Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

A wide-ranging two-volume portrait of India written by a British colonial official who lived there for more than thirty years.

W. H. Sleeman (Author)

9781108092302, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 June 2011

504 pages, 7 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.9 cm, 0.64 kg

Lieutenant-Colonel William Henry Sleeman (1788–1856) spent his entire career in India as an army officer and later as a magistrate and resident. He was best known for his fight to suppress the activities of 'thugs', bands of criminals who attacked, robbed and often murdered innocent travellers. By the time of the publication of this two-volume work in 1844, Sleeman had lived in India for more than thirty years. In Volume 1, he draws on his travels and experiences, and over 48 chapters he discusses myriad aspects of Indian life, including Hinduism, local festivals and folklore, the 'thugs' he tried to eradicate, disease and famine, and the natural world. He also details the lives of a wide range of Indians, from key historical figures such as Aurungzebe, the Mogul emperor, to the ordinary people he encountered, such as washerwomen and elephant-drivers.

Dedication
1. Annual fairs held upon the banks of sacred streams in India
2. Hindoo system of religion
3. Legend of the Nerbudda River
4. A suttee on the Nerbudda
5. Marriages of trees. The tank and the plaintain. Meteors. Rainbows
6. Hindoo marriages
7. The purveyance system
8. Religious sects. Self-government of the castes. Chimney-sweepers. Washerwomen. Elephant-drivers
9. The great Iconoclast. Troop routed by hornets. The Ranee of Gurba. Hornets' nest in India
10. The peasantry and the land settlement
11. Witchcraft
12. The silver tree, or kulpa briksha. The Singhara, or trapa bispinosa, and the Guinea worm
13. Thugs and poisoners
14. Basaltic cappings of the sandstone hills of central India. Suspension bridge. Prospect of the Nerbudda valley. Deification of a mortal
15. Legend of the Sauger Lake. Paralysis from eating the grain of the Lathyrus sativus
16. Suttee tombs. Insalubrity of deserted fortresses
17. Basaltic cappings. Interview with a native chief. A singular character
18. Birds' nests. Sports of boyhood
19. Feeding pilgrims. Marriage of a stone with a shrub
20. The men-tigers
21. Burning of Deoree by a freebooter. A Suttee
22. Interview with the Rajah who marries the stone to the shrub. Orders of the Moon and the Fish
23. The Rajah of Orcha. Murder of his many ministers
24. Corn dealers. Scarcities. Famines in India
25. Epidemic diseases. Scape-goat
26. Artificial lakes in Bundelcund. Hindoo, Greek, and Roman faith
27. Blights
28. Pestle and mortar sugar-mills. Washing away of the soil
29. Interview with the chiefs of Jansee. Disputed succession
30. Haunted villages
31. Interview with the Rajah of Duteea. Fiscal errors of statesmen. Thieves and robbers by profession
32. Sporting at Duteea. Fidelity of followers to their chiefs in India. Law of primogeniture wanting among Mahomedans
33. Bhoomeeawut
34. The suicide. Relations between parents and children in India
35. Gwalior plain once the bed of a lake. Tameness of peacocks
36. Gwalior and its government
37. Contest for empire between the sons of Shah Jehan
38. Ourungzebe and Moorad defeat their father's army near Ojeun
39. Dara marches in person against his brothers, and is defeated
40. Dara retreats towards Lamore. Is robbed by the Jats. Their character
41. Shah Jehan imprisoned by his two sons, Ourungzebe and Moorad
42. Ourungzebe throws off the mask, imprisons his brother Moorad, and assumes the government of the empire
43. Ourungzebe meets Shoojah in Bengal and defeats him, after pursuing Dara to the Hyphasis
44. Ourungzebe imprisons his eldest son. Shoojah and all his family are destroyed
45. Second defeat and death of Dara, and imprisonment of his two sons
46. Death and character of Ameer Jumla
47. Reflections on the preceding history
48. The great diamond of Kohinoor.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]