and smaller Gothic windows and decorations. There are no minarets Pathan mosques seem never to have had them; though minarets are no modern inventions, since the Cairo mosques-older than these-have them always. The domes are not in the bulbous shape of the Mogul mosques, but flatter, lower, and more saucer-like. Our cicerone was very strong in the belief that the whole colonnade in each case belonged to a Jaina, or, as he said, a Buddhist temple, and that the Mussulmans seized these temples, added the great gateways, and turned them into mosques. To one who has seen the Kutb the theory is plausible, for there too is a cloister or colonnade of square pillars, and also a series of magnificent Mohammedan arches. But after carefully looking at both mosques, I cannot but agree with Fergusson that they are original works of the Pathans. There is no marked break or want of continuity between the domed gateways and the colonnade. At the Kutb the Jaina pillars are covered with sculpture, including bas-reliefs of saints, from capital to base; here the flat surfaces are in the sternest simplicity of Mohammedan puritanism. That there were Jaina or Hindu temples in Jaunpore is undeniable, for every now and then in the walls, roofs, and bases of the mosques we came to stones carved into the likeness of the human figure ; but these were put in carelessly and promiscuously, forming no part of the Mohammedan design; so that, in my opinion, the Mussulmans pulled down the temples and used the materials in building up the mosques. Of the two, the Atala Musjid is the more beautiful, because the colonnade is entire on all four sides of the quadrangle, whereas in the Jumma Musjid it is a mere fragment. On the other hand, the one feature of the great west propylon is grander and more perfect in the Jumma Musjid than in the Atala.

Monday, January 7.-I went to see the mosque over again, and also to visit a third about two miles away, called the Lall Darwaza Mosque. It is a miniature of the others, exactly in the same style, but on a smaller scale. The entrance gateway on the east side of the quadrangle, opposite the great propylon of the mosque proper, is more perfect than at either of the others. There, and at the Jumma Musjid, schools of Mohammedan boys were assembled. Positively the whole instruction consists in teaching them to repeat the Koran by rote in Arabic, without

Ca. VI.]

BENARES.

185

understanding a word of it! They repeat this (to them) utter gibberish in a monotonous chant, swinging their bodies backwards and forwards; truly a vain repetition,' almost more miserable than O Baal, hear us!' for I suppose that Jezebel's priests knew what the words meant.

My second inspection of the mosques convinced me yet more that they are entirely Pathan works, simple in design, and that the Jains or Hindus had no more to do with them than that their stones were pilfered to build them.

Tuesday, January 8.-We performed for the last time during this tour our ordinary morning march; breakfasted together; then I had a Moonshee lesson, translated Psalm xviii. for the C. C. I., and after luncheon took leave of our faithful Sepoys, and made them a brief oration in Hindustani. Their presence has shown me how very hard it must have been for the Indian officer in 1857 to believe that his regiment was disloyal. They are so orderly, punctual, respectful, and quiet, that it must have been really inconceivable that they were capable, almost it would sometimes seem at an hour's notice, of rising in mutiny and committing atrocious crimes, and murdering the very officers to whom they had appeared thoroughly devoted. Our regiment, the 31st, was almost the only line regiment in the Bengal army which did real service in the mutiny, by actually fighting on the English side and driving the rebellious 42nd from Ságor. At 4, S and I mounted Hathi, and had

a short ride of seven miles to Benares.

CHAPTER VII.

RETURN TO CALCUTTA-DEPARTURE OF DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN FOR ENGLAND -THE NIL DURPAN'-INDIGO-PLANTERS-THE

BISHOP'S VIEWS ON

THE RELATIONS OF ENGLISHMEN TO THE NATIVES OF INDIA-LETTERS.

IN February 1861 the Bishop's party were reassembled in the palace, after an absence of eighteen months, which had been rich in novelty and interest, and in personal blessings. Life in Calcutta brought a return to more settled occupations, and to pleasant social intercourse with a large English community. The Government also went through the hot weather with its servants; and there was in those days no migration of Court and Council to the hills, reducing Calcutta to the dullness of a Mofussil town. Many large and small parties at Government House broke the weight of the trying hot season, and one scene of historical interest was the durbar in which Lord Canning received the thanks of the Talookdars of Oude for the privileges it had been his special policy to restore to them. The event of chief importance to the Bishop personally was the departure for England, through failing health, of his chaplain, Thomas Harris Burn. The parting was the rending of another tie with England and the past. Their adoption together of a wholly new work had sealed the confidence and friendship of fifteen earlier years, and the Bishop felt that the separation in 1861 would cause a blank in his life which could never be wholly filled. It was practically a resignation of the office, for Mr. Burn returned to India in 1862 to resume it only during one visitation journey and a few more months. When, in 1864, he

CH. VII.]

THENIL DURPAN.'

187

was released from long and painful illness, the Bishop mourned the loss not only to himself of a tried and trusted friend, but to the whole diocese of one who was a bright example to the service he had adopted, by his high sense of ministerial duty towards both Europeans and natives, by the energy with which he quickly mastered the language sufficiently for much practical usefulness, and by many excellent gifts of head and heart which led him to spend and be spent for India.

6

In July, Calcutta was roused from the torpor which creeps over life in the hot weather by an incident more exciting than anything which had occurred since the mutiny. The Nil Durpan' burst like a cyclone over society. It formed a painful episode in a large and difficult subject, and left its traces in party animosity and personal bitterness, long after the event itself had become a matter of history. The Nil Durpan,' meaning Mirror of Indigo-planting,' was a play in the vernacular intended to describe village life in Bengal, and indigo-planters (chiefly Englishmen of the commercial class) were among the leading characters, and were exhibited in a very unfavourable light, in respect both of humanity and morality. The play got into the hands of some persons in influential position in Calcutta, warmly interested in the condition. of natives of the poorer classes. To them it appeared, though very dull as a composition, curious and noteworthy as an indication of popular feeling on the relations existing between the planters and the peasantry, between the occupiers and the cultivators of the soil. They desired a more extended publication of the play, and to this end they brought about its translation into English in Calcutta, and its subsequent circulation in England through channels sufficiently public and official to be marvellously indiscreet.

Such an open assault upon a whole class, just at a time when the indigo-planting system was condemned by many,

both in India and England, as injurious to the welfare of the peasantry, naturally aroused the utmost indignation in commercial circles in Calcutta. The points in the published play by which they felt themselves especially aggrieved were a clause in the native author's preface, accusing two Calcutta journalists of selling themselves for a sum of money to support the planters' interests, and a statement in the translator's preface that the picture of a ryot ruined by the indigo system was represented in language plain but true.' The Landholders' Association, dissatisfied with an unsatisfactory explanation from the Bengal Government, brought an action against the printer for libel and defamation. He pleaded guilty, paid a fine of a few rupees, and, instructed by one of the chief promoters of the translation, gave up his name. It was that of a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, an earnest and fearless man, devoted heart and soul to the welfare and improvement of Bengal ryots. A prosecution followed, and he was found guilty on both counts, and sentenced to a month's imprisonment and a 1007. fine. It was impossible for the Bishop to stand aloof from an occurrence which had placed one of the clergy in such a position; but he was happily spared from much personal contact with the case by his absence on visitation. In the remote places in Assam the echoes of the din of excitement raging in Calcutta tardily reached him, while the irregularity of postal communications in that sluggish province gave him ample time to survey the transaction in all its bearings, and to pass a carefully weighed judgment on the missionary who, so far as the Bishop was concerned, was the chief actor in it. This he did in a letter which apportioned impartially censure and sympathy, and the conclusion of which ran thus:

. . And now I have fairly told you all my grounds for blaming you in this matter. Everyone who has seen your most zealous and self-denying work at

or who knows your