334. Palaces of India

Palaces of India

Amo_3:10 : ’93Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.’94

In this day when vast sums of money are being given for the redemption of India, I hope to increase the interest in that great country, and at the same time draw for all classes of our people practical lessons, and so I present this fifth sermon in the ’93’91Round-the-world’94 series. We step into the ancient capital of India, the mere pronunciation of its name sending a thrill through the body, mind and soul of all those who have ever read its stories of splendor and disaster and prowess’97Delhi.

Before the first historian impressed his first word on tablets of clay, or cut his first word on marble, or wrote his first word on papyrus, Delhi stood in India, a contemporary of Babylon and Nineveh. We know that Delhi existed longer before Christ’92s time than we live after his time. Delhi is built on the ruins of seven cities, which ruins cover forty miles with wrecked temples, broken fortresses, split tombs, tumble-down palaces and the debris of centuries. An archaeologist could profitably spend his life here talking with the past through its lips of venerable masonry.

There are a hundred things here you ought to see in this city of Delhi, but three things you must see. The first thing I wanted to see was the Cashmere Gate, for that was the point at which the most wonderful deed of daring which the world has ever seen was done. That was the turning-point of the mutiny of 1857. A lady at Delhi put into my hand an oil-painting of about eighteen inches square, a picture well executed, but chiefly valuable for what it represented. It was a scene from the time of mutiny; two horses at full run, harnessed to a carriage in which were four persons. She said: ’93Those persons on the front seat are my father and mother. The young lady on the back seat holding in her arms a baby of a year was my older sister and the baby was myself. My mother, who is down with a fever in the next room, painted that years ago. The horses are in full run because we are fleeing for our lives. My mother is driving, for the reason that father, standing up in the front of his carriage, had to defend us with his gun, as you there see. He fought our way out and on for many a mile, shooting down the Sepoys as we went. We had somewhat suspected trouble, and had become suspicious of our servants. A prince had requested a private interview with my father, who was editor of the Delhi ’93Gazette.’94 The prince proposed to come veiled, so that no one might recognize him, but my mother insisted on being present, and the interview did not take place. A large fish had been sent to our family and four other families, the present an offering of thanks for the king’92s recovery from a recent sickness. But we suspected poison and did not eat the fish. One day all our servants came up and said they must go and see what was the matter. We saw what was intended and knew that if the servants returned they would murder all of us. Things grew worse and worse until this scene of flight shown you in the picture took place. You see, the horses were wild with fright. This was not only because of the discharge of guns, but the horses were struck and pounded by Sepoys, and ropes were tied across the way, and the savage halloo, and the shout of revenge made all the way of our flight a horror.’94

The books have fully recorded the heroism displayed at Delhi and adjacent regions, but make no mention of this family of Wagentreibers whose flight I am describing. But the Madras ’93Athenum’94 printed this: ’93And now! Are not the deeds of the Wagentreibers, though he wore a round hat and she a crinoline, as worthy of imperishable verse as those of the heroic pair whose nuptials graced the court of Charlemagne? A more touching picture than that of the brave man contending with well-nerved arm against the black and threatening fate impending over his wife and child, we have never seen. Here was no strife for the glory of physical prowess, or the spoil of shining arms; but a conquest of the human mind, an assertion of the powers of intellect over the most appalling array of circumstances that could assail a human being. Men have become gray in front of sudden and unexpected peril, and in ancient days so much was courage a matter of heroics, and mere instinct that we read in immortal verse of heroes struck with panic and fleeing before the enemy. But the savage Sepoys, with their hoarse war-cry, and swarming like wasps around the Wagentreibers, struck no terror into the brave man’92s heart. His heroism was not the mere ebullition of despair, but, like that of his wife, calm and wise; standing upright that he might use his arms better.’94

As an incident will sometimes more impress one than a generality of statement, I present the flight of this one family from Delhi merely to illustrate the desperation of the times. The fact was that the Sepoys had taken possession of the city of Delhi, and they were, with all their artillery, fighting back the Europeans who were on the outside, and murdering all the Europeans who were inside. The city of Delhi has a crenelated wall on three sides, a wall five and one-half miles long, and the fourth side of the city is defended by the River Jumna. In addition to these two defenses of wall and water, there were forty thousand Sepoys, all armed. Twelve hundred British soldiers were to take that city. Nicholson, the immortal general, commanded them, and you must visit his grave before you leave Delhi. He fell leading his troops. He commanded them even after being mortally wounded. You will read this inscription on his tomb:

’93John Nicholson, who led the assault of Delhi, but fell in the hour of victory, mortally wounded, and died 23d September, 1857. Aged thirty-five years.’94

With what guns and men General Nicholson could muster he had laid siege to this walled city filled with incarnate demons. What fearful odds! Twelve hundred British troops uncovered by any military works, to take a city surrounded by firm and high masonry, on the top of which were one hundred and fourteen guns and defended by forty thousand foaming Sepoys. A larger percentage of troops fell here than in any great battle I happen to know of. The Crimean percentage of the fallen was 17.48, but the percentage of Delhi was 37.9. Yet that city must be taken, and it can only be taken by such courage as had never been recorded in all the annals of bloodshed. Every charge of the British regiments against the walls and gates had been beaten back. The hyenas of Hinduism and Mohammedanism howled over the walls, and the English army could do nothing but bury their own dead.

But at this gate I stand and watch an exploit that makes the page of history tremble with agitation. This city has ten gates, but the most famous is the one before which we now stand, and it is called Cashmere Gate. Write the words in red ink, because of the carnage! Write them in letters of light, for the illustrious deeds! Write them in letters of black, for the bereft and the dead! Will the world ever forget that Cashmere Gate? Lieutenants Salkeld and Home and Sergeants Burgess, Carmichael and Smith offered to take bags of powder to the foot of that gate and set them on fire, blowing open the gate, although they must die in doing it. There they go, just after sunrise, each one carrying a sack containing twenty-four pounds of powder, and doing this under the fire of the enemy. Lieutenant Home was the first to jump into the ditch, which still remains before the gate. As they go, one by one falls under the shot and shell. One of the mortally wounded, as he falls, hands his sack of powder with a box of lucifer matches to another, telling him to fire the sack; when with an explosion that shook the earth for twenty miles around, part of the Cashmere Gate was blown into fragments, and the bodies of some of these heroes were so scattered they were never gathered for funeral or grave or monument. The British army rushed in through the broken gate; and, although six days of hard fighting were necessary before the city was in complete possession, the crisis was past. The Cashmere Gate open, the capture of Delhi and all it contained of palaces and mosques and treasures was possible. Lord Napier, of Magdala, of whom Mr. Gladstone spoke to me so affectionately when I was his guest at Hawarden, England, has erected a monument near this Cashmere Gate with the names of the men who there fell inscribed thereon. That English lord, who had seen courage on many a battle-field, visited this Cashmere Gate, and felt that the men who opened it with the loss of their own lives ought to be commemorated, and hence this cenotaph. But, after all, the best monument is the gate itself, with the deep gouges in the brick wall on the left side, made by two bombshells, and the wall above, torn by ten bombshells, and the wall on the right side, defaced and scarped and plowed and gullied by all styles of long-reaching weaponry. Let the words ’93Cashmere Gate,’94 as a synonym for patriotism and fearlessness and self-sacrifice, go into all history, all art, all literature, all time, all eternity! My friends, that kind of courage sanctified will yet take the whole earth for God. Indeed, the missionaries now at Delhi, toiling amid heathenism and fever and cholera, and far away from home and comfort, and staying there until they drop into their graves, are just as brave in taking Delhi for Christ as were Nicholson and Home and Carmichael in taking Delhi for Great Britain. This is the first sermonic lesson.

Another thing you must see if you go to Delhi, though you leave many things unseen, is the palace of the Mogus. It is an enclosure a thousand yards by five hundred. You enter through a vaulted hall nearly four hundred feet long. Floors of Florentine mosaic, and walls once emeralded and sapphired and carbuncled and diamonded. I said to the guide: ’93Show us where once stood the Peacock Throne.’94 ’93Here it was,’94 he responded. All the thrones of the earth put together would not equal that for costliness and brilliance. It had steps of silver, and the seat and arms were of solid gold. It cost about one hundred and fifty million dollars. It stood between two peacocks, the feathers and plumes of which were fashioned out of colored stones. Above the throne was a life-size parrot cut out of one emerald. Above all was a canopy resting on twelve columns of gold, the canopy fringed with pearls. Seated here, the Emperor on public occasions wore a crown containing among other things, the Koh-i-noor diamond, and the entire blaze of coronet cost ten million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This superb and once almost supernaturally beautiful room has imbedded in the white marble wall letters of black marble, which were translated to me from Persian into English as meaning:

If on earth there be an Eden of bliss,

That place is this, is this, is this.

But the peacocks that stood beside the throne have flown away, taking all the display with them, and those white marble floors were reddened with slaughter, and those bathrooms ran with blood, and that Eden of which the Persian couplet on the walls spake, has had its flowers wither, and its fruits decay; and I thought while looking at the brilliant desolation, and standing amid the vanished glories of that throne-room, that some one had better change a little that Persian couplet on the wall and make it read:

If there be a place where much you miss,

That place is this, is this.

As I came out of the palace into the street of Delhi I thought to myself: paradises are not built out of stone; are not carved in sculpture; are not painted on walls; do not spray the cheek with fountains; do not offer thrones or crowns. Paradises are built out of natures uplifted and ennobled, and what architect’92s compass may not sweep, and sculptor’92s chisel may not cut, and painter’92s pencil may not sketch, and gardener’92s skill may not lay out, the grace of God can achieve; and if the heart be right all is right, and if the heart be wrong, all is wrong. Here endeth the second lesson.

But I will not yet allow you to leave Delhi. The third thing you must see, or never admit that you have been in India, is the mosque called Jumma Musjid. It is the grandest mosque I ever saw except St. Sophia at Constantinople, but it surpasses that in some respects; for St. Sophia was originally a Christian church and changed into a mosque, while this of Delhi was originally built for the Moslems.

As I entered, a thousand or more Mohammedans were prostrated in worship. There are times when five thousand may be seen here in the same attitude. Each stone of the floor is three feet long by one and one-half wide, and each worshiper has one of these slabs for himself while kneeling. The erection of this building required five thousand laborers for six years. It is on a plateau of rock; has four towers rising far into the heavens; three great gateways inviting the world to come in and honor the memory of the prophet of many wives; fifteen domes with spires gold-tipped, and six minarets. What a built-up immensity of white marble and red sandstone? We descended the forty marble steps by which we ascended, and took another look at this wonder of the world. As I thought what a brain the architect must have had who first built that mosque in his own imagination, and as I thought what an opulent ruler that must have been who gave the order for such vastness and symmetry, I was reminded of that which perfectly explained all. The architect who planned this was the same man who planned the Taj, namely, Austin de Bordeau; and the king who ordered the mosque constructed was the king who ordered the Taj, namely, Shah Jehan. As this Grand Mogul ordered built the most splendid palace for the dead when he built the Taj, at Agra, he here ordered built the most splendid palace of worship for the living at Delhi. See here what sculpture and architecture can accomplish. They link together the centuries. They successfully defy time. Two hundred and eighty years ago Austin de Bordeau and Shah Jehan quitted this life, but their work lives and bids fair to stand until the continents crack open, and hemispheres go down, and this planet showers other worlds with its ashes.

I rejoice in all these big buildings, whether dedicated to Mohammed or Brahma or Buddha or Confucius or Zoroaster; because as St. Sophia at Constantinople was a Christian church changed into a mosque, and will yet be changed back again, so all the mosques and temples of superstition and sin will yet be turned into churches. When India, and Ceylon, and China, and Japan are ransomed, as we all believe they will be, their religious structures will all be converted into Christian asylums and Christian schools and Christian libraries and Christian churches. Built at the expense of superstition and sin, they will yet be dedicated to the Lord Almighty. Here endeth the third lesson.

As that night we took the railroad train from the Delhi station and rolled out through the city now living, over the vaster cities buried under this ancient capital, cities under cities, and our traveling servant had unrolled our bed, which consisted of a rug and two blankets and a pillow; and as we were worn out with the sight-seeing of the day, and were roughly tossed on that uneven Indian railway, I soon fell into a troubled sleep, in which I saw and heard in a confused way the scenes and sounds of the mutiny of 1857, which at Delhi we had been recounting; and now the rattle of the train seemed to turn into the rattle of musketry; and now the light at the top of the car deluded me with the idea of a burning city; and then the loud thump of the railroad brake was in dream mistaken for a booming battery; and the voices at the different stations made me think I heard the loud cheer of the British at the taking of the Cashmere Gate; and as we rolled over bridges the battles before Delhi seemed going on; and as we went through dark tunnels I seemed to see the tomb of Humayun in which the king of Delhi was hidden; and in my dreams I saw Lieutenant Renny, of the artillery, throwing shells which were handed him, their fuses burning; and Campbell, and Reid, and Hope Grant covered with blood; and Nicholson falling while rallying on the wall his wavering troops; and I saw dead regiment fallen across dead regiment, and heard the rataplan of the hoofs of Hodgson’92s horse, and the dash of the Bengal Artillery, and the storming by the immortal Fourth Column; and the rougher the Indian railway became, and the darker the night grew, the more the scenes that I had been studying at Delhi came on me like an incubus. But the morning began to look through the window of our jolting rail-car, and the sunlight poured in on my pillow, and in my dreams I saw the bright colors of the English flag hoisted over Delhi, where the green banner of the Moslem had waved, and the voices of the wounded and dying seemed to be exchanged for the voices that welcomed soldiers home again. And as the morning light got brighter and brighter, and in my dream I mistook the bells at a station for a church bell hanging in a minaret, where a Mohammedan priest had mumbled his call to prayer, I seemed to hear a chant, whether by human or angelic voices in my dream I could not tell, but it was a chant about ’93Peace and good will to men.’94 And as the speed of the rail-train slackened, the motion of the car became so easy as we rolled along the track that it seemed to me that all the distress and controversy and jolting and wars of the world had ceased; and in my dream I thought we had come to the time when ’93The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’94

Halt here at what you have never seen before, a depopulated city, the city of Amber, India. The strange fact is that a ruler abandoned his palaces at Amber and moved to Jeypore, and all the inhabitants of the city followed. Except here and there a house in Amber occupied by a hermit, the city is as silent a place as is Pompeii or Herculaneum; but those cities were emptied by volcanic disaster, while this city of Amber was vacated because Prince Joy Singh was told by a Hindu priest that no city should be inhabited more than a thousand years, and so the ruler one hundred and seventy years ago moved out himself and all his people moved with him.

You visit Amber on the back of an elephant. Permission obtained for your visit the day before at Jeypore, an elephant is in waiting for you about six miles out to take you up the steeps to Amber. You pass through the oppressively quiet streets, all the feet that trod them in the days of their activity having gone on the long journey; and the voices of business and gaiety that sounded amid these abodes having long ago uttered their last syllable. You pass by a lake covering five hundred acres, where the rajahs used to sail in their pleasure boats, but alligators now have full possession, and you come to the abandoned palace, which is an enchantment. No more picturesque place was ever chosen for the residence of a monarch. The fortress above looks down upon this palace, and the palace looks down upon a lake. This monarchical abode may have had attractions when it was the home of royalty, which have vanished, but antiquity and the silence of many years, and opportunity to tread where once you would not have been permitted to tread, may be an addition quite equal to the subtraction.

I will not go far into a description of brazen doorway after brazen doorway, and carved room after carved room, and lead you under embellished ceiling after embellished ceiling, and through halls precious-stoned into wider halls precious-stoned. Why tire out your imagination with the particulars, when you may sum up all by saying that on the slopes of that hill of India are pavilions deeply dyed, tasseled and arched; the fire of colored gardens cooled by the snow of white architecture; bathrooms that refresh before your feet touch their marble; birds in arabesque so natural to life, that while you cannot hear their voices, you imagine you see the flutter of their wings as you are passing; stoneware translucent; walls pictured with hunting scene and triumphal procession and jousting party; rooms that were called ’93Alcove of Light,’94 and ’93Court of Honor,’94 and ’93Hall of Victory;’94 marble, white and black, like a mixture of morning and night; alabaster, and lacquer-work, and mother-of-pearl; all that architecture and sculpture and painting and horticulture can do when they put their genius together was done here in ages past, and much of their work still stands to absorb and entrance archaeologist and sightseer. But what a solemn and stupendous thing is an abandoned city! While many of the peoples of earth have no roof for their head, here is a whole city of roofs rejected. The sand of the desert was sufficient excuse for the disappearance of Heliopolis, and the waters of the Mediterranean Sea for the engulfment of Tyre, and the lava of Mount Vesuvius for the obliteration of Herculaneum; but for the sake of nothing but a superstitious whim the city of Amber is abandoned forever. Oh, wondrous India! The city of Amber is only one of the marvels which compel the uplifted hand of surprise from the day you enter India until you leave it. Its flora is so flamboyant; its fauna so monstrous and savage; its ruins so suggestive; its idolatry so horrible; its degradation so sickening; its mineralogy so brilliant; its splendors so uplifting; its architecture so old, so grand, so educational, so multipotent’97that India will not be fully comprehended until science has made its last experiment, and exploration has ended its last journey, and the library of the world’92s literature has closed its last door, and Christianity has made its last achievement, and the Clock of Time has struck its last hour.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage