established the Delhi dynasty on these terms, and thus
act in obedience to orders, and receive double pay. Hundreds of
guns and a large amount of treasure have fallen into our hands ;
therefore it is fitting that whoever of the soldiers and the people
dislike turning Christians should unite with one heart and act
courageously, not leaving the seed of these infidels remaining.
Whoever shall in these times exhibit cowardice or credulity by
believing the promises of those impostors, the English, shall very
shortly be put to shame for such a deed ; and, rubbing the hands
of sorrow, shall receive for their fidelity the reward the ruler of
Lucknow got. It is further necessary that all Hindoos and Mus¬
sulmans unite in this struggle, and that all, so far as it is possible,
copy this proclamation, and dispatch it every-where, so that all
true Hindoos and Mussulmans may be alive and watchful, and fix
it in some conspicuous place, (but prudently, to avoid detection,)
and strike a blow with a sword before giving circulation to it. The
first pay of the soldiers at Delhi will be thirty rupees per month
for a trooper, and ten rupees for a footman, [a large advance on
the English allowance.] Nearly one hundred thousand men are
LYING AND BLASPHEMOUS PROCLAMATIONS 275.
ready ; and there are thirteen flags of the English regiments, and
about fourteen standards from different parts, now raised aloft for
our religion, for God, and the conqueror; and it is the intention of
Cawnpore to root out the seed of the devil. This is what we of the
army here wish.”
But this was mildness compared to the following blasphemous

proclamation next issued from Cawnpore by the Nana Sahib:
“ As by the kindness of God, and the good fortune of the Em¬

peror, all the Christians who were at Delhi, Poonah, Sattara, and
other places, and even those five thousand European soldiers who
went in disguise into the former city and were discovered, are
destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops who
are firm to their religion ; and as they have all been conquered by
the present Government; and as no trace of them is left in these
places—it is the duty of all the subjects and servants of the Govern¬
ment to rejoice at the delightful intelligence, and carry on their
respective work with comfort and ease.
“ As by the bounty of the glorious Almighty and the enemy-
destroying fortune of the Emperor, the yellow-faced and narrow¬
minded people have been sent to hell, and Cawnpore has been
conquered, it is necessary that all the subjects, and land-owners,
and Government servants should be as obedient to the present
Government as they have been to the former one ; that it is the
incumbent duty of all the peasants and landed proprietors of every
district to rejoice at the thought that the Christians have been sent
to hell, and both the Hindoo and Mohammedan religions have been
confirmed ; and that they should as usual be obedient to the author¬
ities of the Government, and never suffer any complaint against
themselves to reach to the ears of the higher authority.”
But even this is exceeded by the outrageous falsehoods of the

proclamation with which he further imposed upon their credulity,
and tried to rouse them to greater efforts. It finished up with
what he deemed to be a suitable quotation from one of the Persian
poets, and ran thus1:
THE PROCLAMATION OF THE NANA 3AHIB.
“ A traveler just arrived at Cawnpore from Allahabad states that

just before the cartridges were distributed, a Council (of the Gov¬
ernor-General at Calcutta) was held for the purpose of taking away
the religion and rights of the people of Hindustan. The Members
of Council came to the conclusion that, as the matter was one
affecting religion, seven or eight thousand Europeans would be
required, and it would cost the lives of fifty thousand Hindoos, but
at this price the natives of Hindustan would become Christians.
The matter was therefore represented in a dispatch to Queen Vic¬
toria, who gave her consent. A second Council was then held, at
which the English merchants were present. It was then resolved
to ask for the assistance of a body of European troops, equal in
number to the native army, so as to insure success. When the
dispatch containing this application was read in England, thirty-
five thousand Europeans were very rapidly embarked on ships, and
started for Hindustan. Then the English in Calcutta issued the
order for the distribution of the cartridges, the object of which was
to make Hindustan Christian. The cartridges were smeared with
hog and cow’s fat. One man who let out the secret was hung, and
one imprisoned.
“Meantime the embassador of the Sultan of Roum (Turkey) in
London sent word to his sovereign that thirty-five thousand Euro¬
peans had been dispatched to Hindustan to make all the natives
Christians. The Sultan (may Allah perpetuate his kingdom!)
issued a firman to the Pasha of Egypt, the contents of which are
as follows : ‘You are conspiring with Queen Victoria. If you are
guilt) of neglect in this matter, what kind of face will you be able
to show to God ?’
“ When this firman of the Sultan of Roum reached the Pasha of
Egypt, the Lord of Egypt assembled his army in the city of Alex¬
andria, which is on the road to India, before the Europeans arrived.
As soon as the European troops arrived the troops of the Pasha of
Egypt began to fire into them with guns on all sides, and sunk all
THE REAL SPIRIT OF THE MOSLEM CREED. 277
their ships, so that not even a single European escaped. The

English in Calcutta, after issuing orders for biting the cartridges,
and when these disturbances had reached their height, were look¬
ing for the assistance of the army from London. But the Almighty,
by the exercise of his power, made an end of them at the very out¬
set. When intelligence of the destruction of the army from London
arrived, the Governor-General was much grieved and distressed,
and beat his head.
“ ‘At eventide he intended murder and plunder;
At noon neither had his body a head nor his head a cover.
In one revolution of the blue heavens
Neither Nadir remained, nor a follower of Nadir.’
“Done by the order of his Grace the Peishwa, 1273 of the

Hegira.”
Of course every word of this was believed by the Sepoys, for

they not only had the proclamations of their Emperor and the
Peishwa, but their Fakirs stood sponsors to the hideous falsehoods.
How appropriate is all this to the spirit of the Moslem creed—
a Government communicating to its subjects “the delightful intel¬
ligence,” not that its enemies were defeated or slain, but that they
were damned—“sent to hell!” Worthy indeed to be the succes¬
sors of Tamerlane, who, after proving his claim to the title of “ the
scourge of God,” and marking his long track with massacre and
desolation, coolly and complacently wrote with his own hand in his
memoir that he felt it to be “ a pious duty to assist God in filling
hell chock-full of men and genii.”
When, in 1856, Sir Culling Eardly, the President of the Evan¬
gelical Alliance, wrote to Dr. Duff, of Calcutta, to ascertain the real
sentiment of Mohammedans in India on a question in which the
British people felt interested, (as their Government were then
pressing certain reforms on the Sultan of Turkey, involving the
principles of religious liberty for his subjects,) the world were some¬
what surprised at Dr. Duff’s reply. His inquiries led him to the
conviction that Mohammedanism (like Popery) is michangeable;
that, where it has the power, it would not only enforce its claims
and creed, but would do so at the sword’s point. Individual

Mohammedans may, like individual Romanists, be and are excep¬
tions to this statement, and better than their training; but I speak
of the system and of the general action—and here are its terrible
illustrations in the hour of its opportunity.
Our fate evidently hung upon that of Delhi. If that city fell, we
should probably be saved ; if not, we must expect the worst, and
that soon. But what could less than seven thousand soldiers and
a few Sikh and Ghoorka allies do, and that in the open air and
in the hottest season of the India year, against a strongly-fortified
city, behind whose walls from forty to sixty thousand Sepoys
fought! The Commander-in-chief of the Sepoys was Bukt Khan,
an acquaintance of my own, for he was from Bareilly, and was
Subadar of Artillery under our friend Major Kirby. When I have
sat with the Major in the cool of the evening, and seen this sleek
Sepoy come in, with such profound courtesy to us both, to deliver
his daily report, how little I could have imagined the part he
would yet, and so soon, play behind the walls of Delhi, with the
Major’s coat and cocked hat upon him, aftd his sword by his side!
Even though that handful of Englishmen could not take the city
till they obtained more assistance, it was of immense benefit to us
and to India that they held so many Sepoys fast there. The rebels
came out in force on the 23d of June, and fought for thirteen hours.
Their “astrologers” had declared that “unless they should beat
the English army on that day" (the anniversary and centenary of
the battle of Plassey, the most important action of the English irr
India) “the British would hold the country forever.” Hence the
force and numbers with which they attacked, and the perseverance
with which they kept up the contest. They were repulsed, how¬
ever, leaving, as usual, the English masters of the field. They
were much discouraged at their failure. Their loss on that day
was, after all, but small—not over 500; their mode of fighting
accounts for this. When they can choose their own ground and
method they are very averse to any thing like “close quarters,”1
and much like the long-shot mode of warfare. This, and lurking
OUR RAMP ORE FRIEND. 279
under the shelter of the garden walls that surround Delhi, was the
’eading reason why the English could not manage them. Had
they come out and fought in the open field, the General would
gladly have met them, even with his so much smaller force, and a
single day would probably have decided the whole contest. Be¬
sides, they found it made a great difference to them whether they
were led by English officers or by officers of their own race.
Our provisions were now becoming more and more scarce and
dear. Instead of one hundred eggs for sixty-two and a half cents,
as it used to be, we had now to pay five cents for a single egg, and
all other things rose in value about in the same proportion. Just
in our extremity, and quite unexpectedly to us, the Nawab of Ram-
pore, a territory in the plains on the south of our position, sent up
a confidential messenger to inquire what he could do for us ? This
was a great surprise, as he was a Mohammedan and governed a
Mohammedan State, and we supposed that he would have gone
with the Delhi conspirators. But, in the hour of decision, he
remembered that he owed his throne to the justice of the English
Government, which refused to carry out the will of the former sov¬
ereign of Rampore, one of whose wives induced him to arrange so
as to cut off the rightful heir in favor of her little son. The English
declined to commit this wrong, but, instead, confirmed the present
Nawab ; and now, when he was appealed to by the Delhi faction to
join them, he declared that, come what might, he would never draw
his sword against a people whose justice had defended his rights.
He quietly withstood all their persuasions and threats, even at per¬
sonal hazard, and was faithfully sustained in his resolution by his
Minister and the Commander-in-chief of his little, army—two men
whom I had afterward the satisfaction of seeing publicly rewarded
for their fidelity.
This was a great providence for us. Had the Nawab proved hos¬
tile, especially as our south pass touched his territory, our position
would have been probably untenable for a single week. But he
quietly covered our danger on that side, and left our defenders
more free to watch our Bareilly foes on the east pass. What he
28o THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
did in our favor, however, he had to do quietly, so as not to rouse

the fanaticism of his own population, or the hostility of Khan
Bahadur Khan.
On ascertaining our extremity he sent us rice, sugar, flour, etc.,
with some medicine and money—what he could spare and safely
remit to us. We were certainly very much obliged to “his High¬
ness” for these unlooked-for succors. But even his messengers
could not restrain their bigotry : they duly informed our few Ghoor
kas (hill soldiers) that “the ‘King of Rohilcund’ had raised an
army of twenty thousand, and was casting cannon, etc. ; also, that
the Emperor of Delhi had taken the Fort of Calcutta, and his vic¬
torious armies were spreading all over the country ! ” So that even
this help brought its own danger with it, and increased our anxiety.
The road to the Punjab through Kurnal was most providentially
kept open. The Punjab was the only source from which a man, or
a barrel of flour, or a case of medicine, could reach the English
army before Delhi. Had that road been closed upon them, their
condition must soon have become desperate. But the circumstances
that retained that key of their position in friendly hands was as
providential as the good will of the Rampore Nawab toward us at
Nynee Tal. Mr. Le Bas, the Judge of Delhi, owed his life on the
day of the slaughter to the speed of his horse. He reached Kurnal,
about forty miles to the north-west, and sought an interview with
the Nawab. It was the hour of England’s deepest humiliation, and
Le Bas trembled for the loyalty of the Nawab. But early the fol¬
lowing morning he came to Mr. Le Bas and said : “ I have spent
a sleepless night in meditating on the state of affairs. I have
decided to throw in my lot with yours. My sword, my purse, and
my followers are at your disposal.”
Faithfully did the brave Nawab redeem his promise, and at the
head of his little force he saved many a European life, several’ ladies
among them, and kept the road to the Punjab open till Delhi fell,
and the English Empire was restored.
It is also a pleasure to record another instance of wonderful
humanity from a very unexpected quarter. In the month of July
OUR SUDDEN FLIGHT FROM NTNEE TAL. 28r
a Fakir named Himam Bhartee found his way to Meerut, and pre¬
sented himself before Mr. Greathead, the Commissioner, with a little
European baby in his arms, which he had found deserted and alone
near the Jumna River. He had taken care of it, and even defended
its life at great risk to himself, and delivered it up safe and sound.
Mr. Greathead was delighted, and pressed the Fakir to receive a
reward ; but he would accept none, and only expressed a desire
that a Well might be made to bear his name and commemorate the
act. The Commissioner promised it should be done, and the Fakir
departed well pleased. Let the name of this humane creature live
here, and my readers remember Himam Bhartee, of Dhunoura.
The parents of the little one were never discovered ; but good
Samaritans were found to adopt and love it.
The sad monotony of our life was suddenly disturbed early on
Sunday morning, August 4th, by an imperative message from our
Commander, ordering all the ladies and children, with three or four
gentlemen in charge of them, away at once that day from Nynee
Tal to Almorah, thirty miles farther into the mountains. Informa¬
tion that he had received required this movement as a matter of
precaution to them, while it would leave their husbands more free
and unshackled to meet the emergencies that were expected to
arise.
Several reasons had concurred to lead to this measure. First of
all, our provisions were becoming exhausted, and our supplies from
below being (except from the Rampore side) cut off, the Commis¬
sioner felt himself quite puzzled to sustain our market.
In the next place, the delay of the fall of Delhi was rendering
our enemies more rampant, in the expectation that they would soon
weary out and destroy the little English army (now reduced, be¬
sides Ghoorkas and Sikhs, to twenty-five hundred European bayo¬
nets) before its walls ; and then they hoped to make short work in
other parts of the country.
Another reason was, that our friend the Nawab of Rampore was
considered to be exposed to peculiar danger at the approaching
Eyde, (an annual festival of the Mohammedans, during which they
-282 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
are peculiarly excitable.) The Nawab’s refusal to join the Bareilly

rebels, and his kindness in sending us supplies and money, had
rendered him very unpopular with the Mohammedan fanatics
among his people, and it was feared that, during the Eyde, he
might be assassinated, in which case his successor would probably
have been elected with the express understanding that he should
1o what he could to aid the rebel interests, and, likely, to begin by
an attempt to cut us off, as we were close at hand.
The next and chief reason for our removal was that Khan
Bahadar Khan, the new “ King of Rohilcund,” had actually dis¬
patched an increased force from Bareilly to Nynee Tal, in order to
destroy us ; and the Commissioner had certain information on
Saturday morning that they had not only started, but were en¬
camped at Bahari, mid-way between Nynee Tal and Bareilly.
Still, even this alone would not have caused us to leave, for “ his
army ” were not likely to look our three hundred Ghoorka troops
in the face, much less to have gone near the cannon and the body
of English gentlemen with which we had fortified the head of the
pass. But our anxiety was, that inasmuch as preparation to meet
them involved the withdrawal of all the troops and the gentlemen
from Nynee Tal, this would necessarily leave our ladies and chil¬
dren unprotected against any attempt that such an hour of oppor¬
tunity would present to the Mohammedans in the Nynee Tal
Bazaar. Were they to rise while we were below, they might
slaughter every soul of them in a single hour, and the more easily,
should the rebels below agree, as they likely would, to attack us at
both passes at once, so as to divide our little force.
The distance from Nynee Tal to Almorah is thirty miles over
the mountains, by a path which varies from four to six feet in
width. It runs in some places on the very verge of precipices that
are as nearly perpendicular as possible, while the depths below are
sometimes frightful to look at. It requires great steadiness and
care, from the rough and narrow path to be traversed, to go with¬
out danger, while in some places a single false step, especially at
night, is instant destruction.
IN PERILS IN THE WILDERNESS AGAIN. 283
Ladies are carried in a little chair-like vehicle by four men, with

four to relieve. Gentlemen generally ride one of the hill ponies,
which are very sure-footed. The journey occupies three days, ten
miles being as much as can be comfortably accomplished in one
day.
When our sudden order of departure came I arranged every¬
thing for the ladies intrusted to my charge, and sent them* on,
expecting to follow and overtake them in a short time ; but such
was the demand, I could not obtain coolies enough to take their
luggage (including food and bedding, which travelers must always
carry with them) till four o’clock in the afternoon. I then started,
but the lateness of the hour entailed on me a great deal of toil and
suffering. Indeed, I never had such a journey in all my life as
that was. For an hour or two I made my way tolerably well.
The sunset was brilliant, and among other objects of interest were
immense lizards (some of them full fourteen inches long) which were
darting across my path and over the verges. My way lay over
and around a succession of mountains—so it was constantly up and
down—the valleys between varying from a quarter of a mile to a
mile in width. The little torrents had torn the path here and
there, and in some places it was so rocky and rough that it was
very hard work to pick one’s way over it. Going down the hill
was, from the precipitous and stony condition of the narrow path,
something like going down an irregular flight of stairs a mile or
more in length.
The daylight began to decline, and my little pony showed symp¬
toms of unsteadiness. The heavy rains had softened the edge of
the path, and rendered it liable to give way under very moderate
pressure, so that caution was doubly necessary. At one place that
looked doubtful I dismounted, and had not gone many yards when
one of the hind feet of the pony sank, which caused him to stag¬
ger, and in a moment he went hastily over the precipice. The
jerk on the reins caused one of the bit buckles to give way, which
was a great mercy, as it gave me an instant in which to turn round
and lay some pressure on the reins as they flew through my hand,
10
and I was thus enabled in some degree to arrest his downward

progress before he went too far to be recovered.
There he clung, the poor brute, with merely his nose above the
edge of the precipice, and he eagerly holding on to the bank like a
man standing on a ladder. Beneath him sloped down the decliv¬
ity for several hundred feet, till the mist terminated the view;
what was beyond that limit I could only infer by the roar of the
river beneath, which sounded very deep indeed, so that had the
poor fellow missed his hold, or taken one roll, his doom was cer¬
tain. In an emergency how rapidly one can think! There was no
help within many miles, and a very few minutes would decide his
fate. I had sold his worthy predecessor, when rather hard pressed
for cash, and had paid only forty dollars for him ; but he looked
very valuable as he hung on that precipice, and I imagined to
myself what could I do without him there in that wilderness, with
such a journey before me, and I alone ; the night, too, falling fast.
I felt for the poor creature, and I pitied myself, for I could ill
afford to lose him, particularly there and then. To get him
straight up would have required twenty men’s strength. No time
was to be lost. I feared every moment that he would begin to
struggle, and then I must be prepared to know how long I dare
hold on, and what instant I must let him go, lest he should jerk
me over along with himself, and both be lost. A thought struck
me. I got his head round on one side ; he seemed to understand
my object, and slightly shifted one foot, while I held him as fast
as I dared by the rein. He then dug the other foot into the
ground, and soon I had the gratification of having him right across
the hill, and then by a little maneuvering I moved him, step by
step, till I got him up. He was not much hurt, and after a little
while I mounted, but had not proceeded half a mile when he trod
on another soft edge. I felt him stagger, and had just time to free
my right foot from the stirrup, and pitch off into the mud of the
road, as he went over the bank. There I hung, half-way on the
path, my legs dangling over the margin. Having scrambled up, I
saw that he had dropped down about twelve feet, on a heap of
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. 285
sharp stones, and on going down to him I found his hind shoes
torn off, and he lamed and much injured. I managed to get him
up again to the path ; but, alas ! he was now worse than no horse
at all. Seven long miles of that narrow and dangerous road lay
between me and the dak Bungalow, and he could not walk a
step only as I dragged him along. The night soon fled, and he
failed fast. Never in all my life have I felt any thing so lonely as
was that weary walk through those dark woods and over those
high mountains. The keen remembrance of it will go with me to
the grave. The poor animal had some of the stumps of the nails
in his hoofs, which every step seemed to drive higher as he trod
on the stony path, until at last it was real misery to look at him as
he slowly and painfully limped along. What to do I could not tell ;
he was getting worse every step. To abandon him seemed cruel, and
yet to stay with him, without even the means of lighting a tire, was
to expose myself to equal danger. I had no alternative but to bring
him along as well as I could ; so I pulled him on over the rocks and
streams, and up the hills, till I became utterly spent. The solitude
around was something dreadful — no sound save the occasional
yells of the wild animals—and I was obliged to keep a sharp look¬
out lest we should be pounced upon by a tiger. I had my gun on
my shoulder, but the only charge I had with me was in it, so that one
shot was my whole dependence in that line. Another element of
anxiety was the fact that at the cross paths there were no sign¬
boards, and painful indeed was the suspense sometimes felt as to
which road to take, or whether I was on the right path at all.
Many an earnest prayer I put up to God at some of these doubtful
points that He would in mercy guide me aright. The heat in the
woods and valleys was great, and this, added to my exertions,
caused so much perspiration that it fast exhausted my remaining
strength, till at last I had to sit down and calculate what was to be
done. I was also faint from hunger, having only had a light and
very early breakfast, and neither dinner nor supper. My tongue
swelled, and seemed to All my mouth. As I sat there and thought
of all I had given up for India, perhaps it was pardonable that, for
a moment, I indulged a longing for the peace and privileges of the

happy land I had left ; but it was only for a moment, and all was
right again. I felt I was just where I would like best to be, though
for the present these trials seemed hard to bear. It was an hour of
unusual experience, and the depression was correspondent to it.
The hunger, the darkness, the surrounding danger, the heat and
laborious exertion, with the uncertainty of my whereabouts, and
the probable distance of any help, all together constituted such a
drain on my strength, and hope, and fortitude, as I never before
endured. To complete my calamities, both my boots had given
way on the stony paths, and my feet were wet as well as sore.
As I was looking round for a tree in which I might spend the
night, out of the reach of the animals, (for I felt as if I could go no
farther,) I recollected Brother Stevens and “Old Jeddy,” and the
“ rest at home ” that cheered him on that eventful night in the wil¬
derness. I lifted up my heart to God and asked for strength for
body and for soul; and there, in the midst of my gloom and soli¬
tude, I was cheered by the presence of my heavenly Father. A
train of delightful reflections set in. I thought of my own deep
indebtedness to the Divine mercy ; I thought of our Church, and
the glorious work that God had spread before her ; and I thought
of my own mission, and of that future day when it would spread
among these degraded multitudes, and when they would love the
Redeemer as I loved him then ! How these thoughts and feelings
braced up my soul for life and duty! Exhaustion was forgotten,
and my full heart gushed out in strong affection toward the blessed
Jesus, until I felt ready to bear any thing for his dear sake. I felt
it easy to come to the conclusion that my state, with all its weari¬
ness, was one that I would not exchange with any of the votaries
of this world’s pleasure or ease. I rose to my feet, and these words
came from the depths of my heart, and went up on the night air to
heaven :
“ In a dry land, behold I place
My whole desire on thee, O Lord;
And more I joy to gain thy grace
Than all earth’s treasures can afford.”
WE BEACH ALMOBAH. 287
Shortly after, when climbing round the spur of one of the

mountains, the dense clouds separated and exposed to view right
oefore me the “Snowy Range” towering up so majestically to the
skies ! The full moon was shining upon it, and imparting to it
that purple tint which makes it look so lovely and so unearthly!
It was the grandest natural sight I ever beheld, and to me was brill¬
iantly suggestive of that “ land of rest,” where the sun shall no
more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself; but the
Lord shall be unto us an everlasting light, and the days of our
mourning shall be ended !
I resumed my weary way, our pace being now about one mile an
hour, and at nearly eleven o’clock came to the summit of a high
mountain, where there seemed to be two paths, which increased
my perplexity; but on looking off to the right I could make out
that the hills rounded into a crescent, on the far point of which I
discovered a light, which I knew must be from the window of the
dak Bungalow! After all my anxiety I had been guided in safety
by a way I knew not. On reaching the Bungalow, I found that
neither bed nor food was to be had. However, I was too tired to
care pauch for food, so the privation was little felt. I could have
relished a comfortable bed had it been available, but the floor
and shelter of a roof were mercies. The ladies had safely and
duly arrived, and were stretched, some on the ground and others
on charpoys, and thus the night wore over.
Next morning there was no sign of the coolies, so we resumed
our march, my poor horse being obliged to remain where he was,
and by evening we were overtaken at the next Bungalow by our
bedding and food, both of which were very welcome indeed. We
arrived at Almorah next day, tired enough, and were accommodated
with a couple of rooms in a little house near the fort. Some of
our friends would smile could they see the humble accommodations,
for which we felt no small amount of gratitude. The floor was of
clay; we had two camp tables, three chairs, and two charpoys—
that was the extent of our furniture ! But “ necessity is the mother
j)f invention,” and we soon found out that a trunk lid could be
made into a table, and that a child can sleep as well in a basket or
in an old box as on a mahogany bedstead. So our “ picnic ” fashion
of life in Almorah gave us little concern, any inconveniences being
amply balanced by the reflection that thirty miles more of mount¬
ains lay between our precious charge and danger.
Our worthy Commissioner, after a time, unable to endure longer
this “ hunger for news ” that was consuming us, organized a post
department of his own, and by relays of Paharees, stretching along
the crest of the Himalayas, for what is usually seventeen days’ jour¬
ney to Mussoorie, above Dehra Doon, managed to reach on to
beyond the immediate circle of Sepoy power and establish commu¬
nication with the Europeans there, who were able to correspond
with the Punjab, and obtain such news as was available from that
quarter.
Information of our whereabouts and safety now got abroad, and
worked its way around by the sea-coast to Calcutta. The 13th of
August was a joyful day. To our delight and astonishment, the
Paharee postman that morning brought us three numbers of the
Christian Advocate, and three of Zion s Herald, for the month of
April! The postmaster at Bombay had found us out, and com¬
menced sending us a mail whenever he had the chance, via Kur-
rachee, Lahore, and Mussoorie. So we now began to receive
papers and letters with more or less regularity. Only those who
have been, as we were, shut up for three months and a half without
a letter or a paper or a word from home, can imagine the joy with
which we grasped the precious documents, and sat down to devour
their contents. It was almost like life from the dead !
But, while grateful for news at last, what horrible accounts of
massacre and pillage poured in upon us—frightful details of what
had occurred ! How truly we realized, as we heard or read them,
the reality of the lines—
“ My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day’s report
Of wrong and outrage.”
At our family altar, and in our closet, our cry was, “ O Lord, how
long! ” Nor was the suffering and wretchedness limited to the
THE FEARFUL STATE OF THINGS BEFORE DELHI. 289
Europeans. The feuds between the Hindoos and Mohammedans

were revived, and conflicts between them increased in bitterness
and cruelty, until the country became one scene of anarchy.
Trade, agriculture, and industry in general were all but suspended ;
any one that had a rupee to lose lost it; riot and bloodshed became
the order of the day, while rapine and murder were openly carried
on by the Goojurs, a Gipsy-like class of vagabonds, whom the mis¬
erable Mohammedan Government was unable to put down.
Short as our time was in Bareilly, I have the satisfaction ot
Knowing that our labors were not altogether fruitless. Several of
the Europeans who attended our little English service had spoken
in grateful terms of the benefits received under the preaching.
Among these was the excellent Dr. Bowhill, Surgeon of the Sixty-
eighth Native Infantry. This gentleman had a very narrow escape
for his life on the day of the massacre. His horse carried him only
about twenty miles, and then fell dead lame. The remainder of the
seventy-four miles he had to walk (with a very occasional lift on the
horses of others of the party) under a broiling sun. I went to meet
and congratulate him on his escape. We kneeled down together,
and never shall I forget his emotions while I offered up to the serv¬
ice of the Holy Trinity the life that had been so mercifully pre¬
served ! It was a privilege to have made the friendship of such a
man; and not only so, but also to have had that friendship
cemented by the holiest ties. His sense of duty led him, as soon
as the Commissioner arranged the letter post along the Himalayas,
to venture to cross to Mussoorie and thence to Kurnal, and then
join any passing column, so as to reach the little English army
before Delhi, where his professional services were so much required.
The brave man made his perilous way in safety, and we heard occa¬
sionally from him. In reply to a letter which I had written,
expressing my gratitude for great professional kindness, especially
at Nynee Tal, and adding a word or two to “ strengthen his hands
in God,” he says: “ I do not feel that I am in any way entitled to
the thanks you give for. my attendance on your family. Inasmuch
as the soul is more worthy than the body, so much the more are
my thanks due to you ; for, under Providence, I have to thank you

for teaching me to love God. I feared him before I knew you, and
that fear restrained me. Now I feel that, through your means, I
love my Saviour and Redeemer, and try to obey because I love
him.” What must have been then the condition of things before
Delhi may be understood by the Doctor’s statement, when he adds
in this communication, that “ Such is the amount of sickness which
prevails, that twenty-five hundred of our men are in hospital, two
hundred and forty-one of whom entered in one day. In my own
regiment of five hundred men two hundred and forty-seven are
lying sick! I fear that if the assault does not take place soon we
shall not have men enough in health to attempt it. May God save
us from a reverse before Delhi! The effect of a repulse here
might be ruinous throughout the whole country.” How earnestly
we prayed for the brave men in that little army who were thus
suffering and fighting for us there !
Just then we had a little battle of our own to go through. On
the Thursday after the receipt of this letter from Delhi, Khan
Bahadur ordered his forces to assault our position. They moved
up nearer to our defenses and encamped for the night, perhaps not
realizing, being all “ plains men,” how chilly they would feel the
next morning in the cold hill air. Our Commandant saw his
advantage, and very early next morning dropped down into the lit¬
tle valley where they were encamped, with thirty gentlemen and
the twenty-five faithful Sowars, making a little body of cavalry;
these, with the two hundred and fifty of our Ghoorka (hill) troops,
came quietly upon them before they had unrolled themselves out
of their blankets, and a fearful carnage-ensued. In an hour all was
over. The Sepoys fled in every direction, leaving one hundred and
fourteen of their number dead, besides what wounded they man¬
aged to carry off.
After counting the enemy’s dead, our men turned to ascertain
their own loss, and, to their surprise and gratitude, found that they
had only one man—a Sowar (native horseman)—killed, and two
Ghoorkas wounded. One officer, Captain Gibbency, was slightly
OUR LITTLE FIGHT. 291
touched by a pistol ball, and this was all. The effect of this con¬
test was of great importance. It struck some terror into the Sepoy
mind, and they refused ever after to come up into our glens again ;
it raised our spirits, and had an immense effect upon the hill peo¬
ple, who of course flattered themselves that the victory was due to
their own prowess. It also deepened their hatred of the Moham¬
medan party ; while below, the Hindoo villagers took courage to
help the Commandant, and actually captured nine rebels, stragglers
who had turned to the work of plundering the villagers and abusing
their women. They were brought up to Nynee Tal, tried, and exe¬
cuted at once. I was informed that they met their doom with the
indifference that characterizes Mohammedan fatalists.
After this event some of the villagers and Hindoo Zemindars
(landholders) of the plains around our hills sent up deputations
to our Commandant, requesting him to assist them against the
Mohammedans, and offering to pay their jumma (revenue) to him
if he would only sustain them (as they thought him now able to do)
against the rebel Government. But Major Ramsay was too pru¬
dent to go beyond his safe line, especially as he well knew he was
stiil closely watched by a powerful and wily foe, and must risk
nothing while he had ladies to protect. That foe, however, was
beginning to feel certain qualms of anxiety, for already Havelock’s
name and the story of his victories were flying over the land, and
they felt that he, or some other English General, might ere long
give them a better opportunity to prove their courage than what
they had when they so leisurely and safely cut down and butchered
unarmed men and defenseless women and children.
It was “ a day of rebuke and blasphemy,” but I still believed that
our redemption was drawing nigh, and that all would be overruled
for good.- How grateful I feel that my letter to the Corresponding
Secretary, written at this time, closes with the following words,
now measurably in process of fulfillment:
“ One sentence in closing. Believe me, this is one of the last
terrible efforts of hell to retain its relaxing grasp on beautiful
India, and the issue will be salvation for her millions! . . .
Don't be discouraged for us. If the sufferings abound, so do the

consolations. But if I am cut off, (which is not improbable,)
remember my mission and sustain it. Farewell, Doctor. Again
let me beseech you, whether I live or die, remember my mission
and sustain it. For India is to be Redeemed ! ”
AMERICAN MISSIONARIES WHO FELL AT CAWNPORE. 2Q3
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAWNPORE MASSACRE AND THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.
\T7HILE we were thus maintaining, as best we could, our

’ * position against fearful odds, and hoping for that relief
which had yet, for the reasons following, to be so much longer
delayed, our fellow Christians down in the plains below us were
passing through sorrows and agonies in the presence of which our
trials were not worthy to be mentioned, and the accounts of which
were about to fill the civilized world with horror.
With a sad heart we tell the story of Cawnpore—the “ city of
melancholy fame”—and present to our readers that wonderful
record of fruitless valor and unutterable woe which was there exhib¬
ited. Fourteen years have passed over since these deeds were done,
but the fearful record of them will be read with deepest interest by
Christian men and women long after the present generation has
passed away. This story can never die. Wherever and whenever
read, it should be remembered that England alone did not suffer
there. The dire agony of Cawnpore was shared by American gen¬
tlemen and ladies ; indeed, they took precedence in these sorrows,
for the group first “led as sheep to the slaughter,” before the mur¬
der of those from the intrenchment was perpetrated, included the
Rev. Messrs. Freeman, Johnson, M’Mullin, and Campbell, with
their dear wives and children, from Futtyghur—the very next sta¬
tion to the one then occupied by the writer, who, with his family,
had to conclude whether to accept the invitation to join this party,
and attempt escape by the Ganges, or else “flee to the mountains”
on the north. He decided for the latter, and thus narrowly escaped
the fate which befell these brethren and sisters, whom he had
already learned to esteem so highly for their own and for their
work’s sake.
294 TEE LAND OF THE VEDA.
Of few of “the martyrs of Jesus” in any age may it more truly

be said than of them, “ These are they which came out of great
tribulation'' The sharp agony of that hour is ended, and they
have met again where He who loved them has long since wiped
away all tears from their eyes. The American Presbyterian Church,
to which they belonged, should nobly press on the work for which
they died, and be earnest to reap the harvest made so fertile with
their blood.
“The massacre of Cawnpore” has been truly called “the black¬
est crime in human history.” Every element of perfidy and cruelty
was concentrated in it. No act ever carried to so many hearts
such a thrill of horror as did the deed that was done there on the
15th of July, 1857. Yet no complete account of it has been laid
before the American public. To supply this deficiency, so far as
our space allows, is the aim of these pages. Our authorities are
the best: Trevelyan, (of whose excellent work we make free use,)
with Thomson, Bourchier, The Friend of India, and the Calcutta
QiLarterly Review, together with the personal communications of
Havelock’s soldiers ; while photographs, taken on the spot, enable
us accurately to present “the Well” into which the ladies were
thrown, and the beautiful monument which a weeping country has
placed over their remains.
The city of Cawnpore is situated on the banks of the Ganges,
six hundred and twenty-eight miles from Calcutta, and two hun¬
dred and sixty-six miles from Delhi. At the time of the great
Rebellion, the English general commanding the station was Sir
Hugh Wheeler. He had under his command four Sepoy regi¬
ments, and about three hundred English soldiers. In addition to
these, there were the wives and children of the English officers and
of his own force, and of the force at Lucknow. Oude having been
but recently annexed, the families of the officers in Lucknow could
not yet obtain houses there, and so were left for the present under
the care of Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore. When the alarm began
to extend, the ladies and children of the stations around also went
to him for protection, so that, before the rebellion broke out, the
THE CONDITION OF MATTERS AT CAWNPORE. 295
General found himself responsible for the care of over five hundred
and sixty women and children, with only three hundred English
soldiers and about one hundred and forty other Europeans, for
their protection.
Sir Hugh had been over fifty years in India. His age and his
confidence in the loyalty of the Sepoys under his command ill-fitted
him for the position he then held. He would not credit the immi¬
nence of the danger, nor make that provision against it which some
of those under his orders believed to be urgently necessary. He
still trusted the loyalty of the Nana Sahib, and placed the Govern¬
ment treasure—an immense sum of money—under his care ; and
there was even a proposal to send the ladies and children off to the
Bithoor palace for safe-keeping. There was a strong magazine on
the banks of the Ganges, well provided with munitions of war and
with suitable shelter, to which Sir Hugh might have taken his
charge, and where, it is believed, he could have held out till relief
reached him ; but unfortunately he thought otherwise, believing
himself not strong enough to hold it. So he crossed the canal and
took a position on the open plain, in two large, one-story barracks,
and threw up a low earth-work around it, and thought himself
secure till assistance could reach him from Calcutta. He did not
take the precaution to provision even this place properly or in time,
and also left the strong intrenchment on the Ganges stored with
artillery of all sizes, and with shot and shell to match, with thirty
boats full of ammunition moored at the landing-place—left all to
fall into the hands of his enemies ; and it was actually used, pro¬
fusely used, against himself in the terrible days that followed. The
few cannon which he took with him were no match for those he
left behind, and which he had afterward to fight so fiercely and at
such disadvantage.
On the 14th of May intelligence reached them of the fearful
massacres of Meerut and Delhi. On the 5th of June the Cawnpore
Sepoys broke into open mutiny, having been joined by other regi¬
ments from Oude. The Nana Sahib had been in intimate com¬
munication with the ringleaders ; yet for some reason or other
probably a disinclination to murder their officers or to face the few

English soldiers there, the Sepoys seemed more inclined to leave
the station and march for Delhi than to remain and attack the
English. They actually started, performed the first stage, and
encamped at a place called Kullianpore. The wily Azeemoolah
and his master now saw that their hour had come. Arriving in the
camp, they persuaded the Sepoy host to return to Cawnpore and
put all the English to the sword before they left the place. Their
unwillingness was overcome by the promise of unlimited pillage,
and the offer by the Maharajah of a gold anklet to each Sepoy.
They retraced their steps. That night the English officers were,
some of them, sleeping in their own houses, imagining that they
had seen the last of that Sepoy army. But early the next morning
the Nana announced his intention to commence the attack at once,
and there was barely time to summon the officers and families
outside ere it began. Every thing of value, clothing and stores of
all kinds, had to be suddenly abandoned. He who in that close
and sultry night of midsummer had sought a little air and sleep on
his house-top might not stay “ to take any thing out of his house
he who had been on early service in the field might not “ turn back
to take his clothes.” Few and happy were they who had time to
snatch a single change of raiment. Some lost their lives by wait¬
ing to dress. So that, half-clad, confused, and breathless, the
devoted band rushed into the breastwork, which they entered only
to suffer, and left only to die.
Within this miserable inclosure, containing two barracks de¬
signed for only one hundred men each, and surrounded by a mud
wall only four feet high, three feet in thickness at the base, and but
twelve inches at the top—where the batteries were constructed by
the simple expedient of leaving an aperture for each gun, so that
the artillery-men served their pieces as in the field, with their per¬
sons entirely exposed to the fire of the enemy—within this inclo¬
sure were huddled together a thousand people, only four hundred
and forty of whom were men, the rest being women and children.
Here, without any thing that could be called shelter, without proper
THE OPENING OF THE AGONY. 297
provisions for a single week, exposed to the raging sun by day and
to the iron hail of death by day and night, these Christian people
nad to endure for twenty-two days the pitiless bombardment, the
rifle-shots, and storming-parties, launched at them from a well-
appointed army of nearly ten thousand men.
How well those four hundred and forty men must have fought,
when, with closed teeth and bated breath, the Brahmin and the
Saxon thus closed for their death grapple, where no quarter was
asked or received, may be imagined. But who can imagine the
terror and the sufferings of that crowd of five hundred and sixty
1 idies and children, not one of whom could be saved, even by all
the valor of those brave men who fought so hard and died so rap¬
idly to protect them ! Of the whole number, only three men es¬
caped—Captain Delafosse, Major Thompson, and Private Murphy.
America and Europe have ever forbidden their warriors to point
the sword at a female breast. But Asiatics have no such scruples.
The Hindoos, who allow their women few or no personal rights,
and the Mohammedans, who doubt if they have souls, have no ten¬
derness for the position or treatment of the weaker sex. The
sharp-shooters and gunners of the Nana Sahib were true to their
heathenism. They gave no rest, and showed no mercy. Some
ladies were slain outright by grape or round shot, others by the
bullet: many were crushed by the splinters or the falling walls.
At first every projectile that struck the barracks, where they were
crowded together, was the signal for heart-rending shrieks, and low
wailing, more heart-rending still; but ere long time and habit had
taught them to suffer and to fear in silence. The unequal contest
could not last long. By the end of the first week every one of the
professional artillery-men had been killed or wounded, besides those
who had fallen all around the position. Sun-stroke had dazed and
killed several. Their only howitzer was knocked clear off its car¬
riage, and the other cannon disabled, save two pieces which were
withdrawn under cover, loaded with grape, and reserved for the
purpose of repelling an assault. Even the bore of these had been
injured so that a canister could not be driven home, and the poor
ladies gave up their stockings to supply the case for a novel, but
not unserviceable, cartridge. As their fire became more faint, that
of the enemy augmented in volume, rapidity, and precision—casual¬
ties mounted up fearfully, and at length their misfortunes culminated
in a wholesale disaster. One of the two barracks had a thatched
roof. In this, as more roomy, were collected the sick, and wounded,
ard women. On the evening of the eighth day of the bombard¬
ment the enemy succeeded in lodging a lighted “carcase” on the
roof, and the whole building was speedily in a blaze. No effort
was spared or risk shunned to rescue the helpless inmates ; but, in
spite of all, two brave men were burned to death. During that
night of horror the artillery and marksmen of the enemy, aided by
the light of the burning building, poured their cruel fire on the
busy men who were trying to save the provisions and ammunition,
and living burdens more precious still, out of the fire, while the
guards, crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, each at his
station behind the outer wall, could see the countless foes, revealed
now and again by the glare, prowling and yelling around the outer
gloom like so many demons eager for their prey.
The misery fell chiefly on the ladies : they were now obliged to
pass their days and nights in a temperature varying from one hun¬
dred and twenty to one hundred and thirty-eight degrees, cowering
beneath such shelter as the low earth-work could give—and all this
to women who had been brought up in the lap of luxury, and who
had never till now known a moment of physical privation. There
were but two wells within reach ; one of these had been used to
receive their dead—for they could not bury them—the other was
so trained upon day and night by the shell of the enemy that at
last it became the certain risk of death to remain long enough to
draw up, from a depth of over sixty feet, a bucket of water for the
parched women and children. Yet necessity compelled that risk,
while it made the sip of water rare and priceless, but left none to
wash their persons or their wounds. A short gill of flour and a
handful of split peas'was now their daily sustenance. The medical
stores had been all destroyed in the conflagration—there remained
A BORROW WITHOUT A PARALLEL. 299
no drugs, or cordials, or opiates to cure or alleviate. The bandages

for the newly wounded were supplied off the persons of the ladies,
who nobly parted with their clothing for this purpose, till many of
them had barely enough left to screen their persons. And to this
condition were these once beautiful women reduced—herded to¬
gether in fetid misery, where delicacy and modesty were hourly
shocked, though never for a moment impaired. Bare-footed and
ragged, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought and faint
with hunger, they sat watching to hear that they were widows.
Each morning deepened the hollow in the youngest cheek, and
added a new furrow to the fairest brow. Want, exposure, and
depression speedily decimated that hapless company, while a hide¬
ous train of diseases—fever, apoplexy, insanity, cholera, and dysen¬
tery—began to add their horrors to the dreadful and unparalleled
scene. Alas ! even this does not by any means exhaust the list of
terrors, but we can go no further. American ladies will add their
generous tears to those which have been flowing for their sorrows
in many an English home during the past few years.
They tried hard to communicate with the outside world—with
Lucknow or Allahabad—for they had a few faithful natives who
ventured forth for them ; but so close were the cavalry pickets
around their position that only one person ever returned to them.
These spies were barbarously used. The writer saw some of them
after the Rebellion in their mutilated state—their hands cut off, or
their noses split open ; and one poor fellow had lost hands, nose,
and ears. The native mode of mutilation was horribly painful, the
limb being sometimes chopped off with a tulwar—a coarse sword
—and the stump dipped in boiling oil to arrest the bleeding.
Events had now reached their dire extremity. The sweetness
of existence had vanished, and the last flicker of hope had died
away. Yet, moved by a generous despair and an invincible self-
respect, they still fought on for dear life, and for lives dearer than
their own. By daring, and vigilance, and unparalleled endurance,
these brave and suffering men staved off ruin for another day, and
yet another. Long had their eyes and ears strained in the direction
17
of Allahabad, hoping for the succor that was never to reach them
The 23d of June dawned—the anniversary of the battle of Plassey
The Nana Sahib had vowed to celebrate that centenary of the
rise of the English power in its utter overthrow ; the Sepoys had
sworn by the most solemn oath of their religion to conquer or per¬
ish on that day. Early in the morning the whole force was moved
to the assault; the guns were brought up within a few hundred
yards of the wall ; the infantry in dense array advanced, their skir¬
mishers rolling before them great bales of cotton, proof against the
bullets of the besieged, while the cavalry charged at a gallop in
another quarter. It was all in vain. The contest was short but
sharp. The teams which drew the artillery were shot down, the
bales were fired, the sharp-shooters driven back on their columns,
and the saddles of the cavalry were emptied as they came on.
The Sepoy host reeled before the dreadful resistance and fell back
discouraged—nor could they be induced to renew the effort. That
evening a party of them drew near the position, made obeisance
after their fashion, and asked leave to remove their dead. This
acknowledgment of an empty triumph was a poor consolation to
these gaunt and starving Englishmen, under the shadow of the
impending doom of themselves and those whom they so well
defended.
The result of this day’s conflict produced a sudden change in
the plans of the Nana Sahib. He began to despair of taking the
position by storm, and events were forbidding him to wait for the
slower process of starvation. The Sepoys were already grum¬
bling, and another repulse would set them conspiring. The
usurper saw he must bring matters to a speedy conclusion ; for,
in addition to Sepoy discontent, rumors had already reached him
of an avenging force having left Benares to save those whom he
had resolved to destroy. He had not a day to lose. It behooved
the monster to bring the matter to a speedy conclusion by any
means, even the very foulest, as all others had failed. He there¬
fore resolved to insnare where he could not vanquish—to lure those
Christians from the shelter of that wall within which no intruder
NANA SAHIB'S INFERNAL TREACHERY. 301
had set his foot and lived. He suspended the bombardment and
opened negotiations. The world had never yet heard of treachery
so hellish as what he meditated then. Though some of the ladies
had their fears, yet none imagined the purpose which was in the
depths of the dark hearts of this man and his minion Azeemoolah.
Admiration of the defense was expressed, and sympathy for the
condition of the ladies still living, with the offer of boats provis¬
ioned, and a safe conduct under the Nana’s hand to take them to
Allahabad. The terms of the conference were committed to paper,
and borne, by Azeemoolah, to the Nana for his signature; all was
made seemingly right and safe for the capitulation. The boats
were actually moored at the landing-place and provisions put on
board, and the whole shown to the committee of English officers.
That night they could obtain water, and deep were the draughts
of the blessed beverage which they imbibed ; they could also sleep,
for the bombardment had ceased, though a cloud of cavalry held
watch around their position. They slept sounder the next night,
as the Nana intended that they should.
Some criticisms have been made upon their agreement to sur¬
render at all. It may be answered, that had that garrison con¬
sisted only of fighting men, no one would have dreamed of sur¬
render. But what could be done when more than half their
number, male and female, had already been killed, and the balance
was a mixed multitude, in which there was a woman and child to
each man, while every other man was incapacitated by wounds or
disease, with only four days more of half rations of their miserable
subsistence, and the monsoon — the tropical rains — hourly ex¬
pected to open upon them in all its violence ? The only choice
was between death and capitulation ; and if the latter was resolved
on it was well that the offer came from the enemy.
Eleven o’clock next morning, June 27th, came. Every thing
was ready ; all Cawnpore was astir, crowding by thousands to the
landing-place. The doomed garrison had taken their last look at
their premises and at the well, into which so many of their number
had been lowered during the past three weeks. The writer has
walked over the same ground, between their intrenchment and the
landing-place, wondering with what feelings that ragged and spirit¬
less cavalcade must have passed over that space that day. But
they had at least this consolation—they thought that their miseries
were ending, and that they were going toward home, with all its
blessed associations. They moved on, reached the wooden bridge,
t
and turned into the fatal ravine which led to the water’s edge.
Two dozen large boats, each covered with a frame and heavy
thatch, to screen the sun, were ready ; but it was observed that,
instead of floating, they had been drawn into the shallows, and
were resting on the sand. The vast multitude, speechless and
motionless as specters, watched their descent into that “ valley of
the shadow of death.” The men in front began to lift the wounded
and the ladies into the boats, and prepared for shoving them off,
when, amid that sinister silence, the blast of a bugle at the other
end of the ravine, as the last straggler entered within the fatal
trap, gave the Nana Sahib’s signal, and the masked battery, which
Azeemoolah had spent his night preparing, opened with grape
upon the confused mass. The boatmen who were to row them
thrust the ready burning charcoal into the thatch, plunged over¬
board, and made for the shore, and, almost in a moment, the entire
fleet was in a blaze of fire. Five hundred marksmen sprang up
among, the trees and temples, and began to pour their deadly bul¬
lets in upon them, while the cavalry along the river brink were
ready for any who attempted to swim the Ganges. Only four men
made good their escape — two officers and two privates, one of
whom soon afterward sank under his sufferings — and they owed
their lives to their ability in swimming and diving, and were in¬
debted for their ultimate safety to the humanity of a noble Hindoo,
Dirigbijah Singh, of Oude. The Nana Sahib was pacing before
his tent, waiting for the news. A trooper was dispatched to in¬
form him that all was going on well, and that the Peishwa would
soon have ample vengeance for his ancient wrong. He bade the
courier return to the scene of action, bearing the verbal order to
“ keep the women alive, and kill all the males.” Accordingly the
‘
The House of Massacre.
RESERVES THE LADIES FOR ANOTHER DOOM. 305
women and children whom the shot had missed and the flames
spared, were collected and brought to land. Many of them were
dragged from under the chained woodwork, or out of the water
Deside the boats. Some of the ladies were roughly handled by the
troopers, who, while collecting them, tore away such ornaments as
caught their fancy, with little consideration for ear or finger.
Their defenders were all soon murdered, and lay in mutilation on
the banks or in the boats, or floated away with the stream. The
ladies were taken back along the road, through a surging crowd of
Sepoys and towns-people, till the procession halted opposite the
pavilion of the Maharajah, who, after receiving his wretched cap¬
tives, ordered them removed to a small building north of the canal,
which was to be the scene of their final sufferings on the 15th of
the following month. We present a sketch of this place, known
afterward as the “ House of the Massacre.”
It comprised two principal rooms, each twenty feet by ten, with
three or four windowless closets, and behind the building was an
open court, about fifteen yards square, surrounded by a high wall.
Guarded by Sepoys, within these limits, during nineteen days of
tropical heat, were penned up together these two hundred and one
ladies and children and five men—two hundred and six persons in
all—awaiting their doom from the lips of a monster. Their food
during those terrible days was very coarse and scanty indeed ; and,
to add to it the keenest indignity that an Oriental could give, it
was cooked for them by the Methers, (scavengers.) They lay on
the bare ground, and were closely watched day and night. “ The
Well,” into which he had their mangled bodies thrown, is shown on
the left side of the picture.
That evening the Nana Sahib held a State review in honor of his
“ victory,” ordered a general illumination of the city of Cawnpore,
and posted the Proclamation already quoted, in which he called
upon the people to “ rejoice at the delightful intelligence that
Cawnpore has been conquered, and the Christians have been sent
to hell, and both the Hindoo and Mohammedan religions have been
confirmed.”
30 6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
The Maharajah at length enjoyed the compliment he had so long

coveted, and was so long denied—at the review he was greeted
with the full sum of twenty-one guns, his nephew and two brothers
receiving seventeen each. He wore his royal honors for seventeen
days and no more. Distributing $50,000 among the mutineers, he
returned in state to his Cawnpore residence. This was a hotel
kept by a Mohammedan, and in which the writer slept when in the
place a few months previously. The Nana took possession of these
premises, which were about seventy-five paces from the house here
shown, where the poor ladies were confined. Here he lived from
day to day in a perpetual round of sensuality, amid a choice coterie
of priests, panderers, ministers, and minions. The reigning beauty
of the fortnight was one Oula or Adala. She was the Thais on
whose breast sank the vanquished victor, oppressed with brandy and
such love as animates a middle-aged Eastern debauchee. She is
said to have counted by hundreds of thousands the rupees which
were lavished upon her by the affection or vanity of her Alexander.
Every night there was an entertainment of music, dancing, and
pantomime, the latter being some caricature of English habits
The noise of this revelry was plainly audible to the captives in the
adjoining house ; and as they crowded round the windows to catch
a breath of the cool night air, the glare of the torches and the
strains of the barbarous melody might remind them of the period
when he who was now the center of that noisy throng thought him¬
self privileged if he could induce them to honor him with their
acceptance of the hospitality of Bithoor. To such reality of woe
were they reduced ! Heat, hardship, wounds, and want of space
and proper nourishment were beginning to release some from their
bondage before the season marked out by Azeemoolah for a jail
delivery such as the world never witnessed before. A sentence of
relief may be added here, as rumors contrary to the fact have been
circulated : Trevelyan, whom we have so freely copied, declares that
the evidence shows that these ladies died without mention, and we
may hope without apprehension, of dishonor.
The hour of retribution dawned at length ! Outraged civiliza-
TEE MASS A ORE OF TEE LADIES. 307
tlc/ii was coming with a vengeance to punish the guilty, and to save
this remnant if it were possible. General Havelock and his brave
little brigade were on their way, making forced marches daily.
The Nana roused himself to meet the dangtn He had forwarded
armies to resist their approach, but twice his forces were hurled back,
bringing to him the news of their disaster. Reserving his own
sacred person for the supreme venture, he now ordered his whole
army to be got ready. But before setting out he took advice as to
what was best to be done with the captives. It was seen that dead
men or women tell no tales and give no evidence, and this was
important in case of a reverse ; while he also reasoned that, as
the British were approaching solely for the purpose of releasing
their friends, they would not risk another battle for the purpose
merely of burying them, but would be only too glad of an excuse
to avoid meeting the Peishwa in the field. So he and his council
concluded. Their decision was that the ladies should die, and
that, too, without further delay, as the army must march in the
-morning.
We purposely omit many of the details of the horrors of that
dreadful evening, as we have read them or heard them described
by Havelock’s men, and will try to give the result in brief terms.
About half past four o’clock that afternoon—the 15 th—the woman
called “The Begum” informed the ladies that they were to be
killed. But the Sepoys refused to execute the order, and there
was a pause. Nana Sahib was not thus to be balked, even though
the widows of Bajee Rao, his step-mothers by adoption, most ear¬
nestly remonstrated against the act. It was all in vain. The
Nana found his agents. Five men—some of whom were butchers
by profession—undertook the work for him. With their knives
and swords they entered, and the door was fastened behind them.
The shrieks and scuffling within told those without that these jour¬
neymen were executing their master’s will. The evidence shows
that it took them exactly an hour and a half to finish it; they then
came out again, haying earned their hire. They were paid, it is
said, one rupee (fifty cents) for each lady, or one hundred and three
dollars for the whole, and were dismissed. Then a number of

Methers (scavengers) were called, and by the heels, or hair of their
head, these once beautiful women and children were dragged out
of the house and dropped down into the open well—shown on the
left of the picture—the dying with the dead, and the children over
all! The well had been used for purposes of irrigation, and was
some fifty feet deep. Next morning, when the army marched, no
living European remained in Cawnpore.
Commanding in person, the Nana Sahib went forth that day to
meet General Havelock, bent on doing something great in de¬
fense of his tottering throne. But, notwithstanding the dispar¬
ity of their numbers, he soon realized the difference between them
and the group of invalids and civilians, whom he had brought to
bay behind that deserted rampart, or a front rank of seated ladies
and children and a rear rank of gentlemen, all with their hands
strapped behind their backs, as in his first “victory.” Now he
saw before him, extending from left to right, the line of white faces,
of red cloth, and of sparkling steel. With set teeth and flashing
eyes, and rifles tightly grasped, closer and closer drew the meas¬
ured tramp of feet, and the heart of the foe died within him ; his
fire grew hasty and ill-directed, and, as the last volley cut the ah
overhead, the English, with a shout, rushed forward at their foes.
Then each rebel thought only of himself. The terrible shrapnel
and canister tore through their ranks, and they broke ere the bay¬
onet could touch them. Squadron after squadron, and battalion
after battalion, these humbled Brahmins dropped their weapons,
threw off their packs, and spurred and ran in wild confusion, pur¬
sued for miles by the British cavalry and artillery. At nightfall
the Nana Sahib entered Cawnpore upon a chestnut horse drenched
in perspiration and with bleeding flanks. On he sped toward
Bithoor, sore and weary, his head swimming and his chest heaving.
He had never ridden so far and fast before. It was the just ear¬
nest of that hardship which was henceforth to be his portion. Far
otherwise had he been wont to return to that palace after a visit of
state to the English: lolling, vinaigrette in hand, beneath the
EVIL SHALL HUNT THE VIOLENT MAN, ETC. 309
breath of fans, amid the cushions of a luxurious carriage, sur¬

rounded by a moving hedge of outriders and running footmen.
Placing his harem on steeds, with some treasure and provisions, and
with his brothers and such as chose to follow his fortunes, he
accompanied his forces to resist General Havelock’s advance on
Lucknow. When again defeated, for the fifth time, he fled to the
congenial society of Khan Bahadar at Bareilly, where he made his
last stand ; and he then, having filled to overflowing the measure of
his guilt, passed away like a thief in the night, and left his wealth
to the spoiler. Accompanied by his evil spirit, Azeemoolah, he
and his followers entered the jungles of Oude and penetrated deep
into desolate wilds, where the malarious fever soon thinned off his
company, and reduced the remnant to the final distress. For the
last that is known of this man’s doom we have to depend upon the
reports of two native spies who followed him, and two of his serv¬
ants who subsequently found their way out of those Himalayan
solitudes. Wasted and worn at last by fever and starvation to
utter desperation, they are reported to have held a council, and con¬
cluded to put their swords each through his own women, and then
to separate and die alone. Certainly a remnant of any of them
has never since been seen. The Nana Sahib wore that great ruby
which was so celebrated for its size and brilliancy. His priests
had told him that it was an amulet which secured to him a charmed
life. He trusted in it, no doubt, to the very last. It was probably
in his turban when he wandered up that deep ravine to die alone ;
and if so, there it lies to-day, for no human hand will ever pene¬
trate those pestilential jungles to gather it. The eagles of the
Himalayas alone, as they look down from their lofty height for
their prey, are the only creatures that will ever see the burning rays
of that ruby, as it shines amid the rags of the vagrant who perished
there long years ago !
On the 17th of July at daybreak the English army reached
Cawnpore ; they passed the walls of the roofless barracks, pitted
with shot and blackened with flames, and then came to “ the
Ladies’ House,” and, as they stood sobbing at the door, they saw
3io THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
what it were well could the outraged earth have hidden—the inner
apartment was almost ankle deep in blood! The plaster all around
was scored with sword-cuts, not high up, as where men had fought,
but low down, and around the corners, as if a creature had crouched
there to avoid the blow. Fragments of dresses, large locks of hair,
broken combs, with three or four Bibles and Prayer Books, and
children’s little shoes, were scattered around. Alas ! it was thirty-
six hours too late ! The Well beside the House held what they had
marched and fought so hard to save, and marched and fought in
vain. They had to leave them as they found them ; so they filled
up the well and leveled the earth about it. Over that well a
weeping country has erected a graceful shrine, and has turned the
ground around it into a fair garden, and made the whole forever
sacred to their memory. We present views of the outside and
inside of the shrine, engraved from photographs taken on the spot.
Around the rim of the stone covering the well’s mouth is this
inscription :
“ Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian

PEOPLE, CHIEFLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, CRUELLY MASSACRED NEAR THIS SPOT
BY THE REBEL NANA SAHIB, AND THROWN, THE DYING WITH THE DEAD, INTO
THE WELL BENEATH ON THE XVTH DAY OF JULY, MDCCCLVII.”
Over the door outside are the words of the one hundred and forty-
first Psalm, “ Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as
when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth.”
The garden, inclosed, planted, and made so lovely, with the
monument in the center, is now such a contrast in its peace and
beauty to the sorrows once endured within its limits, that one is
reminded of the words which Havelock’s- men cut on the tem¬
porary monument of wood which they placed over the well: “ I
believe in the resurrection of the body.” The entire premises
have been placed by Government under the appropriate guardian¬
ship of Private Murphy—one of the three survivors of that fearful
siege—and here he may be seen daily, accompanying visitors from
many lands, who with sad thoughts and respectful steps approach
the Ladies’ Monument in the Memorial Garden of Cawnpore.
The Shrine—outside view.
BLOWING AWAY FROM GUNS. 313
It may be well here to consider for a moment the alleged severi¬

ties which some of the English soldiers and commanders inflicted
upon those red-handed Sepoys. Who will wonder, as he thinks of
the men that stood around the door of that “ Slaughter House,” (as
it was long after called,) and who gazed upon a sight that no other
men had ever seen, and who, as they reflected upon all they had
themselves so vainly endured to save those whose gory memen¬
toes lay before them, causing these sun-burned soldiers to sob and
weep like children, that such soldiers, in such circumstances, should
have vowed vengeance against the perpetrators of this matchless
cruelty ? Does not even humanity, in advance, require a gentle
judgment upon their feelings and resolutions, or the retributions
which they afterward administered ?
One of them told me that, as they stood around the door and
looked in, a tuft of hair, from a lady’s head, floated on the con¬
gealed mass; a comrade went in, walking on his heels to keep his
shoes above the gore, and snatching up the handful of hair, he
returned to them and proposed they should share it among them.
They stood around in a circle, and divided it, taking an oath that
they would have a Sepoy life for each hair they held! This dread¬
ful resolution may be forgiven. General Havelock was a man of
mercy as well as of valor, and impressed his authority upon them,
so as to keep them from exercising this vengeance upon any save
resisting rebels and convicted criminals. Two of his Aids, Generals
Neill and Renaud, were more severe ; they felt it their duty to
break the caste, as well as to take the life, of the more prominent
murderers who fell into their hands, by requiring these Brahmin
Sepoys to wipe up the blood which their leader had caused to
be shed ; reminding one of the punishment inflicted by Ulysses
in the palace of Ithaca, as related by Homer, only that the prov¬
ocation was so much greater at Cawnpore. Under any other
civilization than Christianity, in its hour of triumph, retaliation
would have been general and undiscriminating. The citizens of
Cawnpore well knew that a Hindoo or Moslem army, in such an
opportunity, and with such a deed to revenge, would have given
3H THE LAND OF THE VEDA
them and their city to fire and sword, and have left only a rum
behind.
The practice of “blowing men from guns” in India during the
Rebellion also needs a few words of explanation. The act has been
much misunderstood, especially in this country. I have met with
strange assertions upon this matter, some of which assumed that
the Sepoys were actually rammed into the guns, and then fired
out! and too often has it been said or supposed that the act was
perpetrated as a refinement of cruelty. Both of these opinions are
mistaken. The mode of death in this case was, usually, to sink a
stake in the ground, and tie the man to it; the gun was behind him,
from six to eight feet distant, loaded with blank cartridge, and,
when discharged, it dissipated the man’s remains. It was a quick
and painless mode of death, for the man was annihilated, as it were,
ere he knew that he was struck. But what the Sepoys objected to
in it was, the dishonor done to the body, its integrity being de¬
stroyed, so that the Shraad could not be performed for them. [The
Shraad is a funeral ceremony, which all caste Hindoos invest with
the highest significance, as essential to their having a happy trans¬
migration ; the dissipation of the mortal remains of a man thus
executed would necessarily render its importance impossible, and
so expose the disembodied ghost, in their opinion, to a wandering,
indefinite condition in the other world, which they regard as dread¬
ful ; and, to avoid this liability, when condemned to die they would
plead, as a mercy, to be hung or shot with the musket—any mode
—but not to be blown away.
Knowing that this was the only procedure of which their wretched
consciences were afraid, two of the English officers—one of them
being General Corbett, at Lahore—threatened this mode of punish¬
ment upon Sepoy troops whom they could not otherwise restrain
from rebelling. Corbett did, at last, execute it upon twelve of the
ringleaders of a Sepoy regiment which, during the height of his
anxiety for the safety of the Punjab, rose one morning and shot
their officers, and marched for Delhi. He took two Sikh regiments
and pursued and scattered them, bringing back these leaders for
GENERAL CORBETT'S MOTIVE. 315
trial and execution. The court resolved death should be inflicted in

this mode, as a last resort to strike terror into the other two Sepoy
regiments, so as to restrain them from rising. And it certainly
had that effect. From the hour of that execution till Delhi fell, not
a single Sepoy hand was raised against an officer’s life or the Gov¬
ernment. They saw that the man at their head would not shrink
from violating their prejudices, even as to their Shraad, if they
committed mutiny and murder, and they would not face that
danger. So the Punjab was kept quiet, and we at Nynee Tal, and
they at Simla and Delhi, (including hundreds of ladies,) were
saved, more probably by that act of stern discipline than by any
other event during those seven months.
Every generous and candid heart will judge the General’s action
by his motive and the circumstances around him, as well as the
minds on which he had to operate. He was far, as was his noble
Governor, Sir John Lawrence, from any wish to perpetrate an
undue severity or refinement of cruelty. He was in circumstances
where he had reason to believe that this was the only way to arrest
murder and mutiny, and save thousands of lives whose fate hung
on the position of the Punjab and his measures to preserve it.
This was equally the motive of the other General, who employed it
as a measure of restraint as well as punishment. The act itself
was analogous to the policy of Christian States one hundred years
ago, in refusing what was called “ The Benefit of Clergy” to certain
notorious criminals. Lord Canning, the Governor-General, as soon
as he heard of it, however, believing that it infringed too much
upon the conscience of the Hindoos, forbade its repetition by any
Commander, and it was therefore entirely abandoned. As a mode
of punishment it was introduced into India by the French during
their brief rule in the South. Wilkes’s “History of the Mysore”
relates its infliction, by Count Lally, in 1758, upon six Brahmins.
The consideration of Lord Canning, however, was not recipro¬
cated by the Sepoy power itself, for in the hour of their opportu¬
nity they made no scruple whatever to employ this mode of execution
upon other people. We have testimony that several of the Euro-
peans who fell into the hands of the Nawab of Futtyghur and the
Nana Sahib, were executed by being blown from guns ; and even
the greased cartridges, to which they at first objected, when their
own time came, they are said to have readily used to murder
the Europeans who fell into their hands.
Though, unhappily, too late to save those who suffered at Cawn-
pore, the relieving army were destined, after endurance and valor
which received the admiration of all who ever heard of it, to reach
and rescue the larger garrison of Lucknow, which, as the reader
will see on the map, lies forty-three miles beyond Cawnpore.
The Mission of the Queen of Oude in 1856 had failed, the decree
had gone forth and was unalterable, and an English Governor ruled
the kingdom, which became a part of British India. His official
residence—ere long to become so famous—is shown in the picture
on the opposite page. This building, before the annexation, was
the home of “ the Resident,” or English Embassador, at the Court
of Oude, and afterward became the house of “ the Chief Commis¬
sioner,” or Governor, of the kingdom, and was therefore called
“ The Residency.”
No record of human endurance exceeds that which was here
exhibited from June to November, 1857. “The Story of Cawn¬
pore” is, alas! more tragical; but for the great qualities of the
heroic and the enduring, Lucknow may well challenge human his¬
tory to furnish a higher example, especially when we remember the
number of women who were here shut up, and how nobly they bore
themselves amid risks and sufferings which only Christian women
of our Anglo-Saxon race could bear to the bitter end, and yet
emerge from them all in moral triumph. Nearly a dozen volumes,
by different hands—three of them from the pens of ladies—have
presented the facts to the world. They abundantly show how
nobly woman can illustrate the virtue inculcated by Virgil:
“ Do not yield to misfortunes,
But advance to meet them with greater fortitude.”
Probably there never was such a siege as that of Lucknow. His¬

tory seems to have no parallel to it in its extraordinary circutn-
The Residency," LucKnow, Inoia.
THE PREPARATIONS FOR RESISTANCE. 319
stances, the bravery of its garrison, the privations, risks, and horrors
to which the women were subjected, while hope was deferred, and
England gave them up as dead, and they themselves at length,
‘ not expecting deliverance,” resolved to die, if die they must, with
their face to their bloody and relentless foe. The women of Car¬
thage are celebrated for having cut off their hair to make bow
strings for their husbands, but the resolute and enduring courage
of these daughters of Britain make them worthy of higher fame.
Englishmen may well feel proud of their countrywomen.
Two great and good men are the central figures of this siege and
relief, Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir Henry Havelock—the former
an Episcopalian and the latter a Baptist—both men who honored
and loved God, and who were greatly honored by God, the first in
defending, the latter in rescuing, against fearful odds, the gallant
men and women of the Lucknow Residency.
Sir Henry Lawrence, after spending more than thirty years in
the military and civil service in India, was appointed Governor of
the Kingdom of Oude. He reached Lucknow, the capital, and
entered upon his duties early in 1857, fully impressed by the dan¬
gerous condition of things at that time. Though in very feeble
health, he set himself vigorously at work to prepare for the coming
storm, which at length broke over India on the memorable 31st of
May. Every city in Oude, save Lucknow, was seized that day by
the Sepoys, and deeds of cruelty and blood perpetrated which
shocked the whole civilized world. Lucknow alone, where Sir
Henry dwelt in the Residency, was held, and even his vigor and
ability could not have suspended its fall had he not had a hand¬
ful of English soldiers to rely upon. He at once collected all the
civilians and Christian residents of Lucknow, with a few native
troops whose fidelity he thought he could trust, and over whom he
exerted a wonderful influence, into the Residency, and some other
houses close to it, and began to fortify them in the best manner
that the time and means at his command would allow. Provisions
were collected rapidly, and ammunition stored and prepared, guns
put in position, and his people organized. In addition to the
Residency, he also occupied an old fort called the “ Muchee Bha-

wun,” about one third of a mile west of the Residency, and close
■to which are our mission premises. Dividing his force, he fondly
hoped to be strong enough to hold both positions till re-enforce¬
ments should reach him, and enable him to restore law and order
at the capital, and throughout the kingdom. How little he fore-
t
boded the fearful odds against which his feeble garrison woul 1 soon
have to contend ! Meanwhile the reports of the fiendish atrocities
•of Delhi, Meerut, Shahjehanpore, Bareilly, and other places reached
Lucknow, and its few hundred anxious Christian people began to
realize more fully how completely they were cut off from all human
assistance, and how dark their own future was becoming.
The natives in the city had become so persuaded of the over¬
throw of the English power that the Government securities, which
a few days before were selling at a premium, had fallen from over
one hundred to thirty-seven. Fanatics paraded the city—some of
them haranguing the crowds of people, and exhibiting pictures of
Europeans maimed and mutilated by Sepoys ; others had a show
of dolls dressed as European children, which ended by striking off
their heads, to the great delight of the mobs, who looked on and
applauded ; while the blasphemy of Mohammedan Fakirs became
bold and frightful, as they exulted in the overthrow of Christian¬
ity, and demanded the blood of “ the Kaffirs” in the Fort and Res¬
idency, as the consummation of their efforts. These wretched men
imagined that the whole of Hindustan had fallen, that the few of our
faith around Sir Henry Lawrence were all of the Christian life left
in India ; and for many long and weary months the Christians gen¬
erally, like those at Nynee Tal, did not know but that this was the
terrible truth.
While busy preparing the defenses with which they were sur¬
rounding the Residency and the other houses near it, so as to form
intrenchments, and make the best of their position, Sir Henry was
joined by the few Europeans who had escaped from the massacres
at Secrora and other stations in Oude. The news they brought
deepened the gloom of the situation. Reports of the dead bodies
THE DISASTROUS DEFEAT OF CHINHUT. 321
of Europeans, among them three women, lying by the road side a

few miles out, were brought to them, and the fiendish cruelty to
which they were exposed received a fearful illustration when, one
day, some natives brought to the Residency the body of an English
.ady, which they had found lying by the road side cut up into quar¬
ters ! These unfortunate people were evidently making for the
Residency when they were overtaken and thus cruelly murdered
and mutilated by the Sepoys.
Sir Henry now redoubled his efforts to complete the batteries,
stockades, and trenches around his position, and prepare for what¬
ever might occur. Hearing, on the 29th of June, that the insur¬
gents were approaching Lucknow, he concluded to march out with
a part of his little force, hoping to defeat them before they reached
*-he city, and so save himself from investment and the city from
being taken ; but, unfortunately, his information of the strength of
the foe was defective, and in the moment of emergency, when he
suddenly came upon them at Chirihut, seven miles from Lucknow,
he found his little force of six hundred and thirty-six men and
eleven guns in front of an enemy fifteen thousand strong, with six
batteries of guns of various caliber, all ready to receive him. Be-
fore his force could recover their surprise the foe opened upon
them, their cavalry quickly outflanking them, and it seemed for a
while as though not a man could escape to tell the tale. But the
brave handful of troops showed a bold front, charging with the
bayonet when the enemy came /near enough, yet unable to follow
up their advantages. The native drivers of the British guns fled
in terror, and their artillery was rendered nearly useless, and most
of it fell into the hands of the foe. Colonel Case, at the head of his
men, was struck by a bullet and dropped. Captain Bassano, seeing
him fall, turned to assist him, but the dying hero waved him off,
saying, “ Captain Bassano, leave me to die here ; your place is at
the head of your company. I have no need of assistance.”
They now tried to return to Lucknow, but only about two hun¬
dred and thirty-four of their number reached the Residency ; they
•saved only sixty-five of their wounded—the rest were all cut up.
18
322 TEE LAND OF IEE VEDA.
The wonder is, that any one escaped. Had the rebel cavalry used
its opportunity not a single man of Sir Henry Lawrence’s force, or
of the faithful natives he had with him, could ever have returned to
the Residency.
This sad event of Chinhut caused Sir Henry Lawrence the deep¬
est anguish, and it is thought tended to shorten his life. His face,,
already careworn enough to be remarkable, assumed a sad aspect
that it was painful to contemplate. But he nerved himself to meet
the stern realities of the position, and all allow that it was, under
God, to his foresight and efforts that the Lucknow garrison held
out to be at last relieved by Havelock. Those who had till this
day remained outside the intrenchments had now to fly to the Res¬
idency, leaving houses and property unprotected, sacrificing every
thing, and thinking only of saving their lives. The Residency be¬
came one scene of confusion—the women and children rushing to
find a place of refuge from the relentless foe, who, flushed with
victory, were approaching with flying colors and drums beating,
confident of an easy triumph over the remnant that remained.
Men, covered with blood, some with mangled limbs, their mus¬
cles contracted with agony, their faces pale, and bodies almost cold,
others with the death-rattle in their throat, were brought in by their
comrades and laid in rows in the banqueting hall, now turned into
a hospital. The ladies crowded around them, fanned them, sup¬
plied temporary bandages, and showed as much solicitude for them
as though they had been their own relatives, which was probably
the case as to some of them. The surgeons were soon busy enough,
cutting, probing, amputating, and bandaging. All the horrors of
war were at once laid bare before the anxious crowd.
Every man, including the civilians—some of whom had never
handled a musket before, but whom Sir Henry had armed—were now
called out to defend the position, for the exultant enemy were pour¬
ing over the two bridges and up the streets to the very gates of the
Residency, and getting their guns into position. The people of
the city within range were flying, with their goods, out of the way
of the expected bombardment, while both sides prepared for the
UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF TEE CONFLICT. 323
terrible and unequal conflict. The defenses of the Residency were

hastily completed. Barricades were formed in all exposed situa¬
tions, and it is marvelous to read the elements of which some of
them were composed—mahogany tables and valuable furniture of
all kinds, carriages and carts, the records of Government officers in
large chests, boxes of stationery, and whatever could be laid hold
of and piled up, to cover from the enemy's fire or stop a bullet.
Even Captain Hayes’s famous library, consisting of invaluable
Oriental manuscripts, the standard literary and scientific works of
European nations, and dictionaries of almost every language, were,
for the nonce, converted into barricades.
These, with the other defenses which they had already prepared,
were by no means strong, though the best they could extemporize.
Their chief reliance was on the number of their guns, the quantity
of their ammunition, and their own courage, which they hoped the
God of Hosts would crown with his blessing, till relief could reach
them from Calcutta or from England.
Their enemies had taken possession of the houses deserted by
the citizens, and were filling them with sharp-shooters, loop-holing
the walls, and putting their numerous cannon in position all around
the Residency, as near as they could come, a few of them being so
close that they were not more than forty or fifty yards from the
intrenchments around the buildings occupied by the Christians.
This seems almost incredible, but I can vouch for its truthfulness
from personal knowledge before the siege, and personal examina¬
tion after it, while the battered and torn Residency is to-day its
standing memorial. Each party spent a busy night, and next
morning the iron messengers of death were flying back and forth
in increasing numbers.
Let us pause here and note the respective strength of the par¬
ties in this fearfully unequal conflict, and the object for which each
was about to tight. On the one side were part of an English
regiment, one company of British artillery, a few hundred laithtul
Sepoys, with some English and European civilians ; on the other,
the whole army of Oude. But this fact is worthy of more detail.
The entire number now inside the Residency, including those

holding the fort of the Muchee Bawun, near by, was as follows :
Men : European soldiers. 629
“ civilians. 298
Native soldiers. 765
Total bearing arms. 1,692
W omen. 240
Children.... 310
Total inside the Residency. 2,242
This includes the sick and wounded after the disastrous defeat at
Chinhut.
Outside, their enemies swarmed around their position in such
numbers that they have been variously computed at from 30,000
to 100,000 strong at different periods during the siege, with about
one hundred guns bearing on the devoted Residency and its
defenders.
But mere numbers do not give a sufficient idea of this dreadful
contest. Many of those now within the Residency had fled there
in such panic as to leave behind in their homes their provisions,
money, and furniture, and were literally without a change of cloth¬
ing, or a bed to lie down upon, or a knife and spoon with which to
eat their scanty food. The hottest time of the year was upon
them, with not the first of the appliances by which they had been
accustomed to mitigate its rigor. Crowded into the narrowest
space, most of them had to lie down on the ground, the heat,
mosquitoes and effluvia being almost intolerable : the shot of the
enemy, too, often came crashing through the walls, sprinkling them
with the dust and mortar as it passed over them, while sometimes
a fearful shell would explode in their midst, and kill or wound
two or three or more of them. Alas ! one hundred and forty-three
days of such suffering lay before them now, during which time
two fifths of their number were to die, and more than a thousand
brave men would have to perish in order to save the remnant that
was left!
The Residency itself, and a few houses around it—the homes of
THE MUCHEE BAWUN BLOWN UP. 325
the officers in the suite of the Governor—occupied an elevated

plateau, with the city on three sides of it and the river Goomtee on
*-.he north. From the roof of the Residency the view was beauti¬
ful, extending over the city and surrounding country. The num¬
ber and variety of the buildings, the gilded domes and cupolas, the
elegant outlines of the palaces, all set in the deep green of the
surrounding trees and gardens, together made up a scene of sur¬
passing beauty; but no building could have been less calculated
for purposes of defense. Its lofty windows, which had not been
walled up, offered unopposed entrance to every bullet that came.
The roof was wholly exposed. Below its ground floor the Resi¬
dency had a spacious “ Tyekhana ”—underground rooms, used by
people in India as a retreat from the heat and glare of the mid-day
sun in the hot season, and as soon as the siege commenced the
ladies and children were crowded into this splendid cellar, and had
to remain there. The Banqueting Hall was turned into a hospital,
and the upper rooms occupied by the soldiers. Altogether, in this
one building there were from 800 to 1,000 persons. The remain¬
der were placed in the houses around, or at the batteries, or where
any shelter could be found.
Meanwhile the siege went on, and increased in its fierceness ;
closer and closer still was drawn the circle of guns around the
position, and they were served with great ability. Every loop-hole
made in the walls of the houses around had a sharp-shooter at it
day and night, and the moment a head was exposed the rifle sent
forth a leaden messenger of death. Sir Henry soon became con¬
vinced that he was too weak in numbers to think any longer of
holding both the Muchee Bawun and the Residency. He saw
that he would be overwhelmed in the assault which would probably
follow this fierce bombardment, so he resolved to give up the
Muchee Bawun and concentrate his whole force within the Resi¬
dency. But how to effect the junction now, when the river side
of the road the whole way to the Muchee Bawun was lined with
the batteries and troops of the enemy, was a difficulty before which
most men would have shrunk. Sir Henry, however, saw it must
be attempted, and every thing was done to carry it out. By tele¬

graphic signals from the tower, shown in the picture, communica¬
tions were at length established, and the order was transmitted to
the commanding officer, “Blow up the fort and come to the Resi¬
dency at twelve o'clock to-night. Bring your treasure and guns, and
destroy the remainder.”
That night was anxiously looked for, and many an earnest
prayer went up to God that every movement might be made safely
and well, so that the retreat of the retiring force might not be
intercepted. To distract the attention of the enemy the batteries
opened fire, especially toward the iron bridge, by which the column
must pass. The movement was most successfully accomplished,
and so noiseless was the march, favored by the darkness, that the
head of the column was at the Residency gate at fifteen minutes
after twelve. There was a little delay here, as, not being so
quickly expected, the gate had not been made ready. It was dark,
and a very serious accident had almost occurred, for the leading
men finding the gates closed, cried out, “ Open the gates.” This
the artillerists at the guns above, which covered the entrance,
mistook for “ open with grape.” They flew to their guns and
rammed in the grape, when an officer rushed up and set them
right. The whole force came in without a shot being fired by
them or at them. The distance is fully one third of a mile, and
the enemy was on their left hand, within fifty or sixty yards of them
most of the way. The explosion had not yet occurred, the fuses
having been left extra long to give time for the rear to be quite
clear of danger ; but soon a shake of the earth, a volume of fire, a
terrific report, and an immense column of black smoke shooting
high into the air, announced to Lucknow that the Muchee Bawun
was no more. All the ammunition that they could not remove-
two hundred and fifty barrels of powder and several millions of
ball cartridge—was destroyed, together with the buildings and their
contents. The shock resembled an earthquake.
How gladly the garrison greeted their comrades as they entered!
The junction of the two forces was an incalculable gain, for the
SIR HENRY LAWRENCE'S DEATH. 3 27
additional men were actually required to man the defenses, and

their safe arrival greatly cheered every person in the Residency.
Strange things will occur in the most solemn circumstances. On
calling their muster-roll they found one man was missing—an Irish
soldier. He was given up as lost. The unfortunate fellow had
been left behind in a state of intoxication. He was thrown into
the air and returned again to mother earth unhurt, continued his
drunken sleep, and awoke early next morning to find, to his aston¬
ishment, the fort all in ruins around him. He deliberately walked
to the Residency, unmolested by any one. The men inside
the Residency gate, just as day was breaking, were not a little
surprised to hear a man outside sing out to them, with a rich Irish
brogue, “ Arrah, thin, open your gates ! ” Convulsed with laugh¬
ter, they opened and let the poor fellow in. He was asked why he
had left the fort, and with a look of wonder and simplicity an¬
swered, “ Sure, an’ I didn’t see e’er a man in the place.”
Every one seemed to catch the spirit of the noble chief—Sir
Henry’s presence anywhere was like a re-enforcement. Day and
night he was inspecting and encouraging the various posts, ex¬
posed to imminent danger all the while. From twelve to forty
men were at each point or battery, with thousands of the blood¬
thirsty and blaspheming fanatics opposed to each set ; but these
outposts must be maintained, for if once in, the enemy never
could have been turned out; every man, woman, and child would
have been ruthlessly butchered ; yet each party fought under the
apprehension that others might be more hardly pressed than them¬
selves, and occasionally the cry would be heard, “ More men this
way! ” and off would run two or three, all that could be spared, till
a similar cry was heard from another direction, when others would
rush to that point to give assistance.
On July 4 the heaviest trial that could befall them occurred—
their trusted and heroic commander was struck down. The
Sepoys had found out what room Sir Henry Lawrence occupied—
the one shown on the lower floor, right-hand side, in the picture,
and they began to send shells into it. One of these entered and
exploded close to Sir Henry, tearing the thigh from his body, and
mortally wounding him. He lingered for two days, and then de¬
parted as noble a spirit as ever animated human clay. He spent
the conscious moments of these two days in directing and advising
what should be done in carrying on the defense till succor should
arrive. Frequently he would arouse himself, and exclaim to the
mourning group around him, “ Save the ladies ! ” and for their
sakes he enjoined upon them, in view of what had been done at
Delhi and Cawnpore, never to surrender ! His last thoughts were
given to those he loved so well, and to the Redeemer whom he
had served for many years. He expressed his anxiety for the wel¬
fare of the “ Lawrence Asylum ”—a school which he had founded
for the children of soldiers in India; sent affectionate mes¬
sages to his children and to his brother, late Viceroy of India,
and to his sisters ; and spoke most affectionately of his wife, Lady
Lawrence, who had died four years previously. He then earnestly
pointed out to those around him the worthlessness of all human
distinctions, recommending them to fix their thoughts upon a bet¬
ter world and try to gain it. He was prayed with, and received
the holy sacrament, praising God, and expressing his perfect faith
and reliance on his divine Saviour, and in this state of mind he
passed out of that scene of conflict and confusion to that blessed
clime where
“ No rude alarm of raging foes,
No fears, shall break his long repose.”
Military honors marked not their respect for his remains. The
times were too stern for such demonstrations. “ By dead of
night ” a hurried prayer, amid the booming of the enemy’s cannon
and the fire of their musketry, was read over his corpse, and he
was lowered into a pit, with several other, though lowlier, compan¬
ions in arms, and there he sleeps behind the Residency, awaiting
the resurrection of the just.
A feeling of despair for a few hours seemed to take possession
of every man and woman, but they had to rouse themselves to
meet the stern realities of their position. Darker and more dread-
THEIR DREADFUL RESOLUTION. 329
ful the days came on ; yet still they fought and suffered. Their
nopes of relief were still deferred, and their hearts were sick, while
their foes grew stronger in numbers and determination to destroy
them, and would frequently yell out, with fearful imprecations—for
they were near enough to be heard—what they would do with
them when they did get in. But the garrison were determined
there should not be another Cawnpore. Sir Henry’s injunction
“ never to surrender ” was fully accepted. It is fearful to read
their resolves should the worst come, and to find the ladies acqui¬
escing; and even, in some cases, requiring an engagement from
their husbands to fulfill those wishes rather than that they should
fall into the hands of the Sepoys.
This awful alternative was actually taken by some of those who
fell at Jansee. One lady in particular is mentioned, who pledged
her husband, an English officer, that when death became inevitable,
he was not to allow her to fall alive into the power of the Sepoys,
but she was to die by a pistol-ball from his own hand. Sadly and
reluctantly he gave the promise ; and when the fearful hour came,
and the enemy broke in upon them, she sprang to his side, and,
with a last caress exclaimed, “ Now, Charley, now—your promise ! ”
He kissed her, put the pistol to her head, and then turned and sold
his own life dearly to the wretches around him.
Such cases cannot be judged by ordinary rules. Those who
entertained such thoughts were confronted by an Oriental foe,
whose fiendish malice and cruelty to women and children are not
known in civilized warfare. It is a matter of devout thankfulness
that the Lucknow garrison were not reduced to this dreadful
extremity. It would have clouded the bright record of their heroic
endurance.
Space would fail to give even a brief outline of their sorrows dur¬
ing the next three months. Reduced to starvation allowances of
the coarsest food, many of them clad in rags, and all crowded into
the narrowest quarters, so that Mrs. Harris’s Diary speaks of the
ladies lying on the floor, “ fitting into each other like bits in a puz¬
zle, uifiil the whole floor was full,” they still courageously endured.
And if this was the condition of those in health, what must have
been the state of the sick and wounded ! Small-pox, cholera, boils,
dysentery, and malarious fever added their horrors to the situation,
while the iron hail of death, mingling with the drenching rain of
the monsoon, dropped upon them, so that by the first of August
the deaths sometimes rose to twenty in a single day. During this
period, and amid all this turmoil and sorrow, eight or ten little ones
were born ; and most of these “ siege babies,” as they were called,
actually lived through it all, and still survive, while many of the
poor mothers sank under their privations. But the bereaved
babies were cared for by the noble women around them. Daily
the men fell in the presence of the enemy; and it is described as
truly affecting to see how the list of newly-made widows increased
in its number and sadness.
Food and clothing became painfully scarce, and now “ money
was despised for bread." The effects, or little stores, of the offi¬
cers killed were at once sold by auction to the survivors, and it is
curious now to read the prices that were eagerly paid. A bottle of
wine brought 70 rupees, (the rupee is 50 cents in gold ;) a ham, 75
rupees ; a bottle of honey, 45 rupees ; a cake of chocolate, 30
rupees ; a bottle of brandy, 140 rupees ; a small fowl, bought by
an officer for his sick wife, 20 rupees ; two pounds of sugar brought
16 rupees, and other things in proportion. An old flannel shirt,
that had seen hard service in the mines—which they had to dig to
countermine the enemy—brought 45 rupees. The single suit with
which many of them had to hurry into the Residency was being
fast worn out, and the officers might have been seen wearing the
most extraordinary costumes. Few had any semblance of a mill-
tary uniform, and many were in shirts, trousers, and slippers only.
One gallant civilian, having found an old billiard-table cloth, had
contrived to make himself a kind of loose coat out of it. All
carried muskets, and were accoutered like the soldiers.
While the feeble garrison were thus decreasing in numbers, theii
foes were augmenting their strength. The Talookdars (Barons) of
Oude were sending their armed retainers to aid the Sepoys, till il
THE SOOTHING INFLUENCE OF PRATER. 331
was thought that by the end of August there must have been as
■many as one hundred thousand men around the Residency. Their
readers were maddened by the continued and successful resistance
of the English; and all that they could do to inspire their men, by
fanaticism, bhang, (an intoxicating liquor,) and brave leading, were
done to capture the position. They attempted to storm it several
times. Three of these occasions are specially memorable ; and it is
perfectly amazing to read the stern, unconquerable resistance with
which this handful of heroic men, behind their intrenchments, met
and dashed back again that raging tide of fierce and blaspheming
assailants. They would begin by exploding the mines which they
had driven close up to or under the defenses, open with a fearful
cannonade, and then swarm up to the breaches made. On July
20th the fight lasted from 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., with the broiling sun
up to 140 degrees. At what cost these repulses must have been
received may be understood by the fact, that the native report of
the attempt to storm on the 10th of August admits a loss on their
side of four hundred and seventy men killed and wounded on that
day alone.
Lady Inglis, wife of the Commander, in her journal of this ter¬
rible day, while the poor ladies down in the Tyekhana trembled
for the result, refers to the soothing influence of prayer, as she
tried it there with that excited and terrified crowd of women. The
effect, she says, was amazing; each of them seemed to rise above
herself, and with calmness and true courage they awaited the
result, realizing that, though the enemy was near, God himself was
nearer still, and could preserve them. And he did preserve them.
It is described as one of the most affecting sights that ever was
witnessed in a scene of battle to see how the wounded men acted
on that day. Knowing the danger, and how their comrades were
pressed, they insisted on leaving their beds in the hospital and
being helped to the front. The poor fellows came staggering along
to the scene of action, trembling with weakness and pale as death,
some of them bleeding from their wounds, which reopened by the
exertions they made. Those whose limbs were injured laid aside
their crutches and kneeled down, and fired as fast as they could out
of the loop-holes; while others, who could not do this much, lay on
their backs on the ground and loaded for those who were firing.
With such endurance as this the fierce enemy was beaten back;
and Asiatics were taught how Christian soldiers could fight and die
when defending the lives and honor of Christian women. The
storming over, the usual cannonade and musketry were resumed ;
but the garrison had become so used to danger and death, that by
this time the balls would fall at their feet, or whiz past and graze
their hair, frequently without causing any remark about their escapes
—they were so common, yet so narrow. The very children began to
act like soldiers, playing the mimic “ game of war.” One urchin of
five years was heard saying to another, “ You fire round shot, and
I’ll return shell from my battery.” Another, getting into a rage
with his playmates, exclaimed, “ I hope you may be shot by the
enemy!” Others, playing with grape instead of marbles, would
say, “ That’s clean through his lungs,” or, “ That wants more eleva¬
tion.” These young scamps picked up all the expressions of the
artillery, and made use of them at their games.
The peacock abounds in India, wild and “ in all his glory.” On
the 30th of June, during a lull in the firing, one of these magnifi¬
cent birds flew near the Residency, perched on the ramparts,
and there quietly plumed his feathers. The hungry men looked at
him for awhile, and all felt what a welcome addition he would be
to their scanty fare. They could easily have shot him, but they
refrained ; the beautiful creature seemed like an omen of coming
liberty and peace, and he was allowed to remain unmolested as
long as he liked.
To insult the garrison, the Sepoys would frequently send the
regimental bands to the opposite banks of the river Goomtee, and
have them perform the popular English airs that they used to
play there for their officers in other days. With any thing but
pleasant feelings, the garrison would have to listen to “ The
Standard-Bearer’s March,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “See,
the Conquering Hero Comes,” etc. The disloyal rascals had the
I
f
My ns
"From. an Original Portrait belonging to Sir "William Norris

HAVELOCK'S OPPORTUNE ARRIVAL. 335
impudence always to finish the concert with the loyal air, “ God
Save the Queen.”
We pause here to consider what was being done, meanwhile,
hundreds of miles away for their relief. The English authorities
at Calcutta had become ere this fully aware of their danger, and
were straining every nerve to send them assistance. But what
could they do without men ? Delhi had not a soldier to spare, nor
had other points throughout the land where a few English troops
were found. Relief must come from without, until the four tedious
months rolled over that would bring it from England, twelve thou¬
sand miles away.
It was this terrible emergency that made the little force from the
Persian Gulf so opportune in its arrival in June. Its saintly and
gallant commander was General Havelock, whose portrait we here
present.
No account of the Sepoy Rebellion would be just or adequate
that would fail to give him that prominence in its overthrow which
Almighty God, in his wonderful providence, awarded him.
About a month after the battle of Waterloo Henry Havelock
entered the English army as Second Lieutenant in the Rifle Bri¬
gade. In 1823 he was ordered to India, and it was while on his way
there, on board the “ General Kyd,” and chiefly through the instru¬
mentality of Lieutenant James Gardner, that he. was led to that
full surrender of his heart and life to the Lord Jesus which he so
consistently sustained through the evil and good report of the fol¬
lowing forty-three years of his eventful military career. His con¬
secration to God was so complete that a brother officer has testified
of him that “ he invariably secured two hours in the morning for
reading the Scriptures and private prayer.” He did this even when
campaigning ; so that “if the march began at six o’clock, he rose
at four ; if at four, he rose at two.” He recognized the claims of
God upon his money as well as his time, and from his conversion
to the close of his career he devoted regularly one tenth of his
income to the cause of God ; so that he might be truly described,
in the words applied to the Centurion of the Italian band at Cesa-
rea, as “a devout man, and one who prayed to God alway.” His
talents were equally at the Lord’s service, so that he was ever
ready to visit the sick, to hold a prayer-meeting, to address an
audience at a missionary or Bible meeting, while his efforts to lead
the men whom he commanded to Christ, and to promote temper¬
ance and virtue among them, are well known to have been contin¬
ued to the last, and to have been greatly owned of God.
Havelock was a Baptist by profession, but he would not be a
close communionist. He loved all good men, and delighted to join
with them in celebrating his Lord’s death. In all his public acts,
when he rose to eminence and command, his dispatches and orders
acknowledged God, and he delighted to ascribe to him the victories
that he was enabled to achieve. How touching are these, especially
in his last campaign !
His life was one of continued exposure and hard service. In
1824 he fought under Sir Archibald Campbell in Burmah, where
he had the satisfaction of assisting at the liberation of and Mrs.
Judson from the Emperor’s cruel tyranny. It was then, in the
midst of a serous military move, and when the corps ordered to
occupy a most important point were found utterly incapable, from
intoxication, to fulfill their duty, that his commander-in-chief paid
him and his men that rough compliment—“ Call out Havelock’s
saints; they are never drunk, and Havelock is always ready!"
The “saints" and their leader promptly responded, the position
was saved, and the enemy repulsed.
How he was esteemed by his men, for whose highest good he
labored so earnestly, may be seen in the fact that when, in 1836,
his house was accidentally burned with all its contents, the men of
his regiment came in a body to him, begging him to allow each of
them to devote one month’s pay to help him to sustain the loss.
He gratefully declined the aid pressed upon him, but what a satis¬
faction must it have been in showing the estimation in which these
men held him. He might well offset any petty High Church
hauteur which certain parties might affect toward him because he
was a “ Dissenter,” with this noble instance of the value in
HAVELOCK'S MILITARY SERVICES. 337
which his character and services were held by those who best
knew in what his Christianity consisted.
If the consideration intimated had any thing to do with the fact
that he was allowed to serve his country twenty-three years as a
subaltern before he was promoted to a captaincy, the narrow¬
minded bigots who did him the injustice are not to be envied npw.
When they shall have been long forgotten, the good soldier of Jesus
Christ, whose advance they retarded, will be remembered and hon¬
ored by gallant men and true women on both Continents.
In 1838 he took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, was at the-
storming of Ghuznee, at the forcing of the Khoord Cabool Pass, and
aided in the memorable defense of Jellalabad, where he won his
majority, and received the Cross of the Bath for conspicuous
bravery. He took part in the forcing of the Khyber Pass, in the
invasion of Kohistan, and in the battle of Muherajpore. He wrote
the military memoirs of some of these great events, and was Per¬
sian interpreter to the Commander-in-chief. At Moodkee, in 1845,
he had two horses shot under him, and another at the battle of
Sabraon ; became Military Secretary to the Commander-in-chief
and Colonel; till at length, after twenty-six years of hard service,
which bore heavily on a constitution not naturally strong, he was
permitted to visit England to recruit that energy which would soon
be required in circumstances of greater emergency than he or his
country had ever seen in the East.
Divine Providence had thus trained him for the supreme duty
of his life. In 1855 he was back in India, appointed Adjutant-
General, and just entering his sixtieth year, and in January, 1857,
was nominated in orders to command the second division of the
army employed against Persia, under Lieutenant-General Sir James
Outram, from whence he returned victorious. In the heart of
Persia we find him writing to his beloved wife, (the daughter of
Dr. Marshman, the well-known missionary:) “ I have good troops
and cannon under my command, but my trust is in the Lord Jesus,
my tried and merciful friend ! To him all power is intrusted in
heaven and on earth.” He had to pass a fort here, bis steamer
being crowded with his Highlanders, whom he made to lie down,

while, Farragut-like, he took his station on the paddle-box, to aid
as the emergency required. Though the bullets whizzed all around
him he was untouched. After the victory was won, he writes:
“ I felt throughout that the Lord Jesus was at my side.”
The sympathy of this noble man with “the common people” is
beautifully illustrated just here, when we find him engaged in writ¬
ing a long letter to a Christian soldier then in London, named
Godfrey, who had formerly served under him, a letter from whom
found him in Persia.
But now came the days when we needed him and his brave men,
and a merciful Providence causes war to cease in Mohummera, and
returns him to India on the very day before the Bareilly massacre.
He is delayed by shipwreck, and by having to wait for his troops
at Calcutta, The 78th Highlanders, 84th and 64th Queens’, reach
him at last, and, as no more can then be spared, save a few Sikhs,
and notwithstanding that he must know that he had probably a
heavier duty on his hands than any soldier of his race ever under¬
took'; he shrinks not—but with the words to his wife, “ May God
give me wisdom and strength to fulfill the expectations of the
Government, and restore tranquillity in the disturbed provinces,”
he sets out on his last eventful campaign, to find a grave at its
close, but realizing all through it, ay, and at the end as well, that
“the Lord Jesus was at his side!”
With only fourteen hundred British bayonets and eight guns,
united to less than three hundred Sikhs and thirty irregular cav¬
alry, he sublimely writes in starting: “ I march to-morrow to
endeavor to retake Cawnpore and rescue Lucknow!” He was
to do this through a country swarming with Sepoy troops, who
had been well disciplined and armed by Englishmen, and to do
it, too, at that season of the year when the rains fall fast and
frequently, and the flat country is inundated, and the sun pours
down its rays like fire, till the thermometer stands at one hundred
and thirty-eight degrees—to do it all with a poorly-supplied com¬
missariat, with few tents, and little shelter. Were ever such results
THE VICTORY AT FUTTYPORE. 33$
sought by such means under such circumstances ? But they were

the best the times admitted, and knowing the danger of delay foi
the precious lives at Cawnpore and Lucknow, he would take them,
and trust Him for the results who can save by few as by many.
At Futtypore he was confronted by thirty-five hundred rebels—
two regiments being cavalry and three infantry—with twelve guns.
His men had just finished their march under a broiling sun that
forenoon, when the Sepoys bore down upon him, confident of an
easy triumph. But in four hours Havelock had his victory, with
eleven of the rebel guns, their ammunition and baggage, as the
trophies of it in his hands. In his General Order he ascribes his
triumph "to the power of the Enfield rifle in British hands, to
British pluck, and to the blessing of Almighty God on a most
righteous cause—the cause of justice, humanity, truth, and good
government in India.” This conflict occurred on the 12th of July
—the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, as noticed by the
General. He also notes that one of the infantry regiments opposed
to him was the 56th, the very regiment which he himself led at the
battle of Maharajpore a few years previously ! He challenged them
in particular, and was exultant over their defeat; yet adds in his
letter, “ But away with vain-glory! Thanks to Almighty God, who
gave me the victory! ” Such was the man, and such the heroes
whom he led, who were thus fighting their way up to our relief
against such fearful odds.
It was near Futtypore, and about one day before the battle, that
Joel met this force. His party had slept the night before in Judge
Tucker’s house, as narrated in his letter. That gentleman’s death
was avenged before the General left Futtypore. On the day of
the rising in May, Judge Tucker refused to desert his post, hoping
to preserve the peace by the assistance of his subordinate, Hikrim-
toolah Khan, the Deputy Collector. But, like Khan Bahadar, this
man proved a cruel traitor. He himself led on the mob which sur¬
rounded the Judge’s house. Hikrimtoolah proposed to try him,
but the stern Judge would not surrender. Sixteen of his assailants
fell by his hand ere this brave man was overpowered. At length
19
Hikrimtoolah had him at his disposal, and, taking off his hands,
feet, and head, he held them up before the mob as trophies. All
this was known ; for evidence of native Christians, and others who
fled, was taken on oath, and was already on file in Havelock’s
hands. Instead of keeping out of the way, Hikrimtoolah, with con¬
summate hypocrisy, supposing his deed unknown to the General,
came out to congratulate Havelock on his victory. He was at once
arrested, the evidence of his guilt was found to be conclusive, and
he was executed on the spot.
At Aong and Panduo Nuddee Havelock was again victorious.
This latter action brought him within a few miles of Cawnpore.
Intelligence of the defeat of his Sepoy forces reached the Nana
Sahib on the night of the 15th of July, and was immediately fol¬
lowed by the massacre of the ladies, already described.
The weary soldiers were aroused by the bugle-blast long before
daylight on the morning of the 16th. They had that day to meet
the sternest resistance they had ever yet encountered, for the whole
force of the Nana Sahib, who commanded in person, lay between
them and Cawnpore, where they hoped to find alive, and still hold¬
ing out, the noble men they were marching and fighting so hard
to save. The foe was met strongly intrenched at Ahirwa, and they
fought like furies for two hours and twenty minutes, with every
advantage in their favor. The British charge that day is described
by those who witnessed it as one of the most sublime illustrations
of the power of discipline that was ever witnessed. That little force
of thirteen hundred men moved up, steady and silent as a wall, to-
conquer or to die, amid those crashing shells and volleys of mus¬
ketry ; and the heart of the foe died within him, and his fire became
hasty and ill-directed, as the sheen of the British bayonets became
ominously distinct, till, within one hundred yards, they delivered
their fire, and with a cheer dashed through their own strioke at
the enemy. Then each rebel thought only of himself. These
humbled Brahmins dropped their weapons, stripped off their packs,
and spurred and ran for dear life back to the city of their hideous
crime, leaving all their guns in Havelock’s hands. He lost one
TOO LATE AFTER ALL TO SAVE THE LADIES. 341
hundred of his small force in this fierce contest. It is believed

that “ in no action ever fought was the superior power of arrange¬
ment, moral force, personal daring, and physical strength of the
European over the Asiatic more apparent'” than in this case, for
the rebels fought hard and well, but they had met far more than
their match, and were terribly beaten. Thus, between the 7th and
16th of July, Havelock’s men had marched one hundred and twenty-
six miles, under an Indian sun, alternated with tropical rains ; had
fought four battles, and captured forty-four guns ; yet their labors
and sufferings were only beginning. Still their General trusted in
God, and held that his soldiers’ discipline was equal to their valor,
and he resolved to push on and finish the work that was given them
to do.
The wounded are gathered and cared for, the dead buried, and
the weary heroes lie down on the soaking earth to rest and dream
of the deliverance they will surely bring to-morrow to their belea
guered friends in Cawnpore. In the middle of the night a crash that
shook the ground beneath awoke them—Nana Sahib had blown up
the Ca.vnpore magazine. On the morning of the 17th the British
marched into Cawnpore. A Eurasian with whom I am well ac¬
quainted, a Mr. Shepherd—the only living Christian in the district,
and who escaped as by a miracle—rushed out from his hiding-placc
and joined them ; he told them all, and led them to the house of
blood ! These men, who had charged to the cannon’s mouth on
the preceding day, sank down on the ground and wept like children
at this spectacle of crime and suffering. Havelock’s feelings of grief
were inexpressible. Nana Sahib’s butcheries were evidently a defi¬
ant challenge to a conflict of absolute extermination on the one side
or the other: none could misunderstand his purpose.
Resting his weary and sorrowful troops for that day, on the 19th
Havelock marched against Bithoor. But Nana Sahib had fled and
crossed the Ganges, to get between Havelock and Lucknow, so as
at least to delay his march till the Sepoys there could have time to
copy the hideous infamy of which he had given them the example.
On the 20th General Neill, at Havelock’s urgent request, had
joined him from Allahabad witn every available man—only two

hundred and seventy of the Fusileers in all. Leaving Neill at
Cawnpore with a few soldiers, Havelock, strong in hope that he
should yet be in time to save the Lucknow garrison, crossed the
Ganges on the 21st with his gallant fifteen hundred men, and
began his first march for their relief. He fought two battles and
gained two victories at Onao and Busserut Gunge in one day. But
at this season the rains deluge the whole face of the country, which
is quite flat between the two cities. There is only one road for
that forty-three miles, and his foes, recruited from Lucknow, were
swelled to ten or fifteen thousand men, with ample artillery and
cavalry. Havelock had lost many of his officers and men. The
gallant Renaud was killed ; Beatson had died of cholera ; disease
and sun-stroke were busy in his ranks ; and the great and good man
was compelled, with a sad heart, to come to the conclusion thal he
must return nearer to Cawnpore, and wait for reinforcements, ere
he could venture to resume his march. To persevere now would
be certain destruction. So he returned to Munghowur, sent his
sick and wounded to Cawnpore, and corresponded with Calcutta
and Allahabad, entreating for help.
All this time he was trying to communicate with Lucknow, by
hiring faithful natives to venture to carry letters to the garrison.
Three of his missives did reach them—short, written in Greek, and
inclosed in a quill, which the messenger could conceal in his mouth
when liable to be searched by the rebel police and others. He had
the satisfaction of receiving two replies from them, telling him of
their condition and how they looked for his arrival. They little
imagined with how small a force, and under what disadvantages, he
was trying to reach them, for he made light of his obstacles, and
wrote cheerfully of his hopes.
Neill sent out to him every available soldier that couid then be
obtained ; and with fourteen hundred healthy men Havelock com¬
menced his second march to relieve Lucknow on the 4th of August.
The enemy had taken up a strong position on their old ground, at
Busserut Gunge. The Sepoys, in great force and well posted, had the
HAVELOCK UNABLE TO ADVANCE. 343
town for their second line of defense. The country on either side
of the road was little better than a lake ; so, as it was impossible for
Havelock to turn the position, he had to advance along the road
which they so completely commanded, to drive them from their
position. But he did this, and gained the town, and drove the
rebels through and beyond it. He had only a handful of cavalry to
follow up his advantage. This was his seventh victory.
But now appeared an invisible foe whom he could not conquer.
The terrible Asiatic cholera broke out among his men, and he was
in the field, exposed to the elements, and surrounded by swamps
and malaria. He had, therefore, to retreat again, not from the face
of man, but from the fearful pestilence. He retired upon Mung-
howur, which was on rising ground, and here he wrote one of his
last letters to Mrs. Havelock, evidently fully conscious of the emer¬
gencies of his position, and says : “ I have every-where beaten my
foes, but things are in a most perilous state. If we succeed in
restoring any thing, it will be by God’s especial and extraordinary
mercy. I must now write as one whom you may see no more, for
the chances of war are heavy at this crisis. Thank God for my
hope in the Saviour! We shall meet in heaven.”
What the Duke of Wellington said of a soldier whom he saw
turn pale as he looked at the fearful breach which he was mount¬
ing up to storm—“ There is a brave man ; he sees his danger, and
yet he faces it ”—might with every propriety be said of this warrior
and his men. They were fully sensible of their risks, and yet they
gallantly faced them. What would four or five thousand men have
been to Havelock then ! But help was far away. A few hundreds
were struggling up to him from Calcutta, but the forces he needed
were tossing on the billows off the Cape of Good Hope, while
twenty thousand Sepoys, well provisioned, and in splendid condi¬
tion, lay extended across the road by which he wanted to march to
the relief of the beleaguered garrison in the Residency. He had
lost one hundred and forty men out of a thousand, and was but ten
miles on his road to Lucknow. He evidently had no alternative
but to go back to Cawnpore and wait for help. On the thirteenth
344 THE LAND OF THE VELA.
he recrossed the Ganges, and here the additional danger of his

position broke upon him. Nana Sahib had recrossed the river
before him and was threatening Cawnpore, and also his communi¬
cations with Allahabad, while Neill and his little force were on the
brink of destruction. He soon retrieved the state of affairs, fight¬
ing another well-contested battle, and scattering the rebel hosts to
the winds.
Himself and men were now doomed to a brief term of enforced
rest, which they greatly needed ere they entered upon their last
great struggle. On the 15th of September came some of the help
for which he had so longed, for Lieutenant-General Sir James
Outram, with two thousand men, reached Cawnpore that day,
General Outram could, in view of his superior rank, have at once
assumed command ; but, with a magnanimity as rare as it was
generous, he waived his right, that he might gratify and honor the
noble man whose devotion and gallantry he so highly appreciated.
He therefore issued his divisional order on the night of the 16th,
saying, “ The important duty of first relieving Lucknow has been
intrusted to Major-General Havelock, and General Outram feels
that it is due to this distinguished officer, and the strenuous and
noble exertions which he has already made to effect that object,
that to him should accrue the honor of the achievement. General
Outram is confident that the great end for which General Have¬
lock and his brave troops have so long and gloriously fought will
now, under the blessing of Providence, be accomplished. The
General, therefore, in gratitude for, and admiration of, the bril¬
liant deeds in arms achieved by General Havelock and his gal¬
lant troops, will cheerfully waive his rank on the occasion, and will
accompany the force to Lucknow in his civil capacity as Chief
Commissioner of Oude, tendering his military services to General
Havelock as a volunteer.”
Havelock gratefully and publicly acknowledged this generous
and noble conduct of his chief, and, with renewed hope, prepared
for the great task before him. The first letter of Havelock’s that
the garrison in the Residency received was on the 24th of July.
REINFORCED AND ON HIS WAY AGAIN 345
promising, as the writer fondly hoped, relief in a few days ; but it

was not till the 29th of August that they understood the reasons
of his delay, and now, nearly a month later still, he was at length
to inform them in person what he had endured in order to reach
them, and why he could not do so at an earlier day.
On the 20th of September Havelock again crossed the Ganges
with 3,179 men, composed of the 78th and 91st Highlanders, the
64th and 84th, and the 1st and 5th Fusileers, a regiment of
Sikhs, and 168 volunteer cavalry. No greater work was ever
accomplished by military skill and daring than the relief of the
Lucknow garrison by this handful of men.
The faithful native messenger, Ungud, again reached his camp,
and was at once dispatched to give the final assurance to the gar¬
rison that he was at last really coming, and that, God helping him,
they should be relieved within three or four days. This glad news
reached them on the 22d of September, and raised the drooping
spirits of all. How fervently they prayed, and how anxiously they
watched, during the three following days, trembling to think how
many precious lives of their approaching friends would have to be
sacrificed in order to rescue them !
General Havelock had to fight two battles more between Cawn-
pore and Lucknow, but these he fought and won. Within five
miles of the city they could hear the artillery booming around the
Residency of Lucknow, and the General ordered a royal salute to
be fired from his heaviest guns, in the hope that his beleaguered
friends might hear the report and understand its import—that
deliverance wras drawing nigh.
Their beaten foes fell back on their strong city, about two miles
of which Havelock’s men must fight their way through, ere they
could reach the Residency. Every inch of ground was disputed ;
palisades and barricades had to be taken at the point of the bayonet.
The flat-roofed houses had been furnished with mud-walls on the
top, on the street side, pierced for musketry, where the Sepoys
could fire on the men in the narrow streets without exposing their
own persons, thus doing dreadful execution. No words can do
justice to that march of fire and death. “ Broad, deep trenches

had been cut across the road, fitted with every kind of obstruction.
Each inch of the way was covered point-blank by unseen marks¬
men ; at every turn heavy artillery belched forth its fiery breath
of grape and canister. Above, below, on all sides, crowds of
human tigers glared from housetop and loop-holed casement upon
the intrepid band, while, as they turned the corners which open
upon the squares of the palace, surrounded by high walls, they
had to encounter from many thousand rifles an iron hurricane of
destruction and death.” A bullet here strikes General Neill, and
he falls to rise no more. But the brave men and their gallant
leaders move steadily on, capturing guns and positions, till they
reach the Kaiser Bagh—the King’s Palace Garden—which they
also capture. And here they try to collect and secure their
wounded, and rest for the night, for they can go no farther. Alas ?
many of their wounded, about whom they are so anxious, fell into
the hands of the cruel enemy, the fate of some of whom was dread¬
ful. They were collected early in the night by these barbarians
into one of the squares, and were there actually burned to death
in the doolies, or hospital litters, in which they lay.
Early the next day the troops resumed their terrible task. A long
reach of the city still separated them from the Residency. Strong
positions and lengthy streets must be won ere they are heard or
seen by their anxious friends there. The distance has often been
walked over in twenty minutes by the writer, but it took these
brave men more than twelve hours of the fiercest fighting to
accomplish it that day. This was the 25th of September. One
of the staff thus describes what followed: “About eleven o’clock
A. M. the people in the Residency could distinctly perceive an
increased agitation in the center of the city, with the sound of
musketry and the smoke of guns. All the garrison was upon the
alert, and the excitement among many of the officers and soldiers
was quite painful to witness. About half past one P. M. they
could see many of the people of the city leaving it on the north
side across the bridges, with bundles of clothes, etc., on their heads.
The Relief of Lucknow by Gen. Havelock.
THE RESIDENCY REACHED. 349 *
Still their deliverers were not yet visible. At four P. M. a report

spread that some of them could be seen, but for a full hour later
nothing definite could be made out. At five o’clock volleys of
musketry, rapidly growing louder and nearer, were heard, and soon
the peculiar ring of a Minie ball over their heads told them their
friends could be only a gun-shot from them now. They could see
the Sepoys firing heavily on them from the tops of the houses, but
the smoke concealed them. Five minutes later and the English
troops emerged where they could actually be seen, fighting their
way up the street, and though some fell at every step, yet nothing
could withstand the headlong gallantry of the men. The 78th
Highlanders were in front, led in person by General Havelock.
Once fairly seen, all doubts and fears regarding them were ended,
and then the garrison’s long pent-up feeling of anxiety and sus¬
pense burst forth in a succession of deafening cheers. From every
pit, trench, and battery—from behind the sand-bags piled on shat¬
tered houses—from every post still held by a few gallant spirits—
rose cheer on cheer, even from the hospital. Many of the wounded
crawled forth to join in the glad shout of welcome to those who
had so bravely come to their assistance. It was a moment never
to be forgotten.”
The shouting made the ladies rush out from the Tyekanahs, just
in time to witness the Highlanders and Havelock, having borne
down all before them, reach the Residency. The enthusiasm
with which they were greeted baffles all description—tears, hur¬
rahs, every evidence of relief and joy, as they welcomed Havelock
and the gallant men who had come in time to save them. Our
picture but feebly depicts this thrilling scene, yet the heart of
every humane person will easily imagine all that pen or pencil fails
to portray.
Soon the whole place was filled, the Highlanders shaking hands
frantically with every body, and then these great, big, rough-
bearded men, black with powder and mud, seized the little chil¬
dren out of the ladies’ arms, and were kissing them, and passing
them from one to another, with tears rolling down their cheeks,
thanking God that they had come in time to save them from the
fate of those at Cawnpore.
For eighty-seven days the Lucknow garrison had lived in utter
ignorance of all that had taken place outside. Wives, who had
long mourned their husbands as dead, were now suddenly restored
to them—some of them had come as volunteer cavalry with Have¬
lock—and others, looking fondly forward to glad meetings with
those near and dear to them, now for the first time learned that
they were alone in the world. On all sides eager inquiries for
relations and friends were made. Alas ! in too many instances
the answer was a painful one. Sleep was out of the question, and
the morning dawned upon the inquirers still asking for more
information.
It is excusable that you find them recording now, amid this joy
of their rescue, as they realized the success of their protracted
struggle, the proud consciousness of the defense that they had
made against such fearful odds, in preserving not only their own
lives, but the honor and lives of the ladies and children intrusted
to their keeping. Now they learned at last that they had not been
forgotten. They were told what sympathy their fearful position
had awakened in all noble hearts in England and America, and
throughout the civilized world. The general order issued next day,
in eloquent and beautiful terms, gave them official assurance of all
this.
“ Havelock’s hundred days ” were ended in success, and that
brave heart glowed with gratitude for the wonderful mercy that
had helped him thus to struggle on to the end through the terrible
tide of battle, disease, and death, to insure their safety. Now that
it was accomplished, he acknowledged the divine help in the words
of the Hebrew warrior: “Not unto us, O Lord, not unfo us, but
unto thy name give glory.”
His gallant friend General Outram here assumed command,
and in his dispatch he refers specially to a fact which shows that
a delay of forty-eight hours more might have involved the destruc¬
tion of all in the Residency. He writes: “We found that they
THE LADIES SAVED. 351
(the Sepoys) had completed six mines in the most artistic manner
—one of them from a distance of two hundred feet under our prin¬
cipal defensive works, which were ready for loading, and the firing
of which must have placed the garrison entirely at their mercy.
The delay of another day, therefore, might have sealed their fate.”
So near, apparently, did they come to being made another
“ Cawnpore.”
The few native troops that had nobly and faithfully stood by
them were well honored and rewarded. Ungud, their valiant mes¬
senger, received five hundred rupees for each letter he carried,
quite a fortune for the worthy native. The spirit of these brave
Sepoys, who had so long resisted unto blood, “ faithful among the
faithless,” may be illustrated by a sad but touching incident, re¬
lated by Mr. Rees, and which occurred at the entrance of the 78th
Highlanders on the day of the relief. Coming with a rush on the
Bailey Guard outposts, defended by the faithful Sepoys, and not
knowing it to be within the Residency inclosure, or that these
Sepoys were faithful, the Highlanders stormed it, and bayoneted
three of the men, whom they mistook for rebels. The men never
resisted, and when explanations ensued, and regret was expressed,
tine of them waved his hand, and crying, “ Kootch purwanni—
Never mind—it is all for the good cause ; welcome, friends!” he
fell and expired.
General Havelock was too weak in men to attempt to bring out
the garrison ; he had to remain shut up with them till the Com¬
mander-in-chief, Sir Colin Campbell, came to their assistance on
the 22d of November. The Sepoys still kept up their cannonade,
but at a more respectful distance, and the ladies no longer feared
either storm or capture. But Havelock’s vigor was now unmistak¬
ably on the wane. Symptoms of serious illness were developing.
By the effort of a strong will he tried to think lightly of them, and
was still actively engaged day and night ; but a “ reduced ration
of artillery bullock beef, chuppaties and rice” was poor nourish¬
ment for an invalid who had not even a change of clothing for the
following forty days, the baggage being four miles off at the
Alumbagh. Bread, tea, coffee, sugar, soap, and all such articles,,
were then unknown luxuries there. The wretches outside stiff
sustained their incessant din of shells and bullets, and raged in
tens of thousands in the streets and occupied the buildings which
all around commanded the Residency. They were as resolved as
ever to destroy the garrison, while they must have been well aware
that it could never escape from that position unless relieved by a
powerful English army.
But that army, though not large in numbers, was now on its
way. Sir Colin Campbell had landed at Calcutta, and with the
first five thousand men that arrived he started for Lucknow.
On the 16th of November Sir Colin approached the city.
Avoiding the crowded and barricaded streets, he took a course
around by the Royal Park on the east, and, being on rising ground,
his force, as they fought the enemy, could be seen from the Resi¬
dency. They were sternly resisted the whole day. The garrison
eagerly watched the conflict. One person was most conspicuous
he was mounted on a white horse, and seemed to be every¬
where. They all felt very anxious for this person, for they guessed,
and rightly too, that he was the Commander-in-chief. He ad¬
vanced upon the Residency by the Dilkoosha and Martiniere and
the line of palaces ; but it required three days of fighting for him
to accomplish his purpose. How fierce that fighting was may be
imagined from a single item in the Commander-in-chief’s dis¬
patch, wherein he says that within the limits of a single building,
the Secunderbagh, and its garden, the bodies of two thousand
Sepoys were counted.
As soon as they left the Park and entered the city they were of
course hidden from view, and terrible was the anxiety within the
Residency for their success, and even their fate, as hour after hour
went over, and the second, and even the third, day came and yet
they could not see them. Nothing was known of them but the
noise of the firing, the shouting, and the smoke of battle ; still
they felt that they must be coming nearer to them, for these
sounds gradually became more distinct. This was the moment
MEETING OF CAMPBELL, OUTRAM, AND HAVELOCK. 353
chosen for that imposition upon the sympathies of the world, the
story of “ yessie Brown ” and her “ Dinna ye hear the slogan ? ”
The heroine and the incident are alike fictitious ; but what a wide
currency the story obtained ! Martin ascertained that it was
originally a little romance, written by a French governess for the
use of her pupils, which found its way into the Paris papers, thence
to the Jersey Times, thence to the London Times, (December 12,
1857,) and afterward appeared in many of the English and Ameri¬
can papers, and is to this day quoted as authentic. Yet the inci¬
dent had some foundation in fact, though not in the form in which
the poet has presented it. The bagpipes were heard certainly,
but not till the Highlander who played them had got into the
Residency ; he was in among the first. The inspiration of the
welcome set him going. As each party of the brave deliverers
poured in they were greeted with loud hurrahs, which each gar¬
rison in the intrenchments would catch up, and so the cheers ran
the rounds, and rose one wondrous shout to heaven. He who bore
the bagpipes worked his way into this exulting mass of men,
women, and children, and as he strode up and down and around
the Residency he gave forth paens of triumph in the shrill and
joyous notes of his instrument, adding, of course, to the enthu¬
siasm, and calling forth ardent repetitions of the wild delight of
the occasion. Music never did more for the anxious human heart
than was effected in that hour by those simple bagpipes. The
sorrowful sighing* of these prisoners of hope was suddenly turned
into the joyous sense of deliverance ; and it was fitting that Scot¬
land’s music should first thrill those hearts that Scotland’s sons
had been foremost to save.
On the evening of the 17th the army of the Commander-in-chief
had fought their way near enough for the garrison to co-operate
with his fire and attempt a junction. Notwithstanding the balls
were still flying, Havelock and Outram rode forth to meet their
deliverer. And what a meeting was that! The Scottish Chief,
Sir Colin, grim with" the smoke and dust of battle, “the good Sir
James,” as Outram was called, and the dying Havelock, with their
respective staffs around them, met opposite the king’s palace gate,
about four hundred yards in front of the battered Residency, and
there stood, hand grasped in hand, amid the roar of the cannon
and the loud, glad cheers of their troops ! Mansfield was there,
and Hope Grant, and gallant Peel, with Norman, Ewart, Great-
hed, Sir David Baird, Adrian Hope, Gough, the Allisons, and
scores of others, who had fought and suffered bravely to see
that hour. All were in a tumult of joyous excitement. En¬
gland has tried to do justice to that great meeting by a magnif¬
icent picture of the scene. But how significant of their toils and
dangers is the reflection that of the names I have mentioned all but
about two of this group of Christian knights are in their graves
to-day! Campbell and Outram rest in Westminster Abbey, Have¬
lock lies in the lonely Alumbagh, (he ought to sleep with his
illustrious comrades,) and half the others repose beneath India’s
soil, on subsequent battle-fields, which had to be fought ere com¬
plete peace was conquered.
The relief of the Residency was at once followed by its evacua¬
tion. The women and children required to be promptly removed
from danger to a place of safety ; and, as this must be accomplished
without risk to any of them, the intention had to be entirely dis¬
guised from the enemy, fifty thousand strong around them. The
Commander-in-chief considerately intrusted the arrangement of this
honorable duty to General Havelock ; it was the last service he
would ever render, and most efficiently was it performed. The
whole force was admirably handled, the fire of the Residency
being sustained, and even their lights left burning till sunrise.
At midnight of the 22d all was ready, and along a narrow, tortuous
lane, (the only possible path,) protected on both sides by the out¬
posts, which, as the last of the column passed, were quietly with¬
drawn, “ the pickets fell back through the supports ; the supports
glided away through the intervals of the reserve ; the reserve, in¬
cluding the Commander-in-chief, silently defiled into the lane;
while the enemy, seeing the lights and fires burning, thought the
Residency still occupied, and kept up on the south and west sides
HAVELOCK DYING. 35 S
their usually desultory night-firing.” Not a single mishap occurred,

and, to the delight of their deliverers, not one soul that had left the
Residency that dark night was missing, as the garrison, with the
four hundred and seventy-nine ladies and children, found them¬
selves at sunrise on the morning of the 23d safe in the center of
the whole English force, camped in the Dilkoosha Park, while the
Residency, five miles away, the prison of their long agony, could be
seen in the distance, swarming all over with the enraged Sepoys,
who had just discovered, with the daylight, how completely they
had been out-generaled!
The fresh air and green fields, the bread, butter, and milk, and
clean table-cloths, and other comforts, which for many months they
had not seen or tasted, are described as almost bewildering to the
poor ladies and children, while the grateful hearts and tearful eyes
of the officers who waited upon them so tenderly was a homage to
their worth and sufferings which must have been very cheering to
them. They were safe and well protected now.
But, in a tent near by, the noble man who had so uncomplain¬
ingly endured more than his enfeebled health could bear, was sink¬
ing, now that his great work for them was done. He had been
helped off his horse and laid in a dooley. General Havelock was
seriously unwell. His gallant son, with one wounded arm hung in
a sling, was sitting by his cot, reading the Holy Scriptures and
praying with his father. He was full of gratitude for the rescue so
gloriously accomplished, and had accepted with becoming modesty
the marked attention paid to him on all sides. He had also just
heard of the gratitude of his country, the thanks of his Queen, for
his noble services, and the fact that she had made him a Baronet,
with a pension of £ 1,000 per year. But he had higher honor and
reward than this awaiting him, and in a few hours was to pass away
to its enjoyment. His disease was dysentery, which had been for
several days aggravated by the “ bread want,” so severely felt at
the Residency. Every thing that medical science and human sym¬
pathy could effect was now done, but all in vain ; there was no
remnant of strength to fall back upon, and the complaint had
assumed its malignant form. He realized that his hour had come,
and his work was done, and that now he had nothing more to do
but to die. For that, too, he was ready. “The Resurrection and
the Life" was beside him in that little tent, ready to pass with him
through the valley and shadow of death. He feared no evil. Mes¬
sages to his dear ones were delivered, and his last thoughts were
given to the Redeemer, whom he had served and loved so long.
He would say, and repeat it, “ I die happy and contented!” To
his eldest son, who waited upon him with such tenderness and
loving attention, (though himself a wounded man and needing
care,) he exclaimed, “ My son, see how a Christian can die !”
General Outram, his illustrious comrade, asked to be permitted
to see him. They had confronted danger together on many a hard-
fought field, and death in all its reality was to be faced now. The
Christian warrior looked up into the kindly, sympathetic counte¬
nance of his visitor, and said to him, “Sir James, for more than
forty years I have so ruled my life that when death came I might
face it without fear.” Then pausing, as he realized that death had
come, he added : “ So be it. I am not in the least afraid. To die
is gain !”
On the evening of the 24th he “ departed to be with Christ,”
realizing the literal truthfulness of the favorite lines,
“ My body with my charge lay down,

And cease at once to work and live.”
He was buried amid the tears of those he saved, and his compan¬
ions in arms, on the following day, in the Alumbagh, five miles on
the Cawnpore side of Lucknow.
“There rest thee, Christian warrior, rest from the twofold strife:
The battle-field of India, the battle-field of life !
* ***** *
Victorious first at Futtypore, victorious at Lucknow,

The gallant chief of gallant men is more than conqueror nowf”
\
We cannot conclude without referring to the loss of the garrison

and the cost of their rescue. Of the 1,692 fighting men in the
Residency on the 29th of June, the loss was 713—including 49
RECEPTION OF THE LADIES AT ALLAHABAD. 35/
officers—when they were finally relieved. To these are to be added

19 ladies and 53 children killed, besides those wounded. Of General
Havelock’s force of 3,179 men, the total killed and wounded, besides
76 officers, was 966, nearly a third of his force. The Commander-
in-chief had 45 officers and 536 men killed and wounded ; so that
the total casualties to rescue the Lucknow garrison amount to 121
officers and 1,490 men. Adding the loss of the garrison, the entire
number of killed and wounded was 170 officers, and 2,203 men.
The ladies and children were safely escorted to Cawnpore, and
thence to Allahabad. Word had been telegraphed in advance of
their coming, and the whole city seemed to turn out and welcome
them. Government officials, troops, natives, every body wanted to
see and greet the ladies of the Lucknow garrison, for whose safety
they had so long trembled.
At length the train rolled into the station, and the thundering
cheers that greeted them, and were over and over again repeated,
was a welcome that few have ever received. They stepped out of
the carriages, and the haggard, pale faces of many of them, with their
evidence of suffering and their scanty raiment, all told a tale that
brought the tears to many an eye. As the last of these brave
women passed out of the station, and the sympathizing crowd dried
their tears and looked after them, their pent-up feelings found
expression in response to an English soldier, who was holding on
to a lamp-post, as, flinging his cap into the air, he sung out at the
top of his voice, “ One cheer more for our women, boys !” On the
following day they went in a body to the church in Allahabad, and
there returned thanks publicly to Almighty God for their most
merciful preservation and rescue.
20
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAUSES AND FAILURE OF THE SEPOY REBELLION.
' I 'HE hate and cruelty of these fearful scenes have now to be
accounted for. To what cause are we to ascribe them ?
Next to the facts of the great Rebellion, men have sought for the
explanation of its origin.
I. The earliest reason to account for it was that put forward by
certain members of the British civil service—venerable men, who had
long administered the rule of the East India Company, and reflected
so exclusively its merely commercial and worldly spirit that they
seemed to forget they were Christians, or from a Christian land.
They so fully vindicated and illustrated their master’s doctrine
of “neutrality,” as in effect to discountenance Christianity and
favor idolatry. Of such men the slang used to be that they “ had
left their religion at the Cape of Good Hope, to be resumed there
on their return to England.”
Such men had become Hindooized from long contact with idola¬
trous usages and ceremonies, almost verifying in regard to heathen¬
ism the reality of the lines,
“Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
That to be hated, needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
They paid a certain deference to idol shrines, to caste prejudices,

and heathenish customs ; and very decidedly discountenanced all
attempts at Bible or tract distribution, or legislation which aimed
at abolishing even the cruel rites of Hindooism. They discouraged
the incoming of missionaries or their preaching, and, if public sen¬
timent would have permitted it, they would have persecuted and
expelled them, as they once actually expelled Judson, and tried to
ENGLAND'S MISREPRESENTALIVES. 359
drive away Carey, Marshman, and Ward. Even their own coun¬
trymen were not welcome to enter India as traders or merchants.
Up to the time when I reached it their ready nickname for all such
persons was, “ Interlopers.”
Long had they threatened that ruin would come if all such
people as these were not kept out, and the inhabitants of India
reserved for the exclusive manipulation of the East India Company
and its servants. No one else was needed or desired there. These
were the men who, thirty years ago, led the heathen to believe that
“the English had really no religion.” Well might they think s.o.
As the mutiny developed, these conservatives looked round for
some specific act to which they could triumphantly point the people
of England as a verification of their predictions, and an adequate
and valid reason for the Sepoy Rebellion. They found it in the
fact that the Governor General, Lord Canning, (fresh from home
and not yet tainted with their Christless “ neutrality,”) had so far
forgotten the obligations of his high position before the people of
India, that he had actually contributed money in aid of a Missionary
Society !
By an American reader this statement must be thought simply
ridiculous, and the writer be deemed trifling. But no, far from it;
we are in sober earnest. This was, in all seriousness, solemnly put
forward before the British people and Parliament as the cause of
the Rebellion by these “ most potent, wise, and reverend seigneurs”
of the East India Company ! They found a mouth-piece even in
the House of Lords, in the person of one of their former associates,
Lord Ellenborough, who rose in his place, and' lifted his hands in
horror as he announced the fact, and declared that nothing less
than Lord Canning’s recall could be considered an adequate pen¬
alty for so great a violation of the rules and traditions of the
Honorable Court!
This “ old Indian,” who thus made a fool of himself, and slurred
the Christianity of the very crown before him in the presence of
what has been called “ the most venerable legislative assembly in
Christendom,” was answered “according to his folly,” not so much
by his brother Peers, or by Christian clergymen, as by a man who

is no Christian at all. God stirred up the spirit of a Hindoo in
India to reply to it, and that far more effectually than any one else
could have done it.
I have genuine pleasure in quoting this man’s glowing words,
and, from personal knowledge of him, I believe his utterance was
the profound conviction of his heart. I commend the last para¬
graph of his speech to those who wish to know how one of the most
intelligent men in India, speaking for himself and his fellows, re¬
gards Christian Missionaries.
This enlightened native is a gentleman by the name of Baboo
Duckinarunjun Mookerjee, Secretary of the British Indian Associa¬
tion, a native club of considerable influence, with head-quarters in
Calcutta. In regard to those mistaken views put forward in the
House of Lords, the Baboo, at the next meeting of the association
in Calcutta, repudiated any such idea, as a reflection upon the people
of India, who, he alleges, can discriminate as well as other men
between a personal and an official act. He said, “ Lord Ellen-
borough, on the 9th of June last, in the House of Lords, was pleased
to observe that the recent mutinies here are attributable to an ap¬
prehension on the part of the natives that the Government would
interfere with their religion ; that the fact of Lord Canning’s ren¬
dering pecuniary aid to societies which have for their object the
conversion of the natives, operates detrimentally to the security of
the British Indian Government, which must be maintained on the
principles of Akbar, [a tolerant ruler,] but never could be main¬
tained on those of Aurungzebe, [an intolerant one,] and if it be a
fact that the Governor General has subscribed to such societies,
his removal from office would obviate the danger arising from the
error. If the premises laid down by Lord Ellenborough be correct,
there could be no two opinions as to the unfitness of Lord Canning
to fill the vice-regal chair, and the urgent necessity of his Lord¬
ship’s immediate dismissal from office ; but in considering so mo¬
mentous a question, it is requisite that the facts upon which Lord
Ellenborough grounds his premises should be fairly inquired into,
A HINDOO'S REPLY TO A BRITISH PEER. 361
and no place is more appropriate to institute that inquiry than

Hindustan, nor any assembly more competent to decide upon that
subject than the one I have the honor to address. First, let us
then inquire whether the present rebellion has arisen from any at¬
tacks, made or intended, against the religious feelings of the people
by the administration of Lord Canning ? Secondly, What are the
real circumstances that have caused this rebellion ?
“ Speaking, as I am, from the place which is the center of the
scenes of those mutinies that have drawn forth the remarks of Lord
Ellenborough, and possessing, as we do, the advantages of being
identified in race, language, manners, customs, and religion with
the majority of those misguided wretches who have taken part in
this rebellion, and thereby disgraced their manhood by drawing
their arms against the very dynasty whose salt they have eaten, to
whose paternal rule they and their ancestors have, for the last one
hundred years, owed the security of their lives and properties, and
which is the best ruling power that we had the good fortune to
have within the last ten centuries—and addressing, as I am, a
society, the individual members of which are fully familiar with the
thoughts and sentiments of their countrymen, and who represent
the feelings and interests of the great bulk of her Majesty’s native
subjects—I but give utterance to a fact patent to us all, that the
Government have done nothing to interfere with our religion, and
thereby to afford argument to its enemies to weaken their allegiance.
“ The abolition of the diabolical practice of infanticide by drown¬
ing children in the Ganges, by the Marquis of Hastings, of the
criminal rite of Suttee suicide, by Lord Bentinck, and the passing
of other laws for the discontinuance of similar cruel and barbarous
usages, equally called for by justice and humanity, by Governors
General, (though they existed among us for ages,) never for a
moment led us to suspect that our British rulers would interfere
with our religion, or weaken the allegiance of any class of subjects
in India. And is it to be .supposed that Lord Canning’s subscrip¬
tion to the Missionary Societies has ignited and fanned the awfui
fire, the flame of which now surrounds the fair provinces of Hin-
dustan, and has changed the obedient and faithful native soldiers
of the State into fiends who delight in plunder, massacre, and de
struction ? No, certainly not; our countrymen are perfectly able to
make a distinction between the acts of Lord Canning as a private
individual, and his Lordship’s doings as the Viceroy of her gracious
majesty Queen Victoria.
“ Chiefs of all denominations, both Hindoo and Mohammedan,
as well as the merchants and soldiers of both these races, possess
enough of intelligence and shrewdness to know that what a person
does in his Zaut Khass is quite a different thing to what he does in
his wohdah; and Lord Ellenborough must have been misinformed
as to the impression the Governor General’s subscription to the
Missionary Societies has produced in this country, when he sur¬
mised that that had occasioned the rebellion.
“Aware of the weight that would be attached by the British pub¬
lic to the views expressed by that personage, I feel it incumbent on
me to point out his Lordship’s mistake. Then, as to the Mission¬
aries, a man must be a total stranger to the thoughts, habits, and
character of the Hindoo population who could fancy that because
the missionaries are the apostles of another religion, the Hindoos
entertain an inveterate hatred toward them. Akbar of blessed
memory, whose policy Lord Ellenborough pronounces as peculiarly
adapted to the government of these dominions, (and which, no
doubt, is so,) gave encouragement to the followers of all sects, re¬
ligions, and modes of worship, yaugeers and Altumghas bearing
his imperial seal are yet extant, to show that he endowed lands and
buildings for the Mohammedan musjids, Christian churches, and
Hindoo devasloys. The Hindoos are essentially a tolerant people;
a fact which that sagacious prince did fully comprehend, appre¬
ciate, and act upon : and the remarks of Lord Ellenborough that
Akbar’s policy should be the invariable rule of guidance for British
Indian Governors, is most correct—but in the sense I have just ex¬
plained—and should be recorded in golden characters on the walls
of the Council Chamber. When discussing an Indian subject, it
should always be remembered that this country is not inhabited
ESTIMATE OF MISSIONARIES BT A HINDOO. 3<33
by savages and barbarians, but by those whose language and litera¬
ture are the oldest in the world, and whose progenitors were en¬
gaged in the contemplation of the sublimest doctrines of religion
and philosophy at a time when their Anglo-Saxon and Gallic con¬
temporaries were deeply immersed in darkness and ignorance.
And if, owing to eight hundred years of Mohammedan tyranny and
misrule, this great nation has sunk into sloth and lethargy, it has,
thank God ! not lost its reason, and is able to make a difference be¬
tween the followers of a religion which inculcates the doctrine that
should be propagated at the point of the sword, and that which
offers compulsion to none, but simply invites inquiry. However
we may differ with the Christian Missionaries in religion, I speak
the minds of this Society, and generally of those of the people,
when I say that, as regards their learning, purity of morals, and
disinterestedness of intention to promote our weal, no doubt is
entertained throughout the land, nay, they are held by us in the
highest esteem. European history does not bear on its record the
mention of a class of men who suffered so many sacrifices in the
cause of humanity and education as the Christian Missionaries in
India; and though the native community differ with them in the
opinion that Hindustan will one day be included in Christendom,
(for the worship of Almighty God in his Unity, as laid down in the
Holy Vedas, is, and has been, our religion for thousands of years,
and is enough to satisfy all our spiritual wants,) yet we cannot for¬
bear doing justice to the venerable ministers of a religion who, I
do here most solemnly asseverate, in piety and righteousness alone
are fit to be classed with those Rishees and Mohatmas of antiquity,
who derived their support and those of their charitable boarding-
schools from voluntary subscriptions, and consecrated their lives to
the cause of God and knowledge.
“ It is not, therefore, likely that any little monetary aid that may
have been rendered by the Governor General, in his private capaci¬
ty, to Missionary Societies, should have sown the germ of that re¬
cent disaffection in the native army which has introduced so much
anarchy and confusion in these dominions.”
3^4 TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
That will suffice. The East India Company is well, and forever
answered by one of its own Hindoo subjects.
II. Men outside of India, imperfectly acquainted with its people
and the condition of the English administration there, had their
theory to account for the rebellion, and supposed that it was owing
to causes, among which was the preference of the natives for some
other rule—say that of the Russians, whose incoming would be
hailed by them as a deliverance from a yoke which galled them,
and the misrule of which was crushing them down.
Here, too, let the natives speak for themselves. They know their
own grievances best, and have no restraint upon their utterance.
The few educated men among them have spoken. Any quantity
of testimony might be given, but two or three will suffice. These
men understand the difference of things ; know what good govern¬
ment, and personal security, and equal rights mean ; they appre¬
ciate fine roads, arrangements for irrigation, and provision for
public instruction ; they value peace, and law, and progress ; and
are well enough acquainted with their country’s history to know
that their land never had so much of all these as it has to-day.
They know this, also, notwithstanding that they are equally alive
to what they regard as the defects of the English rule, yet they
have patience, and are aware that that too is fast improving in
their interest.
One hundred and seventy years ago France contended with
England for commercial and military supremacy in Southern
India, but England won the rich prize then, as she did at the
beginning of this century, when she destroyed the embryo French
State which Perron was erecting in North India, on the banks of
the Jumna. The Marquis of Wellesley smoked the French out of
India by a vigorous use of his artillery, and the Land of the Veda
was saved, in the mercy of Heaven, from becoming a French col¬
ony, from which freedom, and the Bible, and the missionary would
have been excluded for ages, while the wealth of the conquered
people might have been employed to inflate French vanity and
extend her bigoted misrule over Europe and the world.
INDIA'S ESCAPE FROM FRENCH RULE. 365
One of India’s most intelligent sons, Baboo Bholanauth Chunder,

remarks upon this escape of his country from French domination :
“ It is well that an end was put to this French State in embryo.
The fickle and freakish Frenchman has no genius for consolidating
an empire which India wants. If he had stepped into the shoes
of the Great Mogul, India would have been brought up in sans-
culottism, under a galling chain of gilded despotism. Under French
rule the staid Hindoo would have been a strange animal, with
many a vagary in his head. How little could their own distrac¬
tions have allowed Frenchmen the time to look after the welfare
of two hundred millions of human beings. Doubtless the French
acknowledge, but fail to act up to, the necessity of accommodating
the institutions of government to the progress of information.”
He adds, as to the comparative value of the two civilizations
which contended for supremacy in his country, “ It may be ques¬
tioned whether there is not more tyranny in France than in India.
The conquered Indian is happy to have no bit in his mouth—to
speak out his grievances. It is necessary for us to appreciate cor¬
rectly the character either of the French or of the Russian. If it
be the will of Providence to have a yoke upon the neck of our
nation, our nation should, in the ripened maturity of its judgment,
discriminate, and prefer the yoke of the English to be the least
galling. Nothing less than British phlegm, and imperturbability,
and constancy, and untiring energy, could have steadily prosecuted
the task of consolidating the disjointed masses of India, and casting
her into the mold of one compact nation. They want but ‘ the
high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy ’ to attach us to their
rule with a feeling of loyalty that, not merely ‘ playing around the
head, should come near the heart.’ ”
What the Hindoo mind thinks of its present masters, and of
that possible Russian rule of which people outside of India some
times prognosticate, may be understood from the utterance of such
a native journal as “ The Som Prukash,” which, in its issue for
December, 1870, in an article on Russia and England, remarks :
“ Other nations seem to think that the Indians are disaffected
toward England, but there can be no greater mistake than this.

That there is dissatisfaction is true, but that the rule of Britain
should pass away is not the desire of any. It is the dissatisfaction
that seeks to prevent arbitrary measures, and to establish a more
large-hearted policy. If Russia or Germany depend at all upon
our dissatisfaction, they will soon find proof to the contrary.
Should there be war with Russia, all the inhabitants of India would
zealously come forward to support the Government.”
Their preference for English rule, and their appreciation of its
advantages, is equally if not more fully entertained on the western
coast. Mr. Satyendra Nath Tagore, a cultivated Parsee of Bom¬
bay, speaks for his class of the population in the following enlight¬
ened language :
“ It is not for nothing that India has been placed under the
British rule. It is impossible to think that her destinies have
been ruled by blind, unsparing Fate, or that it is for the glory
and power of England alone that such a wonderful bond of con¬
nection has been established by an inscrutable Providence between
the two countries. There is one hope, one intense conviction
from which no true patriot can escape ; that is, that England and
India are to be a mutual blessing ; that our country, once famous
in the world’s history, is destined to be helped out of her present
degeneracy and utter stagnation. And is there no reason for this
hope ? and are there no data to base this conviction upon ? What
was India a few years ago, and what do we now see around us ?
We see a marked progress, brought about by Western civilization.
We see a nation domineered over by caste and idolatry—a nation
of which the men are completely enslaved to custom, and the
women kept down and tyrannized over by the men, by dint of
sheer physical strength, which they cannot resist—a nation which
has long ceased to be progressive, and of which inertia and station-
ariness is the natural condition. Even this nation, opening its
eyes to the enormous evils around it, is gradually awakening to
the influences of the bright light of thought and knowledge, before
which millions of false stars are fading away. India sank down
YOUNG BENGAL'S OPINION OF CHRISTIANITY. 367
under the weight of the accumulated corruption of ages ; foreign

influences were requisite to arouse her. These are being felt
throughout her length and breadth. A steady, though slow, prog¬
ress is perceptible. The tyranny of society is slowly succumbing
to the gaining force of individuality and intellect. Superstition is
losing its strongholds one after another. Ceremonial observances
*
are being replaced by true principles of morality. There are many

things still wanting, hideous defects to be remedied ; but let us
work and hope for a brighter future. May India be grateful to
England for the blessing she has been enjoying under her benign
rule! May England feel that India is a sacred trust and responsi¬
bility, which cannot be thrown away ! ”
In the same spirit, but with even a wider and more candid range
of moral vision, (all the more remarkable from such a source,) Baboo
Keshub Chunder Sen of Calcutta tells the world what he and his
Brahmo Somaj think of English rule, and the Christian missions
which it protects. The Baboo says, (and I would commend his
words to the consideration of some of his Christian (?) and clerical
admirers in New York and Boston, as a lesson which they certainly
much need to learn :)
“ It cannot be said that we in India have nothing to do with
Christ or Christianity. Have the natives of this country alto¬
gether escaped the influence of Christianity, and do they owe
nothing to Christ ? Shall I be told by my educated countrymen
that they can feel nothing but a mere remote historic interest in
the grand movement I have described ? You have already seen
how, in the gradual extension of the Church of Christ, Christian
missions came to be established in this distant land, and what
results these missions have achieved. The many noble deeds of
philanthropy and self-denying benevolence which Christian mission¬
aries have performed in India, and the various intellectual, social,
and moral improvements which they have effected, need no flatter¬
ing comment ; they are treasured in the gratitude of the nation,
and can never be forgotten or denied. That India is highly in¬
debted to these disinterested and large-hearted followers of Christ
for her present prosperity, I have no doubt the entire nation will
gratefully acknowledge. Fortunately for India, she was not for¬
gotten by the Christian missionaries when they went out to preach
the Gospel. While, through missionary agency, our country has
thus been connected with the enlightened nations of the West
politically, an all-wise and all-merciful Providence has intrusted its
interests to the hands of a Christian sovereign. In this significant
event worldly men can see nothing but an ordinary political phe¬
nomenon ; but those of you who can discern the finger of Provi¬
dence in individual and national history will doubtless see here a
wise and merciful interposition. I cannot but reflect with grateful
interest on the day when the British nation first planted their feet
on the plains of India, and on the successive steps by which the Brit¬
ish empire has been established and consolidated in this country.
It is to the British Government that we owe our deliverance from
oppression and misrule, from darkness and distress, from ignorance
and superstition. Those enlightened ideas which have changed
the very life of the nation, and have gradually brought about such
wondrous improvement in native society, are the gifts of that Gov¬
ernment ; and so, likewise, the inestimable boon of freedom of
thought and action, which we so justly prize. Are not such con¬
siderations calculated to rouse our deepest gratitude and loyalty to
the British nation, and her Majesty Queen Victoria ? Her benefi¬
cent Christian administration has proved to us not only a political,,
but a social and moral blessing, and laid the foundation of our
national prosperity and greatness, and it is but natural that we
should cherish toward her no other feeling except that of devoted
loyalty.”—Carpenter s Six Months in India, Vol. II, p. 73.
Such men, of course, deprecated the Sepoy Rebellion, and
lament it to-day as the greatest mistake that their ignorant and
fanatical countrymen could have made, and the success of which
would have been the doom of India for ages. Bholanauth Chunder
speaks the mind of every enlightened Bengalee Baboo when he
says :
“ In their infatuation they entered upon a bubble scheme, the-
APPRECIATION OF THE BENEFITS OF ENGLISH RULE. 369
bursting of which no sane man could doubt. They raised the

standard for national independence, and anticipated that event at
least two centuries before its time. We have to learn much before
we ought to hazard such a leap. India can no longer be expected
to relapse into the days of a Brahmin ascendency or a Mahratta
government. The advent of the Anglo-Saxon race was not merely
fortuitous, but had been fore-ordained in the wisdom of Provi¬
dence. First of all, our efforts should be to shake off the fetters
which a past age has forged for us ; to effect our freedom from
moral disabilities ; and not to stake the well-being of the country
on the result of a contest with veteran soldiers who have marched
triumphant into Paris, Canton, and Candahar.”
Another Hindoo testimony is to the same effect, only stronger
in its satisfaction with the results :
“ The mutiny was a fatal error; it once more plunged the coun¬
try into the misrule of past ages. It jeopardized the vital interest
of India, and was to have proved suicidal of her fate. The exit of
the English would have undone all the good that is slowly paving
the way to her regeneration. Rightly understood, to own the
government of the English is not so much to own the government
•of that nation, as to own the government of an enlightened legisla¬
tion, of the science and civilization of the nineteenth century, of
superior intelligence and genius, of knowledge itself. Under this
view, no right-minded Hindoo ought to feel his national instinct
offended, and his self-respect diminished by allegiance to a foreign
rule. The regeneration of his country must .be the dearest object
to the heart of every enlightened Hindoo ; and it must be perfectly
•evident to him that the best mode of attaining this end is by striv¬
ing to raise himself to the level of his rulers. What can the most
patriotic Hindoo wish for better than that his country should, until
its education as a nation is further advanced, continue part of the
greatest and most glorious of empires, under a sovereign of the
purest Aryan blood ? ”
Baboo Chunder, in the first volume of his Travels of a Hindoo,
having twice lately gone over the extent of Hindustan Proper
gratefully contrasts the present with the past in the peace, secu¬
rity, and prosperity of the people of the great Gangetic Valley, and
ascribes it all to the beneficence of English rule. This impartial
witness says :
“ The public works of Hindoos were for the comfort only of the
physical man. The Mohammedans exhibit but the same care for
the material well-being, without any progress made by humanity
toward the amelioration of its moral condition. Far otherwise are
the public works of the English. Their schools and colleges, lit¬
erary institutions, public libraries, museums, botanic gardens, are
proofs of a greater intellectual state of the world than in any pre¬
ceding age. Supposing the English were to quit India, the benefi¬
cence of their rule ought not to be judged of by the external
memorials of stone and masonry left behind them, but by the eman¬
cipation of our nation from prejudices and superstitions of long
standing, and by the enlightened state in which they shall leave
India. In the words of De Quincey, ‘higher by far than the
Mogul gift of limestone, or traveling stations, or even roads and
tanks, were the gifts of security, of peace, of law, and settled
order.’
“ Nothing afforded me so great a pleasure as to pass through a
country of one wide and uninterrupted cultivation, in which paddy-
fields, that have justly made our country to be called the granary
of the world, extended for miles in every direction. No such pros¬
pect greeted the eyes of a traveler in 1758. Then the annual
inroads of the Mahrattas, the troubles following the overthrow of
the Mohammedan dynasty, frequent and severe famines, and viru¬
lent pestilences, had thinned the population, and reduced fertile
districts to wastes and jungles. It is on record that previous to
1793, the year of the.English Permanent Settlement, one third of
Lower Bengal lay waste and uncultivated. Never, perhaps, has
Bengal enjoyed such a long period of peace without interruption
as under British rule. From the day of the battle of Plassey no
enemy has left a footprint upon her soil, no peasant has lost a
sheaf of grain, and no man a single drop of blood. Under security
TESTIMONIES TO CHRISTIANITY. 37*
against an enemy from abroad, population has increased, cultiva¬

tion has been extended, the country has become a great garden,
and landed property has risen in value more than forty-fold in one
province, nineteen-fold in another, and more than ten-fold through •
out all Lower Bengal.
“The Mahratta freebooter, the murderous Patan, and the Jaut
bandit, have settled down to an agricultural life, and honest labor
has superseded lawless rapine as an occupation.”—Vol. I, p. 421,
etc.
I can add my personal testimony to this general peace and secu¬
rity. Traveling for nearly ten years in a palankeen, alone and
unprotected in the hands of the natives, I have slept in their
serais and under their trees, often fifty miles from any white man,
yet I moved in perfect security, was never molested, and never lost
the value of a cent in all my peregrinations. So profound is the
confidence in the power of law and the care of the Government,
that ladies travel alone in this way every night in the year without
hesitation or anxiety. Such is the security of person and property
under English rule in India. It never was so before ; and every
honest and candid mind should give them credit for what they have
there accomplished. The Hindoos do so frankly, and have even tried
to make capital out of the wonderful fact, to the credit of their own
system of idolatry, in the following singular fashion, as related by
General Sleeman in his “ Recollections.” He says :
“ A very learned Hindoo told me in Central India that the
oracle of Mahadeva (the Great God) had been at the same time con¬
sulted at three of his greatest temples—one in the Deccan, one in
Rajpootana, and one in Bengal—as to the result of the govern¬
ment of India by Europeans. A day was appointed for the
answer, and when the priest came to receive it, they found Maha¬
deva (Shiva) himself, with a European complexion, and dressed in
European clothes. He told them ‘ that their European govern¬
ment was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of
himself, and that he had come among them in this shape to pre¬
vent their cutting each other’s throats, as they had been doing for
some centuries past; that these, his incarnations, appeared to have

no religion themselves, in order that they might be the more im¬
partial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds
and sects who now inhabited the country ; that they must be
aware that they never had before been so impartially governed,
and that they must continue to obey these governors, without
attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of their gods.’ ”-
Vol. II, p. 241.
Thus Brahmos, Bengalees, Parsees, and Hindoos, the educated,
the agriculturists, and even the idolaters themselves, admit the
mighty change, and rejoice in it. Instances are even found where
candid men among them, and even Brahmins, will go further than
all these have gone, as in the recent case at Arcot and its medical
mission.
A reading-room had been opened at Madnapilly. At the dedi¬
cation, the Rev. Jacob Chamberlain delivered an address, at the
close of which a Brahmin requested permission to make some
remarks. Without the least conjecture of what he was going to
say, he was allowed to commence, when he proceeded to deliver a
remarkable eulogy on the missionaries. He compared them to
the mango tree, which, however beaten, and wounded, and stripped
of its fruit, still goes on, year by year, to yield its wholesome fruit.
He dwelt with enlargement and unction on this subject, and then
added as follows :
“ Now what is it makes him do all this for us ? It is his Bible.
I’ve looked into it a good deal at one time and another in the dif¬
ferent languages I chance to know. It is just the same in all lan¬
guages. The Bible—there is nothing to compare with it in all our
sacred books for goodness, and purity, and holiness, and love, and
for motives of action. Where did the English-speaking people get
all their intelligence, and energy, and cleverness, and power ? It
is their Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us
and say, ‘ This is what raised us ; take it and raise yourselves.’
They do not force it upon us, as the Mohammedans used to their
Koran ; but they bring it in love, and translate it into our
THE ENEMIES OF ENGLAND IN INDIA. 373
languages, and lay it before us, and say, ‘ Look at it, read it, exam¬
ine it, and see if it is not good.’ Of one thing I am convinced:
do what we will, oppose it as we may, it is the Christian’s Bible
t*hat will, sooner or later, work the regeneration of this land.”
The missionary adds, “ I could not but be surprised at this testi¬
mony thus borne. How far the speaker was sincere I cannot tell;
but he had the appearance of a man speaking his earnest convic¬
tions. Some three years ago I had attended, in his zenana, his
second wife, a beautiful girl, through a dangerous attack, and I
knew that he felt very grateful; but I was not prepared to see him
come out, before such an audience, with such testimony to the
power and excellence of the Bible. My earnest prayer is, that not
only his intellect may be convinced, but that his heart may be
reached by the Holy Spirit, and that he may soon become an ear¬
nest follower of Jesus.”
These quotations, which are rather lengthy, are of high signifi¬
cance, as showing what is the condition of multitudes of the think¬
ing classes of India, and what changes are imminent in that mag¬
nificent land, when leading men can be found thus to stand forth
before their countrymen and utter such words. To all this can be
added that England has given India the printing press, the tele¬
graph, the iron horse, the Ganges canal, (which irrigates 3,380,000
acres of land, and makes famine impossible in the Doab,) and that
these improvements are constantly on the increase. Allowing for
her time and the circumstances, she has done wonders for the land
she rules, and the immense majority of the people knew this well,
and had no sympathy for, and lent no aid to, the Sepoy Rebellion,
for they did not desire a change.
But England had her enemies. The Mohammedans generally,
the Fakirs, most of the Brahmins, the Thugs, and the lawless and
criminal classes, to a man hate her. These together amounted to
millions. Circumstances gave them an imperial name for a rallying
cry, a Peishwa’s influence and a Sepoy instrumentality for the
working power, and they made wonderful use of the peculiar com¬
bination. But why did they single themselves out, and in the
21
name of the people of India, which the immense majority never

gave them the slightest authority to use, commence the work of
extermination ? We have already given the reasons which influ¬
enced the Mogul Court, the Nana Sahib, the Mohammedans, and
the Fakirs. But there were other reasons which account for the
Brahminical interest in the matter, as well as that of the Thugs
and the lawless classes, which have not yet been presented, and a
knowledge of which is essential to a full and complete view of the
motives which originated the fearful combination against Chris
tianity, and the English power which protected it.
Slowly, but surely, the better portion of the British administra¬
tors were urging on reforms and legislation in the interests of
humanity. They had much to contend with in their noble aims
between, on the one hand, the old civilians of the Company, who
were still in the higher posts of the service, and on the other, from
the men whose power and emoluments were derived from usages
and institutions which they were striking down one by one. The
abolition of female infanticide was allowed to pass with little re¬
sistance, because it brought no profit to priest or Fakir. But it was
different with the far greater crime of deliberately roasting alive
the beautiful and wealthy ladies of the land who had the misfor¬
tune to become widows, for there the ceremonies were splendid,
the Brahmin exercised the height of awful power, and his per¬
quisites were larger than in any other ceremony of his faith.
This extraordinary and (save in India) unparalleled crime, re¬
duced to a system, sanctioned by their religion, and practiced for
ages, is so wonderful in itself and its circumstances that the West¬
ern reader will desire to be more fully informed of its character,
and the motives under which it was inflicted and endured, than
he could be by a mere passing allusion, so we pause here to
illustrate and describe it.
The suttee commemorated in this steel engraving took place in
the neighborhood of Baroda, in the dominions of the Guicowar,
during the period that Sir James Carnac was English Resident
(Embassador) at that Court. The sketch was made and the whole
PREPARING FOR THE IMMOLATION OP A HINDOO WIDOW
SUTTEE WITHOUT VEDIG SANCTION. 3 77
circumstance described, by Captain Grindley, as it was one of un¬

usual interest. The suttee was a young Brahmanee woman. On
her intention becoming known to the Resident, he went at once to
her house with the humane intention of persuading her to abandon
her purpose. Failing to produce any impression, the Resident
waited on the ruling Prince, who kindly undertook to add his per¬
suasion, but he was equally unsuccessful. Determined to prevent
her burning herself, he surrounded her premises with his troops,
fie offered her the means of subsistence, and urged the duties she
owed her family. The widow remained unmoved and unconvinced.
On being told she would not be allowed to ascend the funeral pile,
she drew a dagger from the folds of her dress, and, with all the
vehemence that passion could add to fanaticism, declared that her
blood—the blood of a Brahmin woman—should be upon the soul
of him who offered to prevent her performing her duty to her hus-
oand. Intimidated, the Guicowar with his retinue withdrew. The
unhappy woman rushed away to the river brink, and there, aided
by her friends and the Brahmins, she quickly went through the
ablutions and prescribed ceremonies, and ascended the steps to the
fatal spot—immediately behind the domed arch in the engraving—
and threw herself into the midst of the flames.
Christian women will wish to understand the reasons that could
thus so strangely and determinately overcome, in one of their sex—
a young and beautiful woman—the love of life, of friends, and of
children, and lead her to dare death in one of its most awful forms,
in obedience to what she regarded as a supreme duty.
Of suttee, or widow burning, the origin is unknown. But it
must be very ancient, for it is alluded to by Diodorus Siculus as
being then an established custom. Such a horrid rite should cer¬
tainly be able to show the highest authority for itself. According¬
ly, the Brahmins of India have asserted that the Vedas, which they
hold to be their most ancient and divine writings, have expressly
required this last evidence of a wife’s devotion to her deceased lord.
So long as these writings were unknown to the outside world, they
might make their assertion with safety. But of late years Chris-
tian men have mastered the ancient Sanscrit, and have read the
Vedas, and demanded from the Brahmins the proof of a statement
under which millions of women have been foully murdered during
the past twenty-five hundred years. The depth of their villainy has
been revealed by the appeal made to the highest authority of their
own religion. The honor of demolishing the last Brahminical pre¬
text for regarding suttee as an orthodox Hindoo practice belongs
to Horace Hayman Wilson. In a paper read by the learned pro¬
fessor before the Royal "Asiatic Society on February 4, 1854, he
proved that the passage—and it was the solitary text from all the
Vedas that the Brahmins could bring forward in its defense—the
passage quoted had actually been corrupted by the substitution of
a single letter, which changed the whole sense, agneh for agreh, the
meaning being thereby perverted from, “ let them [the widows] go
up into the dwelling',' to “let them go up into the fire"—the r
changed to n made this difference ; and these cruel men were re¬
sponsible for the flagrant corruption ! Professor Wilson added,
that he was supported in his opinion by Dr. Max Muller, and that
Aswalayana, the' author of the Grihya Sutras—a work little inferior
in authority to the Vedas themselves—actually designates the
proper person to lead the widow away at the conclusion of the
funeral rites ; so that so far from demanding her immolation, the
text inferentially enjoins the widow’s preservation. Suttee, there¬
fore, with all its antiquity, is proved by the Vedas to be, like female
infanticide, an accursed invention of modern Hindooism.
Next to the Vedas, the “Institutes of Menu” are the highest
authority to a Hindoo conscience. I have carefully read this
entire code of laws ; but not one obligation to such a rite as suttee
is to be found in it. The Brahmins have not dared to reply to the
learned professor. They assert, of course, that it is recommended
in the Shasters and Puranas ; but these are all of more recent
origin, and are far below the paramount authority of the Vedas,
and no serious doctrine can be built on them alone ; so that they
stand convicted of teaching for doctrines novelties which are only
“the commandments of men,” like the Jews of old, or the Romanists
MODERN HIND00ISM ALONE DEMANDS SUTTEE. 379
of our own day. Exactly as the present Pope has done, when,
eighteen hundred years after the canon of Scripture was closed, he
dared to invent a new doctrine — that of the Immaculate Con¬
ception of the Virgin Mary—and would fain make its belief bind¬
ing on the consciences of Catholics, even so have these Brahmins
acted at distances almost as great from the date of their own
Vedas.
Every suttee, therefore, has been without what even they regard
as the divine sanction, which alone could ordain it. Christian
Orientalists and missionaries have pressed this position, to the
utter discomfiture and confusion of these guilty Brahmins.
But while the Vedas and the Code are thus entirely silent, and
even lay down the laws by which a widow’s life is to be guided, the
inferior authority of modern Hindooism—and any thing is “ mod¬
ern ” in their view which dates within two thousand years of this
time—are particular and definite enough, in prescribing the bar¬
barous rites under which she is urged to yield her delicate body to
the devouring flames ; so that upon this fraud on the faith of
India has been built up the greatest victory that priestcraft has
ever achieved over the natural feelings and instincts of mankind in
any age or nation.
The words of the Puranas, which commend this dreadful rite,
are as follows : “ The wife who commits herself to the flames with
her husband’s corpse shall equal Arundhoti, [the exalted wife of
Vashista,] and dwell in Swarga, [heavenly bliss.] As many hairs
as are on the human body, multiplied by threescore and fifty lakhs
[each lakh, 100,000] of years, so many years shall she live with him
in Swarga. As the snake-catcher forcibly draws the serpent from
his hole in the earth, so, bearing her husband from hell, she shall
with him enjoy happiness. Dying with her husband, she purifies
three generations—her father and mother’s side and husband’s side.
Such a wife, adoring her husband, enters into celestial felicity with
him—greatest and most admired ; lauded by the choirs of heaven,
with him she shall enjoy the delights of heaven while fourteen
Indras reign.”
In the event of her husband dying while absent from her, pro¬
vision is made for her suttee in the following words of the Brah-
ma-Purana: “ If the husband be out of the country when he dies,
let the virtuous wife take his slippers, or any thing else that
belongs to his dress, and, binding them or it upon her breast, after
purification, enter a separate fire.” The same Purana adds:
“ While the pile is preparing, tell the faithful wife of the greatest
duty of woman. She is alone loyal and pure who burns herself
with her husband’s corpse. Having thus fortified her resolution,
and full of affection, she completes the Pragashita, and ascends to
Swarga.”
The circumstances are defined in which widows are excused
from the obligation of suttee. For example, if a woman has re¬
cently become a mother, or expects soon to be, she may hold her¬
self exempted ; yet even she is at liberty, thirty days after child¬
birth, to assert her fidelity by dying amid the flames.
In case a Hindoo widow decides not to burn, then these priestly
law-makers have prescribed her future condition under degrading
obligations, that often prove but a little less terrible than death
itself; but of this we shall speak more fully when we come to
describe the condition to which Hindoo law reduces the afflicted
widows of that land. Before considering the motives of this fear¬
ful sacrifice, and the extent to which it has prevailed, we will place
before our readers a description of the rite of suttee as it is usually
performed.
The husband is dead. In India the body must be disposed of
within twelve hours. In the tumult of her grief, the Brahmins and
friends wait upon the distracted widow to learn her intentions.
There is no time for reflection or second thought. Within an
hour it is usually settled. She agrees to mingle her ashes with
her lord’s. Opium or strong liquor is given to sustain her cour¬
age. Before the word is spoken the decision is with herself; but,
once consenting to die, she may not recall her words. Millions,
of course, have expressed a trembling preference for life, even with
all its future gloom to them ; but multitudes have consented at
THE MODE OF SUTTEE. 381
once to burn, and, even in advance of being asked, they have, in

the first spasm of their bereavement, uttered the fatal and irrevo¬
cable cry, “ Suth ! suth /” Orders are at once issued for the erec¬
tion of the fatal pile, and the accustomed ceremonies ; the widow,
too, has to be prepared. Friends sometimes, with more or less
sincerity, try to dissuade her from her purpose ; but all her relig¬
ious convictions and priestly advisers urge on the poor, infatuated
—perhaps intoxicated—woman to her doom. On the banks of the
sacred river, while she bathes in the Ganges, a Brahmin is coolly
reading the usual forms. She is now arrayed in bridal costume,
but her face is unvailed, and her hair unbound and saturated with
oil, and her whole body is perfumed. Her jewels are now added,
and she is adorned with garlands of flowers. Thus prepared, she
is conducted to the pile, which is an oblong square, formed of four
stout bamboos or branches fixed in the earth at each corner.
Within those supports the dry logs are laid from three to four feet
high, with cotton rope and other combustibles interlaced. Chips
of odoriferous wood, butter, and oil are plentifully added, to give
force and fragrance to the flames. The ends above are interwoven
to form a bower, and this is sometimes decked with flowers. The
husband’s body has been already laid upon it. In the south of
India the fire is first applied, and the widow throws herself into
the burning mass ; but the more general way is not to apply the
fire till she has taken her position. The size of the pile is regu¬
lated by the number of widows who are to be burned with the
body. Cases are well known, like the one at Sookachura, near
Calcutta, where the pile was nearly twelve yards long, and on it
eighteen wives, leaving in all over forty children, burned them¬
selves with the body of their husband.
When the widow, thus prepared, reaches the pile, she walks
around it, supported if necessary by a Brahmin. She then distrib¬
utes her gifts, including her jewels, to the Brahmins and her friends,
but retains her garlands. She now approaches the steps by which
she is to mount the pile, and there repeats the Sancalpa, thus : “ On
this month so named—that I may enjoy with my husband the
felicity of heaven, and sanctify my paternal and maternal progeni¬

tors, and the ancestry of my husband’s father—that expiation may
be made for my husband’s offenses—thus I ascend my husband’s
pile. I call on you, ye guardians of the eight regions of the world,
sun and moon, air, fire, ether, earth, and water, my own soul, Yama,
[god of the dead,] day, night, and twilight! And thou, conscience,
bear witness, I follow my husband’s corpse on the funeral pile! ”
She then moves around the pile three times more, while the
Brahmins repeat the Muntras—the texts on burning already quoted,
and others—and then ascends to the corpse, and either lies down
by its side, or takes its head in her lap. In some places ropes
are thrown over to bind the living to the dead, or long bamboos
are bent down upon them both, and the ends held firm by attend¬
ing Brahmins. Sometimes she is left untied and loose. All is
now ready: her eldest son, if she have one—if not, the nearest male
relative—stands ready to discharge the cruel office of executioner
by igniting the pile at the four corners quickly. The whole struct¬
ure instantly blazes up, and the poor lady is at once enveloped
in a sheet of flame. Musical instruments strike up, the Brahmins
vociferously chant, the crowd shout “ Hari-bal! Hari-bal!” [call
on Hari—a name of the god Vishnu,] so that her moans or shrieks
are drowned in the infernal din raised around her.
Just at this period of the proceedings is the dreadful moment when
woman’s courage has so often failed her, and nature has proved too
strong for fanaticism. If not at once overwhelmed or suffocated,
even though she knows that her attempt to escape will be resisted
as a duty by her own friends, who would regard her as an outcast,
the .victim not unfrequently, when left untied, springs off the burn¬
ing mass among the spectators and piteously pleads for life.
Alas ! it is too late ; there is no mercy for her now! She is at
once struck down by a sword or a billet of wood, and flung back
again on the pile, her own son having been known to be one of
the most forward to tie her hands and feet for this purpose.
The writer remembers to have heard of a case at Benares, where
the poor woman was actually saved by a sudden and singular
THE EXTENT TO WHICH SUTTEE HAS PREVAILED. 383
thought of the English magistrate, a young gentleman of the name

of Harding. On the death of the Brahmin, Mr. Harding was suc¬
cessful in persuading the widow not to burn ; but twelve months,
after she was goaded by her family into the expression of a wish,
to burn with some relic of her husband preserved for the purpose.
The pile was prepared for her at Ramnugger, two miles above
Benares, on the other side of the Ganges. She was not well se¬
cured on the pile, and as soon as she felt the fire she jumped off
and plunged into the river. The people ran after her along the
bank; but the current carried her toward Benares, where a police
boat put off and took her in. Her oiled garments had kept her
afloat. The police took her to the magistrate, but the whole city
of Benares was in an uproar at the rescue of a Brahmin’s widow
from the funeral pile. Thousands surrounded Mr. Harding’s house,,
and the principal men of the city implored him to surrender the
woman ; among the rest was her own father, who declared that he
could not support his daughter, and that she had, therefore, better
be burned, as her husband’s family would not receive her. The
uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who felt all the re¬
sponsibility upon himself in such a fanatical city as Benares, with
a population of three hundred thousand people. He long argued
the point with the crowd, urging the time that had elapsed, and the
unwillingness of the woman, but in vain ; until at length the thought
struck him suddenly, and he said that the sacrifice was mani¬
festly unacceptable to their god—that the sacred river itself had
rejected her, as she had, without being able to swim, floated down
two miles upon its bosom, in the presence of them all; and it was,
therefore, clear that she had been rejected ! Had she been an ac¬
ceptable sacrifice, after the fire had touched her the river would
have received her! This Hindoo reason satisfied the whole crowd.
The father said, after this unanswerable argument, he would re¬
ceive his daughter. So the poor woman was saved.
The question has been raised, To what extent has suttee pre¬
vailed ? It is very difficult to reach even an approximate reply h>
this inquiry. Lord Bentinck’s efforts for the abolition of the rite
led to the possession of the only reliable statistics that we have

upon the subject. From these the rest must be inferred. The
cruel custom has been almost restricted to the affluent and higher
orders, as the poor are unable to bear the expense ; so that it has
been the most exalted, wealthy, and beautiful ladies of the land who
have thus been immolated.
From statistics obtained by the magistrates of the district around
Calcutta prior to 1829, a published list gives fifty-four cases in the
months of May and June, 1812, where sixty-nine women, of ages
from sixteen to sixty, were burned with these fifty-four dead bodies ;
leaving altogether one hundred and eighty-one children, who were,
as in all such cases, thus deprived of both parents at once. An¬
other list for the region within thirty miles of Calcutta, gives two
hundred and seventy-five known cases for the year 1803. In the
Bengal presidency, in the year 1817, there were seven hundred and
six cases recorded—nearly two each day for that part of India
alone. In ten years, from 1815 to 1825, these lists, for the locali¬
ties where English magistrates took note of suttees, show that five
thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven widows were thus immo¬
lated ! These are only the more public instances coming to the
knowledge of the magistrates within the limited portion of India
then directly ruled by England. But what of those of all the rest
of the country, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin ? And, if they
could be numbered and known, then, to obtain the sum total, you
have to multiply them by the two thousand five hundred years dur¬
ing which these unwarranted and fiendish cruelties have been prac¬
ticed on gentle women before the face of heaven in India! The
blood of these millions of women has been crying to God from the
ground all that time, against the Brahmins of Hindustan.
The origin of suttee, some have supposed, might be found in the
cruel jealousy of husbands, reaching thus beyond the grave ; while
others refer it to the tradition that it was adopted as an expedient
for the preservation of men’s lives. Doctor Chever, in his recent
work on Indian Medical Jurisprudence, traces the custom to this
origin. He brings forward authorities to show that the Brahmins
THE MOTIVES OF SUTTEE. 385
themselves invented the law as a means of self-protection against

their wives. Before its introduction, the wives were in the habit of
avenging themselves on their husbands for neglect and cruelty by
mixing poison with their food; and at last things came to such a
height that the least matrimonial quarrel resulted in the husband’s
death. An easier remedy for the evil might have been found in
compelling the wife to eat out of the same dish as the husband, but
this would have involved too wide a departure from the customs of
society; and it must be admitted that there is a peculiar refine¬
ment of cruelty in the expedient adopted, which would commend
itself to the Asiatic mind. The Brahmins thus gave the matron
an interest in the preservation of her lord’s life, by decreeing that
her ashes should mingle with his. If this were its origin, then the
deepest insult was added to the most cruel wrong of which woman
can be made the victim, when thus surrendered to a false religion,
and into the hands of men as oppressive as their faith.
The motives which have perpetuated the rite are more easily
found. So far as the priestly Brahmin is concerned, he has a
direct pecuniary interest in the existence and increase of the cruel
custom. Brahmins officiating at suttees are always well rewarded,
both by fees and gifts ; and quarrels among themselves about their
earnings are no novelty. The family of the immolated woman are
taught that to them belong the invisible and spiritual blessings of
the suttee—that this doomed widow’s agonies are to expiate the
foulest sins of them and of her husband, and lift them all to heav¬
enly bliss. The reader will remember the Puranas already quoted,
where this is expressly taught. Hence the eagerness with which
her consent to become a suttee is sought, and the barbarity which
helps on, and even enforces, her destruction when her resolution has
failed. The motives of the poor lady herself are still more mani¬
fest. There is, first of all, her obedience to her religious obliga¬
tions. Her faith, like that of the Romanist, must be an un¬
questioning faith. Woman in India seems never to have thought
of looking behind this Brahminical teaching, and demanding a
•“ Thus saith the Lord ” for the peculiar woes to which she submits.
586 THE LAJSTD OF THE VEDA
Then there is the appeal to her love as well as her duty. She is
told, and her uninstructed soul believes the lie, that her husband
needs the attendance and care in the other world which she lav¬
ished upon him here ; nay, more, that he is actually suffering for
want of it. Her terrified imagination is appealed to, and he is pict¬
ured in a fearful intermediate hell—the counterpart of the Romish
doctrine of Purgatory—out of which her merits alone can lift him ;
and her loving heart urges her to the great effort, which is to save
and bless him, and herself with him. Again, there is the motive
of fame. By it she can demonstrate the perfection of her conjugal
devotion ; she rises from obscurity, before her friends and the world,
to the eminence of a heroine, a saint, a savior; she avoids a life of
insult and misery, and the splendid monument on the spot where
she suffers will keep her name and memory before her people in
future ages.
I was intimate with a family in India, the head of which, a phy¬
sician, gave the following description of a suttee at which he was
actually present. It was in the city of Lahore, in June 1839, and
was witnessed by this gentleman and some other Europeans. The
occasion was the burning of the body of the Maharajah Runjeet
Singh—he who was commonly called the “ Lion of the Punjab/'
and who was the last Oriental sovereign that wore the great Koh-
i-noor diamond. (The father of the Prince represented on page 47.)
On account of his special orders, the funeral pile was composed of
an unusual quantity of the precious sandal-wood. It was also made
large enough for his eleven wives to burn with his body. Early in
the morning, an immense concourse attending to witness the cere¬
mony, the body of the Maharajah, decorated and wrapped in Cash¬
mere shawls, was brought out from the palace and the procession,
formed, the four Ranees (Queens) in order, unvailed, sitting in open
palanquins, followed by the seven other wives on foot, barefooted
—some of them, the doctor declared, being not more than four¬
teen or fifteen years old. Then came the .court, the officials, the
military, and the crowd. The ceremonies performed, the body was
lifted to the top of the great pile ; then the four Ranees ascended
INSTANCES OF SUTTEE. 387
in the order of their rank, seating themselves at the head ; the other
seven placed themselves around the feet. The chief widow, now sit¬
ting on the funeral pile, apparently as calm as any American mother
on her dying bed, called to her Khuruk Singh, the son, and Dhian
Singh, the favorite minister, of the Maharajah, and, placing the dead
king’s hand first in the hand of the royal heir, and then in the hand
of the powerful minister, made them swear to be mutually faithful.
They then retired, and a strong, thick mat of reeds was placed
around and over the ladies, and oil plentifully poured upon it. There
they cowered in silent expectation of the fatal moment. The brand
was applied quickly, and the roaring flames leaped up and enveloped
them, and in fifteen minutes nothing remained of the eleven beau¬
tiful women but a heap of bones and ashes. Preparation was now
made to convey part of their remains to the Ganges. Some of the
bones and ashes of each were placed in urns ; these were put in
separate palanquins richly decorated, and attended with the same
pomp and splendor as if the Maharajah and his wives were still
alive. Surrounded by guards and attendants, and accompanied by
costly presents, such as shawls, decorated elephants and horses,
with money, etc., for the Brahmins, the procession passed through
the Delhi gate, amid the last royal salute from the fort and ramparts
of the city. Here the minister and chiefs returned, leaving the
remains and presents to proceed under the care of the military.
The Brahmins received the whole on its arrival at the Ganges.
The bones and ashes they put into the river, the valuables they
divided among themselves, and the guard returned. The whole
ceremony was one of the most extravagant ever seen in India,
and must, Dr. Honiberger thinks, have cost several millions of
rupees.
That the subject maybe fully understood, I will add two cases of
suttee where the victims were more than usually willing, and exhib¬
ited a resolution that will surprise the reader. The first is de¬
scribed by an intelligent young native, who was the nephew of the
lady burned. He gives the facts from his Hindoo stand-point, yet
with much simplicity and candor.
He says: “Fearing intervention from the British authorities, it

was decided that this solemn rite, contrary to the usual practice,
should be performed at a distance from the river-side. The margin
of the consecrated tank was selected for the purpose. After cere¬
monies of purification had been performed upon the spot, strong
stakes of bamboo were driven into the ground, inclosing an oblong
space about seven feet in length and six in breadth. Within this
inclosure the pile was built of straw, boughs, and logs of wood ;
upon the top a small arbor was constructed of wreathed bamboos,
and this was hung with flowers within and without. About an
hour after the sun had risen, prayers and ablutions having been
carefully performed by all, more especially by the Brahmins and
Lall Radha, the widow, who was also otherwise purified and fitted
for the sacrifice, the corpse of the husband was brought from
the house, attended by the administering Brahmins, and surrounded
by the silent and weeping friends and relations of the family.
Immediately following the corpse came Lall Radha, enveloped in a
scarlet vail, which completely hid her beautiful form from view.
When the body was placed upon the pile, the feet being toward
the west, the Brahmins took the vail from Lall Radha, and, for the
first time, the glaring multitude were suffered to gaze upon that
lovely face and form ; but the holy woman was too deeply engaged
in solemn prayer and converse with Brahma to be sensible of their
presence, or of the murmur of admiration that ran through the
crowd. Then, turning with a steady look and solemn demeanor to
her relations, she took from her person, one by one, all her orna¬
ments, and distributed them as tokens of her love. One jewel only
she retained, the tali, or amulet, placed around her neck by her
deceased husband on the nuptial day ; this she silently pressed to
her lips. Then, separately embracing each of her female relatives,
and bestowing a farewell look upon the rest, she unbound her hair,
which flowed in thick and shining ringlets almost to her feet, gave
her right hand to the principal Brahmin, who led her with cere¬
mony around the pile, and then stopped, with her face toward it, on
the side where she was to ascend. Having mounted two or three
INSTANCES OF SUTTEE. 3 *9
steps, the beautiful woman stood still, and, pressing both her hands
upon the cold feet of her lifeless husband, she raised them to her
forehead, in token of cheerful submission ; she then ascended and
crept within the little arbor, seating herself at the head of her lord,,
her right hand resting upon his head. The torch was placed in
my hand, and, overwhelmed with commingled emotions, I fired the
pile. Smoke and flame in an instant enveloped the scene, and
amid the deafening shouts of the multitude, I sank senseless upon
the earth. I was quickly restored to consciousness, but already
the devouring element had reduced the funeral pile to a heap of
charred and smoldering timber. The Brahmins strewed the ashes,
around, and with a trembling hand I assisted my father to gather
the blackened bones of my beloved uncle and aunt, when, having
placed them in an earthen vessel, we carried them to the Ganges,,
and with prayer and reverence committed them to the sacred
stream.”
The other, and the most determined instance of suttee, in view
of her age, etc., that is on record, is described by an English gen¬
tleman who was governor of that part of the country, and in
whose presence it took place. He says : “ On receiving charge of
the District of Jubbulpore in 1828, I issued a proclamation prohib¬
iting any one from assisting in suttee. On Tuesday, November
24, 1829, I had an application from the heads of the most respectable
family of Brahmins in the place to suffer an old lady, aged sixty-
five years, to burn herself with the body of her husband, Omed
Sing Opuddea, who had died that morning. I threatened to
enforce my order and punish severely any man who assisted, and
placed a police guard to see that no one did so. She remained
sitting by the edge of the river with the body, without eating or
drinking. The next day the body of her husband was burned to
ashes in a small pit, about eight feet square and four deep, before
thousands of people who had assembled to see the suttee. All
strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed no prospects
of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family, who, ac¬
cording to the rules of their faith, dared not touch food till she had
burned herself, or declared herself willing to return to them. Her

sons and grandsons and some other relatives remained with her,
urgjng her to desist; the rest surrounded my house, urging me to
allow her to burn. She remained sitting upon a bare rock in the
bed of the Nerbudda, refusing any subsistence, and exposed to the
intense heat of the sun by day, and the cold of the night, with only
a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut off
all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on Ihe
dhujja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by
which she became dead in law, and forever excluded from caste.
Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her
family. Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but*
all their entreaties were unavailing. I became satisfied that she
would starve herself to death if not allowed to burn, by which her
family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I rendered
liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for no pro¬
hibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the formal
sanction of the Government. Early on Saturday morning I rode
out ten miles to the spot, and found the poor old widow still sit¬
ting with the dhujja around her head. She talked very collectedly;
telling me that ‘ she had determined to mix her ashes with those
of her departed husband, and she would patiently wait my permis¬
sion to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till
that was given, though she dared not eat or drink.’ Looking at
the sun, then rising before her over a long and beautiful reach of
the Nerbudda River, she said calmly, ‘My soul has been for five
days with my husband’s near that sun ; nothing but my earthly
frame is left, and this I know you will in time suffer fo be mixed
with the ashes of his in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature
or your usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old
woman.’ I replied, ‘ Indeed it is not; my object and duty is to
save and preserve them, and I am come to dissuade you from this
idle purpose, to urge you to live and keep your family from being
thought your murderers.’ She said, * I am not afraid of their ever
being so thought ; they have all, like good children, done every
A DETERMINED INSTANCE OF SUTTEE. 391
thing in their power to induce me to live among them, and if I had
done so, I know they would have loved me and honored me, but
my duties to them have now ceased. Our intercourse and com¬
munion here end. I go to attend my husband, Omed Sing Opud-
dea, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already
three times mixed.’
“ This was the first time in her long life that she had ever pro¬
nounced the name of her husband ; for in India no woman, high or
low, pronounces her husband’s name. She would consider it dis¬
respectful toward him to do so. When the old lady named her
husband, as she did with strong emphasis, and in a very deliberate
manner, every one present was satisfied she had resolved to die.
Again looking at the sun, she said with a tone and countenance
that affected me a good deal, ‘I see them together under the bridal
canopy !’ alluding to the ceremonies of marriage ; and I am satis¬
fied that she at that moment really believed that she saw her own
spirit and that of her husband under the bridal canopy in paradise,
and equally believed that she had been, in three previous births,
three times married to him on earth, and as often had died with
him, and must repeat it now again. I asked the old lady when
she had first resolved to become a suttee ? She told me that
about thirteen years before, while bathing near the spot where she
then sat, the resolution had fixed itself in her mind, as she looked
at the splendid temples on the bank of the river erected by the
-different branches of the family, over the ashes of her female rela¬
tives, who had at different times become suttees. Two were over
her aunts, and another over her husband’s mother. They were
very beautiful buildings, erected at great cost. She said she had
never mentioned her resolution to any one, till she called out Suth !
suth ! suth ! when her husband breathed his last, with his head in
her lap, on the bank of the Nerbudda, to which he had been taken,
when no hopes remained of his surviving the fever of which he
died.
“ I tried to work upon her pride and her fears—told her that it
was probable that the rent-free lands, by which her family had
22
been so long supported, might be resumed by the Government, as

a mark of displeasure against the children for not dissuading her
from the sacrifice ; that the temples over her ancestors on the
bank might be leveled with the ground, in order to prevent their
operating to induce others to make similar sacrifices ; and, lastly,
that not a single brick or stone should ever mark the place where
she burned, if she persisted in her resolution ; but that, if she con¬
sented to live, a splendid habitation should be built for her among
these temples ; a handsome provision assigned for her support out
of these rent-free lands ; her children should daily visit her, and
I should frequently do the same. She smiled, held out her arm,
and said : ‘ My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has de¬
parted, and I have nothing left but a little earth that I wish to mix
with the ashes of my husband. I shall suffer nothing in burning ;
if you wish proof, order some fire, and you will see this arm con¬
sumed without giving me any pain.’
“ Satisfied that it would be unavailing to save her life, I sent for
all the principal members of her family, and consented that she
should be suffered to burn herself if they would enter into engage¬
ments that no other member of their family should ever do the
same. This they all agreed to ; and the papers having been drawn
out in due form, about mid-day I sent down notice to the old lady,
who seemed extremely pleased and thankful. The ceremonies of
bathing were gone through with, the wood and other materials for
a strong fire collected and put into the pit. She then rose up, and,
with one arm on the shoulder of her eldest son, and the other on
her nephew, she approached the fire. I had sentries placed all
around, and no one else was allowed to go within five paces of it.
As she rose up fire was set to the pile, and it was instantly in a
blaze. The distance was about one hundred and fifty yards. She
came on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once, and,
casting her eyes upward, said: ‘ Why have they kept me five days
from thee, my husband ? ’ On reaching the sentries her supporters
stopped ; she advanced, walked once round the pit, paused, and,
while muttering a prayer, threw some flowers into the fire. She
ABOLISHED AT LENGTH BY LORD BED TIN OK. 393
then walked deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the
center of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst, as if
reposing upon a couch, was consumed, without uttering a shriek or
betraying one sign of agony ! ”
In another part of the country a most affecting instance occurred.
A young princess named Mutcha Bae lost first her son and then
her husband. She resolved upon being burned with the corpsb of
the latter, and met the remonstrance of her own mother, the excel¬
lent Alia Bae, who begged that she might not be left thus alone
and desolate in the world, by saying, “You are old, mother, and a
few years will terminate your pious life. My husband and my only
child are gone, and when you follow, life, I feel, will be insupporta¬
ble, and the opportunity of closing it with honor will then have
passed.” Nothing could alter her purpose ; and the royal mother,
finding she could not prevail on her child to consent to live, resolved
to witness her beloved daughter’s suttee. She joined the cruel pro¬
cession and stood close to the pile : two Brahmins held her by the
arms. She bore it all till the flames rose round her beautiful child,
when she lost all her self-control; she shrieked with anguish, while
the crowd shouted; and her hands, which she could not liberate,
she actually gnawed in agony. By great effort she so far regained
her self-possession as, after the bodies were consumed, to join in
the ceremony of bathing in the Nerbudda. Then she retired to
her palace, and for three days she fasted in her deep grief, never
uttering a word. She subsequently sought relief in erecting a
beautiful monument to the memory of the dear departed. Such
monuments, the tombs of suttees, varying in size and form, yet
generally pyramidal, are seen along the banks of the different
sacred rivers.
At length this terrible crime, which the edicts and energy of
such emperors as Akbar and Aurungzebe could not restrain, trem¬
bled before the cross of Christ. The Protestant missionary entered
India, and stood up to “ plead for the widow.” Before the blessed
Name which he invoked, the demon of suttee feared and fled
from British India. What Veda, and Shaster, and Menu, Moham-
medan Emperor and European governor, all failed to prevent 01

terminate, in the long experience of twenty-five centuries, was
effected by the beneficent religion of Him who, in every age and
in every land, has proved himself to be woman’s greatest and truest
friend.
The honored man who signed the prohibitory edict which ended
this awful crime was Lord William Bentinck. He bore unappalled
the brunt of native and European opposition. The highest English
functionaries expressed their forebodings of da.7iger from its forcible
suppression, and the Brahmins protested and defended it, as a re¬
ligious rite that must not be meddled with. Amid this storm of
opposition and fears, and sustained by the sympathy and prayers of
the missionaries and other good men, his Lordship, on the 4th of
December, 1829, signed the act which ended this outrage on human
nature and the laws of God. Widow-burning prevails still, to some
extent, in those provinces of India not under the direct govern¬
ment of England. Two notable cases were recorded while I was in
India—one in March, 1858, in the city of Aurungabad, in the do¬
minions of the Nizam, and the other in August, 1859, at Koonghur.
But the flag of Britain no longer waves over a suttee, and the gov¬
ernors are doing what they can to induce the native Princes to com¬
plete its suppression.
Lord Bentinck visited Behrole in 1832, in company with General
Sleeman, and, pointing to some magnificent tombs of suttees, asked
what they were. When told, he remained silent; but he must have
felt at the moment the proud consciousness of the debt of gratitude
which India and India’s daughters owe to the statesman who had
the Christian courage to put a stop to the.great evil in spite of the
fearful obstacles that opposed him.
O, Christian women of America! amid your happy homes, and the
exalted privileges and honor with which the Cross has surrounded
you, remember your sisters who are still in the bonds of this cruel
idolatry! Urge on and extend the missions that are toiling there,
until they penetrate to the very last of “the dark places” of India,
where “the habitations of cruelty” still erect the suttee ; and theie
group ot Thugs.— From a Photograph.
THE THUGS. 397
let them, in Jesus’s name, “relieve the oppressed, judge the father¬
less, and plead for the widow.”
Meanwhile, let us bless God for that wonderful victory of Chris¬
tian civilization in 1857-58 over Brahminical rebels, who, had they
triumphed, would most surely have rekindled the fires in which, as
in former days, the daughters of India would again have had to
mount their chariots of flame, to be borne, not to their Vedic heav¬
en, but before the tribunal of Him who has forbidden self-murder,
because he “ will have mercy and not sacrifice,” and who declares to
the deluded suttee, as to the wayward sinner, “ I have no pleasure
in the death of him that dieth.”
In all lands, but especially in a country like India, with the mill¬
ions utterly uneducated, and debased in conscience and morals,
there are “ dangerous classes,” who live by fraud and violence, and
who are ever ready for any opportunity of plunder and crime that
may occur.
But in India there exists what is not found elsewhere on earth,
a class of men whose trade is blood, who follow murder as a pro¬
fession, and even perform it as a religious duty! The Thugs for
centuries have
“Laughed at human nature and compassion.”
Their organization was complete ; they were bound to each other

by oaths and engagements as relentless as death and as heartless
as hell. Their accessions were from the worst of all classes ; the
perfection of villainy became a Thug.
I present here seven members of this infernal association, whom
I have seen in India. Every man of the group is a murderer, and
a murderer, not by the heat of passion, or revenge, or the stimulus
of strong drink, but a cool, sober, unexcited trader in human life,
whose conscience knows no remorse, because he regards himself as
rendering in the act the highest service to his chosen deity!
One day, at Agra, I had the opportunity of seeing these mon¬
sters. The English Government have a special police and staff—
one of the most perfect detective systems in the world—for the
capture of these wretches. At the head of this “Thuggee De-
39^ TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
partment” was Colonel Williams—he whom Government employed

to take the evidence of the Cawnpore Massacre. A number of
ladies, among whom was Mrs. Havelock, the General’s sister-in-
law, expressed a desire to visit the Taj that afternoon. The court¬
eous Colonel offered to escort us, and on our return casually
remarked, as we crossed the road from the Taj, “Come, and I will
show you something else.” So he turned down an ominous-look¬
ing portal, and we followed him through the guarded gate into a
square with high walls, and thence by a gloomy passage into an¬
other inclosed court, where were a group of some of the most awful-
looking men that I had ever seen. The Colonel coolly remarked,
“ These are some of my pets.” In a moment we realized where
we were standing, three gentlemen and a party of ladies unguarded,
in the very presence of nearly two hundred Thugs ! It made one’s
flesh creep. The feeling was dreadful, and the situation was not
at all relieved, when, in retiring again through the long, dark pas¬
sage, a number of these wretches came clanking close after us, to
plead in the outer court for some concession from the Colonel.
The ladies of the party could hardly forgive our gallant escort for
the trick he played upon them in leading them into such a pres¬
ence, and that, too, after coming out of the Taj. It seemed like
leaving paradise and descending into hell among those who, in
chains and darkness, await the judgment of the great day!
The Colonel permitted a photograph to be taken of some of the
most notorious of his collection. They were unshackled, and
brought into the parlor of the prison for the purpose. He pointed
out one man (the one in front, on the left hand in the picture)
who had confessed to having committed thirty murders, and who
had given him the details of each ! And yet every one of these
heartless villains were let loose upon society when the Sepoys rose,
and since the suppression of the Rebellion the Thuggee Depart¬
ment has had a busy time in ferreting them out and recapturing
them.
Sixty years ago these men plied their dreadful trade almost un¬
molested. The native Governments could not cope with them.
DIVINE SANCTION FOR THUG GEE ISM. 399
They infested the public roads disguised as merchants, travelers,
and Fakirs, but always in gangs, each man knowing his part of the
service when the moment came for action.
If any thing further were possible to add a more damning char¬
acter to these deeds of blood it is found in the fact that Hindoo
Thuggeeism has dared to add a divine acquiescence to these prac¬
tices ; for their abominable creed has furnished a suitable patron
to accept and delight in the groans and dying agonies of their
wretched victims.
The consort of Shiva—the third member of the Hindoo Trimurti
-the female Moloch, to whose horrid appetite for blood, and hun¬
ger for the human lives on which she is represented as feeding,
with a desire that is insatiate, is the being to appease and gratify
whom the benighted mothers of India have for ages sacrificed their
daughters’ lives, and her adorers, these Thugs, have strangled the
thousands whom they have immolated. Her name is Kalee. She
is the most popular deity of Bengal—the etymology of the name
of the metropolis of India being derived from her designation and
shrine—Kalee, and Ghat, a place of ablution—Kalee’s-ghat—hence
Calcutta.
Of this abominable idol the Kalika Purana declares, in de¬
scribing her appetite for blood and carnage : “ If a devotee should
scorch some member of his body by applying a burning lamp, the
act would be very acceptable to the goddess ; if he should draw
some of his blood and present it, it would be still more delectable;
if he should cut off some portion of his own flesh and present it as
a burnt-offering, that would be most grateful of all. But if the
worshiper should present her a whole burnt-offering, it would prove
acceptable to her in proportion to the supposed importance of the
animated beings thus immolated—that, for instance, by the blood
of fishes or tortoises, the goddess is gratified for a whole month
after; a crocodile’s blood will please her three months; that,of
certain wild animals nine months ; a guana’s, a year ; an antelope’s,
twelve years ; a rhinoceros’s, or tiger’s blood, for a hundred years ;
but the blood of a lion, or a man, will delight her appetite for a
thousand years ! while by the blood of three men, slain in sacrifice,

she is pleased a hundred thousand years !”
This is the patroness of these Thugs, these professional murder¬
ers, who, when their victim is in the agonies of strangulation be¬
neath their knees, on the ground, are engaging in acts of prayer—
offering to Kalee the life that is passing away—and to this abomi¬
nation, thus said to feed on the human soul, have the mothers
of India for ages immolated their daughters !
So popular is she and her worship, that even the English Gov¬
ernment cannot keep the public offices open during the term of
the “ Durga-Poojah” holy days, from the first to the thirteenth of
October, for all Calcutta then runs mad upon this idolatry. I
have seen her image, larger than the human form, painted blue,
with her tongue represented as dripping with gore upon her chin,
her bosom covered with a necklace of human skulls, and her many
arms each bearing a murderous weapon, carried in proud proces¬
sion through the streets of Calcutta during those holidays, ac¬
companied by bands of music and tens of thousands of frantic
followers.
Of this teaching and worship Thuggeeism was the natural re¬
sult, combining rapine with religion, the service of their goddess
with love of plunder—the life for her, the booty for themselves. It
raised ruffianism to the dignity of a fulfillment of duty, and swelled
the numbers of these religious murderers to a fearful height, till the
public thoroughfares were haunted by these wretches, as well as
by the brigands and plunderers who imitated them in their lesser
guilt. It was on the discovery of thirty dead bodies in different
wells of the Doab, (when these assassins had grown to be so reck¬
less in their work that they were ceasing to act with their usual
caution in burying and concealing the bodies of their victims,) that
Thuggeeism was first brought to the knowledge of the English
Government in 18io ; and so determined were the measures taken
by them for its suppression, and so faithfully have they since been
followed up, that the Thug had to disappear from the roads of
British India, and confine his limited depredations within the
WHAT THE CONFLICT INVOLVED. 401
bounds of native States, where English law cannot penetrate.

Hundreds of them were ferreted out, and are now confined for life
within the walls of safe jails. The Government presses upon the
rulers of native States the necessity of imitating English example
in this regard. But, while willing to follow the friendly advice of
the paramount power, they have not yet the nerve and energy of
the Anglo-Saxon, to accomplish its complete extirpation.
Even as late as the days of Bishop Heber (1825) the common
people went to market armed with swords and shields and spears
and matchlocks. Just as I have seen the plowman in Oude, at the
time of the annexation, with his sword by his side and his friends
within view—such was the public apprehension of the lawless and
violent, by whom life and property might at any moment be assailed.
What a change has the presence of the English magistrate made
all over the land, within twenty-five years ! Very justly does a
native writer remark : “ The trader and traveler now pass along the-
loneliest highway without losing a pin. If a corpse were now dis¬
covered in a well, or found by the side of a jungle, it would cause a
general uproar in the community, and create a greater sensation
than the irruption of a Mahratta horde. The wicked have been
weaned from their life of rapine, and taught to subordinate them¬
selves to the authorities of society and the State.”
Over and above all these elements of wrath and hatred might be
enumerated the “ Budmashes,” “ Dacoits,” “Goojurs,” and criminal
classes generally, with all the disaffected elements of every kind,
who only needed the sanction of their Brahmins and Fakirs, and
the leading of the Sepoys, to be ready for every evil work against
law, reform, and government. The reader, from these conditions
of society, can easily divine for himself the causes and motives of
the great Sepoy Rebellion. He can see what classes, and how
many, regarded it with terror and detestation, and what classes
reveled in its developments, and by what purposes they were
actuated.
Can any just and adequate interpretation be put upon this terri¬
ble conflict, that does not acknowledge that its life and soul was the
religious question? The Rebellion was Heathenism—vile, selfish,

and cruel—trembling for its very existence and goaded to retalia¬
tion, rising up in its hour of opportunity against the Christian civ¬
ilization, whose increasing reforms and enlightenment manifestly
knew no limit save the overthrow of every wrong, and the removal
of every error, in India. It was the irrepressible and inevitable
conflict of light with darkness ; it was the Christian knowledge and
saving faith of the nineteenth century mightily wrestling with ven¬
erable ignorance and licentious idolatry for the possession of the
bright Land of the Veda, and for perpetual supremacy over its
200,000,000 of men ! The prize and the agony for its possession
were correspondent; and God defended the right.
III. Yes ; for God and his providence must be acknowledged here
as we search for the causes of this great conflict. On how many
of its facts, as well as its precious results, is written, “ This is the
finger of God ! ” The permissive providence which allowed this
terrible calamity to fall upon the English in India, was, even by
their own subsequent, contrite acknowledgment, only what their
sins deserved. It is consistent with all that we know of the divine
government to suppose that the Almighty must have taken cogni¬
zance of their compromises of his truth, of their patronage of idol¬
atry, of their repression of his Christianity, so as to keep it away
from a people who needed it so much. He knew that if such a
course was to continue unchecked India could not be saved for
long centuries to come. He was resolved that caste and idolatry
must be overthrown ; and if Englishmen dared to prop up the God¬
dishonoring systems, they must feel the blow which dashed those
systems to pieces.
I need not enumerate their national sins in India—they have
done so themselves. As I write, the pamphlets are before me
which contain their petitions to their Queen and Parliament, signed
by multitudes of the best men of Britain, acknowledging before
God and the world, in the hour of their national agony, how
unworthy and responsible they felt themselves to be for the
sins and shortcomings of their rule in India, and how earnestly
ENGLAND'S CONFESSION OF HEM SINS. 403
{hey pleaded with their Government to reform what was wrong in
the administration of India, and act henceforth on Christian princi¬
ples in the rule of that land. Here is what these people said in
185/ in their Memorial to Parliament:
“ By professing to be neutral among the various religions of its
Indian subjects, the Government has in effect denied the truth, and
given a great moral advantage to those foolish, wicked, and degrad¬
ing systems to which the great bulk of the people adhere. Nor
has the advantage thus given been merely moral. Idolatry has
formerly been, and to some extent still is, publicly patronized and
subsidized. Its immodest and cruel rites have been honored with
the attendance of Government officers, and paid for from funds
under Government control. The system of Caste, which, in every
part of it, contradicts and counteracts the Christian religion, has
been recognized in Government arrangements for the administra¬
tion of justice, as well as in the organization of the army, and selfish
humanity and contempt of their fellow-men and subjects, have thus
received the highest official sanction. The Government has dis¬
couraged the teaching of the Christian religion to certain classes
of its subjects, and made the profession of it, in a sense, penal, by
placing some who have been turned from idols to serve the living
and true God under disabilities to which they were not, before their
conversion, liable. And, while allowing the Koran and the Shaster
to be freely used, it has forbidden the teaching of the Holy Scrip¬
tures, or even the answering of spontaneous inquiries respecting
their contents, during school hours, in the educational institutions
which it supports. In all these instances the Indian Government,
though professing neutrality in matters of religion, has practically
countenanced and favored falsehood and wickedness of the most
flagitious kind.”
They here quote dispatches of the East India Company, who had
ruled India for a hundred years, in proof of the foregoing statements,
and also refer to facts well known in India—such as Lord Clive per¬
sonally attending a heathen festival at Conjeveram, and present¬
ing an ornament to the idol worth 1,050 pagodas, ($1,850;) Lord
404 THE LAND OF THE VE1)A.
Auckland, another Governor General, offering 2,000 rupees ($1,000)

at the Muttra shrine, and being highly praised in a native newspa¬
per for his piety! Lord Ellenborough, in 1842, ordering the gates
of the Temple of Somnath (carried off by a Mohammedan con¬
queror eight hundred years ago) to be carried back hundreds
of miles, with military honors, and his issuing a proclamation,
announcing the heathenish act, “ to all the Princes, Chiefs, and
People of India.” They also refer to the conduct of Lord Dal-
housie, later still, paying reverence to an idol, by changing his dress
on entering the heathen temple of Umritsur, and making an offer¬
ing to it of 5,000 rupees, ($2,500.) These things were done by
Indian Viceroys, while Government servants were required to col¬
lect pilgrims’ tax, administer the estates of idol temples, and pay
allowances to officials connected with heathen shrines ; and even
military officers had to parade troops and present arms in honor of
idol processions !
These things were so. The writer has seen (and could give the
name of the place, and of the commanding officer responsible) Brit¬
ish cannon loaned, and ammunition supplied, to fire a salute in-
honor of a heathen idol, and that on the holy Sabbath day ! Chris¬
tian Englishmen in India groaned over these acts, officers in the
army threw up their commissions sooner than obey such orders,
and men in high positions protested against them as sins of the
deepest dye, fearing that God would “visit for these things,” and
appealed to the British public to stop the madness of the East
India Company and their servants in India. When I entered India
there was not over one native Christian in Government employ in
all the North-west Provinces. While that very year the only Sepoy
who, up to that time, had ever become a Christian (save one, men¬
tioned by Heber, who was also dismissed) was, by order of the
Governor-General, removed from the army because he had become
a Christian, and the commanding officer and the civil judge who
attended at the baptism were reproved by his Excellency for doing
so ! His object, in this mistaken policy, was to prevent the discus¬
sion and prejudice which would result, and convince the Sepoy
HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. 405
army how fully his administration would sustain the doctrine of

“ neutrality.” But what must Almighty God have thought of such
conduct, and that, too, on the part of men who went to Church on
Sunday, and professed to be members of a State Establishment of
Christianity!
The patience of Him who will “ not give his glory to another,
nor his praise to graven images,” was about exhausted with that
proud company and their policy, and the Parliament of England
and its Christian people were already preparing the overthrow of
both, and deliberately making up their minds to the introduction
of a more Christian and manly administration of Indian affairs.
The petitioners end their Memorial, earnestly pleading that these
Government sins should cease, and India be henceforth ruled in a
way more worthy of the duty which Christian England owes to
that people.
Their confession and humiliation were candid and sincere, and in
the hour of their deep distress God was entreated for the land.
Defeat was soon after turned to victory. He saved them from
among the heathen. God came to their aid, not in the infidel,
Bonapartist sense, in which He is said to be “ on the side of the
strongest battalions,” for here he clearly was on the side of the
weaker, and gave the victory to the “ few ” instead of the “ many.”
No Government ever committed a greater mistake than the
East India Company did when it adopted this “neutrality” policy.
The result was, it laid itself open to the charge of underhand
■designs for the overthrow of the popular faith—for the people could
not imagine a Government without a religion—and it was conse¬
quently disbelieved and distrusted, while the Christian mission¬
aries, who boldly and openly denounced idolatry, and invited the
people kindly and candidly to embrace Christianity, were under¬
stood, and even trusted, by the masses. So marked was this fact,
that in the panic at Benares, and when the vanguard of Havelock’s
troops were passing through, and extra supplies were urgently
required, the Government officials could not induce the villagers
around to bring them in ; a very serious condition of things was
40 6 TEE LAND OF TEE VEDA.
arising. In the emergency a Christian missionary, Mr. Leupolt,

could do what the commissariat officers failed to effect. He went
out among the villagers—heathens, to whom he had often preached
on the guilt and danger of their idolatry—and told them what the
Government needed. The people asked him if he would give his
word that they should be justly treated if they furnished what was
needed ? He said he would. Without more ado they loaded their
hackeries, and accompanied him to the city, and furnished all that
was required. This I know to be a fact. A similar instance is on
record in the experience of Missionary Swartz in the south of India,
Honesty is the best policy. If the India Government had acted
on it they would not have exposed themselves to the retort of
Rajah Janaryan, of Benares, a liberal and wealthy friend of native
education, who, when a Christian physician, who had raised him
up from a severe illness, urged the claims of the Gospel upon his
mind, the Rajah at first seemed disposed to yield ; but presently,
on reflection, he stifled his. convictions by the remark, “ Sir, had
the Christian religion been true, the Company Bahadur [the Gov¬
ernment] which has, in other respects, benefited my country, would
not have withheld from at least commending this religion to our
notice ! ”
Sir John Lawrence was Governor of the Punjab when the Rebel¬
lion broke out; the elements around him were as energetic, and
some of them as dangerous, as any in India. He had been supe¬
rior to the policy of his masters, and would insist on favoring Mis¬
sionaries and the Bible in the schools. What was the result of
this open and candid course, even in the hour when all around
them had fallen ? The missionaries waited upon him to say that,
if their public preaching in the streets of Lahore was any embar¬
rassment in the condition of the country, they were ready to pause
for a season, if he thought it requisite to do so. His prompt-reply,
which will be a lasting honor to him, was, “ No, gentlemen ; prose¬
cute your preaching and missionary enterprises just as usual.
Christian things, done in a Christian way, will never alienate the
heathen.” They acted on his advice, and did not preach a sermon
ANOTHER DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 407
the less for the Rebellion. Though all India around them had
“gone,” their Punjab stood firm, and even supplied the men and
means for sustaining the siege of Delhi, till it fell, and the Govern¬
ment was fully restored. The East India Company was abolished,
amid the contempt of all good men, and even of the candid hea¬
then ; while this very man, Sir John Lawrence, was chosen by the
Queen to be Viceroy of India, to introduce that better and more
Christian condition of things which prevails there to-day! What
an illustration of the promise, “ Them that honor me 1 will honor
and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed!”
At the close of September the insurrection between Mooltan
and Ferozepore suddenly stopped all mails, and we were left for a
time without any further news. Just then our implacable foe,.
Khan Bahadur, made his last fierce effort for our destruction.
For a few days our anxiety was terrible. The force at Bareilly
had been augmented by the arrival there of the Nana Sahib, and
their rage had risen with the spirit and character of their visitor,
and the followers he brought to their aid. Of course he advised
our destruction, and it was attempted by the largest force hitherto
sent against us, consisting, it was said, of over one thousand cav¬
alry and four thousand infantry. They came to the Huldwanee
side of our position for their attack, but our trust was still in the
“ God of battles so there we stood, calmly awaiting the result.
Few as we were, we knew that there was succor, in which “ they
that be with us are more than they that be with them.” (2 Kings vi.)
The help of Providence is not less certain or near because it is
invisible. It was “a day of trouble, and of rebuke and blas¬
phemy.” This modern Sennacherib had come up to cut off “ the
remnant that are left,” full of rage at Christ and his people. His
blasphemies against the Lord’s Anointed doubtless exceeded in
bitterness the reproaches of the Assyrian king, and with similar
pride and confidence he said, “ With my multitude I am come up
to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and I will
cut down the tall cedar trees thereof, and the choice fir trees
thereof, and I will enter into the lodgings of his borders, and into
4c8 TEE LANE OF TEE VEDA.
the forest of his Carmel.” (2 Kings xviii, 19.) He would, we knew,

if God allowed him, but not otherwise. Yet this haughty spirit
was the precursor of his own destruction.
Of course he kept us in distress and excitement, and this was
intensified by the cutting off of our mails, so that we could get no
information. For a few days we could but fear the worst. How
we longed for the news of the fall of Delhi, and for the relief that
would come when that was accomplished ! But God was working
out our salvation in his own way, and in the height of this very
emergency one of his most manifest interpositions was developed.
A few days after their arrival this powerful force, by some unac¬
countable influence, suddenly decamped, without doing us the
smallest injury. Our spies brought us word that every one of
them had fled, and, on some of us going down, we found that they
bad evidently left, not merely in a hurry, but in a panic, for the
heel ropes of the cavalry horses, instead of being untied and taken
with them, were all found cut and left fast to the stakes ! The
only way we could account for it was a report which was said to
have reached them that we were going down to surprise. them
with immensely augmented numbers. Be this as it may, they left
suddenly and went back to Bareilly.
The old Nawab was outrageous at their return, and insisted
upon a renewal of the effort; but a terror from God seemed to have
fallen upon them, and this was immediately followed by the news,
so dreadful to them, of the capture of Delhi by the English troops,
spreading consternation through their ranks. They received that
information some days before we did ; but at length it came to us
at the close of September.
I was sitting that afternoon, writing in a very pensive mood,
when the sudden roar of a cannon, from the little fort near our
cottage, brought me to my feet, and a brilliant hope flashed across
my heart. I snatched my hat and ran up the hill, while peal after
peal thundered out, making the grand Himalayas reverberate. At
last I gained the summit, and stood till I counted the “ royal ”
twenty-one. I needed no one to tell me what it meant. Our
DELHI FALLS AT LAST. 409
commanding officer had just received the message which an¬

nounced that Delhi had fallen !
I stood there, wrapt in thoughts never to he forgotten, and a
luxury of feeling flowed through my heart, which will make that
moment a bright spot in my life and recollection forever.
How often before had the thunder of those British cannon
proved the inlet of salvation to the oppressed and persecuted ! I
was not the first American missionary to whom they had an¬
nounced “glad tidings of great joy.” I thought of Judson and
his heroic wife, of Wade and Hough, on whose ears, in their mel¬
ancholy captivity, those cheerful peals proclaimed approaching
liberty.
None but those who, like ourselves, have been practically cap¬
tive for months, not knowing but that any day our doom might be
sealed by the hand of violence, can imagine how every gun seemed
to ring the knell of the Moslem city and power, while it proclaimed
liberty to the Christian and the missionary of the cross—none but
those so situated can appreciate the luxury of an hour like that.
It was impossible, as I returned down the hill, to repress the
tears that so freely flowed ; yet they were caused by no craven
love of life, nor coward fear of death. I had passed through
sufficient ordeals to know “ in whom I had believed.” No, my
tears flowed, but they were for India’s own sake ; shed in joyful
hope and largeness of heart, that God was once more setting free
those Christian agencies which alone could redeem “ her from her
sins ” and sufferings, and which would lead her to the possession
of those untold mercies that even she shall yet enjoy in common
with all Christian nations.
If time is to be measured by the magnitude of events that tran¬
spire within any given space, how long and how much we seemed
to have lived during those past five months !
The capture of Delhi is too well known to the reader to require
any thing more than mere references in these pages. It was the
event on which our fate, and the fate of British India, seemed to
hang during those long months ; and its capture by a mere handful
23
of troops was one of the marvels of those stirring times. At

length we breathed freely, and the hope of deliverance rose
brightly upon our horizon. The scattered Sepoy host had to be
followed up through all parts of India, Rohilcund being left until the
last. Lucknow could not be reoccupied till March of the following
year, (1858,) and it was not till May the 5th that Bareilly was cap¬
tured, and our way opened to return there.
We were thus free to go out on the north-west side, whiJe we
were to be shut up on the south-east for eight months more, so we
concluded to leave for the plains, after most of our number had
already gone. To remain longer where we were seemed out of
the question. No money could reach us ; I had exhausted every
source, and to borrow any more was impracticable.
Ere the snow closed the road over the Himalayas for the winter,,
we concluded it was best for us also to go. At Meerut we could
obtain the means required, and should also be on the “grand
trunk road,” and, after the fall of Futtyghur could, if necessary,
join the brethren expected at Calcutta, and decide with them what
was best to be done for the present. We could also obtain requi¬
sites for the mission and for ourselves, and be ready to return with
our brethren and sisters as soon as our field was again open.
Before starting, we had the joy of receiving a letter from Broth¬
ers Pierce and Humphrey, dated Calcutta, September 30, with the
glad news of their safe arrival there in good health. They wrote
in their letter : “ We knew nothing of the fearful scenes transpir¬
ing in India until our pilot came on board on the morning of the
19th instant, bringing files of the latest papers. After we had
recovered ourselves a little from the first blow, we turned to the
account of the Bareilly tragedy. I read it aloud, trembling almost
to read from line to line. Twenty-nine out of eighty-four Euro¬
peans escaped, and your name unmentioned! Our worst fears
were excited. We saw, however, that only official names were
given ; but, after resolving the matter, could encourage ourselves
but little to hope for your safety. We remained in this state of
intense suspense until four P. M. on Monday, the 21st, when we
AGAIN IN THE WILDERNESS. 4”
cast anchor at Calcutta. I hastened on shore, called on Mr.
Stewart, and learned the joyful tidings of your escape to Nynee
Tal. Our interest was all concentrated in the question, ‘Are
Brother Butler and family safe ?’ When we learned this, our grati¬
tude and gladness were such that we scarcely thought, for the time,
of your losses and sufferings : it seemed enough that you were
saved. ‘ O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and
for his wonderful works to the children of men ! ’ I returned to
the ship ; then were we glad, thanked God, and took courage.”
It seems a singular coincidence that the English and American
Methodist missions to India should both have commenced their
labors under afflictive circumstances connected in each case with
their superintendent.
On the 3d of May, 1814, the leader of the first band of Wesleyan
missionaries, Dr. Coke, suddenly died, almost within sight of India.
His brethren, deprived of their zealous and devoted superintend¬
ent, landed in grief and sadness.
On the 19th of September, 1857, another ship neared the coast
of India, this time bearing, not English, but American, Meth¬
odist missionaries. They also are the first band that this Church
has sent to India ; and they, too, are in anxiety and distress, for they
fear that their superintendent has been murdered.
But this is not all. On Dr. Coke’s death, the Rev. James
Lynch was appointed to the superintendency. He labored nearly
thirty years, and then returned to his native land, and was appointed
to the Comber Circuit. Being feeble, the writer was sent to assist
him. We traveled and labored together ; God was with us, and
sinners were converted. During the Sepoy Rebellion he was
calmly awaiting his departure to a better world, full of years and
the grace of God, while the boy preacher, whom he so kindly cher¬
ished and prayed for fifteen years before, was in that very India,
and superintendent of the first American Methodist Mission
established there!
The journey across to Landour was a wonderful one. We
climbed mountains, forded rivers, clambered round frightful preci-
pices, often on narrow paths which, in places, were not more than
twenty to thirty inches wide. At a gorge in the mountains we
crossed the Ganges, there a roaring torrent between walls of rock,
on a miserable rope bridge, which had been condemned as unsafe,
and which swung in the wind, sixty feet above the water that
foamed beneath it. It was a journey never to be forgotten fee its
magnificent views, its tall pine forests, the wildness of the scenery,
the beauty and variety of its birds, and the singular sensation that
we were moving over mountains and through forests infested by
tigers and all sorts of savage animals, against which our only pro¬
tection was the sunlight by day and the flaming log fire by night.
But God guided us in safety. Though, to show how near we were
to danger, and how much we required merciful care, I will state that
one night we had camped in a lonely valley by a stream, having
with us a goat which we had brought along to give milk for the
little “ Mutiny Baby.” The poor goat was left fastened, as usual,
to the peg at the tent door, with the fire in front outside, and our
lantern lighted within. The fire unfortunately went out, and in the
middle of the night we were startled out of our sleep by a roar and
a yell of agony, and, jumping up and opening the tent door, I found
that the wild beasts had carried off the poor goat bodily, and were
already clear out of sight with her!
Occasionally we slept five thousand feet higher, or lower, than
where we rested the night before. Our “house and home” was a
little tent eight feet square. A day’s journey varied from seven to
fifteen miles, according to the character of the road. It was gen¬
erally four or five P. M. by the time we reached the camping-place.
The tent was then set up, our dinner cooked, and there, beside our
large log fire, sometimes ten or twenty miles from any habitation, we
enjoyed the grand solitude. After this we would heap more logs on
the fire for protection against the animals, and, commending ourselves
to the care of God, would lie down and sleep tranquilly. The wild
beasts, by which we were generally surrounded, disturbed us no fur¬
ther. So it went on for sixteen days and nignts from the time we
started, the whole distance being about one hundred and eighty miles.
DELHI NAKED. 413
The last day, when crossing the highest mountain of the range, the
snow began to fall, so that we had to camp that night upon it, with
a few boughs under us. But the next morning we crossed it, and
began to descend to the plains, and soon were beyond the snow
line.
Our last communication from America was dated several months
before. How people over there felt about our position and circum¬
stances, and in regard to our mission, we knew not. We could
only hope that our beloved Church, far from being daunted or dis¬
couraged, was more than ever resolved and prepared to do her duty
toward her great work in India.
We reached Dehra Doon December 5th. How calm and beauti¬
ful all things in the valley seemed to us, after being shut up so many
months upon the mountains! But the Rohilcund rebels were
across the Ganges, so we kept off by Saharunpore, and thence to
Kurnal and the imperial city. It was two hours after midnight
when we passed the outskirts of Delhi. We rolled down the empty
street of the Subzee Mundee, rattled on to the bridge over the
moat, and hailed the sentry, who, seeing a white face, asked no
questions, but opened the ponderous gates, and—ten weeks after
its capture—we were in Delhi !
There is something very solemn in passing through the de¬
serted streets of a conquered city. We could dimly see that all
was desolation and utter confusion. Having reached the lonely
house assigned for travelers, and taken a cup of tea, my curiosity
was too great for rest or sleep, so I procured a light, and wandered
down the Chandnee Chowk, (the Street of Silver.) All was still
as death ; indeed the silence was dreadful; not a ray of light any¬
where, except from the lantern which I carried. Not a human being
to be seen. Every door, whether of store or private house, lay
open. I entered five or six shops. No words could describe the
wreck: even the floors had been torn up by the “ loot ” seekers.
One was a native doctor’s shop. The drawers were all out, half
the bottles still on the shelves, and the rest overturned and
smashed. Every thing valuable in each case had been carried off,
and there lay the worthless remnants, knocked to pieces on the

floors. In some places a heavy fermentation was going on, causing
an insupportable smell. The wretched cats were silently moping
about, and the poor dogs howled mournfully in the desolate houses.
And this was Delhi, and this her recompense! Far rather
would one see a city knocked down and covered with its own ruins,
than to behold a scene like this. A tomb in Herculaneum can be
contemplated with interest; but Delhi, that night, was like an open
grave rifled of its ornaments, and its dishonored, reeking condition
lying exposed to the gaze of the lonely visitor. No wonder that
its excluded Mohammedan population, as they prowled around its
vicinity, said, “This is a worse punishment than that of Nadir
Shah. He gave up the city to massacre and pillage for a few days,
then all was over, and the surviving inhabitants returned to their
homes and employments, and every thing went on as before.
The English took no such vengeance ; but they drove us out, and
week after week they kept us excluded, and will not let us return.”
No doubt, such language correctly represented their feelings.
This decided exclusion of them ; this calm and continued investi¬
gation by the civil and military authorities ; this searching out, and
bringing to justice, the perpetrators of the crimes of May and June
—giving them the opportunity of proving their innocence, (one
trial alone having lasted ten days,) and then their prompt execution
when found guilty of murder—all this, together with the disposition
of the Government to acknowledge and reward fidelity where they
found it, produced an immense impression. It was so contrary to
the rash and indiscriminate mode of Oriental despotism.
When I reached the Kotwalie (the Mayor’s office) in the square,
a horror came over me as I remembered that I was then standing
upon the very ground where, on the I2th and 13th of May, En¬
glishwomen
“ Perished
In unutterable shame ; ”
where good Rajib-Ali, and many others with him, were tortured,
not accepting the deliverance urged upon them by the raging crowd
ALONE AT MIDNIGHT BEFORE THE EOTWALIE. 415
on condition of apostasy; and where also the murdered and muti¬

lated bodies of Christian men and women lay exposed and insulted,
till at length, when no longer endurable, they were dragged away
out of the city and flung to the jackals and the birds of prey ; and
here I was, standing alone at midnight amid the darkness which
my lantern only made visible, in the very center of Delhi, with no
sound to be heard save the sighing of the wind in the great, dark
peepul trees above my head, till my excited fancy almost imagined
that I heard them moan out, “ How long, O Lord, how long ! ”
The reminiscences of that moment were enough to chill the blood
of the strongest man. They recur to me now like a dream of ter¬
ror that can never be forgotten.
I walked on to the Emperor’s gate, but it was shut; the walls
frowned darkly down upon me, and all was silent as death. I
turned back by the other side of the street to my lodging, a walk
of more than a mile, without meeting a single human being.
As I stood that night in the midst of this stern desolation, I was
forcibly reminded of the Lesson in the calendar for the 14th of
September, which attracted our attention so much when reading it,
and all the more when we heard afterward that it was the Lesson
for the day on which the assault was given. It was in Nahum iii,
and begins, “Woe to the bloody city !” etc.; as applicable to Delhi
as ever it was to Nineveh—and here was her “woe.” She was
“naked,” “a gazing stock,” and “laid waste;” her “nobles in the
dust,” her “ people scattered ;” so that with equal truth it might
then be said of her, “ There is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound
is grievous ; all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their hands
over thee, for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed con¬
tinually ? ” (Verse 19.)
I picked up an Hindustanee account book lying at a merchant’s
door, and returned and went to bed absorbed in the thoughts of a
retributive Providence, and the sad miseries of war among which
I lay.
Early the next morning I was out again rambling through the
streets. The people who had passes were admitted for trade and
4i 6 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
market. The Chandnee Chowk, with a few of its leading tributa¬

ries toward the Palace, (inside the walls of which were the troops
and the prisoners,) were the only portions of Delhi where I met
any number of people. The rest of the city was a desert, where
one might walk half a mile and not meet a human being, even at
midday. Coming around to the Kotwalie, an awful sight presented
itself. On a high gallows (which the darkness prevented me from
seeing when I stood there a few hours before) were hanging by the
neck, dead, eighteen of the “ Shahzadas ”—the king’s seed—who
had been found guilty of terrible crimes, many of them committed
at this very place. They had been hanged at daybreak, and only
a few persons were standing around.
I had, of course, heard the report of their fiendish deeds, but to
come thus suddenly upon the authors of them, bearing their pen¬
alty on the very spot where their crimes were committed, was
enough to chill the blood in one’s veins. How dreadful is sin !
The sight made me sick, and I turned hastily away.
During the day we called upon Lieutenant E., a military friend,
who kindly gratified our wishes to be shown “ the sights.”
Mounting us on one of the government elephants, he took us over
the battle-field, and described the siege and the assault, and the
capture of the city at the different points. We lingered where
General Wilson stood when the terrible assault was made, and
seemed to realize the whole scene. It is doubtful if any com¬
mander in modern times has sustained a weightier responsibility
than he did then.
Further delay was impossible ; there was no room for any
reverse. He must succeed or all was lost. A repulse would have
involved consequences so terrible that the mind dare hardly con¬
template them. If he failed, that little army, without a miracle,
must have been annihilated, the wavering Punjab would have
“ gone,” and the undecided princes have been drawn into the cur¬
rent, which would probably, within a few weeks, have swept away
every thing British and Christian from the soil of India.
We wandered over the battle-field, by the broad shore of the
THE SIGHTS OF DELHI. 417
Jumna, and saw that, notwithstanding the efforts to clear the

ground, the sanguinary character of the contest was still manifest:
dead horses and camels, and occasionally human remains, with
portions of exploded shells, might be seen. The “ Brahminee
hawks ” and vultures were still hovering around. I took up a
human skull ; it was that of a Sepoy, for the marks of the paivn
were still on the front teeth. A round shot or sword-cut had
taken off the top of the head; death must have been instantaneous.
I thought of the lines of the classic poet as I thus looked upon the
most vivid realization of them I ever saw, or ever expect to see :
“ The wrath which hurled to Pluto’s gloomy reign

The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain ;
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore ! ”
From the battle-field we went in the afternoon to Selim Ghur,

and thence along the fortifications by the river. We were for¬
tunate in falling in with Brigadier Jones, who took the Palace on
the last day of the assault. He told us that he led 780 men into
action, of whom nearly 450 were either killed or wounded, the pro¬
portion of officers being very large. This fact shows what a des¬
perate service he had to perform. Personally he escaped un¬
touched. The Brigadier commanded a few months afterward at
the battle of Bareilly.
We went next to the magazine, the defense of which has ren¬
dered the name of Willoughby so famous. Here we were also
favored in having as a guide Lieutenant Forrest, who was one of
Willoughby’s officers on that occasion. He conducted us over the
place, and explained the details of the ever-memorable defense.
We next went to see the beautiful Jain Temple. The outward
court reminded me of the description of Solomon’s Temple, it was
so rich and elegant. In the sanctuary there stood a shrine, which
rose tier above tier, till it terminated in a dome on four pillars, the
proportions of the whole being exquisite. Each part was richly
carved in screen work in white marble, and inlaid with precious
stones ; but every thing movable had been carried off, including
4i8 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
the magnificent curtains, embroidered in gold, which were hung

around the court, perhaps twenty in number.
In the sanctuary we found two Parisnaths, (or Parswanaths,) one
of them as large as life, in black marble, with a genuine negro
type of countenance, high cheek bones, thick lips, and curly hair.
On asking the reason, the priest informed us that their god Paris-
nath was exactly like a negro, an idea which they hold in common
with all Buddhists.
Both of the venerable deities had their noses smashed, and
looked, in consequence, rather ridiculous. I asked the priest, “ Who
mutilated them ?” He said, “The Mohammedan Sepoys did so, and
then the Sikhs came afterward, and robbed us of every thing they
could carry off.” This temple, for its size, is certainly the most
splendid place of worship I ever saw. The Motee Musjid, in Agra,
is more chastely elegant; but there was about the structure and
appearance of this edifice something which, though “not worthy to
be compared,” yet helped to a more adequate idea of that match¬
less “house of God” which the liberality of Jewish piety erected
on Mount Zion.
From this we went to see the Jumma Musjid, the greatest Mo¬
hammedan “ cathedral ” of the East, and one of the very largest, if
not the largest place of worship, in the world. The view from the
top of the minarets was magnificent. These lofty towers were
occupied by the leaders of the defense during the siege, and in
that vast court below thousands of those blood-thirsty fanatics, from
sunrise to sunset, during that long anxiety, implored God, for Mo¬
hammed’s sake, to aid them in exterminating the followers of the
hated Messiah. Here they “raged” and “took counsel together;”
but God, instead of answering, rejected their prayers, confounded
their devices, and “ dashed them ” and their government “ in pieces
like a potter’s vessel,” and here was the center of the fearful wreck
of all their purposes.
The whole place was desecrated. Native soldiers were cooking
their food in the cloisters. The high priest’s throne was smashed,
and every thing valuable carried off. I entered their treasure room,
MOHAMMEDAN TREATMENT OF HINDOO IDOLS. 419
and on the ground, covered with broken boxes and rubbish, I found
those marble slabs, (of the existence and use of which I had pre¬
viously heard,) one professing to bear the impress of Mohammed’s
hand, and the other of his foot. Notwithstanding the boast of the
Mohammedans as iconoclasts, they do pay these relics a certain
religious veneration that is idolatrous. I found them where they
kept their most venerated things. Those who sought only pre¬
cious metals and other valuables had not considered them worthy
of removal, but to me they were deeply significant, and, as “ loot¬
ing” was the order of the day, I carried them off, to the great
amusement of the Beloochee soldiers, who laughed at the idea of
the “ Sahib ” soiling his clothes to carry away “ such useless things
as those dirty stones.” As long as they last they will be an evi¬
dence of the debasement of Oriental Mohammedanism, furnished
by the treasure room of its greatest mosque.
From the Jumma Musjid we went to the Hindoo Temple of
Mahadeva, near the palace gate. Destruction had raged here also.
The high priest was very civil, telling us “ how thankful he was
that our Raj (Government) had returned.” They confound all white
men with the Government. We entered, and the little knot of
priests looked sad and sorrowful enough. Seeing that the idols
were all off their pedestals, I inquired where they were. They led
us up to the place, and there, on the ground, covered reverently with
a cloth, were nearly twenty of their gods, beautifully carved in white
marble, about as large as little babies, all in a state of mutilation,
not one whole one in the lot. Their legs, and arms, and heads
were off, and their noses smashed, while the bright eyes of one and
another looked up out of the pile as if they were astonished !
The poor priests looked down, with rueful countenances and
heavy sighs, at the wreck and confusion. I had no condolence to
offer, for the scene was such an illustration of the folly and impo¬
tence of idolatry that I felt like giving way to immoderate laughter,
but refrained, as I knew it would annoy them to the last degree.
We asked, “ Who or what wrought all this destruction ? ” “ Why,
Sahib, the Budmash Mohammedans, of course. They came into
420 TEE LANE OF THE VEDA.
our temple, and with the butt ends of their muskets they knocked
off their legs and arms, and smashed their noses, and flung them
• on the ground, and desecrated them.” I told them we had no pity
for them. They had, with their eyes open, joined these “Bud-
mash” Mohammedans, to expel a Government that had never out¬
raged their religion, but always protected them in its exercise, and
which they themselves had often declared was the best Govern¬
ment their country ever knew. They admitted the assertion, and
when we asked them why they did so, they replied, “ Because,
Sahib, we were deluded. Those people told us, if we would only
join them this once, they would give us perpetual deliverance from
all fear of the growing power of Christianity, which, they said, was
about to destroy our religion ; and that they would also give us
equal rights and privileges. Their war cry was, ‘ Do deen ek zeen
men,’ (two religions in one saddle ;) but they soon gave us to
understand that one of the two must ride behind ; and when they
came to decide which it should be, they settled that after their
fashion.” He added, “I prayed to God for your return to this city.
O, how thankful we are that your Raj has come back again !”
I asked if I might take two or three of the broken idols. They
submissively replied, “ What you like ; you are master here.” They
lent me a basket, and procured a coolie to carry the three which I
picked out. I placed some money in their hands for them. They
seemed surprised that I had not acted on my “ right of conquest,”
and taken them without payment. On asking them what they
were now engaged in worshiping, as their other gods were destroyed,
they seemed afraid to reply. We told them they need not be,
and that we had heard of it, and knew what it was, and only
wished to see it. After obtaining our promise that we would not
demand that too, if they showed it, they led us into the sanctuary,
and there it was, nothing more nor less than the upper and hinder
part of a bull, (Nundee Davee,) carved and polished in black marble.
The flowers and Ganges water were fresh upon it, showing that it
had been worshiped that day. And this was Hindoo worship, in-
one of its chief temples in the imperial city !
MY VISIT TO THE EMPEROR. 42 l
Our kind guide now brought us to see the Emperor, Empress,

and the Princes, who were awaiting trial; but before doing so, he
led us up to that part of the palace where was the suite of apart¬
ments which had been occupied by the English Embassador, and
into his reception-room, where he and the chaplain, and the two
ladies, were murdered.
In the East a violation of hospitality is regarded as a crime of
greater magnitude than it is with us. This is fully illustrated in
the Scriptures ; yet here, under the very roof of the Emperor, the
Embassador, Hon. Mr. Fraser, (the second brother killed within
those walls,) with the Rev. Mr. Jennings and his daughter, Miss
Jennings, with her cousin, Miss Clifford—said to be one of the most
beautiful Englishwomen then in the East—were ruthlessly cut to
pieces in this very room. Their blood still stained its floor, the
marks of the tulwars were in the plaster round about, and on the
walls was the impress of some of their gory hands, made as they
leaned after receiving their first wounds ; while the head of another
of the party had fallen back against the wall, and described part of
a circle as it sank to the floor, leaving the blood and hair in the
track of its passage !
There were bitter feelings expressed against the Empress, espe¬
cially for these assassinations. It was considered that under her
■own roof, at all events, it was entirely in her power to have saved
these ladies had she chosen to do so ; but she made no effort for
this purpose, and when her own hour of sorrow came, it was re¬
membered to her disadvantage.
We were obliged to procure a written permission to see the
Emperor. There had been no restriction on the public curiosity
till a gentleman, who had lost several relatives by the mutiny, went
lately to see the Emperor, and, losing control of his feelings,
used such language as put the old man in “bodily fear” for his
safety. This, with no doubt other reasons, led to his being kept a
close prisoner, and interviews permitted only in the presence of
the magistrate and the officer of the guard who had him in charge.
The place of his residence was a small house of three rooms in his
own garden. Accompanied by the officer and Mr. Ommanney, we

passed through the guard of the Rifles, and entered the room
where the Emperor was sitting cross-legged, after the Oriental
fashion, on a charpoy, with cushions on each side to lean upon,
engaged in eating his dinner, using his fingers only, without knife
or fork.
His dress was rich, his vest being cloth of gold, with a beautiful
coat of Cashmere, and a turban of the same material. The figure
of the old man was slight ; his physiognomy very marked ; his
face small, with a hooked or aquiline nose ; his eyes dark and
deeply sunk, with something of the hawk aspect about them ;
his beard was gray and scanty, running down to a point. Not¬
withstanding his crimes, it was impossible to look upon this
descendant of Tamerlane without emotion. My mind went back
two hundred and forty years, to the time when England’s Embas¬
sador humbly sought, in the splendid city of Jehangeer, a foothold
for the East India Company. How different the scene before us
from what Tavernier saw when he beheld Shah Jehan in that
magnificent court, seated on his jeweled “Peacock Throne !” Here
was his lineal descendant a prisoner, while two English soldiers,
with fixed bayonets, stood guard over him. It recalled the aston¬
ished exclamation of a seraph to another potentate in guilt and
captivity,
“ If thou beest he ; but O, how fallen ! ”
It was just twelve months that very week since I saw the “ Princes
of Delhi ” at the Benares Durbar, in all their pomp and finery,
presented in turn to that kingly-looking man, the late Governor
Colvin, himself a sacrifice to this rebellion. What one short year
had done ! Many of those “ Princes ” were now filling the graves
of traitors and murderers, while others of them were awaiting their
trial and doom within a minute’s walk of where I was standing.
This wretched old man was then surrounded with imperial state,
and living on his $900,000 per annum ; and now, here he was a
guilty, forsaken, penniless king—a gazing stock, awaiting his doom
What a change !
THE FALLEN EMPEROR. 423
The feelings with which we contemplated him were a strange

mixture of interest, pity, and contempt. The reader will remem¬
ber the reflections of the Countess of Blessington when she met
the mother of the fallen Napoleon leaning on the arm of the ex-
king of Westphalia, as they wandered pensively amid the ruins of
Rome.
This case added another illustration of the poet’s thought:
“ He who has worn a crown,
When less than king is less than other men;
A fallen star extinguished, leaving blank
Its place in heaven.”
But in the instance before us there seemed a lower depth of degra¬

dation than crowned head had ever reached before ; a profound of
folly and guilt that forbade human sympathy, as was very truly set
forth in the speech of the United States Minister at the great
meeting in London four months before.
As we entered, the Emperor looked up at us for a moment with
a flash in his eye that was easily understood. We belonged to the
white-faced race, and were of the religion that he detested ; and the
man must have keenly felt, as we stood in his presence and looked
at him, how fallen he then was. He, before whom and his prede¬
cessors multitudes had bowed down in such lowly prostration and
homage, had then to realize that there was
“None so poor to do him reverence.”
It was not possible, after all, to look at him without a measure of

sympathy: “a star” that had shone for eight hundred years in this
political “ heaven ” had fallen to the earth and was lying at our feet,,
its light extinguished forever.
I asked the soldiers why the old gentleman was so closely
guarded in that inclosed place ? They replied, “ Sir, it is not for
fear of his getting away, but to protect him from harm till he is
tried.” On expressing my surprise at this explanation, the man
added, “ Well, you see, sir, people are coming here every day to
look at him—wives, whose husbands were killed by his Sepoys,
and husbands whose wives were worse than killed. You see, sir.
his was the name in which every thing was done, and when they
look at him and realize it all their feelings get the better of them,
and they feel like flying at him and revenging their wrongs upon
him, so we have to protect him.” Yes, I saw it all ; and the bitter
remembrance of the cruel deaths of some precious friends of my
own at Bareilly, and elsewhere, seven months before, banished all
sympathy for this guilty author of their sufferings. In response to
some remark which I made to this effect, I saw the blood mount
to the cheek of the soldier as, drawing back his hand in which
was the bayonet, he said, with deep feeling, “Yes, sir, it would
give me the greatest satisfaction to put this through the old
rascal!” The honest earnestness of the man provoked a smile;
and I thought, what would Sir Thomas Roe—England’s first Em¬
bassador to this Court—say, could he rise from the dead, and, after
all the reverence he paid here to “the divinity which hedged”
these gorgeous kings, hear a common soldier of his nation express
his disgust at having to act the jailer over the Great Mogul!
A day or two previously my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside, Mis¬
sionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He
went to see the Emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing
with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general
excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was abro¬
gated by the Koran—as Moses and the law were abolished by
Christ and the Gospel—so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran
had superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother
Woodside calmly, but firmly, told him that, so far from this being
the case, Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie ; and
that unless he repented and believed in Christ, and Christ alone,
without doubt he must perish in his sins.' He then proceeded to
enforce upon his bigoted hearer the only Gospel sermon which he
had ever heard. And Brother Woodside was the very man to
utter it. Was not his Church entitled to that privilege by the
sacrifice of the precious lives of four of their Missionaries at Futty-
ghur, as mentioned-on page 15 1 ?
It was a just and significant providence that in such a moment,
ROYAL CAPTIVES AWAITING TRIAL. 425
when this blasphemous usurpation, arrested by the hand of God,

and about to be hurled from all its aspirations of supremacy over
the mind of India, a Minister of Jesus Christ should, in this pres¬
ence, ring, as it were, the knell of its hopes, and utter those truths
as the last Imperial representative of Oriental Mohammedanism
was bidding a “long farewell to all his greatness,” and the political
power of his system was falling,
“ Like Lucifer,
Never to hope again !”
My wife went in to see the Empress, and found her, with two of
her maids, very plainly dressed and but poorly lodged. When she
came out, she was not at all enthusiastic about the Empress’s
present beauty. Still, competent evidence declares that Zeenat
Mahal, as she appeared in 1846, is faithfully represented in the
picture presented on page 111 ; but twenty years of such a life as
she led in that Zenana, and the apprehension of guilt which she
must then have felt, with the doom impending over her husband
and house, all must have wrought sad changes in that once fair
young face.
From the Emperor we went to the cells where the other pris¬
oners were awaiting their trial. These cells were in a sort of offset
from the palace grounds, in which stood the beautiful Dewanee
Khass, and had doors of iron railing, through which the prisoners
could glance across into the palace gardens beyond. It strikingly
suggested the separation, and yet sight, of each other in the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus. We walked past some of them, and
it was sad to see within these iron doors, awaiting their fate, men
like the Rajah of Dadree, the Nawab of Bullubghur, and others of
their class. Twelve months before, these captives were occupying
thrones, and governing their States in peace, under the protection
of the paramount power of England ; and here they were now,
awaiting their turn to be tried for treason, and, some of them, foi
murder as well. They had sided with the Emperor, sending their
troops and treasure to Delhi to aid him against the British, and his
■defeat and fall had dragged them down into the ruin which had
24
overtaken him. A few of them were very gentlemanly-looking men,

and courteous, salaaming to us as we passed them. But it was too
painful to complete the entire round, so we walked sadly away.
On the 27th of the following month the Emperor was put upon
his trial in the Dewanee Khass, having counsel to aid in his de¬
fense, and, after a patient investigation lasting nineteen days, was
found guilty on all the charges against him, and sentenced to be
transported for life. Many thought the sentence too light; but it
was probably sufficiently severe thus to pass from a throne to the
deck of a convict ship, to end his days among strangers. Zeenat
Mahal and one other of his wives shared his exile. He died at
Rangoon in 1861. Two years after, when in Burmah for the bene¬
fit of my health, I had the opportunity of passing by his lonely
grave behind the quarter guard of the English lines. But no Taj
or Mausoleum will ever rise over the spot where rests, solitary and
alone, on a foreign shore and in a felon’s grave, the last descendant
of the Great Moguls !
The closing words in the defense of one of his own nobles, the
Nawab of Bullubghur, whom I saw tried and sentenced to die in
that same Dewanee Khass, might well apply to his Imperial master.
The Nawab was a noble-looking man, with dark, lustrous eyes, and
fine figure, clad in the usual style of an Oriental prince. There he
stood, during those long hours, before that commission of English
Officers, making the best defense he could for his life.
He admitted the charge, but pleaded in extenuation, that in
sending his wealth and troops to Delhi to help the Emperor he
had acted under compulsion. This was known to be untrue, as it
was well understood that he had acted freely and promptly, and
had even submitted to circumcision, and forsaken his Hindoo faith,
to curry favor with the rising Mohammedan power.
He evidently felt, as he closed his address, that he was not be¬
lieved—that he was a doomed man. With considerable feeling,
and in their figurative phraseology, he ended his defense with
these words : “ Gentlemen, one short year ago I sat on the topmost
bough of prosperity and honor; in an evil hour I lent my ear to
WHY THEY FAILED. 427
other counsels—1 sawed asunder the branch that sustained me,

and this is the result! ”
On Christmas day, 1857, I attended Christian worship in the
Dewanee Khass—the first ever celebrated there. A crowded
audience made its walls resound with the unwonted strains of
Christian hymns ; and there that day the Gospel was preached and
prayer was offered in the blessed Name so long blasphemed beneath
that roof. As I stood amid that throng, and remembered where
I was, and what had there been said and done, and what was then
transpiring, I realized that I was beholding one of the most won¬
drous victories ever consummated by the glorious Son of God over
the enemies of himself and his holy religion. They had distinctly
joined issue with Him on this very ground ; and here he was, in
his almighty providence, victorious amid the utter overthrow of the
wealthiest, most powerful, and implacable foes of his divinity and
atonement; expelling them from the “Paradise” which they had
profaned, and asserting his right, ere he consigned it forever to
degradation and to ruin, to use even their Dewanee Khass for his
own worship, and thus answer, in divine vengeance, the blasphemies
against himself inscribed upon its walls. “Just and true are thy
ways, thou King of saints !”
The crystal musnud, (throne,) the last remnant of its glorious
furniture, was carried away, a present to the Queen of England.
All veneration for the place seemed to cease by common consent;
the visitors and soldiers dug out the precious stones from the walls
and pillars with their knives, and it was soon despoiled. A few
weeks after, I saw its crenated arches built up with common sun-
dried bricks, and the whole structure whitewashed and turned into
a hospital for sick soldiers. Its destruction was at last complete !
The rebels failed, and that failure was both miserable and total.
We may endeavor, as has been attempted by various writers, to
account for that failure by their want of concert as to the time of
commencement; by the escape of nine tenths of those whom they
intended to destroy; by their want of leaders of ability, (though
the Rebellion developed Tantia Topee and Kooer Singh ;) by the
fierce contentions of their chiefs for supremacy, rank, and power;

by the fact that the Hindoos, disgusted and deceived, deserted
the cause ; by the perfidy of the Mohammedans in the hour of their
triumph ; by the heroism and endurance of the British soldiers,
invincible not only against overwhelming odds, but over the diffi¬
culties of climate, season, sickness, and deficiency of resources of
all kinds. Yet, after all, while gratefully and cordially admitting
to the full every one of these considerations, and all the aid which
they involved in the terrible struggle, even wicked men in India
in 1857 and 1858 were constrained to admit, and were prompt
to acknowledge, that any or all of these combined could not and
did not rescue us ;—that our salvation was, without a doubt, en¬
tirely due to the special interposition of Almighty God. It was the
divine help that gave England’s cause the victory, and gladly and
gratefully did they, saint and sinner together, raise their private
and public Ebenezers to Him who alone had saved them !
No attribute of the Almighty could take part with the Sepoy,
the Brahmin, or the Mogul. Every hope for India was bound up
with the defeat of their cruel, self-interested, and wicked purposes.
Grateful India herself will yet place among her highest mercies
the mighty overthrow of 1858.
Mr. Rees has truly shown that the merits of this contest, on the
part of the natives, was a frantic fear and hatred of the growing
influence of Christianity ; that it was not a war of the oppressed
against the oppressors, of a nation rising against their rulers, or of
Hindustanees against Englishmen ; on the contrary, that it was a
war of fanatical religionists against Christians, of barbarism against
civilization, of error and darkness against truth and light. Had it
been different—had patriotism prompted the rebellion—had the
natives, as one nation, determined to shake off the yoke of the for¬
eigner, and had they conducted their war like soldiers and brave
men, instead of acting the part of cowardly assassins, then indeed
might they have enlisted sympathy for their cause among the civ¬
ilized nations of the earth, and found defenders and advocates
among the people of England themselves.
FREEDOM FOREIGN TO EASTERN MINDS. 429
It is not easy to impart to an American reader a just idea of

how far the people of India—nine hundred and ninety-nine out of
every thousand of them—are from the knowledge of freedom, the
appreciation of law, or the rights of constitutional government, as
we understand such privileges. One of their own educated men
speaks but the simple truth of them when he says :
“ The Oriental mind is decidedly wanting in the knowledge of
the construction of a civil polity. It has never known, nor at¬
tempted to know, any other form of government than despotism.
Political science and political reform appear, like the oak and the
elm, to be the plants of the soil of Europe and America. Never
has any effort been made for their introduction to the plains of
Persia or the valley of the Ganges. Though the most important
of all branches of human knowledge, politics have never engaged
the attention of the people of the East. They have never studied
the theory and practice of a constitutional government, never con¬
ceived any thing like republicanism, never understood emanci¬
pation from political servitude, never known a covenant between
the subject and the sovereign. They have never had any patriot¬
ism or philanthropy, any common spirit and unity for the public
weal, or what it is to govern for the good, not of the fewest, but of
the greatest, number.”—Travels of a Hindoo, Vol. II, p. 408.
Progress, preservation of order, the physical and moral well-being
of the people, the advance the world has made in humanity—a
humanity that is extended even to the inferior animals—they do
not understand. They have only just begun to dream about them,
and, even for the dream of the blessed day that is dawning, they
are (as the evidences which I have furnished show) wholly indebted
to the Christianity which has come at last and breathed the thought
into their slumbering souls.
430 TEE LANE OF THE VEDA.
CHAPTER VIII.
RESULTS OF THE REBELLION TO CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
7
T ROM Delhi we went on to Meerut, where we remained two
months, while the troops were clearing the country of the
scattered bands of Sepoys between that point and Cawnpore, and
restoring order, so that mails and passengers might once more
move up and down to Calcutta. More British troops had arrived,
and the Commander-in-chief was directing the movements of the
five columns into which the army was divided, our position at
Meerut being about central to all the operations, and about forty
miles from the nearest of them.
Here I had the joy of again meeting our dear friend Lieutenant
(now Colonel) Gowan, who escaped from Bareilly, and had been
hidden for so many months in a Hindoo house, as narrated on
page 248. He had managed at last to communicate with the
English authorities here, and even before a sufficient length of the
roads westward was clear, his rescue was attempted. The kind
Hindoos who had sheltered him, when all had been arranged, took
him by night in a bylee, (a native carriage used by ladies,) with
the curtains closed, under pretense of going to the Ganges to
bathe. A boat was quietly procured, and they ran him across the
river to the other bank, where an elephant and a band of cavalry
were awaiting him, and before sunrise he was safe in Meerut.
How we rejoiced together ! The last time I saw this Christian
officer (who used to help us occasionally in conducting our Hin-
dustanee meeting) was in Bareilly on the evening before we left,
when I was trying, in our English service, to strengthen our hands
in God by preaching from the text, “ As thy day, so shall thy
strength be.” For nearly seven months, though in jeopardy every
hour, did God fulfill to him that precious promise, till he saw fit to
COLONEL COWAN'S MUNLFLCENCE. 431
terminate his captivity and bring him forth in safety, and now here
we were again together, consulting about God’s precious work.
In the course of conversation I happened to remark that I was
en route for Calcutta, when he suddenly lifted himself up, and
looking me in the face, inquired, “ What, are you going to leave
the country ? ” (fearing for the moment that I was discouraged and
about to abandon the work.) I looked into his earnest counte¬
nance and replied, “ Leave the country ! No, sir. The devil has
done his worst, but he may be assured that we are not going to
yield the field to him now that the fight is won. So far from it, I
am going down to bring up the first band of my missionary breth¬
ren, with whom I expect soon to be preaching Christ through all
Rohilcund.”
I shall long remember the immediate effect of my reply. He
looked at me for a moment, then paused, and
“Delight o’er all his features stole.”
His very moustache twitched again with pleasure, and, with a

smile covering his entire countenance, he turned away, and said
not another word.
He made over to me an orphan boy whom he had rescued from
danger and misery, to whom he had given his own name, and prom¬
ised to be responsible for his support and education from that day.
This was the origin of our Boy’s Orphanage, and its first mem¬
ber, thus received, was the son of a Sepoy officer killed in battle,
the poor child being found on the back of an elephant, where his
father had left him during the fight. In the midst of his sorrow
he fell into the hands of Colonel Gowan, who promised to be a
father to him, which pledge he has faithfully redeemed, and the
orphanage is to-day its result.
This devoted servant of God encouraged and stood by me in all
my future plans for the extension of our mission. No other man
in the East or in America has given half as much money to
develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed. He
ided me in procuring homes for the missionaries, in establishing
our Orphanage and Training School, and he built and endowed the
schools in Khera Bajhera, (the village where he was so long shel¬
tered,) so that his liberality to our mission work, up to the present,
cannot be much less than $15,000, and yet this liberal gentleman
was a member of another Church—the Church of England ; but he
is the type of a large and an increasing class of Christian English¬
men in India who prize our work, and are glad to aid it.
Apropos of leaving the country, while in Meerut I received a
letter from Brother Wentworth, in China, inviting me to join them
in Foochow. He says : “ If British predominance is not soon
established, get leave of the Board and come on here, where there
is as great need of laborers as in India.”
Well, that was all very good; but, on reading further in the Doc
tor’s letter, I was highly amused to find the guarantee of additional
security which I was to enjoy by following the course suggested.
My good brother added : “ Last spring we were fearing the rebels
might drive us from this station, and are not now without appre¬
hensions that the war between Canton and England may become
a general one, and result in the temporary expulsion of all foreign¬
ers from the empire. In case of any sudden outbreak we are in
an unfortunate situation for escape, being ten or twelve miles from
the foreign shipping, and no vessel of war near. A sudden and
decisive outbreak might cost us our lives at any moment.” This
for me would have been “ out of the frying-pan into the fire ”
with a vengeance. Indeed, I thought my circumstances were
every way preferable to his, so far as British predominance and
personal security were concerned, and concluded that I might well
return the compliment, and invite my good-natured brother, if
driven from his post, to come and join me.
However, it is our privilege to live by faith, and as the Doctor
observes, to “ feel secure in the protection of Him who guides revo¬
lutions among the nations as he does tempests in the sky.”
I did not proceed to Calcutta, because, from the center which I
then occupied, I was soon satisfied that the country was fast quiet¬
ing down, and that my brethren would be abie immediately to join
ENTERTAINED IN THE TAJ. 433
me, when we could afterward proceed to our own field of labor and
begin our work.
While at Meerut my aid was requested, as one of “ the Rohil-
cund Refugees,” to help the Postmaster in the melancholy task of
looking over the bags of letters, directed to gentlemen in that pro¬
vince by their correspondents at home in England, which had
accumulated there for months. I could tell who were dead, and,
generally, where the others were scattered, so as to intimate how
he should direct them. It was a sad sight to see the pile of letters
from anxious friends which had to be returned to England, because
those addressed were no longer among the living.
Early in March it seemed practicable to have the two mission¬
aries and their wives join me. The only portion of the way where
there was any danger was from Cawnpore to within twenty miles
of Agra, from parties of Sepoys crossing the Grand Trunk road.
The telegraph had been restored, and the mails were coming twice
a day. I went on from Meerut to Agra, to get into direct com¬
munication with them. Through the kindness of the Postmaster
and the use of the telegraph, I kept myself well acquainted with
the condition of the road as they advanced. They had directions
to call at every telegraph office which they passed, so that if there
had been any danger ahead of them I could at once have stopped
them at any station, until it had passed away; but, by the “ good
hand of God upon them,” they reached me at Agra in perfect safety
on the the 11th of March. The destroyed houses of the English
were still in ruins, and the people all in the Fort, which was crowded
so that at first I did not know where or how I could prepare for
them a night’s lodging, ere they resumed their journey on to Meerut.
But in these circumstances I thought the magnificent Taj none toe
good for them. So I arranged all, and on their arrival had them
comfortably lodged in this “ Wonder of the World.” Ours was a
joyful meeting, and the splendid Taj Mahal was worthy to be the
scene of it.
Little did Shah Jehan, or his bigoted Moomtaj-i-Mahal, imagine
that a day would come when this matchless mausoleum would be
occupied by a party of Christian missionaries, at a time, too, when

the last Mogul of their line—after an effort to fulfill the carnelian
prohibition upon her cenotaph, and carry out Jehan’s fierce order,
“Expel those idolaters from my dominions!”—would be himself a
prisoner awaiting his doom, in the hands of that very “ tribe,” (see
page 147;) or that these missionaries would, as we did, promenade
in peace, in the delicious moonlight, through that lovely garden
which he planted, and sing our Christian doxology, with unction
and glowing hearts, standing over their very dust, and in the pres¬
ence of that powerless and mistaken prohibition !
We left the Taj the following afternoon, by way of Meerut, for
Nynee Tal, as we could there best devote ourselves to the acquisi¬
tion of the language, and be ready to descend to Bareilly and our
other stations when God had prepared our way, after the reoccupa¬
tion of Rohilcund by the English Government. Joel had been
directed to join us on the route. Notwithstanding the distance
and danger, all was correctly timed and safely accomplished. The
day after I received the Missionaries at the Taj Mahal, I joyfully
clasped Joel’s hand once more, on the road to Meerut. It was to
both of us like life from the dead. His devoted wife remained
under the care of her mother till Rohilcund and Oude were cleared
of the rebels, when she rejoined us at Lucknow, from which place
I afterward moved them to Bareilly, where we were again together
on the scene of our former sufferings.
We reached Nynee Tal in safety, and at once entered upon our
mission work, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing a little con¬
gregation collected. We also commenced a Christian day-school
for the native children in the Bazaar.
I present a rough sketch of our first chapel, drawn by Sister
Pierce. Our room having become inconveniently small for the
number of natives attending the preaching, we greatly needed some
larger place for worship. The only building available then was a
sheep-house, which stood on the side of a hill. This, we concluded,
could be turned into a chapel. It was done in three or four days.
We cleared it out; a quantity of clay was thrown in and leveled,
The First House of Worship of the
THE SHEEP-HOUSE CONGREGATION. 437
which, beaten down, made a good floor. I whitewashed it, Brothers
Pierce and Humphrey made the benches, and Joel saw to the
leveling of the ground outside. When it was finished and swept
out, though too humble to have a formal or public “dedication”
awarded it, yet I resolved that a hearty consecration to God’s
service it should not lack ; so, shutting the door, and all alone, I
kneeled down and offered up to the condescending God of mercy
this humblest of all the “ places where he records his name,” and
■earnestly besought him to make it the birthplace of some of those
poor, dark souls that, during the ensuing six months, would come
to worship there.
When Sunday arrived, the smiles and congratulations of our
ladies were really delightful. They could not imagine how we had
made such a commodious-looking affair out of such a place as it
had been. “Why, it looks almost like a church !” they said. Even
the poor natives caught the spirit of the occasion, and, as they came
in and seated themselves, looked around smiling and nodding to
•each other.
The entire cost of fitting up, including the boards and nails for
the seats, was four dollars and thirty-six cents. Only missionaries
—and missionaries under such circumstances—could adequately
appreciate our joy over this humble commencement.
I also present another sketch, (on the top of the next page,) that
will give an idea of the appearance of our congregation inside the
“Sheep-House” Chapel.
The reader can imagine that he sees Joel preaching, and we
sitting around him, the congregation being in front. The women
sit on the benches to the right; the men in the center. Two poles,
supporting the roof, run up in the center of the house.
We occupied this humble place for some months, when our wor¬
thy commandant, Colonel Ramsay, (to whom, next to Colonel
Gowan, our mission is most indebted for munificent financial aid,)
seeing our earnestness and success, resolved that we should have
a house more worthy of our cause. The result was the erection of
our Nynee Tal chapel, costing about $2,500, the whole amount
The Sheep-House Congregation.
being subscribed by the Colonel and his acquaintances and friends

in Nynee Tal and Almorah.
Lucknow was recaptured, and the English Government restored
there, at the close of March. The defeated Sepoys fled into Rohil-
cund, or across the Grand Trunk Road into Central India, with the
columns of British troops in pursuit. Jhansee and Gwalior were
recaptured, and Kooer Singh and the Ranee of Jhansee killed.
This was followed by the capture and death of Tantia Topee.
Most of the other chiefs surrendered, and the columns were at last
turned northward for the pacification of Rohilcund. Three of
them, including the one led by the Commander-in-chief, were to
concentrate on Bareilly, then viewed as “ the metropolis of the
revolt.” On the 5 th of May, within a few hours of each other, and
from opposite directions, they approached that city. Sir Colin
Campbell led his column by the Futtyghur road, General Penny
his by the Allyghur road, through Budaon, and General Jones the
third, by way of Moradabad. Here was to be the last great-effort,
and it was fought, the dispatch says, amid “ a mass of one-storied
houses in front of the British lines,” that is, it was fought on the
very ground where I had lived, our ruined house and garden being
by the road-side, between the cantonments and the city, in the very
THE BATTLE OF BAREILLY. 439
center of the contest, the walls of the houses giving shelter to the
Sepoys as they awaited the onslaught of the Commander-in-chief’s
forces.
The rebels were headed by the Nana Sahib of Cawnpore, Prince
Feroze Shah of Delhi, and Khan Bahadur of Bareilly, and with
them was the Begum of Oude and her troops. So here, as it hap¬
pened, were concentrated for the final effort the living representa¬
tives of the four great centers of the Sepoy Rebellion. Their
resolve and fighting on that dreadful day were worthy of the des¬
perate cause and the desperate men, who well knew that this was
to be their final chance ; that here, at last, it was to be for them
either death or victory. The 42d and 79th Highlanders bore the
brunt of the struggle, which was short and sharp. A body of
Ghazees (Mohammedan fanatics of the most desperate character)
led the Sepoys. These men, sword in hand, with their bossed
bucklers on their left arms, and their characteristic green waist¬
bands, rushed out of their concealment to the attack, brandishing
their tulwars over their heads, and shrieking out their favorite cry,
“ Bismillah Allah ! deen ! deen ! ” (“ Glory to Allah ! the faith ! the
faith!”) In the confusion they were not recognized as distin¬
guished from the Sikhs, who were fighting with the British, till
they came close on the side of the 42d Highlanders. The Com¬
mander-in-chief had just time to cry out, “ Steady, men, steady !
close up ; bayonet them when the struggle ensued. Russell,
the “ special correspondent ” of the London Times, who was pres¬
ent, gives a vivid picture of this fearful moment. He himself was
wounded, as were General Walpole, Colonel Cameron, and others,
for the Ghazees seem to have made straight for the officers ; but
the quick bayonets of the 42d closed around them, and in ten min¬
utes the dead bodies of the devoted band (as their name implies)
were lying in the circle. Not a man of the one hundred and
thirty-three turned back. They all believed, according to the
tenets of their creed, that they were martyrs, and were sure of
paradise if they fell.
Nearly twenty of the Highlanders were wounded in the struggle,
the Commander-in-chief having had a narrow escape. A Ghazee,.

with tulwar in hand, was lying, feigning death, in front of him, and
as he approached, the fellow sprang to his feet to kill him, when
the quick eye of a mounted Sikh soldier saw the move, and (Rus¬
sell says) “ with a whistling stroke of his saber he cut off the
Ghazee’s head with one blow, as if it had been the bulb of a
poppy ! ” General Penny was killed near Kukrowlee. The Com¬
mander-in-chief had only a skeleton staff. He had completely
“ used up ” more than one set of officers, and on this occasion
had only his chief of staff, General Mansfield, with Captain John¬
son, to aid him. Under such circumstances the battle of Bareilly
was fought and won before the sun went down. Early next morn¬
ing the city was attacked, but it was found that during the night
the Sepoys had fled, with Khan Bahadur and the other rebel lead¬
ers. The city surrendered at once, save some Ghazees, whose
positions had to be stormed. A timely proclamation of am¬
nesty to all save notorious rebels and murderers, with precautions
to prevent any plundering, restored confidence to the terrified
inhabitants, and they willingly submitted once more to British
rule and protection.
It was at this spot that the Nana Sahib last saw the face, and
witnessed the prowess, of the white man ; and it was from this bat¬
tle-field he took that departure for the jungles of Oude mentioned
on page 309 of this work. It is some satisfaction to have the
assurance from good authority that two, at least, of the companions
of his flight, the Begum of Oude and Prince Feroze Shah, de¬
nounced his cruel treachery at Cawnpore, as having brought the
curse of God upon the native cause. The- deadly Terai was but
forty-eight miles away. It was the only shelter in all India that was
open to receive them. He and his companions, and the remnants
of the rebel host, entered its malarious inclosures, and, save Khan
Bahadur, who lagged behind in its outskirts, and was captured and
brought back to Bareilly, the rest of the unhappy crew found sick¬
ness, despair, and death within its gloomy shades. Thus, in the
providence of God, ended the great Sepoy Rebellion, and the
VISIT TO MY RUINED HOME. 441
twelve months of its Mohammedan misrule and cruelty closed

amid the dying groans of its emissaries at the foot of our hills, and
almost within sight of our place of refuge.
Our impatience now to go down to our work in the plains was
sorely tried by the refusal of the Commander-in-chief to permit us
to do so for some weeks longer—the ladies he would not allow to do
so till October, not only because the country needed to be cleared
and quieted, but also because houses had first to be built for them.
At length the permission came for gentlemen to go down, and taking
the road to Moradabad, lest that through the Terai, on the Huldwa-
nee side, might have straggling Sepoys in it, we reached Bareilly
on the 28th of August. We found every thing, of course, much
changed. The burned houses and bare walls had a look of fearful
desolation about them.
On entering Bareilly I went, first of all, to my own residence>
(which was so, fifteen months before.) Nothing was Standing but
the bare walls ; the floors were all grown over with deep grass. I
called a coolie, and dug up the rubbish in my once comfortable study,
and we soon came on the charred remains of my precious books.
All had been destroyed by fire! I took up a handful of the burnt
paper, and of the melted glass of the book-cases, as a memento, and
walked away to the spot where Maria lay buried beside the rose
hedge, and then on to where Joel’s house stood. What a change
from the day I last stood there! But no murmuring thought arose.
It was all well: “ Blessed be the name of the Lord !” We were to
begin again, and that, too, under brighter prospects than India ever
knew before. I wandered all over Bareilly. The people were very
civil. I knew that I loved them then better than I had ever done,
and felt sure that God would yet have mercy upon them, and that
we should soon see days of grace in Bareilly.
I then wandered off toward the encampment of the English
troops, and one of the first gentlemen whom I met was our dear, good
friend Dr. Bowhill, safe from Delhi, and the rest of his campaigns.
The warm-hearted Scotchman hugged me up to his heart, and wept
for joy that we should meet again, after all we had gone through,
on the same old ground where we first met, and where God had
blessed his soul in the dark days before the mutiny.
And then I found kind General Troup, to whose prudence we
•owed our lives. He was in command of Havelock’s Brigade, and
worthy of the position. The excellent Magistrate also received us
cordially, and advised an immediate commencement of our work,
promising to aid us in every way. Before I was twenty-four hours
in Bareilly a subscription was started to help us in organizing our
missions. That financial liberality has continued, year by year in¬
creasing, to this day; those excellent men, in the civil and military
service of England, have since furnished the means required to
carry on our system of Christian schools and our Orphanages, aver¬
aging over $10,000 gold per annum.* We promised, as soon as our
Mission in Lucknow was commenced, to begin the work at Bareilly.
At the latter we could not yet find shelter, but in Lucknow houses
could at onfce be obtained, by the assistance of Sir Robert Mont¬
gomery, the successor of Sir Henry Lawrence in the government
of Oude. He was»kind enough to write to me and advise our imme¬
diate occupancy of that city, and we were now en route to do so.
The Sabbath was a blessed day. The troops (two thousand seven
hundred men) then stationed in Bareilly were chiefly Scottish regi¬
ments. The Chaplain being sick, the General commanding sent tc
request that I would undertake the chaplain’s duties for the Sab¬
bath. Of course I gladly did so. My opportunity was one I shall
never forget. Arriving on the • parade-ground, I found the troops
drawn up. I took my stand; the men were formed in a “hollow
square,” the drum of the regiment was placed before me, and a
Bible and Psalm Book lay upon it. The General and his officers
stood beside me, and the band behind. I gave out the one hun¬
dredth Psalm, and the music and voices rose up on the Sabbath
air to heaven. I then prayed with an overflowing heart, and stood
up to preach “ the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”
My emotions almost overwhelmed me when I looked at my audi¬
ence. For who were the men that stood around me ? These were
* See Statistical Table No. I, page 528.
CONDUCTING WORSHIP FOR HAVELOCK'S MEN. 443
Havelock's heroes ! the illustrious warriors who first relieved the

garrison of Lucknow. Yes, these brave men before me had per¬
formed one of the greatest military feats known to history, and did
it, too, notwithstanding that they lost nearly one half of their
number in its execution. I looked at their sun-browned faces, and
thought of the manly tears they shed when, covered with dust and
smoke, they rushed through the last street and into the “ Residency”
among the men and women whom they had suffered so much to
rescue, and, snatching up the children in their arms, thanked God
“ that they were in time to save them ! ”
Noble men ! I realized, as I stood before them, that their fame be¬
longs to our nation as much as to their own. And I shall ever esteem
it one of the highest privileges of my life that I was permitted to
preach, and that, too, on the very ground of their last battle-field, to
the men that General Havelock led to the relief of Lucknow!
Though it anticipates the time somewhat, I may here mention
that Khan Bahadur was captured and brought into Bareilly. He
and four or five others were confined in the little fort, awaiting their
trial. Wishing to see my old neighbor, and say a word to him
before he died, I obtained permission to do so, accompanied by
Rev. Mr. Humphrey. There, in his cell, we found Khan Bahadur,
his long white beard hanging down nearly to his waist. It was a
trying moment for us both. Here was the man who sent to my
house to kill me and my family, who expressed his deep disappoint¬
ment at our having escaped his hands, and who afterward set a
price upon my head ! This was the man, too, who had deliberately
murdered Judge Robertson, Judge Raikes, Dr. Hay, and many
more of my acquaintance !
What a curious thing is human nature! Here was a criminal,
of whose deep guilt no one that knew him could have the least
doubt; and yet an author like Montgomery Martin, who never saw
him, and had no adequate knowledge of his desperate wickedness,
half undertakes to whitewash his ensanguined fame! But this is
consistent with Mr. Martin’s course, in his efforts to find cause of
commiseration for the Delhi Emperor, while he seems to exhibit
but scanty sympathy for the victims ot the Delhi court- -an author
who can indulge in cold-hearted and cynical criticism upon such men
as Sir R. Montgomery and Sir Henry Lawrence, who went through
fiery trials of responsibility of which he, in his comfortable London
home, ten thousand miles away from their danger, could have little
idea. I am sorry to write these words. But I was there, he was
not; and I know whereof I affirm, and can conscientiously say
that I consider some of Mr. Martin’s representations in his “ Indian
Empire” to be unworthy of the confidence of the American pub¬
lic. His slurs and innuendoes caused deep feeling in the minds
of some of the best men in India, many of whom were not at all
his intellectual inferiors, while they were his superiors in opportu¬
nities for forming correct opinions. They had not to depend, as he
seems to have done for some of his representations, upon hasty and
partial statements, or such writers as “ Bull-Run Russell! ” His
glorification of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir James Outram, to the
prejudice of General Havelock and Sir John Lawrence, only shows
that he had his favorites, and would belittle other men to make
them look greater. But we in India knew the difference, and it
was the conviction of many there, competent to give an opinion
upon such matters, that Sir Colin Campbell was not only slow, but
that he did nothing more than what any brave English officer could
have done with the same resources. As to Sir James Outram, so
far as the establishment of Christianity in the Valley of the Ganges
is concerned, I know from my own personal intercourse with both,,
and their actions, that we may have great reason to be thankful
that Sir James Outram was superseded, and the evangelically cou¬
rageous Sir Robert Montgomery was appointed to be ruler of Oude
during the founding of our Mission in that kingdom.
Mr. Martin’s peculiar notions on the lawfulness or expediency of
capital punishment must have been often offended by the events of
the time. It would, however, have been but fair to have extended
the benefit of his doctrine as fully to the victims of the Sepoys as
to the Sepoys themselves. It may, however, be doubted if his nar¬
rative shows this clearly. The consideration he seems so ready to
VISIT TO KHAN BAHADUR IN PRISON. 445
exhibit for the Sepoys is an anomaly not easily accounted for ; but
he has found few sympathizers. I would not speak too harshly,
even of a criminal; yet I will take the responsibility of saying, that
I never saw or heard of men to whom, more appropriately or deserv¬
edly than to the Sepoys and their chiefs, could be applied the terri¬
ble character given by the Holy Spirit, when he so fully describes
those whose profanity, crimes, and riot, exhibit them “as natural
brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed.” 2 Peter ii, 12.
They were men who neither knew nor showed mercy, any more than
would be exhibited by the tigers of their own jungles ; and toward
whom the most just and saintly magistrate on earth would be guilty,
before God and human society, if he should not firmly “bear the
sword ” until he had, at least, controlled their cruelty, and stopped
their power for further mischief.
Mr. Martin has not increased his fame by thus obtruding upon
his countrymen his mistaken and conceited assumptions of “ impar¬
tiality” toward bloodthirsty wretches who, as a class, so generally
(I might almost say universally) proved themselves ready, from the
first hour to the last, to become the destroyers of churches, the
murderers of the ministers of God, and the slayers of undefended
women and children.
But to return to Khan Bahadur. He asked me how had I
escaped ? I told him. He seemed uneasy, and evidently thought
that my visit was in some way connected with his approaching
trial. I assured him that he might dismiss all anxiety upon that
point—my testimony was not required. Far worse than I could
present had been heaped up by his own fearful actions, and was
now ready for his condemnation. I had come, with my brother
Missionary, to visit him with a kind intention ; that I forgave him
all the harm he did me in the destruction of my home and prop¬
erty, and the more serious harm which he intended to do in taking
our lives ; that our only object in coming was to converse with him
about his poor soul, which would so soon have to appear before
God, as we felt sure that his days were numbered, and he could not
hope for mercy here, in view of the past; and we closed by entreat-
ing him to turn to God in penitence, and seek pardon through the
Lord Jesus, who died for him and for all sinners. This was done
in a very kind manner by Brother Humphrey, and I hoped the old
man would have been impressed by it; but his Mohammedan big¬
otry rose up bitterly against the Saviour’s atonement, and he would
not admit his necessity of any such help. The Koran was enough ;
he wanted nothing more, and wished to hear nothing else.
I saw him tried before two judges. He was defended by a
native lawyer, who managed the sad case as well as he could. Mr.
Moens, an English magistrate, prosecuted. The old Nawab’s
policy was to deny every charge, but any number of native wit¬
nesses were ready to come forward and prove them. On the
afternoon of the second or third day the trial was closed in con¬
nection with a singular forgetfulness of his. A witness on the
stand was testifying to the color of the robes which Khan Baha¬
dur wore on the day when he witnessed the exposure of the bodies
of the murdered English people at the Kotwalie. The old man
had denied that he was there at all, but, forgetting himself in his
rage against the witness, who swore it was a blue dress he had on,
Khan Bahadur turned to him and said, “You lie, you rascal! it
was not blue, it was a green dress that I wore.” The look of blank
astonishment that came over the face of the native lawyer at his
client’s acknowledgment was a study, while Mr. Moens turned
toward the judges and merely remarked, “Your honors hear the
admission of the prisoner.” The trial closed that afternoon. He
was condemned to be hanged at the Kotwalie. He passed me on
his way to execution in a cart, sitting on his coffin, with a guard of
the 42d Highlanders around him, lest the Mohammedans should
interpose any trouble ; but they attempted none ; there seemed to
be among the natives a general acquiescence in his doom, as one
that had been fully deserved.
A medical friend went down to see him executed. On his
return he told me what had occurred, remarking, “ I had some
sympathy for the old man, but his wicked utterance at the close
took it all away.” The facts were these: when Khan Bahadur
EOW KHAN BAHADUR DIED. 44 7
mounted the scaffold and stood on the trap, which was about to be
drawn from beneath his feet, the rope resting loosely on his shoul¬
ders, and the cap ready to be drawn down, Mr. Moens, who had
acted as council against him on his trial, and was now acting as
sheriff, stepped forward and said, “ Khan Bahadur, have you any
thing to say before you die ?” “Yes,” was the prompt reply, “I
have two things to say : first, I hate you and then added, speak¬
ing as an Oriental, and using the certain for the uncertain number,
while his face lit up with a glow of awful gratification, “ but,
Moens, I have had the satisfaction of killing a thousand Christian
dogs, and I would kill a thousand more now, if I had the power.”
Ten minutes after, that man stood in the presence of the Judge
of all, and he went into eternity with the Mohammedan conviction
that, in killing Christians, he had been doing God service, and
consequently his crown of martyrdom would be all the brighter for
every life which he had sacrificed ; hence his confidence and exul¬
tation in that fearful moment.
We left Bareilly for Lucknow, attended to Futtyghur (seventy-
four miles) by relays of sowars, (native cavalry,) the General con¬
sidering the precaution still necessary. On reaching Futtyghur
we went to the mission premises. But what a ruin! When I was
last there, the beloved brethren and sisters of the Presbyterian mis¬
sion were surrounded by a happy, native Christian community,
engaged in supporting themselves by tent-making and other
employment, and in the center of the village stood their nice
church ; but all was destroyed and desecrated now, and these dear
Missionaries and their wives were numbered among “ the noble
army of martyrs.”
We pushed on for Lucknow. It was the month of September.
How well we could understand now, what Havelock and his men
must have gone through during that month last year ! My entry,
mad« at the time, tells of the torrents of rain, of the flooded
country, and of having to cross unbridged rivers twenty times in
that seventy miles. We were twenty-six hours going about twenty-
five of these miles. The rain, the mud, and the slippery way
were very trying ; yet Havelock had to take an army over this very
ground, and at the same season. Here he had to fight battles,
carry his wounded, and sustain his men. The Ganges had so
overflowed its banks that it was nearly five miles wide where we
crossed it.
At Cawnpore we visited “the Well” of sad memories, and the
Shrine, (then being built)and the Intrenchments, and Ghat, and con¬
versed with Private Murphy, the only survivor in India of the ter¬
rible massacre.
On reaching Lucknow we were most kindly received at Govern¬
ment House, no longer the Residency, but a building in another
part of the city. Mr. (now Sir Robert) Montgomery welcomed us
with the cordiality of a Christian, requesting us to consider his
house our home till we could obtain a mission residence, and offer¬
ing to aid us in every way within his power. He believed in Mis¬
sions, and in the ability of God’s truth to reach the hearts even of
the turbulent race whom he ruled.
After breakfast next morning I started off to explore Lucknow.
Going out of the door, how well I remembered the last time I went
through it, starting from the Residency on the back of an elephant,
guarded by a Sepoy all day. But Mr. Montgomery did not offer
me an elephant on this occasion, and there were no Sepoys to at¬
tend me. So I walked off, quite content to have it so, and was not
ten minutes in the Bazaar till it was all explained. The change
was amazing, even already. Instead of every man being armed
with tulwar and shield, nobody bore a weapon, save the native
police. Every person seemed to be minding his own business.
The shop-keeper’s sword was no longer on his counter, yet his
goods seemed safe enough. Mr. Montgomery had disarmed the en¬
tire population, and taught them that they must no longer fight
and wound each other. If they had a quarrel, they musi not take
the law into their own hands ; the courts were open to them, and
they must go there and have the magistrate settle it for them.
They submitted, and seemed amazed how well the new arrange¬
ment worked. Never before had it been so seen in Lucknow. It
RESULTS VIEWED FROM THE RESIDENCY. 449
was the new and wonderful reign of law and equal justice in the
land of the Sepoy.
The public, shameless vice, that so shocked me when I last
passed through these streets, was no longer seen. It had been
told it must retire, and cease to shock virtue and decency by its
hateful presence. The order, the industry, and the propriety of
the streets, were to me simply marvelous ; and the people were so
civil—making their salaam as I passed along, much gratified to
find that I returned their courtesy. And this was Lucknow, with
its hundreds of thousands of people, and I, a white face, alone and
unarmed among them ! I could hardly believe my own senses.
But it was just so ; and I felt that we might almost conclude that
the city was already about half saved.
Yet there was enough to remind you of the savage and cruel
past. The houses were all bullet marked, and some blown to
pieces. There still remained the mud walls on the roofs, pierced
for musketry, behind which knelt the fierce Sepoy as he so safely
poured his deadly bullets on Havelock’s men as they fought their
way along the streets on which I was then so peacefully walking!
I went straight to “The Residency.” No words could do justice to
the change from what it was when I stood there eighteen months
before ! Battered out of all recognition, yet still a glorious monu¬
ment of what brave men can do and endure in a worthy cause.
So here we stand, in the capital of the Sepoy, and on the spot
where he did his utmost, and found even that no match for Chris¬
tian heroism. Now let us, in closing this chapter, take our rapid
review of results’ achieved by the valor so gloriously illustrated on
this spot. The former and the present are here, and the future
opens, while, before our face, old things are passing away, and all
things are becoming new. We recognize the blessed changes ;
changes for which India herself will yet adore the Providence
which refused her victory to her own ruin. God has subjected
her “in hope” that she “shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
And, first, as to the great Sepoy Army. This military monster
recruited chiefly from the Brahmin class, had, amid all their igno¬
rance and unreasoning bigotry, grown into a full knowledge of its
own power. They well knew that they were united in a common
class interest, could dictate their own terms, and had the Govern¬
ment at their mercy. They were pampered to the last degree by
their timid and politic rulers. The stronger they grew, the more
dangerous they became, and sooner or later a fearful conflict with
them was inevitable ; and the longer it was deferred, the more de¬
structive it must be to the weaker party. Even now it makes one
shudder to remember how completely we were in the power of
these cruel and wicked men. All this is now changed. That
vast combination of brute force, with its ignorance and fanaticism,
has melted away. Only two regiments remain, who, I fear, more
from peculiar combinations of circumstances than from any special
virtue of their own, remained loyal, and wear to-day the title of
“ Wu/adars,” (faithful;) all the rest of the mighty host has van¬
ished away.
Nor did they fall alone—they dragged down into their hideous
ruin the whole class from which they were recruited. A large
portion of the towns and villages of Oude was a mere Sepoy train¬
ing ground for the East India Company. Here, for generations,
the inhabitants contemplated no other employment save service in
the Company’s army. At twice the compensation of artisans, with
easy times, and decked out in the pomp of military array, these
men lived in comparative affluence, and on the expiration of their
term of service, they were retired on pensions for life equal to
about half their pay. So that there were three generations of
Sepoys in these villages in 1857, namely, the serving Sepoys,
and as pensioners, their fathers and their grandfathers ; and when
the active force threw off their allegiance to the Government of
Great Britain, and lost their cause, the reaction against them
was so great, that, at one swoop, the Government which they had
outraged cut off them and theirs from the rolls forever. Pay and
pensions ceased, and two hundred thousand Sepoys, invalided and
active, were thrown upon their own resources, and reduced to
EFFECT ON THE MOHAMMEDANS. 45 r
hopeless poverty. The old fathers and grandfathers were mad¬
dened by the result, and when the defeated Sepoys, those of them'
who escaped death on the field or in the jungle, came slinking, in
disgrace and fear, back to their native villages, they soon realized;
that their bitterest foes were “ they of their own household.” They
were driven out with taunts and hatred by their own fathers, whom
their perfidy had reduced to ruin. The quiet peasantry on whom
they had brought the calamities of war had no sympathy to bestow
on them. Hooted with curses and contempt from their homes,
afraid to associate together save in the jungles, lest the eyes of the
Government should see and pursue them, many of these wretched
men became fugitives and vagabonds.
Driven to the dire necessity by actual hunger, some of them
threw off their lordly Brahminical assumptions, and were glad to
go between the handles of a plow, to turn up the soil for an honest
living, like common men—a wonderful fact, and one that people
did not dream of in 1856. It was one of the most fearful blows
that Caste and Brahminism ever received, and has forever lowered
the prestige of that proud class in India. A mixed' native army,
of more limited numbers, formed out of all creeds and parties, has
taken their place, while the amount of British soldiers has been
more than doubled, and the forts, arsenals, and magazines of India
are henceforth in their safe keeping.
Second. Equally marked have been the results of the great
Rebellion upon the Mohammedan portion of the population. To'
conciliate these people is impossible. Nothing less than the con¬
viction and grace that can lead a Romanist to esteem and love
evangelical Christians, can ever induce a Mohammedan to become
a willing subject of a Christian power. Till then their insolence
has to be borne with, and their rage controlled by a firm, but
humane, hand. They were in this case the greatest sinners, and
they are the greatest sufferers. Their imperial pretensions, with
their dynasty, have sunk into the dust forever. Their hopes of
supremacy are utterly annihilated ; their nobles fill the graves of
traitors and murderers. They, themselves, are distrusted by all,
and hated with a double intensity by the Hindoo race, whom the^
first misled and deceived, and then oppressed, during their brief
term of power. The worst that they can do is now well known,
and they are well aware that they are no longer feared. An amaz¬
ing submission has been developed, showing how effectually the
proud, imperious conceit has been whipped out of them.
In illustration of this fact, I will ask the reader’s indulgence
while relating an incident, rather “free and easy” in its character,
but one which made a lasting impression upon my mind. It will
point its own moral much better perhaps than a dozen sober facts
could do.
Three weeks after my arrival in Lucknow, as the result of dili¬
gent search, we found premises for sale in the Husseinabad Bazaar,
which seemed just what we needed for our Mission establishment.
They belonged to a relative of the ex-King, a Nawab, or native
nobleman, whose reduced circumstances made him glad to dispose
of them. All being ready for payment, I went with this gentleman
to the English magistrate’s Court, to have the deed recorded and
the cash paid, and have the signature and seal of the Court added,
to render all safe and valid. The Court, for want of a more suit¬
able place, was then held in the splendid Tomb of Asaf-ud-Dou-
lah, second King of Oude. This was situated in the west end of
that great Bazaar ; the Fort, occupied by English soldiers, being at
the other end ; and between these two points, at any business hour
of the day, you could find eight or ten thousand men lounging
about or engaged in trade. Eighteen months before, such was the
turbulence there, that a Mohammedan yell of “ Deen, deen!”
would have brought a mob of probably five thousand men around
you in five minutes, every man armed and used to weapons, for
many of them had served as Sepoys—all ready for any deed of
violence or blood, in which they had the example of the vile
Mohammedan Court then in Lucknow. It may be doubted if
there was then a more combustible and fanatical scene any where
■on earth than that Bazaar held. Mr. Mead’s description of it, on
THE IRISHMAN IN THE LUCKNOW COURT. 453
Passing through the crowds we reached the Court, which was

filled, only the aisle in front of the table, down to the door, being
unoccupied. Mr. Wood, the magistrate, was in his place, and we
took seats on either side of him, and all business was quietly pro¬
ceeding, when a tumult outside, in the Bazaar, attracted our atten¬
tion, and in a few moments in rushed a Jamadar (sergeant) of
police, followed by six of his men, all in a wonderful hurry and
excitement. The Jamadar was a large, heavy man, rigged out with
a red pugree (turban) on his head, and a red kummer-bund around
his waist, with his tulwar tucked under his arm, his men being sim¬
ilarly decorated and accoutered. His face was flushed, for he had run
hard ; and, having for the moment lost his breath, when he drew up
in front of the magistrate’s table, and joined his hands to address
him, the man could not say a word for a few seconds. At length
he gasped out, “ O Sahib, burra tukleef Bazaar men hai! ” (O, sir,
there is dreadful trouble in the Bazaar !) When the magistrate
had succeeded in quieting the perturbation of the poor Jamadar, he
was duly informed that “ a gora log [a white soldier] had come out
of the Fort into the Bazaar, armed with a stout stick, g.nd that the
first man he met he stretched him on the ground, and the rest,
seeing what he had received, had retreated, jumping off their stalls
and leaving money and goods behind them ; and,” continued the
distressed and terrified Jamadar, “ Sahib, the gora is cutting capers
there in the middle of the Bazaar, swinging his stick, and chal¬
lenging them to come on, and offering to fight them all; but, of
course, they wont go near him. They are all here in a heap at the
•end of the Bazaar, and, Sahib, what am I to do ? ” “ What are
you to do ! You gudha, (donkey,) why, go and arrest the man.
What else would you do ? ” The astonished police officer looked
at his chief as if he could not believe his own ears, and asked,
“ What did you say, Sahib ? ” “ I said, go and arrest him.” He
looked at Mr. Wood, and in deep distress at the danger of his
disobedience, exclaimed with emphasis, “ Sahib, it cannot be done.
There is not a man in the Bazaar would dare to look him in the
face ! ” Mr. W. insisted that he must “ look him in the face,” and
bring him up before him, adding, “If you are afraid, then take your
six men,” (who all stood in a row behind their gallant leader, with
about as much courage as Falstaff’s squad, gazing right into the
face of the magistrate ;) “ surely seven of you, armed with tul¬
wars, are enough to arrest one English soldier with only a stick in
his hand.”
It was all of no use ; go they would not, and much as they loved
livery, and power, and pay, they were, to a man, ready to resign
the service sooner than execute the commission ; so that Mr. W.
had no alternative but to write a line to the English sergeant of
the guard at the Fort, directing him to send a couple of soldiers to
arrest the man and bring him up. A swift messenger, by a back
road, soon delivered the chittee, and we sat still to see the result.
In a short time a military tread was heard, the road clearing as
they came, and the disturber of the peace, with the stick in his
hand, was walked in between two of his brethren right up to the
magistrate’s table. He looked around at the crowd, and at us, and
at the magistrate, in astonishment, every glance seeming to say,
“ What in the world have I been brought here for ? ”
Mr. W. broke the silence with, “ Well, sir, I am given to under¬
stand that you have been disturbing my people in the Bazaar.’’-
Steadying himself for a reply, (the first word he uttered showing
that he was an Irishman, and half drunk at that,) he said, with a
significant twirl of the stick, “ Yis, yer Honor, I’ve been stirring
them up a little looking very merry over it, as if he had been
“ doing the State some service,” which ought to be recognized. It
rather sobered him down, however, to hear the magistrate’s prompt
and stern reply, “ Then, sir, I wish you to understand that I don’t
want them ‘ stirred up.’ ” The soldier was incredulous. He evi¬
dently thought the magistrate was only joking. “ Ah now, yer
Honor, you don’t mean that at all, at all! ” His Honor said he did
mean it, and, trying to look as severe as he could, he added, “And
more than that, I want to know what brought you into my Bazaar
at all?” This question, and its manner, roused the soldier, his rol¬
licking aspect became serious, as, bringing down the end of his
THE IRISHMAN IN THE LUCKNOW COURT. 455
■stick with a sharp ring on the floor beside him, and the tears
springing to his eyes, he stretched out his hand, and for a few
moments he seemed to me the most eloquent speaker I had ever
heard : “ Ah, yer Honor, listen to me. If yer Honor only knew the
races I have had after these rascally Pandies, in rain, and hunger,
and mud, and how many noble comrades have fallen by this side,”
■(striking his thigh,) “and on this!” (repeating the action there.)
Here his feelings seemed to overcome him. He paused, and then
added, “Yer Honor, the spirit was up in me a little this mornin’,
and I thought I’d just come out and have a little bit of a fight on
my own private account; but, yer Honor, I could not get a sin¬
gle one of the spalpeens to face me, and what was I to do, yer
Honor ? ” His Honor’s calm rejoinder was, “ You were to let them
alone.” But the poor fellow could not see it. A happy thought
seemed then to strike him, and the spirit of fun was once more in
full possession of him. Stretching out his stick toward Mr.
Wood, he exclaimed, “ Now, yer Honor, what’s the use of talkin’;
just do you say the word, and I’ll lick out every mother sowl of
them for you in five minutes! ” By this time he was in an attitude,
and looked the fighting Irishman all over.
Mr. Wood, I suppose, made about the best effort of his life to
keep his countenance and seem serious ; he could not afford to
give way before his Court. How he ever did it I cannot imagine.
Being under no such restriction, I shook with laughing till I
-nearly fell off the chair, and all the more, when I saw the effect of
the attitude and the stick on the great fat Nawab on the other side
■of the table. With his hands on his knees, and evidently alarmed,
he watched every movement of the soldier, and not knowing a
word of English, he seemed to realize the fellow’s antics boded no
good to him personally, and looked as if he was ready to bolt. It was
useless for Mr. Wood to rejoin, as he did, that he “did not want
them licked out,” for the Irishman proceeded, quite in a confiden¬
tial way, blandly to assure him, “Yer Honor, you wont have the
least trouble; you will only just have to say the word, and I’ll dc
the business for you !”
Things were going from bad to worse, and the magistrate saw
he must lose no time in getting rid of the fellow ; so, with a threat
that, if ever he found him in his Bazaar again he would hand him
up for court martial, he said to the guard, “ Take him away!” and
off he was walked, to the great relief of the Nawab, and the Jama-
dar, and all the natives present, and I suppose to Mr. Wood as
well. And this was in Lucknow, and only ten months after its
recapture !
Solomon says, “ There is a time to laugh.” I have found in my
life few occasions more appropriate for that exercise than the one
here given, which I have faithfully described as it occurred. It
is allowable occasionally to pass
“ From grave to gay,
From lively to severe.”
My book has more than enough of the grave and the sad ; let this,
then, have a place here, for here it belongs, and has a lesson far
beyond what appears on the surface of this ludicrous scene. I
have introduced it, not for the sake of its levity, though it was rich
and almost inimitable, but for the sake of its lesson. One can
read that lesson, and even laugh over it, as I did, near the graves-
of Havelock and Henry Lawrence. Laughter may be religious.
It was so here. To adequately appreciate the enlargement of
heart, or even the hilarity of that occasion, one would need to have
experimentally known our previous conditions there—to have rid¬
den on an elephant’s back, with a Sepoy guard, through those very
Bazaars of vice and danger — should have been, as we were,
acquainted with those who endured there that long agony of the
defense—must have stood with us for seven months on the summit
of Nynee Tal, with the fear that you were the last of the Christian
life left in India, and that our fate, at the hands of these bloody
men, might be but a question of time, while our only hope, under
God, were these very red-coated soldiers whom we feared might yet
be ten thousand miles away from us. A “dying hope,” no relief, and
hardly expecting deliverance, and then to drop right out of those cir¬
cumstances into a scene like this ! The blessed God himself would
ONE OF YOU SHALL CHASE A THOUSAND. 457
sanction laughter here. For, when He “turned again the captivity

of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled
with laughter, and our tongue with singing.” For. it was literally
true in the Bazaars of Lucknow, that “ They said among the
heathen, God has done great things for them.” He did—here was
a striking evidence of it—and “ we were glad ! ”
Even as I looked and laughed at this half-drunken creature, how
vividly did God’s holy Word come to my mind, as I saw him in
his whimsical resolution and proposal, exulting in his ability, and
so eager for its display, offering to fulfill, to the letter, those words
of Holy Writ, so true then to the race whom he, even in his un¬
worthiness and unconsciousness, there represented, that “ One
should chase a thousand ; ” nay, even more than that, for he alone
offered to do the work of the “ two ” to whom a covenant God had
engaged, that they should “ put ten thousand to flight! ” And
why ? Because “ their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut
them up ; ” while Christendom was, at that very time, mingling their
congratulations with England for this wondrous divine deliverance,
and obeying the command of the Lord Jehovah, “ Rejoice, O ye
nations, with his people ; for he will avenge the blood of his serv¬
ants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be mer¬
ciful unto his land, and to his people.” Deut. xxxii, 43.
Third. The results upon the Hindoo race are equally marked.
They, too, have lost their Peishwa and their prestige ; they have
become deeply convinced of the impotence of their idols to aid
them in any great emergency; they have learned an additional les¬
son of Mohammedan perfidy and bitterness, which can never be
forgotten by them, and which forbids the possibility of any future
combination with their cruel antagonists. Their most intelligent
men are fully satisfied that, till the time comes when they shall be
fit for self-government, their best interests are bound up with their
allegiance to the English Government Under the security and
peace which it gives them they are now, as never before, devoting
their energies to material and educational improvement.
Fourth. The abolition of the East India Company is another of
the merciful results of the Rebellion. This proud and powerfu*

body of commercial men rose, in two hundred years, from the
humble position of a mere trading company, through a series of
events the most wonderful in modern history, till they came at last
to sway their scepter over an empire six times more populous than
that of their own Queen, and twice as populous-as that of Augustan
Rome, and separated, till recently, from them by a voyage of four
or five months. But this vast opportunity, the greatest that Chris¬
tian rulers ever possessed, was not improved to the intellectual
■or moral good of the vast multitudes whom they governed. What
they chiefly considered was large dividends, and every thing had to
bow to that. As a corporation, they had no soul that would feel for
the guilt and danger of perishing men, or make any effort to
redeem them, but, on the contrary, they tried to discourage all such
efforts. To this unworthy and unchristian policy they held on to
the last, and would have held on probably for ages if God and the
English public had not abolished their rule on the 1st of Novem¬
ber, 1858. Even in the terrible lessons of the first outbreak,
instead of relenting and turning from their course, they clung all
the more tenaciously to it. In evidence of this, the fact can be
referred to, that in the first panic caused by the news which reached
England in July, 1857, informing all classes*of the terrible events
which had taken place on the 31st of May, and that British suprem¬
acy seemed to hang in the balance, one of their kind in London,
well acquainted -with the East, and from whose military character,
if nothing more, utterances of another sort would have been con¬
sistent—this man, the editor of “ The United Service Magazine,” in
his leading article for his August number, was so carried away by
his fears and by false and godless theories, that he deliberately
proposed to sacrifice the claims of his faith, and the moral hopes of
India, and surrender all to heathenism at the first blow, and with¬
out a struggle, in language which his descendants can never peruse
without a blush for the cowardly “ Christian ” who wrote it. Speak¬
ing of the measures to be henceforth employed in India for the
pacification of the country, and the retention of British supremacy.
ABOLITION OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. 459
he says : “Missionaries must be sent away about their business, and

the practice of attempting conversions be put immediate stop to. If
a black individual express a sincere desire to become a Christian,
by all means let his wishes be instantly attended to by the minis¬
ters of the Gospel, [the Episcopalian chaplains of the troops and
civilians.] By the substitution of this arrangement we are certain
that there would be no material diminution of the number of real
converts per annum, for at present the interior of a Cremorne
omnibus would afford them ample accommodation.”—United Serv¬
ice Magazine, 1857, p. 480.
In that “ omnibus ” I would have claimed at least three seats—
one each for Joel and Emma, and one for Peggy, Emma’s mother,
and would have felt satisfied, as I handed them in, that the young¬
est and weakest of their number had a courage and constancy for
Jesus and his cause which might well put to shame—as it will yet
in the presence of “the worthy Judge eternal”—the cowardice and
sarcasm of this unworthy Briton, who thus dared to offset the pol¬
icy and claims of the East India Company against the present and
final salvation of two hundred millions of benighted men.
I am thankful that this despicable and wicked utterance expressed
the feelings of a very small fraction of English society—smaller
to-day than ever, and growing “ beautifully less ”—while the “ Com¬
pany” whose policy and practices it pronounced, within twelve
months of the day when these words were printed, was forever extin¬
guished, as a governing body, by the Parliament of England, which
resolved to sustain British Christianity, while they vindicated Brit¬
ish supremacy, in India. The clique who could thus insult God
and his ministers, and wish to hinder the conversion of India’s
millions, were regarded as henceforth unworthy to administer the
political affairs of that great empire; and this very utterance was
the knell of their doom, as it was also of the Sepoy power on which
they so vainly and madly leaned for support. Natives and Chris¬
tians alike celebrated with gladness the day that saw the country
cass under the control of the Queen of England, to be henceforth
ruled by the Parliamentary Government of Great Britain.
26
Fifth. The Government of India to-day, in its freedom from the

policy and traditions of the Company, its separation from idol¬
atrous administrations, its strength and justice, its outspoken inter¬
est in the intellectual and moral well-being of the people, its
humane and impartial administration, is a wonderful improvement
upon the former things that have passed away. At length the oft-
repeated assertion, that “ India is the noblest trust ever committed
to a Christian nation,” seems to have taken possession of the minds
who guide her destiny.
The moral impression made by English prowess over Asiatic
combination and purpose has been immense, and has affected
other lands far beyond the bounds of India. It has convinced the
Asiatic nations of the superiority of Christian civilization beyond any
other event that has transpired on that hemisphere. The result in
India itself is, that England is considered to hold the land by a
stronger right than ever; her laws are more respected, her magis¬
trates more implicitly obeyed, her roads are safer, her peace is
more profound. What her Government know to be right can now
be attempted and carried out free from the temporizing of the past,
so that legislation is more decided, and radical, and beneficent. A
magnanimity that before was not dreamed of guides British policy.
Native gentlemen of education are now invested with Commissions
of the Peace. The native element is introduced into legislative
halls, and connected with the government of their country. Al¬
ready they sit on the bench of the High Court, and hold honorary
positions in Council, as the colleagues of the Governor General.
Public education is encouraged and pushed forward, the admission
of ladies into general society commended, female education among
all classes encouraged to the utmost, and extravagant costs of wed¬
dings and funerals discountenanced. The legislation, the princi¬
ples, and the personal influence of the Government, are all thus
bearing upon the repression of what is wrong in Hindoo society,
and the encouragement of all that is right and good.
None but those who have lived in India can adequately appre¬
ciate the difficulty or the delicacy of the great task which England
INDIA'S FUTURE FULL OF HOPE. 461
is trying to fulfill there to-day. One feature of the structure of

society there will sufficiently intimate this fact. There are in all
one hundred and fifty-three Hindoo and Mussulman Princes, gov¬
erning semi-independent States, under the protection of the para¬
mount power. These communities are less affected by intelligence,
and more liable to caste notions and time-honored observances,
than the territories directly governed by the British, and their
influence has to be considered ; then there are as many more
Princes, (retired from business,) some of them still bearing royal
titles, and drawing royal revenues from the treasury—any number
of Maharajahs, Nawabs, and Kings—within the British territories.
These have courts, ceremonials, and claims, which are all main¬
tained with a tenacity that, to us of the West, seems simply ridicu¬
lous, and which are, and must be, to India’s rulers, matters of worry
and difficulty ; but they have to deal gently with them, and work
on in hope that, in the progress of the country toward popular gov¬
ernment, these “royal” folk (including the Nawab Nazim of Ben¬
gal, the King of Oude, and others) or their descendants will become
content, in the interest of the unity of their magnificent land, and
its preparation for the popular native government which will one
day direct its destinies, to sink title and claim, and accept a posi¬
tion in native society analogous to that of the Peerage of England.
The day is past for the continued existence of “ three hundred and
seventy-four States” in a country that can be but one nation. As
Noblemen around their strong Government, these representatives
of dead or dying dynasties might do much for their country, as well
as opening a way for their own children to be trained and educated
for employment in positions of trust and usefulness.
These are but a mere intimation of the peculiar circumstances
which English administrators in India have to deal with as they
try to guide the interests of that country. The rebellion broke
down many of these difficulties, and simplified their task to a great
extent, making them more fully the masters of the situation ; time,
education, and Christianity will do the rest.
Meanwhile the country is progressing rapidly in the right
direction, its own people testify to their contentment and hopes

of its bright future, while travelers from other lands add their evi¬
dence to the peace and prosperity which have followed the sorrowful
chapters which we have traced. The appreciatory words lately
uttered by the Hon. W. Id. Seward, after having traveled through
India, will be in the remembrance of the reader. Mr. Seward’s
opinion is well sustained by another American gentleman, Dr.
Prime, of the Observer, just returned from a visit to India. With
a candid appreciation of the present, as compared with the past, he
uses the following language :
“ I have spoken of the complete change which has come over
the government of India in its being made directly responsible to,
and dependent on, the British Crown. A still greater change has
taken place in the objects for which the government is adminis¬
tered. For two centuries and a half India was ruled for the bene¬
fit of the East India Company. . . .
“ But that is all changed, or, if not all, the purpose of the Gov¬
ernment is changed. It is ruled now for the good of India, for the
sake of the people of India. I take the greatest pleasure in bear¬
ing testimony to the high character of those who have the admin¬
istration of affairs in that empire, and to the aspect of the country
in its material, educational, social, and religious interests, as being
full of promise. I doubt if any country has more conscientious
and intelligent public officers controlling its destinies than has
India. There are reforms yet to be consummated. The extreme
caution of rulers prevents them from entirely giving up a sort of
complicity with idolatry ; the great work of education which the
Government is carrying on, to which I shall again allude, is con¬
fined too much to a privileged class but it has been a great pleas¬
ure to me to find this land making such rapid progress in all that
is calculated to promote the highest good of the people who dwell
in it, to whatever race they belong. Overlooking all the past, I
heartily rejoice that India is to-day under British rule. Long may
that rule be undisturbed ! May it not be broken until the tribes
of the land shall be able, intelligently and wisely, to govern them
CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 463
selves. The effect of the present system will be to develop their

powers of self-government. In addition to the native princes, who
are still recognized as the heads of their limited territories, natives
are admitted as members to the Supreme and Provincial Councils..
The Government is doing nothing directly to advance the Chris¬
tian religion, (though as much as our own Government is doing,}
and many evils growing out of the peculiarities of the people, the
varieties of races, the inveterate nature of hoary prejudices, yet re¬
main to be removed or remedied ; but, judging from the promise of
the present, India bids fair to become again a mighty empire in the
East, and to outshine in its glory the splendor of the old Moguls.”
Sixth. The improved condition and prospects of Christianity and
of native Christians, as the result of the rebellion, is most marked
and important.
The position of Christianity in India, and its disabilities, will be
well understood from what has been already advanced. The condi¬
tion of the native Christian before the Rebellion was a most trying
one. He was cut off and proscribed by his heathen friends, looked
down upon too often by European officials, refused all employment
under Government, with no one to sympathize with him except a
few pious persons and the missionary, the latter very often unable
to help him, though his heart was distressed for him. Short as
the time was that I had then been in India, I learned some most
distressing cases of this kind.
The very last letter that I had from the martyred Missionary,
Brother Campbell, of Futtyghur, was on this subject. He writes,
“ Poor Saul, whom you saw when at my house, is still without
employment. I sent him to Cawnpore and Futtypore, but those
places were full; had more help and native Christians than could
be well provided for. He is now at home near Agra, and writes
to me that he is in a sad condition. Christians will not receive
him, though he is willing to do any kind of work ; and his relations
say, that if he remains with them in his native village he must
become one of them, that is, a heathen. Poor fellow, I pity him,
for I think him a good man ; weak, perhaps, but still, I trust, a
chosen vessel.’ 0 that God in his good providence would open

up some way for these poor fettered souls (not a few) who wish to
renounce heathenism and cast in their lot with the people of God,
and cannot! For want of employment, we are obliged to turn off
numbers who would gladly come, bringing their families with them,
even very hopeful cases. O that the day may soon come when
caste will be broken up! Then our converts will stand some
chance.”
That letter was written on the 15 th of April. Eight weeks
after the writer was “ before the throne,” and God in his mysterious
ways was beginning to answer the martyr’s prayer for the native
Christians. Little did he imagine, when writing that letter, how
soon and how fully Providence would “ open up a way for those
fettered souls !” The Christian public and the Government, imme¬
diately after the Rebellion, wanted them for situations of trust in
far greater numbers than could be supplied. The Rebellion had
tested and brought out the value of native Christians in a manner
that admitted of no cavil or mistake.
Not one native Christian in India joined the mutineers, though
their education would have made them valuable to them. It was
also known that some conspiracies had been discovered and pre¬
vented by timely information furnished by native Christians. Not¬
withstanding the sufferings to which they were reduced during the
Rebellion, as a body they stood nobly for Christianity and the
British Government, though that Government had neglected and
despised them. Many of them laid down their lives for their
religion. Even under that fiery trial, it is asserted (see “ Liverpool
Missionary Conference,” page 249) that only two of their number
are known to have apostatized. At length the Government itself
began to appreciate them, so that the Rebellion had hardly closed
ere Sir John Lawrence, as Governor of the Punjab, and who soon
after became Viceroy of all India, used the following language in
one of his government orders : “ The sufferings and trials which
the Almighty has permitted to come upon his people in this land
during the past few months, though dark and mysterious to us,
MARTYR CAMPBELL'S PRAYER ANSWERED. 465
will assuredly end in his glory. The followers of Christ will now,
I believe, be induced to come forward and advance the interests of
his kingdom. The system of caste can no longer be permitted to
rule in our service. Soldiers, and government servants of every
class, must be entertained for their merits, irrespective of creeds,
class, or caste.
“The native Christians, as a body, have, with rare exceptions,
been set aside. I know not one in the Punjab, to our disgrace be
it said, in any employment under Government. A proposition to
employ them in the public service six months ago assuredly would
not have been complied with ; but a change has come, and I be¬
lieve there are few who will not eagerly employ those native Chris¬
tians competent to fill appointments.
“ I consider I should be wanting in my duty, in this crisis, if I
did not endeavor to secure a portion of the numerous appointments
xn the judicial departments for native Christians ; and I shall be
happy, as far as I can, to advance their interests equally with those
of the Mohammedan and Hindoo candidates. Their future promo¬
tion must depend upon their own merits.”
His Excellency then added suggestions to guide the Missionaries
in selecting suitable persons to be presented for the purpose.
Shortly after this Sir Robert Montgomery, the ruler of Oude,
issued a similar paper. Other officials did the same. Merchants
and traders also sought them, for they saw they could be trusted.
Their value rose at once. Employment was thrown open to them,
giving them a fair chance with other men, which was all we desired
for them. The native Christian, who before the Rebellion could
not obtain five dollars per month for his services, though an edu¬
cated man and a faithful member of Christ’s Church, within little
more than a year from the date of martyr Campbell’s letter, could
command five or ten times that amount of salary. Missionary
societies had, consequently, twice within five years, to raise the
wages of their teachers and helpers in order to retain them, so
great was the competition by other parties to engage them. The
effect of this change upon their standing in society, the comfort of
their families, and their own self-respect, as well as Christian use¬

fulness, will be apparent. It was for them a great salvation, and
most wonderfully wrought out.
The rapid growth of the Christian Church in India since that
time, and especially of the native ministry, will be fully exhibited in
the Statistical Tables which will follow the next chapter. To them
the reader’s attention is earnestly requested, that he may gratefully
contemplate
“The silver lining to this cloud of grief”
with which a merciful God compensated the sufferings of his serv¬

ants. What a change for the better, in the very respect which they
so much desired, would Brothers Freeman and Campbell witness,
could they rise from the dead and revisit the scenes where they suf¬
fered and died to bring about this result! What a justification, too,
of dear Mrs. Freeman’s words, in her last letter to her sister, when
she said : “ I sometimes think our deaths would do more good than
we would do in all our lives ; if so, His will be done! ”
How intense the interest which that Rebellion awoke all through
Christendom! how earnest the prayers which then went up to God
for India! and how liberal the efforts since made to claim the land
for Christ! All has been overruled for good. The vastness of
India, the value of her evangelization as the heart of Asia, and the
influence of her position, as the key to the salvation of the nations
with which she has commercial relations—Affghanistan, Beloochis-
tan, Eastern Persia, Bokhara, Herat, Thibet, Ladak, Nepaul, West¬
ern China, and others—all these must feel the effects of the mighty
change which India is yet to undergo, and for which this Rebellion
did so much to prepare her.
The hour had come when the inevitable conflict between human
barbarism and divine civilization was to take place, and the words of
Christ were to be realized in India—“ I am not come to send peace,
but a sword.” Ere that sword could conquer the peace of right¬
eous law and order, and place that great land in subjection to the
influences which are all the more certainly and speedily to work out
her redemption—as they are doing at this hour—the words of Sim-
CHRISTIANITY INVINCIBLE AND INEVITABLE. 467
eon to the Virgin Mother of the great Peace-maker might have

been addressed to the Futtyghur martyrs, and the victims of Cawn-
pore and Bareilly, as well as to those who lived to see the great
victory of deliverance, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy
own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."
They did not suffer nor die in vain. Their endurance unto blood,
and the valor of those who, against such odds, fought their waly to
their rescue, have taught the men of Hindustan a lesson that can
never be forgotten. They have been whipped into the alarming
consciousness that their colossal and venerable systems of religion,
in which they trusted, are utterly powerless ; that with civilization
is strength ; and that Christianity is both invincible and inevitable.
They have lost confidence and hope in their own systems, and the
“ thoughts of their hearts ” are “ revealed ” in the candid and singu¬
lar remark made to us one day by an aged native, when we pressed
him upon this subject, as with a sigh he exclaimed, “ It is so, Sahib ;
for some reason that we don’t understand God has left us and gone
over to the Christian side! I suppose what you say is true. My
children, or grandchildren, will probably be of your way of think¬
ing. But I’m too old to change ; I want to die in the faith of my
fathers ! ’’ The tears flowed as he closed his remarks. They were
shed because he felt that Hindooism is dying! And so it is ; for
already, thank God ! the blood even of the Sepoy race flows in the
veins of the Methodist ministry in Oude and Rohilcund, while
their children are singing in our Christian schools and churches,
“ Hosannah to the Son of David! ”
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONDITION OF WOMAN UNDER HINDOO LAW.
A MONG the mercies resultant from recent events in India

may be reckoned “ the door of hope ” which God has thus
opened for the women of that land ; but to appreciate the hopeful
possibilities of the present it is needful that we consider the past,
and what, up to this hour, has been the condition of women there,
under the law of her religion and the customs of her country. If
she is rising at last in any respect, it is in decided defiance of the
system that has so long repressed and wronged her, and her
elevation therefore involves its overthrow.
On page forty-two we have presented a picture of the class
whose legal relations we now more fully represent.
What is this woman, thus “ gorgeously appareled,” in her condi¬
tion, character, and prospects ? Even the Zenana has had to give
up its secrets, and the rest of the world may now know how the
women of India live and die.
Of course every lady of intelligence has heard more or less of
the condition of her sex in India, and has had her sympathy called
forth by the wrongs which they have so long suffered ; yet few
understand why these things are so, much less, what is. the full
measure of the disabilities to which this lady, or any of her sisters
in India, is always exposed, without that appeal which other women
possess to the divine rule of their religion, which forbids such
treatment.
In other lands, and under the teachings and forms of a different
civilization, the wrongs which women suffer at the hands of lordly
and vicious men are the result of the current wickedness of those
who oppress them ; but in India the abject humility, subordination,
WOMAN'S LEGAL WRONGS IN INDIA. 469
and implicit obedience of woman to every whim and wish which
her husband exacts from her, is extorted under the express teach¬
ings of her cruel faith, and she is well aware that he can quote the
only “scriptures” she knows to justify every demand and wrong to
which she tamely submits. Her poor judgment and conscience
are held fast in the terrors of a system that contains not one ray
of hope of any change for the better for her ; while this has been
the condition of the hundreds of millions of women in India since
long before the incarnation of Christ. All that period of time she
has been sunk and suffering in this manner.
If ever woman had an opportunity of showing what she might
become under the teaching and influence of a civilization where
Christianity or the Bible did not interfere with her state, the
women of India have had that opportunity ; and now, after forty
centuries of such experiment, what is woman there to-day ? These
pages shall faithfully declare it to the women whom Christianity
has redeemed, and then let them judge for themselves the differ¬
ence and its cause.
In rendering this service to the truth I shall be under no liabil¬
ity to exaggerate, nor shall I make a single unsupported statement
as to her condition. The evidence shall be all her own, and chap¬
ter and verse—Code, Purana, and Shaster—shall give their testi¬
mony to the exact truthfulness of my descriptions. I feel assured
that those who read these pages will lay them down with the
conviction that a more atrocious system for the extinction of the
happiness and hopes, of woman than that which is contained in the
legislation of the Hindoos never was devised by priest or lawgiver
since the hour when guilty man first began to throw the blame,
the burden, and the wrongs of life, upon the weaker sex.
The most ancient body of human law now extant is the Insti¬
tutes of Menu. This unique and whimsical system of legislation
—the offspring of despotism and priestcraft—fixed the social and
religious position of woman in India nearly a thousand years before
Christ. The full title of the Code—which has been translated from
the ancient Sanscrit by Sir W. Jones—is, “ Institutes of Hindoo
Law, or the Ordinances of Menu—Comprising the Indian System

of Duties, Religious and Civil.”
This is the fountain-head of those rules which constitute the
laws of life for the women of India, and, terrible as many of them
are in their undisguised deformity here, they have been made even
more hideous and horrible by the added ingredients of bitterness-
which they received as they flowed down through the ages, and
were expressed in Puranas and Shasters, in traditional teachings,,
popular dialogues, in the Hindoo drama, and in their literature
generally. We shall quote from these to illustrate and justify the
representations given of woman’s lot in that land
“ Where the skies forever smile,
And the oppressed forever weep.”
In drawing a picture of woman in India, we first speak of her

birth ; and here we are met with the terrible fact of female infanti¬
cide, so common in that land. This is an ancient, systematic, and
prevalent crime among the Hindoos. Not especially among the
poor or the debased, but prevailing chiefly among the Rajpoot
families, some of the proudest and wealthiest of the tribes of India.
The doctrine and practice, and the unblushing avowal of this un¬
natural crime, on the part of its perpetrators, are such as cannot be
found anywhere else on earth. And the infernal custom has so-
drugged their consciences, that even the mothers themselves of
these destroyed little ones have declared their insensibility of any
feeling of guilt, even where the deed has been done by their own
hands.
Girls are not desired, not welcome ; and when they come, and
must live—as British law now demands, where its power can reach
them, that life must be held sacred — still they can be at least
ignored, if not despised. Why, if my native friend had six chil¬
dren, three boys and as many girls, and I happened to inquire,
“ Lalla, how many children have you ? ” the probability is he
would reply, “ Sir, I have three children for he would not think
it worth while to count in the daughters.
They cannot understand our Christian feelings in rejoicing over
FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 471
the birth of a girl with as sincere happiness as we would lavish

upon our male children ; and a case is actually on record, which
shows how generally accepted is this idea in the native mind,
where an English gentleman at Bombay actually received a visit
of condolence from an intelligent native friend. A little girl had
been born to him ; and the polite Hindoo, having heard of it, had
called to express his sympathy with the unfortunate parent!
The prevalence and extent of the horrid crime of female infanti¬
cide attracted, many years ago, the attention of the humane men
whom England sent to rule her India possessions, and from the
official statistics collected, which are now before us, we are able to
give some accurate idea of the fatal devastation which, for ages
past, this hellish cruelty has wrought upon the female life of India.
Mr. Wilkinson’s reports were based upon a census taken in one
locality where this custom was known to exist. By the simple,
spontaneous admission of the guilty parties themselves, it turned
out that in one tribe the portion of sons to daughters was one hun¬
dred and eighteen to sixteen ; in a second, two hundred and forty
to ninety-eight; in a third, one hundred and thirty-one to sixty-
one ; in a fourth, fourteen to four ; and in a fifth, thirty-nine to
seven. Now, as statistics in Europe and America have all shown
but one result, namely, that the births of males and females are of
nearly equal amount, the only inference to be drawn from this dis¬
parity is, that females equal, or nearly equal, in number to the dif¬
ference here exhibited had been destroyed.
The murders, therefore, perpetrated in the first of the above
tribes were seventy-seven per cent, of the females born. The
aggregate result given by the census taken in this locality was six
hundred and thirty-two sons to two hundred and twenty-five
daughters. This is an average of thirty-six daughters to one hun¬
dred boys ; or, in other words, of every one hundred females born
sixty-four must have been cruelly immolated by their parents ; or,
in round numbers, about two thirds were destroyed, and but one
third saved alive.
Some of the villages examined presented a more terrible exhibit
than even this—as where he found only three per cent, of girls,
and in one no girls at all, the inhabitants freely “ confessing that
they had destroyed every girl born in their village.”
The guilty agents were generally the parents themselves, ofttirnes
the mothers, with their own hands. Sir John Malcolm positively
states, in his Report on Central India, that “ the mother is com¬
monly the executioner of her own offspring.” Professing to crperv
the fount of life to her babe, she coolly and deliberately impreg
nates it with the elements of death, by putting opium on the nip¬
ple of her breast, which the child inhaling with its milk, dies. But
the juice of the poppy is not the only ingredient by whose “ mortal
taste” so many unoffending victims fill the unmarked graves of
India. The madar, or the dutterrea plant, the tobacco leaf, starva¬
tion, drowning, exposure in the jungle, and even strangulation, are
the modes employed by these wretches for their fell purposes.
“ Without natural affection,” truly !
Human language, with all its resources, furnishes a feeble and
inadequate medium of expression for the horror which such deeds
of hell awaken in the heart. Probably the celebrated Encyclope¬
dist has as nearly expressed it as is possible when he says, “ In¬
fanticide, or child murder, is an enormity that our reason and feel¬
ings would lead us to reckon a crime of very rare occurrence.
That it should exist at all is, at first view, surprising ; that it
should prevail to any extent is difficult of belief; that parents
shoffid be its perpetrators is in a high degree painful to imagine ;
but that mothers should be the executioners of their own offspring—
/
nay, their habitual and systematic executioners—is such an agoniz¬
ing contemplation, such an outrage on humanity, as every amiable
feeling of our nature sickens and revolts at.”
The most awful feature of the matchless enormity is found in the
fact that Hindooism has dared to cover the deed with a professed
divine sanction. On page 399 we have described the bloody deity,
herself a female, under whose sanction these deeds, so inhuman,
have been consummated. A fitting locality, as a general center
for the hellish enormity, was long since found in that dreary Eland
DAltK SAUGOR'S IMPIOUS STAIN. 47 T
of Saugor, lying below Calcutta, and which few Christians have

ever passed without feeling inclined to invoke upon the island and
its shrine of blood the unmitigated curse of God and man. The
sight of it fired the indignation of that great linguist, Dr. John
Leyden, and led to the composition of those rugged, but honest
lines of his, which describe the place and those deeds for which it
was regularly visited, and which made it so infamous throughout
the civilized world :
“On sea-girt Saugor’s desert isle,

Mantled with thickens dark and dun,
May never moon or starlight smile,
Nor ever beam the summer sun!
Strange deeds of blood have there been done,
In mercy ne’er to be forgiven ;
Deeds the far-seeing eye of Heaven
Vailed its radiant orb to shun.
“ To glut the shark and crocodile

A mother brought her infant here;
She saw its tender, playful smile,
She shed not one maternal tear;
She threw it on a watery bier:
With grinding teeth sea-monsters tore
The smiling infant that she bore—
She shrunk not once its cries to hear!”
He then turns and addresses Kalee, and in the second verse

following literally quotes the Shaster describing her:
“ Dark goddess of the iron mace,

Flesh-tearer, quaffing life-blood warm,
The terrors of thine awful face
The pulse of mortal hearts alarm—
Grim power! If human woes can charm,
Look to the horrors of this flood,
Where crimsoned Gunga shines in blood,
And man-devouring monsters swarm.
“Skull-chaplet wearer! whom the blood

Of man delights a thousand years,
Than whom no face, by land or flood.
More stern and pitiless appears;
Thine is the cup of human tears,
The pomp of human sacrifice:
Cannot the cruel blood suffice
Of tigers, which thine island bears
474 THE LANE OF THE VEHn.
“Not all blue Gunga’s mountain flood,

That rolls so proudly round thy fane,
Can cleanse the tinge of human blood,
Nor wash dark Saugors impious stain:
The sailor, journeying on the main,
Shall view from far thy dreary isle,
And curse the ruins of the pile
Where mercy ever sued in vain!”
This iniquity was openly and fearlessly practiced in India up to

the time when the Marquis Wellesley, brother of the Duke of
Wellington, was appointed Governor-General, and India’s daugh¬
ters will yet learn to revere and love the memory of that humane
and intrepid man, who, in the face of the obstacles that arose
around him on every side, when he attempted to deal with this
“ custom,” never faltered till he had put the protection of Christian
law over the life of every child in India. His Excellency honestly
and bravely placed in the
hands of the magistracy
of India “ A Regulation
for Preventing the Sacri¬
fice of Children at Saugor
and other places, passed
by the Governor-General
in Council, on the 20th
of August, 1802,” “declar¬
ing the practice to be mur¬
der, punishable by death.”
In British India, so far as
law could reach the case
he made infanticide to be
regarded and punished as
The Marquis Wellesley. jn England
We present here an outline of the countenance of this tn.ie friend

of woman, as that of one whose deeds of mercy will be held in ever¬
lasting remembrance.
It is no doubt true that children have been secretly offered to
CAUSES OF FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 475
sanguinary demons in India, and many of the infants thrown to the
crocodiles or sharks at Saugor by their mothers were immolated in
fulfillment of religious vows. Even the desire for children has led
to their destruction, the mother promising her deity, in advance,
that if blessed with offspring, the first-born should be returned
in sacrifice. In this case “the child of the vow” is carefully cher¬
ished for three or four years, and then the mother, tempting it a
step beyond its depth, resigns it to the Ganges, or deliberately
casts it toward the pampered alligator, and stands to see it bleed¬
ing within the monster’s jaws ! Again, it is not uncommon for a
poor, sickly babe (under the blind infatuation of its parents, that its
illness is caused by some malignant demon who has taken posses¬
sion of it) to be placed in a basket and carried into the forest, and
there suspended from a tree, and abandoned for three or four days
and nights ; and if, at the end of that time, the vultures, or ants, or
beasts of prey, have not made away with it, and its sickness has
departed, it is restored to its home.
But none of these abominable cruelties adequately account for
the prevalence of female infanticide. We have to seek its causes
in more unworthy motives than even these. In fact, the daughters
of India have been sacrificed one generation after another, not to
the superstition of their parents, but to their Satanic pride.
It is very difficult to convey to American readers, or to the
common sense of a Christian lady, any adequate idea of the soaring
and extiavagant pride of family descent of such a race as the
Rajpoots.
Multitudes of these Rajpoots are as poor as they are proud, and
as immemorial custom requires, in the event of a daughter’s mar¬
riage, not only her own “gift and dowry” to be provided, but the
festivities of the occasion, lasting six days, to be furnished for all
relatives and friends, priests, bards, and various functionaries, who
must be “bidden” and provided for munificently, it is simply ruin¬
ous for all but the wealthy to dare the experiment, certainly more
■than once . hence the female children are still secretly murdered.
To this is added, what is equally difficult for Europeans and
27
Americans to understand or sympathize with, the general horror

which parents in India feel in view of the supposed disgrace which
would rest upon them and theirs in the event of their daughters
remaining unmarried.
An additional explanation is found in the relation which a son
bears to the Skraad of his father—those funeral rites at which he
is to officiate, and which are considered essential to the happy
transmigration and future welfare of the departed parent; so that
the birth of a boy, and of each in succession, is an assurance of
salvation to the father, while, as sacrifice and religious rites are all
denied to women, a girl is regarded as of no moral moment what¬
ever. She is a mere secular creature, whose life is considered as
forfeited if the father concludes that there is no reasonable pros¬
pect of a suitable marriage for her, or that his means wont allow
him to contemplate the customary nuptial expenses of his tribe.
What girls are saved from death are usually those first born ; the
later ones have not a chance of life, those spared requiring their
death as a necessity of their position and dignity.
This wholesale destruction of human life in the homes of India
is a parental responsibility; but at whose hands have these inno¬
cents perished ? By the midnight assassin, or the Indian toma¬
hawk or scalping knife ? No, no ; let humanity shudder. They
are the mothers—the unhappy mothers—who, in the name of false
honor, demon pride, and hereditary fictions of rank or purity of
lineage, have no compassion on the fruit of their own womb, who
imbrue their hands in the blood of their new-born babes.
Say, ye happy American mothers, who have fondled your smil¬
ing babes, and clasped them to your bosoms as the most precious
gifts of Heaven, if ever such a tale of woe as this has sounded in
your ears ? It will be a satisfaction to you to reflect that the lady
missionaries whom your societies are now sending to that land,
and who carry right into the center of these homes your Christian
sentiments and feelings upon this subject, may be designed by
God to work out a remedy for an evil which has hitherto defied
human law and all that man alone could do for its extirpation.
THE BETROTHAL OF THE 0IRL8. 477
May Heaven help them, until the day shall dawn when the moth¬
ers of India, exulting over their daughters—over each and all of
them—as joyously as they have ever done over their sons, shall
delight to direct their husband’s loving attention to their female
children, as the Christian poet has expressed it for them :
“ O look on her, see how full of life,

Of strength, of bloom, of beauty, and of joy !
How like to me, how like to thee, when gentle.
For then we are all alike : is it not so ?
Mother, and sire, and babe, our features are
Reflected in each other.
Look ! how she laughs and stretches out her arms,
And opens wide her bright eyes upon thine,
To hail her father, while her little form
Flutters as winged with joy. Talk not of pain !
The childless seraphs well might envy thee
The pleasures of a parent ! Bless her !
As yet she has no words to thank thee, but
Her heart will, and mine own too.”
It seems a rapid transition, from describing the early childhood

of the female sex in India, to speak of betrothal, yet the inter¬
vening space is not very extensive. The Hindoo Shasters say
that a girl is marriageable when she is seven years of age, but that
she may wait till she is ten years old. The term “ marriage ” is
used in their writings to include betrothal as well as what we mean
by the term. Reserved for a husband is, in their view, almost as
sacred as being resigned to his care.
As soon as a little girl has reached her fifth birthday her parents
begin anxiously to seek a marriage settlement for her. Their great
concern henceforth relates to her nuptials. They would consider
it a decided reproach if she saw her twelfth natal day without
being at least betrothed. The whole matter is held in their own
hands. The poor girl has no choice or voice in her own destiny—
all is arranged without consulting her views or affections in any
way whatever.
The lawgiver Menu has laid the obligations heavily upon the
father, so that he cannot escape the public sentiment. Menu
ordains as follows : “ Reprehensible is the father who gives not his
4/8 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
daughter in marriage at the proper time and again, “ To an

excellent and handsome youth of the same class let every man
give his daughter in marriage, according to law, even though she
have not attained her age of eight years.”
He carries up the responsibility to an awful height by declaring
(he neglectful father, whose daughter has not been wed at twelve
years old, as incurring a guilt equal to that of the murder of a
Brahmin for every additional month she continues single. He
reduces, according to her age, the amount of the nuptial present
which the father receives, and even deprives herself of the right to
carry her ornaments from her home in the same proportion, and
thus appeals to the mean motive of personal interest to hurry on
her settlement.
The accountability is also pressed to avoid the condemnation of
leaving his daughter asancrita, that is, destitute of the marriage
sacrament. If he fails in this the law releases his children from all
obligation of respect or obedience to him.
In the same chapter he also claims that “ the wife of an elder
brother is considered as mother-in-law to the younger, and the
wife of the younger as daughter-in-law to the elder.” This implies,
what is generally a fact, that it is seldom that a young couple in
India have the luxury of a separate home. The bride is generally
taken to her father-in-law’s residence, and receives her apartment
within the inclosure surrounding the general home. The outer
rooms are occupied by the males of the family, the inner or
secluded ones by the women—hence called the Zenana. These
inner apartments are never entered by one of the opposite sex,
save by the father, her husband’s brothers, or by children.
Harem—or as Mr. Lane spells it, Hhareem—signifies sacred,
prohibited. The temple at Mecca is called Al-haram, that is, the
sacred inviolable temple. The Seraglio of the Turks is a com¬
pound word, formed from sura, “ house, apartment,” and ahul,
“ family, domestic hence Surahulio, or Seraglio, the “ family or
female apartment.” Haram sera, and muhal sera, are nearly
synonymous words, and are often used to express the inner
COURTSHIP UNKNOWN IN INDIA. 479
apartments in India. The common term is Zenana—from Zun,
“ a woman,” Zunun, “ women,” an instance of the prevalence of the
Persian language over the vernacular. (The Calcutta Review,
No. IV.)
“ Courtship,” in our Christian sense, the maiden in India can
never know. She is not allowed to see or converse with him to
whose control she will erelong be handed over. She cannot write
to him, for she can neither read nor write ; all she is able. to
do is to follow the instructions, to “ worship the gods for a
good husband.” She is taught to commence as soon as she is four
years old. Her prayers are addressed chiefly to Kama-dera, the
Hindoo Cupid. The books represent him as having for a steed an
elephant composed of entwined female forms, and that elephant is
darkness ; his car is the south wind ; his bow the sweet sugar-cane,
with a row of green honey bees for its string, and charmed flowers
for its fine arrows ; his minister is spring ; the ocean is his drum ;
his trumpeters are birds, and his conquering troops are women.
He is especially worshiped where he celebrates his triumphs in
connection with marriage festivals.
The maiden prays, and father and mother manage the business
of selection. Each caste has its professional match-makers, whose
aid is indispensable. When the negotiations have reached a cer¬
tain definiteness, the Pundits are consulted to avoid mistakes of
consanguinity, and then the astrologers, who pronounce upon the
carefully preserved horoscopes of the boy and girl, whether they
can be united with safety. These preliminaries all found satisfac¬
tory, the aid of the Brahmin is sought to ascertain if the family
god favors the union. The stars, the gods, and men being a unit,
negotiations are opened between the parents and relations as to
the amount of gift and dowry, and when conclusions are reached
here to their mutual satisfaction, the astrologer is again called in
to ascertain and name a lucky day when the agreement may be
registered and a bond for the dowry executed. This is done with
due solemnity, and then the astrologer has again to ascertain and
name a lucky day for the ceremony, which is accepted by the
parents under their bond to see to the consummation of the engage¬

ment. This is the usual method, slightly varied in different locali¬
ties. It is easily expressed in these few words, but what anxiety,
what care and inquiry before these determinations can be reached !
No part cf the Institutes of Menu is more definite and circum¬
stantial than that which gives the law of selection in marriage
With the eye and taste of a whimsical connoisseur in female
charms, the old legislator has prescribed the standard of excellen¬
ce in age, caste, condition, and qualities, by which the Hindoo
maiden is to be tested. Nor has he or his commentators forgotten
the requisite compromises that will arise in such cases.
With great care and anxiety the questions of consanguinity,
name, physical condition, motion, family, etc., have all to be de¬
cided upon. But let this singular law speak for itself.
As to relationship, “ she who is not descended from his paternal
or maternal ancestors within the sixth degree, and who is not
known by the family name to be of the same primitive stock with
his father or mother, is eligible by a twice-born man for nuptials
and holy union.”
The phrase “ twice-born ” refers to the investiture of high-caste
men with the sacred string into the full immunities of their order,
called a “ second birth.”
As to families outside the pale of selection Menu ordains : “ In
connecting himself with a wife let him studiously avoid the ten
following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in kine,
goats, sheep, gold, and grain — the family that has omitted pre¬
scribed acts of religion ; that which has produced no male chil¬
dren ; that in which the Veda has not been read ; that which has
thick hair on the body ; and those which have been subject to
hemorrhoids, to phthisis, to dyspepsia, to epilepsy, to leprosy and
to elephantiasis.”
The right family and the proper relationship having been care¬
fully sought and found, the child’s personal suitability is then
examined ; and first her age : “ A Brahmin should, according to
law, marry a maiden about a third of his own age.” The exact
BETROTHED AND SECLUDED HENCEFORTH. 481
proportion is not frequently realized ; but whether the bridegroom

be old or young, the Hindoo bride should not be over twelve years
of age.
Her name is the next consideration, and the legislator has seri¬
ously provided for this also. Lovers in this land offer new names,
and ladies accept them and lose their own. In India it is not so.
There the wife is ever known only by her maiden name ; hence
the name is of vital importance, and the law gravely prescribes as
follows : “ Let him not marry a girl with the name of a constella¬
tion, of a tree, or of a river, of a barbarous nation, or of a mountain,
or of a winged creature, a snake, or a slave ; nor one with any
name raising an image of terror. The names of women should
be agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending
in long vowels, resembling words of benediction.” Chapter iii,
sec. 4.
A list of sixty-nine names of Hindoo ladies is before us as we
write, and all of them answer to this requirement. They run
thus : “ Hira, Kaminee, Dasee, Munee, Pudma, Sidhoo, Bhowanee,
Rutuna,” etc.
The preliminaries we have already noted completed, the two
children are then duly and properly betrothed by the officiating
Brahmin. So legal, however, is the ceremony considered, that,
should the boy die ere they come to live together as man and wife,
the little girl is thereby considered a widow, and under the law of
her religion is debarred from ever marrying any one else. Indeed,
till British humanity interfered, many of them became suttees, and
were actually burned with the dead body of the youth whom they
never knew nor loved as a husband—being at once a virgin, a
widow, and a suttee on the last wretched day of their singular life!
As soon as the ceremony of betrothal has taken place, the little
girl enters on a new phase of her existence. Henceforth she is no
more free to roam the fields and enjoy the lovely face of nature.
Reserved for her husband, she can no longer be seen with pro¬
priety by any man save her father and brothers.
She is from that day “ a purdah nasheen ”—one who sits behind
the curtains, within the inclosure which surrounds her mother’s

home, and her education commences.
What, then, is the education, so called, which the betrothed wife
in her Hindoo home receives during her five or six years of train¬
ing for her future life ? Her mother is her sole instructor. But
she can teach no more than she herself knows ; that, however, she
fully communicates. We may epitomize the young lady’s educa¬
tion, the entire curriculum of it, under four heads, cooking, do¬
mestic service, religion, and their peculiar female literature.
The first qualification is to cook, not only well, but appropriately.
Each caste has its own ordinances, and these are very minute and
particular as to the kinds of food that may be eaten, their mode of
preparation and serving, and the care required to preserve the
cooking utensils from all contact with things or persons whose
touch would pollute them. In fact, caste is preserved in the mat¬
ter of food more carefully than in any thing else. A violation of
her duty here would involve consequences at which she is taught
to shudder. The health and life of her husband may be forfeited
by an unintentional neglect of hers. Even where wealth and high
position may excuse her from the drudgery of preparation, the
Hindoo wife is not released from the careful superintendence of
this vital duty. We in this western world have little idea of the
importance attached to it there, where, indeed, it may be truly
said that their “kingdom of God is meat and drink,” and where
the Christian freedom of the text, “ Every creature of God is good,
and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving,” is a
doctrine unknown and a liberty unenjoyed. By the little lady
long, weary months are thus employed in the acquirement of these
distinctions and customs.
Woman, ignorant though she be, is the depository of the system
of Hindustanee heathenism. She was taught it orally by her
mother in girlhood. In her memory are treasured up the “ slokes”
of her religion—the verses of the Shasters which illustrate the
popular idolatry. She has learned the histories of her gods and
the dialogues of her mythological legends, and with these she is
EDUCATION OF THE HINDOO MAIDEN. 483
now industriously storing the mind of the child whom she is train¬
ing to be a Hindoo wife.
To these she adds the literature for females found in the books
of her country. Space permits us to notice but one of those man¬
uals of maiden education, which this mother is now teaching from
her own remembrance—for she cannot read a word of it—to her
little daughter to fit her for her future duties.
There are three leading deities in Hindooism. The first, Brah¬
ma, is not worshiped; he lost the right to be by his own unspeak¬
able vileness. The other two, Vishnu and Shiva, divide between
them the more special regard of the women of India; and as the
two gods are in a state of hostility, their devotees join their re¬
spective factions and keep up the wordy contest. Vishnu and
Shiva have consorts who, of course, take sides, each with her own
lord and against the other. Lakshmi is Vishnu’s consort, and
Parvati that of Shiva. The two deities seem to have left the high
dispute, so far as words are concerned, to be carried on by their
ladies, between whom it is supposed to be progressing continually.
The little book containing this celestial quarrel is a special favorite
with the women of India; they learn it and treasure its sentences
in their memory, and rehearse it, taking the parts at festivals and
other occasions, for the amusement of the guests.
This abominable circle of endless strife, in every bitter invective
uttered, refers to alleged facts in the mythological history of the
parties named, and of course has a depth of meaning and pungency
which it is impossible to convey to readers unacquainted with the
legends of India. But enough is here intimated to cause the
gentle heart of any Christian woman to compassionate the millions
of her sex who are thus systematically debauched in their imagina¬
tions and affections by their very mothers, as they educate them
thus to continue their own degradation and that of their offspring
forever. How much such females need the Christian teacher, and
what light the Holy Bible would bring to such homes, and what a
contrast of loveliness, and purity, and goodness the story of our In¬
carnate God would be to such instruction, can be seen at a glance!
We have mentioned the present dawn of a better day. It is but

the dawn. Dr. Mullen’s statistics tell us that already there are
39,647 women and girls receiving an education in the Zenana
schools in India. The number is by this time larger, and still
increasing, yet what are these among 100,000,000!
The question of caste has an immense influence in the mar¬
riage arrangement of the Hindoos, and its discriminations against
women are particularly mean and insulting to her nature ; while
the compromises constantly occurring show how the cupidity of
the legislators, and of the violators of the code, outrage the pro¬
fessed inflexibility of their own regulations.
For instance, the Institutes ordain: “Men of the twice-born
classes, who, through weakness of intellect or irregularity, marry
women of the lowest class, very soon degrade their families and
progeny to the state of Sudras. A Brahmin, if he takes a Sudra
as his first wife, sinks to the region of torment; if he have a child
by her he loses even his priestly rank.”
In their absurd mythology, the deities and the souls of their an¬
cestors are represented as suffering from hunger, which can only
be appeased by human attention, the cooking and presentation of
which is part of the wife’s duty. The regular and frequent fulfill¬
ment of this service is considered to merit heaven. But these
dainty deities and transmigrated folk are too fastidious to touch
the offering, hungry though they be, unless proffered by high-caste
hands. The result is, that the lady of low rank can never rise in
India, while the favored few of high caste, with all their peculiar
immunities, are sacredly reserved for themselves by these sacer¬
dotal legislators.
The head of a family, a shade higher in caste, will not give his
son in marriage to the daughter of a family a shade lower on equal
terms. But he will do it on receiving a sum of money in propor¬
tion to the means of that family, the cash condoning the caste.
April and May are favorite months for the marriage ceremony
among the Hindoos, though the rite takes place earlier in the year.
J3ut no father will have a marriage in his house during June, July,
MARRIAGE PROCESSIONS. 485
August, and September, the universal belief being that the deity
is then, during the whole rainy season, down on a visit to the cele¬
brated Rajah Bull, and is consequently unable to bless the rite
with his presence.
The ceremonies of marriage in India are too well known to need
repetition here. Often, when traveling at night in my palanquin,
I have been roused from my sleep by my bearers catching sight of
an approaching marriage procession, with its torches, music, and
shouting ; falling in with the enthusiasm of each event, they would
cry out that “the bridegroom cometh.” First, the bridegroom
would make his appearance, mounted on a fine horse, splendidly
caparisoned—his own or borrowed for the occasion—and wearing
a grand coat, decked out in tinsel and gold thread, with the matri¬
monial crown on his head, and his richly embroidered slippers, all
very fine, his friends shouting and dancing along-side of him ; and,
•of course, as he passes, we make our salaam and wish him joy.
Right behind the bridegroom’s horse comes the palanquin of the
bride, but she is vailed, and the Venetians are closely shut, and on
the little lady is borne to a home which she never saw before, to
surrender herself into the hands of one who has neither wooed nor
won her ; a bride without a choice, with no voice in her own des¬
tiny ; married without preference ; handed over, by those who
assumed to do all the thinking for her, to a fate where the feelings
■of her heart were never consulted in the most important transac¬
tion of her existence ; beginning her married life under circum¬
stances which preclude the possibility of her being sustained by
the affection which is founded upon esteem.
When the procession has come within hailing distance of his
home the watching friends go forth to meet the bridegroom, the
bride enters her apartments, the door is shut, and the guests are
entertained in other parts of the establishment.
Let us now consider her life as a married lady in her own home,
surrounded by the cruel prejudices and customs which meet her at
the threshold and subject her to their sway. What they are may
be gathered from a few statements.
When I sit down at a table in this land, spread with Heaven’s

bounty for the family and friends, and look at the Christian woman
who so sweetly presides at the board, and whose blessed presence
sheds such light and gladness on the scene, I often sigh to think
that no such sight as this is enjoyed in India, for that land is
cursed by the iron rule of a system which denies to her the joys
and charities of social life. No lady in India sits at the head of
her own table ; no stranger can share her presence in hospitality;
her healing word or hand cannot be extended to the sick or to the
whole. Woman’s gentle, blessed ministries have no exercise in
India. Her services are all selfishly reserved for him whom now
she is taught to regard as lord and master, and on whom she is
henceforth to wait in a state of abject submission and obedience
that has no parallel in any other system in this world.
My lady readers will bear in mind that these conditions are all
realized within the four walls of the “compound” which inclose the
home of the Hindoo lady. That compound is the woman’s world
in India. In it she lives, and seldom leaves it till she is carried
out a corpse. Ever while she inhabits it, she has “jealousy for her
jailer, and suspicion as her spy and fain would her husband
draw all these bonds tighter when he is obliged to trust her in his
absence. Thus saith the Shaster: “ If a man goes on a journey,
his wife shall not divert herself by play, nor shall see any public
show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself in jewels or fine
clothes, nor hear music, nor shall sit at the window, nor shall
behold any thing choice and rare, but shall fasten well the house
door, and remain private, and shall not eat any dainty food, and
shall not blacken her eyes with powder, and shall not view her face
in a mirror ; she shall never amuse herself in any such agreeable
employment during the absence of her husband.”
Was there any insult ever offered to a lady’s nature equal h>
that which this law has laid down, when it enjoins the Brahmin to
suspend his reading of the Veda to his disciples should a woman
happen to come in sight while he was so employed, and directs
him not to resume the utterance of the holy texts until she has;
WOMAN'S SUBORDINATION ENJOINED. 487
passed beyond the possibility of hearing them ? Her ear is not

pure enough to hear what the vilest male thief or sensualist in the
Bazaar may listen to freely ! Woman’s religious knowledge must
not rise higher than the Shasters. The “holy” Vedas are re¬
served for men, and for them alone.
These old laws were in existence when the New Testament was
written ; and in the provisions of that Christianity which threw its
blessed protection over woman’s nature and rights, did not the
Holy Spirit glance at these wrongs, and provide the principle of
their final overthrow when he said: “There is neither Jew nor
Greek ; there is neither bond nor free ; there is neither male nor
female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus ?”—one in the freedom,
equality and privilege to which Heaven’s impartial mercy was to
raise the Pariah, the woman, and the slave, from the degradation
to which heathenism, in its pride of power, had reduced those over
whom it could thus safely tyrannize.
The Shaster renders her duty very definitely, as follows: “When
in the presence of her husband, a woman must keep her eyes upon
her master and be ready to receive his commands. When he
speaks she must be quiet, and listen to nothing else besides
When he calls she must leave every thing else and attend upon
him alone. A woman has no other god on earth but her husband.
The most excellent of all good works that she can perform is to
gratify him with the strictest obedience. This should be her only
devotion. Though he be aged, infirm, dissipated, a drunkard, or a
debauchee, she must still regard him as her god. She must serve
him with all her might, obeying him in all things, spying no defects
in his character, and giving him no cause for disquiet. If he
laughs, she must also laugh ; if he weeps, she must also weep ; if
he sings, she must be in an ecstasy.”
Menu declares, “ Though inobservant of approved usages, [the
services of their religion,] or enamored of another woman, or
devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered
as a god by a virtuous wife.”—Institutes, sec. 154. Such is the
law, and the popular sentiment is not better than the law even to-
day, after these long ages of helpless woman’s subordination and

suffering.
She waits upon her lord, who is “her god, her guru, and her
religion*” as the Shaster phrases it. She lulls him to rest by the
soft shampooing of his feet, and is at once his slave and stewardess.
Her worth is well summed up by one of their poets, who describes
the best condition she can know, when her bereaved husband thus
laments her :
“ Dost thou depart, who didst prepare
My savory food with skillful care ?
On whom alone of woman kind
In ceaseless love I fixed my mind ?
Whose palms so softly rubbed my feet.
Till charmed I lay in slumbers sweet ?
Who tendedst me with wakeful eyes,
The last to sleep, the first to rise.
Now weary night denies repose ;
My eyelids never more shall close.”
Yet while living she might not walk by his side, even in the
marriage procession ; she may not even call him by his name nor
directly address him ; nor can a friend so far notice her existence
as to inquire for her welfare, for the Sacontala lays it down as a
rule of social life that “ it is against good manners to inquire con¬
cerning the wife of another man.” The face of any man, save her
husband and father, and her own and husband’s brothers, she must
never see, at the risk of compromising her character. So invet¬
erate is the prejudice occasioned by their education that many of
the women of India have sacrificed their lives sooner than violate
the rule. The writer heard of a case which sadly illustrates this.
In the detachment which Major Broadfoot had to take from Lodiana
to Cabul in 1841 there were wives of many native officers, and the
Major, in the performance of his troublesome duty, had them each
provided for their long journey with a howdah fixed on a camel’s
back. During the march one of these came to the ground sud¬
denly, and there was a general halt, for the native lady had got
entangled in the frame-work and had swung around beneath. An
English officer, seeing her danger, sprang from his horse to rescue
Hindoo Woman and her Husband.
V
WIVES NOT ALLOWED TO EAT WITH HUSBANDS. 491
her ; but his action was arrested by the other ladies, who saw his
intention as well as the lady’s peril, and from' behind their curtains
cried out that he must not approach her, as he could not save her
unless by touching her person and lifting the vail that enveloped
her. The astonished officer would have done it, nevertheless, had
it not been that the poor lady herself implored him not to approach
her—she would rather risk death. Her struggle to escape was in
vain ; the terrified and unwieldly beast actually trampled her h>
death before their eyes !
Look into the home where we left the young bride, and see her
as she begins the duties for which she has been trained. She rises
to prepare her husband’s food, and when all is ready and laid out
upon the mat—for they ignore such aids as chairs and tables,
knives or forks, and take their meals with the hand, sitting on the
floor—she then announces to her lord that his meal is ready. He
enters and sits down, and finds all duly prepared by her care.
Why does she still stand ? Why not sit down, too, and share with
her husband the good things which she has made ready ? She
dares not. He would not allow it—the law of her religion forbids
it. She must stand and wait upon him. He “eats his morsel
alone” truly. No wife in India can legally dine with her husband
unless she becomes a Christian.
The opposite wood-cut, taken from a picture of a Hindoo home
of the middle class, shows the situation of affairs generally. It is
substantially the same whether the person be wealthier or poorer
than the one here represented. The higher classes use more
indulgences. The weather is warm and a fan is needed, or a fly
flapper is required, for he considers that he cannot use his curry-
stained fingers to drive the flies away or cool himself; so the duty
in either case devolves upon the wife.
The fan is made of a fragrant grass called khus-kkus ; a basin of
water is ac her feet, and she dips the fan into it occasionally, shak¬
ing off the heavy drops, and cools her lord and master, who enjoys,
as he eats, the fragrant evaporation. Or the mosquitoes may be
troublesome, and provision is made also for this. The tail of the
yak, or snow-cow of Thibet, white and bushy, inserted into an

ornamental shaft, is ready at hand, and with it the lady whisks
around him. and saves him from the slightest inconvenience.
The duty is patiently performed, and when he has fully satisfied
himself, she removes what remains to another apartment—for her
religion not only forbids her eating with him, but also prohibits
her from eating, even what he may leave, “ in the same room where
he dines”—and then, and not till then, can she and her children
eat their food.—Code, sec. 43.
Woman is absolutely, and without redress, in the power of her
husband, and no one can interfere when it stops short of actual mur¬
der. In the western provinces of India the reckless treatment of
woman was carried to its greatest extreme. Before British rule inter
fered there was positively no limit to the cruelty of native husbands
Twenty years have not passed since similar tyranny might have
been witnessed in the kingdom of Oude, (before the introduction
of British rule there threw the protection of the law of Christ over
woman’s life, so far as it can reach her secluded existence.) An
extract from a reliable work, “ The Private Life of an Eastern
King,” will illustrate this. The writer says, speaking of Nussir-i-
Deen, the late King of Oude: “Being irritated, the King retired
into the female apartment, and we returned to our tents. Heaven
help the poor woman who has the misfortune at such a moment to
displease or disgust an irritated despot! An accidental sneeze, a
louder cough than usual, nay, even an ungraceful movement, may
bring down punishment terrible to think of—torture, perhaps, at
the bare mention of which the English wife, or mother, or daughter
would shudder. Such things take place but too often in the
Hindoo zenanas of India. Magistrates know that such things
often take place, but they are helpless to punish or prevent. But
the zenana and the harem are sacred ; and the female slave that
revealed their horrid mysteries would suffer a lingering and ex¬
cruciating death at the hands of the very woman whom her revela¬
tions might be intended to protect. The chief and the wealthy
man who is disposed to be cruel can act despotically, tyrannically
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMAN AS SUCK 493
enough ; but the king, with unquestioned power of life or death i t
nis hands, if once infuriated or enraged, can torture or kill without
question. * My wife is about to be confined,’ said a savage Hindoo
Rajah to his European friend, a solicitor, ‘and if she does not
make me the father of a son, I will whip her to death with my
hunting-whip.’ The child was born; it was a daughter; the
woman’s body was burned two days after. How she died no one
out of the zenana certainly knew. The fact of the threat only
transpired long afterward, when it was the interest of the solicitor,
to whom the remark had been made, to prove the Rajah mad in
his later days in order to set aside a will.”
The discrimination is against women as such. Menu and his
commentators decree no equivalent punishment upon male violat¬
ors of their law or customs, and he actually shields from all pen¬
alty the whole sacerdotal class who formed these laws, no matter
how many or flagrant their crimes may be. No such “class legis¬
lation” was ever enacted as is exhibited in the following section
of the Code: “Never shall the king slay a Brahmin, though con¬
victed of all possible crimes ; let him banish the offender from his
realm, but with all his property secure and his body unhurt. No
greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmin, and the
king, therefore, must not even form in his mind an idea of killing a
priest.” Sec. 380.
When General Havelock, in 1857, laid his hands upon these
dainty and pampered Brahmins, and, finding them guilty of mutiny
or murder, tried and convicted them like common men, and ordered
them for punishment or execution, some of the poor benighted
people whom they had thus deluded thought that the earth would
surely quake or the heavens fall. But, in defiance of this unjust
Code, they were strung up, and the earth was still, the sun
rolled on in its course indifferent to their fate, and the spell of
Brahminical inviolability was broken forever, after the long imposi¬
tion and cruel falsehood of its claim. But in the breaking of that
spell women in India had more interest, and gained more advan¬
tage, than in any event of the past generation. She knows it not
28
yet, but it is nevertheless true that Havelock’s grand march and

Christian soldiership and justice snapped a galling link of that
heavy chain that had so long encircled her mind and body.
Notwithstanding the inhumanity and deep injustice of Hindoo
legislation for the ladies of that land, their married lives are not
without honor and influence, nor their persons unsupplied with
gorgeous clothing and ornaments. On the contrary, the law repeat¬
edly requires these things to be supplied in abundance. But let
the whole truth, as to the expressed design and motive of this gen¬
erosity, be candidly stated, and then let the reader judge what is
the value of this magnanimity to the heart of any noble woman.
Is it for her sake, as true love would prompt, or is it for the grati¬
fication and interest of him who confers it all ? The reply to this
painful question I place before the reader.
Let it be remembered, as explanatory, that in India a woman’s
curse is considered to blast the person, the property, or the home
against which it is uttered. Men stand in fear of it, for prosperity
is impossible where it impends. The legislator (in Secs. 55-59 of
the Code) has affirmed its liability, with the duty of marital liber¬
ality as a motive of prevention. Also let it be borne in mind that
a husband’s passion for sons, in view of the relation of his male
offspring to his shraad and happy transmigration—as previously
explained—is such, that all considerations are expected to bow to
this desire.
Polygamy throws its terrors, either as a possibility or a fact, over
the heart of every married lady in India. Creation and divine law
have ordained woman to be queen of her husband’s heart, and to
reign without a rival. But heathenism has dared to overthrow
that right, and sternly tells the loving and trusting wife that
she must, and without complaining, admit a partner in her hus¬
band’s affection, if he desires it. How often are long years of duty
and fidelity thus rewarded, and the true, faithful heart is crushed
for life, as she sees herself superseded by some youthful stranger
who has stolen her lord’s heart and attention, and leaves her to
pine in neglect and sorrow!
LEGAL PROVISION FOR POLYGAMY. 495
The right to become a polygamist, should he prefer it for any
reason, must unsettle any man’s heart, and be a barrier to true and
permanent affection. That right to be thus unsympathetic and
fickle, and to inflict this terrible wrong upon her whom he ought to
cherish and cleave to, “forsaking all others, as long as they both
should live,” Menu fully grants in the following ordinance of his
Code : “ A wife who drinks any spirituous liquors, who acts immor¬
ally, who shows hatred to her lord, who is incurably diseased, who
is mischievous, who wastes his property, may at all times be super¬
seded by another wife ; a barren wife may be superseded by another
in the eighth year; she whose children are all dead, in the tenth ;
she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh ; she who
speaks unkindly, without delay; but she who, though afflicted with
illness, is beloved and virtuous, must never be disgraced, though
she may be superseded by another wife with her own consent.”—
Code VIII, Sec. 204.
Here is wide range enough from which to select a cause of dis¬
satisfaction, in any hour of alienation or dislike. No tribunal or
process is required ; the husband is sole judge and executor of
this facile law; and in a single day the virtuous and faithful lady
may find herself superseded by some youthful addition to her home,
or become a discarded outcast, without pity or redress on earth.
I have been often asked to what extent polygamy prevails in
India. For reasons already manifest, it is not easy to give a suf¬
ficient answer to this inquiry. I fear it is more general than is
supposed. Of course the crime is limited by its expense. It is a
luxury that poor men cannot well afford ; yet even they are not
innocent of successional polygamy: they often forsake or change
their wives, and then take others. Among the rich it is very com¬
mon. Indeed, with that class it is viewed rather as an exhibition
of wealth and splendor, and cases are not rare where ten or a dozen
ladies may be found in the zenana of a Rajah or Nawab.
There are varieties in the law and usage of the different religion¬
ists of India in this regard, but all of them allow the practice.
The Parsee faith and usage limits polygamy to a second wife, and
then only where the first is childless and gives her consent to the
introduction of the second. The Mohammedan is allowed by
his Koran to take up four wives or concubines, and few of the
wealthy among them limit themselves to less than this number,
while it is notorious that they use their facilities of divorce with so
little scruple that their license under their law is practically unlim¬
ited. The opulent Hindoos are restricted somewhat in the increase
of their wives by the absurd expensiveness of their marriage cere¬
monies, but are limited in no other way as to the number they
choose to take.
The law lays down the subordination which is to exist in a home
where there are several wives. The first married remains mistress
of the family. The others are designated sapatnis, or auxiliary wives,
and the first is expected and required to treat them as younger
sisters. Every additional wife added is thus instructed by the
Hindoo authority called Sacontala: “Here, my daughter, when
thou art settled in the mansion of thy husband, show due rever¬
ence to him, and to those whom he reveres ; though he have other
wives, be rather an affectionate handmaid to them than a rival.”
Extremes meet, and that often when we would least expect them.
Who would imagine, in a country where such rules of social life
exist, that we should meet with a custom so opposite to it in all
respects as polyandry ? And yet this singular and amazing rela¬
tion existed in India twenty-five centuries ago, and lingers to-day
in some localities to such an extent as to call for the legislative
action of the English Government. It is bad enough to be one
among many wives, but to be the wife of many husbands must be
a wonderful relation for any woman to sustain.
India’s greatest poem is the Mahabharata, and its lovely heroine,
Draupady, is represented, at the great tournament, as throwing the
garland of preference over the neck of the valiant Arjunaywhom
she loves so well. But with him she accepts his four elder broth¬
ers, and is henceforth regarded by all five as their common consort.
Singularly enough, there is not a word of reprehension for the rela¬
tion, and the story ends with the reception of the entire family to
POLYANDRY. 49 7
the home of the gods. Sir William Jones, the great Orientalist,
facetiously designates this family of the Pandian chiefs and their
common consort as “ the five-maled, single-female flower,” and
there is reason to believe that this curiosity bloomed then in other
localities of the land besides Indraprasta. The Code must certainly
have tended to its abolition, for except in the Ceylon Mountains,
among the Nairs of the South, and very limitedly in the Hima¬
laya Mountains, the daughters of India have ceased to lament the
Dwaper Yug—a departed age—when they sang:
“ Prepost’rous ! that one biped vain

Should drag ten housewives in his train,
And stuff them in a gaudy cage,
Slaves to weak lust or potent rage !
Not such the Dwaper Yug ! O then
One buxom dame might wed five men ! ”
Whatever may have been the motive for this unnatural alliance
in the ancient days, the purpose in our own, as I learned in the
Himalayas, is the gain to be realized by the sale of their fairer
daughters to supply the zenanas of the plains, and the dearth of
women thus occasioned led to the continuance of this unnatural
custom ; and so one vice created another, and that, too, its very
opposite. The English Government has done what it could to
repress the practice of polyandry where it still exists.
A widow in India is undoubtedly the most miserable of her sex
anywhere. She is now more than ever under the tyranny of her
cruel law, and the bitterest dregs of a woman’s misery are then and
henceforth wrung out to her. Her youth, her beauty, her wealth,
give her no exemption whatever; the rules, relentless as death,
enforce their dreadful claims upon her and crush her down. For¬
merly they were expected to become Suttees and burn with the
man’s body. British humanity, thank Heaven ! has ended that
hellish custom. So they live, but how much better than death is
their condition let my readers judge, when they learn the facts in
her case.
In the first of these pages I introduced a Hindoo wife as she
appears in her best estate—a married wife in her full dress and
jewelry. From a photograph, which has been engraved with equal

fidelity, I now present a picture of a Hindoo widow as she appears
in her weeds, sitting upon the ground in her sorrow. Her aspect
and her attire show at first sight, even to a stranger, the agony of
her condition, which will be better understood when the rules of
her now hopeless existence are stated.
In the forms of their exclamations, when they first realize that
they are widowed, there are terribly reflective phrases which imply
that, for aught they know, they may be responsible for their hus¬
band’s death ; that not misery alone, but guilt also may fasten upon
their wretched hearts. This arises from the fear that in the
responsibilities of their caste duties, in preparing food, etc., they
may have, even unwittingly, violated some rule of the Shaster, and
that the gods have visited the violation with their vengeance in
the sickness and death of the husband. The terrific fear thus
seizes on the lacerated heart that they may be guilty of the death
which they mourn ! Her own children and friends, she justly fears,
are entertaining similar thoughts concerning her, and this dreadful
weight is enough to sink her to despair.
The day she becomes a widow, the lady in India falls to a lot
little less terrible than death itself. All her ornaments and beau¬
tiful clothing—on which her poor, uninstructed mind has doted
—are taken from her, so that “jewelless woman” is the well-
understood designation for a widow. She is henceforth to wear
the dun-colored robe in which the engraving represents her, on
which there must be no seam, no fringe, no figure. Her Tali—
the equivalent of the marriage ring in England—which her hus¬
band tied round her neck when he married her, is removed. From
her forehead the bright vermilion mark is wiped away. Her
raven locks are ruthlessly cut off. The terrible indignity is per¬
petual, for the head is henceforth shaven every ten days. The
terrors of the “God of Hell,” breaking forth against the departed
husband, are employed to make her endure the degradation, for,
says the Casi-Candam, “ If matrons who have put off glittering
ornaments of gold still wreath their hair in unshortened locks, the
Hindoo Widow, in her usual dress
THE HINDOO WIDOW. 501
ministers of fiery-eyed Yama shall bind with cords the husband

of her desire.”
But even this is not the end of the widow’s misery. She must
henceforth consider herself as a creature of evil destiny, practicing
severe austerities ; her weary limbs are no longer to repose upon a
comfortable bed ; her food is to be taken but once a day, and then
only of the coarsest fare ; and, lest her presence should involve the
dreadful doom of a widow’s condition, she is prohibited from ever
appearing in the wedding ceremonies of another woman, no matter
how nearly related to her. The higher in caste she is, the more
rigorously are these rules exacted ; so that a Brahmin’s widow is
the most wretched of all : and this is “according to law”—a doom
laid on willfully and wickedly by their legislation and its commen¬
tators. Menu ordains as follows : “ Let her emaciate her body by
living voluntarily on pure flowers, roots, and fruit; but let her not,
when her lord is deceased, ever pronounce the name of another
man. Let her continue till death forgiving all injuries, performing
harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully prac¬
ticing the incomparable rules of virtue which have been followed
by such women as have been devoted to one only husband.”—Insti¬
tutes, secs. 157, 158. To this the Casi-Candam adds : “ On the
death of their attached husband, women must eat but once a day,
must eschew betel and a spread mattress, must sleep on the
ground, and continue to practice rigid mortification. Women who
have put off glittering jewels of gold must discharge with alacrity
the duties of devotion, and, neglecting their persons, must feed on
herbs and roots, so as barely to sustain life within the body.”
Can any thing equal this cruel audacity of proscription to hearts
which their system had already crushed ! Yet it may be matched
by the willful blindness of our American and British transcendent-
alists, who profess to find in Vedic teaching and Hindoo philoso¬
phy sentiments and ethics which they deem and commend as even
superior to our Christian faith and morality!
It was for the interest of Brahminism that these wretched
widows, henceforth so useless and inconvenient, should die, and
their valuables be divided in the ceremonies of the suttee. For

ages this was done, and the young and beautiful ladies of the land
were immolated amid sol¬
emn religious ceremonies
and music, before applaud¬
ing crowds of priests, and
pundits, and philosophers,
while no voice was raised
against these vile murders
until the Christian mission¬
ary came to plead for the
widow’s life. Then a merci¬
ful God, in response to their
prayers and efforts, sent
that noble man, Lord Will¬
iam Bentinck, to India as
Governor-General, and to
him was given the honor
LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK.
to face the opposition of
Pundits and Brahmins, and in 1829 to sign the law that extin¬
guished these murderous fires forever. The women of India will
yet hang his portrait in their homes, and gratefully cherish his
memory as one of India’s greatest benefactors.
The law of Christ and the legislation of Christian countries per¬
mit a widow, where she chooses to do so, to create and enjoy the
sunshine of a second home ; but from this right Hindooism has for
twenty-five hundred years bitterly prohibited every widow in India.
The Code declares that she is bound by the law to her husband
even after he is dead, and that to change her life is to sacrifice her
claim to be a virtuous woman. Menu says : “A faithful wife, who
wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do
nothing unkind to him, be he living or dead ; while she who slights
not her lord, but keeps her mind, speech, and body devoted to him.
attains his heavenly mansion, and by good men is called sadivi, or
virtuous. Let her obsequiously honor him while he lives, and
REMARRIAGE OF A WIDOW FORBIDDEN. 503
when he dies let her never neglect him. Nor is a second husband
allowed in any part of this code to a virtuous woman.”—Institutes,
secs. 151, 162, 165.
Let me remind the reader that these rules refer not only to the
aged widows, whose long life-relation to their husbands might give
some color to these stern demands, but as fully place the obliga¬
tion upon the virgin widows who never knew the husband’s care
or love. The law is explicit here. Two authorities give the rule :
“ It is said to be unlawful for any to touch jewelless women, whose
eyes are like the dewy cavi flower, being deprived of their beloved
husband, like a body deprived of the spirit.” “ Nor must a damsel
once given away in marriage be given a second time.”
Old or young, faded or lovely, it is all one dull uniformity of
woe. The number of widows is, necessarily, larger in India than in
any other land on earth.
Can Christian ladies in this happy land wonder that these vil¬
lainous laws have brought forth their fruits of death ; that women
in India, being thus degraded by system and rule, have dragged
the nation down into their own ruin, or that their sisters there
have become demented and broken-hearted, so that they have so
long and often preferred immolation to the sorrowful lot of a Hin¬
doo widow ? Alas ! tens of thousands of them, after such married
lives as theirs, ignorant, impulsive, and indolent, when the terrible
alternative has stared them in the face, have either committed
suicide, or else, bidding a long farewell to peace and virtue, have
buried themselves for life in the hells which abound in every
Bazaar in India !
The death and funeral of the Hindoo wife is a very sad topic.
Those final scenes are complete contrasts to what such words
express under Christianity. In our civilization, with all its honor,
and love, and blessing for woman, as wife and mother, what tender
thoughts and holy memories surround a wife’s or a mother’s grave!
It is far different in the Land of the Veda.
The Hindoo wife and mother falls sick. Her case grows worse
and the fear fastens upon her heart that she is dying. She must
have sad anxieties for her children and their future, knowing well
that none can ever be to them what she has been. Coming days
■of desolation lie before them. For her husband’s future she can
have little concern, as she knows that she is in no sense essen¬
tial to his comfort.
The usual means are tried to restore her. Superstition anu
astrology do their best ; but she is sinking. Her symptoms are
reported to the Hukeem—the native doctor—and at last he pro¬
nounces that hope has fled. No time is to be lost now. If she is
too far from the Ganges to be carried there before the vital spark
has fled, preparations are made for the burning of the body.
Within a few hours after death it is laid upon the pyre and quickly
consumed. When the heap is cold, a small portion of the ashes
and calcined remains, representing the rest, are taken and put into
an earthen vessel to be carried to the sacred river; and the rest of
the remains are left there to be, as I have so often seen them,
tossed about by the hogs and pariah dogs, or scattered by the
winds of heaven.
But, should the Ganges not be more than a few miles away,
instead of being kept to be burned at home, the dying wife and
mother is laid on a charpoy — the light native bedstead — and
raised on the shoulders of four bearers. She leaves her home
forever, unattended, however, by her husband ; her eldest son
instead goes with her, and they hurry her by the shortest route
across the country to the sacred river. She is dying ; the sun
blazes upon her with its fierce rays, often as high as one hun¬
dred and thirty-eight degrees, and she is, of course, jolted and
shaken by the runners; but they must.go on, and she must
bear it all. At length the river is reached — those banks
where all Hindoos so much desire to die—and now they lift her
off, and lay her on her back on the brink, with her feet in “ the
sacred waters,” and the bearers depart, for no restoration is ever
anticipated ; none there grow better and return. They think that
it would be fitting in such a case to prevent it. So the son takes
his station by the dying mother, and every few minutes he wets
WOMAN'S LAST HOURS IN INDIA. 505
her tongue with the sacred water, or puts the mud of the Ganges
on her lips.
The sun sinks low in the heavens ; the shades of night com¬
mence to fall, and the place begins to look very dreary, for the
wolves and jackals which abound will come there to drink when it
is dark ; and the son, it may be a mere youth, timid and supersti¬
tious, thinks his mother is a long time dying. But he cannot
immerse her till the heart ceases to beat; so he watches on, and
wets her lips again. And there they are, alone, far from house or
friends, in “ the valley and shadow of death ” together. At length
the last gasp is over, and his final duty is ready. He goes outside
into the water, and, taking her by the heels, draws her down into
the river, and floats her out till the water is above his own
breast, and then with a final push he sends her from him as
far as he can into the river, and turns to the shore and makes
his way home as fast as possible. She is left to her fate, no more
to be thought of or protected. To her son, who thus deserts her
—to her husband, who left her to die without his presence—it is
nothing that the body of the mother and wife is rolling along with
the current in the darkness, and that, most probably, within a few
hours, and within a few miles of her dwelling, it will strand upon a
sand-bar, and be discovered by the vultures, who, with the jackals,
will fiercely contend together during the night as they feast upon
it, or that the sun of the next day will shine on the gory and
naked skeleton of the wife and the mother to whom, by their
gloomy religion, even the rest of the grave is thus denied!
CHAPTER X.
OUR CHRISTIAN ORPHANAGES IN ROHILCUND.
I ''HE preceding facts and doctrines will lead to an appreciation

-*■ of the efforts made by the mission to educate and train
some of the youth of India, so that we could present before the
heathen the examples of Christian manhood and womanhood, and
also have native helpers of both sexes on whose intelligence we
could more fully rely than we could upon our adult converts. Our
Boys’ Orphanage was originated by the suggestion and liberality of
the devoted Englishman mentioned on page 436. We present a
woodcut of the present building, close to the city of Shahjehanpore.
In this institution one hundred and forty-eight boys are now re¬
ceiving a good Christian education, under the direction of Dr. and
Mrs. Johnson, whose devotion and ability, by God’s blessing, have
made that school the power for good which it is fast becoming.
The origin of this noble charity may be briefly given here, as it
is one of the results of the Great Sepoy Rebellion, and intimately
connected with the facts which have been stated.
The wages of a laboring man in India is two annas per day—the
anna is three cents—so that millions of men in that land toil all
day for six cents, and are grateful if they can only, even at that
rate, obtain regular employment. This is their whole compensa¬
tion, for they find themselves—as they would not, on account of
their caste prejudices, touch our food—so the six cents have to pay
rent, and clothe and feed them and their families ! Of course,
they could not live at all if their habits were not very simple,
and the means of life very cheap. They eat only twice a day, rice
and coarse flour, alternated, being their chief food, with a season¬
ing of curry ; and they drink only water.
The result is, that these millions of toiling men are always on
the very verge of want, living “ from hand to mouth.” Occasion-
Orphanage, School - House, and Chapel, at Lodipore, India.—From a Photograph
CAUSE OF FAMINES. 509
ally, two or three times in a score of years, there will occur a
deficient rain-fall. This involves a scanty harvest and a pressure
on the labor market, under which thousands are thrown out of
•employment for a period more or less protracted. They cannot be
“ forehanded,” by savings from six cents a day, to meet these dread¬
ful emergencies, and the result is, if relief does not soon come,
hundreds of them are liable to starve to death.
One of these fearful experiences occurred in Rohilcund during
the year i860. So decided and quick was the calamity, that be¬
fore the English Government ascertained its extent, and could
originate public works to arrest its severity, large numbers of the
people had died of want. The poor children were the last to suc¬
cumb, for nature would lead the dying father or mother, heathen
though they were, to give the final morsel to the child or children,
in hope of saving them. The Government hurried on the meas¬
ures of relief, and also sent around its police to give immediate
succor to the living and to bury the dead.
From wretched homes, where a father or a mother, or both, lay
dead, the surviving children were carried out and collected to¬
gether. The orphan boys were assembled in one town, and the
girls in another. There were hundreds of each. The Govern¬
ment could extend only temporary relief, and what was to be the
fate of the rescued children became a painful consideration. The
pressure was too great for friends of the dead to come forward and
receive the bereaved and destitute, and the poor children thus lay
between hope and despair. No Mohammedan or Hindoo hand
was extended to save them. There was, however, one class of
persons who were ready to receive a number of the elder and most
likely girls, but they knew well that their proposal would be met
with indignation by the English magistrates, and that they durst
not make it. They had to deal with men who understood that
there was something worse for a girl than even starvation and
•death. So the government waited, day after day, in hope that
relief for these orphans would arise from some quarter.
Amid this fearful state of things, where Christian philanthropy
was so much called for, the idea came to us that this emergency
might be turned to good account, by our Mission seizing on the
opportunity then presented, not only to save those ready to perish,
but also to do a great work for the women of India and for Chris¬
tianity, by taking up a number of these destitute children, particu¬
larly the girls, and training them for Christ and for usefulness.
We took the case to God, and laid it all before him. The more
we prayed and thought over it, the more intense our zeal in the
project became, till at length we could think of nothing else but
those wretched children, and the way to save them, and what we
might make of them in a few years by good care, and education,
and Christianizing—and how much they would be to us in return
as Christian women, Christian wives and mothers, meeting fully all
this special want of our new Mission, and opening up in the future
just such an agency as we required to reach the women of India.
The importance, also, of having a number of boys of our own,
whom we could train up for God as Christian lads, free from the
contamination of Hindoo homes, also commended itself to our best
judgment and feelings as every way desirable. Yet still the girls
seemed beyond all measure the more important proposition. But
as the subject was considered and prayed over, it seemed essential
that we should have both, and both in good numbers. So “a score’'
of each was given up, as far below the opportunity and the needs
of our work, and at length our heart set its hopes upon the pro¬
posal of taking as many as would raise our number to one hundred
boys and one hundred and fifty girls. It was a bold adventure to
propose. We had no means in hand to provide for them ; no shel¬
ter or support. But our feelings and judgment clung to the con¬
viction that it was right and necessary to do this thing; and that
the good of our Mission and the glory of God would be promoted
by it; and that, somehow or other, the Lord and his Church would
find the means to do it, and would sustain our effort, while the
good results would justify it in the years to come.
Accordingly, the project was presented to the Mission. As was
to be expected, the proposal, especially in its extent, awakened fear
ORIGIN OF OUR ORPHANAGES. 511
that it could not be done—that it would bankrupt the Mission to

attempt it. To the inquiry, “ Brother Butler, how are you going
to sustain them ? how will you feed, or clothe, or shelter, or edu¬
cate them ? ” I could only answer in faith, “ I cannot tell, but I
believe the Lord will provide.” The ladies soon heartily sym¬
pathized with the proposition, and encouraged me to go on and
trust God, and erelong we were all united in the great and good
enterprise.
I wrote to the Government; they were only too glad to consent,
and have the children taken off their hands. We might have as
many of each sex as we desired. English magistrates, in whose
hands they were, were communicated with, and directed to make
them over to us.
On going to Moradabad to receive our children, we found that
the Mohammedan wretches connected with the magistrates’ court,
at whose disposal they had been placed, had actually distributed
many of them in the houses of infamy in the city, to be brought up
to a life of sin and shame ! With an earnestness befitting the occa¬
sion, I placed the facts at once before the Governor, who acted with
noble promptness, and the children were ordered to be immediately
recovered and forwarded to us. The enemies of their souls and
bodies were defeated, and we had the satisfaction of rescuing them
from hands whose “ tender mercies were cruel,” and fulfilling in
their case the letter and spirit of the divine Word, “Of some have
compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pull¬
ing them out of the fire ; hating even the garment spotted by the
flesh.” Poor girls ! what a different fate did Christianity confer
upon them, instead of the “deep damnation” of soul and body to
which that vile and cruel Mohammedanism would have surely con¬
signed them for time and eternity ! They, and their children, and
children’s children, will certainly remember with adoring gratitude
to God, and thankfulness to his people, the great salvation which
was wrought out for them. I bless God, and shall always do so,
for the part we took in their rescue.
They were sent on to us to Bareilly in native hackeries, fifteen
or twenty of them to the load, drawn by four bullocks each, and

were laid down at our door. I have four large photographs of
these children as they now appear—every face of the one hundred
and thirty-nine girls is there; and after twelve years’ care and
training what a contrast do they present! If I only had photo¬
graphs of them as they were when laid down before us in i860, in
all their weakness and forlorn condition, so naked, filthy, and igno¬
rant, what an eloquent sermon those pictures would silently preach,
as they so wonderfully exhibited what Christian mercy and Chris¬
tian education and grace could do, even for the poor wretched
female orphans of an India famine! Can it be that these fine,
healthy, hearty, educated girls in these graduating classes, year by
year, so bright with intelligence and sanctified by the grace of
God, were, only.twelve years ago, just like the rest of the sad group
in squalor and helplessness? Yes, it is so, and to the holy
Trinity be the glory of the blessed change that has thus trans¬
formed them!
They were sent to us of all ages, from twelve or thirteen years
down to the babe of three months, for whom we had to provide a
nurse. Most of them were weak and emaciated, and a few of them
dying, whom no care could save, so that we lost, out of the one
hundred and fifty, about fifteen, who were too much reduced in
strength and vitality to be saved.
What the Boys’ Orphanage has become after twelve years may
be best intimated by the picture, which presents Dr. Johnson and
his theological class of thirteen young men. Educated and con¬
verted, they have been for some time seeking a higher preparation
for the Christian ministry among their countrymen.
I have already mentioned the case of Maria, the first native of
India who joined our Church in Bareilly, and who became one of
the martyrs of Jesus at noon on the 31st of May, 1857. She dearly
loved our means of grace, and particularly the class-meeting, where,
with artless simplicity, she would tell how the Lord led her to hate
sin and love holiness, and how sweetly her soul rested in Christ as
her perfect Saviour. Her father was a Eurasian, and she spoke the
Theological Class m ind a. — From a Photograph.
MARIA'S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE. 515
English language well. She had an unbounded zeal to do good,
and an ardent hope for the elevation of her sex in India, though
she knew their deep degradation far better than we did. But it
was then a dark day in Bareilly.
Maria had been led to Christ while on a visit to Calcutta, through
the instrumentality of the Baptist missionaries there. Thus, the
first Church Member of American Methodism in India was con¬
tributed by the English Baptists, while Amierican Presbyterianism
donated the first Native Preacher to lay the foundation of our work
in that land. No opening then appeared, even to her, by which
we could reach and enlighten the daughters of India. Every door
seemed shut, and we could not obtain a single female scholar to
instruct or save. But Maria believed that the morning light would
break soon, and a better day would dawn upon her country, and
that it was near at hand. We would sit and converse with hei,
and then, with our hearts full of mingled hope and anxiety, would
kneel down and implore God Almighty to come to our aid, and
open a door of faith to those millions of souls so closely shut up.
Prayer would give us renewed confidence, and help us to hang upon
the naked promise of our God, while we struggled hard to answer
the anxiety of our hearts as they would exclaim, “ Watchman, what
of the night ? ”
This precious girl, who, of all her race and sex in Bareilly, alone
loved us for the Gospel’s sake, seemed raised up to encourage and
aid us in our new mission. She was likely to become as faithful a
helper to my wife as “Joel” was to me. But the fearful Rebellion
broke over the land, and Sepoy bigotry aimed to extinguish every
vestige of Gospel light in India. Maria became a martyr for Chris¬
tianity. Her blood baptized the soil of Bareilly and made it sacred
forever for our mission and for Christ. And there, on the very
spot where she fell, has sprung up a harvest of good for the daugh¬
ters of India of the realization of which we had but feeble hope
in those dark days before the Mutiny.
This wood-cut of the Mission-House and Orphanage at Bareilly
epresents the first spot in India where the denominational stand-
29
ard of the Methodist Episcopal Church was planted, in 1857, and

from which the founder of the mission, with his wife and children,
had to fly for their lives in May of that year. On the very ground
now occupied by the house to the left stood the home of “ Maria.”
The site of our mission is on the edge of Bareilly, a city of one
hundred and twelve thousand souls, hid in the trees of the picture.
The Mission-House, where Brother and Sister Thomas and Miss
Swain reside, is the tiled building to *he left. Just over it is seen
the top of the Orphanage, which is a square inclosure; in the fore¬
ground is the school-house, with its bell-tower; and in front of the
school-house is the public road into the city.
I feel assured, with these reminiscences before my mind, that,
were Maria alive to-day to read this account of what God has
wrought for her sex in Bareilly since the 31st of May, 1857, and
that, too, on the very ground occupied by her own homestead, her
simple, gentle heart would thrill with a joy and gratitude for the
priceless victories won for woman and Christianity in Rohilcund
more intense and appreciative than can be bestowed upon these
pages even by those who in this land may read them with the
deepest interest. The reason is manifest. She knew the diffi¬
culties to be overcome, and the darkness to be illuminated, as none
here can ever know it, and as even our missionaries to-day in
India, who have “entered into our labors,” cannot adequately real¬
ize amid their more hopeful opportunities and wider doors of use¬
fulness. We were then in the valley of vision; around us were
the moral skeletons, “ very many and very dry ”—no life nor sign
of life—and, in our sadness and struggling hope in “ Him that
raises the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they
were,” the Divine Master was challenging our faith in his power.
“ Son of man, can these dry bones live ? ” All that we could
answer was, “ O Lord God, thou knowest! ”
But a change has come, and by means which we then little antic¬
ipated. In that valley of the Ramgunga Maria died for Jesus, and
the raging heathen, as they exulted over her lifeless body, con¬
cluded that they had killed the last woman of their race who would
House and Orphanage at Bareilly.—From a Photograpn.
THE NEED THE ORPHANAGE MET. 5 19
ever become a Christian—that with her life would expire the only
hope of reaching and ameliorating the lot of her sex in Rohilcund.
How little they knew that Jesus is Jehovah ! Nor did they imag¬
ine how soon He would dash to pieces, like a potter’s vessel, the
despotism which they built up that day upon the ruins of his cause.
How much less did they anticipate that, on the very spot where
they murdered his faithful handmaid, he would found an institution
to be a Christian home for their own daughters, taken from their
side when famine had laid them low in death, and that thus he
would answer, in judgment to them and in mercy to their innocent
offspring, their rage against him, and their diabolical efforts to over¬
throw his holy cause and to bind permanently the fetters of dark¬
ness upon the women of India ! “Just and true are thy ways, thou
King of saints ! ”
There stands that Orphanage to-day, one of the brightest hopes
that shines for woman in the East; and of it may be said, that the
little one has become one hundred and fifty, and the solitary female
worshiper an exultant congregation of bright, happy girls, with a
future of Christian usefulness before each and all of them. Truly,
“ Thou makest the wrath of man to praise thee, and the remainder
of wrath wilt thou restrain.”
Our early congregations in India, from 1857 to 1861, had, in one
sense, a melancholy aspect. There would be from ten to forty
men, chiefly young men, on one side of the room, offset by perhaps
one woman or two, the wives of our native helpers, on the other
side. No Christian families, no social aspect in our services.
It was all a one-sided, unnatural-looking affair, with a certain
monkish appearance that seemed dejected and forlorn. Woman
was not there. The great want was felt deeply by the missionary
as he rose to conduct the services. Nor was there then any way,
or hope even, by which this dreary aspect could be relieved by
female presence. We felt it the more because in India every
young man looks forward to marriage as a duty as well as privilege.
These young men, as they became attached to our congregations
and converted to our faith, were met at the threshold by the
forbidding and manifest fact that to all the other disadvantages of

their position as Christians was added the consideration that only
a life of celibacy remained to them. They could not return to
heathenism for wives, for their friends would not give them ; and,
even if they did, our Discipline might put them out of the Church
for marrying unconverted women ; while, on the other hand, we had
no Christian families from which they could be supplied. Such
were their circumstances and the cheerless future that lay before
them. I used to lie awake at night and groan over this aspect of
our work, while the wTay to reach the minds of the women of the
land, for want of a female agency, seemed as dark as did the pros¬
pects of our converted young men in reference to marriage.
These disabilities hemmed us in on every side, and made the
progress and the future of our mission uncertain and doubtful. It
was very discouraging. A Christianity without homes, or female
schools, or daughters, without wives for our native teachers or
preachers, without female worshipers in our congregations, wanted
the first elements of perpetuity and completeness.
Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even
day scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter
prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the
proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a
vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. They
went from house to house, hired a suitable place in which to hold
a school, bought mats and necessary equipments, offered even to
pay the girls some compensation for the time expended if they
would only attend ; but at the end of three months they had only
succeeded in inducing two children to come, and one of these was
unreliable. At length, tired out, they had to abandon the effort as
hopeless, until some change would come over the minds of the
people in favor of female education.
I well remember what joy there was in November, 1858, when
Providence put into our hands the first female orphan we ever
received. She was a poor, weak little creature, was blind of an
eye, and plain-featured—certainly no beauty ; but she was a girl,
THE ORPHANAGE ANSWERS ALL OUR EXPECTATIONS. 521
and she was all our own to rear for Jesus and his Church—one of
India’s daughters. We rejoiced over her, and felt that she was a
precious charge for India’s sake. Dear, sainted Mrs. Pierce cher¬
ished her with a mother’s love. She was baptized Almira Blake.
After a while we obtained three or four more, but we were still
pained to think how inadequate were these few to meet the great
want of our extending mission. The opportunity of Divine mercy
was, however, nearer than we then knew. God was about to meet
our requirements, and thus lay the foundations of greater and
wider usefulness for our mission than we were anticipating.
The kind ladies of our mission took this wretched group of girls
in charge, and they were washed and clothed, and cared for and
fed. Educational advantages were soon provided. Responses
came pouring in from schools and individuals in America, pledging
support for one or two, and sending a favorite name to be put
upon their protege at their baptism. Individuals in India also, and
the Government itself, came to our help, and soon a comfortable
orphanage and a school-house—shown in the picture to the right,
with its tower and bell — and all necessary conveniences, were
erected. To these have been added library, apparatus, pleasant
grounds, and other requisites, until the establishment is acknowl¬
edged by all who see it, and by Sir William Muir, the Governor,
who lately visited it, to be one of the best-arranged institutions in
India, and an honor to the American Methodist Church. It is
also a credit to the interest and diligence of Brother and Sister
Thomas, who, in their long and devoted connection with it, have,
under God’s blessing, made it what it is to-day.
The Lord has graciously laid the claims of the Female Orphan¬
age upon the hearts of our ladies. It is now under the special
charge of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Method¬
ist Episcopal Church, as a part of their work for women in India.
It is a beautiful sight to see the orphan girls on the Sabbath of
God, in His house, so neat, and attentive, and devotional, and to
hear them sing the praises of Him to whose mercy they owe so
much, and then all bow down to worship in the true Biblical and
Oriental fashion. Their prayer-meetings and class-meetings are

times of real interest, and in listening to them you realize that
many of them are truly taught of God.
The number of female orphans is now nearly one hundred and
fifty, about twenty having been added during the past year. The
good fruits of the institution have so won the confidence of all who
are acquainted with it that it has conquered prejudice and concili¬
ated the interest and good-will of many even of the native nobility
as well as the English magistrates, from whom the institution
every year receives additional destitute orphans to be adopted into
this Christian home and family, and trained freely upon our own
principles.
From six to nine girls finish their studies and graduate each
year. I here present, from a photograph, the last class that gradu¬
ated, from which the reader will have a correct idea of their per¬
sons, style of dress, etc.
The girl on the left hand, standing up, is Julia Pybah, the mid¬
dle one Mary Cocker, and the right hand one is Elizabeth Husk
The first one sitting, left hand side, is Clementina Butler ; the
next, Rebecca Pettis ; the next to her is Josephine, and the fourth
is Grace Anable.
During a revival of religion, with which God was pleased re¬
cently to visit the Orphanage, over forty of these girls were soundly
converted.
Thus God has justified our confidence when we first took these
girls to train them up for him ; all our hopes have been fulfilled.
They have done well intellectually and religiously. More than
twenty-five of them have already been married to our native
preachers, teachers, and converts, and are now happy wives and
mothers in their own homes, exhibiting before their heathen sisters
what a Christian wife and mother is. Others of them have become
efficient teachers and helpers in the work of visiting and instruct¬
ing their countrywomen, as the columns of the “ Heathen Wom¬
an’s Friend ” show. Probably the highest work which God had in
view for these girls is that now in progress under the training of
Graduating Class—From a Pnotograph
ITS FUTURE MOST HOPEFUL. 525
Miss Swain, M. D., who has a large class of the elder girls under
instruction in the theory and practice of medicine, to fit them to
go into the houses of the suffering ones around them as medical
Bible women, healing the sick while they preach the Gospel. No
words can be too ardent to express the importance of such an
agency ; and as to the view which is taken of its value by the
people of the land, it is enough to mention the fact that the Nawab
of Rampore, a Mohammedan sovereign in the vicinity, who lately
visited the Orphanage, was so pleased with Miss Swain’s medical
class and its object, that his highness expressed himself greatly
gratified, and asked their acceptance of a donation of a thousand
rupees to aid their work. He has since conferred upon them his
residence and grounds at Bareilly to become a Christian Hospital
for the native women of Rohilcund.
The Ladies’ Missionary Society of our Church has done well in
taking this institution under its charge. It has elements of power,
as thus directed, the value of which cannot be over-estimated.
They will generously support it and develop its ability for good ;
and I doubt not it will justify all their confidence and expectations
in its future history and success. From it must continually go
forth influences which will mitigate the prejudices of the women
of India, for they can understand the disinterested benevolence
that thus seeks their own relief and welfare ; and gratitude must
surely incline them to examine into the truth and virtue of that
religion whose mercy and good fruits will be so manifest in the
benighted and suffering homes to which the graduates of the
Bareilly Orphanage, and their devoted instructress, will bring help
and healing in the days to come.
Earnest may be the prayers and strong the confidence of the
ladies of Methodism in the Christ-like agency which they have
thus made their own, and which, under their fostering care, will
develop into a permanent power of Christian womanly goodness
for long-neglected heathen women, the value of which they can
never fully know' till they find it in eternity, when they stand in
the glorious presence of Him who, before his Father and the hoi}'
angels, will remember it all, and, acknowledging that each of them

“hath done what she could”—to the body as to the soul, after his
own blessed example—will tell it then “ as a memorial of her.”
The organization of the Missions into an Annual Conference, at
the close of 1864, terminated my superintendency, while the toil
and care to which body and mind were subject during these
scenes, and in such a climate, were so exhausting, that release from
further service there became indispensable. This release was
kindly granted by the Bishop and the Missionary Board.
The progress of the Indian Church to-day is an encouraging
contrast to the weakness and obstructions of sixteen years ago.
Already some of our native Christian brethren are rising to posi¬
tions of great trust and responsibility in the Church, the State,
and the learned professions. We name but a few :—
Krishna Mohun Banerjea, Pundit Nilakantha Gore, John De-
vasagyam, and Goloknath Cbattergi, not to mention others, are
among the ornaments of its native ministry. Gunga Ram and
Professor Ramchunder, show what Hindoos can become as cultured
Christian teachers, as does Kalee Mohun Banerjea, among Univer¬
sity graduates. The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, its first royal
convert, illustrates how its higher classes shall bow to Christ, and
devote their influence and wealth to his glory ; while Government
officers, like Behari Lai Singh, and Deputy Magistrates, likeTarini
Churn Mitter, prove how worthily public positions can be filled by
the followers of that faith : and their descendants shall yet occupy
every office of their Government in the glad day when their
Ganges shall flow only through Christian realms, and their fertile
lands shall be cultured by a happy Christian population, whose re¬
deemed country, no longer the Land of the Veda, “shall be
called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall name.”
MISSIONARY S TATIS TIGS. 52*
CHAPTER XI.
STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.
Table No. I. Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church
in India.
“ II. Missionary Societies operating in India in
1872.
« III. Summarizing the Results, and showing the
Progress, of Christianity in British India
since 1852.
« IV. Foreign Missionary Statistics of the Prot¬
estant Church throughout the World.
“ V. Woman’s Foreign Missionary Societies.
“ VI. Home Missionary Societies.
“ VII. Tract Societies.
“ VIII. Bible Societies.
“ IX. Roman Catholic Missions.
‘ X. Protestant and Roman Catholic Missions
Compared.
528 THE LAND OF THE VEDA
TABLE I.
MISSIONS OF METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN INDIA.

1872.
Non-Communicant Adherents.
Mission
Society Agents. CHURCH. EDUCATIONAL. Propkkty.
Sunday-School Scholars.
Am’n Native Day Teach¬ Day
Miss. Assist’s. Sch’l. ers. Scholars.
| Number Excluded.
Baptized Children.
Total Membership.
| Total of Agents.
| Local Preachers.
Probable Vdlue.
j Total Baptisms.
| Mems. of Conf.
MISSIONS.
Total Scholars.
| School-houses.
Probationers.
s
Members.
0>a bo
1 Chapels.
«
Female.
| Female.
Female.
a
o
| Male.
Male.
ea E«
X >. '3
o
w ca O s CL
Bareilly. . 5 7 l'l2 20 45 275 257 582 i 204 693 595 203 28 9 71 18 1,130 511' 1,641 7 5 8 $47,250
Lucknow. 7 6 2 912 86 10S 92 200 2 78 30 182 24 14 10 47 10 762 149 911 3 3 8 18,600
Moradabad 6 6 310,17 42 158 177 335 8 115 12 401 74 2S 27 70 15 1,692 407 2,099 7 5 10,270
I | 6
b-
co
Total... 1819 6.31149 128 541 526 1,067 11 397 735 301 70 46 1SS 43 3,5841,067 4,651 IT 14 21 $76,120
Four male and five female missionaries left for India in October last; these
are included in the above totals.
There are 541 members, 523 probationers, 735 non-communicant adherents,
(regular attendants on worship,) with 1,178 Sabbath-scholars, and the 86 native
helpers, making a Christian community of 3,066 souls under the charge of the
India Conference in Oude and Rohilcund, all won for Christ since the Great
Rebellion closed.
In the 34 Sunday-schools there are 107 officers and teachers, 1,177 scholars,
and 1,088 volumes in the libraries; conversions during last year, 56.
In the 45 Vernacular Day-schools for boys there are 1,437 pupils; in the 25
Anglo-Vernacular Boys’ schools, 1,968 scholars; in che 46 Vernacular Day-schools
for girls, 915 pupils; in the Anglo-Vernacular schools, 142 girls: being a total
of 116 schools, 234 teachers, and 4,462 scholars, including 138 orphan boys and
142 orphan girls—-the entire expense of which, including the two Orphanages,
was $29,423 for the past year, the whole of which was contributed by friends
in India and the Ladies’ Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
with the American patrons of the orphan children.
MISSIONARY SOCIETIES OPERATING IN INDIA IN 1872.
TABLE III.
COMPARATIVE TABLE.
SUMMARIZING THE RESULTS, AND SHOWING THE PROGRESS, OP CHRISTIANITY IN BRITISH
INDIA SINCE' 1852.
[Members and hearers, or regular attendants on worship, the entire staff of laborers, with the regular
Sabbath-school scholars, if reckoned together as native Christians, (had all been reported,) would amount
to considerably over 850,000 souls. Four of the Missionary Societies in the preceding table, especially
the Gospel Propagation Society, supply pastoral care to English Colonists. I have made a correspond¬
ing deduction for this in the statistics of those societies, to show, as near as practicable, the number of
missionaries to the unevangelized only. The figures given are, in nearly all cases, those from the Reports
of 1871. The reader will note the great increase in those items which intimate the progress of the India
Church toward self-reliance and development, such as the native pastorate, membership, scholars of both
sexes, and contributions. The Sunday-schools are numerous, but are not fully reported. The increase
in that particular is very large.]
India and India and India, Ceylon, India, Ceylon, Increase dur¬
Missions, Etc. Ceylon in Ceylon in and Burmah and Burmah ing the past
1S52. 1862. in 1862. • in 1872. ten years.
Missions. 22 31 31 58 27
Stations. 313 371 386 628 242
Out-stations. 1,218 1,925 2,307 Not fully reported.
Foreign Missionaries, Male. 395 519 541 551 10
“ “ Female. Not previously reported. 317
Native Pastors. 48 140 183 406 223
“ Catechists & Preachers 698 1,365 1,776 2,784 1,008
School Teachers . Not fully reported. 3,422
Total of Laborers. 1,141 2,024 2,500 7,480 4,980
Native Churches. 331 1,190 1,542 Not fully reported.
Communicants. 18,410 31,249 49,688 70,857 21,169
Native Christians. 112,491 153,816 213,182 273,478 60,296
Vernacular Day Schools. . . 1,347 1,562 1,811 1,917 106
Scholars. 47,504 44,612 48,390 67,080 18,690
An°;lo-Vernacular Schools. 126 185 193 245 52
Anglo-Vernacular Scholars 14,562 23,377 23,963 32,242 8,279
Bovs’ Boarding Schools.... 93 101 108 112 4
Christian Boys. 2,414 2,720 3,158 3,584 426
Total of Male Scholars.... 64,480 70,709 75,511 102,906 26,395
Girls’ Day Schools. 347 371 373 552 179
Scholars. 11,519 15.899 16,862 30,961 14,091
Girls’ Boarding Schools.... 102 114 117 Not fully reported.
Christian Girls. 2,779 4,098 4,201 3,459 ....
Total of Female Pupils.... 14,298 19,997 21,063 34,420 13,357
Total Scholars of both Sexes 78,778 90,706 96,574 137,326 40,752
Number of Languages used .... 23 25 28 3
Id three years. In three years. In three years. Last year. Last year.
Local Contributions. $167,500 $226,625 $274,000 $151,787 $60,457
Native Contributions.. . ... $65,000 about $90,000 $43,101 $13,101
TABLE IV.
FOREIGN MISSIONARY STATISTICS OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
[Several of these Societies provide ministrations for colonists and evangelized people. All items of
this kind are here left out, so far as they could be recognized, so that these numerical and financial sta¬
tistics represent only the foreign missionary action of Protestantism to the unevangelized races of the
world. The excluded items will be found credited under the head of Home Missions in Table YI. The
figures are nearly all from the Reports of 1871. Where the return failed to indicate the native Christians,
the membership is entered in that column. If the Christian children in boarding-schools and the Sabbath
scholars had been reported, not less than 200.000 might have been added to the native Christian Com¬
munity. In order to secure a complete comparison with the missions of Romanism, (in Table X,)
I have included in the statistics of the American Board their missions in the Sandwich Islands, recently
set otf as self-supporting. The statistics have been submitted, as far as possible, to the Secretaries of
each Society, in order to secure reliable and authorized representation.]
Es- Foreign Native Total ol Native Native Total of Income of

tab- Mission’iks. Pastors, Christ’n C lunch Christian Scholars the Society
liflh’d SOCIETIES. Preach’s, Labor¬ Mem¬ Commu¬ of both in
A. D. Male. Fem’e CuteclPts. ers. bers. nity. Sexes. 1871.
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
1810 The American Board . 131 180 42S 739 23,718 77,091 14,410 $461,058
1814 Baptist Missionary Union. 49 60 865 974 26,4S0 105,920 7,397 217,510
1819 Methodist Episcopal Church. 53 53 169 275 5,182 15.500 4,078 224,198
1821 Protestant Episcopal Board. 28 16 20 64 706 4,000 1,485 112,S37
1832 Reformed Church. 17 19 46 82 1.123 38,000 2,341 71,123
1832 Presbyterian Church. 129 131 171 431 3,700 12,000 10,059 37S,S03
1833 Free-will Baptist . 6 7 IS 31 212 030 1,078 11,389
1837 Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Societ}' 5 5 3 13 80 SO 355
1842 Seventh-day Baptist. 3 3
1844 Reformed Presbyterian Church. 2 3 5 8,453
1845 Baptist Free Missions. 4 4 8 16 2,41 ii 8,000 2,673 10,000
1845 Southern Baptist Board. 12 9 22 43 301 301 27,254
1S45 Methodist Episcopal Church, South_ 2 2 4 s 70 70 32
1846 American Missionary Association. 16 14 5 35 550 1,023 329 27,424
1853 United Brethren Church. 2 1 3 2,201
Southern Presbyterian Church. 10 8 9 27 27.296
1859 United Presbyterian Church. 16 17 5 38 351 1,337 2,113 48,345
Nova Scotia Presbyterian Church__ 5 5 10 1,000 1,000 1,500 6,000
BRITISH SOCIETIES.
1701 Gospel Propagation Society. 70 50 700 820 S,407 24,000 S.019 532,175
1792 Baptist Missionary Society. 53 51 221 325 6,491 J 1.407 4.551 164.400
1795 London Missionary Society. 156 156 2,726 2,998 50,763 389,900 50.671 530,700
1800 Church of England Society. 203 223 1,845 2,048 18,700 84,912 36.71S S23,5s5
1810 General Baptist Society. 5 6 IS 29 503 503 1,523 30,050
1817 Wesleyan Missionary Society. 543 554 1.978 3,075 68,531 250,170 140,397 445,000
1824 Church of Scotland. 11 11 0 28 21S 818 2,800 49,965
1840 Irish Presbyterian Church. 11 s 19 130 130 1,300 25,895
1840 Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. 4 14 18 211 830 714 20,460
1843 Free Church of Scotland. 28 is 110 153 1,906 3,542 9,752 131,317
1844 English Presbyterian Church. 12 5 44 01 1,000 2,002 800 40,207
1844 South American Missionary Society.. .. 14 7 21 43,520
1847 United Presbyterian Church. 40 50 34 124 5,740 6,400 6,903 42,700
185S Christian Vernacular Education Society* 5 5 4,650 45,529
1860 Moslem Missionary Society. 4 5 9
Primitive Methodist Society. 2 * *2 4 65 410 93 11,730
i860 United Methodist Free Church. so 30 id 70 5,044 6,850 1,241 14,425
Methodist New Connection. 4 4 12 20 2S4 284 S2 10,075
1806 Assam and Cachar Missionary Society.. 2 2 i 5 2,420
China Inland Mission. 5 10 3 18 iii) ii©
CONTINENTAL SOCIETIES.
1732 Moravian Missionary Society. 156 149 15 320 20,742 69,123 15,822 107,005
1797 Netherland Missionary Society. 20 46 66 13,037 40,000
1816 Basle Evangelical Mission. 71 '62 103 236 3,478 5,300 3.218 156,468
1822 Paris Evangelical Society. 21 19 40 1,368 1,368 900 40,S29
182S Rhenish Missionary Society ... 56 69 21 146 4.656 4,656 3,752 59,505
1833 Berlin Missionary Society. 35 9 44 1,851 4,434 1,500 49,459
1S33 Berlin Evangelical Mission. 16 85 101 4,700 15,000 1,400 22,500
1836 Leipsic Evangelical Lutheran. 15 5S 73 9,290 6,119 1,684 49,500
1836 North German. ii 11 42 42 94 20,395
1842 Norwegian. 19 30 49 114 114 150 19,500
1850 Berlin Union for China. 2 2 4 8 200 200 304 3,000
1852 Herrmansburgh Society. 44 44 SS 37,735
1860 Danish Missionary Society. 2 5 4 11 7,500
Utrecht Missionary Society. 10 14 24 4 4 60 19,500
SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE TABLE.

American Societies. 490 544 1,773 2,797 65,889 265,552 47,850 $1,633,891
British Societies . 1,197 1,169 7,747 9,910 16S,328 780,809 270,414 2,975,869
Continental Societies. 478 365 366 1,217 46.445 105,360 41,925 022,95o
Total Foreign Missions. 2.165 24)78 9,SS6 13,924 280,662 1,151,721 360.189 $5,232,716
* Issues 250 different publications, in 14 languages, for Christian education.
TABLE V.
WOMAN’S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETIES.
These Societies are all of recent institution, are growing rapidly in ability and influence, and are, no
doubt, destined to accomplish, especially on the Eastern Hemisphere, a glorious work for Christianity,
and one which only woman can do.
Number Number
EUROPEAN SOCIETIES. of Mis¬ of Native Scholars. Inccme.
sionary. Helpers.
English Church Ladies’ Society for Female Education in the East. 80 295 15,000 $19,845
Ladies’ Society of the Free Church of Scotland. 14,756
Wesleyan Ladies’ Com. for Female Education in Foreign Countries. T 7,435
Ladies’ Association for Female Education in India and Africa. 6 34 2,595 15.440
Ladies’ Association for Improvement of Syrian Women. 27,710
Ladies’ Association for Promoting Education in the West Indies.. 3,155
Zenana Mission in India. 4,625
Berlin Woman’s Association for Christian Education of Females
in the East. 4 53 2,700
China Ladies’ Association. 4 1 49 5,000
AMERICAN SOCIETIES.
Woman’s Union Missionary Society. 29 100 920 44,857
Woman’s Board of Missions of Congregational Church. 25 30 200 24,459
Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the M. E. Church. 9 49 684 22,398
Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Baptist Church. 3 4,000
Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church. 32 30 i,ioo 15,000
Total 14 European and American Societies. 149 539 20,601 $211,8SO
TABLE VI.
HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETIES.
This Table (the summary alone of which is all that we can take room for) includes, besides destitute
districts in nominally Protestant countries, Missions to colored populations. French Canadians, Scandi
navians, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Mexicans, Romish populations, Indians, Negroes in West Indies,
Jews, Colonial and Continental Missions, etc., which are not strictly Foreign Missions to Heathen and
Mohammedan Countries, so far as we could obtain their statistics, perhaps not more than two thirds
of the whole. The number of hearers, or attendants on worship, is not given with the exactness with
which they are reported in the Foreign Missions, but I have ventured to enter in a column, under the
head of Attendants on Worship, two hearers to each communicant, (which is a very low average,)
for the sake of comparison of results in Table X.
Staff of Laborers.
Number.
Attendants
SOCIETIES. Lay and Total
Ordained Church on
Native Preach¬ Scholars. Income.
Missiona’s. Members. Worship.
Preachers. ers.
11 3,522 2,140 5,662 257,203 771,609 96.9SS $1,881,110

25 3,424 8,253 11,672 339,349 1,0 IS,047 109,201 954,992
Total. 36 6,946 10,393 17.834 596,552 1,789,656 266,1S9 $2,336,102
TABLE VII.
TRACT SOCIETIES.
Number.
Number Number
Publications
Publiea’s Publications Income in of Lan
SOCIETIES. from Com¬
on Soci’s Last Year. 1811. griagei
mencement.
Lists. used.
u 4,807 35,956,831 2,190,SS7,000 $763,124 148

8 4,925 25,616,231 15,483,000,000 1,104,461 119
Continental Societies. 7 814 1,577,190 16,523,230 5,746
Total. 26 10,046 63,150,258 17,690,410,230 $1,873,331 262
Of the above societies, the Religious Tract Society of London employs 119 languages. Its income for
1871 was $608,870. The issues of its publications last year were 49,600,000, making a total since the
formation of the Society of 1,335,000,000.
The American Tract Society employs 143 languages. Its income for the last year was S492.0S2 50.
Its issues during the past year amounted to 8,621,419, and from the commencement of the Society
816,145,036.
MISSIONARY STATlSllva. 533
TABLE VIII.
BIBLE SOCIETIES.
Insti¬ Number of No. of copies Income Income
tuted SOCIETIES. copies issued issued from the in from the
A.D. m 1870. commencement. 1871. commencement.
1804 British and Foreign Bible Societies. 3,908,067 68,299,788 $1,086,121 $34,280,001
1816 American Bitle Society. 1,107,727 27,670.09S 783,082 14,100,407
188T American and Foreign Bible Society. 786,696
American Bible Union..".. 608,184
1880 Bible Association of Friends in America. 127,470
Vari- j Continental Bible Societies. 11,724,808
ous
I British India Bible Societies. 4,680,850
Dates.
Total Issues and Income. 5,010,794 108,892,839 $1,869,208 $48,880,408
Adding to these the u Authorized11 issues of the Oxford and Cambridge Presses, and those of the
1 Queen’s Printers” in Edinburgh and London, from 1800 to 1844, (13,000,000 copies,) and the probable
number from the same sources from 1844 to 1870, (9,500,000,) making 22,500,000 copies, so that Home
and Missionary Protestantism have given 131,392,339 copies of the Book of God to their fellow-
men during the past seventy years! and this besides the multitudes published by private firms in
America, and the Harmonies and Commentaries issued by scores of authors.
LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS,

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-POUR IN NUMBER, IN WHICH THE HOLY SCRIPT¬
URES, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED, PRINTED, AND DI8
TRIBUTED, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, BY THESE BIBLE SOCIETIES.
EUROPE.
British Isles—in the English, Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, and Manks languages. France—in French, Bre¬
ton, or Armorican, and French Basque. Spain and Portugal—in Spanish, Catalan, Spanish Basque
Judffio-Spanish, Gitano, and Portuguese. Northern Europe—in Icelandic, Swedish, Lapponese, Fin¬
nish, Norwegian, and Danish. Central Europe—in Dutch, Flemish, German, Judaso-German, Lithu¬
anian, Polish, Judaso-Polish, Wendish Upper, Wendish Lower, Bohemian, Hungarian, Wendish, and
Slovenian. Italy, Switzerland, etc.—in Italian, Latin, Romanese, Romane3e Lower, Piedmontese,
Vaudois. Greece, Turkey, etc.—in Greek Ancient, Greek Modern, Gheg, Tosk, Turkish, Graeco-Turk -
lsh, Armeno-Turkish, Rouman, Servian, and Bulgarian. Russian Empire—in Slavonic, Modern Russ,
Dorpat Esthonian, Reval Esthonian, Lettish, Karelian, Zirian, Samogitian, Calmuc, Morduin or Mord¬
vinian, Tscheremissian, Tschuwaschian, Orenburgh Tartar, Karass, and Crimean'Tartar.
ASIA.
Georgia, etc.—in Ossitinian, Georgian, Armenian Ancient, Armenian Modern, Ararat-Armenian,
Trans-Caucasian Tartar, and Kurdish. Syria, etc.—in Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Carshun, and Syro-Chal-
daic. Persia, etc.—in Persic, Pushtoo or Affghan, and Belochee. India—in Sanskrit and Hindustanee.
Bengal Presidency—in Bengali, Santali, Maghudha, Uriya or Orissa, Hindui and its dialects, the
Bughelcundi, Brug or Brij-bhasa, Canoj, Kousulu, Harroti, Oojein, Oodeypoora, Marwar, Juyapoora,
Bikaneera, Buttaneer, Sindhi, Gurumukhi, Moultan, Punjabi, Dogura, Cashmerian ; Gorkha dialects—
Nepalese, Palpa, Kumaon, and Gurwhal. Madras Presidency—in Telinga, Oanarese or Karnata,
Tamil, Dakhani, and Malayalim. Bombay Presidency—in Kunkuna, Mahratta, Gujarati, Parsi-Guja-
rati, Cutchi or Catehi. Ceylon—in Pali, Singhalese, and Indo-Portuguese. Indo-Chinese—Assamese,
Munipoora, Tibetan, Khassi, Burmese, Bghai-Karen, Sgau-Karen, Pwo-Karen, and Siamese or Thay.
China and Japan—in Chinese, Mandarin, Ningpo, Canton, Hakka, Manchoo, Buriat, Southern Mongo¬
lian, Japanese, and Loochooan. Malaysia—in Malay, Low Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, and Dajak.
ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC.

Malagasy, Hawaiian, Narrinyeri, Maori, New Caledonian, Nengonese, Lifu, Aneityum, Iaian, Ero-
mangan, Fate, Feejeean, Rotuman, Tongan, Nine, Samoan, Rarotongan, Tahitian, Kusaien, Ebon, Gilbert’s
Island, and Marquesan.
AFRICA.
East Africa—in Coptic, Ethiopic, Amharic, Tigre, Galla, Kanika, and Swahili. West Africa—in Ber¬
ber, Mandingo, Temne, Mende, Bullom, Grebo, Ga, Tyi, Yoruba, Haussa, Ibo, Nnpe, Mpongwe, and
Dualla. South Africa—in Benga, Namacqua, Sechuana, Sesuto, Zulu, and Kafir.
AMERICA.
Greenlandish, Esquimaux, Mohawk, Mic-Mac, Maliseet, Seneca, Arrawack, Creek, Cree, Tinne, Ojibwa,
Creolese, Delaware, Choctaw, Dakota, Mayan, Mexican, Negro dialect of Surinam, and Aimara.
TABLE IX.
ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS.
The numbers of Roman Catholics is given by John G. Shea, Esq., a Romanist writer, (in Newcomb s
Cyclop., p. 29T,) at 184,000,000; Professor Schern (in his Eccles. Almanac, p. 81) states it at 195,434,000,
the Protestants at 100,S35,000, and the Eastern Churches (Greek, Armenian, Abyssinian, etc.) at 81,478,000.
These latter figures may be accepted as sufficiently liberal toward ltomanism. They show that the Anti-
Papal Churches (all Protestants in fact, if not in name) are nearly equal in numerical strength to the
entire body of the Eomish Church. Its claim, therefore, to be “Catholic” is justly resisted by one half
of Christendom.
The Missions of the Church of Rome were organized in 1021 by Pope Gregory XV., under the desig¬
nation of The Congregation de Propaganda Fide. Formerly the foreign missionaries of Rome received
regular stipends from the Governments of France, Spain, and Portugal. But these have ceased, and
their Missions arc now supported by voluntary subscriptions alone, raised by the organization called “ The
Society for the Propagation of the Faith," (instituted at Lyons in 1822.) and which is now “the solemis¬
sionary organization of the Catholic Church,” (Marshall’s Christian Missions, vol. i, p. 5.) France is the
head-quarters of this Society, and she contributes about two thirds of the amount raised in the entire
Papal Church, (that is, 3,G7G,0G0 out of 5,217,092 francs collected last year.) Their missionary periodical
is entitled “The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith.”
In China, Romanism was planted as early as the thirteenth century, and so far flourished as to have an
Archiepiscopal See in Pekin, but was afterward expelled, and remained excluded for two hundred years,
when Francis Xavier’s association undertook to regain a footing in China. The “Catholic World" (for
1870, p. 210) calculates that in 1G30 their Church had 13,000 converts in China, 150,000 in 1050, and that
the numbers had risen to 500,000 at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but that, at the close of
that century, it had sunk, by expulsion and persecution, to less than 290,000.
In China, in 1S5G, according to Mr. Shea, (Cyclop., p. 301,) Romanism had “Bishops, 1G; European
Priests, $4; Native Priests, 84; Catholics, 400,000; and many convents'and houses of religious women.”
But Mr. Marshall, with his usual freedom with figures, chooses to swell up these numbers to nearly three
times Mr. Shea’s amount within only three years afterward, lie says, (vol. i, p. 137,) “In 1S59 there
were in China, Bishops, 51; European Priests, 19G; Native Priests, 428; Ecclesiastical Colleges, 18; and
probably adherents, 1,000,000.” It need hardly be observed that the statistics of Papal Missions are des¬
titute of the detail and clearness which characterize those of Protestantism.
Their missions in India were commenced in 1510 by the Franciscans, Dominicans, and others. Francis
Xavier began his labors in 1542, and amazing, are the accounts which they give of their success. But
after 330 years, these “millions” have dwindled down to about S00,000 souls. According to the “ Madras
Catholic Directory ” for 1804, the following are the statistics of the Romish Missions in India. The
schismatics mentioned are those connected with the Portuguese rite at Goa, etc.; but the total number
of “ population ” given is considered excessive by the authority mentioned on page 67 of this work.
Schools, Schismatics,
Homan Catholic 1S62. 1862.
Dioceses. Pkiests.
Population.
No. Pupils. Priests. People.
1852. 1862. 1852.* 1862.

Eastern Bengal. 4 S 13,900 0,476 7 235 4 2,173
Western Bengal. 10 28 15,000 17,000 8 850 4 300
Patna. 12 18 3,200 8,383 8 192 i ....
Agra. 21 25 20,000 20,313 14 1,025 i
Bombay. 81 45 IS,800 17,500- 19 1,000 33 30,000
Mangalore. 22 35 10,45G 44,000 10 S35 12 9,000
Vizagapatam. 12 17 0,250 8,55S 19 656 1 1
Hyderabad. 6 9 4,000 4,080 8 350 2 1,000
Mysore. 12 18 19,000 17,100 IS 680 0
Madras. 17 15 41,400 36,426 45 2,300 18 5,57G
Coimbatore. 10 19 20,000 17,000 4 256 1 1,200
Pondicherry. 41 68 9G,550 107,136 64 900 4 3,329
Madura... . 38 4G 150,000 141,174 16 1.400 15 25,000
Cluilon. 18 24 44,000 50,000 17 1,130 7 7,000
Verapoly. 441 808 228,000 230,000 300 6,S40 20 5,000
Jaffna. 15 24 50,000 55,237 48 1,538 1 700
Colombo. 19 22 100,000 97,708 48 2,620 1 4S
729 779 846,156 878,691 653 22,657 118 90,321

Estimated numbers.
MISSION ART S TA TIS TICS. 535
The missionary statistics of Romanism in India are more carefully reported there than they are else¬
where, as they are surrounded by circumstances by which they can be more fully tested. Tet even
this showing is a wonderful fall from the “millions” reported in that land centuries ago.
Under the pressure of the diplomacy and the cannon of France, which constituted herself “ the protector
nf Christianity in China,!’ the Chinese Government has lately been obliged to enlarge the privileges of the
Romish Missions, and certain results are expected in consequence.
After an existence of ninety years, their missions in Japan, over which such extravagant laudation
was uttered in Xavier’s Life, were simply annihilated in 1637, and they remained excluded until lately.
It is impossible from any source within our reach, even from Papal authorities, to obtain anything
like an accurate knowledge of the condition of Romish missions throughout the world beyond what is
here presented. A very large portion of their missionary income is spent in Protestant nations, chiefly
tn England and the United States. They appropriated to “ Europe and America ” last year 1,985,068
francs, leaving only 2,960,S32 francs for the Heathen world.
They published no report in 1871, on account of the anarchy in France confusing and reducing their
Income, so we have to depend upon the Report of 1870, as given in the Annals, p. 134, etc.
They sustain, they say, “ 272 missions.” But a large number of these would be regarded as Domestio
or Home Missions by Protestant Christians. We italicise such in the list which they furnish, as follows:
“ England, Scotland, Wales, West Indies, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Canada, United States, Isles
of the Levant, China, Abyssinia, Algiers, South Sea Islands, Persia, Siam, Cochin China, East Indies,
Bulgaria, Greece, Palestine, Australia, Cape of Good Hope, British Guiana, Ava, Syria, Thibet, Tripoli,
Tunis,” etc.
The Income of the “Society for the Propagation of the Faith ” was, at different periods since 1849, as
follows:
In 1849... .3,600,148 francs, divided by 19 = $684,028 12
In 1852.. ..5,615,400 1,067,000 00
In 1866.... 5,145,558 979,856 02
In 1867.... 6,149,918 978,484 42
In 1868.... 5,308,867 1,008,684 73
In 1869.... 5,217,092 991,247 48
Professor Schem, from a Theological Journal published in Paris, gives the following summary of the
Missionaries of the Church of Rome:
Of the first class, or Missions of the “Secular Clergy,” there are. 264
Of the second class, or Missions of “Religious Congregations,” there are_ 1,236
Of the third class, or Missions of “Monastic Orders,” there are. 3,639
Making in all, throughout the world, Missionaries. 5,139
The “ Catholic Directory ” for 1851, published by Battersby & Co., Dublin, made the number one fourth
larger twenty years ago. The enumeration then was, “Vicariates, 76; Prefects, 9; Missionaries,
6,276; Population, 8,731,062.” Of this mission “ population ” there are, according to this authority, in
“Europe, 5,482,552; Asia, 1,577,000; Africa, 231,000; America, 1,380,009; Oceanica, 60,000,” (p. 261.)
Showing 1,868,000 proselytes in the heathen world, and 6,S62,561 “ population ” in Europe and America.
Who these six and three quarters millions in America and Europe are they themselves best know. They
are not “heathen” certainly.
Their missionary income was larger then than it is now, (in 1852, $1,067,000,) and it would seem to
indicate a falling off in the staff, which, in the crippled condition of France, they themselves fear (see An¬
nals for May, 1871, p. 125) will lead to a still heavier decrease for some time to come.
Of the above 5,13S missionaries, 1,672 are Jesuit missionaries, operating in the United States, China,
India, Australia, British America, and South America. Their mode of counting “ missionaries ” differs
from the Protestant method. They include, besides clergymen, Brothers of various Orders, Nuns,
Sisters of Charity, etc. They say, in the “ Annals ” for September, 1849, “ Besides the regular clergy,
we have for fellow-laborers nine religious bodies, or pious societies; hospitals and orphan asylums,
poor societies and boarding-schools; numberless establishments prosper under the direction of virgins
consecrated to God.” And again they observe that their “staff consists of bishops, coadjutors, Euro¬
pean missionaries, native priests, deacons, clerks in minor orders, students of theology, Latin schol¬
ars, pupils in colleges, catechists, and nuns in convents.” (Annals for 1871, p. 163.) For further evidence
of this see the “Annals ” for January, 1850, p. 51, where the above are expressly designated and counted
as “missionaries.” Numbered in this way, it is easy to show a large missionary staff. Reckoning thus,
the Home and Foreign Missions of Protestantism have already a staff many times more numerous than
that of the Romanists; while that of our strictly Foreign Missions alone, in the extent of its agency, (not¬
withstanding the economy possible to them by their system of celibate instrumentality,) is much larger
ban theirs, as will be shown in the next Table.
30
53*5 THE LAND OF THE VEDA.
TABLE X.
PROTESTANT AND ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS COMPARED.

Romanism has earnestly labored to ignore Protestant missions and deny their efficiency, while she
has shown equal anxiety to exalt and excessively exaggerate her own successes. Honest Romanists
might well feel ashamed of the misrepresentations of an author like T. W. M. Marshall, (in his “ Christian
Missions," published by Sadlier & Co., N. Y., 1S64;) for surely the false and partisan statements of such
a writer can bring no strength or credit to any cause.
Mr. Venn, of London, in his “ Life of St. Francis Xavier," has exposed the hollowness of these boosted
successes of Romish missions; and now Dr. Hoffman, of Berlin, in his German edition of Mr. Venn’s
work, but with additional and independent testimony, supplied by Roman Catholic missionaries them¬
selves—the witnesses of their own want of success—has shown how frequently and extensively these
missions have failed. We hope that Dr. Hoffman’s book will be republished in this country, to give
English readers the evidence he has added to Mr. Venn’s. The statistical tables here presented, by the
honest comparison which they supply, will further aid in exposing the misrepresentations of such par
tisan writers as Mr. Marshall and Cardinal Wiseman.
We first ask attention to the following summary, and request the reader to refer to page 531 of this
work—where the details are given—so as to carry into the comparison the full impression there presented
of the great work of God here summarized:
HOME AND FOREIGN MISSIONS OF PROTESTANTISM.

(Uniting Tables IV and VI, on Pages 531, 532.)
Ordained Native Total

PROTESTANT. Church Attendants Income of
Missiona¬ Pastors and Christian Scholars.
Members. on Worship. Societies.
ries. Preachers. Laborers.
2.165 9,886 13,924 280,662 1,151,721 360,1S9 $5,132,711

Home Missions ... 6,946 10,393 17.334 596,552 1,789.656 266489 2,336,107
Total. . 9,111 20,279 81,258 877,214 2,941,377 626.378 $7,46S,S13
Before proceeding to compare these missions with those of Romanism it should be noticed that,
1. Membership in Romish missions is under different conditions from membership in Protestant
missions, and their relative increase is correspondingly significant. Romanism teaches that her baptism
regenerates and gives Church membership—a doctrine which we hold in just abhorrence. Protestant¬
ism, on the contrary, teaches the heathen his need of personal repentance and faith in Christ, and
admits to baptism only as a privilege and evidence of this grace. Romanism puts her baptism in the
place of conversion, or, rather, makes it equivalent to it, and leaves the deluded soul to give evidence of
the error in an unregenerate life. The language of her missionaries in reference to their converts is—
“ She was regenerated in the waters of baptism,” (Annals, 1871, p. 17 ;) “Adult baptisms, that is, conver¬
sions,” etc., (Marshall, vol. i, p. 248;) “We have baptized several children, many of whom have gone to
Paradise, where they will pray for their benefactors,” (Annals, 1869.) Protestant converts differ widely
from the proselytes of such a system of dangerous error as this.
2. Their methods of missionary action are also entirely dissimilar.
The Protestant Missionary translates the Holy Scriptures into the language of the people, also prints
Christian tracts, and goes forth into their bazaars and meins, and preaches the Gospel to them,
denouncing their idolatry as a crime against the Second Commandment of Almighty God. He calls upon
them to forsake their images and pictures, their holy water and praying beads, and come to Christ for
salvation by grace alone. But the Romish missionary does not, and dare not, do this. He works mostly
at home: converts are brought to him by others, and he sacramentally regenerates them, whether they be
infants abandoned by their parents, or adult proselytes. The epitome of their labors is furnished by one
of themselves in the following language: “ Hearing confessions, administering communions, confessions
of children before first communion, baptisms of the children of Christians, of adult pagans, baptizing
dying pagans, marriages blessed, extreme unction, administering masses for the living, for the dead, and
for the Propagation of the Faith Society.”
They sometimes disguise themselves, travel at night, conceal their movements from the native
authorities, wear the native dress, and live in isolated communities. The Protestant Missionary, on the
contrary, is known and read of all men, has no disguise or occasion for it, speaks openly to the world,
moves among the heathen without suspicion or fear, his life and that of his family being in their pres¬
ence, and what the heathen think of him and his motives and his honest work may be gathered from
the voluntary and unprejudicial testimonies quoted on pages 363-373 of this book—statements that
have incidentally replied as effectually to Romish falsehoods about Protestant missions as they hava
MISSIONARY ST A TIS TIGS. 537
to Lord Ellenborough’s misapprehensions. While the local contributions in aid of Protestant missions
(amounting last year in India alone to $151,000, and constantly on the increase) from English gentlemen
of all grades of society, judges and magistrates, colonels and planters, before whose keen observation the
daily life and labors of Protestant missionaries and their converts lie open continually, attest the confi¬
dence of those who know them best, and, like the testimony of the candid and intelligent heathen, will, in
the esteem of honest men, answer and silence the wicked misrepresentations of Romish writers like those
whom I have named.
Let us now compare the standing and progress of the two systems, on their respective showing, in
India, and then throughout the World.
I. In India.—We give them every advantage. Taking their own figures, and even the highest of them,
those ir. the Madras Catholic Directory, (see Table IX, p. 534,) and using terms in the same sense, we
find the following facts in India:
PROTESTANT AND EOMISH MISSIONS IN INDIA.

Native
Ordained Attendants
Preachers Total Number Number Yearly
Missionaries, on Worship,
INDIA. and Cate¬ Missionary of of Expendi¬
Foreign and or “ Popula¬
chists unor¬ Staff. Schools. Scholars. ture.
Native. tion.”
dained.
Protestant Missions. 957 2,784 4,058 350,000 2,826 137,326 $1,207,039

Eomish Missions. 779 779 878,691 653 22,657 28,328
Majority in favor of Prot- )

176 2,784 3,279 2,173 114,669 $1,178,711
estantism.. \
Giving Protestantism the advantage in every item of the comparison save “ population,” and in that
respect our more Christian terms of admission and stricter discipline furnish one satisfactory reason for
the difference. If Eomanism would venture to publish the details of her work as Protestantism can do,
and does, in Tables II and III. (see pages 529, 530,) the comparison would be still more to our honor in
every department of Christian labor, while our progress would be found, especially for the time we have
been at work, vastly greater and more rapid than that of Eomanism.
In addition, we have given the Word of God to the people in the twenty-three languages of the coun
try, besides creating a Christian literature which is already of considerable magnitude.
II. Throughout tiie Would, comparing Protestant and Eomish missions in the statistics furnished
by each for their results, we find the comparison to be still more favorable to Evangelical Christianity.
From the returns given in Table IX, (though we cannot understand what they mean by “Europe,
population, 5,482,552, and America, 1,380,000 population,” as missionary figures,) yet, comparing their
Home and Foreign Missions, even as they thus express them, with the Home and Foreign Missions of
Protestantism, given on the preceding page, we find the following results :
COMPAEISON OF PEOTESTANT AND BOM AN CATHOLIC MISSIONS THROUGHOUT

THE WORLD.
Attendants
Ordained Native Total Scholars Missionary
on Worship,
THE WORLD. Missiona¬ Pastors and Christian in Income in
or “ Popula¬
ries. Preachers. Laborers. Schools. 1871.
tion.”
Protestant Missions. 9,111 20,279 31.258 2,941,877 626,878 $7,468,SIS

Eomish Missions. 6,276 j 6.276 8,731.062 22,657 991,247
Majority in favor of Protestantism... 1 2,S35 20,279 24.9S2 603,721 $6,477,571
We can find no return of their scholars, save for India. They have others, but not reported. There
is tolerable certainty that their relative proportion is not greater than in India. If as great, then their
scholars are about 181,256, which, taken from the 626,378 scholars of Protestantism, leaves 445,122, or
three and a half times more scholars than Eomanism has. They devote only three fifths of their income
to the heathen world, and cannot, therefore, support with that amount a larger staff of laborers than
what is here given.
In the strictly heathen world (seeTable IX, p. 534) their “population ” is 1,868,000 ; Protestantism has
(see Table IV) 1,151,721, which is coming up close to them in the single item in which their figures out¬
number ours. While, if their 6,276 “Missionaries” include—as we suppose they do—not only their or¬
dained men, but also their Nuns and other Helpers, then the comparison should be with the “ total staff”
of Protestant laborers, which amounts (see Tables IV and VI) to 31.25S Preachers and Teachers,
or five times the number of Romish Helpers cf all classes.
We have also during the past seventy years, at home and abroad, translated and printed and put into
circulation, 131,000,000 copies of the Book of God in 274 Languages and Dialects of our fellow-men,
ut a cost of $4S,000,000. (See Table VIIT, page 533.)
This comparison establishes, first, That Protestantism contributes eight times more money to save the
world than Eomanism gives ; while, in view of their numerical superiority, her liberality, man for man,
In this work, is only one fifteenth that of Evangelical Christians 1
Second. That Protestantism is educating three and a halftimes more heathen youth than Eomanism,
and giving them a higher education as well, for which reason they come to us.
Third. That Protestantism has a less number of adherents ; but this is caused, among other things, by
the fact that we receive only adults to membership on personal conviction and profession of saving faith,
and exercises over those thus received a stricter discipline, to the exclusion of those who live not ac
cording to the Gospel. The “ population ” of missionary Eomanism are no better, and perhaps no worse,
than her population at home, and what these are every taxpayer in the land well knows. No unpreju¬
diced man familiar with the facts but is well aware that there is a difference between these two classes
of converts.
Fourth. That Protestantism has a missionary staff larger by nearly 8,000 ordained men—if the figures
of Eomo include only ordained agoncy—while, if those figures include all their laborers, as they seem to
do, then Protestantism has a staff of laborers five times more numerous than that of Romanism.
Fifth. Let it be borne in mind, in this comparison, that the increase in Protestant missions is far
more rapid ihan in those of Eomanism. Eoman missions are the growth of 350 years, 2S0 years of
which she had the field to herself without competition; while Protestant missions have been only
seventy years in operation, or one fifth of the period of Eomanism. Most of our work is the growth
of about fifty years. We entered China only thirty years ago, in 1842. If Protestantism, then, has
overtaken Eomanism in less than seventy years of activity, the reader can readily anticipate what is
likely to be their relative position seventy years hence.
Sixth. The boast of the Catholic Church in her celibate Agency—some of whom, she tells us, “ live
in bachelor’s barracks on £24 per annum ”—has availed her little in the way of progress ; while the mar¬
ried missionaries of Evangelical Christianity, at which she sneers so often, though costing more, have
been so well worth the difference that they have, under God, wrought out results which she would be
only too glad if she could number among the trophies to which she could point as evidence of Heaven’s
blessing upon her instrumentality.
A married missionary has a decided advantage over her wifeless priests. Not only is he standing in
the holy relation enjoined upon all grades of the Christian clergy by the Divine Spirit, that he should be
“ the husband of one wife,” and presenting before the heathen the example of the Christian home, but
also those heathen better understand him in this relation than they can any celibate priesthood. In
addition to this, his wife is truly a “ help meet for him.” Each such woman is well worth her “ bread
and butter” to the Society which supports her husband; and she can do, and does, for the Missionary
Church, particularly for its female members—who go to her, as a wife and a mother, in their trials and
cares for sympathy, advice, and help—that which a Nun (however zealous or devoted) is disqualified to im¬
part. No Nun has ever been to the cause of Christ what such missionary wives as Mrs. Judson, Mrs.
Spaulding, or Mrs. Peirce have been.
Seventh. Nor have the full facts of Protestant success been even yet brought out in this comparison.
Had evangelical Christianity retained under its rule and tutelage the Churches which it has founded, its
numerical statistics would be nearly double its present figures. The missionary action of evangelical
Christianity has originated large Churches, and raised nations from barbarism. The Baptists in Bur-
mah have saved the Karens, and made them a Christian pe&ple; the American Board has done the
same for the Sandwich Isles, the Moravians for Greenland, the Wesleyans for the Feejec and Friendly
Isles, and the Independents for Madagascar. Extensive self-supporting Churches, and even whole Con¬
ferences, have been organized in Australia, Eastern British America, Canada, France, Liberia, the Sand¬
wich Isles, and Oceanica, all of which were once “missions,” and are now not only self-supporting, but
even aiding the parent Churches in their evangelizing efforts, or else supporting missions of their own.
The converted Friendly Islanders last year raised all the expenses of their mission, and contributed
besides $17,500 (£3,500) in order to send the Gospel of Christ to regions beyond. So also are the Sand¬
wich Islanders doing in Micronesia. The writer saw the same fact developing among the Karens o'
Burmah. The native Christians of India contributed last year (see Table III) $43,101 toward the sup¬
port and extension of the work of God.
These cheering results, and evidences of true Christian life and devotion, Eomanism cannot compare
with. What confusion and destruction of her labors has she had to witness during the past three hun¬
dred years 1 How frequently has she been expelled from lands where she toiled, not for the Gospel’s sake
»o much as for a course of procedure which jealous native administrations have regarded as political ambi¬
tion, and overbearing conduct and interference! Protestant missions, in the East especially, are no
6t.rangers to the complications which she has originated, and it is very probable that, if it were i>ot for
the presence of Protestant missions, and the consideration which their godly and prudent course justly
claims, even from the heathen, that Eomanism would be an exile to-day from other lands besides those
which have already expelled her, even as Roman Catholic Governments at home for similar cause have
often expelled her Jesuit orders, and forbid their return to their territories.
MISSIONARY STATISTICS. 539
What would St Peter or St. Paul think of a system which has departed so far from apostolic doctrine
and methods of evangelization, and descended so low that some of their missionaries adopt the role of
those wretches described in Chapter IV of this work! and that, so far from being ashamed of it, their
writers admit, and try to justify the fact, that her Missionaries do assume their character and livery, wear
their badges, and trick themselves out in their paint and crosiers and robes. They thus act a lie, in
the concealment of character and the compromise of truth, in order to make proselytes.
Romish missions have long been open to this fearful charge. The Jesuit missionaries adopted the
dress and habits of the Bonzes in China, and of the Fakirs and Vogees in India. It is enough to name
Robert de Nobili in this connection. Let the reader turn back to the engraving on page 199, and look at
the miserable creature who sits there, and then think of Robert de Nobili, and the system that lauds him
for making himself exactly like that wretched heathen 1
Rome continues the same course to this hour. It is one of her methods of missionary action. Swartz
In 1771, one hundred years ago, was scandalized by meeting the Romish missionary in South India,
dressed in the style of the pagan priests, wearing their yellow robe, and having like them a drum beaten
before him. It is just the same in 1872. Only a few weeks since the Rev. W. 0. Simpson, Wesleyan
Missionary of South India, uttered these words from the platform of Exeter Hall, London :
“Now, of all these, my European brethren and my native brethren, I can say this: you will never
find in them any concealment of character. I was going along a road in Trichinopoli when I saw
something coming toward me astride of a tattoo. I wanted to have a good look at him, and I advanced
into the middle of the road, so that this object might pass between me and the wall. As he came
by that object flashed with, I hope, honest shame. It was something which made his cheeks red. His
face was as white as mine, but he wore the badge of one who has sworn devotion to Siva. On his
shoulder was the robe of one who has sworn devotion to that god; around his neck was the official
rosary, the technical rosary of the Sivite; and in his hand there was a crosier, the serpentine staff of a
Gooroo, or Sivite teacher. Yet that man who passed me had a face as white as mine; he was a Jesuit
Missionary, and was going to angle for souls in the name of the Prince of Truth with all the trappery
and trickery and trumpery of a compromise of the truth. Before I met him that morning I had been
saying to myself, I wonder if I can get any nearer to these people. But when I saw him I felt my
Bible under my arm, and I said, Lord Jesus, forgive me for thinking that I could do this work with any
kind of lie on my lips or in my hand. Just half an hour after I was sitting in a large class of twenty-six,
all Brahmins, sons of the very priests of the temple, who were reading with me in a kindly and in a
loving spirit the history of the Lord Jesus Christ; and I said to myself, I would rather have one soul
won in this way than five hundred in that way. I remember preaching in the streets of Manargudi,
and I had referred to idolatry, when a man came forward and said, ‘ Sir, I have a question to ask.’ ‘ What
is it?’ I said. ‘What business have you,’ said he, ‘to preach against idols?’ ‘My dear friend,’ I said,
‘an idol is nothing in the -world.’ He said, ‘Why, they are in your own temples.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘they
are not.’ ‘But,’said he, ‘ I have seen them.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘you have not.’ ‘ Why, sir,’ said he, ‘can’t I
believe my own eyes?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘you cannot.’ There was near him a shop-keeper who had heard
many sermons from me. This man turned round to the shop-keeper and said, ‘ Did you ever hear 6uch
a gentleman as that in your life? He says I cannot believe my own eyes.’ The shop-keeper said, ‘ And
you cannot.’ ‘Now,’ said he, assuming the dignified, ‘where do you come from ?’ ‘0,’ said the other,
‘I come from so and so.’ ‘Ah,’ said the shop-keeper, ‘anybody could tell you were a country-side
man. Where did you see these idols ? ’ ‘0,’ said he, ‘ I saw them in the little temple on the other side
of the river.’ That was a Jesuit chapel. ‘Ah,’ said the shop-keeper, ‘did I not tell you you were a
man from the country-side ? For anybody but a provincial would know these'—pointing to my col¬
league and myself—‘ are not those.' He went on to say, ‘ Don’t you know those are our little brothers ?
these are no relations.’ I am thankful that in our Indian work we stand so plain and clear from every
kind of compromise that even there the heathen are beginning to understand that ‘ these ’ are not ‘ those.'
Whv, ‘these’ believe in an open Bible, ‘those’ in a closed one; ‘these’ believe in ministers that are no
priests, ‘ those ’ believe in priests that are sacrificers; ‘ these ’ believe in the direct access of each particu¬
lar soul to Christ, ‘those’ believe in mediators and mediatrixes many; ‘these’ believe in a pardon re¬
ceived direct from God, 1 those ’ believe in one dropped from the fingers of a priest, and paid for in
money. I say again for my brothers, both black and white, when you help them and when you pray
for them, you may be quite certain that there will be not only no concealment of character, but no com¬
promise of truth.”
Yes, the sagacious Hindoo was right in recognizing the Romish fraternity as his “ little brothers,” for
the likeness is too manifest to be denied, their opinions, ceremonies, and morals are so nearly identical,
and the only hope of India and the world lies in the deliverance of both from the doctrines and practices
of Romish missions, and their reception of that Evangelical Christianity which has already made good
its claim to finish the glorious work that it has so well begun.
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN TERMS
USED IN THIS WORK AND IN MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE.
(The common spelling Is given in Italic, followed by the correit or phonetic spelling in Roman.)
Ab. .'Ab. .Water; e. g., JDo-ab, two waters; Punj-ab, five waters
Abad . . 'Abad.. A dwelling or city, as Allah-abad, City of God
Adawlat.. . Adalat. . A court of justice.
Admee...'Admi. . A man.
Allah. .Allah. .The Arabic or Mohammedan name of God.
Alum. .'Alam. .The universe, or world.
Ameen.. .Amin. .A native Judge.
Amreeta.,. Amrit.
doo gods.
j
The water of immortality; the ambrosia of the Hin¬
Anna., .'Ana... A coin; the sixteenth of a rupee, worth three cents

Ap.••'Ap. .Your Honor.
Asman.... 'Asman. .Heaven; the firmament or sky.
Asoor... Asur. .A devil, an evil spirit.
Ata...'Ata. .Flour, meal.
Attar... Itr.. . .Essence, or rose oil.
An incarnation; particularly of Vishnu, nine of
Avatar. . Autar.j
which have taken place, the tenth is yet to come.
Ayah.,. 'Ayah. . A maid or nurse.
Baboo...Babu. . Hindoo title of respect; sir, gent

Bagh...Bagh. . A garden or grove.
Bahadoor. ..Bahadur. .Brave, title of rank.
Bajra. . .Bajra. . A kind of millet.
The Word; the so-called sacred writings of the
Bana. . .Bana.|
Bhuddists.
Bandy. . . Bandi. . A gig or cart.
A pole with ropes, for carrying baggage on the
Banghy. .. Bahangi.|
shoulder.
Bangle. .. Bangle. . A bracelet.
Bap. . .Bap. .Father.
Baraduree. . .Baradari.
1
j
, A building with twelve doors. A summer-house in
a garden.
Barat. .. Barat. . Marriage ceremony of bringing home the bride.
Basun. .. Bdsan. .A plate, dish, or vessel.
Baivurchee. .. Bawarohi. .A cook.
Bawarcheekana. .. Bawarchikhana. . A cooking-place or kitchen.
Bazaar. .. Bazar. . A market or trading-street.
j A land measure; about one third of an acre, but
Beegah..
) differing in the various provinces of India.
542 THE LAND OF THE VEDA
Begum. ..Begam . . A princess or lady, (Mohammedan title.)

Belatee. .Foreign, European.
1 The Lord of Purity. The deity worshiped
Bhadmauth.... . .Badrinath.
( Bhadrinauth.
Bhugavat.... Bhagavat. .One of the names of Brahm. God.
Bhugavat- Gita . .. Bhagavat-Gita.. . A philosophic episode of the “ Mahabarata.”
Bhung . ..Bhang. . An intoxicating preparation of hemp.
Bheestee. . .Bihishti. . A water carrier.
Bhoosa. . .Bhus. . Food for cattle; chaff.
Bhoot. ..Bhut. . A ghost or spirit.
Bihisht.. .. Bihisht., .Paradise, heaven.
Bouzees. . .Bouzis.. .The priests in China and Tartary.
Boodha. ..Budha., .Old man.
Boot. .. But.. .An idol or pagoda.
Brahm. . .Brahm., .God; the Divine essence.
Brahma. .. Brahma.. .The personal Creator.
( The highest of the sixteen celestial worlds of the
Brahma-loka...
( Buddhists.
Brahmin. .. Brahman. . Hindoo priest; the first of the four Hindoo castes.
( A new sect of reformed Hindoos, styling themselves
Brahmo Somaj. .. Brahmo Somaj. •
( intuitional deists.
Brinjaries. , .Carriers of grain.
Budgerow. . A large cabin-boat; a pleasure-boat.
j Gotama; a historical personage worshiped in Thibet,
Buddha. . .Baudh.-I
j China, etc. Called Fo in China.
Buddhist. .. Buddhist. . A follower of Gotama-Buddha.
Bucksheesh. . .Bakhshish. . A present or gift.
Bungalow. .. Bangla. .A house, usually thatched.
Bunya. .. Baniya. .A grain merchant or trader.
Burra. . .Bara,. . Great.
Bur sat. .. Barsat., .Rains, or the “rainy season.”
Buttee. .. Batti. . A candle or lamp; a lamp-wick.
Byragee. .. Bairagi. .A religious mendicant, a worshiper of Vishnu.
Bylee. .. Bahli. . A native carriage drawn by bullocks.
Caranchie. .. Karanchi. . A native carriage.

( A division of Hindoo society, of which there are four
Caste. .. Zat.
( principal: Brahmin, Kskatriya, Vaisya, Sudra.
| A Mohammedan Judge, who decides civil and crim-
Cazee. .. Qizi.'
j inal suits by the Koran.
Chand.. ..Chand. .The moon.
j A light native cot or bedstead, usually made of
Charpoy. .. CMrpai.
[ bamboo and cords.
Chattah. .. Chh&t£. . An umbrella.
Cheetah. . .Chit&. .A leopard; frequently used in hunting.
Chirr agh. .. Chiragh. .A small light or lamp.
Chitak. .. Chhatank. .A weight of about two ounces.
Chittee. .. Chitthi. .A note or letter.
Chobedar. ,. A bearer of a silver mace.
Chokey . .. Chauki.. A chair or stool; a guard station.
Chakra. .. Chokra. . A boy. Chokrf: a girl.
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN TERMS. 543
Chor.Chor.A robber, a thief.
Chota.Chhota.Little.
Chota-hazree.Chhoti-haziri_A slight refreshment in the morning.
Chowk.Chauk.A market, yard, or court.
Chowkeydar.Chaukidar.A watchman.
Chowrie.Chauri.A whisk for driving off flies.
Chuddur.Chaddar.A sheet or table-cloth.
Chumar.Chumar.A leather-dresser.
Chunam.,.Chunam.Lime.
Ghupatti.Chapati.A thin, unleavened cake of coarse flour.
Chupper.Chappar.A thatched roof.
Chuprassie.Cliaprasi.A peon or messenger.
Churuk-poojah .. . Charkh-puja.An annual barbarous swinging festival.
Chutney.Chatni.A kind of pungent sauce or catsup.
Coolie.Quli.A burden-bearer, a laborer.
Coss.Kos.The Hindoo mile; about two English miles.
Cowrie.Kauri.A small shell used as currency; 5,120 to a rupee.
Crore.Karor.Ten millions; one hundred lakhs.
VM \ -A. popular Indian dish, composed of meat cooked in
.] a dressing of spices, and eaten with boiled rice.
Cutcha.Kachcha.\ UnriPe! uncookedi green; imperfect; built of un
| burnt brick.
Cutcherry.Kachahri.A court-house, or court of justice.
Dacoit.Dakait.A robber or river-pirate.

Dai.Dai.A wet-nurse ; a midwife.
DanH; \ A light conveyance, or sedan, borne on the shoulders
\ of two men.
Daroga.Darogha.A superintendent; an agent.
Dawk.Dak.A post, letter post, or arrangements for traveling.
Dawk Bungalow . .Dak Bungla.A rest-house for travelers.
Deccan.Daklian.The South.
Deen.Din.Religion, faith.
Devar.Dewa.A Hindoo name for the gods generally.
Dewan.Diwan.A chief minister; an agent.
Dewanee Khass. . .Diwan i Khass.. .The audience-hall of the “ Great Moguls.”
Dharma.Dharm.Divine law, duty, virtue.
..
Dharma Shastra. .Dharm Shastr. .The Hindoo Code; religion, science, morals, law.
j The custom of sitting in defiance before one’s door
Dherna . .Dherna.■!
! to compel compliance with a demand.
Dhobee. . Dhobi. . A washerman. Dhobin: a washerwoman.
j A tract of country between two rivers; as that be
Doab. .Doab.'
1 tween the Ganges and Jumna.
Dooley. .Doli. .A litter, or light palanquin.
Dozukh.. Dozakh . .Hell.
Durbar.. Darbar . .A court where a levee is held.
.
Durbeen .Durbin . .A spy-glass or telescope.
...
Durga-Poojah ... ji
.Durga-Puja A yearly festival of the Hindoos, extending over uf
' teen days, in honor of the Goddess Durga.
.
Durvesh .Darwesh. .A Mohammedan sage or beggar.
Durwan. .Darwan . .A gate-keeper.
Durzee. .Darzi. ... . A tailor.

Dustoor. .Dastur. ... .Customs, manners, usage.
Dustoori. .Dasttiri. ... .Fee or percentage exacted by middlemen and servants.
Dwaper Tug.... .Dwapur Jug. ... .The third age of the world.
Eblis. .Iblis. ... .The Mohammedan name for the DeviL

Eed. .'Id. ... .A Mohammedan festival; their Easter.
Emir or Ameer.. . Amir. ... .A chief or noble.
( Descendants of Europeans and Asiatics; sometimes
Eurasians . .Eurasians...
| called East Indians, or half-castes.
Fakir. .Faqir. ... .A religious mendicant.

Feringhee. .Fariughi......... A European; a foreigner.
Ferishta. .Farishta.....An angel.
Firdoos. . Firdaus.... .Paradise; the heaven of the Mohammedans.
Firman. .Farman.... ..... A royal order, mandate, command.
Foujdar. .Faujdar....,.A commander; an army officer.
j A Hindoo deity: the God of Wisdom, represented

Gunesha. .Ganesh.
) with an elephant’s head.
1 The holy river of India. From Gunga, the river,
Ganges. .Gunga.
( represented as a deity.
Gharree. . Gari._.A carriage, cart.
Ghareeivan. . Gari wan ...,.A coachman.
( A landing or bathing-place; flight of steps at a
Ghat.. .Ghat.
1 river; also, a pass in mountains.
Ghee. .Ghi..An inferior butter used for cooking.
Ghogra. . Ghogra.... .A river in Upper India, a tributary of the Ganges.
Gholam. .Ghulam. . . . .A slave, a servant.
Ghora. .Ghora. ..... A horse.
Ghur. . Gliar. .House, home, habitation.
Ghurra. . Ghara. .An earthen water-pot or pitcher.
Ghurree. .Ghari. .A clock, watch, hour.
Gomashta. .Gumashta.. .An agent, officer, or superintendent.
Goomtee. .A river in Oude flowing by Lucknow.
Godown. .A store-house, cellar, warehouse, magazine.
Gora ... .A white man: an English soldier.
Gossain. .A religious mendicant worshiping Mahadev, CShiva.)
Gonah. .A sin, crime.
Gram. .Gram...A kind of vetch, pulse, or peas.
Guddee. .Gaddi. .Pad, cushion, or seat: a throne or royal seat.
Guicowar. .Gaekwar... .Name of a sovereign in the South.
Gully. .Gall. .Street, alley, way.
Guroo. .Guru. .A religious teacher, priest.
Guz. .A measure; a short yard.
Hackery. .A native cart drawn by bullocks.

1 A Mohammedan who has made the pilgimage to
Had/jee..
l Mecca.
Hukeem. .A Mohammedan doctor, a sage, philosopher.
Hakim. .A ruler, governor, king.
Ranuman. Hanumdn The deified monkey who was the ally of Rama.
Harem... Haram... Sacred, prohibited, the inner or women’s apartments.
Rati. Hathi.... An elephant.
Eavildar. Hawaldar , A native sergeant.
Razree... Haziri... Breakfast, presence.
Hejira... Flight; the flight of Mohammed from Mecca, ICth
Hijri ....
of July, A. D. 622; the Mohammedan era.
Hera. Hira. ,A diamond.
Hookah... Huqqa... .A smoking-pipe.
A Hindoo festival to commemorate the beginning of
Roolee.. Holi.
{ the new year.
Eoondee Hundi. . A native bank-note; a bill of exchange.
A box-seat on an elephant’s back; an elephant’s
Hotudah
Ruck
Hauda.
Haqq.
I saddle.
.Equity, truth, reason.
Rurkaru.... .. Harkara ... .A messenger, a running courier.
Rurrumzadu . .Haramzada. . A rascal, a bastard.
Huzar. . .Hazar. .A thousand.
Ruzoor. . .Huzur. .Royal presence; “Your Honor.”
Excellency, majesty, divine; a title accorded to
Ruzrat.Hazrat ....
superiors.
Huzrat Isa.Hazrat 'Isa .Jesus Christ.
The God of Light. The leading ancient Vedic deity,

Indr a.Indra. sometimes called the God of Heaven, but now
occupying only an inferior position.
Islam.Islam. The Mohammedan religion.
A termination, signifying place or country, as Aff-
Istar. ... .Istan or Sthan.
ghanistan that of the Affghans.
Izzut. .Izzat. .Honor, respect.
A State or landed estate assigned by Government

Jagheer.... Jagir....
as a reward.
Jaghiredar , Jagirdar. ,A person holding a jagheer.
Jehan.... , Jahan. The world.
Jahaz. ,Jahaz. A ship.
Jain.. , Jain. A kind of degenerate Buddhists.
Jat. , Jat. .A caste or sect; a tribe among the Rajpoots.
Jeel. .Jhll. A shallow lake or pond.
A native subaltern officer; head-man of a village or
Jemmadar. Jamad&r.
class.
According to the Mohammedans, an intermediate
Jinn. .Jinn.
race between angels and men.
Jo tee. .Juti. .A shoe or slipper.
Jowar.... .Joir. ,A kind of millet.
The Lord of the World. A god of the Hindoos,
Juggemauth.Jaganath..
whose temple is at Orissa.
Juldee.Jaldi. .Quick! quickly!
Chief mosque at Delhi. The largest place of Mo¬
JtmmaMusjid.., .Jama Masjid...
hammedan worship in India.
Jammaut.Jaraaat. Assembly, meeting, congregation.
Jumna.Jamuna.A river of North-west India.

Jungle.Jangal.A thicket, desert, wilderness, wood.
Kaffir. Kafir. An infidel; impious rascal.

Kalee. Kali.. .The Hindoo goddess of destruction.
The fourth or present age of the world; the black or
Kali Tug.. ,Kal Jug....
iron age.
Kalpa.. Kalpa. A day of Brahma, equal to 4,320,000,000 solar years
Karen. , Karen. ,An aboriginal race in the hills of Burmah.
Magnificent; the ancient name of Benares, still so-
Kasi. .Kashi.
called by the Brahmins.
Katree. .Khatri. .A military caste of Hindoos.
Khansama. , Khansaman .A steward or butler.
Kheleei.... , Khilat. .A robe or dress of honor presented as a gift.
Keranee.... . Kirani. . A writer, clerk; a man of mixed blood.
Khuda.. .. . Khuda. .God.
Khudawund .Khud&wand .Lord, sir, master.
Kitmutghar. .Khidmatgar .A table attendant.
Kincob. . Kimkhwab. .Brocade.
Kismut.... .Qismat .Destiny, chance, fortune.
“Mountain of Light.” A diamond so called, for-,
Koh-i-noor.. Koh-i-nur. merly worn by the Great Moguls, and now by the-
Queen of England.
The supposed revelation to Mohammed, collected by
Koran. Quran.
the Caliph Omar.
Kotee. Kothi. .A house, mansion, dwelling.
Kotwal. Kotwal.... .Mayor of the city, police officer.
Kotwalie. Kotwali... .Mayor’s office or police station.
Krishna .... . Krishn.... .The name of Vishnu in his eighth incarnation.
Kshatriya..., .Kshatri.. .. .The second or military caste of the Hindoos.
The Mohammedan confession of faith: “ There is no.
Kulma.. .Kalma ....
God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet.”
Kupra-wallah Kapra-wala .A cloth merchant.
Lac. .. Lakh.One hundred thousand.

I The Buddhist priests of Tartary and Thibet, the
Lamas Lamas.< chief of whom is called Dali, Grand Lama, or
( Living Buddha.
Larka. Larka.A babe, boy, child. Larkee: a girl.
■j-. j Membrum virile; the indelicate form under which
Linga.
\ Shiva is'worshiped.
Log... ,L5g.Mankind, people.
Lohar. .Lohar.A blacksmith..
Lungoor.Lungur.A baboon; the black-faced monkey.

Maha.Maha.Great, illustrious.
r The second great Sanscrit epic of the Hindoos, eel-
Mahabarata.Mahabharat... J ebrating the wars of the rival Pandoos mid
( Kuroos.
Mahadeva.Mahadev.One of the names of the god Shiva.
Maharajah.Mah6raja.A great king.
' A celestial age in Hindoo chronology, including

12,000 divine years, each of which is equal to
■ifa/la Tug. . Maha Jug.
360 solar years, the Maha-Yug being equal to
4,320,000 years of mortals.
Mahout. .Mahaut. .An elephant-keeper and driver.
Malik. .Malik. .Master, lord, ruler.
Malee. .Mali. .A gardener.
Manjee. .Manjhi. . Master of a vessel; a steersman.
Meidan. .Maidan. . A plain, ground, field-of-battle.
Hindoo fair or festival held for religious or commer¬
Mela. .Mela.|
cial purposes.
The author of the legal and religious Code of the
Menu. . Menu.■
Hindoos.
Methur. . Mihtar. .A sweeper.
Mithuranee. .Mihtaram. .A low-caste nurse.
Minar. . Minar. . A tower, minaret, obelisk.
Mina. .Mirza. .Prince, sir.
Mochee. .Mochi. .A shoemaker.
Mohulla. . Mahalla. .Quarter, district, division.
Mohur. . Muhr. . A gold coin, valued at sixteen rupees or eight dollars.
Mohurrum. .Muharram. . The first month of the Mohammedan year.
Moolk. . Mulk. .Country, region.
Moonshee. . Munshi. . A teacher of languages, usually a Mohammedan.
Moonsif.. . Munsif. .Arbitrator, Judge.
Mootee. . Mott. .A pearl.
Moulah. .Moulah. .A Mohammedan priest, doctor, teacher.
Moulvie. . Maulvi. .A learned Mohammedan.
Munir a. . Mantra. .Mystic verses or incantations of the Brahmins.
Musjeed. .Masjid. . A mosque; Mohammedan place of worship.
Mussal. .Mashal. . A light oi torch.
Mussalchee. . Mash&lchi. .A link-boy, torch-bearer.
Mussuk. . Mashk. . A leathern bottle for carrying water.
A term used, like Moslem, to denote all who believe
Mussulman. . Musalman .... -
in the Koran.
Musnud. .Masnad. . A throne, a royal seat.
Muezzirt. .Muazzin. .The person who calls the Mohammedans to prayer.
Naih. .Naib. . Deputy or viceroy.

Namaz. .Namaz. . Prayer, (Mohammedan term.)
Nana. .Nana. .Maternal grandfather.
Nautch. .Natch. .The dance, ball, etc.
Nabob . .Nawab. .A Mohammedan title, viceroy, governor.
.Nizam. .■Ruler.
Nazim or Nizam.
.Namak. .Salt.
Nimmuk.- •
.Namak-haram.. . A traitor to his “ covenant of salt.”
Nimmuk-haram..
Noor. .Nur. .Splendor, light.
Nubee. .Nabi. .A prophet.
Nuddee. .Nadi. .A stream, river.
Nugger. .Nagar. . A town, viuage, city.
Nullah. .Nullah. .A water-course, a ravine.
Nuzzur. .Nazar. .An offering.
D ,. j , i Padshah'}
A king, ruler, emperor.
FMah.j Bidshffli }.
Paddy.Paddy. Rico; rice in the field.
A common term in India for a Christian clergyman;
Padre.Padrl.j
a priest, (Portuguese.)
Pagoda.Pagoda. A Hindoo place of worship.
Pahar.Pahar. A hill or mountain.
Paharee.Pahari. A hill-man, mountaineer.
Palankeen A litter for one person to ride in, the usual convey
. Palki.
Palanquin ance in India.
A sect found in Western India, the followers of
Par see.Parsi.
Zoroaster, or the Persian Magi.
Parswanath.Parisnatli. The deity of the Jains.
A term applied to the old Affghan Mohammedans
Patan.Pathan ...
as distinguished from the Moguls.
The betel-leaf; the nut of the areca-palm, lime, and
Pawn. .Pan. spice wrapped in a betel-leaf and chewed by the
natives.
Peer.Pir. A Mohammedan spiritual guide; a sage.
A leader; originally the title of the chief minister
Peishwah.Peshwa. of the Mahratta, later a royal designation of
Bajee Rao and Nana Sahib.
Pergunna.Pargana. A district, township; less than a zillah.
A copper coin; one third of an anna, value nearly
Pice.Paisa....
one cent.
Pie.Pai... A copper coin; one twelfth of an anna.
Poojah.Puja,.. Worship, prayer.
Ripe, finished, thorough, (as a burned brick,) perfect.
Pucka.Pukka.
Used to discriminate a true from a false Christian.
Punchaet.Pauchayat. . .A jury of five men.
( A Brahmin learned in the Vedas and Shasters; a
Pundit.Pandit
Punkah.Pankha.
/
! teacher of the Hindee or Sanscrit language.
A large, wooden, covered frame, suspended from the-
ceiling, with a heavy, deep frill, kept in motion by
a coolie, as a fan, to cool the air in a room.
I A town or city; used in composition, as Seeta-pore,
Poor or Pore.Pur.
( the City of Seeta.
) The especial designation of the eighteen books of
Puranas.Puran.
( the Hindoo legends or traditions.
Pur da. . Parda. .. A curtain or vail; partition, secrecy, privacy.
Purda-nashssn....Parda-nashin.... A secluded, lady; one sitting behind a curtain.
Purwana .... ... . A permit, pass, or order.
Rais. .... A prince, chief, head, citizen.

Raj. . . . .Empire, kingdom, government.
Rajah. ... .King, prince, sovereign.
Ramadan.... .. . .The name of a month; a fast of the Mohammedans
Ranee. ... .Feminine of Rajah; a Hindoo princess or queen.
Rupee. ... .A silver coin, worth nearly fifty cents.
Rutt. ... .A four-wheeled carriage or car.
Ryrt. ... .A peasant; a tenant or subject.
Sahib.Stlhib.... Sir, lord, gentleman.

Satya Fug.Sat Jug.. The first age of the world; age of truth.
Sepoy.Sipalii. .. A native soldier.
From Sura, house, and Ahul, domestic; hence
Seraglio ..Seraglio. Suralio or Seraglio, the family or female apart¬
ments.
Sewalla.Shiv41a.. A temple.
Shadee.Shadi ... Marriage, wedding, happiness.
Shah.Shah.... A king, a prince, (Mohammedan title.)
Shahzada.Shithzdda The son of a king.
Shastra or Shaster. SMstr... Hindoo Scriptures.
The Hindoo God of Destruction, husband of Kali,,
Shiva.Shiv.... and the third member of the Hindoo Triad or
Trimurti.
' One of the great Mohammedan sects; followers of
Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and esteeming
the three Caliphs, Abubeker, Omar, and Oman, as
Shesas or Sheeites.. Shiah
usurpers. To this sect belong the Persians gen¬
erally, the royal family of Oude, and most of the
lower orders of Mussulmans in India.
Shroff. . . A native banker or money-changer.
Shytan. . .The devil, Satan.
1 A disciple, follower, scholar; the name of the
Sheikh.
( religionists in the Punjab.
Svrkar. . .The State or Government.
The milky juice of the moon-plant mixed with bar¬
Soma. ley and fermented, forming an intoxicating drink ;
used in the ancient Yedic worship
“Followers of the traditions,” who maintain the
lawful succession of the three Caliphs before Ali,,
and pay great respect to the traditions of Islam.
Soonees ..Sunnis The Arabs, Turks, Affghans, and most of the
educated Mussulmans of India, are of this class,
and style themselves Orthodox, the Sheeas being
regarded as heretics.
Sowar.Sawar.. A cavalryman, a mounted soldier or policeman.
Subadar... .Subadar A governor of a province, a captain.
Subah.Suba... A province.
Chief, principal, as Sudder-adaivlut, the Supreme
Sudder.Sadr...
Court of Justice in India.
( The fourth or servile caste of the Hindoos; now
Sudra.Sudr.. .
/ vaguely applied to all low classes,
j Sovereign, prince, (Mohammedan;) also a title for.
Stilton.Sultan..
\ merly borne by the royal family of Delhi.
Sunnud.Sanad. . . .A grant or diploma.
Surdar.Sardar.. . .A chief, head-man, commander,
j The ceremony of burning a widow with her hus-
Suttee .Sati....
/ band’s corpse.
Syce , ..Sais.... . .A groom or horse-keeper.
^ A prince; a descendant of Hossein, son of Ali, and
Syud. or Said..... Saiyad
) grandson of Mohammed.
o'5° TEE LAND OF THE VEDA.
Taj. • • -Taj. .A crown.

Talook. . A State or Barony, usually larger than a Zemeer darea
Talookdar. . A land-holder, a baron.
Tattee . A mat made of cus-cus grass, kept wet, and sus¬
pended before a window to cool the room.
Tattoo. .A pony.
Thakoor. .Idol, lord, baron.
Thanna . .A police station.
Terai. .A swamp, marsh, or miasmatic region.
Thannadar.. .. .A police officer or constable.
Thug. A professional murderer and devotee of the goddess
...Thag.
Kali.
Tola. .One hundred and eighty grains Troy weight.
Tonjon. .A chair with a hood.
Tope. .A clump of trees; a cannon.
Treta Yug. .. .Tret Jug. . The second age of the world; the silver age.
Tuklit ,....... .Chair, throne, seat.
Tulvjctr. .A native sword.
Tussuldar. .A collector of revenue.
Upanisliads ... .Expository supplements to the Yeaas.
Vaishnavas.... .The worshipers of Vishnu.

Vaisya. .The third or agricultural caste or the Hindoos.
Vakeel. .. .Vakil. . An envoy, prime agent.
' From Ved, learning, the most ancient sacred boons
Vedas. ...Bed. of the Hindoos, of which there are four : the Kig-
Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, ana :he
Atharva-Veda.
A system of pantheistical philosophy founded on
Vedanta.
scattered texts of the Vedas.
The Preserver; the second member of trio Hindoo
Vishnu.
Triad or Trimurti.
Vizier. . The chief minister in a Mohammedan sovereignty.
Wah Wah .... .. .Wall Wah. . Admirable! well-done! bravo I

Wilaet. .Country, region, abroad, foreign.
Wufadar. .Faithful.
Yogee. • • -Jogi. .A silent saint

Yug. • •-Jug. .An age of the world
Zeen. . A saddle.
Zemeendar.... .Land-holder; collector of revenue of a district.
Zemeendaree... .A province.
Zenana. .From Zun. a woman, the inner apartments in India
ZiUah. ... Zila. . An extensive district.
INDEX
Page
Agra, tomb of Et.mad-od-Doulah at, Brahmins no longer the learned class
view and description of. 151-156 of India. 38
Almorah, flight to. 282 -, forms of devotion of the. 27
Aristocracy of India, habits and life of 55 -, the priestly caste. 28
Astronomy of the Hindoos. 82 -, Vanaprastha, or hermit life of the 35
Azeennoolah Khan, agent of Nana Sahib. 182 Bullubghur, Nawab of, address of, at his
-, treachery of, at Cawnpore. .296, 301 trial. 426
Butler, Dr., arrival of, at Bareilly. 221
Baboo Duckinarunjun Mookerjee, reply -, arrival of, at Cawnpore.413
of, to Lord Ellenborough. 360 -, last sermon of, at Bareilly, be¬
Bahadur Khan, visit to, in prison.443 fore the flight to Nynee Tal. 235
-, trial and death of..446 -, midnight ride through the Him¬
Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poonah.... 178 alayan forest. 284
Bareilly, Dr. Butler’s arrival at.221 -, prayer of, in the jungle. 239
-and Boston, singular coincidence at 258 -, perils of, in the wilderness. 283
-, battle of.. 438 -, preaching for Havelock’s men. . 442
-, day of small things at. 223 -, return of, to Bareilly.441
-, desperate charge of Ghazees at
battle of.. 439 Campbell, Sir Colin, appointed Com¬
-, destruction at. 257 mander-in-chief. . 272
-, Dr. Butler’s return to. 441 -, laconic reply of.. 273
-, massacre at. 246 -, meets with Havelock and Outram 353
-, Mission-house and Orphanage of. 517 -, starts for Lucknow. 352
-, our first visitor at. 221 Campbell, the martyred, last letter of,
-, preaching at, before Havelock’s to Dr. Butler. 463
men.442 Carpenter, Miss, her patronage of the
-, warning to flee from. 234 Brahmo oomaj... 93
Baugh, Major, escape of his lady from Caste, origin and divisions of.23, 30
Moradabad. 263 -, exclusiveness of. 30
Bentinck, Lord William-, abolishes Suttee 394 Castes, Hindoos divided into four.. .23, 24
Bhagvat Geeta, the, a sacred book__ 24 -, import of the term. 23
-, its rules of moral perfection for Cawnpore, surrender at, to Nana Sahib. 300
Yogees. 202 -, breaking out of rebellion at.... 295
-, rejects the common origin of our -, captured one day too late. 309
race. 24 -, General Wheeler’s preparations
Bowhill, Dr., communication from, be¬ for the defense of.. 294
fore Delhi. 289 -, Havelock’s men at the well of. . 310
Brahma, the length of his “ Days ” and -, situation of. 294
“Nights”. 77 -, the massacre of the ladies at ... 307
Brahmin, portrait of a. 21 -, the “ Well ” at, two views of... 311
-, assumptions and prerogatives of a 28 -, treachery of Nana Sahib at.... 300
-, definition of the term. 24 -, view of “ House of Massacre ” at. 304
-, import of investing a, with the Chandalas, cruel law concerning. 32
sacrificial cord.24, 31 Christ, his government of men explains
-, legal discriminations in favor of a 33 the changes and overthrow of em¬
-, oath and salutations of a.32, 34 pires and religions. 163
-, person and property of a, invi¬ Christianity opposed to the fundamen¬
olate. 493 tal principles of Hindooism... .23, 29, 31
-, the four stages of life of a.31-37 -alone creates a true home. 57
-, whimsical rules of action for a 34 -the friend of native education ... 38
R> ahmins, arrogant claims of the.... 20 -woman’s highest charter of rights 487
i>52 THE LAND OF TEE VEDA
Page Page-
Chronology of the Hindoos. *76 Eternity, Brahminical attempts to map
“Chupatties,” similar to the “Feast of out. 77
the Moon Loaves ” in China. 226 Etmad-od-Doulah's Tomb, view of. 150
Clive, Lord, laconic note of, to General
Forde. .... 273 “ Fakir," a self-torturing. 196
Cotton famine, education in India stimu¬ --, import of the term. 192
lated by the. 222 -, Himam Bliartee, and little babe. 281
Fakirs, astonishment of Alexander and
Dancing, forbidden by Hindoo senti¬ army at the sight of. 192
ment to virtuous women. 45 -, expense of supporting. 204
Delhi, massacre at. 228 -, hold themselves superior to the
-, desolation of. 413-416 claims of common decency. 198
-, Dr. B.’s arrival in. 413 -, humorous verses on. 197
- magazine, Willoughby’s gallant -, numbers of, in India. 203
defense of. 229 -, painful pilgrimages of. 198
-, news of the fall of, received.... 408 -, portraits of. 193
-, siege of, by a small English force 278 -, “ the secret service ” and post¬
-, visit to royal captives awaiting men of the Sepoy rebellion. 205
trial at. 425 -, their appearance and influence. . 191
-, visit to the Emperor of. 421 French rule deprecated by Hindoos.. 365
Dewanee Khass, view of the. 117 Friendly Island Christians, liberality of 538
-, Christian service in.427 Futtypore, Havelock’s victory at... 339
-, scenes of blood within the walls
of the. 125 “ Garment of Praise" the. 270
-, utter ruin of the. 113 Geography of the Hindoos. 80
Dhava, Rajah, builder of the Iron Pillar 168 Glossary of Indian terms. 541-550
Duffi Rev. Dr., disastrous voyage of, to Gowan, Colonel, wonderful escape of
India. 262 him and his party. 247
-, kind reception by. 103 -, interview of Dr. Butler with, at
-, on Mohammedan intolerance... 277 Meerut. 430-
Duleep Singh, character and influence -, munificence of.. 432
of. 50-53 Greased cartridges, terror created by.. 223
-, education and conversion of... . 50 Grihastha, an order of Brahminhood.. 35
-, portrait of. 48 Gymnosophists, Fakirs so designated
Durbin, Rev. Dr., suggestion of, in re¬ by Alexander the Great. 192
gard to a mission field. 213
-, extract from letters to.... 245, 291 Harem, the term defined .478
Durga-Poojah festival. 400 Havelock, General, and his men at the
Dwarper Yug. 76 Well of Cawnpore 1.309, 341
-, defeats Nana Sahib at Ahirwa.. 340
East India Company, misrepresentation -, fights his way through Lucknow
of Christianity by. 358 to the Residency. 345
-, idolatry patronized by. 403 -, last service of, conducting the la¬
-, overthrow of as a governing body 458 dies out of the Residency. 354
-, their doctrine of “neutrality ”... 405 -. leaves Calcutta for Cawnpore... 338
Editor, Hindoo. 54 -, opportune return of, from Persia
Edwards, Judge, incident concerning. . 270 to India. 273
Ellenborough, Lord, folly of, in the En¬ -, portrait of. 334
glish Parliament. 359 ---, prevented advancing to Luck¬
-, nobly answered by Baboo Duck- now . 343
inarunjun Mookerjee. 360 -reinforced, and on his way again. 344
Emperor of Delhi, portrait of. 106 -, sketch of life, conversion, and
-, numerous beggarly dependents of 174 military service of.335-338
England, material interest of, in India. 73 -, triumphant death of. 355
- conscious of her high trust, and -, victory of, at Futtypore. 339
moral obligation to India. 75 Himalayas, journey across the.412
-, enemies of, the Fakirs, Brahmins, Hindoo mind, freedom foreign to the.. 429
Thugs, and criminal classes gener¬ -, portrait of a. 17
ally. 373, 374, 397, 401, 420 Hindoos, original home of the. 16
-, the Mohammedans in India gen¬ -, astronomy of the. 82
erally opposed to. 177,275-277 -, chronology of the. 76
INDEX. 553
„pa(?e
Hindoos, condition of, in the time of Jones, Sir William, facetious designa¬
Alexander the Great. 89 tion of Polyandry by.491
-, French rule deprecated by the.. 365 Judson, Mrs. Ann Hazeltine, grave of,
-, geography of the. 80 at Amherst. 156
-, literature of the.95-100 Jumma Musjid, desecration of. 418
-, mythology of the. 19 Jungle, the prayer in the. 239
-, passion of, for display.59-62
-, portraits of four. 11 Kalika Parana, the, quoted. 399
-, the, an effeminate people. 18 Kali Tug, the. 16
-, their methods of measuring time 18 Kama-dera, the Hindoo Cupid.415
Hindustani estimates of British rule, Karens, liberality of. 538
by Baboo Duckinarunjun Mookerjee. 361 Keshub Chunder Sen, representation of
-. by Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen. 368 Yedic teaching by. 92
-, by Baboo Bholonauth Chunder, -, opinion of missionaries of.361
365, 369-310 Khan Bahadur, his treachery and cru-
-■, by Satyendra Nath Tagore.366
-, by the “ Som Prukash ”. 365 -, his trial and death. 446
-, from “Sleeman’s Recollections” 311 -, visit to, in prison. 443
Home, its true sense unknown in In¬ Koh-i-noor diamond, its last possessor. 50
dia . 56 Kootub Minar, view of the. 151
Hunooman, the Mars of India. 98 -, origin and object of. 161
-, peerless majesty of.. 159
India, capacity for self-government -, the monument of a dead city and
wanting in.12, 429 a dying faith. 163
-, civil and religious statistics of.. 61 Kshatriya, caste of the. 29
-, diversity of races in. 66 Kwrnaul, Nawab of, noble conduct of,
-, first Mohammedan conquest in. 204 during the rebellion. 280
-, greater than Europe, leaving out
Russia. 69 Lady of India, portrait of a. 40
-, habits, education, and amuse¬ Lalla Rookh, quotation from, mistake
ments of the aristocracy of.54-58 of the poet corrected. 119
-, languages spoken in. 68 Lawrence, Sir John, noble conduct of
-, names of, and their significance. 10 during the rebellion. 406
-, number of British troops in, iu -, official paper of, issued in behalf
1856. 13 of justice to native Christians.464
-, style of dress of gentlemen of.. . 49 Lawrence, Sir Henry, appointed gov¬
-, “ “ a lady of. 42 ernor of Oude. 319
-, trade, railroads, telegraphs, and -, disastrous defeat of, at Cliinhut. 321
wealth of. 10 -, injunction of—“ Never to surren¬
-, value of, to England. 13 der I ”. 329
Infanticide, female. 410—416 -, killed in the siege of Lucknow.. 321
-, the, in the Lucknow Court.453 Lucknow, arrival and reception of Dr.
Inglis, Lady, testimony of, to the Butler at. 201
soothing influence of prayer. 331 -, Dr. Butler contemplates a mis¬
Irishman, the, blown up with the Mu- sion at. 212
chee Bawun fort. 321 -, efforts of Havelock to reach... 343
-, the, in Lucknow court.453 -, Havelock fights his way through 346
Iron Pillar, description of the. 161 -, “ Jessie Brown,” and her uLHnna
-, import of inscription on. 168 ye hear the slogan? ”. 353
-, its mystery. 168 -, lawlessness and depravity of, in
-, the palladium of Hindoo domin¬ 1856. 208
ion . 161 -, preparations for defense of. .... 319
-, repeated attempts to storm. 331
Jain Temple, in Delhi, visit to. 411 -, siege of, begun. 325
Jesuits, character of their missions... 539 -, the capital of Oude. 201
Joel, the first native helper of the M. -, the Muchee Bawun fort at, blown
E. Church in India. 214 up. 325
-, escape of, from Bareilly. 259 -, the relief of, view of. 348
-, joyful meeting of, with Dr. But¬ -, the “Residency,” view of.317
ler, on the road to Meerut. 434 -, the Residency reached, and the
-, portrait of.. 215 ladies saved. 349
Page Parnr
Lucknow, results of the conflict viewed Missionaries of the various Societies
from the Residency of.. 449 killed by the Sepoys, names of..... 261
-, statistics of the missions at ... 528 -, by a Brahmin. 372
-, unequal conditions of conflict at 323 -, by Keshub Chunder SeD.367
-, estimate of, by Duckinarunjun
Mahabarata, the. a famous epic of India 99 Mookerjee. 361
-, the, recognizes polyandry. 496 Missionary Societies operating in India
Maliadeva, temple of, in Delhi, confu¬ in 1872. 521
sion and wreck of.. 419 -, progress since 1852. 531
Maha Pralaya, the, or great destruction 7 7 -, statistics of Foreign Protestant,
Maria, martyrdom of. 512 throughout the world. 531
Marriage ceremonies, extravagance in -, Woman’s Foreign. 532
connection with. 60 -, Home. 532
Martel, Charles, great victory of. 12 Missions of Roman Catholics through¬
Martin, Montgomery, remarks upon the out the world. 534
partiality of.. 443 —•— of Protestant and Roman Cath¬
Meerut, mutiny and massacre at. 228 olic Churches compared. 536
-, sad service at the post-office of. 433 Mogul Emperor, the, accepts English
Menu, his system of caste a practical protection. 109
failure. 31 -bargain of the, with the English 171
Menu, Institutes of, their abundant le¬ -, Dr. B.’s interview with the last 421
gal provision for divorcing wives... 495 -, insufficiency of the munificent
-, discriminations of in favor of provision for the. 173
Brahmins..... 33 -, portrait of the last. 106
-, forbid a wife to eat with her -the pageant of, felt to be a bore 175
husband. 492 -, the last, unmarked grave of... 425
--, harsh rules of, for a widow’s life. 501 Mohammedan invasion of India.. . .19, 104
-, hold a widow to be bound to -bigotry of, illustrated in the death
her husband when he is dead. 502 of Khan Bahadur. 446
-, hold the power of a woman’s -sovereigns of India; character of
curse to be a motive of marital lib¬ their rule. 107
erality. 494 -, sovereigns, their sad record.... 114
-, inflexible ordinance of, in regard Mohammedans, dress and appearance
to choice of a wife. 484 of.20, 63
-, on the marriageable age of girls. 477 Mohammedanism, repulse of, from West¬
-, ordain that the person and prop¬ ern Europe. 12
erty of a Brahmin should be invi¬ -, its hatred of Christ and Chris¬
olate. 493 tians.177, 451
-, ordinances of, for selecting a -, the real spirit of the Moslem
wife. 480, 481 Creed. 277
-, quotation on caste. 23, 29 Montgomery, Sir Robert, his reception
-, quotation on Chandalas. 32 of the first missionary in Lucknow. 443
-, quotation on a Brahmin’s oath.. 32 Moomtaj, Empress, notices of.143-147
-, rules of. for the orders of Grihas- -, the Taj built for the tomb
tha and Vanaprastha. 35 of.144, 147
-, rules of, for the order of Sannyasi 36 Moore, lines by, on Mohammedan bru¬
-, relax the law of female seclu¬ tality . 104
sion in favor of Fakirs, Brahmins, etc. 191 -, mistake of, in Lalla Rookh cor¬
-, stern demand of, for a wife’s sub¬ rected. 119
ordination. 487 -, Persian couplet over the De-
Methodist Episcopal Church, mission wanee Khass, quoted by. 119
field of the, in India. 212 “Mutiny baby," the. 263
-, Christian orphanages of. 506 Mythology of the Hindoos. 79
-, first place of worship of, in India,
view of.. .435 Nana Sahib, a hypocrite without an
-, inside view of.438 equal. 183
-, organized its first conference in -, ambition and disappointment of. 182
Asia at the close of 1864. 526 -, character of his palace. 184
Missionaries better understood and -, history of.. 181
more trusted than Government offi¬ -, infernal treachery of. 309
cers. 406 -, massacre of the ladies by.307
INDEX. 555
Page Page
Nana Sahib, lying and blasphemous Polygamy. .. 494
proclamations of.215 Post-office, the regular, distrusted oy
-, portrait of. 180 the Sepoy conspirators. 1901
-, probable end of the. 309 Prayer, the, in the jungle. 239
Nauch girl, portrait of. 44 -, soothing effects of. 331
-girls, character of.. 46 Presbyterian Church, missionaries of,
-, import of term. 45 murdered. 15, 261, 293, 924
Nawab of Rampore, proffers assistance -, M. E. Mission indebted to, for its
to refugees at Nynee Tal. 219 first native helper. 214
“Neutrality" of the East India Com¬ Presbyterian missionaries did not die
pany not understood.189, 405 in vain. 466, 461
Noor Jehan, the “ Daughter of the Des¬ Priests of Mahadeva, interview with.. 419
ert,” her singular history. 151 Prime, Dr., testimony of, to the im¬
Nynee Tal, view of. 243 provements in India. 461
-, Dr. Butler’s first entrance into.. 242 Protestant Missions compared with Ro¬
-, first chapel in.434 man Catholic. 536
-, joyous salute heard at. 408 -, statistics of... 534
-, measures of defense at. 266 -, superiority of. 538
-, panic at, and flight from. 282 Providential interpositions:—
-, refugees at, hungry for news... 269 General Sibbald’s timely absence. 232
-, singular panic of besiegers of.. 408 Singular panic which fell upon
the besiegers of Nynee Tal.... 408
Orphanages of the M. E. Church in The night in the Terai. 239
India, origin of. 506 The night in the Himalayan fore-
-, the need of. 519 ests. 283
Oude, annexation of. 201 Punjab, its preservation in the hour of
-, discouragements by British offi¬ trial.401
cials in regard to establishing mis¬
sions in. 212 Rajpoots, their pride and cruelty.415
-, history of, presents a record of Ramayana, outline of the. 95-99
violence, perfidy, and blood. 211 Rampore, Nawab of, noble conduct of,
-, its last king, Wajid Ali Shah, during the rebellion. 219
portrait of. 209 -, exposed to danger in consequence
-, necessity for the annexation of aiding us. 281
of. 201 -, munificent liberality of, to the
-, Queen of protests against an¬ Woman’s Missionary Society.525
nexation. 102 Rig - Veda, the. 84
“ Outcasts," cruel law concerning. 32 Robertson, Judge, deceived by Bahadur
Outram, Sir James, magnanimously Khan. 231
waives his right to command in fa¬ -, execution of. 249
vor of Havelock. 344 Roe, Sir Thomas, in the Court of the
-, interview of, with the dying Mogul. 122
Havelock. 356 -, a changed scene in Delhi from
what he witnessed. 422, 424
Pana, the, its value. 33 Roman Catholic Missions throughout
Paradise, illustrated from the Dewanee the world. 534
Khass. 120 Romanism, failure of, to improve its
Parisnath, two, as large as life, in Delhi 418 opportunity in India. i'45
Parsees, (followers of Zoroaster,) num¬ Russian rule not desired by the people
ber of, in India. 61 of India. 365
Peggy, matron of our Female Orphan¬
age, portrait of. 218 Sacontala, the, forbids inquiry concern¬
Peggy's sacrifice for her Saviour.214 ing the wife of another man. 488
“ Peishwa," import of the title. 118 ———, injunction as to the subordination
Permissive Providence of God, instanceof 231 of younger to elder wives. 496
Pierce and Humphrey, Rev. Messrs., Sannyasi, rules of life for. 36
Satya Yug, the. 16
-, joyful meeting with, in the Taj Saugor Isle, its accursed scenes.413
Mal;al. 433 Sepoy Rebellion, the, originating causes
Poietiers, Abder Rahman’s defeat at.. 12 of. 110-190
Polyandry.491 -, causes of the failure of.421
I'aire
Sepoy Rebellion, criminals in the jails Suttee, abolished by Lord Bentinck... 394
linked in with the.227 -, extent and motives of. 383
•-, did not originate in patriotism.. 428 -, instances of.. 387-393
-, growing fear of the extension of -, mode of. 381
the Christian religion a cause of the. 189 -, modern Hindooism alone de¬
-, how English government in In¬ mands . 379
dia affected by.. 460 -, without Vedic sanction. 378
-, Mohammedan monopoly of place
and power a cause of the. 186 Taj Mahal, a mausoleum. 133
-, no native Christian joined the. . 464 -, appearance of, at sunrise and by
-, opened a career for Christians in moonlight. 134
India. 466, 626 -, first view of.. 129
-, opening of, at Meerut and Delhi. 228 -, joyful meeting in, with the first
-, position of the Delhi Emperor, Methodist missionaries.433
respecting the. 170 -, matchless grace and beauty of the 141
-, probable number of English per¬ -, materials used in construction of 130
sons killed in the. 260 -, remarkable effect of music in the 139
-, promoted by false prophecies and -, the architect and cost of the.... 148
news. 226 -, to whom erected. 143
-, promoted by the criminal classes -, view of, from a distance. 128
and disaffected elements. 401 -, view of, inside the garden Frontispiece
-, results of, to Christianity in India 463 -, view of the entrance-gate to.... 132
-, results of, to the East India Com¬ Takt Taous, or Peacock Throne, of Shah
pany. 468 Jehan. 116, 422
-, results of, to the Hindoo race... 457 Theological Class of the Boys’ Orphan¬
-, results of, to the Mohammedan age, portraits of. 513
portion of the population. 451 Thugs, portraits of. 396
--, results of the, to the Sepoy army 450 -, interview with two hundred.... "398
-, “secret service” and post-office -, murderers by profession. 399
of, in the person of the Fakirs.205 Treta Tug, the. 76
-, encroachments of English law on Troup, Colonel, warns Dr. Butler to
peculiar institutions of India, a cause flee. 234
of the. 190 -, General, in command of Have¬
-, the annexation of Oude, a cause lock’s brigade.442
of the. 188 Tucker, Judge, heroic death of.. 339
-, the greased cartridges made the “ Twice born," import of the phrase... 24
occasion for. 223
Sepoys, the native force of the English Vanaprastha, or hermit life, rules for. 35
in India. 72 Vedas, collated and published by for¬
-, blown from English guns—how eigners. 4J.
and why. 313-316 -, licentiousness of the worship in¬
-, spirit they generally manifested. 445 culcated in the.91-93
-, fidelity of some, at Lucknow... 351 —, a willful corruption of the, the
-, number and description of. 73 foundation of Suttee. 378
-, the ruin which they dragged —, the, common misapprehension of
down on themselves and others.... 450 their character.92, 93
Shajehanpore, fearful massacre at. .. 259 —, deities mentioned in the. 86
Shalimar, the gardens of. 115 —, the,, do not sanction the usages
Shaster, the, on a wife’s seclusion.... 486 of modern Hindooism. 85
-, the abominable injunction of, on —, the, polytheistic character of... 86
a wife’s subordination.487 —, samples of the.90, 95
Shraad, purpose of.. 476 -, the, sanction beef-eating. 87
-, blowing from guns deemed a -, their age, number, and character 84
preventive of the. 313-316
Sibbald, Gen., undue confidence of... 232 Wages of a laboring man in India... . 506
Simpson, Rev. W. O., remarkable state¬ Wellesley, Marquis, makes infanticide a
ment of, on Jesuit missions. 539 capital crime. 474
Seeta, the rape of. 96 Wentwo'rth, Rev. Dr., invites Dr. Butler
Soma-juice, the libations of the ancient to join him in China. 432
Hindoos. 88, 91 Wheeler, General Sir Hugh, fatal mis¬
Suttee, view of a. 376 take of. 295
INDEX. 557
Page Page
Widowhood in India.497--502 Women, courtship of, unknown in
-, re-marriage of a, forbidden. 502 India. 497
Willoughby's gallant defense of the -, statistics of education of.. 42
Delhi magazine. 229 -, widowhood of, in India.497-502
Woman debased by the Hindoo sys¬ -, wrongs of. legalized in India.... 469
tem. 31 Woodside, Rev. J. S., interview of, with
-forbidden by law to eat with her the Emperor of Delhi.424
husband. 492
-, last hours of, in India. 504 Xavier, St. Francis, life of, by Mr. Venn
-of India in full dress, portrait of a 40 and Dr. Hoffman. 536
■■■ —, training of a youthful Hindoo.. 482
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of uYogee," meaning of the word. 203
the M. E. Church. 521 Yogees, or silent saints of India, por¬
•-, munificent liberality to the, by traits of. 200
the Nawab of Rampore. 525 -, singular rules of moral perfec¬
Women of India doomed by modern tion for, from the Bhagvat Geeta.
Hindooism to a life of ignorance... 42 201, 202
-in India at present unable to cre¬ -, superstitious veneration for.... 203
ate a true home. 57
— in India, higher social position Zeenat Mahal, last Empress of Delhi,
of, in the Ye die age. 88 portrait of. Ill
-in India never dance unless they Zenana, the term defined.479
are prostitutes. 46 Zenana Schools, number of pupils in.. 42

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THE

LAND OF THE VEDA

INCIDENTS OF THE GREAT SEPOY REBELLION

LAND OF THE VEDA

INCIDENTS OF THE GREAT SEPOY REBELLION

WITH A MAP OF INDIA, AND 42 ILLUSTRATIONS

ALSO, STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AND A GLOSSARY OF INDIAN

REV. WILLIAM BUTLER

ASIAN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES

* 5, SRIPURAM FIRST STREET, MADRAS - 600 014,

First Published: Cincinnati, 1871

LAND OF THE YEDA:

ITS RELIGIONS, MYTHOLOGY, PRINCIPAL MONUMENTS, PALACES, AND

TOGETHER WITH THE

With a Map of India, and 42 Illustrations,

ALSO, STATISTICAL TABLES OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AND A GLOSSARY OF INDIAN

TERMS USED IN THIS WORK AND IN MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE.

By Rev. WILLIAM BUTLER, D.D.

CARLTON & LANAHAN,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasningtor.

HE writer of this book has aimed to act toward the reader in

and the movements and changes of thrones, and powers, and

whose scepter sways “ all power in heaven and in earth.” At his

The Taj Mahal—Agra (Steel). Frontispiece

Map—Land of the Veda (India). Opposite page 11

A Lady of India in Full Dress. 40

The Nautch Girl of India. 44

The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh. 48

The Mohammedans of India. 62

Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen Shah Gazee, Emperor of Delhi, the Last of

the Moguls. 106

Zenat Mahal, Empress of Delhi (Steel). m

The Dewan Khass, or Hall of Audience, Palace of Delhi. 117

Weighing of the Emperor in the Dewan Khass. 123

The Taj Mahal viewed from the River Jumna. 128

The Gate of the Taj. 132

The Taj Mahal—Agra. (See Frontispiece)

Tomb of Etmad-ood-Doulah—Agra (Steel). 130

The Kootub Minar. .

The “Nana Sahib,” the Author of the Cawnpore Massacre. 18c

The Fakirs of India.

The Yogee, or Silent Saint of India. 200

Joel, Our first Native Preacher. 2,15

Nynee Tal as you enter it. 243

“The House of Massacre”. 304

“The Well”—Inside View. 31 (

“The Shrine”—Outside View... 3x1

“The Residency”—Lucknow, India. 317

Major-General Sir Henry Havelock (Steel). 334

The Relief of Lucknow by General Havelock. 348

Preparing for the Immolation of a Hindoo Widow (Steel). 375

A Group of Thugs. 396

The First House of Worship of the Methodist Episcopal Church in

The Sheep-House Congregation. 438

Lord Wellesley, who made Female Infanticide Penal.474

Hindoo Woman Waiting on her Husband. 489

Hindoo Widow in her usual Dress. 499

Lord Bentinck, who Terminated the Suttee. 502

Boys’ Orphanage, School-house, and Chapel at Lodipore, India. 507

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