A MAHRATTA ROMANCE.* IF good wine needs no bush, as
the proverb affirms, it is certain that a novel based on Hindoo life, first published nearly forty years ago, and now republished from the only copy attainable, required an in- troduction. Sponsors were needed to vouch for its authenticity, and experts to tell us what amount of reliance could be placed on the narrator in his character as a faithful reporter on manners, inci- dents, habits prevailing in Western India, at a period separated
Pandarung Hari; or, Memoirs of a Hindoo. With an Introductory Preface by Sir H. Bartle E. Frere. 2 vols. London: Henry S. King and Co. from us by the gulf of two generations. Pandarung Hari was written by Mr. Hockley, a Bombay civil servant, whose experiences belong to the days of Lord Hastings and Bajee Rao. He quitted India. "under a cloud," left behind him a reputation for deftness in. practical jokes, wrote his novel, and disappeared so effectually that Sir Bartle Frere can learn nothing as to his subsequent career.. Thus much we learn from the few pages in which Sir Bartle Frere introduces the author to his modern public, gracefully, of course, but somewhat timidly, and with marked apologies to young Bom- bay, whose feelings may be hurt by the too accurate photograph of their ancestors. What is important, however, is that a man of his experience does recognise the general accuracy of a book which,. so considered, comes within the limits of historical evidence. Nor can we rate at a lower value the testimony of Dr. George Birdwood, who,. as an admirer of the natives, but a greater admirer of really sound literature, was not likely to approve a book somewhat adverse to the " native cause," unless it came before him as a witness in a higher cause, that of truth. Dr. Birdwood speaks of Pandarung H1r1 as a "favourite," as the interpreter of his own fitful recollec- tions of childhood, when he played with the Begum of Bhopal, and it is really to him that we owe the resuscitation of a volume- forgotten by all save a few Anglo-Indians. But the book deserved to live, because, albeit fictitious, it is a bit of genuine chronicle- writing. The style is not elevated, the art displayed is at best poor, the humour is not refined, but from beginning to end the pages of Pandarung Hari are never dull, and they have besides the undoubted merit of presenting a narrative closely allied to reality.
Pandarung Hari, kidnapped when a child, and subsequently supposed to have been destroyed, is saved by a follower of Holkar, and brought up in his household. The little scapegrace is no less a personage than the son of the rightful Rajah of Sattara. He writes his own autobiography after he has discovered his parents, married a wife, and settled down, and the two volumes are filled with the story of his many and stirring adventures in various. capacities and employments. It may be readily conceived what a fine field is thus afforded for the sketching of character. In his career, from the camp of Holkar to the palace of Sattara, he traverses the varied strata of native society, and fills his gallery with specimen portraits of men and things. He is present at Assaye, Argamn, Bhurtpore ; he visits Poona, and gives a striking sketch of that place as it existed under the Peishwa. He finds his. way to Broach, Surat, and the Moslem society of the Concan, and is obliged to take refuge in Bombay. On one journey he is captured by Pindarees, whose tactics and habits are capitally described ; on another, he falls into the power of the Kandeish Bheels. Life in the camps, the cities, the jungles of Western India is painted in a style deriving its effectiveness from real graphic force. Here is an• example, not by any means exaggerated. Pandarung has fallen in. with two scoundrels who have been sent to hunt down and capture- Sagoonah, his love. They take him to a cavern in the jungle and engage him to enter Asseergurh, where the women are supposed to. be, entice them forth, and give them up to the robbers. He accepts- the employment, of course determining to frustrate their design, and quitting their presence, he shuts them up in the lurking-place " While creeping through the small iron door,' which was the solo outlet from the cave, saw,' he writes, 'that a strong bolt was fixed on the outside, and as soon as I was clearly out, and the door closed again, I drew it across into its place, and consigned the two mon to a lingering and terrible death. There was no other egress from the chamber. They heard the grating noise that sounded the knell of their destruction. They attempted in vain to open the door; they screamed, and then were silent for a time, then burst out into louder curses on my head and on their own folly. Then they quarrelled, and ended their altercation in deep and bitter groans. Theirs was a horrible destiny, to be eaten up by famine, to. waste into death ! But were they not plotting against others, and those, too, far dearer to me than mino own existence? Was not my Sagoonah to be their victim, and were they not scheming mischief against the poor goatherd of the glen,—perhaps to murder him? These considerations, and the consciousness that to frustrate the schemes of such men by such means was fully justifiable, bore me up, and afforded, me consolation in respect to the justice of what I had done. Night had now come on, and I feared to enter the jungle at that season, though I kept as near it as I could, to avoid the groans and maddening screams- that came from the cell in which my victims were immolated. I could not get beyond the hearing of them. At times I was almost tempted to go and seal my own destruction by unbarring the portal, the cries of suffering so softened my heart ! When I recollected that they were still men like myself, a chill of horror came over me ; but-. reason, after many struggles, resumed her seat, and the memory.of Sagoonah's security again fixed my tottering resolution. The owl and the bat flitting across my face added to the impression of that terrible hour. The wild beasts howled in the jungle ; once more I went to avoid them towards the cave, as I had done several times before, but the yells of the miserable captives drove me away. Again I reached_ the entrance of the outer cave, through which their groans echoed and almost palsied my heart, and again I returned to the jungles. At last I mastered resolution to fly from the damps of the frowning rocks in which.
the cave was scooped, for over, and to leave my prisoners to die. A friendly tree, as far off as I could venture in the darkness, gave me shelter in its boughs for the night from beasts and men, and at dawn of day I pursued my journey through the jungle. The entrance into such a place and at so early an hour was highly dangerous ; yet I longed to remove myself as far as I could from the neighbourhood of the cave, and to get nearer Sagoonah. As I went along I shook the limbs of the lower kind of underwood, and disturbed the birds of prey roosting among them, that fluttered away with shrill shrieks. The roar of a tiger not far from me made me conceal myself hastily behind a large tree on the opposite side whence the sound came. A second roar appeared to be very close by, and I lost not a moment in ascending the tree before the eye of the savage should flash upon me. It was then the hour of grey dawn, rendered more obscure by the forest foliage ; but I could still see objects very distinctly for some distance around me. I had not sat long on a huge overhanging branch, when two enormous tigers issued from the thickest part of the jungle, in a violent struggle for some heavy body in which their fangs were plunged. They came directly under where I sat, and I perceived they were con- testing for the body of a man that appeared completely lifeless."
But the book abounds with characteristic incidents, and stories, and touches of manners. We see and hear the civilian official of the native governments ; the soldier, half brigand ; the wholly ferocious robber ; the ambitious, restless, unprincipled native chiefs, who vexed, when they did not devastate, the land by their perpetual turbulence. If the author has taken liberties with
history, he has not passed the bounds allowed to his craft, but in the main he has contrived to weave into the fortunes of his hero a tolerably authentic thread of Deccannee politics, and a faithful pattern of the manners of that time. We need scarcely say that the hero falls in love at an early period with a beautiful and per- secuted young lady, but it is remarkable that Sagoonah, the heroine, is, like the Seeta of later romance, the one wholly unex- ceptionable character in the book. Her trials are great, her escapes many, her faithfulness exemplary, and her end,—Pandarung for a husband. We have only to hope that he reformed in middle life, and made his Sagoonah happy, but it may be doubted whether -even unusual adversity sufficed to make a model spouse out of a shifty Mahratta.
Not the least value belonging to the book is the contrast its pages afford to the present state of Western India. Whether, as Sir Bartle Frere thinks, the character of the people has under- gone considerable changes, we shall not now discuss, but beyond all doubt the conditions of existence are nowise what they were. The strong hand of the European has suppressed disorder. In- stead of raising armies to devastate Kandeish, Holkar has put his money into trade; and invested half a million in a branch State railway of his own, to connect Indore with the trunk line from Bombay to Calcutta. The roads which the Pindaree and the hill robber made unsafe may now be traversed with impunity. As Scindia remarked to Colonel Daly, he could if he pleased get any day on a mail-cart and drive alone from Gwalior to Poona. The city of the Peishwa is far different from what it was when Pandarung Hari figured as a magician at the Court of Bajee Rao. The Bombay governors have a huge, ugly, tumble-down, expensive " House' on the plain of Gunesh Khind ; a vast camp is established not far from the Kirkee battlefield; pleasant bungalows and stately buildings rise out of the verdant groves in which the European quarter is embowered ; a bund, just where the road to the south crosses the river on a fine stone bridge, has formed an almost lake-like expanse of water out of the Moota-Moola ; and courts of justice sit in the Peishwa's palace. Instead of driving slowly down the ghauts to Panwell, and sailing thence to Bombay, the Mahratta traveller jumps into a railway carriage, slips down the Bhore ghaut incline, speeds through the Concan, and in a few hours transacts his business in the bazaars of the island city. The freebooters have disappeared from the lovely hill ranges, the Bheels furnish shikarees, guides, soldiers, policemen ; tee gossein has become an ordinary cheat and fortune-teller ; Broach is a con- siderable cotton market ; the Nawab of Surat patronises horse- racing ; Asseergurh is a State prison ; Sattara is an agreeable and coveted collectorate ; there is a High School, nay, an University, in Bombay ; peace, profound and fruitful, broods over an immense territory, the scene of continuous turmoil, bloodshed, plunder, murder, fifty years ago. Let anyone who desires to realise the change read the instructive and entertaining pages of Pandarung' Hari and compare what he finds faithfully recorded therein with what exists now. Dr. Birdwood did well to rescue the book from oblivion.
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