Storia do Mogor 255: On their Mode of Government among Themselves.
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 255
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Contents
On their Mode of Government among Themselves.
255.1.1
The Hindu government is the most tyrannic and barbarous imaginable, because, all the rajahs or kings being foreigners, they treat their subjects worse than if they were slaves. All land belongs to the crown; no individual has as his own a field, or estate, or any property whatever, that he can bequeath to his children. The method in which the rajahs let out their lands is as follows: At the beginning of their year, which is in June, the officials come from the court to the villages and compel the peasants to take up the land at a certain rate. This bargain made, they must give notice at harvest-time to the king's officers, for without their permission the peasants may not harvest the grain. As soon as notice is received the officials proceed to the spot, and before allowing the crop to be cut, they ask the cultivators whether they are willing to give a half or a third more than they have contracted for at the beginning of the year. Should the cultivators agree to this, writings are drawn up and security taken; but after having made the bargain, they usually find that what they gather in does not suffice to meet the king's rent. It thus happens, more often than not, that they find themselves ruined by this revenue payment.
255.1.2
It is for this reason that many of them, when the royal officials try to increase the demand, reply that they can pay no more than they agreed to before signing the papers. But this way, too, they find themselves equally ruined, for the officials then remain present during the harvest, and inspect the cutting of all the crops, the cultivator also being present. When all is ready, they first place on one side the cultivator's share ; next they compel him, then and there, to buy the king's share. When in the country-side one measure is selling for six sols, they force the peasants to give them nine. In this way, whatever be the method employed, the poor cultivator finds himself ruined. Nothing is left to him to maintain his family, seeing that they are obliged to enter every year into new engagements in order to get a subsistence for their family and obtain fresh supplies. Nor is it particularly easy to take to flight, for wherever they go they find the same tyrannies. It may be said of them what Martial sang of Phauno : ' Et mortem fugeret se Phaunius ipse peremit. Die mihi non furor este ne memoriam mori.'
255.1.3
Besides, all the cultivators give sureties to the king. These sureties are usually given by one village for another. Thus the poor cultivators live on in hope. For, ordinarily, the rajahs or kings appoint fresh officials every year to lease out the village lands. These men, in order to get them taken again by the cultivators, make fresh promises, including that of governing justly and rationally. Then they advance the cultivators something to induce them to cultivate the land carefully. After the man has ploughed and sown, and is engaged in working the land, he is no longer free to remove elsewhere [118]. In this way they recover from the peasantry by consent or by force whatever they have lent them. This is the tyrannical system with which the rajahs or kings of these countries rule over the country people. These well deserve such treatment from their pride and their contrariness, for, if they were treated otherwise, it would be their entire ruin ; they would all kill each other, as is demonstrated by experience among those of them who have anything to lose.
255.1.4
The rajahs deal thus tyrannically with the agricultural population, that being the occupation of the greater number of the inhabitants of the country, without distinction of descent or caste, for everyone may follow it. At the same time, they behave no less cruelly to their creatures and officials. For, having sent them into the provinces to collect the rents, the only business confided to them, and having allowed them to pass several years in that employment, the rajah, on the simple supposition that they must have embezzled (as to which there need be no doubt), causes them to be seized, has them whipped and exposed to other cruel tortures. All that the officials have is taken from them, and he who yesterday was a great lord is to-day the most abject of mendicants; he who yesterday was rolling in wealth wanders to-day from house to house and door to door begging an alms.
255.1.5
All the collectors of the crown rents are, during the time they are in office, absolute masters of the province made over to them, and can take cognizance of all disputes, whether regarding civil or criminal questions, even matters relating to religion. In everything they can pass final sentence without appeal, even when the death penalty is involved. Since there is not throughout this empire any written law or ordinance, each one acts as it best pleases him, and puts to death anyone as he thinks fit. He can do this, since there is no one to demand an account of his acts, above all when he is a receiver of the crown rents. When any hungry wretch takes it into his head to ruin the kingdom, he goes to the king and says to him : ' Sire ! If your Majesty will give me the permission to raise money and a certain number of armed men, I will pay so many millions.' The king then asks how it is intended to raise the money. It is by nothing else than the seizure of everybody in the kingdom, men and women, and by dint of torture compelling them to pay what is demanded. Such financiers are hateful and avaricious men. The king generally consents to their unjust proposals, as he thereby satisfies his own greed; he accords the asked-for permission, and demands security bonds.
255.1.6
The men, armed with the order, and impelled by their desire to gain an overplus on the sum contracted for, go about seizing everybody and putting them to torture. For, without such pressure, no one would pay anything, experience in time past having proved to the subjects that, should any of them, through fear of punishment, make no difficulties about paying what is demanded, he does not thereby evade torture. For the financier and his agents always accept on account what the poor fellow has offered; but they infer that he who pays so readily, thinking more of torture than of his money, must have a deal more that he can give. This is why they demand from such a man as much again; and, if he refuses, he is subjected to torture to enforce payment. He is not released till he has paid all that has been demanded the second time. The tortures to which they subject these men are very severe. The first is made by water, and is very cruel. They place two pieces of wood at the bottom of a pond or a river bound to four posts driven into the ground. They lay the poor sufferer on the two pieces of wood with his arms bound, either behind, at his side, or in front. Then two or three men are seated upon him, and after leaving him like that for a time, he is extricated. They then ask him to agree to what they want. If he refuses, they resume the above treatment until he makes the required promise.
255.1.7
If they do not succeed in this way, they expose him to fire by making him tread on red-hot iron bars, and brand him on the ribs with iron axes heated in a fire. Others are drawn with red-hot pincers, others are tortured with cold pincers, which hurt even more. Some have their arms tied with ropes up to such a point and so tightly that the blood comes in drops from their finger-ends; and thus tightly bound they are suspended from two iron rings placed abreast and flogged with all imaginable cruelty with the whips that are used to horses. Others are stretched on the ground tied to four posts, and there they rub the man's face with criques (bricks) so violently and forcibly that it is made as flat as a board. Others are thrown naked upon sharp thorns, and on the top of the man is placed a board, on which three or four men walk up and down. In other cases they tie thick cords steeped in oil to all the fingers of the hands and throw the cords over a beam, suspending the fingers in the air, without any power of movement. They then set light to the ends of the cords and let them burn to the last, unless the sufferer before that time promises what is asked. If he makes a promise it is reduced to writing, and the poor wretch has to procure a surety.
255.2.1
It is by these means and others like them, which I omit in order not to be too lengthy, that they find out and lay hold of all that these poor wretches may possess, not even allowing one of them to escape, not even the priests serving their own idols. Indeed, they often begin with the children and the nearest relations of the rajah, so that no one can excuse himself from meeting their demands, if not in one way, then in another. If through affection they do pass anyone over, even though he may not be worthy of any punishment, they think that they are doing a very great favour, and that they would be avoiding their duty if they did not act upon the orders of their tyrannical goverment. When the financier has satisfied the prince by paying the money agreed upon, the latter orders him into arrest, and applies to him what he has done to others, and deprives him of all he has acquired. It often happens that, by a just judgment of God, such persons, either from want of fortitude or fear of being so wanting, and disinclination to paying the money asked for, give up their lives under such tortures. All that is stated above is ordinary and settled custom throughout India, and it may be said, in a general way, that all, great and small, are little else but thieves. He who is the most adroit and the keenest in this trade passes as the most agreeable comrade. As I speak of the Malabaris, I think it judicious, for the reader's satisfaction, to append some reflections on what I have said.
255.2.2
I know that those who read this account will not be able either to understand or imagine what sort of people those of this country are who are subjected to such tyranny, and yet continue to dwell in a country where such things are practised. To this objection I reply that all the neighbouring princes are the same sort of tyrants. To leave the dominions of this one and seek refuge in those of that one would be to seek repose by exposing one's self to greater hardships. In addition to that, I say, it must be remembered [120] that these regions are extremely populous. Everybody of both sexes marries, and a considerable number of men take more wives than one. In this way it is practically impossible for one of these kingdoms to provide room and means of subsistence for the population of a second kingdom. Although this is the fact, there are some who, like men suffering from fever, imagine that by changing their abode from one place to another they will find some relief. For this reason they are always removing from one province to another, though it be within the same kingdom. But they encounter throughout the same treatment that they sought to avoid, and often encounter greater hardships, for, without house or covering, they find themselves strangers in the land, and yet that fact does not give them any immunity from punishments.
255.2.3
In addition to these tyrannies and ways of robbing people, there are other practices more continuous and more inevitable. There are certain noblemen who have under them people they call guardians of the realm. These persons, in their turn, place subordinate officials in every village as guards. These subaltern officials are like little sovereigns in those places, where they issue their commands in civil as well as in criminal business. If this be not by right, they do it by force. The cultivators and the other persons belonging to the body forming the community entertain them, and pay punctually certain annual contributions. They are under obligation to prevent thefts within the bounds committed to their charge. If there is a theft, they must pay compensation ; but they are themselves the greatest thieves ever heard of, and they take away the best of the things to be found in the houses under their protection. Their assertion is that they are not bound to compensate for what is stolen in the daytime.
255.2.4
As for thefts happening at night, they ask to be shown the thief, and forthwith he shall be made to pay. If anyone ventures to open his mouth, and asserts that everything he had has been taken, that he shall go to the superior officer to complain, these same watchmen seek him out at night, and, if they do not kill him, give him a sound beating. They strip him of all he has, and warn him that if he opens his mouth on the matter they will kill him and all his relations. The guardians of the realm, let alone their being the most ambitious and the most inhuman of human beings, kill or procure the killing of anybody and everybody for a mere nothing, and carry on such a disastrous warfare against each other that it is rare to see one of them die of disease. The cruelties perpetrated in some other of the kingdoms are not less severe, principally in the lands subject to certain rajahs. Here is one sample. If, for instance, there be born a son to a rajah or to one of his relations on a day held by them of evil augury, adopting the advice of Brahmans, they endeavour to avert the day's malignant influence by sending men out on that and the following nights to burn down one or two villages, or sometimes more. Since almost all the houses are thatched with straw or grass, many poor persons lose their lives as well as all their property.
255.2.5
These rajahs have still another measure of policy — the keeping as prisoners of those who will succeed them. This they do as long as they live ; no sooner do the rulers die than the chief men of the country release those prisoners, proclaim them, and crown them as rajah. However, it is noticeable that, though the rajahs take all this trouble to suppress treason or alteration in the government, such things are continually happening, from an absence of justice, which can never be well exercised where there is a want of experience. Having set forth the cruelty and bad usage meted out by the Hindus to the natives of the country, their natural-born subjects, it is easy to picture their dealings with foreigners. It is impossible to live among people so barbarous, such enemies of all kinds of justice and sound reason.
255.2.6
I come now to their mode of making war. When two rajahs are at war, they retain ambassadors not only at the court, but often in the army which is opposed to them. Since secrecy is the soul of government, a rule which these barbarians ignore, I do not consider that I am wronging them when I say that their political condition is that of a body without a soul ; for every intention and every design of an enemy is known to his opponent and to everyone else — so much so, that when an ambassador dispatches a letter to his rajah, it is read out by him in public. Ordinarily in the council where the letter is read there is present an envoy of the enemy, or some dependent of his. It is a common practice among these rajahs to end up a war by a payment made from the weaker to the stronger, for money is their only passion. As regards the men, not a native of this country has any loyalty, or gratitude, or power to keep a secret.
255.2.7
Armies never march in formed bodies, but always in long files. Almost every soldier has with him in camp his wife and children. Thus a soldier may be seen carrying under his arm an unweaned infant, and on his head a basket of cooking-pots and pans. Behind him marches his wife with his spears, or else his matchlock, upon her back. In place of a bayonet they stick into the muzzle of the gun a spoon, which, being long, is more conveniently carried there than in the basket borne by the husband upon his head. The want of order being so great, the desertions are very numerous, for to-day a soldier will be serving in one army and to-morrow in an opposing force ; then, when it so pleases him, he will rejoin his first service without any hesitation, and as often as not may even be promoted. These soldiers being so brave and agile, one need not be astonished at my saying that even when a battle is very bloody, the number of killed and wounded never exceeds one hundred ; because, as soon as the battle has begun, flight is resorted to on one side or the other. So great is their fear of cavalry, that forty thousand infantry will not stand against two thousand horsemen. As soon as these come in sight, the men on foot begin to run nearly as fast as the horses can gallop, even should the riders not be carrying any kind of firearm.