Ahamkara

“ I know that you have been invested with a veil and robes of honour, and you say that Mohammed Achmed is the Mahdi—and I know that there is among you a man of mature age who has spent his life, from his youth up, in Islâm—who would consent to the ruin of the country. ”

“ Ahimsa truly understood is in my humble opinion a panacea for all evils mundane and extra-mundane. We can never overdo it. Just at present we are not doing it at all. Ahimsa does not displace the practice of other virtues, but renders their practice imperatively necessary before it can be practised even in its rudiments. ”

“ Going to the root of the matter, not one man really practises such a religion, because we do destroy life. We are said to follow that religion because we want to obtain freedom from liability to kill any kind of life. Generally speaking, we may observe that many Hindus partake of meat and are not, therefore, followers of Ahimsa. It is, therefore, preposterous to suggest that the two cannot live together amicably because the Hindus believe in Ahimsa and the Mahomedans do not. ”

“ That our Saviour will appear again, is the cherished hope of every enlightened Mahomedan, and he glories in affirming that all the inhabitants of the world will then become his followers. This is so general an idea, that even the ignorant Mahomedans of the East, firmly believe that the Amhara, or Christian population, of Abyssinia, will at a future time seize Mecca, and destroy the temple. ”

“ I will go to Achmet at Arkeeko, but not to Hamazen, nor ever again to the Naybe here in Masuah. Whatever happens to me must befal me in my own house. Confider what a figure a few naked men will make the day that my countrymen ask the reason of this either here or in Arabia. ”

“ To me, it has a world of meaning, and takes me into realms much higher than the realms to which I would go if I merely understood Ahimsa to mean non-killing. Ahimsa really means that you may not offend anybody, you may not harbour an uncharitable thought even in connection with one who may consider himself to be your enemy. For one who follows the doctrine of Ahimsa, there is no room for the enemy. ”

“ There seems to be no historical warrant for the belief that an exaggerated practice of Ahimsa synchronises with our becoming bereft of manly virtues. During the past 1,500 years we have, as a nation, given ample proof of physical courage, but we have been torn by internal dissensions and have been dominated by love of self instead of love of country. We have, that is to say, been swayed by the spirit of irreligion rather than of religion. ”

“ Dark-skinned people, though of different tribes, inhabit this region. A portion of the population who formerly dwelt in the eastern part of the country are Jews. The ruling race are the Amharas, who are a warlike and intelligent people, but of cruel and bloodthirsty disposition. They are Christians, having been converted about the fourth century, but their Christianity has been greatly corrupted. The country has for centuries remained in a state of chronic disorder, the chiefs rebelling against the sovereign, and being in a constant state of warfare amongst themselves. ”

“ Although Akhbar Khan, of all the Amir's sons, has the greatest influence in Afghanistan, and renown out of it, his elder brother, Afzal Khan, is, we are informed, greatly his superior in judgment and nobility of character. Mohan Lal predicts a general commotion in Kabul when Dost Mohammed dies. If any one of his brothers, the chiefs of Qandhar, or Sultan Mohammed Khan, the ex-chief of Peshavar, be then alive, he will attempt to seize Kabul, and many of the Afghan nobles, some even of the Amir's sons, will lend him their support against Akhbar Khan. ”

“ Immediately next to this is Amhara, between the two rivers Bashilo and Geshen. The length of this country 255 from E. to W. is about 120 miles, and its breadth something more than 40. It is a very mountainous country, full of nobility; the men are reckoned the handsomest in Abyssinia, as well as the bravest. With the ordinary arms, the lance and shield, they are thought to be superior to double the number of any other soldiers in the kingdom. ”

“ The war of deliverance broke out on the accession of Ahmosis, and continued during the first five years of his reign.* One of his lieutenants, the king’s namesake—Âhmosi-si-Abîna—who belonged to the family of the lords of Nekhabît, has left us an account, in one of the inscriptions in his tomb, of the numerous exploits in which he took part side by side with his royal master, and thus, thanks to this fortunate record of his vanity, we are not left in complete ignorance of the events which took place during this crucial struggle between the Asiatic settlers and their former subjects. ”

“ The wilds of Abyssinia are not easily explored by the solitary traveller, and I therefore gladly embraced the opportunity of acquiring important information relative to the mode of Amhára warfare, as well as of visiting regions almost unknown. Superstition, policy, and fear, alike influenced the wily monarch in his expressed desire to be accompanied by his British guests. The presence of the stranger being considered to shed a blessing over the army, is invariably enforced by royal mandate, which extends indiscriminately to all residing within the kingdom ”

“ No doubt the wealthy, high-caste Hindu could have stirred up, and led away into the raging flood tens of thousands of these rustic peasantry by the influence of his social position, religion, and caste; but knowing as he well did that the Mahomedan was the Prime Agitator of the struggle for Empire, as well as at the bottom of the Mutiny, and comprehending to the full extent the ambitious character of that population, he firmly abstained from a share in the rebellion, lest, by the re-establishment of pitiless despotism, he should be the greater loser in the end. ”

“ A woman came in from the Arabs. She says the Expedition left Merowé for Berber, and that Mahomet Achmet will try, on Monday, the 24th November, to take Omdurman Fort. This is disagreeable news! However, I have done what I can, and one can do no more than trust now. What has been the painful position for me is that there is not one person on whom I can rely; also, there is not one person who considers that he ought to do anything except his routine duty. ”

“ Ajmeer, the capital of a kingdom or province of that name, west from Agra, stands on the top of an inaccessible mountain, three coss in ascent, being quite impregnable. The city at the foot of the hill is not great, but is well built and surrounded by a stone wall and ditch. It is chiefly famous for the tomb of Haji Mundee, a saint much venerated by the Moguls, to which, as formerly mentioned, Akbar made a roomery, or pilgrimage on foot, from Agra, to obtain a son. ”

“ The shekh raised our hands to his forehead, and accompanied us to the end of the village, where we gave the coffee-bearer a backsheesh, dismissed our water-boys, and turned our donkeys’ heads toward Abousir.
Achmet’s dark skin was pale from his wounded pride, and I was faint from pyramid-climbing, but a cold fowl, eaten as we sat in the sun, on the border of the glowing Desert, comforted us. The dominion of the sand has here as distinct a bound as that of the sea; there is not thirty yards from the black, pregnant loam, to the fiery plain, where no spear of grass grows. ”

“ Amhara, also bears the same interpretation in Amharic, and although it has another meaning, that of beautiful, this is only because of the national taste directing the name of the favourite complexion among them, to be employed as the term for beauty itself. The Dankalli slave-merchant well understands this, for a light-red Abyssinian girl is the Circassian of oriental harems. In Arabia, where the original word still conveys the more common idea, we find “hamah” employed to express the colour red. ”

“ The vizier, addressing me through Achmet, said: “Tell us what you want; if you come to fight, we are ready for you.” I assured the shekh through him that I came as a friend, and had no intention of molesting them, but he was not satisfied, and repeated three or four times, drawing a mark between us on the ground: “if you are really friends, we will be friends with you; but if you are not, we are ready to fight you.” Achmet at last swore by the Prophet Mohammed, and by the wisdom of Allah, that we had come in peace; that the Sultan wished to pay him a visit, and would then return home. ”

“ When the first cock crowed in some village on shore, we all arose and put the Lotus in motion. Over the golden wheat-fields of the western bank the pyramids of Dashoor stand clear and purple in the distance. It is a superb morning; calm, bright, mild, and vocal with the songs of a thousand birds among the palms. Ten o’clock comes, and Achmet, who has been standing on the cabin-roof, cries: “O my master! God be praised! there are the minarets of Sultan Hassan!” At noon there is a strong head-wind, but the men dare not stop. ”

“ Old women are the match-makers. They see the Arab girls at home, and describe their beauty in glowing Eastern language to the eligible Arab men. A young fellow is kind to an old woman, runs errands for her (I am speaking of Achmet’s class now) , and in return she gives him ‘the straight tip’ as to whose daughter to buy for a wife. Achmet had saved his old lady friend from being insulted by a drunken Zouave, and she had rewarded him by telling him of the beautiful Saidah Bint Mohammed, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Mohammed Ben Omar, the old Arab donkey-driver of the Upper Town. ”

“ Her face is painted blue in the tomb of Kasa. The representations of this queen with a black skin have caused her to be taken for a negress, the daughter of an Ethiopian Pharaoh, or at any rate the daughter of a chief of some Nubian tribe; it was thought that Ahmosis must have married her to secure the help of the negro tribes in his wars, and that it was owing to this alliance that he succeeded in expelling the Hyksôs. ”

“ In the city of Amboyna my friends Doctors Mohnike and Doleschall, as well as most of the European residents and traders, made exactly the same complaint, and would rather have Mahometans for servants, even if convicts, than any of the native Christians. One great cause of this is the fact, that with the Mahometans temperance is a part of their religion, and has become so much a habit that practically the rule is never transgressed. One fertile source of want, and one great incentive to idleness and crime, is thus present with the one class, but absent in the other ”

“ He will march first into the desert on his left and take the fort of Emanghur, a stronghold of the northern Ameers of high repute because it is an island in a waterless sea; then will come back to the Indus and direct his march upon Hyderabad. The Ameers will fly, he thinks, across the Indus, and the entire left bank of the river from the Punjaub to the sea will become British territory. If the Ameers elect to fight, well, he will be glad to give them every opportunity. "Peace and civilisation will then replace war and barbarism. ”

“ Mustapha was recalled the next year at the earnest representations of his wife, the sultan’s sister, and restored to the imperial favour. The end of Achmet was, that, being deprived of his office of grand vizier and sent to Egypt, he excited the Mamelukes to revolt, and was defeated and killed. He had even entered into correspondence with L’Isle Adam, and made proposals for restoring Rhodes to the order. ”

“ I asked them often, (powerful as they were in charms) , Why they did not cure Achmet of the gravel, or epilepsy? Their answer was, That it was a Christian devil, and not subject to their power.
Achmet did not believe that I was a Christian, knew I was no Mahometan, but thought I was like himself, something between the two, nor did I ever undeceive him. I was no missionary, nor had I any care of souls, nor desire to enter into conversation about religion with a man whose only office was to be the deliberate murderer of his sovereign. ”

“ Mahometan rule in India consists of a series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from Othman's raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah's tempest of devastation in 1761.
At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynasties always ruled over a large area.
The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab frontier was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore, annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against the Mahometan kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. ”

“ The religion of the country throughout is Mahommedan. Next to Turkey, Afghanistan is the most powerful Mahommedan kingdom in existence. The vast majority of Afghans are of the Sunni sect; but there are, in their midst, such powerful communities of Shiahs as the Hazaras of the central districts, the Kizilbashes of Kabul and the Turis of the Kurram border, nor is there between them that bitterness of sectarian animosity which is so marked a feature in India. The Kafirs of the mountainous region of Kafiristan alone are non-Mahommedan. ”

“ In a conference with Pottinger, Troup, and many other English and Affghans,—amongst the latter Mahommed Shah Khan,—Mahommed Akbar Khan became greatly excited. He said, that on the religious cry being raised, he killed the Envoy, he destroyed our army; and now that he has drawn down the vengeance of the British upon him, the rest are deserting him: that he has kept his feelings pent up within his own breast, until they have preyed upon his vitals; and that, were he in power now, he would exterminate every one of the recreant Mussulmans who have deserted him, and left him to obloquy. ”