Modern India

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern India, by William Eleroy Curtis This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Modern India Author: William Eleroy Curtis Release Date: February 21, 2004 [EBook #11212] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN INDIA *** Produced by Produced by Robert J. Hall [Illustration] MODERN INDIA BY WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS _Author of "The Turk and His Lost Provinces," "To-day in Syria and Palestine," "Egypt, Burma and British Malaysia," etc._ To LADY CURZON An ideal american woman This volume contains a series of letters written for _The Chicago Record-Herald_ during the winter of 1903-04, and are published in permanent form through the courtesy of Mr. Frank B. Noyes, Editor and publisher of that paper. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. The Eye of India II. The City of Bombay III. Servants, Hotels, and Cave Temples IV. The Empire of India V. Two Hindu Weddings VI. The Religions of India VII. How India Is Governed VIII. The Railways of India IX. The City of Ahmedabad X. Jeypore and its Maharaja XI. About Snakes and Tigers XII. The Rajputs and Their Country XIII. The Ancient Mogul Empire XIV. The Architecture of the Moguls XV. The Most Beautiful of Buildings XVI. The Quaint Old City of Delhi XVII. The Temples and Tombs at Delhi XVIII. Thugs, Fakirs and Nautch Dancers XIX. Simla and the Punjab XX. Famines and Their Antidotes XXI. The Frontier Question XXII. The Army in India XXIII. Muttra, Lucknow and Cawnpore XXIV. Caste and the Women of India XXV. Education in India XXVI. The Himalyas and the Invasion of Thibet XXVII. Benares, the Sacred City XXVIII. American Missions in India XXIX. Cotton, Tea and Opium XXX. Calcutta, the Capital of India ILLUSTRATIONS Map of India A Bombay Street The Clock Tower and University Buildings, Bombay Victoria Railway Station, Bombay Nautch Dancers Body ready for Funeral Pyre, Bombay Burning Ghat Mohammedans at Prayer Huthi Singh's Tomb, Ahmedabad Street Corner, Jeypore The Maharaja of Jeypore Hall of the Winds, Jeypore Elephant Belonging to the Maharaja of Jeypore Tomb of Etmah Dowlah, Agra Portrait of Shah Jehan Portrait of Akbar, the Great Mogul The Taj Mahal Interior of Taj Mahal Tomb of Sheik Salim, Fattehpur A Corner in Delhi Hall of Marble and Mosaics, Palace of Moguls, Delhi Tomb of Amir Khusran, Persian Poet, Delhi "Kim," the Chela and the Old Lama A Ekka, or Road Cart A Team of "Critters" Group of Famous Brahmin Pundits Tomb of Akbar, the Great Mogul Audience Chamber of the Mogul Palace, Agra A Hindu Ascetic A Hindu Barber Bodies ready for Burning, Benares Great Banyan Tree, Botanical Garden, Calcutta The Princes of PearlsI THE EYE OF INDIA A voyage to India nowadays is a continuous social event. The passengers compose a house party, being guests of the Steamship company for the time. The decks of the steamer are like broad verandas and are covered with comfortable chairs, in which the owners lounge about all day. Some of the more industrious women knit and embroider, and I saw one good mother with a basket full of mending, at which she was busily engaged at least three mornings. Others play cards upon folding tables or write letters with portfolios on their laps, and we had several artists who sketched the sky and sea, but the majority read novels and guide books, and gossiped. As birds of a feather flock together on the sea as well as on land, previous acquaintances and congenial new ones form little circles and cliques and entertain themselves and each other, and, after a day or two, move their chairs around so that they can be together. Americans and English do not mix as readily as you might expect, although there is nothing like coolness between them. It is only a natural restraint. They are accustomed to their ways, and we to ours, and it is natural for us to drift toward our own fellow countrymen. In the afternoon nettings are hung around one of the broad decks and games of cricket are played. One day it is the army against the navy; another day the united service against a civilian team, and then the cricketers in the second-class salon are invited to come forward and try their skill against a team made up of first-classers. In the evening there is dancing, a piano being placed upon the deck for that purpose, and for two hours it is very gay. The ladies are all in white, and several English women insisted upon coming out on the deck in low-cut and short-sleeved gowns. It is said to be the latest fashion, and is not half as bad as their cigarette smoking or the ostentatious display of jewelry that is made on the deck every morning. Several women, and some of them with titles, sprawl around in steamer chairs, wearing necklaces of pearls, diamonds, emeralds and other precious stones, fit for only a banquet or a ball, with their fingers blazing with jewels and their wrists covered with bracelets. There seemed to be a rivalry among the aristocracy on our steamer as to which could make the most vulgar display of gold, silver and precious stones, and it occurs to me that these Englishwomen had lived in India so long that they must have acquired the Hindu barbaric love of jewelry. My attention was called not long ago to a cartoon in a British illustrated paper comparing the traveling outfits of American and English girls. The American girl had a car load of trunks and bags and bundles, a big bunch of umbrellas and parasols, golf sticks, tennis racquets and all sorts of queer things, and was dressed in a most conspicuous and elaborate manner. She was represented as striding up and down a railway platform covered with diamonds, boa, flashy hat and fancy finery, while the English girl, in a close fitting ulster and an Alpine hat, leaned quietly upon her umbrella near a small "box," as they call a trunk, and a modest traveling bag. But that picture isn't accurate. According to my observation it ought to be reversed. I have never known the most vulgar or the commonest American woman to make such a display of herself in a public place as we witnessed daily among the titled women upon the P. and O. steamer Mongolia, bound for Bombay. Nor is it exceptional. Whenever you see an overdressedwoman loaded with jewelry in a public place in the East, you may take it for granted that she belongs to the British nobility. Germans, French, Italians and other women of continental Europe are never guilty of similar vulgarity, and among Americans it is absolutely unknown. It is customary for everybody to dress for dinner, and, while the practice has serious objections in stormy weather it is entirely permissible and comfortable during the long, warm nights on the Indian