Jaipur

“ Tradition, however, is probably wrong, and the princess was from Jaipur and a true Mussulwoman.
From every height—and particularly from the Panch Mahal's roof—one sees immense prospects and realises what a landmark the stronghold of Fatehpur-Sikri must have been to the dwellers in the plains; but no view is the equal of that which bursts on the astonished eyes at the great north gateway, where all Rajputana is at one's feet. ”

“ In all India no spot has been so rapturously praised for its beauty as Udaipur in Rajputana and its lake-reflected palaces. Travelling towards it from Jaipur I found myself a day later in the State of Mewar, passing fields of the white opium poppies for which the State is famous.
Udaipur is a white town and comes quite suddenly into view after you have been watching from the train a lovely range of hills, warm and glowing. The bright railway station is a grey stone building with a square tower, and the lower part of it is half smothered in pale convolvulus. ”

“ In the middle of some beautiful public gardens close to the city stands Jaipur's "Albert Hall," a large building in white marble, which contains a durbar hall and a fine collection of examples of Indian art and industry. Its courts are decorated with mottoes translated from Persian and Hindoo literature, and as maxims for guidance they are not at all easy to reconcile with each other. From the Hitopadesa, for example, on one wall is quoted:—
"Fortune attends the lion-hearted man
Who acts with energy; weak-minded persons
Sit idly waiting for some gift of fate." ”

“ The life of the bazaars at Jaipur is singularly varied and interesting. The streets are unusually wide as native streets go in India. They find room to shake out long strips of newly dyed cotton to dry—a man holding the cloth at each end and waving it wildly about to dry, so that great plashes of yellow or orange and pink are apt to illuminate the streets here and there, as this process is a frequent incident. ”

“ We came expecting to find India hot, but we have found the northern part of India very cool. So it was reviving and refreshing to take the drive from Jaipur to Amber in an automobile, over a noble roadway with slightly ascending grade and skirting an originally splendid palace, once in the center of an island, but now in the bed of a dried-up lake. When we left the motor-car at the final lofty hill, the deserted city of Amber towered above us. How should we reach that threatening height? Three gorgeously caparisoned elephants solicited our patronage for the ascent. ”

“ Saturday, October 21.—One is apt to be cross and fussed and generally upset on being landed on a strange platform in the dark at 5.30 A.M., as we were at Jaipur, but much solace lay in the fact that a comfortable carriage stood waiting us and a most kind and genial host received us on the broad verandah of his bungalow, and the cheering fact was borne in upon us that we shall have henceforward but little to do with Indian hotels. ”

“ The Western friends will come to see Jaipur in a week or two. If Jagamohan be there, kindly instruct him to pay some attention to them and show them over the city and the old arts.
I leave instructions with my brother Saradananda to write to Munshiji before they start for Jaipur. ”

“ They fell, while mere boys, in the heroic defence of Chitor against Akbar.
Jey Singh, (Sowar Jey Singh.) Succeeded to the throne of Ambér in 1699, founded Jaipur in 1728. He wrote the following, which I had not read when I visited his observatory at Jaipur “Let us devote ourselves at the altar of the King of Kings, hallowed be his name! In the book of the register of whose power the lofty orbs of Heaven are but a few leaves, and the stars, and that heavenly courser the sun, small pieces of money in the treasury of the Most High.” ”

“ The modern brass-work of Jaipur is somewhat attractive, and we bought various articles—a tall lamp-stand, an elephant bell, and a few ordinary bowls of excellent shape.
I have remarked before on the extreme tameness of, and the confidence shown by, wild creatures out here. A titmouse came and perched on the arm of my chair while sitting reading on the verandah at Gulmarg.
The rats and mice, who own the forest houses in the Machipura, have to be kicked off the beds at night. ”

“ They display in their work at least a boldness in the brilliancy of their colours. The paintings of Ravi Varma and others make one hide one's face from shame! Far better are those gilded pictures of Jaipur and the Chalchitra of the goddess Durgâ that we have had from old times. ”

“ At any rate, the wide streets of Jaipur are laid out like those of the homeland, and are lined with pink structures of only one type of architecture and only one type of ornamentation. Even Paris can present no better illustration of the value of supervision in building. There are no sky-scrapers. There are long rows of shops and residences, with arcades in front of them, and with many variations in plan and decoration, while at the same time one tone of pink, together with the sky-line and the arcade-line is preserved without important change; the Oriental type of building is preserved ”

“ We reached Jaipur about noon and put up at Rustom’s Hotel, a comparatively short drive from the station. The hotel stands in the middle of a large enclosure divided by a low wall from the high road. Tents are pitched along one side of the building to afford extra sleeping accommodation, and a sort of bungalow annexe is prepared to take overflow guests. From pleasant rooms on the terrace we had a view of the Tiger Fort and the road with its constant procession of natives, ox-carts, and camels and horsemen trooping into the city about a mile off. ”

“ Space is as important an element in their design as the exquisite handicraft which produced their unrivalled detail. The Taj itself is on a raised platform of stone, and is flanked on each side by two noble mosques of red sandstone splendidly inlaid with white marble. It was the rich decorative effect of such materials no doubt which suggested to the Maharajah of Jaipur the painting of his town red, which I refer to in a previous chapter, but the reality compared with the imitation is as wine to water. ”

“ But they have also a third offshoot, consisting in the Nāga Gosains of Jaipur, nearly naked ascetics, who constituted a valuable part of the troops of Jaipur and other States. It is said that the Nāgas always formed the van of the army of Jaipur. The sect have white caps with four corners and a flap hanging down at the back, which each follower has to make for himself. To prevent the destruction of animal life entailed by cremation, the tenets of the sect enjoin that corpses should be laid in the forests to be devoured by birds and beasts. ”

“ The Maharajah of Jaipur has the reputation of being very advanced and modern in his ideas. He has at anyrate set up gasworks in his city, which also possesses a large public garden laid out in the European manner, and is both horticultural and zoological, and contains a museum and a bronze statue of Lord Mayo.
It seems rather a mistake, in a climate like that of India, to lay out grounds with broad serpentine paths and drives unshaded by trees, and vast lawns which can only be kept up with a pretence of greenness by constant and laborious watering. ”

“ The western (Mārwāṛī) spoken in Marwar and its neighbourhood, and the east-central (Jaipurī) spoken in Jaipur and its neighbourhood, may be taken as the typical Rajasthani dialects. In the following paragraphs we shall therefore confine ourselves to Gujarati, Marwari and Jaipuri.
We know more about the ancient history of Gujarati than we do about that of any other Indo-Aryan language. ”

“ The Jaipur imperial service transport corps saw service in the Chitral and Tirah campaigns.
JAISALMER, or Jeysulmere, a town and native state of India in the Rajputana agency. The town stands on a ridge of yellowish sandstone, crowned by a fort, which contains the palace and several ornate Jain temples. Many of the houses and temples are finely sculptured. Pop. (1901) , 7137. The area of the state is 16,062 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 73,370, showing a decrease of 37% in ten years, as a consequence of famine. The estimated revenue is about £6000; there is no tribute. ”

“ Negotiations were, therefore, initiated for the formation of a greater Rajasthan Union, which would both satisfy the sentimental aspirations of the people in certain areas, and facilitate the solution of economic and other problems common to all these States. As a result of these negotiations, a fresh Covenant (Appendix XL) was signed providing for the integration of the three major States of Rajputana, viz., Jaipur, Jodhpur and Bikaner and the State of Jaisalmer with the former Rajasthan Union to form the United State of Rajasthan. ”

“ My impression certainly was that civilians did not count for much at Agra.
122 In the bazaars we found we were able to make purchases with rather less accompaniment of drama than at Jaipur. European goods were much in evidence, of the cheap and nasty sort as a rule, ugly socks and scarves and cottons, and tin ware. I saw a crowd of natives clustering round the trumpet mouth of a gramophone—an instrument which seems to have considerable charms for them. ”

“ Nevertheless, she insisted on having her ride in the bullock cart as a new experience and seemed greatly to enjoy the experience. Her Majesty was in excellent spirits and evidently greatly pleased with her reception at Jaipur and with the entertainments provided for her. ”

“ It is a striking pile of Mohammedan architecture.108 Three great gateways are passed on the steep approach up the rocky sides of the hill, and the road is protected by a wall, as at Chitorgarh. Finally the great gateway leading into the courtyard of the palace is reached, and we dismount from the elephant and are surrounded by a number of hangers-on, one of which comes forward to act as guide over the palace, which showed traces of considerable restoration. The great doors of solid brass were exceedingly fine (both here and at the Maharajah’s palace in Jaipur—really the best things there) . ”

“ The Jaipur troops were much on a par with those of Bhopal and Udaipur. I was glad, therefore, that in lieu of troops, the Maharaja had agreed to organize, as his contribution to the Imperial service, a transport corps of 1,000 fully-equipped animals.
At Ulwar I found the 600 Cavalry and 1,000 Infantry (all Rajputs) well advanced in their drill and training; this was evidently owing to the personal interest taken in them by the Maharaja, who seldom allowed a day to pass without visiting the parade grounds. ”

“ RAJASTHANI (properly Rājasthānī, the language of Rājasthān of Rajputana) , an Indo-Aryan vernacular closely related to Gujarati (q.v.) . It is spoken in Rajputana and the adjoining parts of central India, and has several dialects the principal of which are Jaipurī, Mārwāṛī, Mēwātī and Mālvī. Hāṛauṭī, an important variety of Jaipurī, is spoken in the states of Kota and Bundi. Carey, the well-known Serampur missionary, paid great attention to Rajasthani in the early part of the 19th century, translating the New Testament into no fewer than six dialects, viz. ”

“ The endless rice-fields, and the fields of sugar-cane that stretch for miles like a billowy sea, make a railway journey by day a constant source of delight. You ride in a perennial garden, and it is perfectly natural that the bird of paradise should have its habitat here. Like Ceylon, Java is sure to be the resort of innumerable tourists, for here are wonders beyond any to be found in localities more commonly visited.
And yet it is the people that interest one even more than the land they live in. ”

“ If so, I will remember Java, years hence, not as the fairy-land it seemed to me only yester day, in the sylvan solitudes of Tjerimai, but as a busy manufacturing country, prosperous and prosaic.
I will remember a rich soil, an enervating climate, alternating droughts and inundations and fever-breathing monsoons; a mode of life, comfortable and even luxurious, but monotonous in the extreme, which taxes to the utmost both mental and physical energies. I will think of white dusty towns by yellow muddy rivers; of hills, and vales, and marshy lowlands overgrown with thick, sprouting rice ”

“ The busiest part of the city is the Chinese quarter, for, throughout the Insulinde, commerce, both retail and wholesale, is largely in the hands of these sober, shrewd, hard-working yellow men, of whom there are more than three hundred thousand in Java alone and double that number in the archipelago. Beyond the European and Chinese quarters, scattered among the palms which form a thick fringe about the town, are the kampongs of the Javanese themselves—clusters of bamboo-built huts, thatched with leaves or grass, encircled by low mud walls. ”

“ The port of Sourabaya, supreme in mercantile importance, ranks as the second city of Java, as it contains the military headquarters, the principal dockyards, and the arsenal. Leagues of rice and sugar-cane lie between Solo and Sourabaya, the landscape varied by gloomy teak woods, feathery tamarinds, and stately mango trees. White towns nestle in rich vegetation, and the green common known as the aloon-aloon marks each hybrid suburb, Europeanized by Dutch canals, white bridges, and red-tiled houses, planted amid a riotous wealth of palm and banana. ”