The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858

Within the twelvemonth, in a stony nullah, hard by a clump of crooked saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo's gate, some jackals brought to light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe of Thuggee. But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna Tumbe no more.

When a name was bestowed on the Little Brother, the Brahmins wrote a score of pretty words in rice, and set over each a lamp freshly trimmed, and the name whose light burned brightest, with happy augury, was "Chinna Tumbe." And when they had likewise inscribed the day of his birth, and the name of his natal star, the proud and happy Baboo cried, with a loud voice, three times, "Chinna Tumbe," and all the Brahmins stretched forth their hands and pronounced Asowadam,—benediction. Then they performed arati about the child's head, to avert the Evil Eye, describing mystic circles with lamps of rice-paste set on copper salvers, with many pious incantations. But, spite of all, the Evil Eye overtook Chinna Tumbe, when the pleasant peddler came all the way from Cabool, with his bushy-tailed kitten, and his mungooz cracking nuts.

They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks,—that always at midnight, when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo's banian topes with her lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child, girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz, shakes the Baboo's gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so piteously, "Ayah! Ayah!"

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At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed of a devil,—an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous driving-out. In the midst of dire din, heathenish and horrible,—dissonant jangle of zogees' bells, brain-rending blasts from Brahmins' shells, strepent howling of opium-drunk devotees, delirious pounding of tom-toms, brazen clangor of gongs,—a child of seven years, that might, unpossessed, have been beautiful, sat under the shed of a sort of curiosity-shop, among bangles and armlets, mouthpieces for pipes, leaden idols, and Brahminical cords, and made infernal faces,—his mouth foaming epileptically, his hair dishevelled and matted with sudden sweat, his eyes blood-shot, his whole aspect diabolic. And on the ground before the miserable lad were set dishes of rice mixed with blood, carcasses of rams and cocks, handfuls of red flowers, and ragged locks of human hair, wherewith the more miserable people sought to appease the fell bhuta that had set up his throne in that fair soul. Sack bat? It was even so. And as the possessed made spasmy fists with his feet, clinching his toes strangely, and grinned, with his chin between his knees, I solemnly wished for the presence of One who might cry with the voice of authority, as erst in the land of the Gadarenes, "Come out of the lad, thou unclean spirit!"

At the Hurdwar fair pretty little naked girls are exposed for sale, and in their soft brown innocence appeal at once to the purity of your mind and the tenderness of your heart. They come from Cashmere with the shawls, or from Cabool with the kittens, or from the Punjaub with the arms and shields.

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Very quaint are the little Miriams, Ruths, and Hannahs of the Jewish houses in Bombay,—with their full trousers of blue satin and gold, their boyish Fez caps of spangled red velvet, bound round with party-colored turbans, their chin-bands of pearls, their coin chains, their great gold bangles, and the jingling tassels of their long plaits.

Less interesting, because formal and inanimate, even to sulkiness, are the prim little Parsee maidens, who often wear an "exercised" expression, of a settled sort, as though they were weary of reflecting on the hollowness of the world, and how their dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and that Dakhma, the Tower of Silence, is the end of all things.

Then there are the regimental babalogue, the soldiers' children, sturdiest and toughest of Anglo-Indian urchins,—affording, in their brown cheeks and crisp muscles and boisterous ways, a consoling contrast to the oh-call-it-pale-not-fairness, and the frailness, and premature pensiveness of the little Civil Service.

And there is the half-caste child, the lisping chee-chee, or Eurasian, grandiloquently so called, much given to sentimental minstrelsy, juvenile polkas, early coquetry, and early beer, hot curries, loud clothes, bad English, and fast pertness. I never think of them without recalling a precocious ballad-screamer of eight years who was flourished indispensably at every chee-chee hop in Chandernagore:

 
  "O lay me in a little pit,
  With a marvle thtone to cover it,
  And keearve thereon a turkle-dove,
  That the world may know I died for love!"
 

I left India in consequence of that child.

But for the true Anglo-Indian type of brat, at all points a complete "torn-down," "dislikeable and rod-worthy," as Mrs. Mackenzie describes it, there is nothing among nursery nuisances comparable to the Civil-Service child of eight or ten years, whose father, a "Company's Bad Bargain," in the Mint, or the Supreme Court, or the Marine Office, draws per mensem enough to set his brat up in the usual servile surroundings of such small despots. Deriving the only education it ever gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence. It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever is most sacred to the caste attachments of its attendants; the Moab of ayahs is its wash-pot, over an Edom of bhearers will it cast out its shoe; it slaps the mouth of a gray-haired khansaman with its slipper, and dips its poodle's paws in a Mohammedan kitmudgar's rice; it calls a learned Pundit an asal ulu, an egregious owl; it says to a high-caste circar, "Shut up, you pig!" and to an illustrious moonshee, "Hi, toom junglee-wallah!" Whereat its fond mamma, to whom Bengalee, Hindostanee, and Sanscrit are alike sealed books of Babel, claps the hands of her heart, and crying, Wah, wah! in all the innocence of her philological deficiency, blesses the fine animal spirits of her darling Hastings Clive.

"Soono, you sooa, loom kis-wasti omara bukri not bring?" says Hastings Clive, whose English is apt to figure among his Hindostanee like Brahmins in a regiment of Sepoys,—that is, one Brahmin to every twenty low-caste fellows.

The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough.—Wellesley dear, do listen to that darling Hastings Clive, how sweetly he prattles! What did he say then? If one could only learn that delightful Hindostanee, so that one could converse with one's dear Hastings Clive! Do tell me what he said.

The Hon. Wellesley Gough, of the Company's Bad Bargains.—Literally interpreted, my dearest Maud, our darling Hastings Clive sweetly remarked, "I say, you pig, why in thunder don't you fetch my goat into the parlor?"

The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough, of the Hon. Mr. Wellesley Gough's Bad Bargains.—Oh, isn't he clever?

Hastings Clive.—Jou, you haremzeada! Bukri na munkta, nimuk-aram!

The Hon. Wellesley Gough.—My love, he says now, "Get out, you good-for-nothing rascal! I don't want that goat here."

The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough.—Oh, isn't he clever?

What dreadful crime did you commit in another life, O illustrious Moonshee, that you should fall now among such thieves as this horrid Hastings Clive?

"Sahib, I know not. Hum kia kurrenge? kismut hi: What can I do? it is my fate."

Hastings Clive has a queer assortment of pets, first of which are the bushy-tailed Persian kittens, hereinbefore mentioned. When, in Yankee-land, some lovelorn Zeekle is notoriously sweet upon any Huldy of the rural maids,—when

 
  "His heart keeps goin' pitypat,
  And hern goes pity Zeekle,"—
 

when she is

 
  "All kind o' smily round the lips,
  And teary round the lashes,"—
 

it is usual to describe his condition by a feline figure; he is said to "cuddle up to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick." But the sick Oriental kitten, reversing the Occidental order of kitten things, cuddles up to a water-monkey, and fondly embraces the refreshing evaporation of its beaded bulb with all her paws and all her bushy tail. The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.

Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which, as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous practice, are but blackguard birds at best. He also rejoices in many blue-jays, rescued from the Ganges, whereinto they were thrown as offerings to the vengeful Doorga during the barbarous pooja celebrated in her name. Very proud, too, is Hastings Clive of his pigeons,—his many-colored pigeons from Lucknow, Delhi, and Benares; an Oudean bird-boy has trained them to the pretty sport of the Mohammedan princes, and every afternoon he flies them from the house-top in flashing flocks, for Hastings Clive's entertainment.

Hastings Clive has toys, the wooden and earthen toys for which Benares was ever famous among Indian children,—nondescript animals, and as non-descript idols,—little Brahminee bulls with bells, and artillery camels, like those at Rohilcund and Agra,—Sahibs taking the air in buggies, country-folk in hackeries, baba-logue in gig-topped ton-jons. But much more various and entertaining, though frailer, are his Calcutta toys, of paper, clay, and wax,—hunting-parties in bamboo howdahs, on elephants a foot high, that move their trunks very cunningly,—avadavats of clay, which flutter so naturally, suspended by hairs in bamboo cages, that the cats destroy them quickly,—miniature palanquins, budgerows, bungalows, and pagodas, all of paper,—figures in clay of the different castes and callings, baboos, kitmudgars, washermen, barbers, tailors, street-waterers, box-wallahs, (as the peddlers are called,) nautch-girls, jugglers, sepoys, policemen, doorkeepers, dog-boys,—all true to the life, in costume, attitude, and expression.

Statedly, on his birth-day, the Anglo-Indian child is treated to a kat-pootlee nautch, and Hastings Clive has a birth-day every time he conceives a longing for a puppet-show; so that our wilful young friend may be said to be nine years, and about nineteen kat-pootlee nautches, old.

To make a birth-day for Hastings Clive, three or four tamasha-wallahs, or show-fellows, are required; these, hired for a few rupees, come from the nearest bazaar, bringing with them all the fantastic apparatus of a kat-pootlee nautch, with its interludes of story-telling and jugglery. A sheet, or table-cloth, or perhaps a painted drop-curtain, expressly prepared, is hung between two pillars in the drawing-room, and reaches, not to the floor, but to the tops of the miniature towers of a silver palace, where some splendid Rajah, of fabulous wealth and power, is about to hold a grand durbar, or levee. All the people, be they illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony, are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.

A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden state; a manikin hookah-badar, or pipe-server, and a manikin chattah-wallah, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position behind, while a manikin punkah-wallah fans, woodenly, his manikin Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around. Then manikin ladies and gentlemen come on manikin elephants and horses and camels, or in manikin palanquins, and alight with wooden dignity at the foot of the palace stairs, taking their respective orders of wooden precedence with wooden pomposities and humilities, and all the manikin forms of the customary bore. The manikin courtiers trip woodenly down the grand stairs to meet the manikin guests with little wooden Orientalisms of compliment, and all the little wooden delicacies of the season; and they conduct the manikin Sahibs and Beebees into the presence of the manikin Rajah, who receives them with wooden condescension and affability, and graciously reciprocates their wooden salaams, inquiring woodenly into the health of all their manikin friends, and hoping, with the utmost ligneous solicitude, that they have had a pleasant wooden journey: and so on, manikin by manikin, to the wooden end. Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring behind the curtain make the occasion musical.

The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue. In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and amber-studded. Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of their patient bhearers. Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce moustaches, but gentle eyes,—a sort of nursery lions whom a little child can lead. On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles, and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,—shy, demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word Sahib, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive.

Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the scullion,—and all the rest of the household riff-raffry. There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive's birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.

The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the mhindee, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts. During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life.

These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested.

When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a sowar to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor ryots' wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,—so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,—to whom "the news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, "What shall we play next?" And one daring little fellow—whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his kismut (his fate) so quietly, that the gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet—cried, "Let us play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and the priests."

Acha, acha!—"Good, good!" they all cried. "Let us play the Nawab's kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo—he that is more clever than all of us—he that is cunning as a Thug—Mungloo shall be the Nawab!"

So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a mehwatti, who turned king's evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend, the Commissioner.

Then Unnia told how the Nawab had paid Kurreim Khan blood-money, because Shumsh-ud-deen did so hate Fraser Sahib. Whereupon Metcalfe Sahib, a little naked fellow, just the color of an old mahogany table, sent his sepoys and had the Nawab dragged, in all his ragged breech-cloth glory, to the bar of Sahib justice. In about three minutes, the Nawab was condemned to die,—condemned to be hung by an outcast sweeper. But, in consideration of his exalted rank, they consented that he should wear his slippers, and ride to the place of execution, smoking his hookah; and Mungloo acknowledged the Sahib's magnanimity by proudly inclining his head, like a true Nawab, with a dignified "Acha!" Then two members of the court-martial, who lived nearest at hand, ran home, and quickly returned, one with his father's slippers, the other with his mother's hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big, on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village hurkaru, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking his hubble-bubble,—and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every day of his life,"—to the place of execution, an old saul-tree with low limbs. Then, having taken the rope with which the hurkaru's mail-bag was lashed to his buffalo, they slipped a noose over the Nawab's head, made the other end fast to the lower limb of the saul-tree, and led away the buffalo.

Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent; in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,—which the real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,—so that he sent one of his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face, and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, Wah, wah! with all their little lungs. Wah, wah! they screamed,—Wah khoob tamasha kurta hi! Phir kello, Mungloo! Bahoot ucchi-turri nuhkul, kurte ho toom! "Bravo! Bravo! Such fun! Do it again, Mungloo,—do it again! it takes you!" Certainly Mungloo did it to the life,—for he was dead.

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To conclude now with a specimen of the tales with which the native story-tellers entertain little heathens on street-corners.

There was once a bastard boy, the son of a Brahmin's widow; and he was excluded from a merry wedding-feast on account of his disgraceful birth. With a heart full of bitterness, he prayed to Siva for comfort or revenge; and Siva, taking pity on him, taught him the mystic mantra, or incantation, called Bijaksharam,—Shrum, hrim, craoom, hroom, hroo. So the boy went to the door of the apartment where the wedding guests were regaling themselves and making merry; and he pronounced the mantra backwards,—Hroo, hroom, craoom, hrim, shrum. Immediately the fish, and the cucumbers, and the mangoes, and the pumplenoses took the shape of toads, and jumped into the faces of the guests, and into their bosoms and laps, and on the floor. Then the boy laughed so loud, that the astonished guests knew it was he who had conjured them; so they went to the door and let him in, and set him at the head of the table. Then the boy was satisfied, and uttering the mantra aright, he conjured the toads back into the dishes again; and they all lay down in their places, and became fish, and cucumbers, and mangoes, and pumplenoses, just as if nothing had happened.

Glory to Siva!