Lifeofbrianhoug00hunt BW PDF
Lifeofbrianhoug00hunt BW PDF
Lifeofbrianhoug00hunt BW PDF
'
' The cause of all things hath Buddha explained. The great Sramana hath
likewise explained the cause of the extinction of all things."
[
I]
LIFE OF
BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON.
1800
1894.
CHAPTER I.
BOYHOOD: 180O1816.
BRIAN
HODGSON died in
1894,
in his ninety-fifth
year. Had he died seventy years previously, he
would have been mourned as the most brilliant young
scholar whom the Indian Civil Service has produced.
Had he died in middle life, he would have been remem-
bered as the masterly diplomatist who held quiet the
kingdom of Nepal and the warlike Himalayan races
throughout the disasters of the Afghan war. Had he died
at three-score years of age, he would have been honoured
as the munificent Englishman who enriched the museums
of Europe with his collections, enlarged the old boundaries
of more than one science, and opened up a new field of
original research.
He outlived his contemporaries. In 1883 the learned
Italian, Count Angelo di Gubernatis, when introduced to
him, exclaimed :
"
Surely not the veritable Hodgson, the
founder of our Buddhist studies ! He, alas, is dead these
many years." In 1889, when Oxford conferred on him her
degree of D.C.L., the Sheldonian rang with welcome to the
beautiful white-haired scholar who seemed to have stepped
I
2 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
forth from a bygone world. Many of his honours came
to him when young
;
some arrived too late. There is a
story of how a thrifty monarch sent his too tardy largesse
to the bard Ferdousi. But as the mules laden with bags
of gold entered the eastern archway of the poet's city, the
poet's bier was borne out by the western gate.
The chief services which Hodgson rendered to his
country are the least known. The distinctions conferred
on him by learned societies in many lands made him
conspicuous among Orientalists during the first half of this
century. But it was as British Resident at an Indian
Court that Hodgson earned his highest claims upon
the nation. He was a civilian diplomatist on whom,
during a dark hour of our rule, fell the task of upholding
the British supremacy in a hostile military State, unsup-
ported by force of arms, and with only his personal in-
fluence to sustain his counsels. The work done for our
Indian Empire by such men, as distinguished from Soldier
Politicals, is yet unrecorded. I purpose to tell the story
of one of them from the official documents written on the
spot, and now for the first time laid open to the public
eye.
The story may be wanting in the dramatic effects of
the Soldier Political's career, with a treaty in one hand
and a sword in the other. But it will disclose certain
aspects of the British suzerainty of India not hitherto
realised. We shall learn how a young civilian was
trained in building up newly annexed districts, left waste
by the misrule of a usurping Himalayan Power, into a
peaceful and prosperous British province. We shall then
see him at his first lessons in dealing with the usurping
Himalayan Power itself We shall next find him holding
back that Power from our frontier, with a nation of warriors
exultant at the destruction of our Afghan army and
fiercely straining in his leash. We shall watch him thread
his perilous way through the intrigues of rival queens,
royal kinsmen, and mayors of the palace, guarded solely by
I.]
BOYHOOD: 1800 1816.
3
his own immovable calm amid their tragedies of massacre
poisoning, torture, suicide, and exile to the snows. After
twenty years of thankless labour we view him emerge from
the homicidal scene, followed by the tears of the prince
and the acclamations of the people.
From first to last we find his conduct regulated by two
motivesthe desire to preserve the integrity of the kingdom
to which he was accredited, and the determination to
render its integrity a source of strength instead of danger
to the British Government. We also discern how many
annoyances the East India Company would bear rather
than destroy the independence of a Native State by
annexation.
I have referred at some length to the public aspects of
Brian Hodgson's career. For no man recognised more
keenly than he that an Indian civilian must be judged,
first of all, by his public work. Nor would any one have
more despised a scholarly reputation gained by the neglect
of official duties. But his many-sided activities made
themselves equally felt in his public and in his private life.
Condemned by ill-health to isolation in the Himalayas
throughout his whole Indian career, far away from books,
and shut off from the inspiring sympathy of brother
students, he used his solitude as a vantage-ground for
original research. The situation which would have been
another man's despair, he turned into an unique opportunity.
He proved to all who may come after him that neither
loneliness nor ill-health, nor personal peril, nor harassing
public cares, need preclude a true worker in India from
rendering great services to scholarship and winning an
enduring fame.
Brian Houghton Hodgson was born at Lower Beech, in
the parish of Prestbury, Cheshire, on February ist, 1800.
He came of a long-lived stock, and was the fourth in
succession of four Brian Hodgsons whose lives extended
4
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
from 170910 1894.
The average age of his three imme-
diate progenitors and their wives amounted to eighty-five
years each, and he himself died at the ripe age of ninety-
four.^ He used to say modestly that his ancestors were
remarkable for nothing unless it was for their longevity
and love of field sports. The earliest surviving of the
family pictures, a full-length portrait of a forefather five
generations back by Vandermyn in 1728, now in the
possession of Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton, represents
a striking-looking man holding a gamecock. His
descendant, the subject of this book, was an enthusiastic
student of all wild creatures, and in spite of bad accidents
he hunted with two packs of hounds till nearly seventy
years of age.
The grandfather, Brian No. 2 in the subjoined list, figures
as a man of considerable property in Derbyshire. For
some time he lived at Wootten Lodge, Staffordshire,
"
a
fine old castellated mansion," according to the District
History, "said to have been designed by Inigo Jones."
^
Wootten Lodge was famous in the seventeenth century for
its Royalist defence against the Parliamentary troops, and
down to the middle of the eighteenth for its well-stocked
deer-park of one thousand acres. But it is now best
remembered as the favourite retreat of Jean Jacques
Rousseau during his sojourn in England. David Hume
had procured for the philosopher the neighbouring house
of Wootten Hall at a nominal rent,
"
an agreeable and
1
Brian Hodgson (ist), great-grandfather, died 1784 aged
75.
Elizabeth his wife ....
1806 90
Brian Hodgson (2nd), grandfather .
1827
85
Ellen his wife 1830 ,, 91
Brian Hodgson (3rd), father . . 1858 92
Catherine his wife ....
,,
185 1
75
Brian Houghton Hodgson, born 1800, ,, 1894
94.
Average of the 6 previous lives and his own
(7)
86 years.
Total 602
*
The History and Topography
of
Ashbourii a7id the Valley
of
the
Dove (Dawson & Hobson, Ashbourn,
1839), p. 253.
I.] BOYHOOD: 1800 1816.
5
sequestered asylum," says Jean Jacques,
"
where I hope to
breathe freely and at peace." The quaint and romantic
gardens of Wootten Lodge were Rousseau's daily resort,
and a seat was long pointed out under the shelter of the
rockery at the back of the house, on which he loved to
meditate and write.
Grandfather Brian,^ who dwelt in this pleasant abode
from
1
78 1 to 1788,
seems to have been a typical country
gentleman of his time, kept a well-known pack of grey-
hounds, commanded the yeomanry cavalry for many years,
and received a handsome presentation of plate on retiring
from the regiment. His sister Margaret married in
1765
Dr. Beilby Porteus, successively Bishop of Chester and of
London. Another member of the family, Robert Hodgson,
became Dean of Carlisle and Rector of St. George's,
Hanover Square. They were all on terms of close
intimacy, and the Dean eventually wrote the Life of the
Bishop. Both the Dean and Bishop lived into the present
century, and the young Brian (our Brian) spent many
happy days of his boyhood at the Bishop's palace at
Fulham, and at the Dean's house in London.
His father, Brian No.
3
in the list, born
1766, was
brought up to no profession. At the age of thirty, having
married
-
a beautiful girl of twenty, Catherine, daughter of
William Houghton, Esq., of Manchester and Newton Park
in the county of Lancashire, he settled down to a country
life in Cheshire. Children soon began to fill his home at
Lower Beech. Brian Houghton, the second child and
eldest son, was born four years after the marriage, in
1800. Among his earliest recollections were his father's
return from hunting in a scarlet coat, and his grandfather
after a cock-fight with his hands covered with blood and
feathers. It was a house full of dogs, and two favourite
hounds Ringwood and Watchman, born and bred on the
'
Brian Hodgson of Swinscoe near Ashbourn, described in the District
History as
"
Brian Hodgson, Esquire, of Ashbourn" {Idem.,
p. 371).
-
In tlie Collegiate Church in Manchester on May i6th, 1796,
6 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
place, were long-remembered playfellows of Brian's child-
hood.
In an unlucky hour the easy-going country gentleman
looked round on the young group growing up about
him, and thought he must bestir himself to better their
fortunes. He entered into partnership with a cousin
Hawkins in a bank at the neighbouring town of Maccles-
field. After some years of affluence the bank failed, owing,
it was said, to a too spirited support of Irish mining enter-
prises. The ruined father faced his shipwreck like a man,
broke up the house at Lower Beech, and moved first to
Macclesfield and then to Congleton. Young Brian
suddenly found the home of his childhood disappear,
leaving behind it only a dim impression of some great
calamity which overshadowed his boyhood.
The father, although he met his reverses with courage,
had not the qualities which enable a broken gentleman to
make a fresh start in middle life. Children still increased
in the wandering household, until the tale of seventhree
sons and four daughterswas complete.^ Fortunately the
family had connections able and willing to hold out a
helping hand. But even if the wind be tempered to the
shorn lamb, it bites shrewdly. It was the mother's force
of character that carried her husband through those dark
years. Mrs. Hodgson, a county toast and one of the
"
Lancashire witches
"
in her youth, retained traces of a
refined loveliness to her old age. In her home her influence
reigned supreme, an influence curiously compounded of
the old strict enforcement of parental authority and
of the children's admiration for a beautiful young mother
who exercised a fascination over distinguished men. Her
immediate neighbours in the new abode at Congleton,
Mr. Maxey Pattison and his brother James, became her
devoted friends, and used their patronage to launch her
'
(i) Catherine, born
1798; (2)
Brian Houghton, i8cx);
(3)
Ellen,
1802;
(4)
William Edward John,
1805';
(5)
Ann Mary, 1808 (died
young);
(6)
Frances Martha, 1810;
(7)
Edward Legh, 1813.
I.] BOYHOOD: 1800 i8i6.
7
sons in honourable careers. She carried on a lifelong
correspondence with several of the minor celebrities of her
day, two of whomProfessor William Smyth of Cam-
bridge, the historian/ and the polished and scholarly Earl
of Clarendon
^
were destined to exercise an influence on
young Brian and his fortunes.
Professor Smyth had known reverses, not altogether
dissimilar to her own. The son of a wealthy banker whom
the war between France and England in
1793
stripped of
his fortune, William Smyth unexpectedly found himself
compelled to earn a livelihood without a profession at the
age of twenty-seven. He accepted the post of tutor to
the eldest son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, accompanied
the youth to Cambridge, and there himself studied with
such success as to win a high place in the list of Wranglers.
In 1806 he sprang into fame by his volume of British
Lyrics, and in 1809 was appointed Professor of Modern
History at Cambridge, a chair which he ably filled for
forty years. His portrait, drawn and published by Josiah
Slater, shows a gentle intellectual face, not devoid of
esprit. With this middle-aged poet and leisurely man of
letters, Mrs. Hodgson, then in the prime of her young
matronly beauty, formed an enduring and graceful friend-
ship. His letters proved his admiration for her bright
intelligence, and one of his cleverest writings was a little
pamphlet entitled an Occasional Lecture,
"
prompted by
the desire of a lady to hear his academical discourses,"
half a century before the girl graduate dawned upon our
Universities. It is an eulogium on woman, full of humour
and varied learning, dated 18
14,
and printed privately in
1840.
Brian, the first boy, was the mother's favourite child.
He used to say that, although hers was a discipline of love,
it was a discipline. She imbued her sons with a high idea
of womanhood, and as they grew up instilled into them
'
Bom 1766; 8th Wrangler,
1797 ;
died
1849,
*
Thomas, 2nd Earl: born
1753 ;
died unm. 1824.
8 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
a chivalrous reverence for all women as women. Brian's
high and courteous bearing, which was so striking a charm
of his personality through life, he acquired from his mother.
In the height of his reputation as a diplomatist and scholar
he shared with her his inmost thoughts, writing to her
always with a deferential tenderness very graceful in a
grown-up and famous son. His letters to his sister Fanny,
penned from his solitude in the Himalayas, will supply
some interesting pages to this book. Brian was a tall and
manly boy, and the mother looked absurdly young by his
side. She used to say that the finest compliment ever paid
her was by a mill-girl near Macclesfield, who remarked as
the mother and son passed,
"
What'n a pretty lass yonder
lad has gott'n !
"
While the family were moving from place to place in
quest of a fresh start in life, all England was arming to
defend her shores from a French invasion. Mr. Hodgson
during the days of his wealth had borne his part as a loyal
country gentleman, and in 1814 the Earl of Clarendon
obtained for him the post of guardian of the Martello
Towers, then fortified against the expected landing. The
wandering household settled down at Clacton near
Colchester, in Essex,^ and the father's sterling merits,
together with the more shining qualities of his wife, soon
won friends around their new home.
During their period of eclipse Brian had been sent to
Dr. Davis' school at Macclesfield, which at that time had
a considerable repute. Brian, a big boy for his age, did his
best to uphold its reputation in town-fights with the lads
of the borough school. Among his favourite comrades in
mischief were Jodrell of Henbury, and John
Nicholson of
Balrath, one of the first Irish squires who, in spite of his
kindly and generous character, suffered boycotting in the
old days. Nicholson wrote a pretty Horatian ode to his
"
Dulcis Amicus" Hodgson on their parting in April 1814-
'
The family afterwards removed to Canterbury, and lived there for
many years.
I.]
BOYHOOD:
1800 1816.
9
Brian took the lead in games, and made his mark
especially in cricket which he afterwards taught to his
escort at the Court of Nepal. He also owed to Dr. Davis
the careful grounding and thoroughness in work by which
he was presently to win distinction in more advanced schools,
and which he carried into every pursuit of his mature life.
About the age of fourteen he was sent to Dr. Delafosse's
seminary at Richmond, Surrey, and there completed his
short school education at sixteen.
Those two years were among the happiest of his life.
His holidays were spent at his relative's the Dean of
Carlisle in London, or in shooting and hunting in Essex.
He always seems to have been able to obtain a mount,
either from his father's modest stable or from some country
neighbour's better-filled stalls, and he established a reputa-
tion as a bold and fearless rider. On one of his visits to
his boy friends the Nassaus at St. Ozeth's Priory near
Colchester, a hunter was brought round but declared un-
manageable. The groom, however, said that he thought
young Mr. Hodgson could ride the horse, and he would
warrant it leading the field. And so Brian did, won the
brush, and came home with his cheeks painted red to his
anxious and delighted father, who met him on the door-
steps with open arms. He and his sister Ellen used to
scour the country on their ponies, and became favourites
with the jolly farmers and yeomen of Essex, then in the
height of their prosperity with wheat at war-prices.
His great-uncle, the Bishop of London, had expressed a
desire that his nephew's eldest son should be destined to
the Church. But the aged prelate died
^
when Brian was
in his tenth year, and although his other relative the Dean
of Carlisle's influence also pointed to the same profession,
the spirited lad found that it was one for which he had no
calling. When Brian reached sixteen the question was
disposed of by a generous offer from Mr. James
Pattison,
'
On May
1
3th, i Zo().Life
of
the Rt. Rev. Beilby Porteus, D.D., Bishop
0/ Lotidon ,\iy Dr. Robert Hodgson, Dean of Carlisle, p. 255.
Ed. 1821.
lO
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
the family friend and neighbour at Congleton. In 1816
Mr. Pattison was a Director of the East India Company,
of which he became Chairman two years later. He secured
a nomination for his old friend's son to the Company's
Civil Service, and Brian, having passed a successful exami-
nation, was allowed to enter Haileybury College nearly a
twelvemonth before attaining the regulation age of seventeen.
This change in 1816 marks the end of Brian Hodgson's
schooldays. It may be well to pause before entering on
the new career which then opened to him, and dwell for
a moment on the other members of the home circle from
which he was soon to be separated. The mother's influence
seems to have given a charm to the daughters, and her
character a force to the sons, which led to a successful
establishment in life for all her children. The eldest
daughter, Catherine, born
1798,
married Mr. Laurence
George Brown and settled prosperously in Canada. The
second daughter, Ellen, born 1802, married Huibert Gerard
Baron Nahuys van Burgst, a Major-General in the Dutch
Army. She accompanied her husband to Java,
where he
held high offices as Resident at the Court of Surakarta
and Member of the Council of Netherlands India.^ Baron
Nahuys' sister was the wife of Count Schimmelpenninck,
the Grand Pensionary of Holland. We have had a glimpse
of this Ellen (Baroness Nahuys) as Brian's companion on
his wild cross-country rides in Essex. She grew into a
woman of remarkable beauty, and was long known at the
Court of Holland as La Belle Anglaise. She lived to the
age of eighty, leaving a son and three daughters who
married into families in the Netherlands.'- In her widowed
old age Brian made his house her home, and watched over
her with fraternal piety during her last illness
(1878).
'
His remarkable and brilliant services form the subject of an inte-
resting Dutch family history : Reminiscences
of
the Public atid Private
Life (1799
1849) of
H. G. Baron Nalmys van Burgst (Arnhem,
1858).
-
The son left three daughters, Helen, Huberta, and Fanny, who are
now the representatives of this branch of the Houghton Hodgsons.
I.] BOYHOOD: 1800i8l6. II
The third daughter, Ann, born 1808, died in girlhood.
The fourth, Frances, born 1810, was the
"
Dearest Fanny"
with whom Brian kept up an affectionate correspondence
throughout their whole lives. His affection was warmly
reciprocated.
"
Though but a child of eight when he
went to India, in 18
18,"
writes one of the family, "and
although they did not meet again till
1844,
yet she was
brought up by her mother (who herself idolised her eldest
son) to think there was no one like Brian. Her admira-
tion for her brother and her devotion to him were absolute.
She always spoke of him as
'
the most perfect of human
beings
!
'
" We shall see with what pathetic playfulness
Brian tried by his letters during his long absence in India
to warm that admiration for an almost unknown ideal into
a human affection for an exile pining for sisterly love. She
married Pierre Baron Nahuys, the son of General Huibert
Nahuys by a previous wife, and therefore a step-son of her
sister Ellen. The Baron Pierre had a distinguished career,
and became Governor of Overyssel, one of the Seven
Provinces of Holland.
Of the three sons, Brian the eldest forms the subject of
this book. The second son, William, born
1805,
entered
the Bengal Artillery, and died as a young Major of great
promise. Brian was devotedly attached to him, and we
shall find the two brothers together at the Residency at
Nepal. The third brother and youngest child, Edward
Legh Hodgson, born 181 3,
obtained an appointment to
the East India Company's Civil Service, through the
influence of the same family friend, Mr. James
Pattison,
who had given Brian his nomination sixteen years pre-
viously. Edward was at Haileybury from 1829 to 1831,
and carried off seven prizes during his three terms.^ He
served in India as Assistant Commissioner of Meerut from
1832 to
1835,
and died there on July
3rd of the latter year.
1
Memorials
of
Old Haileybury College, by F. C. Danvers, Sir M.
Monier-Williams, Sir Steuart Bayley, Percy Wigram, and other con-
tributors (Constable & Co.,
1894), p. 397.
12 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap. i.
I have presented the several sisters and brothers at the
outset, as the following pages will deal almost exclusively
with the work of Brian himself, cut off from his kindred
during the next quarter of a century by a third of the
circumference of the globe. Yet in order to understand
the man it is necessary to bear in mind the background
of home life which was always present in his memory.
During his long isolation in Nepal, that well-loved family
group seemed to stand out for him with an ever-increasing
distinctness. The recollections of the patient father who
had borne the buffets of fortune, of the brilliant young
mother with her circle of distinguished and admiring friends,
of his sisters and brothers, half of whom were to die young
while the other half were to be scattered over the old and
new hemispheres^these were the recollections which during
twenty-five years supplied the human links between the
solitary worker among the Himalayas and the outward
world.
[13]
CHAPTER II.
OLD HAILEYBURY : 18161817.
HAILEYBURY
COLLEGE, which Brian Hodgson
entered in 18
16,
was not unworthy of the magnificent
design of its founders. It formed the embodiment in stone
and lime of the East India Company's resolve to govern
well the empire which they had won. From 1600 down to
the second half of the eighteenth century the Company's
servants, alike in England and in India, had been sea-
captains, merchants, and mercantile clerks. Their territorial
conquests from
1757
onwards demanded an entirely
different class of men. But the necessity of making the
"
annual investment
"
wherewith to pay an annual dividend
for some time obscured the change which had taken place.
A generation of officials passed away before the Court of
Directors definitely realised that they had grown into the
Sovereign Power in India, and that their main function was
government rather than trade.
It was not until the year 1800 that a regular institu-
tion was formed for the training of the civil servants of
the Company. This institution, known as the College of
Fort William, was established by the far-seeing Marquis
Wellesley in Calcutta. The Court of Directors, however,
considered its scope too wide, sanctioned it only on a reduced
scale, and determined to create a place of education of their
own in England for their young civil servants. Their
intention, expressed in 1802, received effect in 1805 by the
purchase of the Haileybury estate in Hertfordshire for
j^5)900-
The building was completed in 1809 at an esti-
14
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
mated cost of iJ'50,000.
During the intervening years from
1806, the new institution carried on its work temporarily
at Hertford Castle under the title of the East India College
Herts. In 181
3 Parliament enacted that it shall not be,
lawful for the Court of Directors to nominate, appoint, or
'
send to the Presidencies of Fort William, Fort St. George,
or Bombay, any person in the capacity of Writer, unless
such person shall have been duly entered at Haileybury
College, and have resided there four terms, and shall pro-
duce a certificate of having during the period duly con-
formed himself to the rules and regulations of the same.
^
While the entrance into the Company's administrative
service was thus restricted to young men specially trained
at Haileybury, the doors of Haileybury were jealously
guarded. The nominations to the covenanted Civil
Service formed the most valuable patronage exercised by
the Directors of the East India Company, and the chief
share of it naturally fell to their relatives or intimate
friends. But the long list of their nominees proves that,
outside their immediate family circles, it was exercised in
a noble spirit. Many a Director conscientiously used his
patronage as a solatium to officers worn out in the
Company's wars, and hard pressed to find an opening
for their sons. The scars and buffets of his father's
ill-requited service formed John
Lawrence's chief recom-
mendation for Haileybury, and gave to India the future
saviour of the Punjab. From the hour that a lad
entered the College it impressed on him the lesson of
integrity which the earlier servants of the Company had
found so hard to learn. No youth was admitted with-
out two certificates : one as to his personal character
;
'Act
53
Geo. III. c.
155,
quoted in Memorials
of
Old Haileybury
College (Constable,
1894),
p.
18. The minimum residence was after-
wards reduced to three terms (a year and a half), or in times of
urgency even to two terms. During a considerable period, students
above the age of eighteen who obtained certificates of High Distinction
might proceed to India after only two terms.
</
II.] OLD HAILEYBURY: 18161817. 1
5
the other, a solemn declaration that the Director who had
given his nomination made no pecuniary gain by the
transaction.
In 1 8 16 the professional staff of the College consisted
chiefly of Cambridge men. It was therefore with peculiar
pleasure that Professor William Smyth of that University
undertook to launch the eldest son of his fair correspondent
in what was practically a coterie of his old college friends.
He took Brian to Haileybury, and settled him as a guest
in the house of Malthus, the Professor of Political Economy,
until he should pass his entrance examination. Malthus
was elected a Fellow of Jesus in
1793,
the year that
William Smyth entered at Cambridge. The Rev. Joseph
Hallet Batten, a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge, and
a high Wrangler as well as an excellent classic, had
been appointed Principal of Haileybury College in
181 5. The Dean was the Rev. Charles Webb Le Bas,^
fourth Wrangler in 1800, and also a Fellow of Trinity.
The Rev. Henry Walter, a second Wrangler and one
of the most genial of men, had just joined as Professor
of Chem.istry and Natural History,^ and perhaps gave
an impulse to Brian's taste for the study of beasts and
birds which was to become one of his main pleasures
throughout life.
Malthus^ received his friend's protege kindly, and for
a season retained him as his guest. The foundation of
an intimacy was thus laid which for the first time turned
the young student into a thinker, and brought him into
'
Appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1813 ;
Deani8i4; Principal
(in succession to Dr. Batten) 1838.
2
In 1816.
'
Thomas Robert Malthus, born 1766; Fellow of Jesus
College,
Cambridge,
1793
(not
1797)
; issued his first Essay on the Principles
of
Population
1798,
and the greatly altered edition 1803;
Professor of
History and Political Economy at the East India College, Herts, 1805
1834;
issued his Corn-Law Pamphlets 1814-15, \\\?, Inquiry into the
Nature
of
Rent 181 5,
and his Principles
of
Political Economy 1820;
died
1834.
l6
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
contact with eminent men. Malthus had then reached
the height of his fame, and his house formed a resort of
the intellectual Whigs of the day. Lord Jeffrey and the
Edinburgh Reviewers, Sir James Mackintosh (who became
Professor of Law at Haileybury two years later ^), and
statesmen of higher if more temporary note were frequent
visitors to the Haileybury philosopher. It happened that
the period of Brian's residence there was one of great
literary activity even in Malthus' busy life. For he was
recasting the rent sections for the seventh edition of his
Principles
of
Population
(1817),
and full of the ideas to
be embodied in his crowning work on Political Economy
published in 1820.
But the unique position which Malthus held in the
College did not altogether depend on his reputation with
the outer world. One of the original professors appointed
in 1805,
he had acted as its literary champion,^ and was
at this very time preparing his final rejoinder to its
opponents. He was not only the most famous member
of the teaching staff, but he was also the public representa-
tive of the system with which the professors and students
were alike identified. His sweetness of temper that
served as an armour against the bitterness of theological
opponents
"
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burnt on the water ; the poop was beaten gold
:
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of lutes kept stroke."
"
You see," said Jeffrey,
"
that thougJi the sails were
purple and the oars silver, they wafted her not less swiftly
than if they had been made of homespun and deal.
Gentlemen, / wrote the article." Upon which all the
company laughed and clapped their hands. I repeat the
story as Hodgson told it more than half a century after-
wards. It formed one of his cherished bits of jetsam from
the Dispiitationes Haileyburieiises to which the kindness of
Malthus gained him admission.
The new impulse given to Hodgson's mental activity was
of rather a discursive character. But from the outset he
showed an aptitude for the native languages, and obtained
a prize for Bengali at the end of his first term (May 18
16).
During his second year he brought home to his delighted
mother the prize for classics (May 181
7),
and continued to
win a prize for Bengali at each of his half-yearly examina-
tions during his stay at the College. In December 1817
he passed out of Haileybury as gold medallist and head
of his term.
Haileybury was not designed to supply a strictly pro-
fessional training to the East India Company's civil servants.
It carried further their previous school-studies in classics
'
I give him the title by which he is most generally known, although
Jeffrey was not promoted to the Scottish Bench until
1834.
2
1
8
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON [chap.
and mathematics. It also grounded them in the general
principles of law and political economy, and in the history
and languages of India. The higher instruction in these
last-named branches it left to the College of Fort William in
Bengal, or to corresponding studies in Madras and Bombay.
But the residence at Haileybury did for the young Indian
civilians what no system or device had ever done for
them before. It bred up and knit together a service with
a strong and honourable esprit de corps, a knowledge
of each other's characters, and a mutual trust. Some
of Hodgson's intimates at Haileybury became, as we shall
see, rulers of great provinces. Many of them continued
his friends through life. Whatever its later shortcomings,
the essential service rendered by Haileybury to the nation
was thisthat during half a century when India could
only be held by a compact, self-reliant, and honest British
bureaucracy, it produced the compactest, most self-reliant,
and most honest bureaucracy which the world had ever
seen.
One of Hodgson's fellow-students, Charles Fraser, was
destined to render good service as the Governor-General's
Agent, that is as political ruler, in the Sagar and Narbada
Territories. Another, William Dampier, besides holding
many high offices, practically created the police of Bengal.
A third. Sir George Clerk,^ became for a short time Lieu-
tenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, and twice
Governor of Bombay. A fourth, Sir Frederick Currie, Bart,
was Foreign Secretary to the Government of India during
the great Sikh struggle under Lord Hardinge, Resident
at Lahore under Lord Dalhousic, and one of the most
influential Members of his Council. Both Clerk and Currie,
after their retirement from India, rendered valuable service
for many years on the Council of the Secretary of State,
and both of them continued warm friends of Hodgson to
the end of their long lives. Another of his best-loved
1
G.C.S.I. and K.C.B.
II.] OLD HAILEYBURY: 18161817. 19
Haileybury companions, the Honourable Frederick Shore,
closed a career of high pronnise, and of some achievement,
by a too early death. Curiously enough, sons of the two
civilian Governors-General of India, Lord Teignmouth and
Sir George Barlow, entered Haileybury in the same year as
Brian Hodgson, and the three went to Calcutta in 18 18.
Four other Bengal civilians who attained to high eminence
overlapped Brian's residence at the College : John Lowis,
one of Lord Dalhousie's Members of Council
;
Ross Donelly
Mangles, Secretary to the Bengal Government, and after
his retirement a Member of the Court of Directors and of
the Council of the Secretary of State
;
Sir Henry Ricketts,
K.C.S.I., a Member of Council under Lord Hardinge
;
and Sir Robert Hamilton, K.C.B., the Governor-General's
Agent in Central India during the Mutiny, who had the
courage to override the orders of the Governor-General on
the memorable occasion of March 1858.
I have particularised the foregoing members of the service
as all of them went, like Brian Hodgson, to Bengal, and
continued his friends throughout his career. Other distin-
guished officers, including Sir Daniel Elliott and Sir John
Pollard Willoughby, who were with him at Haileybury
went to Madras and Bombay. But with few exceptions
these soon fell out of his knowledge.
The life at Haileybury seems to have somewhat resembled
that at the Universities during the same period, except that
there was rather less dissipation and a more direct control.
Hodgson frequently got a day's hunting, and he seems to
have enjoyed a good deal of hospitality from the families in
the neighbourhood. The Lady Salisbury of that time took
notice of the lad one day when he was struggling on a hired
horse to keep in the first flight with the hounds, and her
balls at Hatfield were among the most brilliant recollections
of his Haileybury days. But it was the distinguished
statesmen who from time to time complimented the College
by a visit that impressed themselves most deeply on his
memory. On one occasion the family friend, Mr. James
20 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap
Pattison^ who had given Brian his nomination, and who
was also an intimate friend of George Canning, came
down with the celebrated Minister to Haileybury and
brought him into young Hodgson's room. Canning, then
President of the Board of Control, was full of the thoughts
of Indian imperial sway which made him accept the
Governor-Generalship some years later.^
"
He stood with his back to the fire," Hodgson used to
relate,
"
and put his hand inside the breast of his coat,
pouring forth words which fired my ambition. He drew a
brilliant sketch of the career possible for an Indian civilian,
showing how everything was open to a man of ability and
industry up to the Governor-Generalship. Then telling me
to read Orme and learn how India had been won, he took
up the story himself, and in a quarter of an hour had given
me a most masterly resume of Indian history." Those
fifteen minutes put ideas and aspirations into Brian's head
which were destined to bear fruit in due season. The great
Minister had touched the youth with the magic wand of his
genius, and one touch sufficed.
During his holidays Brian was much at the house
of his kinsman Robert Hodgson, Dean of Carlisle. The
Dean, being also Rector of St. George's Hanover Square,
resided most of the year in town, and having a clever wife,
his house in Grosvenor Street was a popular one. Brian
became a devoted admirer of the Dean's daughters, more
especially of Henrietta who grew up into a woman of
beauty and of social charms. He also spent many
happy days in the quiet rectory of his uncle Edward
1
Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors in 1817, when Hodgson
was at Haileybury ;
Chairman in the following year, 181
8,
and again in
1822.
2
On the news of the intended retirement of the Marquess of Hastings
reaching England early in 1822. But before Canning sailed Lord
Castlereagh's tragic death made it necessary that Canning should fill
his place at the Foreign Office, and with many regrets he resigned the
Governor-Generalship in the autumn of the same year. Lord Amherst
went out instead.
I
II.] OLD HAILEYBURY: 1816
1817. 21
Hodgson/ whose first wife, a highly accomplished musician,
made Moore's Irish melodies an abiding memory for
Brian : a memory that often came back to him in the
loneliness of his Himalayan years. To his cousin the son
of the Rector, and now Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton,
I gratefully acknowledge my debt for interesting materials
for this book. But Brian's own home, with its beautiful
and talented mother, the generous patient father, and the
spirited group of sisters and brothers now looking out like
himself with expectant eyes upon the world, remained as
ever the dominant chord in his life.
^
Rector of Rickmansworth.
[22]
CHAPTER III.
FIRST YEAR IN INDIA.
CALCUTTA, 1818-1S19,
HAVING
passed out of Haileybury as medallist and
head of his term in December
1817/
Brian Houghton
Hodgson sailed in the following year round the Cape of
Good Hope to Calcutta.
'
His Haileybury certificate runs thus
:
'*
We, the Principal and Professors of the East India College, do
hereby testify that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson having been nomi-
nated a Student of the College by the Court of Directors of the
Honourable East India Company, has resided therein Four Terms, and
has duly conformed himself to the Statutes and Regulations of the
College.
"The said Brian Houghton Hodgson has also attended the Public
Examinations of May 1816, in which he gained a prize in Bengalese,
and passed with great credit in other departments; December 1816,
in which he gained a prize in Bengalese, and was highly distinguished
in other departments; May 1817, in which he gained a prize in
Classics, a prize in Political Economy, a prize in Bengalese, and was
highly distinguished in other departments; December 1817, in which
he gained the medal in Classics, a prize in Bengalese, and was highly
distinguished in other departments.
*'
The College Council, in consideration of his distinguished Industry,
Proficiency, and Conduct, place him in the First Class
of
Merit; and
assign him the Rank
of
First on the List of Students now leaving
College for the Presidency of Fort William.
"
Given under the College Seal, and signed in behalf of the College
Council, this fifth day of December in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and seventeen."
Signed,
J.
H. Batten, Principal.
Countersigned,
Edward Lewton, Registrar.
BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON. iei7-/eTAT 17.
CHAP. III.] FIRST YEAR IN INDIA: 1818
1819. 23
The Englishmen of those days started early in life.
Hodgson was, after all, only a lad of seventeen, with
enough of Latin and Greek to enable him to quote Horace
or to make an iambic, a fair specimen of the sixth form
boy at a public school in the present day. But he carried
with him from Haileybury a habit of original observation
which a sixth form boy rarely imbibes at our public schools.
Its professorial system of imparting instruction by means
of lectures, although compatible with a good deal of
indolence and sham work, was highly stimulating to the
keener class of youthful intellects. In the hands of
Malthus political economy became a living science, dealing
with the actual facts and needs of humanity, and quicken-
ing young minds with ideas instead of cramming them
with formulae.
Malthus was, in fact, the dominant influence in Hodgson's
intellectual horoscope. He found him a young aristocrat
in social feelings and sympathies
;
he left him an advanced
liberal in politics. But for the inspiration of Malthus,
the youthful civilian would scarcely have embarked on a
comprehensive study of the institutions and constitutional
problems of Nepal, or struck into the great conflict over
popular education in India with a scheme of his own.
How closely the lad had listened to Malthus' lectures,
his prize in Political Economy at Haileybury attests.
Hodgson to the end of his life used to sum up his political
creed in a quotation, learned at Haileybury from Bacon's
Essay of Innovations :
"
All this is true, if time stood
still : which, contrariwise, moveth so round that a froward
retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation
;
and they that reverence too much old times are but a scorn
to the new."
The love of liberty and the generous respect for the
liberties of others, with a belief in their capacity for ex-
ercising those liberties aright, which Malthus impressed on
Hodgson's awakening mind, resisted the effacing influences
of time and of a bureaucratic career. Even when, as a man
24 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
of eighty-six, Hodgson had to choose between the old
liberalism now identified with the Unionist party in politics,
and the new liberalism associated with Irish home-rule, he
did not fear to take the plunge. Although living in a circle
of Tory country-gentlemen, he followed Mr. Gladstone in
all the later developments of that statesman's policy, and
died with an unshaken belief in its results. This courageous
belief in the future of humanity, and in the power of a
people to work out its own salvation, gave a beautiful
youthfulness to his old age. It furnishes the key to many
of the activities of his life. If one had to differ from him
as to its practical application, one could not withhold a
feeling of reverence for the enthusiasm which years did not
chill nor public disappointments daunt.
Meanwhile Hodgson was a young civilian not yet eighteen.
The scheme of a junior civilian's training in those days
included at least a year at the College of Fort William in
Calcutta, for the further study of the native languages and
of Indian law. Brian accordingly found himself a member
of a small and close fraternity of very young men, who had
a good deal of leisure on their hands and who were deter-
mined to enjoy it. The contemporary descriptions of their
life are not always edifying. As a whole they seem to have
been a body of spirited English lads let loose a little early
in life, tasting sometimes too freely of the first pleasures of
an independent income, and indulging in extravagances
at which they afterwards smiled, but which crippled not
a few for many a year. Calcutta society looked at their
follies with a lenient eye, and made much of those who
cared for its blandishments. For after all they were a well-
spring of perpetual youth in a small official community
which was apt to feel very weary
;
almost all of them had
friends or relatives among the seniors
;
and each one of
them had the possibilities of a brilliant career.
It is difficult for an Anglo-Indian of the present day to
realise how small and how official Calcutta then was.
The new Charter in 1813 had broken down the Company's
III.] FIRST YEAR IN INDIA: 1818-1819.
2$
monopoly of the East India trade, while maintaining it
as regards China. But the influx of independent mer-
chants and capitalists who were to raise Calcutta to one
of the commercial capitals of the world had scarcely set
in. The non-official Englishman, unless he belonged to
one of the half-dozen great agency houses closely united
by family ties with the Services, was regarded as an
inferior person. Under the old system, if a merchant or
planter did not come out under the protection of the
Company, he was an
"
Interloper " in the eye of the law.
He still remained an interloper in the eye of society. On
his part, he regarded the governing body with the jealousy,
and sometimes with the injustice, of an outsider. A plate
published in London in 1816, the year that Hodgson
entered Haileybury, shows the pagoda tree as
"
Exhausted,"
but with Indian officials still eagerly clambering up the
mutilated stem, which an elephant is breaking off at the
root.
A period of rapid fortunes in India had given place
to one of commonplace ostentation. The depravity of
the
"
nabobs " of the last century, whom Burke and
Sheridan scourgedsometimes laying the lash on the
wrong shoulders as is the way with oratorshad been
followed by the dull and pompous officials over whom
Thackeray, himself the son and grandson of Bengal
civilians, made savage laughter. Barwell bawling to his
footmen to
"
bring round more curricles
"
was succeeded
in English literature by the fatuous coward Josh. Sedley,
and by Binnie the plethoric cynic. Sedley is Thackeray's
portrait of the ignoble class of Bengal civilians of the pre-
Haileybury type, which still supplied some of the leaders
of Calcutta society at the time of Hodgson's arrival.
Haileybury, and the aims which Haileybury repre-
sented, had during the preceding twelve years done
something to improve upon that type. But although
the Indian services then, as at all times, produced high-
minded and able men, and administrators who have never
26 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
been surpassed, the general tone of Calcutta society
remained much more orientalised than it now is. India
was a place of exile to a degree which we of the present
day can scarcely understand, and the exiles found far
fewer interests outside the routine of their ordinary work.
The alleviations of Indian existence which we regard as
matters of coursea cheap and abundant supply of ice,
the European telegrams every morning at breakfast in
varied and well-written newspapers, the weekly mail from
England with its budget of letters and new books, the
summer trip to the hills, and the inexpensive frequent
holiday homewere all unknown to our forerunners in
Bengal at the beginning of the century.
On the other hand they had the hookah, the heavy
midday meal, and the still heavier afternoon sleep. Eng-
lish ladies, although more numerous than formerly, had
not yet acquired an absolute predominance in Calcutta, or
completely imposed their social standards. Some of the
great Calcutta houses have wings or annexes which are
still pointed out as the native female apartments of
those days. Calcutta society, which now strikes a new-
comer as bright and friendly, only left an impression
of weariness in the memoirs of a century ago. Macaulay's
recollections of the Calcutta dinner-parties as combining
the dulness of a State banquet and the confusion of a
shilling ordinary refer to a period not long after Hodgson's
arrival.
This unattractive picture of Anglo-Indian society in its
earlier developments is borne out by contemporary accounts
from widely different hands. It was the P. and O. Company
that Europcanised the social life of Calcutta. Indeed the
struggle between Eastern and Western influences upon the
habits and standards of our countrymen in India forms
not the least curious chapter in the history of our Asiatic
rule. Even towards the end of the transition stage, the
stage contemporary with Brian Hodgson's service in India,
the tone was widely different from what it now is. The
III.] FIRST YEAR IN INDIA: 1818
1819. 27
Bombay Courier for 1830/
the letters of a lady written
from Madras a few years afterwards," and the Rev. Charles
Acland's experiences in Bengal from 1842 onward, tell
the same dull unflattering tale.^ Henry Martin records*
some striking examples of Indianised Englishmen in the
decade preceding Hodgson's arrival.
One of the forgotten benefits conferred by Haileybury
upon Anglo-Indian society was its tendency to stamp the
old indulgences as bad form. For Haileybury disciplined
the young civilians in the use of comparative liberty, and
imbued them in some measure with the responsibilities
which attach to independence. They came out to India
with much the same feeling in regard to the more vulgar
forms of dissipation as that of undergraduates at the
Universities in their third year. Hodgson, who always
remembered his mother's look of disgust when gentlemen
who had drunk more than enough lurched into her
drawing-room after dinner, did not find orgies amusing.
He used to tell how, on arriving in Calcutta, the colonel
of a crack regiment and his fellow-passenger on the voyage
asked him to dine at mess. No sooner was the cloth re-
moved than several large cases of wine, which the hospit-
able colonel had brought out with him, were deposited on
the floor. The host then locked the door, put the key into
his pocket, and, turning to the company, said,
"
There,
gentlemen, is your night's work." Before the evening
was over, most of the gallant entertainers and their guests
were under the table. But the colonel magnanimously
allowed Hodgson to pass the bottle on the score of his
youth, and did not oblige him to sit out the revel.
'
Quoted in Dr. George Smith's Life ofJohn Wilso7i, D.D., F.R.S.,
P-
54-
^
Letters
from Madras duiing the Years 1836
1839,
by a Lady.
John Murray,
1843.
^
A Popular Account
of
the Manners and Customs
of
India, by the
Rev. Charles Acland, late Chaplain of Cuttack.
*
Letter dated March 14th, i8o8.
Traill's
Report, Appendices,
p.
vii.
-
Idem., Statement D.
^
In 1824 Traill reported
187,273
bisis (or units of land
vide post,
p. 50)
as "waste," against
215,310 under cultivation. But it does not
appear how much of the
"
waste
"
in Kumaun and Garhwal was really
cultivable.Traill's Report, Supplementary Statement,
p.
viii. Reprint
of 1851.
^
There were
39,369
houses in the revenue-paying villages of
Kumaun including Garhwal,
4,599
in the villages assigned to temples,
and 681 in the revenue-free villages.Traill's Report, Appendices,
Statement A.
48
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [cpiap.
of hamlets consisting pf one house," says Traill,
"
is very
great."
^
This settlement, based on the data collected in 1819-20,
carried a little further the principles which had been acted
on since our deliverance of the country from Gurkha oppres-
sion six years previously. Broadly speaking, it assigned
a fixed demand to each village, based upon an examination
of the actual capabilities of the village lands. The Gurkha
system had been one of confiscation and squeezes.
"
The
country," wrote Traill in his Report of 1822-23, "including
all the villages hitherto reserved for the support of the
Court and their attendants, was parcelled out in separate
assignments to the invading army."
"
The villages were
everywhere assessed rather on a consideration of the sup-
posed means of the inhabitants than on any computation
of their agricultural produce. Balances soon ensued, to
liquidate which the family and effects of the defaulter
were seized and sold. The consequent depopulation was
rapid and excessive."
"
For a time indeed it seemed that,
under Gurkha rule, the only alternative for the Kumaun
hill-men lay between flight to the jungles and the sale of
themselves and their women and children into slavery on
the Indian plains.
It was in vain that the central Gurkha Government in
Nepal tried to arrest the depopulation of Kumaun. It had,
indeed, issued a commission of inquiry from the Nepalese
capital to fix the Kumaun revenues at reasonable rates.
Much of its machinery for the collection of the revenue,
and its registers of village cultivation, were continued by
the British administration. But notwithstanding a Gurkha
inspection of the resources of each village, the Gurkha
"
as.sessment must be viewed," says Traill,
"
rather as a
tax founded on the number of inhabitants than on the
extent of cultivation." " In spite of an elaborate system
1
Report, p. 12. Reprint of 1851.
^
Traill's Report,
pp. 41, 42. Agra reprint, 1851.
*
Traill's Report,
p. 42.
IV.] FIRST APPOINTMENT: 18191820.
49
of returns and registers, made up village by village and
bearing the seal of the Gurkha State, "the absence of a
controlling power on the spot rendered the arrangement
almost nugatory."
^
The Gurkha revenue-agents and soldiers squeezed the
last drop out of the people in Kumaun
;
in the Garhwal
district their exactions were so heavy that even the Gurkha
military chiefs found it impossible to enforce them. We
have seen that the legal demand of the Gurkha
Govern-
ment, apart from the extortions of its local agents and
their underlings, amounted to the double assessment which
our officers thought reasonable when the province passed
under British rule. According to the Gurkha system, the
cultivators who remained were responsible for making good
the whole revenue. But the depopulation under the Gurkha
oppressions had rendered it impossible for the Gurkha
taskmasters to wring the full demand out of the remaining
inhabitants. Fiscal brutalities and depopulation kept pace
together, the revenue balances under the Gurkhas
"
annu-
ally increasing from the attempt to enforce the full
demand."
^
The settlement of 1820-21, following upon Traill's previous
reforms, put an end to this state of things for ever. In
order to adjust fairly the taxation of the land, Traill and
Hodgson made a sort of revenue census. They not only
counted the villages and arranged them into the four classes
mentioned on
p.
47
;
they also made a careful estimate
of the number of houses and the quantity of cultivated
land in each village, together with the number of buffaloes,
cows, and oxen. The tabular statements which they were
thus enabled to prepare look very complete. But, as a
matter of fact, Traill and Hodgson had to arrive at the
area under cultivation by a series of guesses instead of
by actual measurement. They adopted the native system,
current throughout the hills, of calculating the area of
fields by the supposed quantity of grain which would be
*
Traill's Report for
1822-23, p. 42.
*
Idem.,
p. 42.
4
50
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
required to sow them. The unit of land was the bisi, which,
as the term implies, meant twenty
"
measures of seed."
^
The superficial area of a dz'sz of land differed widely, as the
grain was sown much more sparsely on poor lands near the
summit of the cultivated hill-sides, than on rich lands at
the base of the mountains or on alluvial patches in the
valleys. It was the only method of arriving at an equitable
adjustment of the land-tax then practicable in Kumaun,
and it rendered the demand from each village fairly pro-
portionate to the aggregate produce of the village lands.
With these materials before him and proceeding as far
as possible on the old native registers, Traill assisted
by Hodgson let out the revenue-paying area of the pro-
vince in
7,883
lots, a lot usually corresponding to a
village.^ But before doing so they had to determine a
question, the most important of all in its influence on the
contentment of the people. Who was the person in each
village entitled to receive the Government lease ? Here
too they followed the old native system, and merely carried
our administrative arrangements a step further along the
lines adopted on our first acquisition of Kumaun in 18
15.
Almost every village had its representative man, who
was recognised to have a right to engage for the land-
revenue with the ruling Power. This title he might
derive from several distinct sources : from hereditary pre-
scription, or from election by the co-sharers in the village
lands, or in the case of clan-communities by election of
the clans. As a rule a son succeeded his father in the
office, unless deemed incapable by reason of youth or of
feebleness of character, in which case the village co-sharers
or the clansmen (as the case might be) chose another
representative from among themselves.
The representative or head-man
^
of a Kumaun village
1
Nalis.
*
There were
7,902
"
khalsa," or direct revenue-paying villages, and
7,883
separate leases.Traill's Report for 1822-23, Appendices, State-
ments A. and D.
^
Padhan, a vernacular corruption of the Sanskrit pradhan, chief,
IV.] FIRST APPOINTMENT: 1819 1820.
5
1
had distinct privileges and distinct obligations. He paid
the land-tax, in the first place for his own share of the
cultivated lands. With the aid of the village assembly the
head-man allotted a fair proportion of the total village as-
sessment to each cultivator, collected the whole, and handed
it over to the revenue officer. He managed the distribution
of the uncultivated lands, letting them out to applicants
and accounting for their rental to the co-parcenary village
body. Perhaps the most difficult duty of the head-man
was to make good the losses arising from fields falling out
of cultivation. The death of a husbandman without heirs,
or his migration to another village, left for the moment
a deficit in the general collections. This deficit the head-
man had to raise.^ He called a
"
general assembly
"
of the
village co-sharers, and with their consent added a per-
centage to the land-tax of each of the co-parceners in the
cultivated lands. The vacant holding passed for the time
into the general stock of uncultivated lands, in which the
villagers had rights in common. The remuneration of the
head-man consisted of an allotment of revenue-free land,^
averaging about five per cent of the whole cultivated area
in Kumaun proper, together with fees on marriages.
A useful representative person of this sort grew into
importance under the British system of adjusting the
principal. The term was used throughout India for widely different
classes of functionaries, from the Prime Minister at a Hindu Court,
and the eight chief civil and military officers of the Maratha State as
established by Sivaji, to a village head-man, or a respectable cultivator
with hereditary rights.
'
For an account of this system of joint responsibility, by which the
village commune had to make up the land-tax of deceased or defaulting
members, see my BengalMS. Records
(4
vols.,
1894),
Introduction,
p.
54,
etc. Under the Mughal revenue settlements it developed into a regular
abwai or extra tax, the najai.
^
Termed Hek Padhatichari, and amounting practically to 5,000 bisis
out of a total of 101,924 bisis of revenue-paying land in Kumaun
proper. In the Garhwal district the system varied. Traill's Report
for 1822-23,
P-
52,
compared with Appendices, Statement D.
52
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
land-revenue fairly to the capabilities of each village.
He became
"
the village ministerial officer entrusted with
the collection of the Government demand, and with the
supervision of the village police."
^
During the inquiries
of Traill and Hodgson in 1819-20, he formed an invaluable
link between the British officers and the people. It was
from constant intercourse with the village head-men that
the two young investigators chiefly obtained the informa-
tion which made up Traill's Statistical Sketch
of
Kumaun
two years later.
The collection of the materials for that work opened out
a new world to Hodgson, although his share in collecting
them was a subordinate one. It is impossible now to
distinguish his contributions. But the habit of systematic
inquiry into the population, their history, language,
social institutions, and economic conditions, which Traill
impressed upon Hodgson in his first years of service,
became the keynote of Hodgson's whole official career.
It is surprising how long a really good piece of work lives
in India. The Report for which Traill and his assistant
were gathering the materials in 1819-20 became the basis
of the administrative handbook to the province. It was
published in the Asiatick Researc/ies in 1828;" entered
largely into Batten's Settlement Reports of Kumaun from
1842 to 1848 ;
was reprinted by order of the Lieutenant-
Governor of the North-Western Provinces in 185 1
;
supplied the materials for the account of Kumaun
^
written
by Mr. Atkinson^ in
1877
for the Statistical Survey of
India
;
and then started life afresh in the article
"
Kumaun
"
'
Traill, quoted in
J.
H. Batten's Report on Garhwal, dated
August loth, 1842, para. 20.
2
Under the title of
"
Statistical Sketch of Kumaun," Asiatick Re-
searches, Vol. XVI. (Calcutta, 1828), pp. 137-234.
^
As No. I of The Official
Reports
of
the Province
of
Kumaun.
Secundra Orphan Press, Agra, 1851.
Dated Naini Tal, August 31st, 1877, and printed in the Gazetteer
volumes of the North-Western Provinces:
5
Mr. E. T. Atkinson afterwards became Comptroller-General
of
IV.] FIRST APPOINTMENT: 1819 1820.
53
in the Imperial Gazetteer
of
India. That article reproduced
in 1886 some of the ipsissima verba of Traill written in 1823.
If any young Indian civilian, in the solitude and ill-
health amid which some of his earlier years may be spent,
feels inclined to despond about the reality of his work, let
him read the foregoing paragraph. No lives could be
more solitary than those of Traill and Hodgson in Kumaun,
and few civilians have had to struggle so hard with ill-
health as the latter during the first part of his Indian
service. Yet not only their work but their very words are
alive and bearing fruit to this day.
There is something very refreshing in the sight of these
two young men setting to work with almost boyish zest
to take stock of the terra incognita of a new British province.
They found the population divided into two classes
:
human beings and ghosts. Of both classes Traill furnishes
an equally serious account. The ethnical origin of the
various human races in the mountains is discussed, and a
realistic description of their customs winds up with a
tribute to their integrity.
"
Of the honesty of the hill
people," writes Traill,
"
too much praise cannot be given.
Property of all kinds is left exposed in every way, without
fear and without loss. In those districts whence periodical
migration to the Tarai takes place, the villages are left
with almost a single occupant during half the year, and
though a great part of the property of the villagers remains
in their houses, no precaution is deemed necessary, except
securing the doors against the ingress of animals, which is
done by a bar of wood, the use of locks being as yet
confined to the higher classes. In their pecuniary trans-
actions with each other, the agricultural classes have rarely
recourse to written engagements ; bargains concluded by
the parties joining hands {JtatJt mama) in token of assent
Finance to the Government of India, and filled the office of President
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His comparatively early death cut
short a career of usefulness both to the Indian administration and to
Oriental scholarship.
54
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
prove equally effectual and binding as if secured by
parchment and seals."
^
But the most complete details are reserved for
"
the
ghost tribe," which Traill informs us
"
is divided into many
varieties. The first and most formidable is the Bhut," or
ghosts of persons who have died a violent death, by murder,
drowning, or public execution, and to whose manes due
funeral honours have not been paid. These require to
be appeased by sacrifices and offerings.
"
Masan or imps
are the ghosts of young children, the bodies of whom
are buried and not burnt, and who prowl about the villages
in the shape of bears and other wild animals. Tola or
will-o'-the-wisps are ghosts of bachelors, that is males who
may die at mature age unmarried," dwellers in solitary
places and contemned by other ghosts. The Airi or ghosts
of persons killed in hunting wandered about the forest in
which their death occurred, and might be heard from time
to time hallooing to their spectral dogs. The Acheri or
hill fairies were the ghosts of young female children, who
flitted about the tops of mountains, producing wondrous
optical illusions among the distant ranges, and descending
at dusk to play in the valleys. The Deos or demons
formed a numerous and malignant class
;
"
indeed scarce a
village but has its peculiar Deo."
^
I have condensed the foregoing paragraph to show
the minute character of the inquiries conducted by Traill
and his assistant not only into the social conditions, but
also into the inner life of the people. It would be easy to
multiply interesting examples of the customs and super-
stitions which they were thus enabled to record. I confine
myself to one more passage from Traill's Report dealing
with the judicial procedure by ordeal which he found in
full work in Kumaun.
"
Three forms of ordeal were in common use : First, the
Gola Dip, which consists in receiving in the palms of the
'
Traill's Report,
p. 64. Reprint of 185 1.
'
Traill's Report for 1822-23,
PP-
65-67.
IV.] FIRST APPOINTMENT: 18191820.
55
hands, and carrying to a certain distance, a red-hot bar of
iron. Second, the Karai Dip, in which the hand is plunged
into a vessel of boiling oil, in which cases the test of truth
is the absence of marks of burning on the hand. Third,
Tarazii-ka Dip : in this the person undergoing the ordeal
was weighed at night, against stones which were then
carefully deposited under lock and key and the seal of the
superintending officer. On the following morning, after a
variety of ceremonies, the appellant was again weighed, and
the substantiation of his cause depended on his proving
heavier than on the preceding evening.
"
The Tir-ka Dip, in which the person remained with his
head submerged in water, while another ran the distance of
a bowshot and back, was sometimes resorted to. The
Gurkha governors introduced another mode of trial by
water, in which two boys, both unable to swim, were thrown
into a pond of water, and the longest liver gained the cause.
Formerly, poison was, in very particular causes, resorted to
as the criterion of innocence : a given dose of a particular
root was administered, and the party, if he survived, was
absolved. A further mode of appeal to the interposition of
the deity was by placing the sum of money, or a bit of earth
from the land in dispute, in a temple before the idol.
Either one of the parties volunteering such test then, with
imprecations on himself if false, took up the article in
question. Supposing no death to occur within six months
in his immediate family, he gained his cause ; on the
contrary, he was cast in the event of being visited with any
great calamity or if afflicted with severe sickness during
that period."^
Hodgson seems to have given satisfaction to his young
chief, and in 1820 an unexpected piece of promotion befell
him. Mr. Stuart the assistant to the British Resident at
the Court of Nepal died,^ and the Resident, Gardner,
'
Traill's Report,
pp. 29,
30.
-
Robert Stuart, Haileybury 1808-9; India 1810; died March 14th,
1820.
56
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap. iv.
wanted a thoroughly competent man to replace him.
Stuart had been a contemporary of Traill at Haileybury,
and went out to India in the same year. Traill was
Gardner's assistant in Kumaun, as Stuart was his assistant
in Nepal. Gardner would naturally consult Traill in filling
the vacant post, and probably on Traill's recommendation
Hodgson was appointed.
Sir Charles D'Oyly may have put in a good word for
him at headquarters in Calcutta, but it is almost certain
that so junior an officer as Hodgson would not have been
selected for this responsible position if he had not already
made his mark and been strongly recommended by his
immediate superior. Indeed it is difficult to imagine a
better training (brief as it was) for his new duties at the
Gurkha capital of Nepal than Hodgson received in
Kumaun. He learned at first hand the process by which
a territory was being redeemed from Gurkha misrule and
converted into a prosperous British province.
Traill started in 1815 on the old native methods of
administration, except when they conflicted with justice
or humanity. By three years of experimental settlements
^
he patiently found out in what particulars those methods
were defective. He then commenced a careful investiga-
tion of the conditions and actual capabilities of the province,
with a view to a more permanent arrangement based on
the ascertained facts. These inquiries, conducted throughout
1818-20, yielded the materials for the fourth British settle-
ment of Kumaun in 1820-21,' and for the general Report
on the province for 1822-23. Traill had the art of getting
the most out of his assistants and of stamping his personality
upon them. In less than two years he not only taught
Hodgson how to inquire, but also implanted in him a love
of inquiry which was destined to extend, in more than
one direction, the boundaries of human knowledge.
India
Office
MS. Records.
v.] EARLY YEARS IN NEPAL: 1820
1824.
59
Admiral Lord Gardner, entered the Bengal Civil Service in
1802. He early distinguished himself in political employ-
ment, and in the districts which had formed the scene of
Lord Lake's campaign of 1802-3. In 18
14
the Marquess
of Hastings employed the two cousins Edward and
William Gardner in the central or Kumaun expedition
against the Gurkha power.
The success of its operations was in no small measure
due to Lieut.-Colonel William Linnasus Gardner's tact
and knowledge of the native character. Edward, as
political officer with the force, put the seal of peace upon
the conquest of Kumaun. Colonel W. L. Gardner after
further service in Central India, the North-Western
Provinces and Burma, at the head of his irregular cavalry
known as Gardner's Corps,^ settled down with his princess
on a property which they bought in Etah District, and
there they both died within a month of each other at a
ripe age in
1835. His cousin the Honourable Edward
became, as we have seen, the first Commissioner of
Kumaun, and was promoted by Lord Hastings after the
ratification of the Treaty of Segauli to be the first British
Resident in Nepal.
Hodgson came to Nepal at a time when this stirring
period had given place to a reaction of sullen acquiescence.
After half a century of aggression and insolence the
Nepalese had been forced to submit to our arms. The
Company's earlier relations with them tended, indeed, to
encourage a contempt for its power.^ In
1767,
at the time
of the Gurkha usurpation of Nepal, we had declared in
favour of the legitimate but effete Newar Raja of Kath-
mandu, and despatched to his aid a force which never
'
Otherwise the 2nd Local Horse.
-
The following summary is condensed from Sir Charles Aitchison's
Treaties and Engage?netits, Vol. II., Part III. (Ed.
1876) ; H. T.
Prinsep's History
of
the Political a?id Military Transactions in Ifidia
during the Administration of the Marquess of Hastings, 1813-1823,
Vol. I. (Ed.
1825) ; and General Sir John Malcolm's Political History
of
India
from 1784/0 1823
(Ed. 1826).
6o LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
got farther than the jungly outskirts of the countrythe
deadly Tarai.
In 1792
the Gurkhas, having completely subjugated
Nepal, were encroaching on Tibet and advanced as far
as Digarchi, the Lama of which was spiritual father to the
Emperor of China. The Chinese Emperor replied to
their insolence by a mighty army. The Nepal Court
sought the favour of the British by means of a commercial
treaty/ and Lord Cornwallis offered to mediate between
China and Nepal. But before our envoy reached the
frontier, the Chinese general had imposed an ignominious
submission on the Nepalese within a few miles of their
capital Kathmandu.
During the first twenty-five years of our intercourse
we had thus appeared to Nepal equally incapable as an
opponent and as an ally. This tradition survived during
a generation, and, as we shall see, affected the attitude of
the Nepal Court throughout Hodgson's whole residence.
The commercial treaty of
1792
speedily became a dead
letter, the Nepalese encroached on our frontier, and a
new treaty in 1801 ended in our further discomfiture." On
that occasion we mixed ourselves up with the domestic
disputes of the reigning family in Nepal. The treaty of
1801 provided, inter alia, for the appointment of a British
representative at the Court of Kathmandu, and Captain
Knox was appointed to the post. But he was treated
with such contumely as to compel him to withdraw from
Nepal in 1803,
and on January 24th, 1804, Lord Wellesley
formally dissolved our alliance with the Nepalese.
The next eight years formed a period of unavailing
remonstrance against Gurkha aggressions along the whole
length of our frontier. The Gurkhas seized one piece of
territory after another. Only on a single occasion did
they give up their prey, and on that occasion only when a
'
Dated March ist, 1792,
and numbered LI. in Aitchison's Treaties,
Vol. II., p. 159.
Ed. 1876.
^
No. LII. in Aitchison's Treaties, II.,
pp.
161-164.
v.] EARLY YEARS IN NEPAL: 1820
1824. 6
1
British detachment was despatched to retake possession of
the lands at the point of the bayonet
(1810). In the next
year they again crossed our frontier, and their forcible
entry among an unwilling population gave rise to the first
border skirmish. Lord Minto was at length compelled to
recognise that a gradual invasion of the British districts
was being carried on. After trying in vain to effect a
settlement by commissioners, he formally called on the
Gurkha Government in June 181 3 for redress.
Before the replya most unsatisfactory onearrived,
Lord Hastings
^
had assumed the Governor-Generalship.
The alternative forced upon him was simple.
"
I might
shrink," he wrote,
"
from the declaration plighted by Lord
Minto, abandoning the property of the Company, sacri-
ficing the safety of our subjects, and staining the character
of our Government ; or I had to act up to the engagements
bequeathed to me, and to reprove the trespass of an in-
satiable neighbour."
-
The war which followed is a matter of general history,
and has been lately summarised by a military expert of
no ordinary skill.^ It must suffice here to state that, after
an unsuccessful campaign by four British columns in 18
14,
the struggle was renewed in the following year. In April
181 5 the troops under Lieut-Colonel Gardner forced
the centre of the long-extended frontier of the Nepalese
dominions, and occupied Kumaun. The fall of its capital
Almora took the heart out of the Gurkha army, already
tired of a protracted conflict, and enabled our western
column operating from the Sutlej to secure possession of
the Simla and Punjab hill-states. Our troops thus set free
in the west were employed to reinforce the British army
'
Throughout I call Lord Moira by his later and best-known title of
Marquess of Hastings.
2
Nepal Papers,
992.
Quoted, H. H. Wilson's History
of
British
India
from 1805 to
1835,
Vol. IL,
p. 76, footnote. Ed. 1846.
^
It forms Chapter IV. of the admirable monograph on The Marquess
of
Hasti7igs, written by Major Ross-of-Bladensburg, C.B., for the
Rulers of India Series,
1893.
62 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
advancing in the east from Bengal upon Kathmandu. In
the spring of 1816 it imposed terms of peace within a
short distance of that capital. After exhausting every
device of procrastination the Nepalese delivered to our
victorious general, Sir David Ochterlony,
"
at half-past two
o'clock p.m. on the 4th of March,
1816,"^
a treaty by which
they renounced all claims to the lands in dispute before
the war, ceded extensive territories, and engaged never to
employ any European or American without our consent.
Nepal thus entered into subordinate alliance to the British
power. To secure that the new relationship should be
effectually maintained, it agreed "that accredited ministers
from each shall reside at the Court of the other."
^
It was this Treaty of Segauli that the Honourable Edward
Gardner had been appointed in 18 16 to carry out. The
task was made easier for him by the frankly cordial atti-
tude which the Governor-General adopted towards Nepal
from the moment that hostilities ceased. Lord Hastings,
"
with a view to gratify the Raja in a point which he has
much at heart,"
'^
authorised Gardner to soothe the wounded
honour of the Nepalese by giving them back, for a
pecuniary consideration, a part of the Tarai conveniently
separated from the British boundary.
Lord Hastings aimed at converting Nepal from a
troublesome neighbour into if possible a friendly, or at
least a quiescent, ally. Gardner was exactly the man to
give effect to the Governor-General's policy
"
that all
future causes of misunderstanding should be avoided."*
During the thirteen years of his residentship at Kath-
mandu, he preserved an attitude of benevolent non-inter-
'
Sir David Ochterlony's endorsement.Aitchison's Treaties, Vol. II.,
p.
168. Ed. 1876.
2
Treaty of Segauli, Article 8.No. LIII. in Aitchison's Treaties,
Vol. II.,
pp.
166-168.
^
Memorandum of December 8th, 1816, signed "Edward Gardner";
and counterpart letter and document from the Raja of Nepal, received
on December nth, 1816.Aitchison's Treaties^ Vol. II.,
pp.
168-171.
*
The Marquess
of
Hastings, by Major Ross-of-Bladensburg,
p. jj.
v.] EARLY YEARS IN NEPAL: 1820
1824. 63
ferencc and abstained from raising any new questions.
That long period added not a single document to our
public engagements with Nepal, and Sir Charles Aitchison's
authoritative narrative of our diplomatic transactions passes
without comment from 18 16 to 1832.^ This policy of non-
intervention was rendered possible by the long predomin-
ance of the minister Bhim Sen Thappa, who had witnessed
the whole course of the war and had definitely although
reluctantly recognised the invincible force of the British
arms.
Mr. Gardner found Bhim Sen in complete control of the
factions which made up the Gurkha nation. Soon after
Gardner's arrival at Kathmandu the nominal Raja died,
leaving an infant two years old as his successor. Bhim
Sen remained in power as Prime Minister, with the Queen-
Mother as nominal Regent during the long minority. He
conciliated the Gurkha chiefs by keeping up a large
standing army, and by a display of almost insolent indif-
ference to the British Resident. At the same time he
avoided any cause of actual rupture with the English
power. Gardner perfectly understood the position. His
business was to do nothing, so he and the Prime Minister,
while privately good friends, maintained in public an
attitude of haughty aloofness, like two estimable augurs
without a wink or a betraying smile.
Hodgson too was not long in realising the situation.
After the first pleasure in his promotion wore off, he by
no means relished the prospect of doing nothing for an
indefinite period in an out-of-the-way corner of India.
Gardner, a man of only thirty-six in 1830, was evidently
a fixture in Nepal for life. Hodgson, fresh from his robust
training in Kumaun, shrank from so prolonged a study in
the art of looking on. Instead of the world of administra-
tive activities into which Traill had launched him, he now
found himself shut up in the narrow round of Residency
routine, and forbidden to stray further than a morning's
Aitchison's Treaties and E7igagements, Vol. II., p. 152. Ed. 1876.
64
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
ride from its walls. His friends at headquarters bestirred
themselves, his Persian proficiency at College remained on
record, and after two years of laissez-faire in Nepal he
was brought into the Foreign Office, Calcutta, as acting
Deputy-Secretary in the Persian Department.^
So in 1822, after barely five years in India, Hodgson's
great chance in life came to him. The Deputy-Secretary-
ship was in itself one of the chief prizes of the junior
service. It might lead to the very highest positionsto
Governor-General's Agencies, to Council, or to the govern-
ment of a province. It gave almost certain opportunities
for personal distinction. A Bengal civilian with a fair
amount of talent and industry had only to follow step by
step the line of promotion which it naturally opened up,
in order to enjoy an interesting and a lucrative career.
But before long it became apparent that the pleasant
places at headquarters were not to fall to Hodgson's lot.
The climatic complaints which had formerly driven him
from Calcutta again fastened on him, and with a more
lasting hold.
The Calcutta autumn of 1823, like that of 18
19,
tried
him severely, and by the end of the year the old alter-
native was once more forced upon him, an appointment
in the hills or a grave on the plains. To him also as to
many an eager soul, from the days of Baruch the son of
Neriah downwards, came the message :
"
And seekest thou
to do great things for thyself ?
"
A voyage to England
might have restored his health, and opened afresh to him
the brilliant career which stretched its vista before his eyes.
But a voyage to England was for him impossible. He
had already become the bread-winner of an unprosperous
far-off home, and he could not intermit the support on
which his parents in large measure depended.
In the present case there was no means of breaking the
fall. The office of Assistant at the Nepalese Residency
had been filled up, and Hodgson
"
at the beginning of
*
November 1822.
hidia
Office
MS. Records.
v.] EARLY YEARS IN NEPAL: 1820-1824.
65
1824 returned to Kathmandu to assume charge of the
post-office there."
^
For more than a year he recruited his
health in that subordinate post. In 1825 the assistant-
residcntship again fell vacant, and Hodgson was reappointed
to it.'- But the hope of a career in the great arenas of
Indian diplomacy and administration, opened up by the
deputy-secretaryship in the Foreign Office, had closed
to him for ever. He knew that if he were to continue to
live in India his life must be spent in Nepal.
'
Rajendra Lala Mitra, Preface to The Sanskrit BuddJiist Literature
of
Nepal {Ca\cni\.a, 1882), and India
Office
MS. Records.
-
htdia
Office
MS. Records.
[66]
CHAPTER VI.
A SOLITARY HEART.
SO
in 1824 Hodgson returned to Kathmandu, seeing
clearly that for him an Indian career was circum-
scribed by stringent limits. A pent-up valley in the
Himalayas which he could traverse in a forenoon, and
beyond which no European might penetrate, was hence-
forward to be his world. How he converted his misfortune
into an opportunity, and used his isolation as the poet
employs the narrow bounds of the sonnet to perfect his
work, forms the story of this book. His life was to be one
of solitary labour, with small chance of recognition, and
indeed with little thought of the outer world. The best
memorial of him is his work, and I shall try to show what
he was by a plain statement of what he did. I thus fulfil
his own wish, a wish expressed in many gentle ways during
the last twenty-five years of his life, when I had the
happiness to call him friend.
He has, of a truth, left so vast and multiform a mass of
labour that there is danger of his individuality being buried
beneath its own creations. While therefore the following
chapters of this volume will be almost exclusively occupied
by a record of his work, it seems well, before we enter upon
it, to get a clear idea of the man. It may save interrup-
tions in the subsequent narrative, and explain certain of its
episodes, if we carry with us some perception of his per-
sonalitysensitive, high-minded, I had almost said haughty,
careless of praise yet longing for loveand of that insatiable
spirit of exploration into many regions of human know-
ledge which marked him out among men.
CHAP. VI.] A SOLITARY HEART. t7
Hodgson soon discovered that intense mental activity,
even when it brings success, docs not satisfy a man's whole
nature. He began to feel the hunger of the heart which
forms so marked a feature in the lives of Englishmen
who have rendered great services in India. Almost from
the outset he managed to send part of his salary to his
mother, and the straitened household at Canterbury had
got into the habit of depending on him for no incon-
siderable part of its income. The father never recovered
the loss of his fortune in middle life, and although his com-
mandantship of the Martello Towers led to another small
military appointment, whose duties he faithfully and
modestly discharged, it became clear that Brian must be
a main support of the family. The younger children
grew up to regard Brian as a sort of tutelary power rather
than as one of themselvesa power working in the myste-
rious distance for their good, and capable of being specially
invoked when each brother or sister had to be furnished
forth in life.
Hodgson, however, was no mere benevolent abstraction,
but a very solitary man longing for human affection. Like
many an Anglo-Indian brother and father, he felt that he
was growing to be an outsider to the dear ones at home,
and he would gladly have exchanged all their gratitude
and admiration for a little love. Especially did he feel this
in regard to his favourite sister Frances, always throughout
life his
"
dearest Fan." She was only a child of eight when
he left for India, and her early fondness for him as a
comrade soon faded away into veneration for a distant
benefactor. But veneration is rather trying to a healthy-
minded youth of twenty-five, and Hodgson, in his letters
to her, half attempted to live up to it and half tried to
break it down into some warmer sisterly feeling. A few
extracts from these letters will show the inner nature of
the man. He felt forced to play the mentor, yet hated the
part.
The first which has been preserved was written to his
68 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
sister when about fifteen. In judging of the style one must
remember that it was still the age of fraternal responsibility
and of the suppressed and ornamental position of girls.
It might have been written by an elder brother in one of
Jane
Austen's novels, and consequently contains passages
which may make a modern girl stamp her foot.
"
Kathmandu, Nepal.'
''December ist,
[1825].
"
My sweet Fan
!
A letter under date May 23rd,
from our dearest mother, gives me a charming account of
your talents, industry, and acquirements. You love music
and promise to excel. You have possessed yourself of
those elegant languages French and Italian. How I long
to hear my sweet Fanny sing an Italian song with all the
taste and feeling of a genuine lover of music ! And as you
take pains to accomplish yourself in these fascinating arts,
I doubt not that you bestow your talents and industry with
equal or greater zeal on the acquisition of more important
artsthe noble arts of self-command, of a just control over
your thoughts and affections
;
and the constraining of both
into a steady course of action sufficiently rigid in regard to
yourself, and sufficiently gentle and considerate in regard
to all others. Gentleness, dearest Fan, is the crown of
womanhood, and, when accompanied by spirit and talent,
forms the perfection of your sex in the eyes of ours.
"
I am very glad to hear you are fond of reading, because
books open sources of satisfaction more permanent, more
within our own command, more various, and more suited
to a cultivated mind than any other which this world
affords to us. Accident or good luck led me to turn my
attention early towards books, and I can assure you, from
experience, that during the past six years I have drawn
the chief joys of my life from this fount.
"
I do not, however, mean to read you a lecture, dearest
FanI am a laughing philosopher, if philosopher at all
'
Received at Boulogne, May 23rd, 1826.
VI.] A SOLITARY HEART.
69
and so little am I used to this grave mood that the deep
interest I take in your happiness could alone have moved
me to assume it. You will, my pretty one, readily believe,
and seriously think on, what a brother tells youa brother
who speaks to you from the distance of half the world.
Wisdom in the conduct of life is nothing mysterious or
hard to find. Children may comprehend it.
'
She crieth
aloud in the streets,' as Scripture says
;
and the only secret
is, not to know, but to act up to her injunctionswhich
even the most sensible and well-disposed cannot do with-
out early disciplining themselves to habits of self-denial
and of consideration for others. Let the very look of
your parents be a law to you
Itidia
Office
Records.
'
Leave for six months to Nepal on sick certificate, G. O., March 5th,
1827 ;
extended for four months on sick certificate, G. O., November
29th, 1827 ;
leave extended for twelve months in Nepal on sick certifi-
cate (which cancels his last extension), G. O., December 8th, 1827
;
and again extended for three months to rejoin, G. O., November 21st,
1828.
India Office
Records.
VI.] A SOLITARY HEART. ^l
The truth is that his youngest brother, Edward Legh
Hodgson, had this year
(1829)
to be started at Haileybury,
and the demands upon Brian's purse more than consumed
his income.
As the correspondence goes on, Hodgson keenly feels
that he is becoming more and more of a brother in the
abstract to the charming sister now blossoming into
womanhood. He envies the warmer relationship between
the younger members of the family.
"
Trust me, sweet
Fan," he writes on September 22nd, 1829,
"there lives not
a person, not even
'
Darling Will,' who loves you more
than I do." He thanks her for her lively letter and hopes
she is as cheerful in actual life.
"
Sure I am that that
eternal sunshine of the mind which makes us prized and
cherished wherever we go is the best gift of Heaven when
it is constitutional, and one which it is our first duty to
strive to possess ourselves of, if we are not naturally
endowed with it. By this, however, I do not mean the
shining with a glaring lustre in large parties, but the
shedding the
'
useful light ' of cheerfulness round the little
circles in which we ordinarily dwell. The former is entirely
a vulgar merit, but the latter, the crown of manhood, and
yet more, of womanhood."
Hodgson's letters disclose the difficulty (felt by how
many a
"
big brother
"
in India
!)
of readjusting their tone,
which was once suitable to the little girl whom he had
known and loved, but who had now grown into a young
woman. She seems to have felt it also, and to have let
him know that she did. By this time Hodgson had moved
into the Residency, where he kept an open table for his
assistant and the officer of his escortthe
"
two guests
"
referred to in the following letter, dated May 7th, 1830:
"
My dearest Fan,I owe you two letters, and must
endeavour to pay them by one long if not agreeable one.
You seem vexed at me for still, as you deem, considering
you and writing to you as a child. You are utterly
72 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
mistaken, my dear sister. I entertain no such notion of
you, but, on the contrary, am thrice proud of your sense,
talents, and accomplishments
;
and as for my letters to you,
good lack, what is there for me to talk of? This is the
veriest retreat in the world, and, without change of scene,
event, or character, I live on in it, as from day to day, so
from year to year.
"
What shall I say to a mercurial, accomplished girl of
your age unless I draw upon my imagination for topics ?
Shall I be content to tell you that I usually, at this season
when the mornings are cold and foggy, rise at eight o'clock,
go to breakfast at nine, get up from the breakfast-table at
ten ? Then, alas ! indite a public letter to Government
acquainting the Right Honourable the Governor-General
of the continued disposition of the Court of Kathmandu
to maintain the relations of amity and concord for some
time past so happily established. Or turn over some of
my heaps of raw materials for the future investigation of
the manners and institutions of the Nepalese, and sigh to
see how far from sufficient for the object in view those
materials still are, after ten years of search. Or mount
my horse and follow the strenuous idleness of woodcock-
shooting
;
or take up my Cuvier and seek in him how to
dispose some of my now numerous and valuable ornitho-
logical specimens
;
or pore over some book taking a general
and scientific view of the subject of lawmore for edification,
in this last instance, than pleasure.
"
Thus, one way or other, I more or less rationally con-
sume the hours till about four o'clock, when, if I have not
been shooting, I put my hat on head, take my stick in
hand, and stroll forth, the very model of a country gentle-
man, to look at my garden, my grounds, or my farmyard.
At six, home to dress for dinner, which is served at half-
past six o'clock. Eating and drinking and chat, or billiards
or backgammon, till nine, when my two guests retire and
I draw my chair to the fireside, and; taking up the last
work that has reached me from my bookseller in Cornhill,
VI.] A SOLITARY HEART.
73
read and meditate till midnight, or haply till one o'clock.
Then to bed, and so ends the day.
"
Then for the variations. Say, I indite no solemn
trifling about amity and concord to the Governor-General,
but have some heroic tale to tell how Gopi Mohan Das, a
Nepalese, crossed the frontier, seized and carried off into
this territory from under the shadow of the Company's
wing, Deo Datt, Bengali
;
said Deo Datt having five years
before bought some timber of said Gopi Mohan, and
perseveringly excused himself from paying for the same.
"
Or perchance (as has this very hour occurred) the
Court scribe comes to me and explains how a Captain So-
and-so, the Company's public agent for supply of timber,
won't .settle his accounts with one Girdhari Choudry, a
Nepalese timber merchant. Meanwhile, in all probability,
the said Captain has already paid and settled all that was
and is due to said Choudry
;
and, moreover, has had the
unheard-of effrontery and cruelty to bid said Choudry
produce his books before a set of arbitrators of both
nations, in order that these books and those of the Captain
may show how matters stand between the litigants.
"
Say, I go not a-woodcock-shooting because birds are
sadly scarce and the toil too great for the spoil, why then
if I must ramble, and 'tis too fine weather to sit at home,
I am off to some grassy bank with my comrades and a
basket of prog, and we three dream away the day in
Jacques' style. Or haply I go alone, for my companions
are no antiquaries, and explore some old Buddhist temple
and muse and meditate, like the famous Roman amid the
Ruins, upon the changes and chances of this mutable
world. Here are before me the traces of a creed which
once divided with Brahmanism the minds of the Hindus,
but of which no visible trace, nay, not even an intelligible
legend, remains in all the vast continent of India !
"
The end of my paper ! Why then it is time to let you
know that, as the Governor-General lately passed up the
country, he stayed three days with the D'Oylys, and that
74
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
excellent woman Lady D. (for mama says I must not
call her Eliza) attacked the great man upon his usage of
me, making me do the Resident's work and giving me
only half the pay. The Right Honourable the Governor-
General said I was a proper person enough, and applauded
the talent manifested in a recent report made by me, and
added what a thousand pities it was I was so very young.
There, Mistress Fanny, you see you are not the only body
in the world who has reason to be wrathful because some
folks will have it that he or she has not come to years of
discretion ! The truth is that these are saving times, and
the Governor-General the prince of political economists.
And verily, if he does not supersede me, he will keep
me charge d'affaires
for another year for the sake of the
saving.
"
He showed my said report to the Lord Bishop, and
the Church joined the State in applauses : as the Church
told Lady D'Oyly (for the Church too is migratory in
India) when recently said Church personified, alias the
Bishop, passed Patna on his or its way down to Calcutta.
Yet I get only half-pay, and am beginning now and then
to con over Falstaffs apostrophe to Honour ! And yet I
am well and happy, and, but for our dear parents, have
enough and to spare.
"
And now, having got the advantage over you in pro-
spect, by the inditement of this so long and charming
epistle, I have a great mind to have my scold too, in
return for yours.
"
Tell me. Fan, how is it that your letters to William
come so much more from the heart than those to me? It
is like soul to one and the body to the other : and cousin
Mary too can write to dearest William ! And sister Fan
and cousin Mary can finally and decisively settle that one
brother is a dear, frolicsome, spirited fellow, fit to fill
woman's eye and heart, whilst the other is the most perfect
of beingsthat is the greatest bore, simply !
"
So long as I lived in the world I was, by all men's
VI.] A SOLITARY HEART.
75
voice, a
'
lady's man,' and truly I feel not that I am altered,
albeit I have not seen the fringe of a petticoat for eight
years, and therefore dare not speak positively. But then
I am, I must be, a bookworm ! Books I love ! But are
they all grave books ? and does my love of books make
me less bold a rider, less keen and good a shot, less able at
billiards, cricket, quoits ? Perhaps the whole secret of the
misapprehensions is, that you and Will remember each
other perfectly, you and I most imperfectly.
"
Alas, alas, and as for letters, consider what a different
condition I stand in to that of William in respect to the
letters I must write and receive from our dearest parents.
I must talk and feel gravely when I take up the pen, and
so must they. Nor can it be otherwise until, with God's
blessing, I have been enabled to take off entirely the load
that has ever pressed on them since my reason and memory
dawneda day of liberation for them, how ardently longed
for by me, and surely now not far off
!
"
Thus it is that you have come to imagine me to
yourself as a most grave and reverend senior brother, who
could not even sympathise heartily with a sister because
she was a woman. Dearest Fanny, you do me grievous
wrong by such imaginings. For wise or foolish in what-
ever degree, I have ever worshipped woman, and have ever
held her to be worthy the worship of the highest and
greatest of our sex.
"
And now I must conclude. William has lately taken
a trip to the Western Hills, and has come back to Meerut
in perfect health and spirits. A thousand thanks for your
pretty little present, which I kiss for thy sake now at this
moment as I hold it in my hand. God bless thee, dearest,
and think of me no longer as the
'
most perfect of human
beings,' but as a most affectionate brother merely, and one
whom nature made of so gay a temperament that even all
our domestic woes have not turned me serious. I never
peeped into Trophonius' cave, and never mean to do till
you cease to love me."
76 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Hodgson's hope of being appointed full Resident in
Nepal was not immediately realised. He held the officiat-
ing appointment for two years after Gardner's retirement
in 1829, but the Governor-General very properly thought
him too young for the permanent responsibility of so
involved and important a position. So in 1831 T. Herbert
Maddock (afterwards Sir Herbert) was sent to Kathmandu.
Maddock was four years senior to Hodgson and had
recently held high political offices in the Native States,
including perhaps the most important of allthe Residency
in Oudh. He soon satisfied himself that Hodgson, young
though he was, might be entrusted with the management
of the Nepalese Court, and he seems to have impressed this
view on the Governor-General.
Indeed Hodgson's work and reports had by that time
attracted high praise, not only at headquarters in Calcutta,
but also from the Court of Directors in London, Accord-
ingly, when Maddock took furlough in
1833,
Lord William
Bentinck appointed Hodgson, having just completed his
fourteenth year of service, to be Resident in Nepal.
Maddock carried away from Kathmandu a fixed opinion
as to Hodgson's sterling qualities which made him a friend
for life, and enabled him to speak with conviction in the
final crisis of Hodgson's career.
The income of the Resident was
^^4,000 a year. But
Hodgson, abstemious in his personal habits, had borrowed
sums to send home, and still owed money to his banker.
His one ambition in life was to free his parents from
the burden of debt
"
that had ever pressed on them
since his reason and memory dawned," He also spent
considerable amounts on the purchase and copying of
Buddhist or Sanskrit manuscripts, and the preparation of
zoological specimens, which he presented in a munificent
spirit to the Asiatic and other learned or scientific Societies.
But if his public and private liberality prevented him
from saving, it richly rewarded him in the way most
congenial to his nature. By this time, as we shall
VI.] A SOLITARY HEART.
^7
see in subsequent chapters, he was beginning to be
recognised in Europe as a man of unique research into
the languages, religion, and zoology of the Himalayan
regions. He had also the happiness of aiding to set
forth his youngest brother on his start in life as a Bengal
civilian in 183
1-2, and of again receiving his soldier
brother William as his guest at Kathmandu. William
had a return of ill-health in 1831,^ and spent another
whole year with Brian.
But the sense of isolation becomes more intense as the
years roll on. In
1833
he writes to his sister :
"
I am, and
long have been, secluded from society, without wife, child,
or any other object of affection." He is afraid of
"
petrify-
ing within," and begs for less respect and a warmer love.
At the same time he feels the stern pleasures of re-
sponsibility and work. Here are a few paragraphs
from a letter to
"
my dearest Fan," dated October 22nd,
1833-
"
I am thirty-threethe last thirteen years passed in
the wilderness without wife, children, or the presence of
a female. No change, no society ! What think you I
am likely then to be ? Something, at least, sweet Fan,
standing in need of more of your affection than I have
yet experienced. So entirely are we strangers to each
other's habits and occupations, that I feel the awkwardness
of a stranger in attempting to interest you in what con-
cerns me, and in asking you to repay me in kind. Alas !
this should not be, should not have been. To William
you are a constant and garrulous correspondent, and yet
William loves you not better than I do, and stands far
less in need of feminine affection. I think I shall begin
a Diary, and send it you from time to time through my
London bookseller.
"
I am, and have been since February, Resident Minister
^
Granted leave to visit Kathmandu on sick certificate for nine
months, G. O., March 5th, 1831 ;
extended for four months to rejoin,
G. O., November 4th, 1831.
India
Office
Records.
78 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
at this Court, the only independent
^
one now left in India.
Sufficient honour for thirty-three ! But my situation is
by no means so agreeable as it might be if these bar-
barians did but know their own good. Instead of which
they are insolent and hostile, and play off on us, as far
as they can and dare, the Chinese etiquette and foreign
polity. The Celestial Emperor is their idol, and, by
the way, whilst I write, the [Nepalese] sovereign himself
is passing by the Residency in all royal pomp to go three
miles in order to receive a letter which has just reached
Nepal from Pekin. There they go ! Fifty chiefs on
horseback, royalty and royalty's advisers on eight ele-
phants, and three thousand troops before and behind the
cavalcade ! They have reached the spot. The Emperor's
letter, enclosed in a cylinder covered with brocade, hangs
round the neck of a chief ; the Prince descends from his
elephant to take the epistle, a royal salute is fired, the
letter is restored to the chief, who, mounted on a spare
elephant, is placed at the head of the cavalcade, and the
cortege sweeps back to the capital.
"
Shall I tell you how I spend a day ? Breakfast at
ten, business till two. Then luncheon, after which I read
till five. From five to seven drive or ride out, dinner at
eight, chat with the gentlemen
"
till ten, and read again
till twelve or one, my bedtime. The roads are not very
carrossable, but well suited for riding at all seasons, and
I am a cheerful and bold cavalier. The valley, about
sixteen miles long and broad, is beautiful except in winter.
At present it presents an unbroken sheet of golden rice,
just ready for the sickle. When the major part of the
crop is downthere being excellent quail-shooting in the
standing patchesbut for the consciousness of doing
wrong by injuring the poor peasant, I should enjoy the
amusement. That feeling has latterly made me give up
65
being the maximum heat.
"
There is not much level space, but the undulations
of the hill's summit are graceful, and covered by superb
forest of rhododendron, oak, and numberless Laurifolias.
The sward is an emerald, and the familiar tokens it displays
of England in its daisies, fern, thistle, and colewort, are
dear to the exile ! Parallel with the course of the ridee,
one can walk and ride a native pony with ease and pleasure.
But there is no transverse development of flat ground
;
and
in the direction of either valley, a lusty bound from the
door might carry you a good way towards either
!
"
I am felling, and digging, and sowing potatoes and
oats
1805)
with a view to training
up an Indian diplomatic service. Lord Wellesley not only
reorganised the Native States on the basis of subsidiary
alliances or Protectorates, which remains to -this day; he
also determined to create under his own eye a school of
officers who should perpetuate his foreign and feudatory
policy. Some of these young
"
Politicals," as they were
called, became in due time ambassadors
;
others controlled
great Native States; others, after taking part in the
annexation of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, were
recalled to the higher branches of the general, administration.
Among the most distinguished of this last class was
William Butterworth Bayley, the only Bengal civilian who
has ever held the position of Acting Governor-General of
India, and also that of Chairman of the Court.of Directors
94
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
at home. It is a curious instance of the longevity of some
Anglo-Indian families that the son
^
of Lord Wellesley's
young Political in the first years of the century now holds,
during its last decade, the office of chief Political Secretary
at the India Officeafter an Indian service of his own
extending over thirty-four years and ending as Lieutenant-
Governor of Bengal.
Mr. Butterworth Bayley was a member of the Governor-
General's Council when Hodgson came to him for advice.
"
Having listened attentively to my statement," writes
Hodgson,
"
Bayley replied :
'
True, Nepal is in every sense
peculiar, and in the present quiet times you can learn
little there. But we have had one fierce struggle with
Nepal, and we shall yet have another. When that event
occurs there will be very special need for local experience.
Go back and master the subject in all its phases, and then,
despite your youth and the many men your seniors in
the service who will try to get the embassy, you will have
a fair chance of succeeding.'
"
^
'
Sir Steuart Colvin Bayley, K.C.S.I. This was written in
1895.
Sir Steuart Bayley has since then been appointed a Member of the
Council of the Secretary of State for India.
2
Mr. William Butterworth Bayley's life, and that of his father the
philanthropist, are given in the Dictionary
of
National DiograpJiy,
Vol. VII. As Mr. W. B. Bayley was an important influence on
Hodgson's career, I subjoin the list of his services from the India
Office MS. Records. Bayley, William Butterworth :
1799,
arrived November 6th, as Writer; 1803, Assistant in Governor-
General's Office and to Persian Translator;
1805, Deputy Registrar
to Sadr Diwani and Nizamat Adalat ; Assistant to Registrar and
Translator of the same Court; 1807, Persian and Hindustani Trans-
lator to Commissioners of Settlements in the Ceded and Conquered
Provinces ; Registrar to the Sadr Diwani and Nizamat Adalat
;
1808, Member of Committee of the General Post Office;
1809, Judge
and Magistrate of Dacca Jelalpur; 1810, Judge and Magistrate of
Burdvvan ; 1814, Fourth Judge of Provincial Court of Appeal at
Bareilly, afterwards at Dacca; Officiating Secretary, Revenue and
Judicial Departments; 1815, Secretarj', Revenue and Judicial Depart-
ments
;
1 8
17,
Acting Chief Secretary
; 1819, Chief Secretary to Govern-
ment
;
1820, Member of Council of the College of Fort William
;
1821,
Member of the Presidency Records Committee
; 1822, Acting Member
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833. 95
"
I did as I was advised," adds Hodgson, and subsequent
events fully justified Mr. Bayley's advice. Hodgson not
only succeeded to the Residency, but his supreme know-
ledge of Nepalese affairs enabled him to carry the interests
of the Government of India through a crisis which, under
less experienced guidance, must have forced on us a
campaign.
"
Fortunately," writes the learned and im-
partial historian of Nepal, "by the skilful management
of the Resident, Mr. Hodgson, war was averted."
^
Meanwhile Hodgson, on being finally reappointed
Assistant in 1825,
discovered that the little world in which
he was to be isolated for the next nineteen years (1824
1843)
was an extremely curious one. Its three central
figures were the Queen-Regent, the Prime Minister, and
the British Resident : the two former, personages with
romantic histories and strong wills of their own
;
the third,
a man of unwearied patience and tact.
The story of the Princess Tripuri, " Queen-Regent of
Nepal, reads like an Eastern tale. When Hodgson was
reappointed Assistant Resident in
1825, she had been
a widow for twenty-one years. Her husbanda bad,
weak, and cruel youthhad
"
shared the fate which has
attended every Gurkha Raja of Nepal," says the official
narrative,^ almost since the date of the Gurkha conquest.
of the Supreme Council of the Governor-General;
1823, President of
the Council of the College of Fort William ; Member of General Com-
mittee of Public Instruction; 1825, Head Member of the Supreme
Council; 1828, Provisional Governor-General of India {appointed
March i^ih)
\
President of the Board of Trade;
1830, Vice-President
and Deputy Governor; on furlough to Europe December 26th;
1834,
retired from Service May ist on an annuity;
1833, elected a Director
of the E. I. Company July
23rd
;
served on the Direction till
1858
;
Deputy Chairman in
1839;
Chairman in
1840; died May 29th, i860,
at St. Leonards-on-Sea.
History
of
Nepal, by Daniel Wright, M.A., M.D.,
p.
55
(Cambridge
University Press,
1877).
^
Her Highness the Maharani Lalit-Tripur-Sundari Devi.
'
Report dated Kathmandu,
July
24th,
1837,
written by Officiating
Assistant to the Resident, Nepal (Dr. A. Campbell), under Mr.
96
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
During three generations/ from
1777
onwards, that fate
had been to succeed as a child to a distracted sovereignty,
to be debauched during a long minority by Ministers
ambitious of retaining their power, and to reach young
manhood designedly unfit to rule, and half insane from
premature vices. The unfortunate prince
^
who succeeded
as an infant in 1777^ grew up a slave to fits of "un-
controlled ferocity and passion."
^
He married three wives. The first was the Princess
Tripuri, daughter of a Raja
Report
of i^i"] ,
p.
8.
*
Idem.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833. 97
science-stricken by her death, and urged on by the public
horror at the
"
seduction or ravishment of a Brahman's
daughter,"
^
he resigned the throne in favour of her son, and
in or about the year 1802 retired to a religious life at
Benares.
The high-born Princess Tripuri, in spite of much cruel
treatment by her husband, accompanied him into exile.
The more worldly second wife, of middle-class origin,
remained in Nepal and became regent for the infant
kingthe son of the Brahman girl. But the besotted
father, although he gave up his royal title and assumed
a new religious name, continued to be the brutish madman
under a devotee's dress at Benares that he had been on
the throne of Nepal. His faithful high-born wife, at length
wearied out by his insults and outraged in every feeling as a
woman and a princess, found herself compelled to abandon
him to his vices, and went back to Nepal. The second
wife, fearing the loss of her position as regent, sent a force
to capture the Senior Queen on the road. But the Princess
Tripuri declared that
"
as every kind of outrage had been
already committed on her, there was nothing but loss of
life to fear, and tliat would not prevent her making her
way good." The troops, struck by her courage, declared
in her favour, and conducted her in triumph to the capital,
contending
"
with each other for the honour of carrying
her palankeen."
-
She speedily ousted the second queen, and established
herself in the government. Her husband determined to
profit by her success, gave up his religious garb at Benares,
and returned to Nepal to claim his own. The faithful
Tripuri received him back, but in 1804 he was assassinated
in open Court by an officer whom he had in a rage ordered
for execution. The Prime Minister arranged for the second
queen to immolate herself on the funeral pile, while the
Princess Tripuri retained the regency and held it for
twenty-eight years. On the death of the boy-king, the
>
RepofiofiZyj, p.
8.
^
Idem.,
p.
21.
7
98
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
son of the Brahman girl, in 1816,
Queen Tripuri still
remained regent on behalf of his infant son and successor
until her own death in 1832.
It was this remarkable woman, faithful as a wife, politic
and patriotic as a princess, who ruled Nepal as Queen-
Regent during the whole period covered by the present
chapter. The actual government was in the hands of the
Prime Minister, Bhim Senthe most famous of the line
of soldier-statesmen who have de facto governed Nepal
from the Gurkha conquest in 1768^ to Sir
Jang
Bahadur
in our own times. Bhim Sen, while still a youth, had
followed the exiled king and Queen Tripuri into their
exile at Benares, and had helped in the short-lived restora-
tion of his royal master. On the assassination of the latter
in 1804,
Bhim Sen became Prime Minister, and retained
the office with an iron grip for thirty years, until it came
to his turn to perish miserably in 1
839.
The secret of his long rule was that he thoroughly under-
stood both the fears and the aspirations of the military
tribes of Nepal. The fear of these brave mountaineers
was the establishment of a British ascendency
;
their
aspiration was to extend their conquests at the expense
of our Indian frontier. To the British he appeared to be
a
"
vigorous, ambitious, and unprincipled opponent."
'
To
the Nepalese he seemed to be a stern master, whose yoke,
though grievous to bear, was better than the evils which
1
This year is taken as the official date of the conquest in the royal
genealogy of Nepal.Wright,
p. 290.
^
Captain Hamilton, quoted in para.
17
of a memorandum by
Dr. A. Campbell, Officiating Assistant to the Resident in Nepal, on
the relations of the British Government and Nepal down to
1834,
in two
parts, headed
"
Principal Transactions and Early Intercourse." This
valuable State paper was drawn up in 1837
under the instructions of
Mr. Hodgson as Resident, and embodies his matured views on our
relations with Nepal. I quote from the copy in the Political and
Secret Department of the India Office, and for the sake of brevity,
as already mentioned, I refer uniformly to it as Principal Transactions.
It formed Parts II. and III. of the Report
of 1837,
described ajite^
p.
95,
footnote.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833. 99
it averted. Bhim Sen was the first Nepalese statesman
who grasped the meaning of the system of Protectorates
which Lord Wellesley had carried out in India. He saw
one Native State after another come within the net of
British subsidiary alliances, and his policy was steadily
directed to save Nepal from a similar fate. He also per-
ceived that the Gurkha race, having conquered Nepal and
the hill valleys eastwards and westwards at the foot of the
great Himalayan wall on the north, had no further outlet
for its warlike energy except southwards on the Indian
plains. How to meet these two conditions, to stealthily
encroach upon British territory and yet to prevent British
reprisals which might bring Nepal under the British ascend-
ency, were the almost irreconcilable tasks which Bhim Sen
set before him.
During the first ten years of his Prime-Ministership he
did not quite appreciate its difficulties. Judging from the
ineffective interferences of the East India Company in
Nepalese affairs from
1765
to 1801, he failed to realise
the strength which it could now put forth. Between
1804 ^^^ 1
81
3 he accordingly allowed a long series of
raids and encroachments on the Indian plains, the seizure
of British territory and the carrying into captivity of
British subjects. In so doing he merely continued and
improved upon the old predatory policy of Nepal. In
a single British district the magistrate had to report that
"between
1787 and 181 3 upwards of two hundred villages
had been seized by the Nepalese on one or other un-
justifiable pretext."
'
Nepal was somewhat rudely awakened to the change
which had taken place in the power of the British
Company by Lord Hastings' demand in 1813 for the
evacuation of the most recently seized districts
"
within
twenty-five days." But Bhim Sen could not bring
himself to believe in the change, and declared for war.
'
Report of the Magistrate of Tirhoot, quoted in Praicipal Trans-
actiotis, para. 17.
lOO LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
Through the influence of your good fortune and that
of your ancestors," he thus solemnly addressed the boy
Raja in full darbar,
"
no one has yet been able to cope
with the State of Nepal. The Chinese once made war
on us, but were reduced to seek peace.^ How then will
the English be able to penetrate into our hills ? . . . The
small fort of Bhartpur" (which Lord Combermere had
failed to take in 1805)
"was the work of man, yet the
English, being worsted before it, desisted from the attempt
to conquer it. Our hills and fastnesses are formed by
the hand of God, and are impregnable."."^
The war which followed in 18 1418 16 convinced
Bhim Sen, once and for ever, as to the reality of the
British power
"
These Highland soldiers, who despatch their meal in
half an hour, and satisfy the ceremonial law by merely
washing their hands and face and taking off their turbans
before cooking, laugh at the pharisaical rigour of our sepoys
who must bathe from head to foot and make Puja ere they
begin to dress their dinner, must eat nearly naked in the
coldest weather, and cannot be in marching trim again in
less than three hoursthe best part of the day. In war
the former \_z'.e. the Gurkhas] carry several days' provisions
on their backs ; the latter [the Company's old sepoys]
would deem such an act intolerably degrading. The former
see in foreign service nothing but the prospect of gain and
glory
;
the latter can discover in it nothing but pollution
and peril from unclean men, and terrible wizards and
goblins and evil spirits.
"
In masses, the former [the Gurkhas] have that indomit-
able confidence, each in all, which grows out of national
integrity and success
;
the latter [the Company's sepoys]
can have no idea of this sentiment, which however maintains
the union and resolution of multitudes in peril better than
all other human bonds whatever.
'
Principal Transactiofis, para. 64.
^
Record of the Services of the 2nd Gurkha Regiment in the Military
Department of the India Office.
^
Dated October 1832. This Report was, by permission of the
Government, placed before the Asiatic Society at its meeting of
January gth,
1833,
and has been frequently printed : e.g. mthe Journal
of
the Bengal Asiatic Society, Vol. II.,
1833 ;
Selectionsfrom the Records
of
the Government
of
Bettgal, No. XXVII. (Calcutta,
1857);
Hodgson's
Collected Essays, Part II. (Triibner, London,
1874)
; and in various State
papers. I quote from its final official form, as' reproduced in the Report
for the Government of India drawn up under Mr. Hodgson's instructions
when Resident in
1837.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833. 109
"
I calculate that there are at this time in Nepal no less
than 30,000
Dhakeriahs, or soldiers off the roll by rotation,
belonging to the Khas, Muggurs, and Gurung tribes (three
chief military tribes in Nepal). I am not sure that there
exists any insuperable obstacle to our obtaining in one form
or other the services of a large body of these men ; and
such are their energy of character, love of enterprise, and
freedom from the shackles of caste, that I am well assured
their services, if obtained, would soon come to be most
highly prized. In my humble opinion they are by far the
best soldiers in India, and if they are made participators of
our renown in arms, I conceive that their gallant spirit and
unadulterated military habits might be relied on for fidelity
;
and that our good and regular pay, and noble pension
establishment, v.ould serve to counterpoise the influence of
nationality."
This Report by Hodgson in 1832, although it won the
thanks of the Government and probably decided Lord
William Bentinck to appoint him as Residefit of Nepal,
resulted in no immediate action. It came in the midst
of the twelve years' peace between the fall of Bhartpur in
1827 and the first Kabul war in 1839.
It was in vain that
one military expert after another called attention to the
importance of providing some counterpoise to the pampered
sepoys of the Gangetic valley, and urged the recruitment
of the Gurkhas as a new element of strength and safety.
Lord Dalhousie's prescient mind did, indeed, realise the
necessity. He reorganised the local Gurkha battalions
into regiments in 1850,
and one of his last acts in 1856
was to urge the increase of this force as essential to our
security in India. He urged in vain.^ A year later, when
the Mutiny of
1857
broke upon Northern India, the
authorities fell back when too late on Hodgson's scheme,
which would, humanly speaking, have rendered such a
catastrophe impossible,
'
For references to the question in its general bearing upon the Mutiny,
see my Life of
Dalhoitsie,
pp. 214,
222 (The Clarendon Press, Ed. 1890)-
no LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Hodgson himself, by his close intimacy with Sir
Jang
Bahadur, exercised at the height of the crisis an important
influence on the decision of the Nepalese Minister to place
at our disposal the Gurkha force which did such good
service. We shall see the part which Hodgson played in
persuading Lord Canning to accept the proffered Gurkha
troops. As usual Hodgson sank his personality and only
lamented, not that his own counsels, but that those of
acknowledged military authorities had been so long and
fatally neglected. "It is infinitely to be regretted," he
wrote in
1857,
"that the opinions of Sir H. Fane, of Sir
Charles Napier, and of Sir H. Lawrence, as to the high
expediency of recruiting largely from this source, were not
acted upon long ago."^
Hodgson's scheme for relieving the growing pressure of
the military castes in Nepal was not confined to recruit-
ing alone. He believed that until some peaceful outlet
could be provided for the productions and commercial
capabilities of Nepal there would be chronic unrest.
"
By
depriving her of a third of her territory," says the Report
drawn up under his instructions at a later period when
Resident,
"
and girding her on all sides by our own
Provinces, we imagined that of necessity she would gradu-
ally abandon her thirst for arms and conquest, turn her
thoughts and resources to the peaceful arts of commerce
and agriculture, and ere long be changed from a hostile
power which skirted our dominions for about eight hundred
miles, to a less powerful, quiet, and peaceable neighbour
and ally. The reverse of this is the case, and at this
moment
[1837]
Nepal holds a station of offensive power
to the full as great as she did in 18 14." The Report goes
on to urge that
"
the second means " {i.e. in addition to
enlistment of the Gurkhas in our regiments)
"
for quieting
'
This passage has been quoted by Captain Eden Vansittart, 5th
Gurkhas, in his Notes 07i the Gurkhas,
p. 32.Superintendent of
Government Printing, Calcutta (Calcutta, 1
890).
Military Department,
India Office.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833.
Ill
the passion for arms among the military tribes of Nepal
is a due attention on our part to the encouragement and
increase of commerce."
^
Hodgson, in regard to his trade-proposals, found the
initial task of obtaining the necessary data a protracted
one. It occupied him during many years while Assistant
Resident, and it was not until acting temporarily as
Resident, in 1829-31, that he thought it safe to submit
his conclusions to Government in a complete form. Mean-
while, as his official reports state, he searched the records
of the past generally in vain, and gradually accumulated
data as to the present.
"
I have secretly and carefully
applied," he writes,
"
to some of the oldest and most respect-
able merchants of Kathmandu and other chief towns of
the valley. ... In the absence of statistical documents
these are the only accessible data."
The results were at length embodied in two despatches
from him dated March 8th, 1830, and December ist, 1831.
Taken together they form the most interesting account
of Himalayan and Central Asian trade in the records of
the Government of India. His final report of 1831 was
published by authority," and has been more than once
reprinted." In his despatch of 1830 he had explained the
causes
"
why that great commerce which naturally ought
to, and formerly did, subsist between the Cis- and Trans-
Himalayan regions should seek the channel of Nepal rather
than that of Bhutan on the one hand or of Kumaun on
the other." In his Report of 183 1 he set forth the available
means for resuscitating and developing this trade under
three main heads. He first gave
"
a precise practical
account of the commercial route to Kathmandu, and thence
to the marts on the Bhote or Tibetan frontier, with the
Principal Transactions, para. 64.
-
As Paper No. II. of the Selections from the Records
of
the Go7>ern-
ment
of
Bengal, Vol. XXVII.
'
For example, under the title of
"
On the Commerce of Nepal," in
Part II. of Hodgson's Essays,
pp.
91-121 (Tnibner,
1874).
112 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
manner and expense of conveying goods, the amount and
nature of the duties levied thereon by the Nepal Govern-
ment, and the places where they are levied." He next
furnished
"
lists of imports and exports with remarks." He
concluded with
"
catalogues showing the number of native
and Indian merchants residing at Kathmandu and the
other chief towns of the valley of Nepal, with the supposed
amount of the trading capital of each."
Hodgson pointed out that the competition for the Central
Asian commerce lay between the trade route from Pekin
to St. Petersburg on the north, and that from Pekin to
India via the Nepal passes on the south. The former
route he estimates, upon data which he gives, at
5,500
miles
;
the latter at 2,880, or deducting the river-section from our
frontier to Calcutta, at only
2,340.
The Russian route,
moreover, was subject to heavier and more numerous
transit duties than the Indian one. Yet the commerce via
the Indian route had dwindled, while that of the Russian
route flourished. One main cause was the attitude of
isolation assumed by the intervening State of Nepal, and
our consequent absence of information as to the conditions
and requirements of the inner-Asia trade. Hodgson's aim
was to convert Nepal from an interposing obstacle into a
common mart where the merchants from Hindustan might
interchange their commodities with the traders from inner-
Asia.
He showed that it was exactly the products in which
Great Britain excelled, especially warm woollen stuffs and
cutlery, and for which Calcutta formed the natural inlet,
that were in demand for the trans-Himalayan trade.
Even the Russian caravans in Central Asia had to depend
on Manchester for their finer goods.
"
Of the cotton and
woollen cloths the coarse only are Russian-made," wrote Mr.
Hodgson,^
"
the fine come chiefly from England ; and the
like is true of the glassware and hardware." Indeed Russia
'
Letter to the Political Secretary to Government, dated December
1st, 1
83
1.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833.
II3
went even farther afield, to our colonies.
"
From Canada
Russia seeks through England our peltry," or fur-skins, he
continues,
"
to convey it to the Chinese across the endless
savage wastes of Siberia. What .should hinder our Indian
subjects and the Nepalese from procuring these same furs
at Calcutta, and conveying them through Nepal and Tibet
to these same Chinese? . . . What, again, should hinder
the same merchants from underselling the Russian in the
articles of English woollens, hardware, and glassware, by
conveying them to Setchuen from Calcutta by the same
route? . . . The Nepalese have used the Chinese com-
merce via Tibet for ages, and our Indian subjects might
deal in concert with the Nepalese by joint firms at
Kathmandu."
But while Western China formed the ultimate goal
of such commerce, Hodgson urged that, even without
reaching that goal, important openings for trade lay along
the route. In Nepal's nearest neighbour, Tibet, he pointed
out that there was
"
an immense country, tolerably
well peopled, possessed of a temperate climate, rich in
natural productions, and inhabited by no rude nomads,
but by a settled, peaceful, lettered, and commercially dis-
posed race, to whom our broad cloths are needful, since,
v.'hilst all ranks and ages and both sexes wear woollen
cloths, the native manufactures are most wretched, and
China has none of a superior sort and at a moderate price
wherewith to supply the Tibetans. With her [Tibet's]
musk, her rhubarb, her borax, her splendid wools, her
mineral and animal wealth, her universal need of good
woollens, and her incapacity to provide herself or to obtain
supplies from any of her neighbours, Tibet may well
be believed capable of maintaining a large and valuable
exchange of commodities with Great Britain, through the
medium of our Indian subjects and the people of Nepal,
to which latter the aditus, closed to all others by China,
is freely open."
Hodgson explained in detail the existing nucleus from
114 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
which such a trade might be developed.
''
It appears that
at this present time," he wrote in 183 1,
"there are in the
great towns in the valley of Nepal fifty-two native and
thirty-four Indian merchants engaged in foreign commerce
both with the south and the north, and that the trading
capital of the former is considered to be not less than
Rs. 5,018,000,
nor that of the latter less than Rs. 2,305,000."
In a comment on this passage Hodgson first reduced his
estimates by a third, and finally in a pencil note to one
half, which would give the aggregate capital of the
merchants then engaged in the Nepal foreign trade at
about Rs. 3,500,000.
He found it extremely difficult to
obtain data as to the volume of business done by them
;
but he ultimately estimated the total Nepalese exports
and imports at over Rs. 3,000,000 a year. There was there-
fore a definite nucleus both of capital and of acquired
experience from which a Central Asian trade through
Nepal might be developed.
"
Let the native merchants
of Calcutta and Nepal, separately or in concert," he said,
"
take up this commerce."
Hodgson went into a degree of detail which may now
seem curious, but which at the time was eminently practical,
as to the means for rendering such commerce profitable.
Not only the length of each stage and the amount of
customs duties at each station, but the estimated buying
price in Calcutta of over a hundred articles of Central
Asian trade, from cottons, carpets, and corals to gun-flints,
needles, and betel-nuts, their selling price in Nepal, the
total import of each into Nepal, and the total consumed
within Nepalese limits, are set forth in tabulated statements.
His Report forms a handbook as to the articles of
Himalayan trade, the qualities most profitable and the
colours most in demand, in the first third of the nineteenth
century. He gives minute suggestions even as to the
packing of the goods in transit.
"
The merchants' wares
should be made up at Calcutta into secure packages,
adapted for carriage on a man's back, of the full weight of
vii.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833.
II5
two Calcutta bazaar maunds each/ Because, if the wares
be so made up, a single mountaineer will carry that
surprising weight over the huge mountains of Nepal
;
whereas two men not being able to unite their strength
with effect in the conveyance of goods, packages heavier
than two maunds are of necessity taken to pieces on the
road -at great hazard and inconvenience. . . . Let every
merchant, therefore," he quaintly concludes his dissertation
on packing,
"
make up his goods into parcels of two full
bazaar maunds each, and let him have with him apparatus
for fixing two of such parcels across a bullock's saddle."
Hodgson's plans for the commercial development of
Nepal had a different fate from his project for the British
enlistment of the Gurkhas. Both were designed with the
same political view, to find an outlet for the energy of the
surplus population of Nepal. But as his military scheme
was pigeon-holed owing to the long twelve years' peace,
so for the same reason his trade-proposals won the imme-
diate approval of Government. It was his pleasant duty
while Resident from
1833
to 1843
to aid in extending the
intercourse between British India and Nepal on the lines
which he had sketched, and to give effect to the trade-
policy on which he had so long pondered when an Assistant.
An immense development of our commercial relations
with Nepal dates from his Reports. The Rs. 3,ooo,(X)0
of Nepalese imports and exports in 1831 had grown
into a Nepalese trade with British India alone of over
Rs.
33,000,000 in 1 89
I.-
Hodgson foresaw that such a development would only
be possible when the legal position of British- Indian
merchants in Nepal should be placed on a satisfactory
footing. His third series of efforts were accordingly
directed to exploring the judicial system of Nepal, and
to drawing up an accurate account of it for the British
'
About 160 pounds avoirdupois.
^
Statistical Abstract relating to British India, presented to both
Houses of Parliament,
pp.
226-7 (iSQS). Return for 1890-91.
Il6 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Government. Nothing of the kind had previously been
attempted, but the habit of inquiry which Hodgson learned
under his first master Traill in Kumaun, and especially of
inquiry into the judicial" practice of what had up to that
time formed a Nepalese province, now served him in good
stead in Nepal itself.
"
The administration was purely
Hindu," writes Rajendra Lala Mitra,^
"
absolutely untouched
by foreign influence for several centuries."
Hodgson started with no preconceived notions, but
simply with the idea of acquiring such a practical know-
ledge of the native judicial system as would enable him to
secure justice in cases which the British Residency had to
settle conjointly with the courts of Nepal. Such cases
were numerous, and at times formed an important part
of the Resident's and Assistant Resident's work. For the
Nepalese Darbar, finding itself unable to maintain its isola-
tion, threw legal obstacles in the way of merchants from the
Indian plainsobstacles which rendered it difficult for
British-Indian subjects to collect their debts, and sometimes
involved them in the meshes of a judicial procedure which
they did not understand. As it was difficult for them to
obtain redress from the Nepalese tribunals, Hodgson deter-
mined to ascertain exactly the number and constitution of
those tribunals and the law which they were bound to
administer.
He accordingly drew up a series of ninety-three questions
and placed them before the Brahmans learned in the law
whom he maintained to assist him in his philological and
Buddhist researches. The statements thus collected he
tested by secret inquiries from Nepalese pandits and
officers
"
who were judged most capable of replying to
them in a full and satisfactory manner." He embodied
the results in two official reports,
"
On the Law and
Police of Nepal " and
"
On the Law and Legal Practice
of Nepal
;
"
with a third in the Asiatic Researches.
"
This subject," wrote the Government,
"
is one which
'
The Sanskrit Bicddhist Literature
of
Nepal,
p.
v. (Calcutta, 1882).
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 18251833. 1
17
possesses much interest, whether for the legislator, the
historian, or the philosopher. In Hindustan we look in
vain for any traces of Hindu legislation or government.
The Moslem conquerors have everywhere swept them away.
And if we wish to inquire what are the features of the
Hindu system of jurisprudence and judicature, it is in
Nepal we must seek for the answer. Mr. Hodgson is the
first who has enabled us to obtain a precise and definitive
view of the subject. His information was transmitted to
the Governor-General, and the Governor-General deemed
it of sufficient importance to authorise its publication."
^
The two papers were accordingly placed before the
Asiatic Society," and subsequently reprinted in Vol. XXVH
of the Selections from the Records
of
the Government
of
Bengal. They start with simple questions as to the number,
territorial jurisdiction, and terms or sittings of the courts, and
the names and functions of their officers. They proceed to
more complicated inquiries in regard to the law of evidence
current in Nepal, the judicial consequence of confession,
the police establishment, the ultimate sources of the law
(whether written or customary), crimes and their punish-
ments, the rules of inheritance, and the practice in mercan-
tile cases. The law for the recovery of debta matter
constantly arising between our Residency and the Nepalesc
Courtis stated as follows :
"
The creditor may attach
duns to the debtor, to follow and dun him wherever he
goes. The creditor may also stop the debtor wherever
he finds him
;
take him home, confine, beat, and abuse
him ; so that he does him no serious injury in health or
limbs. Another answer states that the creditor may seize
upon the debtor, confine him in his own house, place him
^
Quoted in The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature
of
Nepal, by Rajendra
Lala Mitra,
p.
vi. (Calcutta, 1882).
-
The second paper was read before the Bengal Asiatic Society on
December 7th,
1833. The two were finally reprinted as Some Account
of
the Systems
of
Law and Police as recogiiised in the State
of
Nepal
in Vol. II. of Hodgson's Miscellaneous Essays,
pp.
211-250 (Triibnen
1880).
Il8 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
under the spout that discharges the filthy wash of the
house, and suchlike
;
but he has no further power over
him."
^
The thoroughness with which Hodgson went into the
subject may be seen from the answers to two single ques-
tions. I quote them in full, for they disclose the actual
administration of justice in a Hindu State undisturbed by
foreign influences. I know of no other record so trust-
worthy, because obtained from witnesses on the spot while
the system was still in full vigour, as to the procedure by
ordeal and torture which the British system had to super-
sede and eradicate in old-fashioned parts of India. Readers
who are afraid of native words may skip it, but to those
who can overcome their aversion to unfamiliar terms, it
will present a realistic picture not devoid of pathos. I
have tried to make the task as light as possible by giving
the English equivalents.
"
Question XXXH.Describe the forms of procedure in
a civil cause, step by step.
"
Answer.If a person comes into court and states that
another person owes him a certain sum of money, which he
refuses to pay, the bicJiari [or examining officer] of the
court immediately asks him for the particulars of the debt,
which he accordingly furnishes. The examining officer
then commands the jamadar [head bailiff] of the court to
send one of his sepoys to fetch the debtor. The creditor
accompanies the sepoy to point out the debtor, and pays
him two annas per diem (then about threepence), until he
has arrested the latter and brought him into court. When
he is there produced, the difha [judge]
"-
and examining
officers interrogate the parties face to face. The debtor is
asked if he acknowledges the debt alleged against him, and
^
Selections from the Records
of
the Government
of
Bengal, Vol.
XXVII. ; Answer to Mr. Hodgson's Question No. XCIII.,
p. 227.
^
The dit'ha, or judge, decided
;
the bicharis, or examining officers, of
whom there were two to each court, conducted the preliminary proce-
dure.Answer to Ouestion XV.
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833
II9
will immediately discharge it. The debtor may answer by
acknowledging the debt, and stating his willingness to pay
it as soon as he can collect the means, which he hopes to
do in a few days.
"
In this case, the examining officer will desire the
creditor to wait a few days. The creditor may reply that
he cannot wait, having immediate need of the money
;
and if so, one of the cJiaprassis [orderlies] of the court
is attached to the debtor, with directions to see to the
producing of the money in court by any means. The
debtor must then produce money or goods, or whatever
property he has, and bring it into court. The judge and
examining officers, calling to their assistance three or
four merchants, proceed to appraise the goods produced
in satisfaction of the debt, and immediately discharge it
;
nor can the creditor object to their appraisement of the
debtor's goods and chattels. In matters thus arranged,
that is, where the defendant admits the cause of action
to be valid,
5
per cent of the property litigated is taken
from the one party, and 10 per cent from the other,
and no more [as court-fees].
"
If the defendant, when produced in court in the
manner above described, denies instead of confessing
the debt, then the plaintiff's proofs are called for
;
and
if he has only a simple note of hand unattested, or an
attested acknowledgment the witnesses to which are
dead, then the judge and examining officers interrogate
the plaintiff thus :
'
This paper is of no use as evidence
\
how do you propose to establish your claim
?
' The
plaintiff may answer :
'
I lent the money to the father
of the defendant ; the note produced is in his handwriting,
and my claim is a just claim.' Hereupon the plaintiff is
required to pledge himself formally to prosecute his claim
in the court in which he is, and in no other. The words
enjoining the plaintiff thus to gage himself are Beri VJiapo
;
and the mode is by the plaintiff's taking a rupee in his
hand, which he closes, and strikes the ground, exclaiming
120 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
at the same time,
'
My claim is just, and I gage myself
to prove it so.'
"
The defendant is then commanded to take up the
gage of the plaintiff, or to pledge himself in a similar
manner to attend the court duly to the conclusion of the
trial, which he does by formally denying the authenticity
of the document produced against him, as well as the
validity of the debt ; and upon this denial he likewise
strikes the earth with his hand closed on a rupee. The
rupee of the plaintiff and that of the defendant, which are
called beri, are now deposited in court. The next step is
for the court to take the fee called karpan, or five rupees
from each party. The amount of both beri and kai'Paii
is the perquisite of the various officers of the court, and
does not go to the Government. The giving of karpan by
the parties implies their desire to refer the dispute to the
decision of the ordeal
;
and accordingly, as soon as the
karpan is paid down, the judge acquaints the Government
that the parties in a certain cause wish to undergo the
ordeal. The necessary order is thereupon issued from
the Darbar
;
but when it has reached the court, the judge
and examining officers first of all exhort the parties to
come to an understanding and effect a settlement of their
dispute by some other means. If, however, they will not
consent, the trial is directed to proceed.
"
The ordeal is called nyaya, and the form of it is as
follows : The names of the respective parties are inscribed
on two pieces of paper, which are rolled up into balls, and
then have ptija offered to them. From each party a fine
or fee of one rupee is taken : the balls are then affixed to
staffs of reed, and two annas more are taken from each
party. The reeds are then entrusted to two of the
havildars [beadles] of the court to take to the Queen's
Tank ; and with the havildars^ an examining officer of
the court, a Brahman, and the parties proceed thither, as
also two men of the CJiaviakhalak (or Chamara) caste.^
*
A low aboriginal caste, in India skinners and leather-workers. The
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825 1833.
121
"
On arriving at the tank, the examining officer again
exhorts the parties to avoid the ordeal by adopting some
other mode of settHng the business, the merits of which are
only known to themselves. If they continue to insist on
the ordeal, the two Jiavildars [beadles], each holding one of
the reeds, go, one to the east and the other to the west
side of the tank, entering the water about knee-deep. The
Brahman, the parties, and the ChamakJialaks, all at this
moment enter the water a little way
;
and the Brahman
performs worship to Varuna in the name of the parties,
and repeats a sacred text, the meaning of which is that
mankind knows not what passes in the minds of each
other, but that all inward thoughts and past acts are
known to the gods Surya, Chandra, Varuna, and Yama
;
and that they will do justice between the parties in this
cause,
"
When the puja is over, the Brahman gives the tilak
^
to the two Chaniakhalaks, and says to them,
'
Let the
champion of truth win, and let the false one's champion
lose
!
' This being said, the Brahman and the parties come
out of the water, and the CJiaviakJialaks separate, one
going to each place where the reed is erected. They then
enter the deep water, and at a signal given, both immerse
themselves in the water at the same instant. Whichever
of them first rises from the water, the reed nearest to him
is instantly destroyed, together with the scroll attached
to it. The other reed is carried back to the court, where
the ball of paper is opened, and the name read. If the
scroll bear the plaintiff's name, he wins the cause ; if it be
that of the defendant, the latter is victorious.
"
The fine cdWcd
Jit'hotwi is then paid by the winner, and
that called Jiarhoiiyi by the loser; besides which, five rupees
presence of low castes at the ordeal was probably connected with the
idea of making the aboriginal gods witnesses to the ceremony, as the
Brahman represented the Hindu gods.
'
That is to say, he solemnly puts the sacred mark on their fore-
heads.
122 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
are demanded from the winner in return for a turban
which he gets, and the same sum, under the name of
sabhasiidd^ha (or purification of the court), from the loser.
The above four demands on the parties, viz. jifJiouri,
harhouriypagri, and sabhasudd^ha, are Government taxes
;
and, exclusive of these, eight annas must be paid to the
inahanias of the court, eight annas more to the kotwal,
eight more to the kumhalnaikias, and, lastly, eight more
to the kJiardar, or registrar. In this manner multitudes
of causes are decided by nyaya (ordeal), when the parties
cannot be brought to agree upon the subject-matter of
dispute, and have neither documentary nor verbal evidence
to adduce."
"Question XXXIII.Describe the forms of procedure
in a criminal cause, step by step.
"
Answer.If any one comes into court, and states that
such an one has killed such another by poison, sword,
dagger, or otherwise, the informant is instantly interro-
gated by the court thus : How ? Who ? When ? Before
whom? The Corpus delicti, where? etc., etc. He answers
by stating all these particulars according to his knowledge
of the facts
;
adducing the names of the witnesses, or
saying that, though he has no other witnesses than himself
to the fact of murder, he pledges himself to prove it, or
abide the consequences of failure in the proof. This last
engagement, when tendered by the accuser, is immediately
reduced to writing, to bind him more effectually
;
after
which, one or more sepoys of the court are sent with the
informant to secure the murderer, and produce him and
the testimony of the deed in court, which, when produced
accordingly, is followed by an interrogation of the accused.
"
If the accused confesses the murder, there is no neces-
sity to call for evidence. But if he denies it, evidence is
then gone into
;
and if the witnesses depose positively to
their having seen the accused commit the murder, the
latter is again asked what he has to say ; and if he still
refuses to confess, he is whipped until he does
;
the con-
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1825
1833.
123
fession, when obtained, is reduced to writing and attested
by the murderer, who is then put in irons and sent to
jail.
"
Cases of theft, robbery, incest, etc., arc also dealt with
in Nepal, and the convicts sent to prison. When the
number amounts to twenty or thirty, the difJia [judge]
makes out a calendar of their crimes, to which he appends
their confession, and a specification of the punishment
usually inflicted in such cases. This list the judge carries
to the BJiaradar SabJia (Council of State), whence it is taken
by the Premier to the Prince, after the judge's allotment of
punishment to each convict has been ratified, or some other
punishment substituted.
"
The list, so altered or confirmed in the Council of State,
and referred by the Premier to the Prince, is as a matter
of form sanctioned by the latter, after which it is re-
delivered to the judge, who makes it over to the araz-begi.
The latter, taking the prisoners, the viaJia-naikias^ and some
of the men of the Porya caste with him, proceeds to the
banks of the Bishen-rnati, where the sentence of the law is
inflicted by the hands of the poryas, and in the presence
of the araz-begi and the viaJia-naikias. Grave offences,
involving the penalty of life or limb, are thus treated.
With respect to mutual reviling and quarrels, false evi-
dence, false accusation of moral delinquency, and such-
like minor crimes and offences, punishment is apportioned
with reference to the caste of the offender or offenders."
Hodgson's work soon began to attract the attention of
the Foreign Office in Calcutta. In a letter to his sister we
have heard of one of his reports being handed about with
approval by the Governor-General and the Bishop. In
another he sends home
"
the Court of Directors' public
thanks " for his papers on the laws and institutions of
Nepal. I have dwelt on his labours as Assistant Resident
between 1825 and
1833,
because it was those labours which
gave him his strong grasp of Nepalese affairs during his
next ten years as Resident. They show the spirit in which
124 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Hodgson carried out Mr. Buttervvorth Bayley's advice of
"
Go back to Nepal and master the subject in all its
phases." The reward which, when that advice was given,
Hodgson had not dared to look forward to, now fell to
him. At the age of thirty-three he became full Resident
in Nepal.
At one time, indeed, it seemed as if his good fortune
might have come even earlier. When the Honourable
Edward Gardner retired from the service in
1829,
the
Governor-General appears to have considered the possi-
bility of appointing Hodgson as Gardner's immediate
successor. Hodgson had already distinguished himself
both by his official reports and by his contributions to
learned societies. Gardner recognised his capacity, although
he possibly thought his abilities greater than his experience.
Nor would the good word of distinguished officers at head-
quartersof Butterworth Bayley, Herbert Maddock, and
D'Oylybe wanting, while the Governor-General's decision
hung in the balance.
Lord William Bentinck took a course which was both
wise and kind. He realised that Hodgson could not live
on the Indian plains, and that Nepal was almost his only
chance of a career in India. But Hodgson at twenty-nine
was too young to be appointed permanent Resident in
Nepal. Lord William Bentinck knew that, if he chose a
middle-aged political of the ordinary type for the post, the
officer would stay in it till the end of his service, and practi-
cally put an end to Hodgson's prospects. So he gave
Hodgson a chance of proving his fitness for the eventual
succession by allowing him to officiate for about eighteen
months, and then appointed a Resident whose stay in
Nepal would be almost necessarily a short one.
Sir Herbert Maddock was at that time midway in his
brilliant career. He had been Governor-General's Agent
for the Sagar and Narbada Territories, and in 1829 rose
to the supremely important post of Resident with the
King of Oudh at Lucknow. But his health had been
VII.] ASSISTANT RESIDENT IX NEPAL: 1825
1833.
125
severely strained, and in 1
831
he accepted for a time the less
onerous duties and more healthy climate of the Residency in
Nepal. Lord William Bentinck foresaw that that position
could be only a brief resting-place in Haddock's upward
flight. As a matter of fact Haddock, having satisfied him-
self that Hodgson might be safely trusted with the political
management of Nepal, took furlough to Europe on January
2 1 St,
1833,
and Hodgson succeeded him as Resident.
[126]
CHAPTER VIII.
RESIDENT IN NEPAL.
1833 TO THE FALL OF BHIM SEN IN
1839.
HODGSON
brought to his duties as Resident the
convictions which he had slowly formed during
the preceding twelve years in regard to our policy towards
Nepal. He was now to labour throughout the remaining
ten years of his Indian service to give effect to those
convictions. He believed that if we wished to convert
Nepal from a sulky and somewhat dangerous neighbour
into a useful, even if not very cordial, ally, four distinct
lines of action ought to be adopted and steadily pursued.
Let me for a moment recapitulate.
In the first place, he held that an outlet should be found
for the surplus military population of Nepal by enlisting
the fighting castes into the Company's forces. Hodgson
was thus the projector of the modern system of Gurkha
regiments, as distinguished from the old local corpsthe
system of regular recruitment from the Nepalese high-
landers which has received so important a development
in our own times, and which now supplies very valuable
materials to our Indian army.
In the second place, he believed that a new and healthy
direction might be given to the energies of the people at
large by fostering a Central Asian trade with India. He
hoped, as I have mentioned, that Nepal, instead of con-
tinuing a barrier between India and High Asia, might
become the meeting-ground for the merchants from both
.sides. He perceived that the commercial predominance
CHAP. VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL:
18331839. I27
of Russia in inner Asia depended on her command of
the caravan route
;
and he was the first British diplomatist
who worked out a detailed plan for cutting the Russian
route in the middle, and for diverting the Chinese and
Tibetan land-trade by the shorter road to our Indian
frontier, via Nepal.
With a view to effecting this he sought, in the third
place, to come to clear understanding with the Nepalese
Court as to the conditions under which commerce might
enter and pass through the country. He also endeavoured
to procure a definite legal status for British- Indian traders,
and some security for their obtaining redress from the
Nepalese tribunals. In the fourth place, he tried by a
fair settlement of frontier questions, and by the completion
and maintenance of a well-marked line of boundary pillars,
to get rid of a chronic cause of umbrage in our relations
with Nepal.
These objects Hodgson never lost sight of. We also
must bear them in mind if we are to understand his
attitude throughout the long period of palace intrigues,
revolutions, and massacres on which Nepal was about
to enter. The Queen-Regent, who had ruled conjointly
with Bhim Sen, the Prime Minister, since
1805, died in
1832. The young King was only eighteen years old when
his grandmother passed from the scene, and he was back-
ward for his age.^ Her death seemed for a time to leave
the Prime Minister completely master of the situation.
Bhim Sen's ambition, to which her royal prestige had
acted as a counterpoise if not always as a check, now
acknowledged no control.
It was at this juncture that Hodgson in the beginning
of the following year,
1833,
became full Resident of Nepal.
'
In the Secret Consultations of the Government of India he is
spoken of as sixteen. But the Nepalese chronology shows that he
was two years old at the death of his father and his own nominal
accession in November 18 16.
Native records of Nepal, translated from
an MS., and printed in Dr. Wright's History
of
Nepal,
p. 284. Ed.
1877.
128 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
The Prime Minister had for long studied the character
and aims of the new British representative, and seemed
anxious to conciliate Hodgson's goodwill by con-
cessions which did not affect his own undivided power
within Nepal, but which he knew that Hodgson had at
heart. One of these objects was the final settlement of
the long-standing boundary disputes. After the war in
1816 we had made over the Western Tarai or Nepalese
borderland to the King of Oudh, but all efforts during
the following fourteen years had failed to procure a
demarcation of the frontier. When Hodgson was Acting
Resident of Nepal in
1830, the Prime Minister yielded
to the pressure which he brought to bear for a final adjust-
ment, and the boundary line of the Western Tarai was at
length completely marked out by a British officer in the
presence of deputies from both States.^
The Eastern Tarai we partly kept in our own hands
after the war of 18
16,
and partly restored to Nepal. But
here again Bhim Sen had managed to defeat all efforts for
a complete demarcation
;
and here also he displayed a
willingness to meet what he knew to be one of Hodgson's
special aims. Soon after Hodgson became full Resident
in
1833,
the Prime Minister concluded a final agreement,
and this old source of frontier quarrels was closed.
The official records had noted, during Hodgson's Acting
Residentship
(
1 829183
1
),
" a gradual cessation of suspicion
and distrust between the Nepalese and the people of the
plains of India, and the increase of commerce, especially
in the importation of Indian and European articles, to the
exclusion of those from Bhutan and China." The Nepalese
chiefs and Bhim Sen himself began to show
"
a growing in-
cHnation
" "
for British luxuries and customs." ' The Prime
'
Secret Consultations, No.
74,
of January iSth, 1841.
India
Office
MSS.
India
Office
MSS.
^
Idem.
9
I30
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
narrative,
"
in a remote part of the palace, and required to
give his message to some people of no condition."
^
Among other means of isolation, the Prime Minister
increased the restrictions always placed on the officers of
the Residency as regards excursions in the neighbourhood.
This was carried so far as to incite the peasants to give
trouble to the Resident or members of his staff while out
shooting. Hodgson did not condescend to officially
remonstrate for such petty annoyances, but he hit upon
a rather ingenious device, and one which struck the
Oriental imagination.
"
I sent my two last and best setters
to the Minister's young son with a message that, as I had
given up shooting in the fields, he was welcome to the
dogs and would find them excellent ones." The Minister
sent to say how sorry he was that his friend was no longer
enjoying his usual sport, and asked the reason. Hodgson
gently let the grounds of his annoyance appear in the
conversation which followed, without laying stress upon
them. The Prime Minister, who had a hill-man's sense
of humour, saw that if he was to render the new Resident's
position isolated it must be by some less paltry plan, and
for the moment all was geniality and goodwill. The
Governor-General, however, on hearing of these insolent
restrictions, directed the Resident to make reprisals by
refusing passports to Nepalese subjects proceeding to the
Indian plains.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister began to discover that
the death of his old ally and mistress, the Queen-Regent,
was not an unmixed gain. Official appointments in Nepal,
from the highest downwards, were nominally for twelve
months only. The theory was that all public offices were,
ipso facto, vacated each year and had to be formally re-
newed. This meant a change of the whole official body,
or of as many of the officials as the ruling authority chose,
at the annual ceremony of the Panjani, to exclude. Bhim
Sen, being the ruling authority, had had his Prime-
'
Secret Consultations, No,
24,
of March 5th, 1833.
htdia
Office
MSS.
IHIM StN THAPPA-
PREMIER OF NEPAL
,CTAT 62 .
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839. 131
Ministership renewed as a matter of course during the
previous twenty-eight years from 1805. But he took
advantage of the custom to render the civil and mihtary
services entirely dependent on his favour, and removable
at his will. There was, however, a dynastic party of
"
royal kinsmen "
^
in Nepal whose claims the Queen-
Regent had wisely respected. Her death set free the
Prime Minister from this restraint, and he promptly used
his freedom.
"
So heavy a hand has Bhim Sen for the
last thirty years laid^ on the Nepalese chiefs," says the
official record for
1833,
"that, palpable and shameful as is
his usurpation for years past of their rights, and now of the
Raja's also, not one of them dares confront him openly."
^
It had not occurred to Bhim Sen that the custom of
annually vacating all offices at the Panjani could be ap-
plied to his own. He was now to find that the death of
the clear-headed old Queen was allowing new forces to
spring into existence with which he would have to reckon.
Hodgson saw the change coming, and at once realised
what it meant alike to the Prime Minister and to the
British position at Kathmandu. He firmly but courteously
insisted on his Munshi being admitted to the Raja's pre-
sence, when sent on business from the Residency direct to
the Prince. Without the right of direct audience it was
impossible to know whether the communications of the
British Government ever reached the Raja's ears. Within
a month after he became Resident he submitted a confi-
dential letter in his own handwriting to the Governor-
General on
"
the state of parties in Nepal." Having
described the relations of the Resident to the Raja
with whom our treaty was made in i8i6, he proceeds as
follows
:
*
'
Generally but somewhat loosely spoken of as "the Chauntrias," of
whom we shall presently liear more.
-
The word is written lived in the MS. Consultations.
'
Resident of Nepal to Political Secretary to Government of India,
December 19th, 1833.
India
Office
MSS.
*
The Resident to the Political Secretary to Government, dated
132 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
A long minority followed his death, which minority-
has just expired, and during it all our intercourse has been
with the Minister who, it seems, has grown so great by-
virtue of two minorities (with but a short interval between
them), and thirty years of almost uninterrupted sovereign
sway, that he cannot now subside into a subject and is
determined to keep the Raja a cypher, as in his nonage,
both with respect to power and to observance also as far
as possible. Almost every office is filled with Bhim Sen's
creatures
;
he and his family monopolise all the loaves and
fishes. Mere children
^
of his kindred hold high commands.
The ancient families of the Pandis and others who, by the
constitution of this State, are entitled to share its counsels
and exercise its highest offices, are excluded almost wholly
from the one and other, besides being treated with habitual
contumely by Matabar Singh, Bhim Sen's overbearing and
heedless nephew.
"
The Raja is hemmed into his palace, beyond which he
cannot stir unaccompanied by the Minister, and then only
to the extent of a short ride or drive. Even within the
walls of his palace, the Minister and his brother both
reside, the latter in the especial capacity of
'
dry nurse
'
to
His Highness.
"
Last year the Raja desired to make an excursion into
the lower hills to shoot. He was prevented by all sorts of
idle tales and obstructions. This year he proposed visit-
ing his palace at Nayakot, the winter residence of his
fathers
;
again he was prevented as before. Of power he
has not a particle, nor seems to wish it. Of patronage he
has not a fraction
;
and is naturally galled at this, as well
as at being sentinelled all round by Bhim Sen's creatures
even within his own abode, at beintr debarred from almost
February i8th, 1833.
The letter is too long for quotation in full, and I
omit passages and proper names not essential to understanding the
general situation.
^
I?idia
Office
MSS.
India
Office
MSS.
138 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Persia and Russia. Forthwith the Nepalese Court des-
patched
"
an experienced spy
"
to Lahore and Teheran,
and opened up clandestine negotiations with several of the
great landholders within our own frontier. The rumoured
Russian invasion of India proved to be merely a rumour
;
but a confederacy between Nepal and the Sikhsthe two
Hindu powers who retained their independence on our
north and north-western frontieropened up a vista of
dangerous contingencies.
In
1834
a fresh outburst of military aggressiveness took
place in Nepal on the report of
"
our having marched the
whole of our available force to the westward against Man
Singh of Jodhpur, and thereby having left our territories
on the Nepal frontier unprotected."
"
The Darbar,"
Hodgson reported,
"
as far as Bhim Sen could influence
its sentiments, would hail the demonstration with joy, and
would be ready to second it the moment such a course
could be taken with any degree of prudence."
^ "
This
feeling, however, was quickly crushed by the news of the
capitulation of Jodhpur." The barometer of Nepalese
hostility against us, as he pithily puts it, rises or falls with
each rumour of our being in trouble with other States.
It must be borne in mind that the war party was
the one permanent party in Nepal. As I have already
explained, all the non-servile population (except the
Brahmans) were hereditary soldiers whose only career was
arms. An appeal to the military instincts of the Nepalese
was, therefore, always a popular appeal. From 18 16 to
1832 Bhim Sen supported by the old Queen-Regent
had held undisputed sway, and he had made only such
moderate concessions to the national military proclivities
as might keep him on fair terms with his countrymen w^hile
pursuing his own ends. But in the struggle for the Prime-
Ministership which began to develop after the death of the
Queen-Regent in 1832, not only he but every one of his
'
The Resident to the Political Secretary to the Government of India,
dated December 19th, 1833.
India
Office
MSS.
viii.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
I39
rivals had to court the aid of the military castes. The
British Residency was the centre of the opposite or peace
influences. Bhim Sen had experienced a British war, and
as long as he was left to himself he was resolved not to
repeat the experience. He had therefore, while secured
by the prestige of the old Queen-Regent, only used the
war party as a convenience. He now found that his rivals
were bidding for the support of the war party in eager
earnest.
It soon became a race as to who should gratify with
most disregard to ulterior consequences the war instincts
of the ruling castes. This state of things lasted, amid
revolutions and massacres, from the death of the Queen-
Regent in 1832 down to the establishment of
Jang
Baha-
dur's power in
1845,
when, by a crowning butchery, Nepal
started once again under the rule of an absolute Prime
Minister. During the intermediate thirteen years the
war party was the supreme party in Nepal. Throughout
the first ten and most aggressive years it fell to Hodgson's
lot to maintain peace.
Bhim Sen's appeal to the martial spirit of the chiefs for
a time brought him fresh strength. In spite of the Raja's
failing support and of the open hostility of his principal
queen, the commencement of
1834
disclosed "Bhim Sen
and his family in the possession of every provincial
command throughout Nepal, with the exception of the
government of Doti, which was held by a Chauntria or
collateral member of the Royal Family."
^
The Prime
Minister accordingly began the year in no mood for
arrangements with a view to promote commerce with
India or to secure a legal status to British subjects trading
in Nepal. Negotiations went on nevertheless, for Bhim
1
Secret Consultations, No.
74,
of January i8th, 1841.
India
Office
MSS. Excerpts from the Letters
of
the Resideitt at Kathmandu to
Government from 1830 to 1840, compiled by the Assistant Resident
Mr.
J.
R. Tickell, and forwarded by the Resident B. H. Hodgson, to
T. H. Maddock, Secretary to the Government of India.
140 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Sen shrewdly surmised that he might ultimately have to
look to British support. Nor was Hodgson without hope
that he on his side might utilise this incipient sense of
weakness to secure better terms for Indians trading in
Nepal.
The discussions as to the British boundary line pro-
gressed. But negotiations for delivering up robbers who
had fled from our districts into Nepal proved fruitless,
while those for an international judicial procedure remained
at a dead-lock. The Nepalese did not object to British
subjects being tried according to our procedure, but they
insisted that in certain cases the punishment should be
according to theirs. Thus a Gurkha soldier
"
should take
the same vengeance on a British subject as he was per-
mitted by the laws of his country [to take] on a Nepalese,
if convicted of adulterous intercourse with his wife
;
i.e.
cut his head off on the earliest opportunity. The incom-
patibility of this clause with our ideas of retributive justice,"
adds the report somewhat magniloquently,
"
suspended for
a time the negotiation."
Hodgson was more successful in his attempts to arrange
a commercial treaty with Nepal. As the year
1834
went
on, Bhim Sen received another hint that his supremacy
was on the wane, and he began to realise more clearly that
he might need the Resident's support. The balance
accordingly swung back in favour of Hodgson's projects
of a closer union of interests between India and Nepal.
In November the Nepalese Court finally agreed to the draft
of a commercial treaty with the British Government
which, although not all that Hodgson desired, marked an
important step towards it. A moderate customs tariff
was to be established, Nepal with characteristic haughti-
ness claiming a difference in her favour. Speedy justice
was to be rendered to merchants in case of fiscal extor-
tions. Above all, appeals in such cases were to be referred
through the Resident." Hodgson was able to forward the
'
The Nepalese proposals ran as follows: ist. The produce and
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
I4I
treaty for consideration by his Government in March
1835,
and although not then accepted, it furnished a basis for a
somewhat improved modus vivendi between the Resident
and the Nepalese Court.
Hodgson also took advantage of the Prime Minister's
oscillation towards a better understanding with the British
to seek redress for a long-standing currency grievance.
Till then Nepal had refused to allow the re-export of any
British-Indian coin that once crossed its frontier. Our
high-standard rupees, when paid in Nepal, were swept
into the mint and recast in the Nepalese coinage, which
contained so much alloy as to preclude its passing current
even in the British districts close to the border. The
Nepalese merchants had therefore no currency in which
they could pay for British imports, and such imports had
either to be bartered for Nepalese products, or adjusted
by the secret illegal conveyance of British rupees out of
Nepal. This impediment to international commerce
Hodgson now tried to remove, but had yet to bide his
time. Nepal still refused to permit the re-export of any
manufactures of Nepal and Tibet to pay a duty of
4
per cent
Kuldar, ad valorem, in the British provinces
;
and British and Hindustan
produce, an import duty at Nepal of
5
per cent Muhindra Mulli
rupees, ad valorem, according to the market rates in Nepal. 2nd. No
other or further duty to be paid in either State on any conditions.
3rd. The entire duty above-mentioned to be levied and paid at once.
4th. Proposes a limited number of Custom-Houses in either State, of
which a list is given, seventeen in British India and twenty-one in
Nepal. 5th. Provides for the punishment of any Customs Officers
infringing the provisions of Clause 2. 6th. Speedy justice to be
available to merchants of either State on any ground of complaint
arising from extortion, etc., of Customs Officers in British India or
Nepal. 7th. Appeals from the decisions of the collectors of Customs
in either State to be referred through the Resident. 8th. Lists of the
produce of either State to be prepared and authenticated by the
Governor-General and Raja of Nepal, and goods hitherto free of duty
to remain so. 9th. The treaties of
1792 and 1801 a.d. to be considered
rescinded.
Excerpts
from the Letters
of
the Resident at Kathma7idu to
the Government
of
India, from. 1830 to 1840, compiled by Mr.
J.
R.
Tickell, para. 18.
142 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
British-Indian coinage that once passed its Customs'
line.
While these negotiations were going on, Bhim Sen
received the first unmistakable warning of his coming
downfall. He represented the great Nepalese house of
the Thappa.s, which he had raised to supremacy on the
ruins of another powerful family the Kala Pandis. The
Pandis had been all-powerful at the beginning of the
century, and it was with Damodar Pandi as Prime Minister
that our envoy Captain Knox treated in 1801. Knox
described Damodar Pandi as a man
"
possessing a plain
sober understanding, moderation with great firmness, void
of artifice, and as a soldier unrivalled in Nepal for
gallantry and conduct."
^
He and his house were soon
afterwards destroyed by Bhim Sen. The murder of the
King in 1805 left the Queen-Regent and Bhim Sen in
absolute power, and the Pandis broken by beheadings,
exile, and confiscation. During thirty years the latter did
not dare to reassert themselves, and the chief rivals of
Bhim Sen since the Queen-Regent's death in 1832 had been
those of his own household. His younger brother Ranbir
Singh ingratiated himself with the boy-King, says Hodg-
son, as
"
the constant attendant on his childhood," and
on the death of the Queen-Regent he became General
Commandant of the Nepal Army. Not content with this
important office, he incited the young King to join with
him in ousting his elder brother Bhim Sen from the Prime-
Ministership, in the hope of securing the reversion for
himself.
Two years of family intrigue followed, in which a
nephew of the Prime Minister, Matabar Singh, also came
to the front as a staunch supporter of the Prime Minister
in his efforts to curb Ranbir's ambition. If Ranbir enjoyed
the secret favour of the King, Matabar had the enthusiastic
support of the troops, with; whom his youth and gallant
'
Quoted in Campbell's official memorandum drawn up under
-Hodgson's supervision in
1837, pp. 9, 17,
etc.
vni.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839. H3
bearing made him a favourite. In
1834
he received a
check through the influence of Ranbir. But
"
such was the
popularity he enjoyed among the Gurkha soldiery that on
his resigning the command of the two battalions formerly
under him, the whole of them with the exception of two
hundred men laid down their arms, refusing to serve under
any other leader."
^
The King became afraid, tried to con-
ciliate Matabar, and in November 1834
appointed him
General Commanding the Eastern Districts with
3,000
troops. So far the old Prime Minister and his loyal
nephew had held their own in the family intrigue.
The year
1834
was not to close, however, without reveal-
ing that the Prime Minister had enemies very different
from those of his own house. The heir of the Pandis,
whom Bhim Sen had ruined and exiled in the early years
of the century, suddenly came forward, and petitioned the
King for the restitution of the family honours and estates.
"
This sudden revival of claims nearly extinct for thirty-
one years, and after so complete an extirpation as the Kala
Pandis had undergone through means of the very man
now paramount in the State, struck all with astonishment."
^
The boldness of the measure, together with the favourable
manner in which the Raja received the petition, seemed to
the Resident to indicate some secret influence in the
palace. As a matter of fact the Pandis had secured the
support of the Raja's senior or principal wife.
"
From this
date may be reckoned the commencement of a counter-
revolution and of those intrigues of the Kala Pandis which
eventually succeeded so well in the overthrow of their rival
[Bhim Sen], and in repaying the cruelties which they had
themselves suffered at his hands."
^
By the beginning of
1835
seven factions had developed
'
Excerptsfrom the Letters
of
the Resident at Kathmandu, para. 20.
Ranbir's corps, when their commander had met with a temporary
check in his intrigues in December
1833,
had done the same thing.
-
Excerpts from the Letters
of
the Resident at Katkmandn, para. 21.
Secret Consultations.
India
Office
MSS.
^
Idem.
144
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
at the Court of Nepal, all requiring to be carefully
watched by the Resident, each from time to time
coquetting for his support, and from time to time making
appeals to the popular warlike sentiment in Nepal against
the presence of a foreign representative at their capital.
Hodgson had the delicate task of maintaining an attitude
of dignified non-interference towards them all, which
should not improperly pledge his Government on the
one hand, nor give offence on the other. The principal
dramatis personcB in the series of tragedies that followed
may be briefly enumerated.
First, the faineant King ambitious of becoming actual
ruler, at first with the help of Ranbir Singh the brother
and rival of the Prime Minister, subsequently with the aid
of the Pandi faction hostile to the Prime Minister's whole
clan. After suffering many degradations, the poor King
was finally deposed in
1847,
and died a State prisoner.
Second, the King's chief wife, known as the Senior
Queen, who tried to assert her authority by the help of the
Pandis. After furious outbursts in which she more than
once quitted the palace in a rage, she died on her way into
exile, as rumoured at the time from poison, but apparently
from jungle-fever caught on her flight towards the Indian
plains in 1841.
Third, the King's second wife, known as the Junior
Queen, who hoped to rise to power by supporting the
Thappas (the clan of the Prime Minister Bhim Sen), and
by opposing the Pandis. After a long struggle she ob-
tained her full political rights as Queen in January
1843,
restored the Thappas with the gallant Matabar as Prime
Minister, lost her power on his assassination in
1845,
and
was afterwards exiled to the Indian plains.
Fourth, the Chauntrias, or collateral branches of the
royal race with hereditary claims to high office. Kept
down during the long supremacy of Bhim Sen, they re-
asserted their rights as his power waned, and secured the
Prime-Ministership for their clan more than once after his
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
I45
fall, but lost their leaders by exile and assassination, and
finally went down in the great massacre of 1846.
Fifth, the Thappa family, headed by the Prime Minister
Bhim Sen who after a six years' struggle to maintain his
power since the death of the old Queen-Regent was
degraded in
1837,
and cut his throat in prison to avoid
torture in 1839.
His rival brother Ranbir became a fakir,
or wandering mendicant, to save his life. His gallant
nephew Matabar, after long exile, obtained the Prime-
Ministership through the influence of the Junior Queen in
December
1843,
and was murdered in
1845.
Sixth, the rival family of the Pandis, who had been
crushed for thirty years by Bhim Sen. Headed by
Ranjang, the son of the Prime Minister murdered at the
beginning of the century, they began to reclaim their rights
in
1834.
By the palace intrigues of the Senior Queen,
Ranjang obtained more than once the Prime-Ministership.
and after many murders perished himself in the general
slaughter and exile of the Pandis in
1843, His principal
kinsmen were beheaded. The aged Ranjang
"
was brought
to the place of execution, but being in a dying state, he
was merely shown to the people and then removed to his own
house, where he died naturally a few hours afterwards."
Seventh, the Brahman party, in turn allied and opposed
to all the foregoing factions of the military castes. Un-
justly kept out of their hereditary appointments, the
Brahmans emerged with Raghunath Pandit as their leader
on the downfall of Bhim Sen. During the confusion which
followed, the hostile factions allowed Raghunath Pandit
to obtain the Prime-Ministership till each could gather
its own forces. The Brahman, however, discovered the
times to be too perilous for a man of peace, and finding
himself unsupported even by the poor King soon resigned
the premiership. He reappeared from time to time,
especially as chief of a coalition ministry in 1840
;
always
keeping out of harm's way, and content to retire to the
safe seclusion of a religious life whenever danger threatened
10
146 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
All these factions came in their turn to the front amid
palace intrigues and massacres during Hodgson's Resident-
ship from
1833
to 1843.
Each did its best to establish its
power by destroying its rivals, and, with the exception of
the Brahman party, each when its time arrived shared the
common fate of slaughter and ruin. The ablest and most
confident of the rival ministers Matabar Singh, when he
finally established his supremacy, told the Resident that
since the foundation of the Nepalese dynasty every Prime
Minister had met with a violent death, but that, for his
own part,
"
he hoped he would escape." One dark night,
less than three months later, his mangled corpse was let
down by a rope into the street from a window of the
palace.^
While these homicidal politicians were struggling up to
power, murdering each other and in their turn getting
murdered, a youth was silently watching the blood-stained
arena. Jang
Bahadur, a grand-nephew of Bhim Sen,
managed to elude the Pandi sleuth-hounds on the destruc-
tion of his grand-uncle in 1839.
He obtained the judicial
office of Kaji, but led a life of self-contained retirement.
He accompanied his long-exiled uncle Matabar Singh on
his triumphant return to Nepal in February
1843,
Hodgson's
last year of office, and plunged on his own account into
the game of intrigue and massacre. After the slaughter
of the Pandis in that year, the murder of Matabar Singh
in 1845,
the dethronement of the King in
1847,
and other
assassinations and exiles too numerous to recount,
Jang
Bahadur emerged the final winner, and retained to the
end of his life as Prime Minister the almost supreme
authority which his grand-uncle Bhim Sen had exercised
for a third of a century.
I have explained the factions and intrigues which made
up Nepalese politics between the decline of Bhim Sen's
power in 1835
and the ascendency of
Jang
Bahadur in
J
Oldfield's Sketches from Nepal,
pp. 343-346,
Vol. I. Ed. 18S0.
This was in
1845,
^ft^'" Hodgson left Kathinandu.
vin.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839. 147
1847,
as it fell to Hodgson to deal with them in their most
acute stages. His cheery letters home made light of the
difficulties and dangers of his position. But the official
records of the Government of India prove how real those
difficulties and dangers were. Meanwhile the rise of the
rival faction of the Pandis in
1834
led Bhim Sen to realise
yet more clearly that the Resident, who represented the
interests of external peace and of the royal authority
within Nepal, might be used as a prop for his tottering
power. Accordingly the spring of
1835
witnessed a new
inclination on the part of the Nepalese Court, still under
Bhim Sen's Prime-Ministership, to agree to the commercial
and judicial arrangements which Hodgson had so long
urged as the surest means of arriving at an understanding
between Nepal and the British Government.
In May
1835
Hodgson wrote jubilantly to his steadfast
correspondent Lady D'Oyly, who had been urging him to
seek a more conspicuous career than he could hope for
in Nepal. He may be forgiven if he mistook the
rapprochement of the moment for a permanent improve-
ment in the attitude of the Nepalese Court.
"
The Darbar
is growing exceedingly civil, and I have now at last a
prospect of seeing the realisation of those hopes which
have buoyed me up these ten years. I think I have by
unwearied kindness and confidence melted the rock of
Gurkha alienation and jealousy ; and if so, I shall be,
ere long, able to turn the Darbar away from its suicidal
prosecution of the old policy of wars of aggression, and
to induce it gradually to accommodate its institutions to
its circumstances, as fixed by the late war with us. Let
me succeed in this
;
and I shall have the pleasure of
reflecting hereafter that, in my public career, I did a real
and great service to my Government, and one which no
other officer could have done. For my influence is the
result of very long intimacy with the people, backed by
untiring forbearance and kindness, despite of numberless
absurd demonstrations of
fiertc
on their part.
148 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
Government little understand the matter, and my
anticipations of applause from that quarter are too
feeble to admit of disappointment. My own conscience
and judgment, however, will richly reward me, and whilst
I live I shall reflect with delight that I saved a gallant
and ignorant people from the precipice on which they
were rushing by force of national habits and incapacity
to survey comprehensively their relative situation. You
would
'
as soon be a cabbage as live in Nepal.' EJi bien,
Eliza ! there is no disputing about tastes. To me the
possible realisation of the aim and object I have just
named affords a stimulus too high for words to convey.
"
The other day when an amiable old chief answered
me with tears, whilst I explained the friendly purpose of
some of my past earnest and even stern warnings, rejoicing
that at last they seemed to have taken effectwhen the
eood old man embraced me and told me that I should
long be remembered as the saviour of NepalI felt that
those words and expressions of his were indeed (in Scott's
language)
'
worth living for.' Eliza ! I have seen your eye
kindle and beam with the energy of the immortal spirit
within at a fictitious tale of generous devotion : have you
no sympathy for the reality?
"
But this strain is somewhat too high, I quit it to
allude to other respects in which Nepal has real and
rational charms for mefor any one of cultivated mind
and self-resource. What say you to its delicious climate,
its glorious scenery, with the enduring, accessible, and
healthful gratifications inseparable from them ? What
say you to the possession of leisure by a servant of the
public ? what to duties free from all tedious and petty
routine-labour ?
"
I waive the commonplaces on retirementbut there
is truth in them, or they had never been commonplace !
And, for my part, as I sit at this moment in my study
with my check fanned by the most temperate of breezes,
and my eye filled with the splendid garniture of Mount
viii.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
I49
Arjun, I could almost consent to live and die here and
should never cast a longing look towards the third-rate
society of all our Indian stations, Calcutta excepted. I
am naturally of too eager a temperament for either the
fiery clime or the killing labours of office below ; and
many a time have I blessed God that He was pleased to
cast my official lot in Nepal. Adieu
;
cherish my brother
William for my sake, and believe that whilst I live I never
cease to love and honour you. Yours most affectionately,
"B. H. Hodgson."
During the course of this year
1835
Bhim Sen seemed
resolved to conciliate the British Resident by acts as well
as by words. The Nepal Court issued an order under the
Red Seal of the King, commanding its warden of the
marches to deliver up to our authorities a famous leader
of banditti who had long committed depredations in the
Company's territories with the connivance of the Nepalese
frontier officers. Certain of the higher and military castes
had hitherto been exempted by Nepalese law from suffer-
ing death for capital crimes. This privilege enabled them
to plunder with impunity on the border. Hodgson's
remonstrances were at length successful in obtaining the
abolition of an immunity which acted as a direct incentive to
crime. The Prime Minister published a royal proclamation
warning all Nepalese subjects residing on the frontier that
they should hereafter be punished according to the gravity
of their offences, without regard to their rank or caste.
The King, under Bhim Sen's prompting, even proposed
to send the Prime Minister's nephew on a conciliatory
mission to England
Excerpts from
the IMters
of
the Rcsidcfit ut Kathmandu. Tickell's
Memorandum, para.
39.
*
Idc?n., para. 40.
^
Ide7n.
viil.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
161
vations are apt to be unpopular, and the politic Brahman
shifted to the shoulders of the Raja whatever odium might
attach to the reform. He modestly presented himself as
chief of the civil administration, while the King stood forth
as its military head.
Meanwhile the national pride was flattered by missions
to the Sikh Government at Lahore and to the Court of
Persia. The army also was maintained at its overgrown
strength of 19,000
men actually under arms, with twice
that number of an effective reserve. Hodgson had to
keep an anxious eye on the frontier now alive with
2,500
additional soldiers, chiefly old praetorians from the
capital full of ignorant swagger and contempt for their
British neighbours. In September
1837
he wrote to his
father that the revolution in Nepal has
"
at last alarmed
the British Government into alacrity and interest ; and
I find myself holding by general admission a highly
important trust."
The year
1837
had proved one of incessant labour to
the Resident. In March Hodgson wrote to Lady D'Oyly
rejoicing in his good health, and hoping to be able to
retire in 1841.^ But his liver complaint returned with new
aggravations in the autumn, and in a hurried letter to his
father on December ist,
1837,
he says that it "has forced
a sea-voyage on me. I shall go to the Cape with the
D'Oylys who are bound for England, and I shall, I hope,
be able to come back to my post here next cold weather."
He made a will leaving to his father his valuable collec-
tions, or rather those which he had not already presented
to learned and scientific societies. That was all he had
to bequeath, except some small savings in cash to his
children.
"
Alas, I have no money to speak of, and what
I have, therefore, must go to my poor children, who will
probably be kept in India to save you trouble and to
better them as natives of this land." Amid his public
cares and ill-health he finds consolation in his little ones.
'
Letter to Lady D'Oyly dated March 5th, 1837.
II
1 62 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
A bit of music or my boy's voice," he writes to Lady
D'Oyly,
"
melts me to gentleness."
The ferment in Nepal did not, however, allow him the
much-needed year of rest. Hodgson had to recover from
his illness as best he could by a change to Calcutta, and
then returned to his post. Next year,
1838,
was one of
palace intrigues. The Senior Queen violently supported
the Pandis ; their leader received the general command of
the troops, while his brothers and relatives crowded into the
highest offices around the person of the Raja and through-
out the provinces. The Junior Queen less effectively urged
the restoration of Bhim Sen who
"
continued at large
"
amid the plaudits of the soldiery, and was still allowed to
present himself at Court.
In February the disputes of the two ladies flamed up
beyond control upon the Senior Queen demanding the
Prime-Ministership for her favourite Ranjang, the head of
the Pandis. As the poor Raja shuffled according to his
wont, "she furiously left the palace, declaring she would
never return unless her will was obeyed, and repaired to
Pushpali-nath, about three miles from the city, attended
by Ranjang."
^
So completely did she dominate her feeble
husband that, in spite of the scandal,
"
during her stay
there the Court attended daily with the Raja himself on
her. This," adds the official report in 1840,
"
is the first-
mentioned of similar vagaries with which this headstrong
woman has up to this day continued to be the torment of
the whole Court."
Bhim Sen's gallant nephew Matabar, under pretext of
a hunting party to catch elephants in the Tarai, slipped
off to the holy city of Benares on the British plains, and
thence to the Sikh capital in the Punjab. The Brahman
Prime Minister began to spin a web of intrigue for the
union of the two great Hindu powers on our northern
frontier, the Nepalese and Sikhs, against us. Even the
^
Excerpts from
the Letters
of
the Resident. Tickell's Memorandmn,
para, 42.
viii.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839. 163
Raja plucked up spirit to declare that,
"
as the English
and Musalmans have united, it was time for the Hindus
to look to themselves." But another outburst of his wife's
fury left him little leisure for distant diplomacy. No
longer content with demanding the Prime-Ministership
for her favourite Pandi, she began to plot for the deposition
of the Raja, the placing of her young son on the throne
and the expulsion of the British representative.
By July 1838 she would have forced the Raja's consent
but for the Brahman Prime Minister's remonstrances. He
pointed out that so disgraceful a surrender to the Pandis
would alienate the army, and drive many of the chiefs to
seek protection from the English. The Senior Queen again
quitted the capital in a rage, declaring
"
that she would
never return unless the throne was abdicated in favour of
her son, and Ranjang made Prime Minister." The miser-
able Raja knew not whither to turn. The whole body of
nobles held sulkily aloof from the henpecked husband
;
his Brahman Prime Minister resigned, and waited in
religious retirement until the feminine tyranny should be
overpast. The despised and deserted King sought for
comfort in superstitious auguries. His timorous soul had
long been accustomed to consult omens
;
indeed earth-
quakes and portents form a large part of the Court
chronicle of his reign.^ The impostors whom he now con-
sulted foretold, probably on the prompting of the Queen,
"
fearful reverses, the downfall of Nepal, and the triumph of
the English
;
and so effectually wrought on his fears as to
compel him to quit the palace."
^
He at last got his wife
back by appointing her favourite Pandi to the Prime-
Ministership.
'
See the very curious enumeration in Chapter IX. of the translation
from the Parhatiya in Dr. Wright's History
of
Nepal,
pp.
268-271
(Cambridge University Press,
1877),
^
Excerpts
fr
0771 the Letters
of
the Resident. Tickell's Memorandum.
I quote from my extracts from the original Secret Consultations in the
India Office MS. Records.
l64 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Bhim Sen now saw that his only chance lay in the
protection of the British. He unfolded to the Resident the
conspiracy against our power, unaware that Hodgson had
silently watched each mesh as it was being woven. In
January 1838 three messengers disguised as religious
mendicants brought a rumour to Nepal of a rupture be-
tween the British and the Court of Ava. Forthwith
Nepal despatched an emissary to Burma, taking Sikkim
and Assam by the way. As the year advanced, negotia-
tions which the Nepalese believed to be profound secrets,
but each move in which Hodgson recorded with an im-
perturbable face, were carried on with the great Native
States of India, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Gwalior, Sindhia,
Haidarabad, the Marathas and the Sikhs
;
while communi-
cations were opened with China, Afghanistan, and Persia.
Three thousand additional rounds of powder and cannon-
shot were served out from the central arsenals to the
garrisons along the British frontier of Nepal.
At length Bhim Sen
"
privately sent secret information
to the Resident that the Darbar were prepared for hostili-
ties in October, should the accounts received from Ava,
Pekin, and Lahore be favourable by that time."^ As
rumours thickened of our being in trouble with Burma,
Afghanistan, and Persia, the Darbar became impatient,
"
and the Raja was formally petitioned by a body of Chiefs
in Council to expel the Resident at oncea proposition to
which he tacitly listened." " The expulsion would probably
be accompanied with massacre, and fears were felt in
Calcutta lest the furious Queen's favourite, now become
Prime Minister, might murder Hodgson and his staff to
win popularity with the army, and to commit the King
irrevocably to war.
Hodgson maintained an attitude of calm which almost
seemed indifference, and kept up his polite intercourse with
the Court as if nothing were happening which could not
*
Excerpts
from the Letters
of
the Resident, ut supra,
p. 81.
^
IdejH.
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 18331839,
165
be adjusted in the ordinary course of diplomacy. On his
remonstrance the King issued royal mandates in September
recalling several of the secret emissaries to the Native
States. At the same time he still more secretly sent forth
new ones. His Highness even went so far as to address
a complimentary letter to Lord Auckland
"
professing the
most amiable views towards the British Government."
Amid these courtly hypocrisies the unhealthy months
slipped by during which Nepal might have struck her blow
;
and with the commencement of the cold weather came the
news that a British force was ordered to assemble on the
Nepal frontier.
Hodgson well knew how little was to be expected from
this order. The Governor-General, Lord Auckland, had
asked him in the summer of 1838 for a confidential report
on the military resources of Nepal
^
and her intrigues with
the Indian feudatory States.- But he had also warned
Hodgson that actual hostilities against Nepal must be
deferred till the Afghan expedition was concluded.^ In
September Lord Auckland informed him that there was
no present intention of dealing with Nepal further than by
strengthening our line of communications on the Ganges.*
Subsequent letters made this still more clear. But for-
tunately they were private ones. Hodgson kept his own
counsel, but allowed the rumours of an assembling force to
freely reach the Nepalese Court.
The opportunity for an attack on our frontier had for
the time passed and the Nepalese Court changed its tone.
'
Letters from John Russell Colvin, Private Secretary to Governor-
General (marked
"
Private "), to B. H. Hodgson, dated Simla,
June 14th,
1838. These and all other letters from Mr.
J.
R. Colvin are quoted
from the MS. volumes kindly placed at my disposal by his son. Sir
Auckland Colvin, K.C.S.I.
-
The same to the same, dated
July
2nd, 1838.
^
The same to the same, dated August 28th, 1838.
''
The same to the same, dated September 28th, 1838. In the task
of copying these Colvin letters, or of making excerpts, Mrs. Hodgson
has given valuable aid.
1 66 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
The complaints by the British frontier magistrates which
had accumulated throughout the year 1838 were inquired
into
;
refugee criminals were given up
;
a just settlement
was even volunteered by Nepal in regard to the Sikkim
boundary. Hodgson's brave and skilful policy received its
crowning triumph on November 28th, when
"
the Darbar
sent a written promise to the Resident, insuring in future
the administration of impartial justice to British subjects
trading in Nepal." His absolute unconcern while his life
lay at the mercy of any palace-prompted tumult, and the
silent completeness with which he had outwitted their
machinations, won the admiration of the Chiefs and at the
same time tickled their Highland sense of humour. It
also frightened the King. The Darbar now granted, as
a pleasantry of the moment, the judicial rights to British
subjects which Hodgson had failed to wring from it by
years of laborious diplomacy.
Hodgson had meanwhile not only to calm the fears of
his parents at home, but also to mourn the death of his
last surviving brother the Horse Artillery Captain, and to
find money to pay his debts and to send the young widow
to England.
"
My dear Parents," he wrote in an undated scrap of a
letter, but which appears to belong to the Christmas season
of 1838,
"
I steal a moment from official writing to tell you
I am well, and that you need entertain no fears for me
though war ensue with Nepal, as it probably will imme-
diately. I have striven heartily and affectionately to save
Nepal. . . . Oh that I had more health and strength to meet
the crisis, but He will support me upon whom is my main
reliance, even God Almighty. Love to Fanny and Ellen,
and believe me ever your devotedly affectionate son. God
ever bless you both and give you many happy returns of
this season."
Captain William Hodgson died on June
12th, 1838.
"In every requisite of a Horse Artillery officer," his
colonel commandant had written in the previous year on
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1S33
1839. 167
Lord Auckland's withdrawing Captain Hodgson to a staff
appointment,
"
I know of few to equal, none to surpass
him."
^
His transfer to the Horse Artillery and recent
marriage had been a drain on Brian's purse : his death
now left behind a legacy of money troubles.
"
I have been
obliged," he writes to his father on August 12th,
1838, "to
send Mary some money (Rs.
1,000), and I fear I shall be
called on for morenot that I love money, but that I fear
poverty and India on account of my health." This was only
the commencement of fresh claims upon him. Among
other items Brian became responsible for a loan of 1,000
borrowed by his brother. The widow begged him to repay
himself in part from some money which came in
;
"
but,"
adds Hodgson,
"
I have not the heart to take it."
^
I
mention these matters, not because Hodgson attached
importance to them, but because they enable us to
understand the private worries which aggravated his ill-
health, and made his public anxieties more difficult to
bear.
The necessity of paying up the Rs.
50,000 towards his
pension to enable him to retire at the end of his service
began to haunt him. His full twenty-five years would ex-
pire in
1843,
^"^ his period of actual residence in 1841.
He feared that his ailment would not allow him to go on
working longer than the earlier date. Yet the constant
demands on his purse by his parents and brothers had
prevented him from laying by a sufficient sum to purchase
his pension.
"
I must calculate on every sous before-
hand," he wrote to his father early in
1839,
"and know
what I have to rest on. I am but in weakly health, and
.should retire as soon as my time is out."
The year 1838 closed with a full recognition by the
British Government of the gravity of the situation in
Nepal. The corps of observation to be assembled under
Colonel Oglander on the frontier could not be got together
Letter from Colonel Boileau, dated February 9th,
1837
*
Letter to his father, dated February ist,
1839.
1 68 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
in an effective form,^ as Lord Auckland was then engrossed
with preparations for his Afghan war.- In September 1838
the Governor-General plainly said that it was not possible
for him to do more than strengthen our troops along the
line of the Ganges.^
Hodgson was informed, however, that in event
of an outbreak the forces in our provinces bordering
Nepal would be at his disposal. In a letter to his father,
dated September 1838,
he had written :
"
The Gurkhas are
behaving as childishly as hostilely, and I fear I shall be
unable to keep the peace, though I have now discretionary
power over three divisions of the army, amounting to
nearly 20,000 men, with which we are to make a cordon
sanitah'e to endure pending the absence of the Kabul
force from India. I fear the cordon may be broken,
despite my cares to preserve it
;
since it must be seven
hundred miles long and liable to attack at any point
by an active and enterprising enemy." Such a cordon,
if it merits that name, might be useful to avenge his
death, but was too far off to prevent a massacre. The
truth is that the Afghan war proved as much as Lord
Auckland could manage at one time, and the best he
could hope for Nepal was that the Resident would keep
things quiet till the storm in Afghanistan blew over.
This is precisely what Hodgson did during the four
eventful years which followed, from the establishment of
our forces in Afghanistan in
1839
till the annihilation of
the Kabul garrison in 1842. But the inability of the
Government to make an effective display of force, or even
to maintain a firm attitude, seriously weakened his hands.
He by no means mistook the momentary good-humour
>
I make this statement on the authority of a marginal note by
Hodgson on p. 314
of Oldfield's Sketchesfrom Nepal, Vol. I. (1880).
2
Lord Auckland decided to send a British force to Kabul in
July
\%-}>^.Joh?i Russell Colvi7i, by Sir Auckland Colvin,
p.
116 (Clarendon
Press, 1895).
'
Letter from Lord Auckland's Private Secretary to B. H. Hodgson,
dated Simla, September 28th, 1838.
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833
1839.
169
of the Darbar towards the close of 1838 for a permanent
amendment of its ways.
"
We have narrowly escaped a
war with Nepal," he wrote to his father February ist,
1839,
"and now I .see many symptoms that the escape
was but temporary, and that unless our Governor-General
make up his mind to more resolute remonstrance than
heretofore, Gurkha presumption and duplicity will speedily
enforce our taking up arms against Nepal."
The Nepalese Court had by this time discovered that our
threatened demonstration on its frontier was only a threat
not to be realised while Lord Auckland had Afghanistan
on his hands. Accordingly it began the year
1839
by
"
publishing prophecies predicting our downfall through-
out the plain.s."
^
At home it got ready again for war.
Throughout the year the arsenals and military workshops
resounded with preparation. Sixty-four new cannon
were cast, while by April two hundred cannon
"
of brass
and leather
"
were under manufacture, and 800,000 pounds
of powder with 100,000 round shot and 1,200,000 musket
balls were ordered. Muskets were to be turned out at the
rate of five a day. Two experienced captains were deputed
to stockade the hills on the border, and a war-census was
taken. It returned the population fit to bear armsthat
is, from twelve to sixty years of ageat 400,000 persons.
All this was very popular with the chiefs, but Ranjang
Pandi, who now made himself sole Minister with the help
of the Senior Queen, found that it cost money. It was
in vain that he retrenched the public expenditure.
"
The
strictest parsimony" failed to yield the needful supplies.
"
As high in favour at Court as he was feared and detested
by the people," he devised a scheme of resumptions,
'
Excerptsfrom
the Letters
of
the Resident at Kathmandu to Govern-
ment. Tickell's Memorandum. For this year
1839
I quote invariably
from the original MS. copy in the India Office, countersigned
by Hodgson. As I follow its text closely, it is not needful to
constantly refer to it in footnotes. It and the letters separately quoted
are the authorities for all statements in the following pages dealing
with this eventful year
1839.
170 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
forced benevolences, and forfeitures "falling little short
of open robbery. He commenced operations by ostenta-
tiously giving up to the State his own lands which he
had held on rent-free tenure," and then called on the
other chiefs to do likewise. All rent-free grants since
the downfall of his father in 1802 were to be resumed.
The chiefs were at the same time subjected to a system
of money contributions
;
from a single one of them a
forced loan of ;^30,ooo was demanded. Fines also were
"
mercilessly levied on the most frivolous pretences for
acts so long past as to have been almost forgotten." One
noble family found itself suddenly called upon for i^8o,ooo,
another for i^2O,O00 ;
while
;^2,500
were extorted from
a poorer man on the plea of his having instigated a friend
"
to intercede for Bhim Sen and his family when in chains."
"
Soldiers were scattered over the country enforcing these
exactions," and the acclamations of the new Prime
Minister's war promises speedily turned into an outcry
against the extortions of his war finance.
Ranjang Pandi tried to stem the public hatred by clutch-
ing more strenuously at the supreme power. The leader
of the Brahman party was compelled to give up his last
pretence of joint authority, and to retire in real earnest
to his devotions. The King's collaterals had indignantly
declared
"
that they who are of the royal race will not be
subjected to any one but the Raja, and that to obey a Khas
(Ranjang's tribe) is intolerable degradation."^ Ranjang
retorted by calling them
"
royal menials," who have no
title to discharge the noble duties of war and of politics."
He elected, in fact, to trust solely to his influence over the
Senior Queen, and disdained alike the wrath of the chiefs
and the detestation of the people. The poor King, with
his usual feeble craft, thought that he himself might
perhaps come to the top in the turmoil. So he kept
'
Letter Irom B. H. Hodgson to the Officiating Secretary with the
Governor-General, dated April 14th, 1839.
India
Office
MSS.
^
Idem.
vin.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833-1839.
171
Ranjang in suspense as to his formal confirmation in the
Prime-Ministership,
while allowing him to discharge its
duties and to bear its odium.
Ranjang's
ministry was one of spoliation, and the chiefs,
as Bhim Sen had predicted, began to turn their eyes to
the British. The following
paragraphs in a secret despatch
from Hodgson to Herbert Maddock,^ who had preceded
him as Resident in Nepal and was now the Secretary to
Government in attendance on the
Governor-General, shows
the gradual
development of the drama, then drawing to its
bloody close.
"Even now, though Ranjang is not yet confirmed in
the Premiership, and perhaps may not, after all, be so, yet
under his predominate secret influence many severities are
inflicted and more apprehended, and the great body of
the Chiefs is extremely disgusted and discontented. The
Senior Rani's irregular and violent ambition is said to find
a ready tool in Ranjang for the accomplishment of her
particular purposes, on condition she prove herself (as she
professes to be) equally pliant in regard to his particular
ends. She wants the Raja to resign in favour of her son
;
Ranjang wants revenge on his numerous enemies
;
and
the Raja, though he dreads with reason both the one and
the other, and thus continues to withhold the [confirma-
tion in the]
Premiership from Ranjang, yet gradually gives
way to his imperious spouse, seduced by
extravagant
promises of the mighty things which Ranjang is to achieve
against the Company, when once he has the complete
direction of affairs.
Meanwhile every step he makes to
power is marked by actual or threatened
retaliation and
severity at home, and by secret instigations of every
species of covert hostility abroad.
"
He appears not in any matter, but he really guides all
through the Senior Rani, and he it is who so often marred
the Raja's better purpose when his
Highness was ready
to lay aside severities at home and intrigues on the plains.
1
Dated Nepal Residencj', April 14th, 1839.
172 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
All persons of mark now look to the Company's
Government, and earnestly hope that the Governor-General
will ere long be led to address the Raja in such terms as may
frighten him into justice at home and abroad, and redeem
him from the toils of the Rani and [Ranjang] Pandi, whose
unjust and irregular ambition threatens equal mischief to
the State in its domestic and in its foreign relations.
"
Several times the Raja has been made to hesitate
and draw back from his meditated injustice. . . . The
Junior Rani dreads that her children will be sacrificed to
the jealousy of the Senior Rani, their eyes being put out
or their lives made away with by foul practices, and she
is meditating some possible means of appeal to the
Resident.
"
The Court physicians have destroyed themselves be-
cause banishment proved no protection to them, and they
were loaded with irons and otherwise oppressed after they
had been again spared and even sent to their destination.
The Court has therefore the blood of these Brahmans upon
its head, and all persons anticipate misfortunes to the
kingdom therefrom. Bhim Sen's brother has turned /<5:/C'z>
to escape from perpetually renewed alarms, and Bhim Sen
considers himself safe only because his nephew Matabar is
beyond the Darbar's power, and would join the English
and open the way to their armies to Kathmandu if Bhim
Sen were presently made away with. The Darbar earnestly
desires to get back Matabar Singh and also Ranudat Sah
to Nepal, and the Governor-General should take good care
that neither of them yet returns, for whilst they are below,
the Darbar will never dare to come to extremities with the
Company.
"
The Raja's temper is spoilt and soured, so that the
most respectable chiefs are repeatedly subjected to coarse
abuse or to actual or threatened extortions, upon pretence
of bribery and malversation in office under the long ad-
ministration of the Thappas. Meanwhile secret intrigues
with the plains with a view to excite discontent among
VIII.] RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833 1839. 173
the Company's
subjects and conspiracy amongst its de-
pendent allies are going on as actively as ever.
"
There are now at
Kathmandu secret envoys from all
the following States:
Gwalior, Satara, Baroda, Jodhpur,
Jaipur,
Kotah, Bundi, Rewa, Panna, and the Punjab
(Dhyan Singh) ;
and the intercourse thus set afoot the
Darbar is determined to maintain. Meanwhile, partly from
dread of the consequences of such perverseness and partly
in order to be ready fully to meet the expected opportunity
of open rupture, hostile preparations of all sorts continue
to be actively made.
.
"
Between fear and hate the Darbar suffers not itself
to have a moment's rest, but so little is it governed by
prudence in its proceedings that, at the very moment when
it would fain break with the Company, it scruples not to
misuse and alarm in an extreme degree the great majority
of those Chiefs who alone could second its wishes in the
event of war. A rash and violent woman aiming at
uncontrolled sway governs the Darbar, and all men of
experience anticipate the worst that can happen unless
renewed dread of the Company should speedily recall the
Raja to safer counsels and more resolution in abiding by
them. I have, etc.
"
B. H. Hodgson, Resident"
Ranjang Pandi perfectly understood the situation. A
coalition of the Chiefs led by Bhim Sen, and enjoying the
goodwill of the British Resident, would frighten the feeble
Raja into a spasm of independence which might sweep
the
Pandi faction out of Nepal. Ranjang did not yet
dare to attack the British Resident. He also feared to
murder Bhim Sen lest the gallant Matabar, who was now
safe at the Sikh Court, should return on the flood-tide of
popular indignation and avenge his uncle's death. "To
get rid of this stumbling-block it was reported
^
about this
'
Excerptsfrom
the Letters
of
the Resident at Kathmandu for
1839,
ut supra. India Office MS. Secret Consultations.
174
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
time that the Darbar had hired secret agents to poison
Matabar Singh, who were shortly to set out with that
intent to the Punjab."
At the same moment a fresh charge of poisoning was
trumped up against Bhim Sen in the palace. The Court
physician was instigated, under threats of torture, to
implicate the ex-minister in an imaginary attempt to poison
the Senior Queenan attempt alleged to have taken place
six months before ! The aged Bhim Sen,
"
in whose favour
none dared now to lift a voice, was reduced to the most
abject and affecting appeals to the Resident." But the
Raja still hesitated to take the plunge into the infamy of
a judicial murder of the old Minister. The King,
accompanied by one of the royal collaterals who was for
a time joint Prime Minister with Ranjang, came in person
to the Residency and laid the accusation before Hodgson.
The Resident calmly but firmly pointed out the insufficiency
of the evidence, "and with a view to the physician's life
being spared, recommended his banishment from the city,
as securing future peace within the palace." Even this
failed to satisfy the furious Senior Queen and her favourite
Pandi. The Court physicians committed suicide to escape
torture. The younger Queen, as we have heard, went in
hourly dread for her children's lives ; and Bhim Sen's
brother^ sought safety under the garb of a wandering
religious mendicant.
The first batch of victims were already in their graves,
but their kindred remained. "The family and relations,
male and female, of the physician who was crucified last
year were seized
;
five had their noses cut off, and eleven,
after being tortured in hopes of extorting confessions
criminating certain chiefs, were given to perpetual slavery
as outcasts."
^
Two of the Court physicians who had not
Ranbir Singh, who had only a few years ago been intriguing against
his elder brother for the Prime-Ministership.
-
These and all other quotations without a separate reference are
from ih^ Excerptsfrom the Letters
of
the ResidcJit, as before mentioned.
viii.J
RESIDENT IN NEPAL: 1833-1839. 1
75
killed themselves were horribly mutilated. One of them,
"
a Brahman and whose life was therefore sacred, was
burned on the forehead and cheeks till his brain and jaws
were exposed."
^
The other was impaled alive, and his
heart torn out while he was still living. The Prince looked
on as these horrors were perpetrated, but no word could
be wrung out of the victims to incriminate Bhim Sen. The
Senior Queen
"
almost publicly avowed her determination
to procure the Raja's abdication in favour of her eldest
son." Every effort was made to lure back Matabar Singh
to Nepal (the secret emissaries having failed to poison
hini), in order that
"
both he and Bhim Sen might be
decapitated."
The last scene in the tragedy opened with a new set of
accusations against Bhim Senaccusations to which his
persecutors no longer took the trouble to give even a show
of probability. He was first charged with poisoning the
widow of the Raja who died as far back as 18
16,
then
with poisoning that long-deceased Raja himself
"
The old
man thus beset," says the official narrative,-
"
courageously
defended himself, demanding why, if such charges had been
really made, they had not been produced against him on
his first arrest in
1837 ;
denounced the papers as forgeries,
and called for confrontation with his accusers. But his
defence and his appeals were alike unheeded
;
not a voice
was raised in his behalf throughout the Darbar. The
Chiefs sat by in dejected silence, and the Raja giving way
to, or feigning, a burst of indignation, denounced him as a
traitor and had him hurried off in chains to a prison.
"
It is needless to trace further his cruel persecutions.
Like a convicted felon, he lingered in his dungeon during
his few remaining days
;
his ears were assailed from day
to day with threats of renewed tormentswith being
'
Oldfield, Vol. I.,
p. 316 (Ed.
1880), apparently writing from local
records which have not come under my notice in the Secret Consultations
preserved at the India Office.
-
Excerpts
fr
0771 the Letters
of
the Reside7it at Kathmandii, 7it supra.
1/6 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap. viii.
exposed plunged up to the neck in a heap of human
ordure and filth, with having his wife paraded naked through
the citytill, totally worn out by accumulated torments, the
wretched man anticipated further malice by committing
suicide. On
July
20th he inflicted a wound in his throat,
with a hikri, of which he died nine days after. His corpse
was refused funeral rites, but dismembered and exposed
about the city, after which the mangled remains were
thrown away on the river-side, where none but the dog
and vulture dared further heed them."
No sooner was the outrage complete than the terror-
stricken Raja hastened to excuse himself to the Resident.
Hodgson listened, then coldly replied
"
that the whole of
the transaction was foreign to the duties of my station,
and that I could only express my acknowledgments for
the official communication made to me by the Darbar."^
But he laid a full account of the proceedings before the
Governor-General.
"
Thus has perished," he concludes in
words not unsuited to the tragical moment,
"
the great and
able statesman who for more than thirty years had ruled
this kingdom with more than regal sway, just two years
after his sudden fall from power in 1837
prior to which
event the uniform success of nearly all his measures had
been no less remarkable than the energy and sagacity
which so much promoted that success. He was indeed a
man born to exercise dominion over his fellows alike by the
means of command and of persuasion. Nor am I aware
of any native statesman of recent times, except Ranjit
Singh, who is, all things considered, worthy to be compared
with the late General Bhim Sen of Nepal."
*
'
Report from the Resident to the Deputy Secretary with the
Governor-General, dated July
30th,
1839,
para. 4.
India
Office
MSS.
*
Idem., para. 6.
I 8++ - /ETAT 44-.
1/7
]
CHAPTER IX.
LAST FOUR YEARS OF RESIDENTSHIP IN NEPAL.
1839
1843.
THE
Queen and her favourite Pandi now breathed
more freely. But they felt that, as long as a British
Resident watched their proceedings, the game of hostility
to the British Government was a dangerous one. They
vented their wrath on the kindred of the dead Prime
Minister, declared his whole clan incapable of holding any
State employment for seven generations, and drove forth
his relatives, who had already been banished to the moun-
tains, still farther into the snows. All grants of lands
made by him or by the late Queen-Regent from 1804
onwards were confiscated, and their holders, many of
whom had received them as payment for public services,
were without mercy turned adrift.
Hodgson's air of indifference to the intrigues against the
Residency, intrigues which the Queen knew he was well
informed of, nonplussed her. She thought he must cer-
tainly have some power of destruction in reserve. His
health improved and his spirits rose as he realised that
Lord Auckland was too busy with Afghanistan to spare
any force for Nepal, and that the Resident must depend
entirely on his own courage and resource. They
"
are
ready to break forth," he wrote to his father in
July 1S39,
"
or at least to break the treaty and expel the envoy, i.e.
myself There is great pleasure to me in the excitement
and in the responsibility, and now Government readily
admits that I was a prophet when I long ago told Lord
Bentinck to beware of the future, assuring him that what
12
178 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
he then called a sinecure would by-and-by come to be
considered the most important diplomatic office in India.
So it has proved. My health is pretty good, and I am
ever mindful of you all."
The Governor-General saw clearly that the death of
Bhim Sen left the war party supreme in Nepal, but he
could only take notice of it in empty words. There is
indeed a feeble magniloquence about Lord Auckland's
reply which the presence of his Afghan complications can
alone excuse.
"
I am directed to state," wrote his secre-
tary,^
"
that the measures of indignity, insult, and cruelty
which the Government of Nepal has adopted towards the
late and able Minister of that State, have been viewed by
the Governor-General with feelings of extreme disgust and
abhorrence. They pourtray a spirit of vindictiv'e hatred
towards the late General Bhim Sen, venting itself on its
unfortunate victim by outrages so atrocious and unmanly
as to lead to the belief that the moral feeling of the Court
has been much vitiated since the deposition of Bhim Sen,
and that, under the present system and the present Govern-
ment, the manners of the people will rapidly sink into a
state of barbarity from which they were being gradually
weaned by a long course of pacific rule, under an able and
comparatively enlightened administration."
Hodgson did what he could with this weak-kneed back-
ing. He made the Raja understand the danger to his
dynasty which the resentment of the Governor-General
implied. The poor Prince again drew away from the war
party. In the summer of
1839
he had begun "to talk of
the fate of the Company being in his hands,"
^
and had
been interdicted by the Queen from intercourse with the
Residency. Before autumn was over Hodgson brought
'
Letter from T. H. Maddock, Secretarj^ to the Government of India
with the Governor-General, to the Resident in Nepal, dated Simla,
August 1
5th, 1 839.
India
Office
MSS.
-'
Excerpts frotn Letters
of
the Resident. Tickell's Memorandum^
lit supra. Secret Consultations, India Office MSS.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 179
him to reason, dexterously using the Raja's necessity for
finding a wife or wives from India for the heir-apparent.
This plea had enabled the Nepalese Darbar to send its
emissaries to the Native Courts throughout Northern India
"
under the old pretence of seeking for brides."
^
The age
of the heir-apparent now rendered it a necessity in sober
earnest, and Hodgson politely informed the Raja that his
envoys would receive passports through the British pro-
vinces only if he acted justly by the British-Indian traders
in Nepal.
The negotiations dragged themselves on through various
phases of duplicity, but by October
1839
Hodgson had
once more checkmated the war party left rampant by
Bhim Sen's death in
July.
He wrote to Mr. Thoby
Prinsep on October i8th,
1839,
that he had for the present
stopped Nepal in her perilous course.'^
"
I have been
debating with her for three months to exact from her an
honest and practical atonement in place of the dishonest
and idle phrases and compliments with which she sought
to cover the past and to shift for the future. She offered
me, at the beginning of that period, a Kharita (or letter) for
the Governor-General full of all excellent discourse, rounded
off with a tender of her troops to us to fight beyond the
Indus and elsewhere. She conceived, or rather proposed
and wished, that this magnificent piece of humbug should
procure her a pardon for all ill-deeds and schemes of the
last two years, besides obtaining present leave for her to
send a gorgeous and numerous mission through the Rajput
States under pretence of marriage, but really to bravado
away the shame of her ejection from those parts eighteen
months ago, and to come to some sort of understanding
with their rulers.
'
Idem.
In this and in other letters I give only the paragraphs directly-
bearing on the political situation. Henry Thoby Prinsep was then
Officiating Secretary to the Government of India in the Secret and
Political Department.
l8o LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
"
I was obliged to be wary at first and to temporise.
But gradually I have grown bolder, and I have at last
compelled the Darbar to admit, by the silent abandonment
of it, that this mission to the Rajputs v^as a fraud
;
whilst
I have refused either to forward the Kharita to the
Governor-General or even to let a real marriage mission go
to the districts on this side the Ganges, until the Darbar
has, verily and in deed, done me right and justice in those
several special instances wherein she has admitted my
claim and pledged herself to redress over and over again.
"
These reforms I have now, I think, nearly carried, after
such delays and evasions and tricks to tire patience as
I never saw nor dreamt of before. I have been on the
verge of success apparently twenty times during the debate,
when the Darbar has gone off again at a tangent.
"
The points I have gained from the Darbar are of some
value, and if the greater politics of India go well for some
time to come, I may be able to keep the Darbar to the
new course which those points will define for her. But at
present she consents and signs with the worst will to the
work, and she will bolt if temptation again arise. Yours
ever,
"B. H. Hodgson."
The agreement which Hodgson thus wrung from Nepal
in the teeth of the war party now forms No. LVI. of Sir
Charles Aitchison's Treaties and Erigageinents. It bears
date November 6th,
1839,
and the translation runs as
follows :
"
According to your {i.e. the Resident's) request
and for the purpose of perpetuating the friendship of the
two States, as well as to promote the effectual discharge of
current business, the following items are fixed : ist. All
secret intrigues whatever, by messengers or letters, shall
totally cease. 2nd. The Nepal Government engages to
have no further intercourse with the dependetit allies of
the Company beyond the Ganges, who are by treaty
precluded from such intercourse, except with the Resident's
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843.
l8r
sanction and under his passports. 3rd. With the land-
holders and men of position on this side of the Ganges,
who are connected by marriage with the royal family of
Nepal, intercourse of letters and persons shall remain open
to the Nepal Government as heretofore. 4th. It is agreed
to, as a rule for the guidance of both Governments, that
in judicial matters, where civil causes arise, there they shall
be heard and decided
;
and the Nepal Government engages
that for the future British subjects shall not be compelled
to plead in the Courts of Nepal to civil actions having
exclusive reference to their dealings in the plains. 5th. The
Nepal Government engages that British subjects shall
hereafter be regarded as her own subjects in regard to
access to the Courts of Law, and that the causes of the
former shall be heard and decided without denial or delay,
according to the usages of Nepal. 6th. The Nepal Govern-
ment engages that an authentic statement of all duties
leviable in Nepal shall be delivered to the Resident, and
that hereafter unauthorised imposts not entered in this list
shall not be levied on British subjects."
For the moment the war party in Nepal was cowed.
Hodgson permitted the complimentary letter to the
Governor-General to be despatched along with the treaty,
and the Court even begged to be allowed to send an equally
complimentary mission to wait on his Excellencywith
the most violent of the war party at its head ! Suddenly,
on a rumour that Lord Auckland had been recalled for
harshness towards the Amir of Afghanistan,^ the projected
mission was dropped
"
in a manner wantonly disrespectful
towards his Lordship."
^
When the rumour turned out to
be false the proposal was ostentatiously revived in the hope
that the Nepalese envoy
*'
would be able by a personal
interview with the Governor-General to obtain his Lord-
ship's sanction to the numerous deputations which Nepal
'
Dost Muhammad.
-
Secret Letter from the Resident to the Secretary with the Governor-
General, dated November 25th,
1839.
1 82 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
wished to send forth all over India, under pretext of the
heir-apparent's approaching marriage, to select brides or
to issue invitations for the ceremony."
'
Hodgson's letters at this period disclose a hopelessness
of keeping the Nepalese Court to any engagements what-
ever, but also a resolve to constantly occupy its attention
with minor matters until Lord Auckland should be set free
from Afghanistan to deal seriously with the situation in
Nepal. The violence of the war party helped Hodgson's
design. For it established such a reign of terror inside the
palace and throughout the country that the Raja's family
as well as the chiefs began to look to the Residency as
their one source of security. The Senior Queen and her
favourite Pandi, carried their persecution of the Junior
Queen so far as to accuse her of criminal conversation
with a captain in the Gurkha army. The Raja saw
the malevolence of the charge, and it fell to the ground.
Presently they renewed the attack by an accusation
"
of
misprision of treason." This, although also foiled, threw
the younger Queen
"
into the greatest distress and fear for
her life and children, and induced her to appeal secretly
to the Resident to procure for her the protection of the
British Government."
^
The year 1840 thus opened with the war party again
supreme in Nepal, headed by the Senior Queen and her
favourite Pandi, but with the Court in the meshes of its
late engagements to Hodgson, and with the Junior Queen
and the royal collaterals looking for support to the
Residency. The Governor-General, notwithstanding his
entanglements in Afghanistan, began to feel that a war
with Nepal could not much longer be staved off. On
^
Excerpts from Letters
of
the Resident, ut supra.
Excerpts from Letters
of
the Rcside7it at Kat]i7na7idu. Tickell's
Memorandum, nt supra. In making my final reference to these
"
Excerpts," which conclude with the year
1839, I beg to express my
obligation to Mr. H. W. Garrett, of the 'Political Department, India
Office, under whose supervision copies were made for me from the
Secret Consultations (MSS.).
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IX NEPAL: 18391843. 183
January 9th, 1840, his Private Secretary wrote strongly to
Hodgson about
"
the idle vapourings and futile intrigues
by which the Nepal Darbar has been bringing upon itself
present ridicule and laying the seeds of its future punish-
ment."
'
Hodgson meanwhile occupied the Nepalese
Government with perpetual discussions about carrying
out its agreement to deliver up Thugs and the bandit-
leaders sheltered within its frontier, and he procured the
issue of stringent orders for their surrender. The truth is
that the Queen and her favourite were preparing their
grand coup, and were as anxious to gain time as Hodgson
himself
Meanwhile they laboured to render the British Govern-
ment odious in every way to the chiefs and people. They
first tried to draw Hodgson into a palace scandal. On
May 5th, 1840,
the marriage of the heir-apparent simul-
taneously to two ladies was celebrated. Shortly after the
ceremony the British Resident was summoned to a private
interview with the Senior Queen and the Raja. The Queen
declared with affected consternation that certain ill-omened
marks had been discovered on the bodies of the brides, and
that the marriages must at once be dissolved. Hodgson
carefully abstained from giving any opinion, for he knew
it was certain to be misrepresented. The Queen, indeed,
had got up the story partly to entrap the Resident, partly
as a move in her policy of keeping the King in perpetual
distresses in order to disgust him with the cares of royalty,
and to induce his resignation in favour of her son with
herself as regent. Foiled by Hodgson's reticence, she
presently discovered that the marks were only temporary
and of no significance.
She next tried to win popular favour by a romantic
outrage upon the British frontier. On April 12th, 1840,
half a hundred Gurkha braves suddenly appeared at the
great fair held in Ramnagar Forest, eight miles within
'
J.
R. Colvin to B. H. Hodgson, dated Camp beyond Dholpur,
January 9th, 1840.Vol. VIII., p. 217, of the Auckland MSS.
1
84
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON-
[chap.
our provinces. After forcibly levying the bazaar dues,
they established their permanent headquarters in the
neighbourhood, called on the inhabitants of ninety-one
British villages to come in, and told them that their terri-
tories were henceforth part of Nepal, to whose Government
alone the revenues must be paid. They then stationed
Gurkha soldiers in each of the villages thus seized, and
threatened to deport to Nepal for punishment any local
official who dared to convey information of the transaction
to the British authorities. "In fact a large tract of country,
eight or nine miles broad, by twenty or twenty-five in
length [say 200 square miles], had been entirely cut off
from the British dominions."^
Hodgson promptly demanded the withdrawal of the
Gurkha soldiers, the punishment of the authors of the
aggression, compensation to the villagers, and an ample
apology to our Government. But the Queen and her
favourite Pandi, being now almost ready to strike their
long-meditated blow, protracted the negotiations and
meanwhile denied redress. As Hodgson had no force
behind him, he had to keep his temper and do what he
could by remonstrances. The Queen and her favourite,
elated by impunity, resolved to at once raise a war-fund
by cutting down the pay of the troops, pretending that
the reduction was being carried out by the Raja under
orders from the British Government. Having thus pre-
pared the way, they awaited with calmness the military
rising which they knew would follow, and hoped that in
the confusion the Raja would be deposed and the Residency
burnt to the ground.
They had not to wait long. Early on the morning of
June
2 1 St, 1840,
the Nepalese army at the capital,
6,000 Strong, broke into revolt at a general parade, at
which the reduction of their pay was to be officially
'
Narrative of events in Nepal in
1840^
prepared by Lieutenant
C. H. Nicholetts, Assistant Resident, dated September 30th,
1853,
para. 7.
India
Office
Records.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
185
announced. On the preceding evening the Queen cleverly
secured the persons of the British Resident and his staff.
"
I was called," writes Hodgson in a private note,
"
to the
Darbar o.stensibly for a mere formal visit. I went as usual
with the gentlemen of the Residency at
7
p.m. At 10 o'clock
I rose to go, but the Raja begged me to stay awhile, and
so again at 1 1 o'clock, and again I think at midnight.
Still something was always urged by the Court to keep us,
and though no adequate cause was assigned, I assented
in order if possible to discover the real cause of our deten-
tion. I felt there was some cause, and possibly a serious
one, as I whispered to Dr. Campbell,^ and I wanted to
fathom the mystery.
"
Soon after midnight, at a sign from one of the Raja's
attendants, his Highness asked me to go to the Queen's
apartments. I went. Her Highness received me with
scant civility, and presently grew angry and offensive with
reference to business. I replied at first seriously," and
then passed to compliments ending in a jest.
"
This made
her laugh, and under cover of the momentary good-humour
the Raja carried me off, apparently only too happy to
have thus easily got me through an interview demanded
by his virago of a wife, who was the prime mover in all the
mischief then brewing. It was daylight when I and the
gentlemen left the palace, and shortly after came rumours
of an uproar in the Nepal cantonments. It was reported
to me that the troops at the capital were in a mutinous
state, and were threatening mischief to the Residency, they
having been told that the Resident had been all night
insisting on a reduction of the Gurkha army by in-
structions from his Government.
"
Ere long the report of the mutiny was confirmed by
the appearance of a large body of soldiers in arms moving
on the Residency. Arrived at an open space two hundred
yards from the embassy-house, the troops called a halt
and held a palaver. The men objected to perpetrate so
'
The Residency Surgeon and Honorary Assistant Resident.
1 86 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
cowardly an act as the destruction of the Resident,
'
he
being a good gentleman long known to them, and always
kind and courteous to them and their families.' The
palaver ended in a deputation of a select body of them
to the Darbar to say that, if they were to do such a deed,
they must have a Lal-moJiar (a formal order under the
royal seal) to that effect."
Hodgson contrived to inform the Raja that the object
of the strange detention of himself and staff during the
night had been seen through, and that measures were
already taken to secure vengeance, if needful, for their
deaths. The Queen, believing her arrangements for a rising
complete, withdrew in the early morning from the capital,
so that, whatever happened, the Raja would have to bear
the consequences alone.
"
Just as the deputies of the
soldiers reached the palace and made their statement, the
Resident's Head Munshi arrived there and acquainted
the Darbar that the pretence of mutiny to cover violence
was transparent, that intelligence to that effect had been
transmitted to the Governor-General by two different
channels, and that the messengers had already got clear
off towards the plains. The effect of this double move
by the soldiers and by the Resident was to put a quiet
extinguisher on a ruse of the Darbar which might easily
have resulted in a scene of bloodshed, furens quid feviimx
possit being an old truth."
^
Meanwhile horrors were taking place in the city which
prove that, throughout that night and forenoon, the lives
of the British officers had hung by a thread. Hodgson's
easy good-humour with the Queen probably saved himself
and his staff from murder in the palace or at the moment
of quitting it. His calmness next morning in resting his
safety on his character as ambassador, and disdaining
any contemptible .show of self-defence, certainly saved the
Residency from the troops. If a single .shot had been
fired from the Residency walls, the mutineers would not
'
Private note written by Mr. Hodgson, without date.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843-
^^7
have halted but would have carried the gate with a rush.
Hodgson kept his escort of two hundred men perfectly
quiet, he kept his officers perfectly quiet, he swiftly took
measures for acquainting his Government with the facts,
and then he threw the responsibility for his safety as an
ambassador upon the Raja and his Ministers. If we
admire the gallantry, or even the gallant futility, with
which Indian envoys have defended themselves by paltry
escorts to the last living man, we must yield a yet higher
respect to the unmoved civil courage with which Hodgson
faced the storm and weathered it.
For meanwhile the mutinous troops had sacked the
palace of the royal collateral who posed as nominal Prime
Minister, gutted the houses of five other chiefs, members
of the Ministry, and loudly demanded that the Raja should
himself come forth and redress their grievances. Next
day, the 22nd, the Raja summoned up courage to harangue
them ;
and the troops, with the habitual loyalty to the
person of their sovereign so characteristic of the Gurkhas,
ceased from further outrages. But the excitement con-
tinued in their quarters, and on June
23rd, 1840,
the
following message was conveyed to the army from the
Raja and his Senior Queen
:
^
"The English Government is powerful, abounding m
wealth and in all other resources for war. I have kept
well with the English so long, because I am unable to cope
with them. Besides, I am bound by a treaty of amity,
and have now no excuse to break it ; nor have I money
to support a war. Troops I have, and arms and ammuni-
tion in plenty, but no money. This is the reason why I
have reduced your pay. I want treasure to fight the
English. Take lower pay for a year or two, and when I
have some money in hand, then I will throw off the mask
and indulge you in war."
To this the troops replied by their deputies at a parade
'
I reproduce this frank proclamation and the reply of the troops
from Oldfield, Vol. L,
pp. 318, 319.
Ed. 1880.
1 88 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
which the Maharaja attended in person.
"
True the
English Government is great ; but care the wild dogs of
Nepal how large is the herd they attack ? They are sure
to get their bellies filled. You want no money for making
war
;
for the war shall support itself. We will plunder
Lucknow and Patna. But first we must get rid of the
Resident, who sees and forestalls all. We must be able,
unseen, to watch the moment of attack. It will soon
come
;
it is come. Give the word and we will destroy the
Resident,"
"
and we will soon make the Ganges your
boundary. Or if the English, as they say, are your friends
and want peace, why do they keep possession of half your
dominions ? Let them restore Kumaun and Sikkim. These
are yours
;
demand them back
;
and if they refuse, drive
out the Resident, and let us have war."
^
The Raja asked time for deliberation. But the secret
hopes of the Queen that the Residency would be sacked in
the tumult had been disappointed, and she hesitated to
officially authorise the outrage. The grievances of the
army were accordingly redressed, and the reduction of pay
was not insisted on. She contented herself with having
placards posted outside the palace exaggerating our diffi-
culties and reverses in Afghanistan. The arsenals and gun
factories were kept in full activity
;
the military spirit was
fanned throughout the country by the old device of a war-
census, which returned the fighting population at 400,000
men.^
Lord Auckland had awakened to the fact that, what-
ever his embarrassments in Afghanistan, the situation in
Nepal brooked no further delay. He instructed his Private
Secretary to write at once to Hodgson that there would
be no hesitation as to moving troops to the Nepal frontier
if necessary.^ He also forwarded a public despatch,
"
with
1
Oldfield, Vol. I.,
pp.
31S,
319.
Ed. 1880.
^
Idem., p. 321.
5
J.
R. Colvin to Brian Hodgson, dated July i8th, 1840.Vol. XI. of
the Auckland MSS., p. 252.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843. ^^9
regard to the forcible occupation of our territory at
Ramnagar " (the ninety-one villages). He instructed
Hodgson to intimate to the Nepal Darbar
"
that your
Government has viewed the continued usurpation of
British territory with extreme displeasure," and to demand
immediate redress. Hodgson was to declare
"
that the
Government of India will speedily feel itself compelled, if
such satisfaction be not fully afforded, to march its troops
to the frontier to vindicate its honour, and to relieve its
subjects from the intolerable violence to which they are
exposed."
^
Armed with the knowledge that his threats would be
backed by troops
"
if necessary," Hodgson took up so
strong an attitude as to obtain the redress without the
actual employment of force. Ample satisfaction was
obtained for the seizure of the ninety-one villages and tract
of two hundred square miles within our frontier, and the
money-compensation for the villages was deposited in the
Residency treasury.^ A series of direct representations
were also forced on the Raja which convinced him that
the safety of his dynasty depended on the dismissal of
the Queen's favourite Pandi from the Ministry.
"
The
Governor-General in Council in reviewing these trans-
actions," Lord Auckland wrote to Hodgson,^
"
has to thank
you for the marked ability, firmness, and judgment with
which you have met a long course of adverse and evasive
negotiation on the part of the Nepal Government, and he
begs you to accept his cordial acknowledgment of your
service on the occasion."
Lord Auckland, in the stern mood brought on by the
peril of the Residency on
July 21st,
1840, had asked
Hodgson to advise him whether the object of the antici-
'
Quoted from the draft despatch enclosed in the Private Secretary's
letter just referred to.
-
From Officiating Secretary to the Government of India, dated
October 26th,
1840, para.
5,
to the Resident at Kathmandu.
'
Despatch from the Government of India to the Resident, dated
October 20th, 1840, para. 9.Hodgson Private Papers.
I90 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
pated war with Nepal "shall be the entire subjugation of the
country, or the raising up of another Gurkha Government
or administration
" ^
on terms favourable to our interests.
Hodgson leaned to mercy, and he soon found that Lord
Auckland's entanglements in Afghanistan rendered it im-
possible to spare a force for Nepal in any respect equal to
"
the entire subjugation of the country." Early in October
1
840
he was, with compliments on his
"
ability and tem-
perate perseverance," warned that troops were not then
available, and that
"
when they may be moved into camp
is uncertain."^ Later in the month this warning was
officially repeated.^ Hodgson was again made to realise
that he must still depend on himself. He accordingly
directed all his efforts to accomplish the change of Ministry
by negotiations, and to secure by peaceful means what
Lord Auckland had in August only hoped to obtain by
a war.
Throughout the whole year he wrote home in high
spirits and with a perfect confidence in his own resources.
"
Don't be alarmed," he reassured his father
" don't be
alarmed at the stuff you see in the papers as to my situation
here."
"
I hope Brian docs not make too light of his
situation," is his father's docket on this letter,
"
but I wish
he was well out of it."
"
Our Government," Hodgson goes
on to explain,
"
wants to get rid of
*
other affairs ' before
it takes Nepal in hand
;
and
'
other affairs ' have arisen
successively fresh and fresh during the last three years,
while Nepal's insolence has thus been stimulated. All our
temporary devices have been used up, so that the Gurkhas
are now 'laughing in our beards.' They are very insolent
and faithless, experimenting perpetually on the limits of
Letter from the Private Secretary
(J.
R. Colvin), dated August 28th,
1840,
toB. H. Hodgson.Auckland MSS., Vol. XIII.
*
The same to the same, dated October loth, 1840.Auckland MSS.,
Vol. XIII.
3
Secretary to Government of India, dated October 26th,
1840, para. 12,
to the Resident at Kathmandu.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
'QI
our forbearance without open war."
^ "
My health is pretty
good, and I am prudent and careful of it for your sakes,
feeding and drinking like a hermit, and casting research
and mental labour aside, as soon as my office duties are
discharged."
"
By the end of October Lord Auckland said plainly that
an expedition against Nepal was for that year impossible.
He applauded Hodgson's efforts to obtain by diplomacy
the change of Ministry which he had anticipated as the
result of a war. At the beginning of November he officially
authorised the Resident
"
to promote to the utmost degree,
consistent with prudence, the object of procuring the
removal of the present Ministers of Nepal, and the appoint-
ment of a friendly and honest administration in their
place,"
^
The day before this despatch was written in Calcutta
Hodgson had secured the desired result at Kathmandu,
and a change in the Nepalese Ministry had been quietly
carried out. On November ist, 1840, the Queen's favourite
Pandi was dismissed, and one of the royal collaterals
"
was
nominated to the Premiership."^ This meant the public
abandonment of the war party by the Raja, and congratu-
lations poured in upon the Resident.
"
I congratulate
you," wrote Mr. Thoby Prinsep, now a member of the
Governor-General's Council,
"
on the issues of your late
troublesome negotiations. They are all you could wish,
and will gain you great and justly earned credit here and
in Europe." Colonel Caulfield, the Resident at Lucknow,
and as such the British representative nearest to the
Nepalese frontier, expressed a soldier's hearty admiration.
"
You have been placed in a situation very delicate and
trying, and you have done your work with wisdom, nerve,
1
Letter to his father, dated May 20tli, 1840.
^
To the same, dated
July 8tli, 1840.
'
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India (confidential),
dated November 2nd, 1840.
India
Office Records.
192 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
and promptitude, meriting the approbation of Government
and the encomiums of all."
^ "
I congratulate you on your
important successes at Kathmandu," wrote the Secretary
to the supreme Government.
"
The credit will stick to
you in Indian history."
"
It was felt, indeed, that Hodgson had single-handed
saved the necessity of a war at a time when war would have
been an impossibility for the British Government. His
skilful diplomacy was compared with the miserable entangle-
ments into which we were being enmeshed in Afghanis-
tan.
"
We entirely concur," wrote the Court of Directors
to the Governor-General,
"
in the praises which you have
bestowed on Mr. Hodgson."
^
He had performed his diffi-
cult task without even a show of force.
"
Actual military
operations," the Governor-General's Private Secretary wrote
to him at the beginning of December,
"
cannot be thought
of for this season, and you will remark that any violence
or injury to you will be the greatest possible embarrass-
ment to your Government !
"
*
"
The military demonstration," as that Government had
truly called it,*^ turned out to be only a demonstration.
It consisted of a camp under Colonel Oliver at some dis-
tance within our own border.*^
"
The notion of defending
500
miles of frontier by a fixed camp of
3,000
bayonets,"
wrote Hodgson in a private memorandum,
"
needs but to
'
Letter dated November 16th, 1840, In citations from the Hodgson
Private Papers, I am sometimes (although seldom) unable to verify from
the official despatches, and have to quote from extracts or copies.
^
George Bushby, Secretary to the Government of India, dated
November 14th, 1840.Hodgson Private Papers.
*
Despatch from the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors,
dated January 29th, 1841,
para. 7, Hodgson Private Papers.
*
J.
R. Colvin to B. H. Hodgson, dated Calcutta, December 2nd,
1840.Auckland MSS., Vol. XIII.
^
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India, dated
February 15th, 1841, para. 2, to the Resident.
^
The force consisted of one squadron, 6th Light Cavalry; the 12th,
40th, and 56th Native Infantry ; a detail of Artillery
;
and a detacli-
ment of Irregular Cavalry. Oldfield, I. 322.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843. 193
be clearly stated to show its absurdity. For myself, I
have always carefully endeavoured to guard against any
such supposition when I have advised the movement of
British [z'.e. Indian] troops, and have expressly stated that
the object of such movement was merely to impress this
Darbar with a conviction of the serious light in which its
conduct was regarded."
Long before the camp could be formed Hodgson secured
the objects for which the demonstration had been designed.
Encouraged by the approval of the Governor-General, he
followed up the dismissal of the Queen's favourite Pandi
on November ist, 1840, by obtaining the appointment of a
coalition Ministry composed of the royal collaterals who
were always on the side of dynastic safety, and of the
Brahman Raghunath who had proved himself a man of
peace. The Senior Queen stood aside, watchful and
vindictive, but powerless for the present.
The Raja commenced the year 1841 by presenting a
remarkable document to the Resident, in which he recounts
the changes just made and his reasons for making them.
"
The Governor-General, Lord Auckland," so runs this
royal missive,^
"
has written stating that it was necessary
and proper to dismiss from office the individuals who had
disturbed the friendly feeling existing between the British
and Nepal Governments, and to appoint in their places
others who had the good of the two Governments at heart,
and that until the individuals who had so behaved have
been dismissed, there could be no real friendship on the
part of my Government.
"
According therefore to the note received from you, I
have inquired into the matter, and have decided upon
dismissing those persons who ha.ve disturbed the good
understanding existing between the two Governments, as
shown in the subjoined list."
' "
Translation of a Yaddasht from the Maharaja of Nepal to the
address of the Resident, dated Saturday, January 2nd,
1841."Hodgson
Private Papers.
^3
194
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
The document goes on to say that
"
whatever the Prime
Minister and his colleagues now appointed may see fit to
do in order to strengthen the bonds of real friendship be-
tween the two Governments will meet with my approval."
It quaintly concludes with lists of the
"
Individuals
Appointed" and "Individuals Discharged" in parallel
columns.
The nobles, particularly the royal collaterals and the
Brahmans, rallied round the Raja and hailed with acclama-
tion the change. Thanks to the British Resident, the
reign of terror under the Queen's favourite was at an end.
"
The spiritual leaders, royal kinsmen, and chiefs of Nepal
"
joined together to the number of ninety-four, and signed
a declaration friendly to our Government, taking on them-
selves the responsibility for the safety of the British
Resident in event of another mutiny or tumult such as
occurred in the previous
July.
The document forms a
curious proof of the personal esteem which Hodgson, with
his firmness in public and his Brahman-likc abstemiousness
in private life, had won from the Nepalese nobility. The
British Government considered it of such importance as
to give it a permanent place in its Treaties and Engage-
ments with Native States.^
"
We the undersigned Gurus, Chauntrias, Chiefs, etc., of
Nepal, fully agree to uphold the sentiments as written
below, viz.That it is most desirable and proper that a
firm and steady friendship should exist and be daily
increased between the British and Nepal Governments
;
that to this end every means should be taken to increase
the friendly relations with the Company, and the welfare
of the Nepal Government ; that the Resident should ever
and always be treated in an honourable and friendly
manner
;
that if, nevertheless, any unforeseen circumstance
' "
Translation of an Ikrar-iiamah, signed by the Gurus, Chauntrias,
Chiefs, etc., of Nepal, dated Saturday, Poos Soodi 9th,
1897,
^^ January
2nd,
1841."
Aitchison's Treaties, Etigaget/ients, and Sanads, Vol. II.,
pp.
178, 179.
Ed. 1876.
ix.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843.
195
or unjust or senseless proceeding should at any time arise
to shake the friendly understanding which ought to exist
between the two Governments, or to cause uproar or
mischief at Kathmandu, we should be responsible for it."
Signed by the ninety-four chiefs.
Lord Auckland, full of his embarrassments in Afghan-
istan, had scarcely dared to hope for success from
Hodgson's unaided efforts in Nepal. Only twelve days
before the above documents were signed, he wrote des-
pondently to Hodgson, lamenting "that the expectations
of effectual assistance from the well-disposed chiefs of
Nepal, on which you had in the first instance been led
to rely, have not been realised."
^
All the Governor-
General could urge on Hodgson vv^as to avoid a
"
direct
collision
" "
at a moment when it might be impossible to
render to you vigorous protection and support."
^
It was
therefore with the greater sense of relief that Lord
Auckland received the Raja's missive of January 2nd,
1841, and the "agreement entered into by several influential
chiefs and other individuals to maintain the alliance
between the two Governments."
"
The Governor-General
in Council, I have the honour to inform you," says the official
despatch,
"
has been pleased to express his entire approval
of your proceedings during the anxious period of these
negotiations."
''
Hodgson was now master of the situation. The Senior
Queen, frantic at the discomfiture of her favourite, resolved
to quit the country, and in February 1841 set off on a
pilgrimage to Benares. The poor Raja once more lost
heart, and followed her with intent to bring her back or
to bear her company. Lord Auckland declared that this
attempt
"
to enter the British territories without a pass-
'
Tlie Secretary to the Governmetit of India, dated December 21st,
1840 (secret), to the Resident at Kathmandu.Auckland MSB.
-
Idem., para. 6.
'
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India, dated January
25th, 1
84
1,
para. 2 (secret), to the Resident at Kathmandu.Auck-
land MSS.
196 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
port must, in the actual state of the communications between
the two Governments, be regarded as in the highest degree
indecorous and unwarrantable."
^
On Hodgson fell the
delicate task of persuading the royal party to come back.
The Queen, imagining from the British Resident's efforts
to procure her return that he must regard her as a very
important personage, celebrated her re-entry into the
capital by at once summoning her favourite Pandi to her
presence !
^
The city walls were placarded with denuncia-
tions of the coalition cabinet, and with threats against the
life of the new Prime Minister.^ Everything seemed once
more to point to a counter-revolution.
In these intrigues the Senior Queen found a new ally.
Her eldest son, the heir-apparent, although only about
twelve years old,* had acquired considerable importance
since his marriage, and his mother played upon his jealousy
of the Junior Queen's children to make him her tool.
"
This young prince," writes the historian of Nepal,
"
who
appeared to have a most ungovernable temper, as well as a
most inhuman disposition, amused his leisure hours by acts
of the grossest cruelty performed not only upon animals
but upon men, who were tortured and mutilated in his
presence upon the slightest and often most unjust grounds,
for no other object than to gratify his brutal passions.
The Raja, instead of exercising any restraint upon these
excesses of his son, constantly tried to evade all responsi-
bility for his own acts under cover of pretended coercion
on the part of the prince, of whose violence he professed
to be afraid."
^
'
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India, dated
March 3rd, 184.1, to the Resident at Kathmandu.
-
Assistant Resident Nicholetts' Memorandum, sub a?mo 1841, para.
17.
India
Office
Records.
^
Translation of a Kharita from the Raja of Nepal to the Right
Honourable the Governor-General, dated January 4th, 1841.Hodgson
Private Papers.
198 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
use the language of earnest expostulation or of firm but
temperate remonstrance," as the occasion might demand.^
So Hodgson was left to encounter what threatened to be
another sanguinary crisis, and to out-manoeuvre the furious
Queen, with the knowledge that no force was available to
back him, and merely with orders to do what he could.
The months which followed were among the most anxious
in his life. But whatever he himself felt, he made the
Queen and her war party also feel that he was too danger-
ous to be openly attacked. He never showed his hand,
and the Queen could not free herself from the apprehension
that so much confidence was a confidence conscious of
strength. Once more the Raja feebly oscillated back to
the British alliance
;
the Queen did not dare to deliver her
blow at the Coalition Ministry, and that Ministry, under
Hodgson's support, was reconstituted on a firmer basis.
Before the end of the summer of 1841, Hodgson could
report that the crisis was over, and that the Queen was
spending her wrath in wall-placards. In August the
Governor-General congratulated him
"
that the arrogant
and furious spirit of the Queen and her faction is giving
way to a milder vein, and that the present Ministry will be
enabled to resume their functions under more favourable
auspices,"
"
His Lordship in Council will be much gratified
to hear of any arrangement of affairs in Nepal which you
shall consider likely to be favourable and stable, and which
shall secure to your Government its legitimate influence in
the counsels of that State, without a resort to measures of
actual ho.stility."
"
"
Lord Auckland," the Secretary wrote privately,''
"
in a
note just come from him says :
'
Mr. Hodgson has done
extremely well again, so that I would not interfere with him
'
Letter from Secretary to Government of India, Secret Department
dated April 26th, 1841.Auckland MSS.
*
Letter from the Secretary to tlie Government of India, Secret
Department, dated August i6tli, 1841.Auckland MSS.
^
T. H. Maddock to B. H. Hodgson, dated August 12th, 1841.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 199
by any peremptory instructions, but leave him to follow
his own sound judgment. He is quite right in assuming
that I am not desirous of a war with Nepal.'
"
The victory over the war party being again won, the
usual results followed. The long-delayed redress was
granted to British subjects and merchants ; refugee Thugs
and robber-chiefs were surrendered by the Nepalese frontier
authorities
;
and the Queen quitted the capital in a rage.
She felt that this defeat was her final one, and, in spite of
the deadly season in the Tarai jungles, she set off for
Benares, resolved to spend the rest of her days in religious
solitude. Her feeble-minded husband would as usual have
followed her, and might perhaps have persuaded her to
return. But the poor passionate lady caught jungle fever,
and on October 6th, 1841,
she died on her way to the
plains. The peace Ministry, as reconstituted under British
auspices, at once became supreme in Nepal. Then at
length the Governor-General felt that the danger from
Nepal was for the time being at an end.
"
I congratulate
you," he wrote with his own hand to Hodgson, "upon
the honourable results of your well-directed and most per-
severing labours."
^ "
I heartily congratulate you," Lord
Auckland again Vv-rote with his own hand a few weeks
later, as the good working of his peace Ministry developed,
"
upon the results of your diplomatic labours."
-
The Government of India in its collective capacity was
not tardy to tender its thanks. It left the removal or
retention of the troops near the frontier entirely to
Hodgson's discretion. "In conclusion," runs one despatch,
"
I am desired to convey to you the high approbation of
Government of the great ability, judgment, and persever-
ance which you have manifested in your late tedious
and difficult negotiations."'^ How narrow had been the
'
Lord Auckland to B. H. Hodgson, dated Calcutta, November 14th,
1841.Auckland MSS.
-
The same to the same, dated December 12th, 1841.
^
Letter from Government of India to Resident at Kathraandu,
dated December 22nd,
1841,
para. 3. Hodgson Private Papers.
200 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
escape from a Nepalese war effected by those negotiations,
and how eagerly it was welcomed by sensible men in the
Government of India, may be judged from the following
facts.
During the summer of 1841,
a member of the Governor-
General's Council wrote to Hodgson that he had long fixed
that autumn for going home, but a war with Nepal seemed
so impossible to avoid that he could not in honour leave
his post. By December 1841 our envoy in Afghanistan
knew that his last hope from the British garrison there was
gone, and that it only remained to face ruin. In January
1842 the British forces in Afghanistan, "a crouching,
drooping, dispirited army" of
4,500
men with 12,000
camp-followers stumbling along
"
as they best could
through the snow and slush," started on the ghastly retreat
through the passes. Of those doomed thousands,
"
one man
only, fainting from wounds, hunger, and exhaustion, was
borne on by his jaded pony to the walls of Jalalabad."
^
If
I have not dwelt on the anxieties which were eating the
heart of the Government of India during the years of
Hodgson's single-handed struggle to maintain peace with
honour in Nepal, it is because his work was in itself so
good that it needs no adventitious circumstances to enhance
its value. Before the end of January 1842 Lord Auckland
learned that the Kabul force had been annihilated in the
snows.
Hodgson's success formed indeed almost the one break
of light amid the general gloom. The Nepalese Raja, set
free from the influence of his furious wife and not yet
subjected to that of her equally furious son, showed a
genuine desire to stand well with the British Government.
At the end of 1841 he placed at our disposal the Nepal
forces for war employment.
"
I have been highly grati-
fied," Lord Auckland wrote to the Raja .shortly before the
news of the final catastrophe amid the Afghan snows
'
The Earl
of
Auckland, by Captain L.
J.
Trotter (Rulers of India
Series), p. 163. Ed.
1893.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
20I
reached Calcutta,
"
by your friendly letter tendering for
the use of my Government in Ava or Afghanistan the
services of your Highness's army. For this friendly offer
accept my warm acknowledgments. For I must regard it
as a proof of your amiable feeling and desire to promote
the interests of the British Government." Lord Auckland
goes on to explain the circumstances which prevented
him at that time from accepting his Highness's proposal.
Mindful, however, of Hodgson's often-urged scheme for
the incorporation of a Gurkha element into the Company's
forces, he thus concludes
:
'
Under these circumstances I should have no immediate
means of availing myself of the services of the Gurkha
army. But I duly appreciate their value as brave and
well-disciplined soldiers, and if any future occasion should
ari.se when they might co-operate with the British forces it
would afford me the greatest satisfaction to see the Gurkha
and the British soldier marching side by side as friends and
allies to the attack of a common enemy."
^
Lord Auckland
did not live to witness this idea realised. But Hodgson re-
mained to urge it successfully on another Governor-General
in a still greater crisis of the British fortunes in India, and
to see it permanently worked out in the Gurkha regiments
which now form so distinguished a part of the British-
Indian army.
With his usual candour he made Lord Auckland clearly
understand the limitations which rendered it unsafe to
regard his diplomatic success as complete. The death of
the Senior Queen had for the time deprived the war party
in Nepal of its head. But it only opened the way to the
ambitious designs of her eldest son. The heir-apparent
fell under the influence of the Pandis, and in spite of his
youth was pushed forward by them into the political leader-
ship formerly held by his mother. The Junior Queen, as
now chief wife of the Raja, began to intrigue for her own
>
Letter from the Governor-General to H.H. the Maharaja of Nepal,
dated January 22nd, 1842.Auckland MSS.
202 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
two sons. Accordingly the year 1842 opened with three
distinct parties in Nepal : first, the feeble Raja, supported
by the peace Ministry of royal collaterals and the spiritual
chiefs, which had been formed under Hodgson's auspices
;
second, the heir-apparent, who, at the head of the Pandis
and war party, was working for the deposition of the Raja
in his own favour
;
third, the surviving Queen, who was
working for the supersession of the heir-apparent on the
plea of his insanity, in favour of her eldest son.
A fantastical incident showed the explosive state which
these parties quickly reached. The Senior Queen's death
had, as usual in Nepal, been ascribed to poison, and the
rumour to that effect was noticed in an Anglo-Indian
newspaper. The Raja, ablaze with indignation, demanded
an interview from the Resident.
"
Mr. Hodgson started
for the palace, but much to his astonishment," says the
official narrative,
"
he had scarcely reached the Residency
gate, when he saw the Maharaja and heir-apparent stand-
ing on the road attended by several chiefs."^ Hodgson
tried to calm his Highness by assurances that
"
every
exertion would be made by the Governor-General to
discover the author of the slanderous tale."
"
Tell the
Governor-General," the Raja exclaimed in a fury,
"
that he
must and shall give him up. I will have him and flay him
alive, and rub him with salt and lemon until he die. Further,
tell the Governor-General that if this infamous calumniator
is not delivered up, there shall be war between us,"
-
Upon
this the heir-apparent stopped his father with insulting
epithets and blows, striking him again and again. After
re-enacting the miserable scene of violence in his Spiritual
Director's garden, the hot fit passed off, and the Raja made
a humble apology to the British Resident.
A month after the news of the annihilation of our Kabul
force reached Calcutta, Lord Auckland was succeeded by
Lord EUenborough on February 28th, 1842. Lord
'
Assistant Resident Nicholetts' Memorandum, sul> anno
1842,
para.
27.
hidia
Office
Records.
-
Idem.
IX] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 203
Auckland's long Governor-Generalship of six years ended
amid a gloom such as had never overshadowed British
rule in India since the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756.
During its last dismal week, not only Lord Auckland but
the provincial chiefs in Northern India looked anxiously
to Hodgson to prevent their flank being turned by an
outbreak from Nepal. "If you can continue," wrote the
Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces to
Hodgson on February 24th, 1
842,
"
with the same success
as heretofore to divert the Darbar from war, you will
indeed have accomplished a most important diversion in
our favour."
Hodgson, as I have mentioned, was scrupulous to explain
the limitations imposed by the temper of the heir-apparent
and military party in Nepal upon any diplomatic success.
But in the view of the Governor-General that success was
ample, for it kept Nepal from striking in at the moment of
our weakness and defeat. During his last four days of
office Lord Auckland congratulated Hodgson both publicly
and privately upon the results actually achieved.
"
Once
more I congratulate you on the successful results of your
negotiations," he wrote to Hodgson on February 24th,
1842,^ On his final day as Governor-General he sent a
formal despatch to Flodgson, stating that
"
the issue of
your late proceedings has been so successful as to prove
that you have acted throughout these transactions with
a thorough knowledge of the native character, and with a
degree of skill, prudence, and forbearance that is highly
creditable to you. His Lordship begs to congratulate you
on the favourable issue of your last struggle."
'"
The Earl of EUenborough had been appointed by the
Court of Directors in October 1841,
when the advices from
India were still comparatively favourable. But his arrival
at the climax of our disasters in Afghanistan made the
1
Auckland MSS.
-
Secretary to Government of India to Resident in Nepal, February
28th, 1842.Hodgson Private Papers.
204 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
change of rulers appear almost an act of recall, although
Lord Auckland had already been retained as Governor-
General^ for a year beyond the usual term. Lord Ellen-
borough's incautious talk gave countenance to this idea,
and he very soon showed that he believed his mission to
be a reversal of his predecessor's measures and the super-
session of his predecessor's men. Perhaps it was with this
foreboding in his mind that Lord Auckland penned his
last letter to Hodgson from the Sandheads as his ship was
standing off to sea.
"
I write these few hasty lines to you, to take leave of
you, and to wish you such good health as may enable you
to complete your labours in Nepal, and afterwards to enjoy
many years of comfort in England. It is most satisfactory
to me on the eve of my departure from India, and when
there is so much of gloom and danger in one quarter of
our political horizon, that the prospects in regard to Nepal
are better and more promising than they have long been.
Once more I thank you for all you have done, and I wish
you well.""
Of the remarkable man who succeeded Lord Auckland
on February 28th, 1842, it is even now difficult to
speak. Endowed with his father's gifts of forensic skill
and eloquence, Lord EUenborough's oratory won for him
a reputation in Parliament which was never altogether
lost by his mingled vacillation and rashness in action.
History writes of his brief Indian career in the language of
indignation. Its verdict may in several respects require to
be reconsidered and in certain details to be modified. My
purview is here restricted to his connection with Nepal.
There as everywhere he determined from the outset to
make his personality felt. In order, however, to under-
stand his action in Nepal, it is necessary to have some
idea of the general tenour of his administration and of the
'
March 4th, 1836, to February 28th, 1842. .
-
Letter marked
"
private
"
from Lord Auckland to B. H. Hodgson,
dated March 7th, 1842, from the Sandheads.Hodgson Private Papers.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843. 205
character of the man. For the present I prefer to quote
the summing up of the most smooth-voiced of Indian
historians rather than to myself pronounce on the idiosyn-
crasies which led to Lord EUenborough's recall at the end
of two years.
"
He went to India the avowed champion of peace, and
he was incessantly engaged in war. For the Afghan war
he was not, indeed, accountablehe found it on his hands
;
and in the mode in which he proposed to conclude it, and
in which he would have concluded it but for the remon-
strances of his military advisers, he certainly displayed no
departure from the ultra-pacific policy which he had professed
in England. The triumphs with which the perseverance
of the generals commanding in Afghanistan graced his
administration seem completely to have altered his views
;
and the desire of military glory thenceforward supplanted
every other feeling in his breast. He would have shunned
war in Afghanistan by a course which the majority of his
countr>'men would pronounce dishonourable. He might
without dishonour have avoided war in Sind, and possibly
have averted hostilities at Gwalior : but he did not. For
the internal improvement of India he did nothing. He
had, indeed, little time to do anything.
"
War, and preparation for war, absorbed most of his
hours, and in a theatrical display of childish pomp many
more were consumed. With an extravagant confidence in
his own judgment, even on points which he had never
studied, he united no portion of steadiness or constancy.
His purposes were formed and abandoned with a levity
which accorded little with the offensive tone which he
manifested in their defence, so long as they were enter-
tained. His administration was not an illustration of
any marked and consistent course of policy
;
it was an
aggregation of isolated facts. It resembled an ill-con-
structed drama, in which no one incident is the result of
that by which it was preceded, nor a just and natural
preparation for that which is to follow. Everything in it
206 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
stands alone and unconnected. His influence shot across
the Asiatic world like a meteor, and, but for the indelible
brand of shame indented in Sind, like a meteor its memory
would pass from the mind with its disappearance."^
On his arrival in Calcutta Lord Ellenborough found the
Government of India rallying from the Kabul disaster.
On March 15th, 1842,
that Government, with the new
Governor-General at its head, laid down a programme to
retrieve its honour.'-^ All garrisons in Afghanistan then
surrounded by the enemy were to be relieved. A strong
point was made of re-occupying Kabul
"
even for a week,"
so that "we should retire as a conquering, not as a de-
feated power."
Unfortunately Lord Ellenborough proceeded shortly
afterwards to the interior, unattended by his Council.
On receiving further bad news from the North-Western
frontier his courage failed, and in April he ordered the
withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistanthe southern
force to Sukkur on the Indus, the northern force
"
into
positions within the Khaibar."
The British generals hesitated to accept what they
deemed a disgraceful and disastrous change. By the
middle of May the Governor-General began to veer round
to a bolder policy, and acquiesced in their postponement
of the withdrawal. As they made their force felt in
Afghanistan, Lord Ellenborough gradually regained con-
fidence, and sanctioned their advance on Kabul. But he
had not the courage to boldly avow the fact of his
vacillation. On July
8th, 1842,
he even wrote to the
Secret Committee that his instructions had induced Major-
General Pollock to contemplate a forward movement
!
Only two days previously he had penned a remarkable
'
The History
of
the British Empire in India, by Edward Thornton,
Vol. VI.,
pp. 548, 549.
Ed. 1841-45.
^
The two following sentences are condensed from the instructions
of the Government of India to Sir Jasper Nicolls, the Commander-in-
Chief, dated March 15th, 1842.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839
1843.
207
letter to the Queen, apparently with a view to gloss over
his change of mind. He represented to her Majesty that
what was in reality an advance of an army of retribution
upon Kabul was merely an option given to General Nott
"
of retiring by the route of Ghazni and Kabul, instead of
that of Ouettah and Sukkur, to the Indus."
'
It is not needful here to inquire how far this vacillation
was justified. It suffices to state that, taken along with
the moral cowardice of the attempt to gloss it over, it
caused dismay to the British administrators throughout
India, and an outburst of jubilation among the disaffected
of the Native Chiefs.
In Nepal, which lay adjacent for six hundred miles to
our main line of communication through Northern India
and could cut it at half a dozen points, the effect was
startling. To the war party it seemed that, not only the
time had come, but also the man. It appeared incredible that
the British fortunes in India would ever again be entrusted
to such feeble hands. They got the Court astrologers to
declare that the heir-apparent was an
"
Incarnation
"
destined to
"
extirpate the Feringhis."- Our military demon-
stration towards the Nepalese frontier was forgotten upon
the withdrawal of the standing camp in February
1842,
and the Pandi faction "was daily amusing the young
prince with mock fights between the English and Gurk-
has. The English were represented by a set of low-
caste ragamuffins dressed in British uniform and with
faces painted white, and under the command of some pariah
who was attired in full-dress uniform of an English general.
The Gurkhas were commanded by a son of the late Premier
and by Kulraj Pandi himself. Of course these actions
were all made to end in the ignominious defeat of the
'
Letter from Lord Ellenborough to the Queen, dated Allahabad,
July
6th, 1842.
India
Office
MSS.
^
Secret Consultations of the Government of India of August 3rd,
1842, No. 67,
Letter from the Secretary to' the Government of India
with the Governor-General to the Resident in Nepal, dated Allahabad,
May 8th,
1842,
para, yIndia
Office
MSS.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 211
Lord Ellenborough, therefore, heard of the recent affair
"
with much disappointment and regret." He was good
enough, however, to say that
"
his Lordship cannot believe
that you would act in a manner so entirely contrary to
the known views and wishes of your Government as to
attempt to extend the privileges of British subjects or your
own authority beyond the just limits which the laws of
nations and a solemn Treaty assign to them
;
still less that
you would evince a want of personal consideration for a
friendly and independent sovereign. Nor could his
Lordship believe, on the other hand, that that sovereign
could so far forget his personal dignity and the obligations
of the public law and Treaty as to offer an intentional insult
to the Representative at his Court of a sincerely friendly
Power and to place under prosecution a British subject."
Meanwhile his Lordship thinks that the State presents
on their way from Nepal, in honour of his accession to the
Governor-Generalship,
"
at a moment when the cloud of
misunderstanding has passed over the sun of friendship,"
"
should await the period when that sun shall burst forth
in all its former effulgence to give light and splendour and
prosperity to two great and friendly States."
Hodgson did not know exactly what to make of this
letter in Lord Ellenborough's finest vein. He felt that
somehow he was placed on his defence by a Governor-
General absolutely ignorant of the situation. The letter
was to be communicated to the Rajaa letter not only
full of pompous inanities, but one which would, in
Hodgson's judgment, undo the good results of Lord
Auckland's policy in Nepal and endanger the lives of the
friendly Ministers. He therefore determined to take upon
himself the responsibility of not delivering it. He com-
municated, however, a modification of its views to the
Raja in less injudicious terms, reported his action to the
Governor-General, and hoped for his Lordship's approval
when the facts were fully laid before him. The Governor-
General replied, after some intermediate rebukes, that
"
the
212 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
step you have taken is not only in direct disobedience of
the instructions you received, but it may tend to produce
serious embarrassment to the Government, by compelling
it to adopt an extreme course with respect to the Raja
of Nepal at a time when it is certainly not desirable
to create a division of the British forces and to impose
new burdens on the finances," His Lordship directed,
therefore, that
"
you will be relieved in your situation of
Resident at the Court of Nepal at the earliest period at
which the season and the exigencies of the public service
may permit such relief to take place."
^
There were circumstances which rendered this decision
peculiarly harsh. It was the decision of the Governor-
General alone, without a single member of his Council to
advise himof a Governor-General who had only been a
few months in the country, and who was so completely
ignorant of our relations with Nepal that he asked
Hodgson during the same summer for a return of the
Nepalese troops which he imagined to be at the Resident's
disposal ! Lord Ellenborough possibly thought that
Hodgson had not taken advantage of the opportunity
afforded to him for explaining matters in person to his
Lordship. In his letter of May 8th the Governor-General
expressed his desire for a personal conference, and directed
Hodgson
"
to join his camp as soon as the season will
permit you to do so." Lord Ellenborough was not aware
that, for a man in Hodgson's state of health, the journey
through the Tarai for some months to come meant probable
death. Hodgson deputed his secretary to the Governor-
General's camp, with excuses for his personal attendance
until the malarious months should be past. But this only
save further offence.'
'
Letter from the Secretary with Governor-General to the Resident of
Nepal, dated Allahabad, June 2ist, i842.-;-Hodgson Papers.
^
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India with the
Governor-General to the Resident at Kathmandu, dated June
12th,
1842,
para,
2.
India
Office
Rccoi'ds.
tx.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
-^3
The essential point was that Hodgson had declined, at
his own risk and pending further instructions, to carry out
orders which in his opinion would have frustrated the
policy that Lord Auckland and his Council had built up
in Nepal, and which would have imperilled the lives of the
peace Ministers whom that policy had raised to office.
"
I
believed," he at once wrote to the Government on receipt
of his dismissal,
"
that the literal execution of your orders
of the 8th ult. threatened immediately and suddenly to
destroy the whole fabric of that policy
;
perhaps also to
bury in its ruins numerous distinguished chiefs, whose
pledges of co-operation had been as solemnly tendered to
as accepted by my Government, and the services of the
principal of whom in the capacity of Ministers of this State
had just received the highest applause from the Governor-
General in Council ; and lastly to precipitate that very
crisis which Lord Ellenborough sought to avoid, as well as
to strip us of all the means to meet it when it came.
"
I believed, moreover, that these far-reaching effect.s,
enveloped as to their sources and quality in the transac-
tions of the four years just past, could scarcely have been at
all present to the mind of the Governor-General, by reason
of his Lordship's so recent arrival, when the instructions in
question were issued
;
and that it was my duty, therefore, to
pause and explain them
;
carefully in the meantime studying
to ward off all risk of crisis during his Lordship's delibera-
tion, and endeavouring, if possible, to accomplish the end
and object of his orders, so that it might be done in sure
exemption from that risk. Whilst intent upon the realisa-
tion of these essential points, I considered myself as
virtually accomplishing my instructions."
^
It is not needful to weigh nicely the arguments for and
against the line of action which Hodgson adopted. In
failing to carry out the orders of the Governor-General he
'
Letter from the Resident in Nepal to T. H. Maddock, Esq., Secretary
to the Government of India with the Governor-General, dated June
30th,
1842,
paras.
4, 5,
6.
Hodgson Papers.
214 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
took on himself a very serious responsibility, and he was
ready to abide by the consequences. Such a case could
scarcely arise at the present day. The more rapid means
of communication by railway, post, and telegraph have
placed the British Agents at Native Courts in daily, or if
necessary in hourly, touch with the Governor-General in
Council. All the facts and arguments known to a Political
Resident may now within a few minutes be laid before the
central Government, and his action in any crisis embodies
the decision of that Government with the whole circum-
stances before it. The constitution of the Government of
India has also undergone alterations which would have
saved Lord Ellenborough from this and similar exhibitions
of impetuous temper. The reversal of our policy towards a
Native State could not now be the act of the Governor-
General alone, but must be the outcome of the joint
deliberations of the Viceroy and his Council.
But while changes in the constitution of the Government
of India give a somewhat academic character to criticism
of the course adopted by Hodgson, it is right to under-
stand the view which then prevailed. The British Agents
at Native Courts were frequently compelled by their
remoteness to act independently of the central Govern-
ment, and sometimes to disregard instructions which they
knew to be based on insufficient information. Sir John
Malcolm, perhaps the greatest of all the great Indian
"
Politicals," clearly stated the duties and responsibilities
of such a position. At a critical juncture in his own career
he declared that the considerations which must regulate
his conduct were different from those which should guide
an officer at headquarters.
"
Your station and mine," he wrote to Political Secretary
Edmonstone,
"
are widely different. As an officer of
Government acting immediately under the Governor-
General you have, in fact, only to obey orders, and are
never left to the exercise of your discretion and judgment,
as you have a ready reference in all cases that can occur
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843.
215
to the superior authority, with whom, of course, every
responsibility rests. Under such circumstances, a secretary
that chooses to be of a different opinionthat is to say
to maintain different opinionsfrom a Governor-General,
has, in my opinion, no option but to resign
;
and his non-
resignation
^
would, on such occasion, appear extraordinary
to every person acquainted with the nature of his office,
which is obviously one of an executive, not of a delibera-
tive nature.
"
Now look at my situation. Placed at a great distance
from the Governor-General, and acting upon instructions
of a general natureobliged constantly to determine points
upon my own judgment, as there is no time for reference
Hodgson MSS.
^
Letter from G. A. Bushby to B. H. Hodgson, dated Calcutta,
June i8th, 1842.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 217
superseding Hodgson, wrote on the 22nd, and again with
his own hand, the following confidential letter to the man
whom he had yesterday recalled in disgrace
:
"
My dear Hodgson/Lord Ellenborough has been
speaking to-day about you, expressing in the kindest terms
his sense of your merits, services, and abilities
;
saying that
he hoped an opportunity would occur of employing you
to your liking in some other field, and suggesting that the
letter of yesterday being kept a profound secret, you should
act on the former summons," and consider yourself as only
waiting for a favourable season to obey it, and to come and
pay your respects to his Lordship, and explain to him the
state of affairs in Nepal.
"
I am awaiting a further report from you before dis-
posing of Kurbeer and his presents. I fancy Smith " will
be dismissed soon.
"
We shall have a pretty strong force ready to move on
your frontier in the cold season, unless the present clouds
are in the meantime entirely cleared away. Be of good
cheer, and believe me, etc.,
"T. H. Maddock."
Meanwhile, long before either the letter of dismissal
of
June
2 1st or the soothing epistle of the 22nd could
reach Nepal, Hodgson had addressed an official despatch
to the Government which still further modified Lord
Ellenborough's views. On June
21st, the very day when
his recall was being passionately penned at Allahabad,
Hodgson was calmly pointing out the measures by which
a change of policy, if insisted on by the new Governor-
General, could be safely accomplished. By this time
Hodgson saw that what Lord Ellenborough really wanted
'
Letter from T. H. Maddock, Esq., to B. H. Hodgson, dated Alla-
habad, June
22nd, 1842.Hodgson Papers.
-
I.e. the summons to come in person to the Governor-General's camp.
^
Lieutenant Smith, the Assistant Resident, whom Hodgson had
deputed to the Governor-General's camp as his substitute.
2l8
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap,
was to put an end to the active support which Lord Auck-
land had given to the peace party in Nepal, and to the
Ministers (appointed with Lord Auckland's direct approval
at the beginning of the year) who were pledged to a peace
programme. Hodgson felt it his duty once more to set
forth the disadvantages of such a changea change which
must throw Nepal into the hands of the war faction and
bring a war Ministry into power. At the same time he
showed that if time were allowed, and if arrangements
were made for giving shelter to the peace Ministers within
our provinces, the change could be effected without any
immediate rupture. His letter, with its somewhat feeble
parentheses and modifying clauses, is written in a very
different tone from his plain-spoken despatches to the
previous Governor-General of whose confidence and
support he felt sure.
If the change of policy were determined on, he wrote
on
June 2ist,^
"
it is difficult to contemplate the character
of the present ruler of Nepal and his son, and entertain
a hope that satisfactory relations with Nepal will be
maintainable in their time upon the present footing
;
for,
if relieved from their present councillors, they will speedily
fall back into the arms of the Kala Pandis whose views
and sentiments, as already explained, cannot, it will be
seen, well admit of change, pledged as they are to the
ancient polity of the kingdom, a policy more grievous to
us than any ordinary war, and necessarily, too, leading
to one.
"
We should therefore, I apprehend, be still prepared for
the worst by upholding our friends here, who, besides, in
quieter times abroad might possibly successfully inoculate
their sovereign or his son with their own just opinions as
to the ruinous unsuitableness to the new position of Nepal^
since the war, of her ancient and cherished maxims of polity.
*
Despatch from Resident in Nepal to the Secretary to Government
of India with the Governor-General, dated
June 22nd, 1842, paras.
25
to 27.Hodgson Papers.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
219
"
At all events, it is most desirable that the change
from our existing policy towards Nepal to another should,
if possible, be quiet and gradual, and be deferred until
our affairs are adjusted with Afghanistan and China, but
especially the latter, where, if we be finally and effectively
victorious, I should not wholly despair of seeing the
Maharaja [of Nepal] eventually subside into a preference
for the maxims of the new school and contentedly acquiesce
in the future guidance (for guided he must be) of his
present councillors,
"
Otherwise those councillors should be allowed, on their
resignation, an asylum if need be in our provinces
;
but,
short of this, their resignation, if voluntary and not too
long deferred, may probably suffice for their protection
here. And, indeed, if it be the Governor-General's decided
determination that their peculiar connection with me do
forthwith cease, I think I could so communicate that
intelligence to them as to lead to their safe resignation^
retaining at the same time their goodwill and voluntary
unofficial good offices. . . .
"In the foregone despatch I trust I have satisfied the
Right Honourable the Governor-General that there has
been nothing whatever in my recent proceedings more
than the natural, and necessary, and consistent sequel of
what had gone before, under the direct repeated sanction
and instructions of the Governor-General in Council, to
whom every step of my proceedings was submitted at the
moment it was made, and from whose wisdom, therefore,
I might have expected the correction of any unintentional
error."
The receipt of this despatch appears to have made Lord
Ellenborough reflect. On July 6th he wrote a friendly
private letter to Hodgson, speaking of the change of policy
in the hypothetical mood, but sensibly enough remarking
that
"
if a change of system should be adopted in treating
with the Nepal Government," it had better be carried out
by new men.
"
No testimony is, I assure you, required
220 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
to satisfy me that you are a most zealous and a very able
servant of the Government ; but I am certainly of opinion
that, if a change of system should be adopted in treating
with the Nepal Government, you are so mixed up with
a party there that you would be unable to act efficiently
in carrying out such new system. It would succeed better
in other, even if much less able, hands."
^
After further consideration Lord Ellenborough decided,
however, that Hodgson's intimate knowledge of Nepal,
and his hold on the affections of the people, made him
the safest man for carrying out
"
the change." On
July 26th he wrote an appreciative letter in his own hand
to Hodgson, and a fortnight later he followed it up by a
public despatch in which he expressly left it to Hodgson
to take such measures as he (Hodgson) thought best to
introduce the new policy.
The private letter of July 26th runs thus :
"
I have
much reliance upon your ability and upon the extensive
knowledge you possess of the Maharaja and his people
;
and I can have no doubt that you will, to the utmost, exert
your ability and use your knowledge for the purpose of
maintaining the existing relations of amity between the
British Government and Nepal."
-
The public despatch of August 8th maintains in temper-
ate terms Lord Ellenborough's instructions for a change
of policy, but leaves Hodgson to dissolve what seemed to
his Excellency to be a too close connection of the British
Government with the Nepal Ministry at his (Hodgson's)
own time and in his own way.
"
SlK,'^The Governor-General has again had under his
1
Lord Ellenborough to B. H. Hodgson, dated Allahabad,
July 6th,
1842.Hodgson Papers.
-
Lord Ellenborough to B. H. Hodgson, dated Allahabad, July 26th,
1842.Hodgson Papers.
^
Letter from the Secretary to the Government of India with the
Governor-General to tlie Resident in Nepal (Secret Department,
No. 661), dated Allahabad, August 8th, 1842.Hodgson Papers.
ix.| LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
221
consideration your letter of June 22nd, and your several
other letters respecting the existing connection between
you as the British Minister at the Court of Nepal and the
Ministers of that State.
"
2. His Lordship cannot doubt that, however temporary
circumstances may have seemed to render expedient that
connection, it is fraught with future evil, and should at the
earliest practicable period be suffered to expire.
"
3.
You have been already made acquainted with the
Governor-General's sentiments upon the subject.
"
4.
The Governor-General leaves it to your discretion
to decide in what manner your conduct should be regulated
so as gradually to withdraw the British Government from
a false position without injury to the persons who may
rely upon its support, a support really inefficacious for their
protection, although its open and abrupt withdrawal might
possibly involve them in new and serious danger.
"
5.
It is obviously impossible to give from hence precise
and absolute directions as to the conduct which should be
pursued with respect to a Sovereign who has more of
insanity than of reason, and an Heir-apparent who is alto-
gether insane. You must be guided by your own judg-
ment, assisted by your long and intimate knowledge of
the people of Nepal, in gradually bringing back the policy
of your mission to the only safe and legitimate course, or
that of abstaining from interference in the internal affairs
of the State to which you are deputed, and relying for the
due protection of British interests upon the knowledge
entertained of British power. 1 have the honour to be,
etc., etc. (Signed) T. H. Maddock, Secretary to Govern-
ment of India."
Hodgson had got all he could reasonably hope for. His
resistance to the new Governor-General's haste after a
change of policy in Nepal ended in Lord Ellenborough
leaving it to Hodgson himself to gradually and safely
effect the change at the time and in the manner which
Hodgson thought best. We shall presently see that
222 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Hodgson skilfully carried out the uncongenial task thus
entrusted to him. But meanwhile the governors of the
British provinces in Northern India and the Supreme
Council in Calcutta had not looked on unmoved at the
spectacle of an experienced and a valued Representative
at a Native Court being recalled in a moment of heat by
the new Governor-General. Lord Ellenborough inflicted
this disgrace on the man to whom his predecessor had,
almost with his last words, expressed his deep obligation
for the security of the Northern Indian frontier and the
main line of communication during the disasters of the
Afghan war. To Lord Auckland, the dexterous manage-
ment of Nepal by Hodgson seemed the bright spot in the
political horizon. Lord Ellenborough, as one of his first
acts after he got beyond the reach of his Council, recalled
Hodgson without the knowledge of his Council, and he
attempted to conceal his action from his Council. He
abstained from sending a copy of Hodgson's recall to the
Supreme Government in Calcutta.^ A private letter from
the Foreign Secretary announcing the intended conceal-
ment is docketed in Hodgson's handwriting as follows
:
"
I answered,
July loth, that I cared not whether Lord
Ellenborough cancelled his despatch of June 21st (ejecting
me) or not ; but expected if that despatch were recorded,
my answer to it should be so likewise." A diligent search
in the India Office Records proves that that despatch,
recalling Hodgson, was never brought upon the Consulta-
tions of the Government of India, nor reached the Court
of Directors at home.
If such a proceeding attracted the grave disapproval of
Lord Ellenborough's colleagues in Council, it excited the
indignation of the governors of the British provinces and
of the British representatives at Native Courts. For not
one of them could be sure that his turn might not come
next. Had Lord Ellenborough officially withdrawn his
'
Letter from the Honourable Thoby Prinsep, then a Member of the
Governor-General's Council, to B. H. Hodgson, dated July
i8th, 1842.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1S43. 223
public despatch of June 21st recalling Hodgson, he would
have earned the praise of magnanimity for retrieving a
hasty error when placed in possession of the complete
facts. Had he communicated that despatch to his col-
leagues in Council, it would have given them the oppor-
tunity of discussing the whole question of Nepalese policy
with the new Governor-General. But instead of officially
recalling his public despatch or of giving his colleagues the
possibility of expressing their sentiments upon it, he dis-
armed Hodgson's fears by a series of private letters asking
him to keep the public despatch
"
a profound secret," and
assuring Hodgson of his Excellency's high opinion as to his
ability and capacity for dealing with the situation in Nepal.
Hodgson was in fact neither officially recalled nor was
his resistance officially condoned. Among many letters
of sympathy which he received, one of the most sensible
came from the sober-minded administrator who then
governed Northern India, and who had had the nearest
opportunities of watching Hodgson's work. To this saga-
cious and responsible ruler of the British provinces adjoin-
ing Nepal, it seemed impossible that Lord Ellenborough
had not clearly realised his mistake, and he advises
Hodgson to treat the whole matter as a piece of petulance
on the part of a new and an inexperienced Governor-
General.
"
Believe me," the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-
Western Provinces wrote to Hodgson on
July 22nd,
1842,
"
that you attach more weight and importance to the
pettish effusion that has caused you so much uneasiness
than it deserves. One of the most unpleasant reflections
to those who, like myself, really long to see the Governor-
General commence his administration well, is that he has
contrived at starting to make men careless of his praise
and heedless of his censure. Hand inexpertus loguor, for
I too have come in for my share of his rebuffs
;
and if
I were much in love with dignity, I should feel very much
out of humour. As it is, though the absurdity irritates
224 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
me for a moment, it always amuses
;
and I find myself
often constrained to laugh, even when persuaded that I
ought to be angry. I am satisfied that he nozv sees that
he was on the verge of falling into the tremendous blunder
of provoking a war with Nepal, and will be glad enough to
find that nothing more is said of the despatch intimating his
displeasure at your course of policy, although his stubborn
pride will not admit of his acknowledging any mistake.
His prepossessions against our service are intense, and lead
him into much that is unfair and foolish."
^
This mild if contemptuous view of Lord Ellenborough's
conduct was not generally adopted. It seemed to many
that Lord Ellenborough had committed himself to the
same devices against a high Political Officer as he had
practised upon his military chiefs.- In regard to those
devices I shall only quote the words of the politest of
Indian historians in summing up Lord Ellenborough's too
subtle instructions to the Commander of the army then
struggling to retrieve the British honour in Afghanistan.
"
It is not to be believed that the Governor-General pur-
posely framed his orders so as to screen himself in any
case from blame, while he might secure some share of the
praise due to successful enterprise, if enterprise should be
determined on. This is not even to be imagined
;
but if
the existence of such an intention could be credited, he
might have been expected to issue instructions precisely
like those which were actually transmitted by him to
General Nott.""
'
Letter from the Honourable
J.
C. Robertson, Lieutenant-Governor
of the North-Western Provinces, to B. H. Hodgson, dated July 22nd,
1842.Hodgson Papers.
-
Even Sir Jasper
Nicolls, the sagacious Commander-in-Chief whose
advice, if followed, would have averted the Kabul disaster, was deprived
"
of the power of influencing affairs."See Colonel W. W. Knollys'
admirable memoir of Sir Jasper Nicolls, based on MS. and other
contemporary sources, in the Dictio7iary
of
National Biogj-aphy,
Vol. XLI.
3
History of
the BritishEvipirc in India, by Edward Thornton, Esq.,
Vol.VI.,
p. 366(1845).
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839 1843.
225
Meanwhile Lord Ellenborough was quite willing to take
any credit to himself for Hodgson's judicious treatment of
the Nepalese imbroglio, although that treatment was based
on the policy of the preceding Governor-General. On
July
6th, 1842, the very day on which Lord Ellenborough
in his letter to Hodgson had relegated his hastily ordered
change of policy in Nepal to the hypothetical mood (" if a
change of system should be adopted
"),^
his Excellency
also wrote with his own hand to the Queen :
"
The Raja
of Nepal has made an ample apology for his disrespectful
conduct towards the British Resident at Kathmandu, and
there is every present appearance of continued peace with
that State."
'
In Lord Ellenborough's privately expressed
opinion, therefore, Hodgson had successfully dealt with the
situation upon the lines laid down by Lord Auckland
;
and
he had so dealt with it a month before Lord Ellenborough
finally determined, by his despatch of August 8th,^ to
abolish Lord Auckland's policy and to introduce a new
policy of his own.
To the high officials around Lord Ellenborough it
seemed, indeed, that his Excellency had sufficiently re-
tracted his impetuous despatch to Hodgson of June 21st.
"
I would take the overtures now made by Lord Ellen-
borough," wrote a Member of his Council
^
to Hodgson
on
July
loth, 1842,
"
as earnest of a desire to make amends
for past brusqueries, and perhaps as evidence of a growing
opinion in favour of the particular course followed by you
which has been so successful." From the Foreign Secretary
in attendance on Lord Ellenborough and the Lieutenant-
Governor of the North-West letters followed in a similar
strain.'
"
Your conduct is vindicated in the amplest manner,"
'
Vide ante,
p. 219.
^
History
of
the Indian Administration
of
Lord Ellenborough, by
Lord Colchester, p. 37.
Ed.
1874.
'
Vide ante,
pp.
220, 221.
*
The Honourable Thoby Prinsep.
*
Letters from T. H. Maddock, dated July nth, 1842, and from the
Honourable
J.
C. Robertson, dated
July
i6th, 1842.Hodgson MSS.
15
226 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap
wrote Mr. Secretary Bushby on August 23rd,
"
and I con-
gratulate you on this issue." Every one who knew of the
matter now advised Hodgson to let it drop.
Bright times appeared to be before him. For as the
army of retribution went on with its work in Afghanistan,
Hodgson's difficulties in Nepal disappeared. Those diffi-
culties had mainly arisen from the fact that the Ncpalese
Court well knew, during the past three years, that our
whole available forces were occupied beyond the north-
western frontier. The crowning successes of the British
arms at Ghazni and Kabul in the summer and early autumn
of 1842 set free our victorious troops for any complication
in Nepal. The Nepalese war party had, moreover, been
discredited by the failure of their predictions of the down-
fall of the British power in China and Afghanistan.
Hodgson, therefore, found it possible to disengage himself
from the peace Ministry in Nepal without the risk of the
war party usurping the control of the King. He made the
Maharaja understand that henceforth his Highness must
manage his own affairs without the active support of the
British Resident accorded under Lord Auckland's policy.
That support had been absolutely necessary to prevent
the war party in Nepal forcing a war upon the East
India Company while its armies were locked up in
Afghanistan. The reason for the exceptional support by
the British Resident to the Maharaja and to the peace
Ministry in Nepal having ceased, that exceptional support
was, during the autumn of
1842,
quietly withdrawn.
Hodgson succeeded in giving a simple and natural
appearance to the change
;
yet the Maharaja felt that
it imperilled not only the peace Ministry but also his
personal safety. Conscious of his inability to control the
insane turbulence of his son, he desired to evade the
responsibility for it by an informal abdication of the throne.
He wished in fact to retain the pomp of majesty without
its risks and cares. The Chiefs came to Hodgson as usual
for advice
;
so also did the Maharaja
;
but Hodgson would
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 1839
1843. 227
only exercise his influence so far as to persuade both
parties to a peaceable settlement among themselves. The
King, finding it impossible to lean any further upon the
strong arm of the Resident, and finding it equally imposs-
ible to do without the support of a firmer nature than
his own, placed himself unreservedly in the hands of his
wife, formerly known as the Junior Queen, but who, since
the death of the Senior Rani in
1841, had become sole
Queen.
^
Meanwhile the Heir-apparent, emboldened by Hodgson's
withdrawal from the sphere of influence, launched out
on his atrocities with a free hand. The King showed
himself powerless to control his son
;
and his subjects, in
December 1
842,
began to hold tumultuous assemblies and
took the matter into their own hands.
"
The people
complained," says the official record of this revolution,
"
that they could not obey two masters, adducing numerous
instances in which the Raja had allowed them to be
punished by his son for obedience to his own com-
mands, whilst for all the murders, maimings, beatings, and
insults perpetrated by the Heir-apparent, the Maharaja
had evaded authorising prevention, or making atonement
in a single instance. At one of these meetings, when
about eight thousand persons were present, a committee
was named to draw up a petition for presentation to the
Maharaja for the due protection of the legitimate rights,
public and personal, of all his subjects. This petition
being approved of by the country was sanctioned and
ratified by the Maharaja on December 7th, amidst the
loud applause of the assembled multitude."
"
Hodgson's counsels contributed in no small measure to
the peaceful result of this revolution. Within six months
he had carried out Lord Ellenborough's policy of with-
'
For the sake of clearness I shall continue to speak of her as the
Junior Queen.
-
Official Narrative of Events in Nepal, sub anno
1842, by Assistant
Resident Lieutenant Nicholetts, para. 32.
hidia
Office
Records.
228 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
drawal, and he had carried it out in such a way as to
avoid danger either to the Maharaja or to the peace
Ministers who trusted to his support. As a matter of
fact the change left the Maharaja in a stronger position
than his Highness had held since the death of the old
Prime Minister, Bhim Sen, in
1839,
for it left him in
the first flush of a good understanding between himself
and his people, with the peace Ministry re-established in
power, and with the strong arm of the Junior Queen to
lean on.
Had Hodgson thought of his personal interests he
would now have quitted the scene. He had long ago
fixed 1
841,
or at the latest
1842, as the date of his retire-
ment from Kathmandu. But the incessant labours and
anxieties of the past three years, since the British armies
entered Afghanistan, rendered it impossible for him to
complete the private researches on which he was engaged
for his great treatise on Nepal. He therefore desired to
remain for one year more, now that the quiet of the times
allowed him to resume the studies on which the fruition
of his life's work depended. Lord Ellenborough seemed
so satisfied with Hodgson's diplomatic successes that
Hodgson could, without loss of self-respect, express his
wish. He did so, and received in good faith the Governor-
General's consent, unmindful of a warning conveyed by one
of Lord EUenborough's own colleagues in Council.
"
Lord
Ellenborough," Mr. Thoby Prinsep wrote to Hodgson,
"cannot but approve what you have done. But he will
do so dryly, because he will like you none the better."
The Junior Queen no sooner felt herself in authority
than she resolved to make her authority absolute. The
year
1843
opened with the announcement to the Resident
that she had been invested with political powers. Forth-
with she began to intrigue for the supersession of the
two surviving sons of the deceased Senior Queen in
favour of her own children. How to get rid of these two
lives between her eldest son and the throne became the
ix.l LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 229
one object of her life. The bloody intrigues which fill
the Nepalcsc annals during the next four years reached
their acute stage after Hodgson left in
1843,
^"d they
form no part of this biography. Hodgson's successor
had to stand by and sec the tragical drama drag itself to
its close. I pause for a moment to summarise the chief
events from
1843 to 1847.
The Queen found that the peace Ministry, consisting of
the royal collaterals and Brahmansthe spiritual advisers
of the kingdomwere no tools for the work she had in
hand. For they represented the legitimist party in Nepal,
and notwithstanding the Senior Queen's hatred of them to
the day of her death, they could not be seduced into
setting aside the rights of her sons. The
Junior Queen
accordingly brought back to power Matabar Singh, nephew
of the late Prime Minister Bhim Sen. That free-lance had
for some time settled down to comfortable exile at Simla,
on an allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month from the British
Government. The Queen took advantage of his somewhat
hesitating return, in
1843,
^o slaughter the Pandi leaders
who, four years previously, had supported the Senior
Queen in procuring the ruin of Bhim Sen and his house.
The official records for
1844
are a dreary narrative of
commotions and decapitations.^ Those for
1845 open
with the murder of Matabar Singh, recently appointed
Prime Minister for life amid the treacherous cajoleries of
the King who afterwards claimed credit for firing the first
shot point-blank into his body. The wounded Minister
fell at his master's feet
"
and begged for mercy for his
mother and children. But as he spoke some one struck
him from behind, and as his hands were stretched out in
supplication one of the attendants cut him with a sword
across the wrists."^ Next year, 1846, produced a still
bloodier list of assassinations and massacres, planned by
the Queen and the menial of the palace whom she had
'
Assistant Resident Nicholetts' Confidential Summary, paras.
43
to
48.
htdia
Office
Records.
-
Idem., sub anno
1845,
para. 50.
230 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
raised to favour.
^
The poor Raja quitted his kingdom
under the decent pretext of expiating these murders by
a joint pilgrimage with the Queen to Benares, leaving the
Heir-apparent to govern as best he could.' The end
came in
1847.
The Heir-apparent seized the throne.
The Queen was banished, and eventually died in exile.
The Raja was deposed, and for a time shut up. He spent
his remaining years as a State prisoner, while
Jang
Bahadur (the nephew of Matabar murdered in
1845,
and
grand-nephew of the great Minister Bhim Sen done to
death in
1839)
established himself as Prime Minister and
Mayor of the Palace for life.
Such were the results of Lord Ellenborough's policy
in Nepal. They bore bitter fruits for years after Lord
Ellenborough had himself been recalled. In almost his
last letter to the Resident whom he appointed in super-
session of Hodgson, Lord Ellenborough still insisted upon
that policy, and ordered the new Resident to gloss over
the fact of his (Lord Ellenborough's) own recall :
"
My
successor will do all I should have done. You may tell the
Court that he has been selected, among other reasons, be-
cause he is my brother-in-law and most confidential friend."
^
Hodgson had, happily for his own peace of mind, left
long before the last acts of the tragedy. I therefore
confine myself to quoting the parting words of the Heir-
apparent to the King his father, when deposing him from
the throne.
"
Your Highness, uniting with the Kala
Pandis, caused General Bhim Sen Thappa to be murdered
;
then joining the party of the Thappas, you had the Pandis
put to death. Afterwards, in conjunction with the Rani,
you caused the death of Matabar Singh
;
again, contrary
to all precedent in your dynasty of fourteen generations,
you gave absolute power to the Maharani, and so caused
'
Assistant Resident Nicholetts' Confidential Summary, sub anfto
1846,
paras. 61 to 70.
-
Ide?n., paras. 68,
69, 73, 74.
^
Lord flUenborough to Major Lawrence, dated Calcutta, June 17th,
1844.
Merivale's Life of
Sir Henry Laivfcncc, Vol. II., p. 5. Ed. 1872.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843.
231
the massacre at the Kot ; and now, lastly, you are sending
orders for the murder of the present Minister, for no
offence whatever."
^
Exactly four years before this remarkable piece of filial
frankness. Lord Ellenborough dismissed Hodgson from
the post of Resident. His Excellency was quite willing
to take credit for the skilful treatment of Nepal, in the
second half of 1842 and first months of
1843,
by the man
whom he had recalled by a public despatch and then
privately made friends with by demi-official letters. But
Lord Ellenborough, finding that no one felt disposed to
give the Governor-General any credit for the success, began
to nourish feelings towards Hodgson of which more than
one warning was conveyed by friendly hands. In March
1843
Secretary Maddock found himself set free from the
distasteful duty of acting as the mouthpiece of Lord Ellen-
borough's duplicities, by his appointment to the Supreme
Council. Next month, with reference to Hodgson's growing
uneasiness as to the value of Lord Ellenborough's private
amende for the public letter of recall, Maddock wrote to
him as follows
:
"
I cannot pretend to account for the actions or policy
of my late master. Lord Ellenborough. His course is too
self-willed and eccentric to be guided, or explained, or
reasoned with. His own way he will have as long as he
rules over this country, and no other human being will be
responsible for the acts of his government, for he will allow
no one to share the responsibility in any degree with him.
Political Officers are the objects of his special aversion,
and they can only do as they are bid, and that is the only
way in which they can avoid his displeasure. However,
I cannot bring myself to believe that his reign over us will
be of much longer duration, for all the Ministers, except
the Duke of Wellington, are said to be perfectly disgusted
with his arrogance and alarmed at his insanity."
^
1
Oldfield's Nepal, Vol. I.,
pp. 375,
376. Ed. 1880.
-
T. H. Maddock to B. H. Hodgson, dated Calcutta, April 4th, 1843.
232
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Three months later Lord EUenborough dispelled every
doubt as to the value to be attached to his private amende
for the public letter of recall. Hodgson determined to bring
the matter to the touch by asking the Governor-General
if he might remain in Nepal during the following cold
weather to finish certain researches, on the completion
of which he proposed to retire from the service. Lord
EUenborough not only refused, but he based his refusal on
the public letter of recall. That letter, it will be remem-
bered, bore date June
21st, 1842.' It was practically with-
drawn by a confidential communication from the Secretary
to Government in attendance on the Governor-General the
very next day, and Hodgson was counselled to keep it " a
profound secret."- Nor had the Governor-General ever
ventured to place the letter before his own Council. Yet Lord
EUenborough, with one of those strange lapses of memory
which characterised his dealings with his subordinates,
could now write as if the suppression of the public letter
had been made against his own judgment, and apparently
at the persuasion of Hodgsonof Hodgson who knew not
of its existence until eight or ten days after its confidential
retractation on the 22nd by the same Secretary who wrote
the official letter of the 21st.
On June 2nd,
1843,
Lord EUenborough delivered the
final blow.
"
Sir," he wrote to Hodgson,
"
I received your
letter of the 22nd ult, intimating your wish to remain still
longer at Kathmandu.
"
I have already twice, against my own better judgment,
acquiesced in your remaining there : first, when I consented
that the public letter of animadversion upon your conduct
should not be placed upon the public records, it being then
distinctly understood by me that you would retire during
the last cold weather
;
secondly, when I was further induced
to consent to your remaining till the ensuing cold weather.
"
I do not think it desirable that you should remain
beyond that period, and I shall then appoint your successor.
'
Vide ante,
pp.
211, 212.
-
Vide ante,
p. 217.
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 233
If you desire to remain on .service in India, I will endeavour
to find some other fit situation for you
;
but you ought to
leave Nepal. I remain, Sir, your faithful servant,
"
Ellenborougil"*
Within six weeks after Lord EUenborough thus addressed
a tried public servant, whom he had repeatedly assured of
his confidence and esteem, it became publicly known that
Lord EUenborough was himself recalled by the Court of
Directors.^ His Excellency's successor did not, however,
assume charge till 1844. Meanwhile during the autumn
of
1843
Lord EUenborough suddenly gazetted Major
Henry Lawrence (Sir Henry) as Resident in Nepal, and
appointed Hodgson to the petty post of
"
Assistant Sub-
Commi.ssioner at Simla."
^
Hodgson resented the insult,
and in spite of the sympathising remonstrances of his
friends, he resigned the service. His successor [Sir] Henry
Lawrence liked the business as little as Hodgson did, and
told a high officer of Lord Ellenborough's Government
"
that he would rather have been appointed here {i.e.
'
Sub-
Commissioner of Simla parish') than Resident in Nepal."*
Some of Hodgson's best friends thought that he had acted
as befitted his honour.
"
I am glad," wrote Sir George
Clerk in the letter just quoted,
"
to see a civilian leave the
country : I used for the people's sake to regret it. For I
feel that he, his untiring zeal and his honest application,
are no longer known or appreciated."
This was the opinion of one of the ablest Indian adminis-
trators of the nineteenth century, who shortly afterwards
rose to the Governor-General's Council and the Lieutenant-
Governorship of the North-West, rendered great services as
'
Letter from Lord EUenborough to B. H. Hodgson, Esq., dated
June 2nd, 1843.Hodgson Private Papers.
^
The date is given as
July 15th, 1844.Thornton's FHstoiy
of
India,
Vol. VI.,
p. 547 (1845)-
^
India
Office
MS. Records.
*
Sir George Russell Clerk to B. H. Hodgson, dated Simla, October
8th, 1843. Hodgson Private Papers.
234
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Governor of Bombay twice over, and completed a brilliant
career as a Member of the Council of the Secretary of State,
a K.C.B. and G.C.S.I. Sir George Clerk remained on the
closest terms of affection with Hodgson to the end of their
long lives. His words express the sense of discouragement
which Lord Ellenborough's conduct produced among those
who saw that conduct nearest at hand.
Hodgson's leave-taking with the prince and people
among whom he had so long represented the British
power, and whose esteem and affection he had won to a
degree which they have accorded to no other Englishman,
was pathetic. The Raja wrote to Lord EUenborough,
begging his Excellency not to deprive him of the adviser
to whom he had all his life looked for support against the
war party in Nepal. Hodgson very properly declined to
transmit the letter. On its being secretly smuggled into
British territory, disguised as a parcel of merchandise,
Lord EUenborough, with less propriety, declined to take
notice of it.
At Hodgson's final audience with the Darbar the Raja
burst into tears, and, referring to the exertions by which
Hodgson had so often averted a war, called him
"
the
Saviour of Nepal."
"
Then taking a jewel from his turban,
he turned to Major Lawrence [who had just received over
charge] and said,
'
I know that it is your custom for
Residents not to accept presents, but I owe so much to
Mr. Hodgson's prudence and patience under many and
great provocations, that I beg you will make my earnest
request to the Governor-General to the effect that he
may be permitted to accept this hereditary jewel of mine
to become an heirloom in his own family.' " This request
could not of course be complied with. But no official
repression could prevent the affectionate farewells of the
chiefs and people which made Hodgson's march to the
frontier one long triumphal progress.
Hodgson's arrival in Calcutta was the signal for demon-
strations of respect scarcely less enthusiastic, and still more
IX.] LAST FOUR YEARS IN NEPAL: 18391843. 235
inconvenient, considering his relations towards the Governor-
General. One of the Members of Council urged him
"
to
withdraw his resignation, and we will with one voice
demand from Lord EUenborough for you the Residency
at Indore as a just reward for your services." Hodgson
with difficulty prevented the Council from taking action,
by pleading that his resignation was an accomplished
fact and his
"
want of health for serving on the plains."
'
In response to all such expressions of sympathy, both
public and private, he let it be known that they were
to him sources of embarrassment rather than of pleasure.
He could not, however, escape a great meeting which
the Asiatic Society held in his honour. And with the
words of the Honourable the President on that occasion,
when bidding Hodgson farewell and conveying to him the
request of the Society
"
to sit to some first-rate artist for
his bust to be placed in " its Hall, I close this official
section of this Life.-
"
Mr. Hodgson sails to-morrow, and I am sure that
there is not a member here present who would not have
regretted the loss of the only opportunity we shall ever
have of seeing him in this place, and of testifying, as far
as we are able, how highly we are sensible of the credit
v/hich his labours and researches have reflected on the
Society. I am aware that in alluding to them I am
causing to the distinguished individual of whom I am
speaking more pain than pleasure, but I hope he will
forgive me, for I feel that you would all consider me as
ill discharging the duties of the situation in which I have
the honour to be placed, were I to allow such an occasion
as this to pass without referring to those labours and those
researches in terms of suitable acknowledgment.
"
I confess, however, that I am quite unable to speak of
'
Hodgson Private Papers.
^
Presidential Address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal at a "special
"
meeting in honour of B. H. Hodgson, Esq., held at Calcutta on Tuesday,
February 6th, 1844.
Proceedings
of
the Society, No. 62,
NS.
236 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap. ix.
them a.s they ought to be spoken of. But of their variety
and extent you may yourselves be able to form some
judgment when you hear that Mr. Hodgson's contributions
to the Transactions and Journal of this Society alone
amount to eighty-nine distinct papers. . . .
"
I will only further observe that the high reputation
which Mr. Hodgson has conferred on the Society is not
merely a local and an Indian one. His name, widely
spread with his discoveries among the Scientific Societies
of Europe, has carried with it corresponding credit to our
body, as a member of which he has laboured."
So, amid the public sympathy of his brethren of the
Service, the praises of his fellow-workers in the fields of
private research, and the hearty good wishes of many
friends, Hodgson retired from the Indian Service at the
age of forty-three.
l^oj']
CHAPTER X.
THE DARJILING
RECLUSE: 1845
1858.
HODGSON'S
reception by the Court of Directors at
home was equally cordial. On his arrival in the
spring of 1844,
he waited, as in duty bound, on the
Chairman. The India House was at that moment seething
with indignation against Lord Ellenborough
;
and Hodgson,
who had no wish to be made a hero of, found himself upon
the top of the wave.
"
Why, we will carry you back on
our shoulders," was the Chairman's greeting to him.
"
Lord
Ellenborough has been
dismissed."
Hodgson explained that he had retired from the service,
and although he was induced to draft a statement of his
case for the Court of Directors, I find it docketed with the
words "Not sent." But he had some of the original
letters privately printed for his family and nearest friends.
The Court could only show its regard for him by social
civilities. It asked him to a public dinner given in honour
of its most
distinguished
Indian servants shortly after his
return to London,
"
and drank his health amid the accla-
mations of some two hundred
gentlemen, including the
Minister for India."
^
I have refrained from offering an opinion as to the
wisdom or unwisdom of Hodgson in resigning the service.
But there can be no question as to the
judiciousness of the
attitude
which he now adopted. Any young gentleman
in the Secretariat
could have found a way out of a
difficulty
with a
Governor-General so impetuous as Lord
'
The President of the Board of Control.
Hodgson MSS.
238 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
Ellcnborough with his unbalanced mind yet by no means
ungenerous heartand lived to smile at the little episode
from the heights of future success. More than one of
Hodgson's friends urged him to take a year's furlough
and let Lord Ellenborough run out his brief course. But
Hodgson had not the adroitness of headquarters. Twenty-
four years of isolation had made his high-strung and some-
what haughty nature still more sensitive. When wounded
by what he regarded as injustice and ingratitude, he could
not help showing that he felt it. Nor did he under-
stand the light foil-play of the Secretariat school-of-arms.
In resigning the service he made a somewhat needlessly
emphatic protest against a piece of unfairness in high
places which a defter official would have taken as a by
no means extraordinary incident in even a prosperous
career. But a man is what he is by having a nature.
Hodgson acted in a way consonant with his nature, and
from a conviction, perhaps the exaggerated conviction of
a too solitary man, that the protest was due to his own
honour and to the honourable service to which he belonged.
It may be doubted, moreover, if a man who could bend to
a storm would have achieved what the combined sim-
plicity and firmness of Hodgson accomplished in Nepal.
But whether he acted wisely or unwisely for himself,
the world was the clear gainer. There are always a score
of men in the India Civil Service who make excellent
Residents at Native Courts. But there was then only one
man in India who could do the work which Hodgson was
destined, during the next fifteen years, to accomplish for
Oriental literature and science. I do not think he at any
moment seriously regretted that, while still in the prime of
manhood, he gave up his whole life to the studies which
bore so rich a fruitage. From time to time, usually at the
prompting of some enthusiastic or too zealous admirer, he
felt a little hurt at the non-recognition of his work by
the English Government, as compared with the honours
showered upon him by foreign countries. But as, even
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 1845 1858. 239
in the first bitter moments, he got rid of his indignation
against Lord Ellenborough by writing a statement of his
case and then locking it up in his desk, so he shrank from
giving pubHc expression to any sense of neglect during
his long subsequent life of fifty years.
Meanwhile he had ample consolations of the kind dearest
to his heart in his welcome home. Hodgson had the rare
good fortune to find, at the end of his quarter of a century
of Indian service, both his parents alive. After a happy
time with his father and mother in their Canterbury house,
he paid a visit to his beloved sister Fanny, now the
Baroness Nahuys. She and her husband who, as I have
mentioned, became Governor of one of the Seven Provinces
of Holland, were living at Arnhem. In this pleasant
Rhine town, with its traces of the ancient Roman sway,
its fortifications then surviving from mediaeval times, and
its more recent memories of the siege of 18
13,
Hodgson
became a living reality to the sister whom he had left as
a child of eight. The admiration which she had long given
him was now warmed into the love for which he craved,
and settled down into a deep and enthusiastic affection.
But before the first year of his retirement passed,
Hodgson began to feel that idleness was for him imposs-
ible. He could not rest from labour, and he began to
turn wistful eyes to the land in which alone he could
complete his life's work. A project for buying the small
estate of Swiscoe as a home for himself and his parents fell
through, partly from the insufficiency of his means, and
partly because of the necessity which he felt to finish his
Himalayan researches. That constraining necessity told
on his powers of enjoying his present surroundings, and
urged him forth once more to the scene of his labours in
the East.
In October
1844,
even amid the hospitalities of Arnhem,
he wrote to his father
^
:
"
This will never do, and 1 had far
better return to India than continue thus a source of pain
'
Letter dated Arnhem, October 17th,
1844.
240 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
to those I love best as well as to myself. Accordingly I
have nearly decided to return, and the sooner, I think, the
better. . . . The mere going the round of Scientific Societies
could never satisfy me. Indeed I look with a sort of
disgust on that kind of thing." He feels the necessity of
plunging again into the study of nature at first hand, and
proposes
"
to keep up the requisite intercourse with the
scientific bodies in Europe
"
by presents of specimens and
drawings as before.
Meanwhile he entrusted to his father the task of having
his zoological collections arranged by a skilled sorter.
The father set a man to work on the skins and bones, but
with a heavy heart, and a deep sense of the solitude which
his son's departure would bring into his life.
"
My dearest
Father," Hodgson tries to comfort him a few weeks later,
"
I cannot think of your being alone and in low spirits
without a fresh pang, sad as my heart is, and the more so
because its sadness is necessarily communicated to you.
Now if you say the word, I shall at once hurry to Canter-
bury. I must rid you of the heap of trash wherewith I
have burdened the barracks, and if I do no more, that will
be well done."
^
The result may be gathered from a letter to Hodgson
from the Trustees of the British Museum in the following
month, expressing themselves "deeply obliged for the
valuable series of skins and drawings which you have
already presented to the Museum, as well as for the liberal
offer now made of completing the series. This offer the
Trustees will thankfully accept, and will instruct the
proper officer to proceed to Canterbury whenever it ma)'
be convenient to you for the purpose of making the selec-
tion for the Museum, and of giving you such aid as he can,
consistently with his other public duties, in sorting the
specimens to be distributed to other public institutions."
-
'
Dated Arnhem, November 24th, 1844.
,
^
Letter from
J.
Forshall, Secretary to the Trustees, dated British
Museum, December 20th,
1844.
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 1845 1858.
24I
Professor Owen also came down to Canterbury to make
a selection from Hodgson's presentations to the College
of Surgeons.
Having thus disposed of his collections, it only remained
for Hodgson to present his departure in a hopeful light to
the loved ones whom he must leave behind.
"
My dearest
Father," he wrote, inviting his father to join him during a
few days' absence in London while arranging with the
Trustees of the British Museum,
"
Thanks for your affec-
tionate letter. It is almost worth while being away from
you in order to get such truly kind letters. God ever bless
you, and believe me that I would not willingly give you
pain for the world. It was and is because my invincible
depression afflicted all your kind hearts that it seemed to
me necessary to put an end to it. You know I can soon
be back '[from India], and probably shall be so. You
speak as if my going were not only evil but irremediable :
not so, my dearest father
;
two months will at any time
bring me back."
'
He had partly won over his sister Fanny to the project,
and she seems to have helped him in winning his parents'
assent.
"
Dearest Fan," he wrote to her three days later,
'^
"
I am right proud to think I have won the entire esteem
and love of so good and sensible a person as you are.
Amid a thousand griefs and disappointments that press
me to the earth, this idea alone elevates and consoles me.
God ever bless you, my darling sister, and believe me that
all your kindly feelings towards me are fully reciprocated
by me towards you. I bless you and ever shall while I
live, wherever my lot is cast.
"
I must away to resume and complete my researches
where alone they can be satisfactorily completed. For
my hurried departure [from Nepal] amid overpowering
vexations caused all my papers and other materials to be
dissipated and dislocated, and I can collect the fragments
'
Letter dated December 18th, 1844.
'
Dated December 21st, 1844.
16
242 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap
in India alone. It will cost me but a couple of years.
Even if I fail I may be quieted by the reflection that
failure came not till every effort had been made to avert it.
If I succeed I shall come back comforted and strengthened
to encounter the new life of Europe."
Why multiply these touching mementos of his last days
at home ? I have ventured to reproduce one or two
of them, as they show the deep and untarnished affection
of the man of forty-five for the loved ones from whom
he had been severed during a quarter of a century. In
1845
the parting came, and I shall only quote his farewell
words to his sister Fanny, dated
"
On Board
"
from Cork
Harbour
:
"
Words cannot tell what I owe you. In my dark hour
you were my guardian angel, and in subsequent hours
your sweet words and looks gave me to taste the only
pleasure I have known for years. Whilst I breathe I
shall cherish the memory of your tenderness. What a
sweet and holy thing is true affection ! There is nothing
else worth living for, and would to God I could dedicate
the remainder of my life to winning and repaying it in
a home of my own. Dear, dear Fanny, I owe you much
for having opened my heart to a full sense of the love-
liness of the heart's best emotions
;
and even if mine
must now again be locked up as they had been, the very
memory of their momentary indulgence will cast a sacred
halo around my future life. I do not think I shall be
able to exist as heretofore, and if this necessity of being
beloved should draw me home again, to you my return
will be owing. ... I sigh to think what a luxury it must be
to love and be loved. Nothing like the hand of Woman
for binding up a stricken heart
;
and as for me, I never
hear a tone that is soft and sounds like affection but it
seems to me a voice from Heaven
"
Mr, Hodgson's high position as a man of science
requires no mention here. But the difficulties he overcame,
and the sacrifices he made, in attaining that position, are
known to few. He entered the wilds of Nepal when very
young and in indifferent health, and finding time to spare,
cast about for the best method of employing it. He had
no one to recommend or direct a pursuit, no example
to follow, no rival to equal or surpass. He had never
'
Himalayan Journals^ or Notes
of
a Naturalist, by Sir Joseph
Dalton Hooker, K.C.S.I., C.B., F.R.S.,
p.
xi, ed.
1854,
and
p.
xiii,
Minerva Edition of iBqi.
244 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
been acquainted with a scientific man, and knew nothing
of science except the name. The natural history of men
and animals, in its most comprehensive sense, attracted
his attention
;
he sent to Europe for books, and commenced
the study of ethnology and zoology. His labours have
now extended over upwards of twenty-five years' residence
in the Himalaya. During this period he has seldom
had a staff of less than from ten to twenty persons
(often many more), of various tongues and races, em-
ployed as translators and collectors, artists, shooters, and
stuffers.
"
By unceasing exertions and a princely liberality, Mr.
Hodgson has unveiled the mysteries of the Buddhist
religion, chronicled the affinities, languages, customs, and
faiths of the Himalayan tribes, and completed a natural
history of the animals and birds of these regions. His
collections of specimens are immense, and are illustrated
by drawings and descriptions taken from life, with remarks
on the anatomy, habits, and localities of the animals them-
selves. Twenty volumes of the Journals and the Museum
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal teem with the proofs of
his indefatigable zeal ; and throughout the cabinets of the
birds and quadruped departments of our national Museum,
Mr. Hodgson's name stands pre-eminent. A seat in the
Institute of France, and the cross of the Legion of Honour,
prove the estimation in which his Buddhist studies are
held on the Continent of Europe. To be welcomed to the
Himalaya by such a person, and to be allowed the most
unreserved intercourse, and the advantage of all his in-
formation and library, exercised a material influence on
the progress I made in my studies, and on my travels.
When I add that many of the subjects treated of in these
volumes were discussed between us, it will be evident that
it is impossible for me to divest much of the information
thus insensibly obtained of the appearance of being the
fruits of my own research."
The earlier years of Hodgson's life at Darjiling were
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 18451858. 245
very solitary ones.
"
I read and read," he says in a letter
^
to his sister Fanny,
"
and write and read. My subjects are
Ethnology and Zoology and Educationall ample fields
and yet enough untrodden to render intelligent truthful
labours permanently valuable. And such I trust will be
mine. I will send you a copy of my work on Education,
and also one of the several Essays on the Aborigines.
But of Zoology you will not care to hear, though even
that can be made rational and pleasant, and for my part,
in the study of nature I find an extreme comfort and
pleasure. The thing is so truthful, calm, and real, as I
pursue it not in books but in actual subjects."
In these first years at Darjiling he again suffered from a
recurrence of the maladies which had distressed him in
Nepal. Against these maladies he bore up with unshaken
courage, eking out the powers of a fever-shaken constitu-
tion by the most abstemious diet, and by an almost abso-
lute retirement from the world. In the spring of 1848 he
had the great happiness of being joined by Dr. Hooker,
who was then engaged on the researches embodied in his
Himalayan Journals. In the autumn he gave his sister
Fanny a graphic description of his home and its sur-
roundings."
"
I, have still my accomplished and amiable guest. Dr.
Hooker, with me, and am even thinking of accompanying
him on an excursion to the foot of the snows. Our glorious
peak Kinchinjinga proves to be the loftiest in the range
and consequently in the world, being 28,178
feet above the
sea.^ Dr. Hooker and I wish to make the nearer acquaint-
ance of this king of mountains, and we propose, if we can,
to slip over one of the passes into Tibet in order to measure
the height of that no less unique plateau, and also to
examine the distribution of plants and animals in these
'
Dated Darjiling, December 5th, 1847.
-
Letter dated Darjiling, September 25th, 1848.
^
Written before Mount Everest was finally ascertained to be 29,003
feet above sea-level.
246 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
remarkable mountains which ascend from nearly the sea-
level, by still increasing heights and corresponding changes
of climate, to the unparalleled elevation above spoken of.
"
Dr. Hooker is young in years but old in knowledge,
has been at the Antarctic Pole with Ross, and is the friend
and correspondent of the veteran Humboldt. He says our
Darjiling botany is a wondrous mixture of tropical and
northern forms, even more so than in Nepal and the
western parts of the Himalayan ranges
;
for we have
several palms and tree-ferns and Cycases and Musas (wild
plantain), whereas to the westward there are few or none
of these. Cryptogamous plants abound yet more here
than there, especially fungi. Every old tree is loaded with
them and with masses of lichens, and is twined round by
climbing plants as big as itself, whilst Orchidece or air
plants put forth their luscious blossoms from every part
of it.
"
Dr. Hooker has procured ten new species of rhododen-
drons, one of which is an epiphyte, and five palms and
three Musas and three tree-ferns and two Cycases. These
are closely juxtaposed to oaks, chestnuts, birches, alders,
magnolias, Michelias, Oleas, all of enormous size. To
them I must add rhododendrons, including the glorious
epidendric species above spoken of, and whose large white
blossoms depend from the highest branches of the highest
oaks and chestnuts. Laurels too abound with me as
forest trees, and a little to the north are the whole coni-
ferous family, Pinus, Picea, Abies, v/ith larch and cedar
and cypress and juniper, all represented by several species
and nearly all first-rate for size and beauty. Then my
shrubs are Camelias and Daphnes and Polygonums and
dwarf bamboos ; and my herbaceous things, or flowers
and grasses, bluebells, geraniums, Cynoglossum, Myriactis,
Gnaphalium, with nettles, docks, chickweeds, and such
household weeds.
"
I wish, Fan, you were here to botanise with Dr.
Hooker ; for I am unworthy, having never heeded this
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 18451858. 247
branch of science, and he is such a cheerful, well-bred
youthful philosopher that you would derive as much
pleasure as profit from intercourse with him. Go and see
his father Sir William Hooker at the Royal Gardens at
Kew."
"
I am living here," wrote Sir James Colvile when on
a visit to Hodgson in
1847,
"in a Babel of tribes and
nations, and, to make them more interesting, I am living
with an eminent ethnologist, who for more than twenty-
five years has had, and profited by, peculiar opportunities
of studying the varieties of men that inhabit the Sub-
Himalaya. He is Mr. Hodgson (better known to the
world in general as a naturalist), who for many years was
our Resident in Nepal, and then occupied his leisure in
these researches. He was, notwithstanding, an excellent
public servant." After referring to Lord EUenborough's
supersession of Hodgson as
"
one of the most wanton acts
of his capricious tyranny," Sir James Colvile goes on to
say :
"
Hodgson in disgust, unfortunately for himself,
resigned the service. Had he not done so he would pro-
bably by this time have found his way back to Nepal.
As it is, not feeling comfortable in Europe, he has returned
to these hills and continues, but with crippled means, his
scientific labours as a private gentleman. ... I have
learned more about India from him in these few weeks
than I have learned at Calcutta in nearly two years."
^
These quiet years at Darjiling enabled Hodgson to save
money. His comparative poverty during his first brief
visit home, he wrote to his sister Fanny,^ was
"
to the full
as much owing to my early and continued aids to members
of my family as to the sudden and unlooked for termina-
tion of a brilliant career, which could not have been run
at all on parsimonious principles, and which was run so
'
Letter from Sir James Colvile, Chief Justice of Bengal, to Monktou
Milnes, dated Darjiling, October nth, 1847.
Life of
Lord Houghton,
by T. Wemyss Reid, Vol. L, p. 382. Ed. 1890
-
Letter dated Darjiling, August loth, 1848.
248 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON.
[chap.
successfully as to keep us all afloat from the second year
of my service. My brothers consumed a great deal of my
money, so much that William grew actually remorseful at
last, and would have Edward only and not me to sign that
bond for ;^ 1,000,
which, however, as usual it fell on me to
pay. Personally, I have ever been all simplicity in my
habits."
Now his poor brothers lay in Indian graveyards, and he
had only his parents to help. His own hermit life at Dar-
jiling could not have cost above a few hundred pounds a
year, and another few hundred would maintain a score of
bird-stuffers, hunters, and native assistants for his zoologi-
cal collections. So the process of accumulation at last
began.
How simple and unworldly was that life, with its
intensity of isolated devotion to noble pursuits in spite of
ill-health, may be realised from some reminiscences which
Sir Joseph Hooker has kindly written out for me. Seldom
has one great naturalist seen another thus eye-to-eye, or
spoken of him so directly from the heart. Any attempt
to put his impressions into my words would lessen their
interest. In the following pages, therefore, I leave his
manuscript narrative to speak for itself as
Sir Joseph
Hooker's Recollections of
Hodgson's Darjiling Days.
I owed my introduction to Mr. Hodgson to the good
offices of our mutual friend the late Sir James Colvile,
then Advocate-General, Calcutta, and President of the
Bengal Asiatic Society.
I arrived at Darjiling in the spring of 1848. Hodgson
received me cordially, and invited me to make his house
my headquarters
;
to share his table and make every use
of his valuable library, which was rich in works relating
to the Himalaya, Nepal, and Tibet. Thus I had the
advantage, at the outset of my explorations, of the counsel
X.] SIR JOSEPH HOOKER'S RECOLLECTIONS. 249
and hospitality of the man who was facile princeps in
respect of knowledge of the Eastern Himalaya, its peoples,
products, and natural history. From the above date till
early in 1850,
when I left Sikkim, my intercourse with
Mr. Hodgson was uninterrupted.
Hodgson was then in his forty-ninth year. After re-
tiring from the service and visiting England, he returned
to India with the view of continuing his researches in the
Ethnography and Zoology of Northern India. He se-
lected as his residence Darjiling, then a little-known
locality in an unknown country. He had three good
reasons for his choice. It promised him absolute freedom
from the trammels of society. It was in a central position
in respect of the field of his future labour. His old friend
and medical attendant. Dr. Campbell, who had been also
his assistant at the Nepal Residency, had lately been
appointed Superintendent of Darjiling and to the political
charge of our relations with the State of Sikkim.
Hodgson's dwelling was in a narrow clearing of the
majestic forest that then clothed the mountains of Sikkim
on every side, and crept up to the very walls of the few
houses of which the station consisted. It was a modest
bungalow afterwards called Bryanstone,
^
of the ordinary
Anglo-Indian type, with two rooms (dining-room and
sitting-room) in front
;
two bedrooms with bath-room
behind
;
a verandah in front and on the sides ; and
supplementary sleeping apartments and offices in the rear.
Occupying the slope of a ridge over 8,000 feet high, facing
the north at an elevation of
7,500
feet, it commanded a
view of the snowy Himalaya unrivalled for grandeur and
extent. Immediately in front at about forty-seven miles
distant, Kinchinjinga, one of the three loftiest mountains
in the globe, rears itself to 28,178 feet above the sea-level,
and 20,000 feet above that of Bryanstone. From its vast
^
At first named Herbert Hill, after Sir Herbert Maddock who had
built it as a residence for himself, and from whom Hodgson bought it
in 1847.W. W. H.
2
50 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
shoulders the perpetually snowed range is continued east
and west for about seventy miles, without the smallest
break of the snow-line even in the height of summer. It
is a wonderful panorama, startling in its effect when first
revealed by the rising mists on a cloudless morning. The
eye spans the intervening gulf of interlacing ranges,
divided by rushing streams and clothed with tropical
forests, until it is arrested by the dazzling amphitheatre of
silvery crests.
During the whole of my two years' stay at Sikkim,
Nepal, and Himalaya, Hodgson was an invalid, suffering
from the effects of fevers contracted in Nepal and from
incurable sleeplessness. He often told me that he did not
know what sleep was, so active was his mind and so brief
were the snatches of repose which nature must have
demanded, and which no doubt she obtained, however
little the patient was conscious of it. He slept in one of
the supplementary apartments alluded to above, and not
unfrequently passed days and even weeks there, during
which I never saw him except to give some simple
remedies for his distressing ailment.
Ever since his arrival at Darjiling he had lived the life
of a hermit. With the exception of a short visit from Sir
James Colvile and his sister, he had received no visitor
until my advent. Nor had he admitted to his house any
one in the station except his old friend Dr. Campbell.
The latter informed me that his Nepal life would have
been almost equally one of solitude but for the society of
the most intellectual of the high-caste Nepalese of the
Court, and of the learned Lamas of Kathmandu and
especially of Tibet, the latter of whom made frequent
visits to him in Nepal.
During the rainy season of 1848 we were very much
together, and I remember no more delightful hours of my
life than the evenings we spent cha,tting over our cheroots
by the light of the wood fire, with the pile of logs for fuel
alongside, gleaming with lambent light from the presence
X.] SIR JOSEPH HOOKER'S RECOLLECTIONS. 25
1
of a phosphorescent fungus in the decaying barkto us
a constant source of wonderment and speculation. This
may not now be so frequent a phenomenon in the forests
of Sikkim as it was half a century ago, before the reckless
clearances took place which have resulted in the modifica-
tion of the climate. At the period referred to, it was often
difficult to get one's pony to pass the piles of logs stacked
by the wayside, so bright was the light they emitted.
There was no
"
skating over thin ice
"
in our discussions
and controversies. He encouraged me to dispute his
theories, especially on the structure and geology and glacia-
tion of the Himalaya and Tibet. He viewed these from
his wide reading and his experience in the Valley of Nepal
;
I, from what I had seen in the Antarctic regions and else-
where. We kept early hours, though what they were I
do not clearly recollect. Breakfast was I think at eight,
dinner about three, and tea at eight, with nothing between.
The forenoon was devoted to study, and we rode for a
couple of hours late in the afternoon. Except when he
went down to the plains for a few months in winter to
escape the cold and damp of Darjiling, he never once to
my knowledge walked a yard from his home.
On leaving Nepal Hodgson gave up his studies in
Buddhist Literature, and confined his attention to the four
subjects which he pursued with ardour at Darjiling. Those
were the furtherance of Vernacular Education in India
;
the study of the Races of Northern India and their lan-
guages
;
the physical geography of the Himalaya and
Tibet
; and the zoology, especially the ornithology, of
Sikkim. Of these subjects the last was probably the least
prolific in results. For in the first place the zoology of
Sikkim is not materially different from that of Nepal,
which he had for twenty years so diligently and success-
fully explored. In the second place the ubiquity and
density of the Sikkim forest, the sparseness of its popula-
tion and the humidity of its climate, are obstacles to the
collection and preservation of specimens. In the third
252 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
place the religion of the country being Buddhist, the
Lamas taught, and the as yet unsophisticated people
believed, that the taking of life would be followed by
disasters to their flocks and crops.
During my travels in the interior I was accompanied
by a couple of Hodgson's trained huntsmen for the pur-
pose of procuring specimens for him, and it was a source
of vexation to me that I could do so little for a friend who
did so much for me. But what could I do but comply
when, on arriving at a village with good sporting ground
around, I was met by a troop of Lamas from the Buddhist
monastery bringing presents, with the request that my
attendants should not shoot or even fish within the range
of their spiritual functions ?
Returning to the chimney-corner of Bryanstone, an in-
exhaustible source of conversation was provided by the
volumes of the Asiatic Society's Tra7isactions,\hQ Gleanings
in Science, and the Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal. I
made a point of reading every article that I could at all
understand. These repertories of half a century of Oriental
literature and science Hodgson was ever ready to talk
over with me, thus adding tenfold to their interest and in-
structiveness. It was delightful to find him so thoroughly
acquainted with the writings of his predecessors and so
enthusiastic an admirer of them. As regards the Gleanings
ifi Science, established in 1829 by his friend the lamented
James Prinsep (one of the most brilliant geniuses that
India ever knew, but cut off after a brief career), and the
Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal, no one contributed so
largely to their contents as Hodgson
;
no fewer than a
hundred and eighty papers, the latest dated 1858,
bearing
his name as author.
It was, however, towards extending the benefits of
Vernacular Education to the natives of India that Hodgson's
energies were principally directed during my stay in
Sikkim. To that end, amongst other of his projects, a
leading one was the construction of an Atlas of Physical
X.] SIR JOSEPH HOOKER'S RECOLLECTIONS.
253
Geography suited for schools. In this I had the gratifica-
tion of co-operating with him, and many and long were
our discussions upon the nature and extent of the work.
They resulted in his asking me to communicate his views
to Baron Humboldt, with the request that, if he approved
of the plan proposed, he would indicate an author com-
petent to supply an elementary treatise on the physics of
the globe with maps. At the same time he offered a
liberal gratuity in advance for authorship out of his own
pocket, and procured subscriptions among his friends to
provide for its translation into the vernacular. Baron
Humboldt recommended as author a man distinguished for
his knowledge of the subject, and who accepted the com-
mission, but never completed the work. One half was
supplied : it was long and learned enough, but totally
unsuited to the requirements
;
and as a further gratuity
was demanded for its completion, the project in the con-
templated form had to be abandoned.
This leads me to the subject of the Physical Geography
of the Himalaya, upon which our discussions were long
and often animated, for we differed considerably in our
conceptions of the structure of the chain and its relations
to the geography of the countries adjacent to it. His
own conclusions were communicated to t]\e Journal of the
Bengal Asiatic Society whilst I was still in Sikkim, in a
very remarkable and learned essay, wherein the whole
subject of the mountain and its river-systems, peoples,
and productions is treated with a fulness of knowledge
of which I had not a fraction.
In the early spring of
1849,
I spent a fortnight with
Hodgson in the Tarai and plains at the foot of the Sikkim
Himalaya. It was the only excursion we took together,
and a very enjoyable one it was. The Tarai at that
time formed a belt of jungle about ten miles in breadth,
virulently malarious in summer, and always swarming
with wild animals. It was in this tract that Lady Canning
was struck down in 1851 by the fever which carried her
254
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
off, brought on by a few hours' halt in the forest for the
purpose of sketching. It has since been opened up and
much of its forest is replaced by tea-plantations. Having
horses and tents, we passed the time most agreeably in
shooting, botanising, and zoologising. Except a violent
earthquake at Titalya, a delightful sail in double canoes
down the rapids of the Tista river in the gorge where it
leaves the mountains, and the cheering fact that Hodgson
threw off most of his ailments for the time, there were no
incidents of the trip of any moment to record.
It remains to say that I cannot convey any adequate
idea of the amount of active interest which Hodgson took
in the success of my Sikkim explorations, of his solicitude
for my welfare, health, and comfort during the many
months that I was cut off from intercourse with any but
natives. I owe it entirely to his personal influence with
the late Sir
Jang
Bahadur that I was permitted in 1848-9
to travel in Eastern Nepal, over ground never before or
since traversed by any European, and to visit the jealously
guarded passes of the Nepalese Tibet frontier. He further
exhausted every effort to persuade the same potentate to
allow me to spend the season of 1850 in going through the
Himalaya from Sikkim to Kathmandu. In this Hodgson
supplemented the strong representations in my favour
made by Lord Dalhousie. Their joint efforts would, I
believe, have been successful, were it not that
Jang
Bahadur urged that he was about to visit England, and
could not be responsible during his absence for my per-
sonal safety in a kingdom where jealousy of Europeans
was a universal feeling, and where his own tenure of power
was precarious.
Nor were Hodgson's good offices confined to helping
me in my work alone. During my travels in Sikkim I
was dependent on Darjiling for food-supplies for myself
and my people, as the Sikkim Raja had issued orders that
neither grain nor flesh was to be sold to me. Thanks to
the energy of Dr. Campbell (the Superintendent), parties
X.J
THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 18451858. 255
of coolies were organised to carry food to me from Darji-
ling with more or less of regularitya most difficult task
during the rains when the unbridged torrents and malarious
valleys rendered transport tedious and dangerous. Never
one such party arrived without letters, newspapers, and
often books from Hodgson, and a liberal addition to
my commissariat of good things from his cellar and
larder.
With these recollections of Sir Joseph Hooker, I close
the personal aspects of Hodgson's life at Darjiling. In
1853
Hodgson made a short visit to his relatives in England
and Holland, and became attached to Miss Anne Scott,
daughter of General Henry Alexander Scott, R.A. Her
family had during several generations rendered valuable
service to their country, and the early death of her brother
Robert closed prematurely what promised to be a distin-
guished public career. Hodgson married Miss Scott at the
British Embassy at the Hague, both families being then
abroad. A few weeks later he started again for Darjiling
with his wife. The four years which followed were the
happiest he ever spent in India. He found at length that
companionship and sympathy for which he had so long
pined.
During his later years at Darjiling he had the gratifica-
tion of being invited by Sir
Jang
Bahadur, the all-powerful
Minister in Nepal, to direct the education of his son-in-
law, then heir-apparent to the throne. The young prince
was sent to Darjiling to be under Hodgson's eye. The
friendly relations thus maintained by Hodgson with the
Nepalese Court bore good fruit during the Mutiny of 1857.
Hodgson accompanied his wife, when in ill-health, to
Calcutta and availed himself of his personal intercourse
with Lord Canning to advocate the acceptance of a
Gurkha contingent from Nepal. The task was a some-
what delicate one. Hodgson knew well that any open
256 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
action taken by him as a private person might give offence
to our Resident at Kathmandu. He also found a strong
feeling in Government House against trusting the Nepalese
proffers of aid,
"
You praise these Gurkhas like your
husband," said Lady Canning to Mrs. Hodgson,
"
but I
can assure you that they are looked on here as being little
better than the rebels."
In May
1857 Jang
Bahadur, on hearing of the outbreak
of the Mutiny, placed the whole military resources of Nepal
at the disposal of the British Government. Lord Canning
after some hesitation accepted a contingent of
3,000
Gurkhas in
June,
but his acceptance was a half-hearted
one and left a feeling of disappointment on
Jang
Baha-
dur's mind. Some correspondence took place between
him and Hodgson, partly through the medium of his
son-in-law, the heir-apparent and Hodgson's late pupil
whom
Jang
Bahadur had charged Hodgson
"
to treat as
your own son." In the end Jang
Bahadur arranged that
his son-in-law should meet Hodgson in Calcutta in the
autumn, when the
Jang was determined to again press his
army and his personal service on the Governor-General.
Owing to new complications the meeting did not take
place, but Hodgson proceeded to Calcutta in October
1857
and urged on Lord Canning a frank acceptance of
Jang
Bahadur's offer.
The friendship of the Chief Justice of Bengal, with
whom Hodgson was staying, afforded him frequent access
to the Governor-General and we get a pleasant glimpse
of more than one interview with Lady Canning.
"
Aunt
Caledon's
^
friends, the Hodgsons, came to see me," Lady
Canning writes on November 4th, 1857. "I was de-
lighted with Mr. H. He is clever and amusing and very
quaint. He has the highest opinion of Gurkhas, and
considers them the best soldiers in the world in all ways,
'
The Countess of Caledon, to whose family Mrs. Hodgson was
related.
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 18451858. 257
especially for discipline, provided no one interferes with
their domestic concerns."
'
"
I urged," Hodgson wrote in one of his private papers,
"
the great value, negative and positive, of the proffered
aid of Nepal for putting down the Mutiny. I said that I
was not unaware of the suspicions generally entertained
of the [Nepalese] Darbar, but that I nevertheless felt
convinced, if the
Jang
were fairly trusted and put into the
hands of a representative of his Lordship having tact,
experience and a liking for the Gurkhas, good faith would
be kept with us, some useful military service done for us,
and above all in importance at such a moment, the
spectacle exhibited of the Hindu State par excellrjice in
alliance and co-operation with us.
"
I then pointed to the great ability of the
Jang,
as
demonstrated by that wonderful career which had made
him the virtual ruler of his country, and to the oppor-
tunities for rightly estimating our power which the
Jang
had enjoyed during his visit to England. Such ability
concurring with such opportunity, I continued, could
hardly be at fault, and the exigencies of the Jang's position
must make a personal connection with us of value to him.
That, further, a man of the Jang's
talents could not have
noted in vain the risks his country had run in times past
from collision with a Power which again and again he had
seen rise superior to every difficulty. Lastly, I pointed
out to Lord Canning that Nepal most eagerly coveted
the restoration of the Western Tarai. Recent events had
placed it at our disposal ; and the prospect of the grant of
it to Nepal, while it might form a tie on the
Jang,
would
offer to us the means of most conveniently rewarding the
Darbar for faithful service."
-
Lord. Canning, after a careful official inquiry, accepted
this view. He gratified Hodgson by telling him that he
'
Lady Canning's Journal, November 4th, 1857 : quoted in The Story
nfTiuo Noble Lives,\iy Augustus
J.
C. Hare, Vol. II.,
p. 339.
Ed. 1893.
-
Hodgson Papers.
17
258 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
had selected one of Hodgson's personal friends, Sir George
MacGregor, as the British officer to be attached to
Jang
Bahadur during the joint military operations. Indeed Sir
George himself wrote to Hodgson that he believed not
only his own appointment but the whole scheme practically
resulted from Hodgson's insistence with Lord Canning.
A new arrangement^ was come to with
Jang
Bahadur
under which he himself marched into our disaffected
territories with a force that ultimately formed a complete
little army of 17,000
men. The valuable work done by
that force under
Jang
Bahadur's leadership is recorded in
history.^ It suffices here to note that Lord Canning's
orders to Brigadier MacGregor to join
Jang
Bahadur's army,
as representative of the Government of India during the
joint operations, were dated December 4th,
1857,
exactly
one month after Lady Canning's entiy in her journal.
The development of the Gurkha regiments in the British
service after the Mutiny, on the lines so long urged by
Hodgson, forms one of the most remarkable chapters in
the history of our Indian army. I have dwelt on the
earlier stages of that development in a previous chapter.^
The old local battalions constructed out of the conquered
or disbanded Nepalese troops after the war of 181 5 had
been embodied into three Gurkha regiments by Lord
Dalhousie in 1850. Hodgson's representations backed by
the opinions of Lord Canning's military advisers led to the
formation of the 4th Gurkha Regiment in 1857.* The
battalion which afterwards became the 5th Gurkha Regi-
ment was raised in the following year. Our whole Gurkha
'
Colonel Malleson's History
of
the Indian Mutiny^
pp.
321 et seq.,
Vol, II. Ed. 1879. I thank Colonel Malleson for kind aid in this part
of my work,
*
Letter from the Right Honourable the Governor-General to
Colonel MacGregor, C.B., dated Calcutta, December 4th,
1857.
^
Vide ante,
pp.
106- no, etc.
^
It appears from the Hodgson Papers that he was also in Calcutta
in June 1857,
and it seems probable that he began at once to urge the
capabilities of the Gurkhas on Lord Canning.
X.] THE DARJILING RECLUSE: 1845 1858. 259
force was reorganised on a permanent regimental basis in
1S61 as a result of the lesson learned in
1857.
With
subsequent additions it now numbers fifteen regiments,
nearly
14,000 strong, of whom about 13,000 are Gurkhas
and the remainder hillmen from neighbouring tribes/
At the end of the chapter I shall give a note showing in
detail the growth of the Gurkha regiments in the army of
British India. Hodgson's idea, which he had urged in vain
in 1832,- and for which he obtained a partial acceptance
in
1850 and
1857,
has borne abundant fruit. Throughout
the past quarter of a century wherever there has been hard
fighting to be done by our Indian troops, or wherever
honour could be earned, the Gurkha regiments have been to
the front, conspicuous for their gallantly and light-hearted
endurance of the perils and privations of the campaign.
During his last years in Bengal Hodgson had the pleasure
of seeing the practical realisation of another of his cherished
schemes. In
1854-55
the views which he had long advo-
cated in regard to vernacular education were adopted as
the basis of public instruction in India. Unfortunately
in
1857 his wife's health gave way, and she had to leave
for Europe. As the doctors could hold out no hope of her
ever again being able to bear the climate, Hodgson gave
up his life's work at Darjiling and returned to England
for good and all in the summer of 1858.
Note on the Growth of the Gurkha Regiments
IN the British-Indian Army.^
1ST Gurkha Regiment.The Nusseree Battalion was raised on
April 24th, 1815, and was in 1850 designated the 66th Gurkha Regiment
of Bengal Light Infantry, taking the place of the 66th Bengal Infantry,
'
A return kindly supplied to me by General Sir Oliver Newmarch,
K.C.S.I., Military Secretary at the India Office, gives the exact total
of the Gurkha regiments at
13,734
in February
1895.
-
Vide ante,
p. 109.
^
From information furnished by the Military Department in the
India Office,
1895.
26o LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap. x.
which was disbanded for mutiny. This became the ist Gurkha
Regiment in 1861, and a 2nd Battalion was added in 1886. A new
Nusseree Battalion was formed in 1850, and disbanded on the reduction
of the army in 1861.
2ND Gurkha Regiment.The Sirmoor Rifle Regiment was raised
on April 24th, 181 5,
and was made a Gurkha regiment in 1850. It was
called the 2nd Gurkha Regiment in 1861, and a 2nd Battalion was
added in 1886.
3RD Gurkha Regiment.The Kemaoon Regiment, which was raised
on April 24th, 181 5,
was reserved for Gurkhas in 1850. It was desig-
nated the 3rd Gurkha Regiment in 1861, and a 2nd Battalion was added
in 1887.
4TH Gurkha Regiment.This regiment was raised in 1857. It
became the 4th Gurkha Regiment in 1861, and a 2nd Battalion was
added in 1886.
5TH Gurkha Regiment.The Huzara Gurkha Battalion was raised
in 1858, and was designated the 5th Gurkha Regiment in 1861. A
2nd Battalion was added in 1886. These two battalions of the 5th
Gurkhas belong to the Punjab Frontier Force.
In addition to these there are the three Assam Corps, now called the
42nd, 43rd, and 44th Gurkha (Rifle) Regiments of Bengal Infantry, the
9th Gurkha (Rifle) Regiment of Bengal Infantry, and the 39th (The
Garhwal Rifle) Regiment of Bengal Infantry, altogether fifteen regi-
ments of Gurkhas and hillmen.
In round numbers nearly 14,000 men, each regiment being 912 strong.
[26l]
CHAPTER XI.
HODGSON AS A SCHOLAR.
HODGSON'S
contributions to scholarship were of
three kinds. He was the largest and most muni-
ficent collector of manuscripts, ancient texts, and vernacular
tracts that ever went to India.^ He was also an erudite
student of the new materials which he thus collected, nor
did the originality of his conclusions less impress his
contemporaries than the stores of buried learning which
he brought to light. Having gathered together his data
and used them so far as his hard-earned leisure allowed,
he handed them over to the learned Societies of India and
Europe in trust for scholars who could bring to their
investigation the final processes of modern research. His
magnificent liberality enriched not only the British
Museum, the India Office Library, and the Asiatic
Societies in Great Britain and in India, but also the
Institute of France and the Societe Asiatique de Paris
with treasures which have not even yet been completely
explored.
Hodgson had a passion for collecting. By rare good
fortune he found himself set down in a part of Asia
isolated from European scholarship and as a field for
the collector absolutely untouched. Within a few months
of his definite return to Nepal in 1824 a stream of
manuscripts, specimens, and antiquarian curios of many
Catalogue
of
the Buddhist SanskritMSS. in the University Library,
Cambridge (Ed. 1883),
Preface, p. vii, byMr. Cecil Bendall, M.A., whom
I have to thank for much kind aid.
262 LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
sorts began to flow into the Asiatic Society in Calcutta
from the young Assistant Resident at Kathmandu.
Hodgson had, however, not only a virgin field as a
collector
;
he also appeared on the scene at the precise
moment when a collector in that field obtained for the
first time the facilities which made it possible for others
to use his collections. In the very year that Hodgson
returned to Nepal, Dr. Carey was preparing his Grammar
and Dictionary of the Tibetan Languagethe language
of the suzerain power of Nepal and the one great language
of culture in Central Asia. Hodgson saw his opportunity*
and in December 1824 he submitted a memorandum to
the Bengal Asiatic Society setting forth the prospects of
new discovery thus opened up. It is a remarkable pro-
duction for a young enthusiast in his twenty-fourth year.^
"
The stores of Tibetan literature need no longer remain
a sealed fountain to us for want of a knowledge of the
language in which they are recorded. All therefore that
remains to be done is to procure these works, and to this
object I will cheerfully address myself It must be satis-
factory to scholars to learn that in acquiring this new
instrument [the Tibetan language] they will not meet with
any great difficulty. For although the vernacular tongue of
Tibet may be radically distinct from Sanskrit, its learned
language certainly bears the closest affinity {sic)." He then
refers to the collection of over sixty manuscripts and texts
which he is despatching to the Society, and hopes they
"
will
be found as intrinsically valuable as they are bulky. I pro-
cured them from the archives of [the Buddhist monastery
of] Svayambhu-nath, and from the poor traffickers and
'
Memorandum by B. H. Hodgson, dated December 5th, 1824.
Space compels me to condense. I am only able to give extracts, and
I change the word
"
Bhotiya
"
to its modern equivalent
"
Tibetan."
"
Sacred to the Memory of Anne, the beloved Wife of Lieut.-General
H. A. Scott, Royal Artillery, Daughter of Robert Alexander, Esq., of
Boomhall near this city, died at The Rangers, Dursley, Sept. i8th,
1865,
aged
85.
"And of the aforesaid General H. A. Scott, R.A., who died at the
Grange, Alderley, Gloucestershire, August, ist, 1868, aged 89.
"And of Annie his daughter, Wife of B. H. Hodgson, Esq., Retired
List of the Bengal Civil Service, who died also at the Grange,
Jan.
3rd,
1868, aged 52."
187 I
-
>eTAT 7 1,/
XV.] CONCLUSION.
329
closing. His memory was singularly retentive, full of the
incidents of a period which to me seemed already historical,
yet keenly alive to every new interest, scholarly, political,
and artistic, of the hour. He formed a most attractive
link between the present and the past. At times he poured
out recollections of the heroic days of the East India
Company
;
at others he would discuss the last new book,
or the Volunteer movement, of which he was a generous
supporter from its commencement, or the most recent
phase in home and Continental politics. Often the only
liberal in the company of strongly conservative squires,
whenever Gladstone's name was mentioned at his table, he
would lift his glass with a courteous smile to his opponents
around him, and say in a gentle voice,
"
Here's to
Gladstone ! God bless him : the greatest statesman of the
day."
His politics and his scholarship he kept, as a rule, for
his friends. His courtesy was for all men. Whether
people differed from him or not, they could not help
admiring him. He was popular in the hunting field, and
rode with two packs of hounds until the last of several
accidents at the age of sixty-eighta concussion of the
brain. He lived the pleasant life of a country gentleman
with a good stable, an annual visit to London, and during
his later years the Riviera in spring. In 1883 he and Mrs.
Hodgson built for themselves a permanent home for the
winter months at Mentonethe
"
Villa Himalaya
"
nestled
among flowers and lemon-groves, and commanding a noble
view of mountains and sea.
His public appearances were rare. In
1874
he took
part in a deputation, on the opening up of trade with
Tibet, to the Duke of Argyll, then Secretary of State for
India. But his true life lay in his Gloucestershire home.
Its fine old gardens were a constant delight to him, and
he seldom returned from his morning's ramble without
an armful of flowers. He lived in the open air. Many
an hour of quiet reading he spent under the shade of a
330
LIFE OF BRIAN HODGSON. [chap.
noble mulberry tree, enriching the margins of his books
with erudite notes on a little table by his armchair.
Although he did not hunt after the age of sixty-eight, he
continued a vigorous horseman until eighty. He rode
up to eighty-six, familiar with every gate and bridle-path
of the lovely country along the edge and spurs of the
Cotswolds. He was happy in his neighbours, his nearest
ones being the old Gloucestershire family of Hale, dis-
tinguished in the army and the Church and descended
from the famous Sir Matthew Hale. The eminent lawyer.
Attorney-General Sir John
Rolt, lived at Ozleworth not
far off. Miss North, whose collection of flower-paintings
occupy a special house at Kew built at her own expense,
passed her closing years in a home and garden filled
with her favourite exotics, a few minutes' walk from the
Grange.
To the Grange itself came many visitors famous in
their own paths of life. Sir Joseph Hooker, President of
the Royal Society, Sir Henry Yule, the finest Indian
historical scholar of our day, Sir Donald McLeod who had
splendidly governed the Punjab, Sir Walter Elliot from
the Scottish border. Professor Max Miiller from Oxford,
Professor Cowell from Cambridge, Dr. Needham Cust, Sir
James Colvile, President of the Bengal Asiatic Society,
and Arthur Grote, President of the Royal Asiatic Society,
were a few of the men of note who made Alderley Grange
unique in its way among English country homes. Hodgson
had the rare gift of attaching to himself young men. As
his older friends dropped off a new generation of scholars
seemed to spring up in their placesProfessor Bendall of
the British Museum, Professor T. Miller of Strasburg,
Professor Tawney, and many others.
The summer months spent in London, or at a charming
residence at Wimbledon, kept Hodgson abreast with the
outside world. His winters on the Riviera were made
bright by groups of friends, some of them the sons or
srandsons of the men who had welcomed him into the
XV.] CONCLUSION. 33
^
world of European scholarship more than half a century
before. Renan, one of his latest visitors, used to say that
it was from his great master Burnouf that he had learned
to reverence the name of Brian Hodgson. Georg von
Bunsen maintained unbroken the friendship which his
father had bequeathed to him with the Darjiling recluse.
The more distinguished of the English colony on the
Riviera also flocked around the picturesque old scholar :
soldiers like General Chamberlain and General Sir Montagu
McMurdo
;
diplomatists and famous frontier officers like
Sir Lewis Pelly and Sir Donald MacNabb
;
philologers,
historians, and political economists like Sir Monier Williams,
Lord Acton, and Sir Louis Mallet.
To the very last he had the faculty of making new
friends. Count Angelo di Gubernatis, after meeting
Hodgson at Florence in 1883,
wrote: "It was a real
festa to us all to make the acquaintance of such a man,
so eminent, so simple, and so good." The eager interest
which he took in everything on his travels was very
striking. At eighty-two he went on a pilgrimage to
Horace's Farm in the Sabine Hills, and made many-sided
notes on the historical and classical associations of ancient
and mediaival Rome.
Scarcely less striking was his intense love of nature.
The wooded clefts of the Cotswolds or the rich expanse
of the golden valley of the Severn in summer, and the
daily drive in the perfect winter climate of Mentone, were
to him a constant delight. When over ninety he would
never fail to watch the sun setting across the Mediter-
ranean, softly repeating to himself Byron's lines
:
"
Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till
Note by B. H. H.
*
1 make this statement on the authority of Mrs. Hodgson.
*
See Journal des Savants for 1863.
*
1 have to thank Professor Max Miiller, Professor Cowell, Mr. Bendall, and
Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio, for their kind assistance in the compilation of these lists. The
original transliteration is preserved in each of the lists
;
but the names are rendered
uniformly (on the Clarendon Press system) in the alphabetical index at the end.
HODGSON MSS. IN ROYAL ASIATIC LIBRARY.
339
CATALOGUES OF HODGSON COLLECTION OF
SANSKRIT MANUSCRIPTS.
I.
Hodgson MSS. in the Royal Asiatic Society's Library, catalogued
by Professors Cowell and Eggeling, and published in the
Journal
of
the Society, Vol. VIII., New Series
(1876).
The manuscripts of Buddhist works described in the following pages
were collected in Nepal by Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, and presented
by him to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1835
and 1836. The great im-
portance of a thorough examination of the Buddhist Sanskrit works of
Northern India, both for Prakrit philology and for Buddhist research, is
becoming more and more apparent ; and it seemed very desirable that
the contents of this collection, which, though deficient in many of the
standard works, is perhaps the finest of original manuscripts in Europe,
should become better known to scholars interested in these inquiries.
A detailed analysis' of the works was beyond the scope of the present
catalogue, as it would in many cases be extremely difficult, if not impos-
sible, without comparing other copies. It is hoped, however, that the
brief description now offered will, at least, suffice for the identification of
the works, and will for that reason be acceptable to Sanskrit scholars.
The Newar era, in which many of these MSS. are dated, commenced
in October, 880 a.d. This number has accordingly to be added to
the Nepal date to obtain the corresponding Christian year.
The material of the MSS. consists of Indian paper, unless otherwise
stated. By modem MSS. are intended such as appear to have been
written within the present century.
N.B.Mrs. Hodgson has kindly undertaken the responsibility for re-
vising the following Lists and the special Index to themincluding their
orthography. They are reproduced substantially from my published
Catalogue
of
Sanskrit Manuscripts collectedin Nepalby Brian Houghton
Hodgson, Esq., F.R.S. (Triibner, 1881).
1. Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita.Complete in thirty-two chapters.
204
palm leaves. 12\ in. by
2|
in. Six lines in a page. Old.
2. Ganda-vyuha.
289
palm leaves. 22^ in. by 2 in. Six lines in
a page.
3.
Dasabhumisvara.
137
leaves (paper).
14I
in. by
3
in. Five lines
in a page. Modern MS.
4.
Samadhiraja.219
leaves.
13I
in. by
3^
in. Six lines in a page.
Dated Jawz/fl/ 920 (a.d. 1800).
'
This analysis has been in good part since made by Rajendra Lala Mitra,
in his Nefalese Sanskrit MSS.
340
APPENDIX A.
5.
Saddharmalankavatara-Maliayanasutram.
157
leaves. 14^
in. by
3I
in. Six lines in a page. Modem MS.
6.
Saddharmapundarika.
174
leaves. 17 in. by
3
in. Six lines in
a page. Modern.
7.
Lalitavistara.
35
leaves. 13 in. by 2h in.
Dated Samvat
764
(a.d.
1644).
A treatise on gems and precious stones (Hera, vaidurya, etc.).
11. Sarvakatadanavadanam.20 leaves. io|- in. by 2|^ in. Five lines
in a page, "Dated Samvat c)i6 {a.X).
1796).
Wanting fol. 18.
12. Sugatavadanam.In twelve chapters. 85 leaves. 12 in. by
2f
in.
Five lines in a page. Modern MS.
13.
Bodhicharyavatara.In ten parichchhedas.
47
palm leaves. \i\
in. by
if
in. Five lines in a page. Old. The shape of the
figures and of some letters is very peculiar.
14.
Asvaghosha-Nandimukha-Avadanam [? Vasudharavratam].
52
leaves. \\\ in. by 3i in. Six lines in a page. Modern MS.
Very incorrect.
15.
Uposhadhavadanam and Doshanirnayavadanam.22 leaves. 14^
in. by
3
in. Five to seven lines in a page. Modern Foil. 1-14,
16 and 22 have been supplied by a later hand.
16. Syama-Jatakam and Kinnari-Jatakam.
39
leaves. 14^
in. by
3^
in. Seven lines in a page. Modern.
17.
Svayambhupuranam.20 leaves. 13 in. by 2|
in. Six lines in a
page. DdXed Samvat 'j'jx (a.d.
1651).
18. Mahat-Svayambhupuranam.In eight adhyayas, corresponding with
the chapters of the preceding work. 173
leaves, numbered 1-69,
go-193. 13 in. by 4^ in. Six lines in a page. Modern writing.
19.
Gunakarandavyuha.205 leaves. i6v> in. by
3
in. Five lines in
a page. Dated Samvat ^^z"] (a.d. 1807).
20. Sukhavativyuha-Mahayanasutram.
65
leaves. la}, in. by
3
in.
Five or six lines in a page. Dated Satnvat
934
(a.d. 1814).
21. Karunapundarika-Mahayanasutram.204 leaves. 14 in. by
3I
in.
Six lines in a page. Dated Sat?ivat <j\6 (a.d.
1796).
22. Chaityapungava.
4 leaves.
9
in. by
3
in. Five
lines in a page. Modern writing.
33.
Bhadracharipranidhanam.In 56 (?
57)
couplets. 7 leaves. 10 in.
by
3
in. Six or seven lines in a page. Dated Nepala-Savivat
942
(a.d. 1822).
34.
Namasangiti-tika, entitled Gudhapada.In fifteen chapters. 180
palm leaves. 12 in. by
2|
in. Seven lines in a page. Old.
Some pages are sadly defaced.
35.
Namasangiti-tippani, entitled Amritakanika.Another commentary
on the same work ; and other treatises. 62 leaves, numbered
7-55,
66-78. 12 in. by 2 in. Ten lines in a page. Very minutely
written about the end of last century.
36.
Bhairavapradurbhava-natakam.115 leaves, iijin. by6in. Ten
lines in a page. The first leaf is missing.
37.
Samputodbhava.In eleven kalpas, each oiiowx prakaranas. 127
palm leaves. \i\ in. by i| in. Five lines in a page. Old.
38. Samvarodaya-mahatantram.In
33
patalas.
94
leaves. 1
1^
in.
by
3{;
in. Five lines in a page. Modern writing.
39.
Yogambaratantram.
27 leaves. 10 in. by
3
in. Five lines in a
page. Modern and careless writing,
40. Dvatrimsatkalpa-mahatantraraja.Two chapters {kalpas) only,
viz. the Hevajra and the Dakinijasamvara-jnahatantram.
48
leaves. 12 in. by
3
in. Six lines in a page. Modern writing.
41. Krishnayamaritantra-tika.In fifty-four /'^^a/^.y. 182 leaves. 13 in.
by 2\ in. Five lines in a page. Modern handwriting.
42. Kriyapanjika, by Kuladatta.
99
leaves.
8i
in. by 2j
in. Five
lines in a page. Modern writing.
51.
Durgatiparisodhani.
40 leaves. 10 in. by 2^
in. Five lines in a page.
Oldish.
58.
Vasudhara-dharani.21 leaves. 14 in. by 3
in. Five lines in a
page. Dated Samvat
7 ^g
(a.d.
1639).
59.
A collection of Dharanis, called Saptavara on the wrapper.26
leaves. 8| in. by
2^
in. Five lines in a page. Oldish.
60. Grahamatrika.Identical with the last" portion of the preceding MS.
13 leaves,
gh
in. by 2|
in. Five lines in a page. Dated Samvat
818 (A.D. 1698).
HODGSON MSS. IN ROYAL ASIATIC LIBRARY. 343
61. Pratyangira-dharani.
14
leaves.
9^
in. by
3
in. Five lines in a
page. Written in the last century.
62. Manjusri-pratijna.22 leaves. 10 in. by
3
in. Six lines in a page.
Written a.d. 1835.
63. Satasahasri Prajnaparamita.The second Khanda, from the 12th
to the 25th /(^r/Var/rt.
329
leaves.
15 in. by
7
in. 17-20 lines
in a page. Modern.
64. Meghasutram. The 64th and 65th parivartas. 32 leaves. riMn.
by 2|
in. Five lines in a page. Modern.
65.
Adhivasanavidhi.Partly vernacular. 200 leaves. I2|in. by 3^in.
Six lines in a page. Modern handwriting.
66. Prayogamukham.On the philosophy of grammar. 48 leaves.
1 1 in. by
3^
in. Six or seven lines in a page. Dated Samvat
918
(A.D.
1798).
67. Anumanakhandam.
69
palm leaves. 12 in. by 2j
in. Eight or
nine lines in a page. Old.
68. Shadangayoga-tippani.
29
palm leaves. 12 in. by 2 in. Six or
seven lines in a page. Oldish.
69.
Adikarmapradipa.
13
palm leaves (of which fol. 11 is missing).
\i\ in. by 2 in. Five lines in a page. Old. The date (in the
reign of Devapala T) is given at the end in letters. It requires
some familiarity with the character to make out the writing.
70. Poshavidhanam.6 palm leaves. 11^ in. by 2 in. Seven lines in
a page. Old. Apparently formulas and invocations.
71. Ahoratravratakatha. In slokas. 8 leaves. 14 in. by
3
in. Six
lines in a page. Written in the latter part of last century.
72. Balipujavidhi.On Tantric ceremonial. Partly vernacular. 40
leaves folded into one continuous roll.
7j
in. by 2|
in. Five
lines in a page. Dated Samvat 908 (? 808).
73.
Nishpannayogambali [yogambaratantram].66 leaves. 12 in. by
3
in. Six lines in a page. Dated Samvat
944
(a.d. 1824).
74.
Dravyagunasangraha.A treatise, in slokas, on various subjects
connected with cookery and eating. 30 palm leaves. 12 in. by
I in. Six lines in a page. Dated Satnvat
484
(a.d.
1364).
75.
Kamasastram.Vernacular. \n\}cM\.&e.Xipratichchhedas. 19
leaves.
1
3
J in. by i\ in. Six lines in a page. Last century.
76. Ashtamivratamahatmyam.Vernacular (Newari). 60 leaves. 8^
in. by
3
in. .Six lines in a page.
77.
Mahapratyangira-mahavidyarajni-Dharani.21 leaves of blackened
paper. 8 in. by z\ in. Five lines in a page, written alternately
in yellow and white paint, there being three of the former and
two of the latter. Dated Samvat
944
(a.d. 1824).
78. Dhvajagrakeyura-Dharani.
I vol. oblong,
63
fol.
(92).
21. Meme titre que le precedent, mais ecrit en prose. Parait etre le
recit primitif qui a servi de texte au poeme.
(
Voir I'lntroduction
a I'Histoire du Buddhisme indien,
pp.
220 et 221.) Caracteres
Sanskrits du Nepal, un peu cursifs, mais tres-soign6s.i petit
vol. oblong,
92
fol.
(93).
22. Mahavastu avadana. Legendes buddhiques. Caracteres Sanskrits
du Nepal.i vol. oblong,
532
fol.
(94).
23. Djatakamala
"
La Guirlande des Naissances." Legendes bud-
dhiques. Caracteres Sanskrits du Nepal.Oblong, 191 fol.
(95).
24.
Kriyasangraha
"
Recueil de Ceremonies " (Buddhique). Carac-
teres Sanskrits du Nepal.Oblong, 112 fol.
(96).
25.
Divyavadana. Legendes buddhiques. Caracteres Sanskrits De-
vanagaris. i vol. oblong,
447
fol. Envoye par M. Hodgson
(97).
26. Divyavadana. Recueil de Legendes buddhiques. Caracteres
Devanagaris.-Oblong, 231 fol.
(98).
27.
Saddharmapundarika
"
Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi." Caracteres
Devanagaris.i vol. oblong, 224 fol.
(99).
28. Le meme que le precedent. En caracteres Sanskrits du Nepal.
Newari Chronicles.
1st. Of Raja Pratap Mall.
2nd. Of the Shepherd Kings (Gopal) of Nepal, or the early mythic
history, in nine parts.
3rd. Dates of reigns of Kings of Kathmandu, Bhatgaon, and Patau,
from coins,' inscriptions, etc., etc.
4th. History of Raja Vishnu Mall of Patau.
5th. Chronicles of the Kings of Nepal, Newari, and Gurkhali, and
of the latter's connexion with Chitor, given to me by the late Sovereign
of Nepal.
6th. History of Raja Mahendra Mall.
7th. History of Nepal, according to the Buddhists and to the
Brahmans.
8th. Persian translation of 7th.
9th. Jit Mohan's (my khardar or scribe) abstract of all the above.
10th. Sundry papers, mostly repetitions of the first eight documents
above.
nth. History of Raja Siddh Nar Siuh of Patau.
1 2th. English translations of the Vasavalis, in two volumes, with
some Persian addenda,both by my office people.
'
Coins annexed.
MSS. PRESENTED TO THE INDIA OFFICE. 359
II.GuRKHALi Chronicles.
1st. A large roll given to me by the King of Nepal (Rajendra Bikram
Sah), containing tlie Chronicles of the Sovereigns of his (the Gurkhali)
dynasty.
2nd. History of the conquest of Garh (Garhwal) given to me by
Balbhanjan Pandi (a member of the Ministry in my time).
3rd. Royal and Thappa Vasavalis, given to me by Matabar Singh
Thappa (late Prime Minister).
4th. Account of Raja Ran Bahadur Sah.
5th. Names of the successive Rajas and Chiefs of Nepal, from the
time of Raja Nar Bhupal to that of Rajendra Bikram Sah (the late
Sovereign).
6th. The Family Histories of the Rajas and Chiefs.
7th. Chronology of the above from coins, etc.
8th. History of Raja Prithvi Narayan Sah.
9th. Brahmanical Statement of the Early History of Nepal, from the
Hemvat Khand of the Skand Purana.
loth. History, from Raja Prithvi Narayan Sah to Ran Bahadur Sah.
nth. A Gurkhali Vasavali, given to me by Lakshmi Bilas (Court
Moonshee).
1 2th. Account of the Regent Ran Bahadur.
13th. English translations of the above, by my office people, in
five volumes.
TRUNK No. I. The second large bundle.
It contains, in five lesser bundles
:
I.
Physical Geography.
1. Physical Geography of Himalaya. Jouni. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. XVIII.
(1849).
Reprinted in Scleciioiis from
Records of
Govcrii77ient
of
Raigal.
2. Two Papers relating to the Himalaya and Mount Everest. Gcol.
Soc. Free, Vol. I.
(1857), pp. 345-351-
364
APPENDIX C.
II.
Topography.
1. Route from Kathmandu to Tazedo. Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVI.
(1832).
2. Route from Kathmandu to Pekin, with Remarks on the Physical
Geography of Tibet. Jouyn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XXV.
(
1
856 ),
pp. 473-497-
3.
Route from Kathmandu to Darjeeling. Joicrn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. XVII.
(1848).
4.
Measurement (Official) of the Great Military Road throughout
Nepal, from Kumaon to Sikim. Joiirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.
5.
Cursory Account of the Valley of Nayakote. Jonrn. Asiat. Soc.
Befig., Vol. X.
(1841).
6. The Seven Cosis of Nepal. Joiirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XVII.
(1848).
7.
Route of two Nepalese Embassies to Pekin, with remarks on the
Watershed and Plateau of Tibet. Jonrn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. XXV.
(1856), pp. 473-497-
III.
Papers on Buddhism.
1. Notices of the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and
Tibet. Asiatic Researches, \o\.yiV\. {1^2%^,-^. dfiC).
Reprinted
in Illustrations
of
the Literature a7id Rcligio7i
of
the Buddhists
(Serampore, 1841) ;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
2. Sketch of Buddhism, derived from the Bauddha Scriptures ot
Nepal. Transactio7ts
of
the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. II.
(1828), p. 222, and Appendix V.,
p.
Ixxvii. Reprinted in Illus-
tratio7ts, p.
49
; also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
3.
On the Extreme Resemblance between many of the Symbols of
Buddhism and Saivism. Orie7ttal Quarterly Maga2i7ie, Vol. VII.
(1827),
p. 218, and Vol. VIII.
(1828), p. 252. Reprinted in Illus-
trations, p. 203 ;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
366 APPENDIX C.
4.
A Disputation respecting Caste by a Buddhist. Transacticms
of
the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. III.
(1829), p. 160. Reprinted in
Illustrations
;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
5.
European Speculations on Buddhism. Jonm. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. III.
(1834),
p. 382. Reprinted in Illustrations; also in
Triibner's Volume of
1874.
6. Remarks on M. Remusat's Review of Buddhism. Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Beng., Vol. III.
(1834), pp. 425, 499.
Reprinted in Illus-
trations ;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
7.
Notice of Adi-Buddha and of the Seven Mortal Buddhas. Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. III.
(1834), p. 215. Reprinted in Illus-
trations; also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
8. Note on the Inscription from Sarnath. Jowji.
Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. IV.
(1835), p. 241. Reprinted in Ilhistratiojis ; also in
Triibner's Volume of 1874.
9.
Quotations from Original Sanskrit Authorities in Proof and Illus-
tration of the Preceding Article. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. V.
(1836), pp. 29,
71. Reprinted in Illustrations; also in
Triibner's Volume of 1874.
10. Note on the Primary Language of the Buddhist Writings. Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), p.
682. Reprinted in Illus-
trations
;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
11. The Pravyajya Vrata, or Initiatory Rites of the Buddhists, accord-
ing to the Puja Khanda. Reprinted in Illustrations.
V.
Papers on Law.
1. On the Law and Legal Practice of Nepal. Journal
of
the Royal
Asiatic Society, Vol. I.
(1834).
Reprinted in Misccllaiico7is Essays
(Trubner, 1880).
2. Some Account of the Systems of Law and Police in Nepal. Journal
of
the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. I.
(1834).
Reprinted in Mis-
cellaneous Essays (Trubner, 1880).
3.
On the Administration of Justice in Nepal. Asiatic Researches,
Vol. XX.
(1836).
VII.
Miscellaneous Papers.
1. On Trans-Himalayan Commerce. Written in 1831. Published in
Selections from Records
of
Gov., No. XXVII., in
1857 ;
also
reprinted in Triibners Volume of
1874.
2. On the Paper of Nepal. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. I.
(1832).
3.
On the Cultivation of Hemp in Nepal. Transactions
of
the Agri-
cultural Society
of
India, Vol. VIII.
(1838).
4. On the Silkworms of India. Journal
of
the Agricultural Society
of
India, Vol. IV.
5.
On the Wool of Tibet. Journal
of
the Agricultural Society
of
India, Vol. V. (1846).
6. On the Colonisation of the Himalaya by Europeans. Selections
from Records,
1857 ;
also in Triibner's Volume of 1874.
Mr. Hodgson reissued the most important of the foregoing papers
in three volumes of collected Essays (one volume in 1874,
and two
volumes in i88o), published by Trubner & Co., London.
[368]
APPENDIX D.
CATALOGUE OF PAPERS BY B. H. HODGSON ON
MAMMALS AND BIRDS.
Taken from Royal Society Catalogue
of
Scientific Papers.^
1. Account of the Chiru, or Unicorn of the Himalaya Mountains
(Pantholops Hodgsoni). Tilloch, P/ul. Mag., Vol. LXVIII.
(1826),
pp. 232-234. Edinb. Jotirn. ScL, Vol. VII. (1S27),
pp. 163, 164.
Ferussac, Bull. Sci. Nat., Vol. XV.
(1828), p. 141. Froriep,
Notizen, Vol. XV.
(1826), pp.
274-276.
2. Sur la Portee du Rhinoceros. Ferussac, Bidl. Sci. Nat., Vol. VII.
(1826), pp. 436, 437.
Froriep, Notizen, Vol. XIV.
(1826),
col.
55,
56.
3.
On the Growth and Habits of a Young Rhinoceros. Ed/Jib. Journ.
Sci., Vol. VII.
(1827), pp. 165, 166.
4. On a New Species of Buceros (B. Nepalensis). Gleanings in
Science, Vol. I.
(1829), pp. 249-252.
5.
On the Chiru, or Antilope Hodgsonii, Abel. Glcariings in Sciciicc,
Vol. II.
(1830), pp.
348-35
1-
6. On the Bubaline Antelope (Antilope Thar ). Gleanings in Science,
Vol. I.
(1831), pp.
122, 123, 327.
7.
Some Account of a New Species of Felis (F. Moormensis). Glean-
ings in Science, Vol. I.
(1831), pp. 177, 178.
8. On some of the Scolopacidae of Nepal. Gleanings in Science,
Vol. I.
(1831), pp. 233-243.
9.
Contributions in Natural History (the Musk Deer and Cervus
Jarai).
Gleanings in Science, V'ol. I.
(1831), pp. 320-324.
10. Description and Characters of the Chiru Antelope (Antilope
Hodgsonii, Abel). Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. I.
(1831), pp. 52-54.
11. Note relative to the Account of the Jarai. Journ. Asiai. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. I.
(1832), pp.
66, 67.
12. Further Illustrations of the Antilope Hodgsonii, Abel. Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. I.
(1832), pp. 59-63 ;
Zool. Soc. Proc,
Vol. I.
(1833), pp.
no, III.
'
Those on ethnological subjects omitted, as they have already appeared in
Appendi.x C. Mrs. Hodgson has kindly undertakenthe responsibility for the
Appendices and their orthography.
HODGSON'S ZOOLOGICAL PAPERS.
369
13. On the Mammalia of Nepal. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. I.
(1832), pp. 335-348.
14. Characters and Descriptions of New Species of Mammalia and
Birds from Nepal (Felis Moormensis, Antilope bubalina, Buceros
Nepalensis). Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. IL
(1832), pp.
10-16
;
Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVIIL
(1833), pp.
178-186.
15. On a New Species of Buceros (B. Nepalensis), Dhanesa, Ind.
Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVIII.
(1833), pp.
178-186.
i6. On a Species of Aquila (circaetus) and Dicrurus. Asiatic Researches,
Vol. XVIIL
(1833),
Pt. 2, pp.
13-26.
17. On the Migration of the Natatores and Grallatores, as observed
at Kathmandu. Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVIII.
(1833),
Pt.
2,
pp.
122-128.
18. The Wild Goat (Capra Jharal) and the Wild Sheep (Ovis Nayaur)
of Nepal. Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVIII.
(1833),
Pt.
2, pp.
129-
138.
19. On the Ratwa Deer of Nepal (Cervus Ratwa). Asiatic Researches,
Vol. XVIII.
(1833),
Pt.
2, pp. 139-149.
20. Description of the Buceros Homrai of the Himalaya
; with Ana-
tomical Obser\'ations by Dr. M. T. Bramley. Asiatic Researches,
Vol. XVIII.
(1833),
Pt.
2, pp.
168-188.
21. Description of the Wild Dog of the Himalaya (Canis primaevus).
Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVIII.
(1833),
Pt.
2, pp. 221-237,
22. Characters of a New Species of Perdix (P. Lerwa). Zool. Soc.
Proc, Vol. I.
(1833), p. 107.
23. Description and Characters of the Wild Dog of Nepal (Canis
primaevus). Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. I.
(1833), pp.
iii, 112.
24. Note on the Chiru Antelope (Gazella Hodgsoni, Abel).
Journ,
Asiat. Soc. Be7ig., Vol. I.,
pp. 59,
66; Vol. III.,
p. 138.
25. Letter on the Distinction between the Ghoral (Antilope goral,
Hardw.) and Thar (Antilope Thar, Hodgs.). Zool. Soc. Proc,
Vol. II.
(1834), pp.
85-87. Oken, Isis, 1835,
col.
1039.
26. On the Mammalia of Nepal. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. II.
(1834),
PP-
95-99-
27. On the Characters of the Jharal (Capra Jharal, Hodgs.), and of the
Nahoor (Ovis Nahoor, Hodgs.), with Observations on the Dis-
tinction between the Genera Capra and Ovis. Zool. Soc. Proc.
Vol. II.
(1834), pp.
106-1 10. Froriep, Notizen, Vol. XLIV.
(1835),
col. 129-134. L'Institut, Vol. III.
(1835), pp.
121-123.
28. Description of the Bearded Vulture of the Himalaya (Gypaetos
[Vultur] barbatus). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IV.
(1835),
pp. 454-457.
Bibl. Univ., Vol. VIII.
(1837), p.
212.
29.
Red-billed Erolia. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IV.
(1835),
pp.
458-461.
2A.
370
APPENDIX D.
30.
Synopsis of the Thar and Ghoral Antelopes. Joiirn. Asiat. Soc.
Bcng., Vol. IV.
(1835), pp. 487-489.
31. On the Wild Goat and Wild Sheep of the Himalaya, with Remarks
on the Genera Capra and Ovis. Jonrn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. IV.
(1835), pp. 490-494,
710. Ann. Sci. Nat., Vol. V. {Zool.)
(1836), pp. 299,
300.
32. Specific Description of a New Species of Cervus (C. elaphoides).
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bcng., Vol. IV.
(1835), pp. 648, 649;
Vol. V.
(1836), pp.
240-242.
33.
Synopsis of the Vespertilionidae of Nepal. Joiirn. Asiat Soc. Beng.,
Vol. IV. (1S35),
pp.699,
700.
34.
Note on the Red-billed Erolia, or Clorhynchiis strophiatus. Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Bcng., Vol. IV.
(1835), p. 701.
35.
Description of the Little Musteline Animal (Putorices Kathiah)
denominated Kathiah Nyul in the Catalogue of the Nepalese
Mammaha. Jou7-n. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IV.
(1835), pp. 702,
703.
With Postscript to the account of the Wild Goat of Nepal.
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IV.
(1835), p. 710.
36.
Indication of a New Genus of the Carnivora (Ursitaxus inauritus),
with Description of the Species on which it is founded. Asiatic
Researches, Vol. XIX.
(1836), pp.
60-69.
37.
Description of Three New Species of Paradoxurus (P. hirsutus,
P. Nepalensis, P. lanigerus). Asiatic Researclies, Vol. XIX.
(1836), pp.
72-87.
38.
Notices of the Ornithology of Nepal. Asiatic Researches, Vol. XIX.
(1836), pp.
143-192-
39.
Description of a New Species of Columba (C. Nepalensis). Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. V.
(1836), pp.
122, 123.
40. Summary Description of some New Species of Falconidae. Jo7irn.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. V.
(1836), pp.
227-230.
41.
Synoptical Description of Sundry New Animals enumerated in
the Catalogue of Nepalese Mammals. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. V.
(1836), pp.
231-238.
42. Notes on the Cervus Duvaucelii, Cuvier, or C. elaphoides and
Bahraiya, Hodgs. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. V.
(1836),
pp.
240-242. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. IV.
(1836), pp. 46, 47.
43.
Description of Two New Species belonging to a New Form of
the Meruline Group of Birds, with Indication of their Generic
Character (Cochoa purpurea, C. viridis). Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. V.
(1836), pp. 358, 359.
44.
On a New Genus and Species of the Meropidae (Bucia Nepalensis).
Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. V.
(1836), pp. 360, 361.
45.
On a New Piscatory Genus of the Strigine Family (Cultrungus
flavipes). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. V.
(1836), pp. 363, 364.
HODGSON'S ZOOLOGICAL PAPERS.
371
46. Postscript to the Account of Ursitaxus (Meles Labradorius) printed
in the XlXth Vol. of the Asiatic Researches. Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Bcng., Vol. V.
^836), p. 671.
47.
Note on Zoological Nomenclature. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Be?ig., Vol. V.
(1836), pp. 751, 752.
48. Additions to the Ornithologj' of Nepal. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Be7tg.,
Vol. V. (1836), pp. 770-774-
49.
On some of the Scolopacidae of Nepal. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. IV.
(1836), pp. 7,
8.
50. On the Lachrymal Sinus in Antilope Thar and Cervus Aristotelis.
Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. IV.
(1836), pp.
39,
40.
5
1
.
On Seven New Species of Vespertilionidae observed in the Central
Region of Nepal. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. VI.
(1836), p. 46.
52. On Three New Genera or Sub-genera of Long-legged Thrushes
(Tesia, nobis, Larvivora, Paludicola), with Descriptions of their
Species. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp.
101-103.
53.
Description of Three New Species of Woodpecker (Picus sultaneus,
Vivia Nepalensis, Picus pyrrhotis) and of Malacolophus melano-
chrysos. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp.
104-109.
54.
Indication of a New Genus of Insessorial Birds (Cutia). Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp.
110-112.
55.
On a New Genus of the Sylviadae, with Description of Three New
Species (Yuhina gularis, Y. occipitalis, Y. flavicoUis). Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol VI.
(1837), pp. 230-232.
56. On some New Genera of Raptores, with Remarks on the Old
Genera. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bcng., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp. 361-373.
57.
New Species of Scolopacidae (Indian Snipes). Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), p. 489.
58. Description of the Gauri Gau of the Nepal Forest (Bibos subhema-
chalus). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), p. 499.
Wiegmann, A7rhiv, Vol. VI.
(1840), pp.
263-267.
59.
On a New Genus of the Plantigrades (Urva cancrivora), with an
Appendi.K by A. Campbell. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Be7ig., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp. 560-565.
60. On the Bibos, Gauri Gau, or Gaurika Gau of the Indian Forests
(Bibos cavifrons, B. classicus, B. Aristotelis). Journ. Asiat.
Soc Beng., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp. 745-749.
61. Indication of a New Genus belonging to the Strigine Family, with
Description of the New Species and Type. Madras Journ.,
Vol. V.
(1837), pp.
23-26.
62. On Two New Genera of Rasorial Birds (Lerva, Arborophila).
Madras Journ., Vol. V.
(1837), pp.
300-306.
63. On the Structure and Habits of the Elanus melanopterus. Madras
Journ., Vol. VI.
(1837), pp. 75-78.
372
APPENDIX D.
64.
On a New Species of Pheasant (Phasianus crossoptilon) from Tibet.
Jotirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VII.
(1838), pp. 863, 864.
65. On a New Genus and Two Species of the Fissirostral Tribe (Raya
sericeogula, R. rubropygea). Joiirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VIII.
(1839), pp.
35,
36.
66. (Three) New Species of Meruline Birds (Sibia picaoides, S. nigri-
ceps, S. Nepalensis). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VIII. (T839),
P-37.
67. On Cuculus (Pseudornis) dicruroides. Jo2ir7i. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. VIII.
(1839), pp. 136, 137.
68. On Three New Species of Musk (Moschus) inhabiting the Himalayan
Districts (M. chrysogaster, M. leucogaster, M. saturatus). Journ
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. VIII.
(1839), p.
202.
69. Summary Description of Four New Species of Otter. Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Beng., Vol. VIII.
(1839),
PP- 3''9i
S^o-
Atin. Nat. Hist.,
Vol. V.
(1840), p. 27.
70. On the Common Hare of the Gangetic Provinces, and of the Sub-
Himalaya
;
with a Slight Notice of a Strictly Himalayan Species.
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IX.
(1840), pp.
1183-1186. Ann.
Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1842), pp.
231-234.
71. Three New Species of Monkey (S. schistaceus, Jiodie Pithex
oinops, P. pelops), with Remarks on the Genera Semnopithecus
and Macacus (Pithex, nobis). Jotcm. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. IX.
(1840), pp.
1211-1213.
72. Classical Terminology of Natural History. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. X.
(1841), pp.
26-29.
73.
On the Two Wild Species of Sheep (Ovis ammonoides, O. Nahoor)
inhabiting the Himalayan Region, with some Brief Remarks on the
Craniological Character of Ovis and its Allies. Jou7'n. Asiat.
Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1840), pp. 230-234.
74.
Illustrations of the Genera of the Bovinae. Part I. Skeletons of
Bos, Bibos, and Bison, the Individuals examined being the
Common Bull of Nepal, the Gowri Gao of Nepal, and the Yak.
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1841), pp. 449-470.
75.
Note on the Cervus elaphus (elaphoides
?)
of the Saul Forest of
Nepal (hodie C. affinis, nobis). Jo7irn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. X.
(1841), pp. 721-724.
76.
Notice of the Marmot (Arctomys Himalayanus) of the Himalaya
and Tibet. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1841), pp. 777,
778.
77.
On a New Organ in the Genus Moschus. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. X.
(1841), pp. 795, 796.
78. On a New Species of Lagomys inhabiting Nepal (Lagomys Nepal-
ensis, nobis). Journ. Asiat Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1841)
pp. 854, 855.
A7tn. Nat. Hist., Vol. X.
(1842), pp. 76, 77.
HODGSON'S ZOOLOGICAL PAPERS.
373
79.
Notice of a New Form of the Glaucopinae, or Rasorial Crows, in-
habiting the Northern Region of NepalConostoma a^modius
(Nobis, tj-pe). Joiirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1841), pp. 856,
857. Ami. A^af. Hist., Vol X.
(1842), pp. 77-79.
80. Classified Catalogue of Mammals of Nepal (corrected to end of
1
84 1,
first printed in 1832). Jourti. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. X.
(1841),
Ft. 2,
pp. 907-916. Calcutta
J
OU7-71. Nat. Hist., Vo\. IL
(1842), pp.
212-221
;
Vol. IV.
(1844), pp. 284, 285.
81. Notice of the Mammals of Tibet. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XI.
(1842), pp.
275-288.
82. On the Civet of the Continent of India, Viverra orientalis {Jwdie
melanunis). Calcutta Journ. Nat. Hist., Vol. II.
(1842),
pp. 47-56.
83. On a New Species of Prionodon (P. pardicolor). Calcutta Journ.
Nat. Hist., Vol. II.
(1842), pp.
57-60.
84. New Species of Rhizomys discovered in Nepal (R. badius, Bay
Bamboo Rat). Calcutta Jotirn. Nat. Hist., Vol. II.
(1842),
pp. 60, 61, 410, 41 1.
85.
European Notices of Indian Canines, with Further Illustrations of
the New Genus Cuon vel Chrysaeus. CalcuttaJourn. Nat. Hist..
Vol. II.
(1842), pp.
205-209.
86. On a New Species of Mustela ? known to the Nepalese Commerce
as the Chuakhal Mustela ? Calotus, nobis. Calctctta Journ. Nat.
Hist., Vol. II.
(1842), pp.
221-223.
87.
Appendix to Account of Cuon primaevus, the Wild Dog, or Buansu
Calcutta Journ. Nat. Hist., Vol. II.
(1842), pp.
412-414.
88. Description of a New Genus of Falconidae (Aquila pernigra) journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XII.
(1843),
PP-
127,
128.
89.
Catalogue of Nepalese Birds. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XII.
(1843), pp.
301-313. 447-450-
90.
Notice of Two Marmots found in Tibet (Arctomys Himalayanus of
Catalogue, potius Tibetensis, hodic tnihi, and A. Hemachalanus).
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XII.
(1843), pp. 409-414.
91. On a New Species of Cervus (C. dimorphe). Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. XII.
(1843), pp.
889-898.
92.
Summary Description of Two New Species of Flying Squirrel
(Sciuropterus chr^'sotrix, Sc. senex). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng
,
Vol. XIII.
(1844), pp. 67,68.
93.
On the Leiotrichane Birds of the Sub-Himalayas, with some
Additions and Annotations : a Synopsis of the Indian Pari, and
of the Indian Fringillidse, by E. Blyth. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bcfig.,
Vol. XIII.
(1844),
Pt.
2, pp. 933-963.
94.
On the Rats, Mice, and Shrews of the Central Region of Nepal.
A7in. Nat. Hist., Vol. XV.
(1845), pp.
266-270.
374
APPENDIX D.
95.
Characters of Six New Species of Nepalese Birds. Ann. Nat.
Hist, Vol. XV.
(1845), pp. 326, 327.
96. On Nepalese Birds. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. XIII.
(1845),
PP-
22-38.
97.
On the Wild Sheep of Tibet, with Plates (Ovis ammonoides, mihi).
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bcng., Vol. XV.,
pp. 338-343.
98. Description of a New Species of Tibetan Antelope (Procapra
picticaudata). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XV.
(1846),
PP-
334-343-
99.
On a New Form of the Hog Kind or Suidae (Porcula Salvania,
Pigmy Hog). Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847),
PP- 593. 594-
100. On the Hispid Hare of the Saul Forest (Lepus hispidus, Pears.,
Caprolagus hispidus, Blyth). Joitrn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847), PP-
572-577-
loi. Postscript on the Pigmy Hog of the Saul Forest. Jour/i. Asiat.
Soc. Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847), pp.
593, 594.
102. Various Genera of the Ruminants. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. XVI.
(1847), pp.
685-711.
103. On the Tibetan Badger (Taxidia leucurus). Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847), PP-
763-771-
104. On a New Species of Porcupine (Hystrix alophus). Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Befig., Vol. XVI.
(1847), pp. 771-774.
105. On the Charj or Otis Bengalensis. Jo7(rn. Asiat. Soc. Beng.,
Vol. XVI.
(1847),
PP-
883-889.
106. The Slaty-blue Megaderme (M. schistacea). Journ. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847), pp.
889-894.
107. On a New Species of Plecotus (PI. homochrous). Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Bcng., Vol. XVI.
(1847),
Pt.
2, pp. 894-896.
108. On the Tame Sheep and Goats of the Sub-Himalayas and Tibet.
Jo7irn. Asiat. Soc. Bcng., Vol. XVI.
(1847), pp.
1003-1026.
109.
On the Cat-toed Subplantigrades of the Sub-Himalayas. Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XVI.
(1847),
Pt. 2, pp.
11 13-1 129.
no. Description of the Wild Ass (Asinus polyodon) and Wolf of
Tibet (Lupus laniger). Calcutta Journ. Nat. Hist., Vol. VTI.
(1847),
PP-
469-477-
111. On a New Genus and Species of Suidae (Porcula Salvania) and
a New Species of Taxidia (T. leucurus). Zool. Soc. Proc,
Vol. XV.
(1847), pp. 115,
116.
112. Anatomy of Ailurus, Porcula, and Stylocerus. Jotirn. Asiat. Soc.
Beng., Vol. XVII.
(1848),
Pt.
2, pp. 475-487, 573-575-
113. Observations on the Manners and Structure of Prionodon pardi-
color. Calcutta Journ. Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1848), pp. 40-45.
114. On a New Genus of Insessorial Birds (Merva). Calcutta Journ.
Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1848), pp. 45-48.
HODGSON'S ZOOLOGICAL PAPERS.
375
115. On the Four-horned Antelopes of India. Calcutta Jonrn. Nat.
Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1848), pp. 87-94.
1 16. On the Buzzards of the Himalaya and Tibet. Calcutta Journ.
Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1848), pp. 94-97.
117. Note on the Kiang. Calcutta Journ. Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII.
(1848),
pp.
98-100.
1 18. The Polecat of Tibet, . sp. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XVIII.
(1849), pp. 446-450-
119. On the Takin (Budorcas taxicolor) of the Eastern Himalaya.
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XIX.
(1850), pp. 65-75.
120. On the Shou or Tibetan Stag (Cervus affinis). Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Betig., Vol. XIX.
(1850), pp. 466-469, 518-520.
121. On the Shou or Tibetan Stag (C. affinis, mihi). Journ. Asiat.
Soc. Beng., Vol. XX.
(1851), pp. 388-394.
122. Catalogue of Nepalese Birds. Jo2(i-n. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol.
XXIV.
(1855), pp. 572-582.
123. On the Geographical Distribution of the Mammalia and Birds of
the Himalaya. Zool. Soc. Proc, Vol. XXIII.
(1855), pp.
124-128.
124. On a New Perdicine Bird (Sacpha Hodgsoniae) from Tibet.
Jotirn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XXV.
(1856), pp. 165, 166.
125. On a New Species of Lagomys (L. Curzoniae) and a New Mustela
(M. temon) inhabiting the North of Sikhim and the Proximate
Parts of Tibet. Jo7irn. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XXVI.
(1857),
pp. 207, 208. Ann. Nat. Hist., Vol. I.
(1858), p.
80.
126. Description of a New Species of Himalayan Mole (Talpa macrura).
Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., Vol. XXVII.
(1858), p. 176. Ann.
Nat Hist, Vol. II.
(1858), p. 494.
127. Notes on Certain Species of Silkworms, Indigenous to India.
India Agric. Soc. Journ., Vol. VI.
(1848), pp.
167-181. B. H.
Hodgson and R. W. S. Frith.
LIST OF MR. HODGSON'S ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS.
I. Zoology.
I. Specimens:
Birds 9.512
Mammals 903
Reptiles, etc 84
Total ....
10,499
All presented to the British Museum in 1843
and 1858. A series
reserved by the Museum for itself, along with all the Reptiles
;
and
the rest (duplicates) distributed to the chief European and American
Societies.
376
APPENDIX D.
2. Drawings
:
Sheets.
Birds 1,241
Mammals
557
Reptiles
55
Total ....
1.853
The above drawings received back from the British Museum (less
the Reptilian ones, which were retained), given in 1874 to the Zoo-
logical Society of London.
II. Ethnography.
1. Specimens
79
2. Drawings, including duplicates . . . . . 107
Specimens all given to British Museum.
Drawings given to Christie Collection, 46 sheets
;
to Anthropological
Society of London, 61.
LIST OF NEW GENERA AND SPECIES OF MAMMALS
FIRST DESCRIBED BY B. H. HODGSON, ESQ.
Kindly contributed by Sir William Henry Flower, K.C.B., Director
of
the Natural History Branch
of
the British Museum}
Order PRIMATES.
Family Cercopithecid^.
1. Semnopithecus schtsiaceus, Hodgson.
Order INSECTIVORA.
Family Talpid^.
2. Talpa micntra, Hodgson.
Family Soricid^.
3.
Soriculits cmcdatus (Hodgson).
4. ,, macrurus (Hodgson).
Order CHIROPTERA.
Family Rhinolophid^..
5.
Rhinolophtcs tragatus, Hodgson.
6. Hipposiderus artniger, Hodgson.
Family Vespertilionid^.
7.
Synotus Darjclingensis (Hodgson).
8. Vesperttlioformosus, Hodgson.
'
I also thank Mr. Lydekker for the actual preparation of this list.
HODGSON'S NEW GENERA AND SPECIES.
m
Order CARNIVORA.
Family Viverrid^e.
9.
Linsang pm-dicolor (Hodgson).
10. Paradoxtcrus lanigcr, Hodgson.
1 1. Herpestcs aicroptinctalus (Hodgson).
12.
//rz/ (Hodgson).
Family Canid.e.
13. Catiisferrilatus (Hodgson).
Family MusTELiD^E.
14. Musiela canigiila, Hodgson.
15.
,,
cathia, Hodgson.
16.
,,
snbhemackelaiia, Hodgson.
17.
,,
strigidorsa, Hodgson.
18.
larvata (Hodgson).
19. (?)
Meles leucuriis (Hodgson) ? = M. taxiis.
20. Lutra aurobrminca, Hodgson.
Order RODENTIA.
Family Sciurid.e.
21. Pierontys ^iiagnificus (Hodgson).
22. Sciui-optcrus alboaiger, Hodgson.
23. Sciurus locria, Hodgson.
24. ,,
locroides, Hodgson.
25. Aixtomys Himalayanus, Hodgson.
Family Murid.(E.
26. Mus niveiventer, Hodgson.
27. cervicolor, Hodgson.
28. Nesocia iicmoj-ivaga (Hodgson).
29. Microtus Sikimcnsis (Hodgson).
Family Spalacid^.
30. Rhisojnys bad/us, Hodgson.
Family Leporid^.
31. Lcpiis o/osio/us, Hodgson.
Family Lagomyid/E.
32. Lagomys Cursonice, Hodgson.
Order UNGULATA.
Family Bovid^.
33.
Ovis nahiira, Hodgson.
34.
Nemorhcedjis btibaliims (Hodgson).
35.
Budorcas taxicolor, Hodgson.
36.
Gazella picUcatidata (Hodgson)
3/8
APPENDIX D.
Family Cervid.e.
37.
Cciijus aj^nis, Hodgson.
Family Suid.e.
38. Sns salvanius (Hodgson).
Order EDENTATA.
Family Manid/e.
39.
Manis aurita, Hodgson,
N.B.Where the generic term has been changed, the name of the
founder of the species is bracketed. The only genus in this list
described by Hodgson which stands is Biidorcas
;
but he also named
Cyon, Hemitragus, and Pantholops, which are likewise generally
admitted.
[379]
INDEX.
Abel, Dr., 301.
Ac/and, Rev. Charles,
27.
Acton, Lord, historian,
331.
Adam, Mr. 'John, missionary', his
Report on the indigenous
schools of Bengal, 318-20.
A/ghanistan,l.oid. Ellenborough's
policy in, 205-6,
224 ; our suc-
cesses in, 226.
Aitchison, Sir Charles, his Trea-
ties a?id Engagements,
59-63,
180, 194.
Am.rita Narida^ a Nepalese pan-
dit,
z^i.
A7-gyll, Duke o/, Secretary of
State for India ; to the opening
up trade with Tibet,
329.
Arnhem, 239-40.
Arya7i and tion-Aryan races
of
India,
284-99: Hodgson's
studies of, 285, 288-99; customs
and religion of non-Aryan tribes,
294-5.
Ashtasahasrika Prajnapara-
mita, a Nepalese MS. of the
I2th century, 266.
Asiatic Society, of London
(Royal),
267 ;
its memoir of
Hodgson,
278 ;
Hodgson's gifts
to, 261, 266-7,
276, 307. See also
in^
339-43.
363-
Atkinson, . 2\, his Report on
Kianaun,
37-9, 42-3, 45-6 ; his
Report on Garhwal District,
40.
Auckland, Lord,
90, 154,
202-3,
204 ;
his policy m Nepal,
154-
226 ;
his letters to Hodgson,
165,
168, 183, 190-2,
195 ;
his thanks
and congratulations to Hodgson,
189, 191, 198-9, 203-4; his ap-
preciation of Gurkha soldiers,
201
;
his recall,
203.
Ajifrecht, Professor,
348.
B.
Barlow, Sir George,
19.
Batten, Joseph Hallet, Principal
of Haileybury College,
15, 22
;
his Report on the Kumaun and
Rohilkimd Tarai,
39.
Bayley, Mr. William Butter-
worth,
93
; his advice to Hodg-
son,
94
;
his advice carried out
by Hodgson,
124.
Bayley, Sir Steuart Colvin,
K.C.S.I.,
94
;
his contributions
to Memorials
of
Old Hailey-
bury College, II.
Beat, Samuel, a student of Nor-
thern Buddhism, 280.
Bendall, Cecil, M.A.,
282 ; his
Catalogue
of
the Btiddhist
Sanskrit MSS., 261, 265; his
Journey
of
Literary and Arch-
CBological Research in Nepal
a?id Northern India, 282 ; his
letter noting a mistaken date of
a Nepalese MS., 266
;
his higher
studies of Buddhism, 280 ; his
views on the bibliographic side of
Hodgson's Buddhist work, 282
;
acknowledgments of his help in
this book, 261, 338.
Bengal Asiatic Society, its Asia-
tic Researches,
104, 272, 363
; its
Transactions,
104, 236, 252 ; its
Jour7ial, 108, 236, 252, 253, 276.
286,
303, 305, 363 ; Proceedings
of
the Society, No. 62,
235 ;
manuscript records of, 262, 302
;
contributions of Csoma de Koros
and of Blyth to its Journal, 278,
38o INDEX.
306 ;
meeting held in honour of
Hodgson, 235-6;
its President's
address at the meeting of May,
1866, 323;
its President (Sir C.
Elliott, K.C.S.I.), 262 ; Hodgson's
gifts to the Society, 261, 266-7,
281, 337-8, 352-3;
Hodgson as
Honorary Member of,
333.
Bentinck, Lord William, ap-
points Hodgson Resident of
Nepal,
109, 124-5 ;
his Resolu-
tion declaring that the State
education in India should be in
the English language,
313 ;
Hodgson opposes his views, 318.
Bhabar, forest track,
34, 39
;
fauna of,
45.
Bhart;pur, fort in Nepal, 100, 109.
Bhini Sen Thapf>a, Prime Minis-
ter of Nepal, his relations with
Mr. Gardner,
63 ; Prime Minister
of Nepal,
98 ;
his policy,
99
;
his
war against the English, 100 ; his
diplomacy and tactics against
the English, loi
;
his settlement
with Hodgson of the boundaries
of Nepal, loi
;
his obstruction of
commerce between Nepal and
India,
103;
his ambition,
127;
his settlement of the Nepal boun-
daries, 128; his conciliatory
measures towards Hodgson,
T28-9
;
his isolation of the British
Residency, 129-30; his despotic
administration,
13
1-2; his power
over the Raja,
133-5 !
^i^ nego-
tiations with Hodgson,
139,
1
40-1
; his severities to the
Pandis, 142 ;
his downfall, 142-6,
151-3, 159, 174-6; his suicide,
176;
his character,
176; indig-
nities towards his relations,
177 ;
result of his death, 178-9.
Bhutan, its commerce, iii.
Birds in Kumaun. Sec Ornitho-
logy.
Blanford, IV. 7., his article m
Natural Science, 307-9.
Blyth, an ornithologist, authority
on Indian birds, 306-7,
i})^,
348-9-
Boddaert, his ornithological work
in the West,
305.
Bodleian Library, O.xford, Hodg-
son's gifts to, 266-7,
337>
348-9.
Bodos, the, a tribe of hillmen in
India,
289-95.
Boileau, Colonel, 167.
Botany of Darjiling and the
Himalayas, 246.
Brahman, education of a, 311.
BrahmanJ>arty, the, in Nepalese
Government,
145, 153-4, 229.
Brahman physicians tortured in
Nepal, 172-5.
Brahmanisf^n, Hodgson's opinion
on its difference from Buddhism,
273-
Brahmaputra, the, its source on
the Tibetan side of the Hima-
layas,
287.
British Museum, Hodgson's gifts
to, of his zoological collections,
240, 307-8, 326, 375-8 ;
of his orni-
thological collections,
308-9,
32b;
of his Tibetan Buddhist MSS.,
etc., 270-1,
326, 338 ; Hodgson's
donations quoted in the List
of
the Speciinens
of
Mammalia in
the Collection
of
the British
j
Museum, 307-8.
I
Broivn, Dr., Gram ma tic a I
I
Notices
of
the Assamese Lan-
guage,
297.
1 Bro7vn, Laurence George, 10.
I
Buddhism, Hodgson's collection
of original documents on, 264-5,
266-8, 271-2, 337-56, 359;
his
articles on,
104, 272-6, 362-3,
365-6 ;
his defence of,
2>2)'^ !
his knowledge of,
283 ;
contro-
versies on, 279-80.
Bunsen, his Philosofhy
of
Uni-
versal Histo7'y,
287, 296
; his
opinion of Hodgson's ethnolo-
gical discoveries, 286,
331.
Bunse7i, Georg von,
331.
Bunyiu Natijio, his help,
338.
Burke, Edmund, referred to,
25.
Burnouf, E., his Introduction a
rHistoire du Buddhisme In-
dien,
264, 267-8, 276-7, 280 ;
his
letters in Choix de Lcttres
d'Eugene Burnouf, 268
;
his
opinion of Hodgson's Sanskrit
and Tibetan collections on Bud-
dhism,
264,
26ti,
271, 276-7. Also
344-8, 2,?>7-
Bushby, George, Secretary' to the
INDEX. 381
Government of India, his letters,
192,
216-26.
C.
Calcutta, the College of Fort
William, 13, 24
; Hodgson's gifts
to, 266, 270-1, xt;],
351.
Calcutta, Life and society in, at
the beginning of the century,
24-32 ;
its trade with China via
Nepal, 113, 114, 115.
Calcutta Engh'shman, the,
quoted, 321-2.
Calcutta Journal
of
Natural
History, Vol. IV., Hodgson's
contributions to, 302.
Calcutta School Book Society,
319.
Caledon, Countess
of,
aunt to
Lady Canning, 256.
Campbell, Dr. A.. Officiating
Assistant to the Resident of
Nepal; his i?^/cr/, 95-107, iii,
142, 185 ;
Superintendent of
Daijiling,
249.
Canning, George. 20.
Canning, Earl, Governor-Gene-
ral
of
India; Hodgson's in-
fluence on Lord Canning's deci-
sion to accept Gurkhas into the
British-Indian army, no, 255-8.
Canning, Lady, her death in the
Tarai,
253 ;
referred to, 256, 258.
Carey, Dr., Grammar a?id Dic-
tionary
of
the Tibetan Lan-
guage, 262.
Caulfield, Colonel,
19
1-2.
Central Asia, Hodgson's account
of its trade, 111-5, 126-7.
Chamberlain.. General,
331.
Chand dynasty in Kumau?i,
38-9.
Chandra, a Hindu god, 121.
Chauntrias, the party of Royal
Collaterals in the Nepalese
Government, 131, 139, 144, 153,
159, 170, 174,
182, 191, 193-4,
208, 229.
China, its trade with India,
113,
127.
Christie, Dr., 208.
Clarendon, Thomas, second Earl
of,
his influence on Hodgson,
1,
8.
Clerk, Sir George Russell,
G.C.S.I., K.C.B., 18, 223-4.
Cloete, Ge7ieral Sir Josias, 31.
Codringto7i, Dr. Oliver, his help
acknowledged, 362.
Colchester, Lo7'd, his Indian
Admifiisfration
of
Lord Ellen-
borough,
207, 225.
College
of
Fort William. See
Calcutta.
College
of
Surgeons, Hodgson's
zoological gifts to, 241.
Colvile, Sir fames, Advocate-
General, Calcutta, and President
of the IBengal Asiatic Society,
247-8, 330-
Calvin, Sir Auckland, K.C.S.I.,
1
6s
;
his fohn
Russell Calvin,
168.
Colvin, John
Russell, Private
Secretary to Lord Auckland,
letters from and to,
154, 158,
165, 168, 163, 188-90, 192, 310.
Comber?]icre. Lord, 100.
Conrady, Professo?', his MS. re-
view of Hodgson's philological
work,
297-9.
Cornwallis, Lord, 60.
Cowell, Professor, his Catalogue
of Hodgson's collection of Bud-
dhist Sanskrit literature, 267,
337. 339-43 ;
his Buddha-
Carita of Asvaghosha,
273 ;
visits Hodgson in Gloucester-
shire,
330
; his help acknow-
ledged,
338.
Craniology, Hodgson's studies of,
288-9.
Csoma de Koros, Alexafzder,
278;
his Himalayan discoveries con-
temporaneous with Hodgson's,
280 ;
his letters. Life of,
280.
Cunningham, General Sir Alex-
ande?', 278.
Currie, Sir Frederick, 18.
Cust, Dr. Needham,
330.
D.
Dalhousie, Lord, 18 ; his reorgani-
sation of the Gurkha battalions
into regiments,
109, 258 ;
on
Indian Education,
2^22.
Damodar, Prime Minister of
Nepal, his execution, 156.
Dampier, William, 18.
Danvers, F. C, his contributions
382 INDEX.
to Memorials
of
Old Hailey-
bury College, ii.
Darjiling,
243-327.
Darwin, Charles,
289 ;
Variation
of
Animals attd Plants under
Domestication,
303.
Davis, Dr., his school at Maccles-
field, 8-9.
Davis, Dr. Barnard, 286, 288
;
Crajiia Britannica, 288.
Dhifuals, the, a tribe of hillmen
in India,
289
; their nomadic
cultivation, 292-3 ;
their burial
rites,
294;
their religion,
295.
Dictionary
of
National Bio-
graphy, referred to,
58, 94,
224.
Dost Muhammad, Amir of
Afghanistan, 181.
D'Oyly, Sir Charles and Lady,
their friendship with Hodgson,
28-32, 73-4, 80, 124, 147-9,
161-2
;
drawings and sketches,
28-9.
D^Oyly, Ge?ieral Sir Charles
(9th Baronet),
30.
Duka, Theodore, M.D., his Life
of
Alexander Csoma de Koros,
269, 270.
E.
Edwardes, Sir Herbert, his
Life of
Sir Henry Lawrence,
86.
Eggeling, Professor, his Cata-
logue of Hodgson's collection of
Buddhist Sanskrit literature,
267,
339-43-
, ^
Ellenborough, Earl
of,
pre-
disposed against Hodgson and
other
"
Politicals," 90-2, 204 ;
his policy and administration,
204-6 ;
vacillation regarding Af-
ghanistan, 206-7 ;
conduct in
Nepalese affairs, 210-3, 215-7,
219-25, 227-8, 231-4;
letters to
Hodgson, 220, 232-3 ;
recall of
Hodgson as Resident, 212, 222,
223, 231-3 ;
result of Lord Ellen-
borough's policy in Nepal,
230;
recalled by the Court of Directors,
233
;
indignation at the India
House against him,
237;
Sir
J.
Colvile's opinion of his conduct
to Hodgson,
247.
Ellerton, Mr., his vernacular
schools at Malda,
319.
Elliot, Sir Walter,
330.
Elliott, Sir Charles, K.C.S.I., 262.
Elliott, Sir Daniel,
19.
Elphinstone, the Hon. Mount-
stuart, 278.
Ethnological Society elects Hodg-
son an Honorary Fellow, 289,
oil-
Ethnology, Hodgson's study of,
244-5, 249, 285-99;
hi^ ethnolo-
gical contributions to learned
societies, 285-6, 326, 364.
Fane, Sir H, his opinion on the
Gurkha soldiers, 110.
Fauna
of
the Himalayas, 45-6
;
Hodgson's studies and dis-
coveries in, 302-3, 308-9;
his
collections and donations of
specimens,
240, 307-9, 368-75.
Ferdousi, anecdote of, 2.
Flower, Sir William,, K.C.B.,303,
376.
Forshall,
f.,
Secretary to the
Trustees of British Museum, 240.
Eraser, Charles, 18.
Frie7id
of
India, thej^iy^^, 321-2.
G.
Gardner, Colonel Williatn Lin-
ncBus, 58-9,
61.
Gardner, Hon. E., Commissioner
of Kumaun and Resident at the
Court of Nepal,
t^"],
57,
58,
59,
61-2; first British Resident in
Nepal, 62-3, 102 ; resigns the
service,
70, 124;
his peaceful
policy as Resident, 102-3 ;
his
estimate of the Nepalese army,
105 ; his suggestion to employ
Nepalese soldiers as mercen-
aries, 107.
Garrett, H W., 182.
Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, 28.
Gould, Mr., his ornithological
work in the West,
305.
Grote, Arthur, President of the
Royal Asiatic Society,
330.
Gubernatis, Coimt Angela di, his
INDEX.
383
meeting with Hodgson at Flor-
ence,
1,331.
Gurkha regimettts ; Hodgson's
advocacy of the employment of
Gurkha soldiers, 107-9, no, 126,
255-8-
Gitrkhas, the ; their oppression
of Kumaun,
39, 40
; their land-
assessment and revenue,
46
;
driven out by the British, 46 ;
depopulation of Kumaun by their
fiscal severities, 47-8 ; their con-
quest of Nepal, 60
; their con-
flict with China, 60 ; and with
the British, 60-1
;
their defeat
and submission, 62. For their
subsequent historj', see Nepal.
Guru Mahashay^ox Hindu school-
master, 318.
H.
Haileybury College, 10, 13-21
;
form of certificate to students on
leaving, 22.
Hale, family of,
330.
Hall, Dr. FitzEdward, Report
on Hodgson's gift of Sanskrit,
Persian, and Newari MSS. to the
India Office,
269,
357.
Hafmlion, Sir Robert,
19,
88.
Hardinge, Lord, 18, 19.
Hare, Augtistus
J.
C,
257.
Hastings, Marquess
of,
28 ; his
conquests and wars, t^t^,
36-7,
61,99,
^00; his treaty with Nepal,
100, loi, 102,
155.
Heber, Bishop, his Narrative
of
a yourney through the Upper
Provinces
of
India quoted,
29.
Himalayas, trade of, 111-5 ;
their
tribes, language, customs, and
religion, 284-6, 288-99 ; rivers,
287-8
;
fauna and zoology,
45-6,
244. 253, 302-3, 307-9;
height,
245, 249;
ornithology,
46, 251,
304, 307-9
; botany,
246, 287
;
reptiles, 307-8 ; as a field for
European colonisation,
299-300
;
the development of tea planta-
tions in, 300-1.
History and Topography
of
Ash-
bourne and the Valley
of
the
Dove, referred to,
4.
History
of
Nepal, by Daniel
Wright (j-^^ Wright),
291, 268-9,
326;
H. A. Oldfield's Sketches
fro77Z Nepal [see Oldfield).
Hodgson, Sir Arthur, of Clopton,
4,
21.
Hodgson, Brian Hotighton, his
life summarised, 1-6
; his
mother,
6, 7,
8 ; her death,
325;
school-days at Macclesfield and
Richmond,
8,
9
; nomination to
India Civil Service, 10 ;
Hailey-
bury life, 13-21,
23 ;
George Can-
ning's visit to his rooms, 20
;
passes out of Haileybury, 22 ;
in-
fluence of Professor Malthus on
his views,
23-4; first year in
India, 22-32
;
Sanskrit and Per-
sian studies,
32
; Assistant to the
Commissioner of Kumaun, 32-6
;
Traill's influence on him,
38 ;
mountaineering and sport in
Kumaun,
43-5 ; taste for natural
history,
46;
land-assessment of
Kumaun,
40-56 ; appointed
Assistant Resident in Nepal,
56
; appointed Deputy Sec-
retary in the Persian Depart-
ment of the Calcutta Foreign
Office,
64
; illness in Calcutta,
64 ;
reappointed Assistant Resi-
dent in Nepal,
65
; his private life
in Nepal, described chieflyby his
letters, 66-92 ; his help to his
family,
67, 76,
88 ; is appointed
Acting Resident in Nepal,
70
;
his scientific pursuits,
79, 84,
85 ;
his domestic relations, 86
;
serious illness,
87 ; his ascetic
life,
87 ;
pubHc career as As-
sistant Resident in Nepal,
93-
125 ; completes the settlement
of the boundary of Nepal,
loi
;
collects materials for in-
forming the British Government
of the military, commercial,
and judicial strength of Nepal,
103-4; his eftbrts to draft the
Gurkhas into the British army,
104, 109 ;
his influence during
the Mutiny, no ;
his Report on
Himalayan and Central Asian
trade, 11 1-5 ;
his judicial Re-
ports, 116-23 ;
Resident in
Nepal,
125, 126-76; settlement
384
INDEX.
of boundaries by Hodgson and
Bhim Sen, 128 ;
Hodgson's en-
couragement of trade,
129 ;
re-
ports to the Governor-General
on
"
the state of parties in
Nepal," 131-6 ;
insists on deal-
ing directly with the Raja,
137;
improvement in commercial in-
tercourse, 140-1,
180-1
;
corre-
spondence with Lady DOyly,
147-9,
161-2; his money anxieties,
1
5 1-2,
167 ;
his confidential ac-
count to Lord Auckland of the
Gurkhas, 154-7;
^is ill-health,
161 ; his insight into Nepalese
intrigues, 164;
his dangerous
situation, 164,
168 ;
his apparent
indifference, 165-6,
177
; suc-
cess of his policy, 166; death
of his brother WiUiam, 166-7
:
impending war in Nepal,
167,
169 ;
Hodgson's description of
the Nepalese Court, 17 1-3 ;
last
four years in Nepal, 177-236;
his negotiations with the Raja,
178-84, 190, 228 ;
revolt of the
Nepalese army, 184;
troops
promised by Lord Auckland to
support Hodgson, 188-9 ;
con-
gratulations on having averted
war, 191-2 ;
obtains a coalition
Ministry in Nepal,
193
;
friendly
declaration of the Nepalese
towards the British,
194-5 ;
Lord
Auckland's reliance on Hodg-
son'sjudgment,
199;
final letters
of thanks from Lord Auckland
to Hodgson, 203-4
'' Lord Ellen-
borough's arrival and change of
policy towards Nepal, 204-13
;
Hodgson's review of the matter
forty years later, 216; change
of policy towards Nepal, 217-
221 ;
Hodgson's difficulties in
Nepal disappear on our success
in Afghanistan, 226 ; success-
fully carries out Lord Ellen-
borough's policy, 226-8
;
predicts
evil result of Lord Ellen-
borough's policy in Nepal, 230
;
Hodgson's recall by Lord
EUenborough, 231-3 ;
ap-
pointed Assistant Sub-Commis-
sioner at Simla,
233
; farewell
of the Raja and Nepalese to
Hodgson,
234
; his reception in
Calcutta,
234-5 ;
retires from the
service, 236 ;
arrival in England,
ZT,"]
;
resolves to return to India,
239-40
; disposal of his zoo-
logical collections, 240-1 ; his
life and work at Daijiling,
243-
T,2-j
;
marries Miss Scott,
255 ;
takes charge of the education of
the heir-presumptive to Nepal,
255-6; again advocates the em-
ployment of Gurkhas in the
Indian army, 255-60 ;
his work as
an Oriental scholar, 261-83 '> his
researches among the non-Aryan
and hill races of India, 284-301
;
his work as a naturalist and
ornithologist,
302-9 ;
the advo-
cate of education in the ver-
nacular languages of India,
310-24 ;
final return to England
and last years,
325-35
; death
of his mother,
325
;
illness and
death of his father, 325-6
;
Hodgson gives his collections
and manuscripts for his His-
tory
of
Nepal to the India
Office Library, 326-7 ; his home
in Gloucestershire,
327 ;
death
of his first wife, 328 ;
second
marriage, 328 ;
life in England
and winters on the Riviera,
328-32 ;
his tolerant views on
religion,
332 ; his old age and
humble opinion of his work
and life,
334
; his death,
335 ;
his Miscellaneous Essays re-
lating to Indian Subjects, 314-
317;
his Illustrations
of
the
Literature and Religion
of
the
Btiddhists, 272 ;
his Disputa-
tion respecting Caste,
274-5 ;
his essay On the Physical Geo-
graphy
of
the Himalaya, 286
;
his essay On the Kocch, Bodo,
and Dhimal Tribes,
289-95 ;
his paper on The Alammalia
of
Nepal, 302 ;
his Catalogue
of
the Mammals
of
Nepal and
Tibet, 302 ; his paper on the
Pantholops Hodgsoni, 302 ;
his
Two Letters on the Education
of
the People
of
India, 7,11,
314,
INDEX
385
315 ; his Collected Works,
334.
For full lists of Hodgson's MSS.,
published writings, scientific
contributions, and donations,
see Appendices,
pp. H']-']'i-
Hodgsofi, Mrs.,
165 ; her arrange-
ment of Hodgson MSS., etc.,
277 ; Dedication to, v. ;
List of
Illustrations, ix.
Hodgson, Edward, 11, 81-2, 151.
Hodgson, Fanny, 11, 68-77, 80, 82,
85-6, 91-2,
239,
241-2, 245-8.
Hodgson, Dr. Robert, Dean of
Carlisle,
5,
20 ; his Life of
the
Rt. Rev. BeilbyPorteus, D.D.,
Bishop
of
London,
9.
Hodgson, William, 11,
69, 70, 75,
80, 88, 151, 166, 167.
Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalian,
K.C.S.I., C.B., F.R.S., his
Hifnalayan Journals, or Notes
of
a Naturalist,
243-5 > his .^^-
collectio7is
of
Hodgsoft's Darji-
ling days,
248-55
; his Flora
Indica,
287
; his opinion of
Hodgson's life and researches,
243-4,
253
; he joins Hodgson,
245 ;
last visit to Hodgson,
334.
Hooker, Sir William, father of
Sir Joseph Hooker,
247.
Horsfield, ornithological work in
the East,
305.
Houghton, Catherine,
5.
Houghton, William,
5.
Howell, A.
P.,i\%.
Humboldt, Baro7i von, correspon-
dence with Hooker,
246, 253;
and Hodgson,
253
; letter to Sir
J.
Colvile, 286.
Hume, Allan Octavian, C.B.,
review On Hodgsons's Ornitho-
logical Work,
304-7 ;
his Game
Birds
of
India, Burma, and
Ceylon,
334.
Hunter, Sir IVilliam Wilson,
K.C.S.I., his
Life of
Dalhousie,
109 ;
his Catalogue
of
Sanskrit
Manuscripts collected in Nepal
by Brian Houghton Hodgson,
261^, 271 ;
his Comparative Dic-
tioftary
of
the Languages
of
l72dia a7id High Asia.,
269 ; his
Be7igal Musalmans and its
dedication to Hodgson,
334
;
his impression of Hodgson,
328-9.
Hutto7i,
ornithological work in the
East,
305.
I.
India
Office
Library, Hodgson's
gifts to, 261, 266,
270, 326-7,
ai'^t 344'
357"6i.
India
Office
MSS., Secret Con-
sultations, etc., 128-31,
137-9,
173, 176, 178, 182, 191, 208, 210
;
Lieutenant F. Smith's Statement,
208-10 ; Records,
233.
Didian Educatio7i Com,mission
,
Report
of, 311, 324.
I7idia7i Mutiny, 109, 255-6, 258.
Indus, the, its source, 287.
Institute
of
France, Hodgson's
gifts to, 261, 268, 338 ; honours
conferred on Hodgson by, 268,
332-3-
J-
Jaeschke, a Danish missionary,
280.
Jang Bahadur, Prime Minister
of Nepal,
98, 139, 230 ; Hodg-
son's influence on, no, 254-6;
his life summarised, 14b ; he
requests Hodgson to direct the
education of his son-in-law,
255 ;
he commands the Gurkha arm}'
for the British during the
Mutiny,
258.
Jaquet, his letters to Hodgson,
277.
Jardtne, Sir William, ornitho-
logical work,
305.
Jeffrey,
Lord, 16,
17, 302.
Jerdofi, Dr. 2\ C,
306-7 ; his
Birds
of
India,
309.
Jodhpur, capitulation of,
138
;
intrigues between Nepal and,
164, 173.
Jodrell, of Henbury, 8.
Joicrnal des Sava7its,
279, 338.
K.
Kabul war, its effect on Nepal,
88, 164,
200 ; the Nepalese
threaten war, 168-9,
177, 190;
the warlike attitude of the
25
386 INDEX.
Nepalese, 181-2
;
our reverses
exaggerated and consequent
warlike preparations in Nepal,
188
;
Lord EUenborough's vacil-
lating policy in Kabul, 206-7.
Kahgyur, the, one hundred and
twenty-three volumes containing
the doctrine and moral precepts
of Buddha,
269
;
presented to
Hodgson by the Grand Lama of
Tibet and given by Hodgson to
the India House, with another
copy to the College of Fort
William,
270, 338.
Kasinath Mull, of Benares, his
lawsuit in the courts of Kath-
mandu, 208-10.
Kathmandu, commercial routes
to, III ; its merchants, 112; its
commerce, 1
13
;
the British posi-
tion at,
131
; secret envoys at,
173.
Kaye, Sir John William, quoted,
215.
Ktnchtnjinga,
245, 249.
Ktiollys, Colonel W. W., memoir
of Sir jFasper Nicolls, 224.
Knox, Captain, 142.
Kocch, the, Hodgson's study of
their language, etc.,
289-95.
Koros, Csofjia de. See Csoma de
Koros.
Ktimaun a7td Garhival,
33-58 ;
effectof our conquest of Kumaun
on the Nepal war, 61-2
;
com-
merce of Kumaun, iii.
L.
Laidlaw, student of the Karen
tongue, 296.
Lake, Lord,
58.
Lamas, of Kathmandu and Tibet,
250, 252 ;
their reception of Aus-
tine Waddell as Amitabha or the
Western Buddha, 282-3.
Lassen, Professor Charles, his
welcome of Hodgson's ethnologi-
cal discoveries, 286
;
his letter
to Hodgson,
295.
Latham, Ethnology
of
the British
Colonies,
289 ;
his Varieties
of
Man,2()^
;
his ethnological work
in the West,
305.
Lawrence, Lord, his nomination
to Haileybury College,
14.
Lawrence, Sir Henry, his opinion
on Gurkha soldiers, no
;
Resi-
dent in Nepal,
233, 234.
Layard, 289.
Le Bas, Professor,
1
5.
List
of
honours^ etc., conferred on
Hodgson,
333.
Logan, his Journal
of
the Lndian
Archipelago quoted,
295.
Long, Rev. fames, his Preface
to Adam's Reports,
318, 320.
Lydekker, his list of Hodgson's
discoveries quoted,
303, 376.
M.
Macaulay, Lord, his views on
Education in India, 310, 318.
MacGregor, General Sir George,
C.B., 258.
Mackintosh, Sir fames,
16.
MacNabb, Sir Donald, 331.
Maddock, Sir Herbert, Resident
of Nepal, 107, 125, 129 ;
secret
despatch from Hodgson to, 171.
Aialcolni, Sir John,
his views
on the responsibility of British
Agents at Native Courts, 214,
215.
Malleson, Colonel, 258
; his His-
tory
of
the Lndian Mutiny,
258.
Mallet, Sir Louis,
33
1
.
Malthus, Professor, at Hailey-
bury,
15, 16; his influence on
Hodgson, 23.
Mammals, Hodgson's contribu-
tions on, collections and dona-
tions of,
244-5, 302-3, 307-9, 363,
368-78.
Mangles, Ross Donelly, 19.
Manuscripts, Hodgson's collec-
tions and donations of, Appen-
dices,
337-61.
Marshall, his ornithological work
with Hume, The Game Birds
of
India, Burma, and Ceylon.^
334.
Martin, Henry, 27.
Martineau, Miss, 16.
Mafabar Sifigh, Prime Minister
in Nepal, 132, 135, 142, 143, 145,
146, 149, 150, 151, 153, 158, 159,
162, 172-5, 229 ; his murder, 229.
INDEX.
387
May^ Mr., a missionary, his ver-
nacular schools in India,
319.
McLeod, Sir Donald,
330.
McMurdo, General Sir Motita-
gu,
331-
Megasthenes, Greek Ambassador
to India in 300 r>.c., 311.
Memorials
of
Old Haileybury
College, II, 14.
Merivale, his Life of
Sir Henry
Lawrence, 230.
Metcalfe, Lord, 150, 154, 157.
Miller, Professor Thomas,
278,
299. 330.
Mtnto, Lord, 61.
Mitrq, Rajendra Lala, his San-
skrit Buddhist Literature
of
Ne;pal,
32, 65, 103-4, 116-7,
267,
31 1 ;
his Descriptive Catalogue
of
Sa7zs/erit MSS., 266-7;
270,
280,311,339.
Mohl, Jules, letters to Hodgson,
277.
Moira, Lord. See Hastings.
Monier Williams, Sir,
11, 331.
Mowat, Sir F., 288.
Miiller, Professor Max, 286-7,
296, 330. iii' 2>2,^-
Museums, of Paris, Leyden, Edin-
burgh, Dublin, etc., Hodgson's
gifts to,
308, 326
; British, see
British Museum.
N.
Nahuys, General the Baron
Huibert Gerard, marriage to
Ellen, sister of B. H. Hodgson,
10
;
letters to Hodgson,
325.
Nahuys, Baron Pierre, 1 1 ; mar-
riage with Frances, Hodgson's
youngest sister, 11, 80; Hodg-
son's visit to them,
239.
Napier, Sir Charles, his opinion
on Gurkha soldiers, no.
Nepal, war and treaty with,
36-7,
58, 62-3 ;
Nepal after the war,
124 ;
crisis in, brought on by the
Kabul war, 88 ; war prevented
by the skilful management of
Hodgson,
95
etseq.; government
of Nepal by the Queen-Regent
and Bhim Sen Thappa, its Prime
Minister, 98-101 ; trade between
Nepal and India,
103, 104, 127,
199;
military service,
105;
Hodg-
son's Report on Nepal, 111-5,
126; judicial system, 115-23,
166; boundaries of Nepal, loi,
127-8
;
commerce, 128,
147,
180
;
parties in Nepal, 131-6 ; the war
party,
138-9 ;
commercial treaty
with the English,
140 ;
criminal
extradition,
149-51, 166, 181
;
military organisation remodelled
by Raghunath Pandit, the Brah-
man Prime Minister, 160-1
;
pre-
parations for war against the
British,
167-9, '^11^ 182, i8,
190,
198;
intrigues of the Court
against the Residency,
177, 183,
185, 188
;
marriage of the heir-
apparent,
179,
180, 183; nego-
tiations between Hodgson and
Nepal, 179-81, 183-4, 190;
attack
on the British frontier,
183-4;
attack on the Residency, 185-6
;
change of ministry,
191,
193 ;
cruel disposition of the heir-ap-
parent,
196, 227 ; death of the
Senior Queen,
199;
outrage on
the Residency, 208-10; British
support withdrawn, 226-7; Mata-
barSingh appointed Prime Minis-
ter and murdered,
229; deposition
and imprisonment of the Raja,
230
; Jang
Bahadur appointed
Prime Minister,
230 ; Sir Henry
Lawrence appointed Resident,
2T^2>
;
affectionate farewell of the
Raja and Nepalese to Hodgson,
234
; Nepalese soldiers during
the Mutiny,
258 ; ancient manu-
scripts of Nepal, 265-6
;
Hodg-
son's gifts of Nepalese MSS. to
learned Societies, 266-7 ! the
dialects and literature of Nepal,
273.
Newmarch, General Sir Oliver,
K.C.S.I., 106,
259.
Nicholetts, Lieutenant C. H.,
Assistant Resident in Nepal, his
Narrative
of
Events in Nepal,
184, 191, 196-7, 202, 207, 22"],
229, 230.
Nicholson, John,
of
Balrath,
friendship with Hodgson, 8.
Nicolls, Sir fasper, his opinion
388
INDEX.
on Gurkha soldiers, io8 ; in-
structions to, when Commander-
in-Chief, 206 ; his advice in
regard to the Kabul war, 224.
No7-th, Miss,
330.
Nott, Ge?ieral, 207, 224.
O.
Ochterlony, General, lo^^-'j
.
Oglander, Colonel, 167.
Oldfield, Dr. Henry Ambrose,
M.D., his Sketchesfrom
Nepal,
Historical and Descriptive,
loo-i, 146, 159,
168, 175,
187-8,
192, 196, 208, 231, 326.
Oldham, Dr., his work On the
Geological Structure
of
the
KhasiHills, 296.
Oliver., Getteral, R.A., 328.
Ornithology, Hodgson's study
of, 46, 251-2, 303-9;
Hume's
works on,
305, 334
;
various orni-
thologists quoted, 305-6 ; Hodg-
son's ornithological collections
and donations, 307-8, 326 ; cata-
logue ofhis ornithological papers,
368-75-
O' Shaughnessy, Professor Sir
W., his Address to the Medical
College, Calcutta, 321.
Oudh, boundary between Nepal
and, loi.
Owen, Professor, his selection
from Hodgson's presentations to
the College of Surgeons, 241
;
his reception of Hodgson's eth-
nological discoveries, 286
;
his
Report to the British Associa-
tion quoted, 289.
O^t/or^'j welcome to Hodgson, i.
P.
Paget, Sir Edward, Commander-
in-Chief, 106.
Panjani, the annual vacating of
offices, 130, 131, 137, 153.
Pattison, Maxey and fames, 6,
10, II, 20.
Pekin, its trade route to St.
Petersburg, 112; and to India
via. Nepal, 112.
Pelly, ^Yr Z^tt7>, diplomatist,
331.
Pe7nberton,h.\s, Report onBhutan,
288.
Philology, Hodgson's researches
and discoveries in, 289-98.
Physical geography of the Hima-
layas, 286-7; Hodgson's discus-
sions with Sir
J.
Hooker on,
253-
Pollock, Major-General, 206.
Porteus, Bishop of Chester and
London,
5,
9.
Prinsep, Hcfzry Thoby,
179,
222 ;
letter of congratulation to
Hodgson, 191 ;
informs Hodgson
of Lord Ellenborough's intended
concealment of Hodgson's re-
call, 222
;
advises Hodgson to
accept the overtures made by
Lord EUenborough, 225
; warns
Hodgson of Lord Ellenborough's
dislike, 228 ; one of the principal
representatives of the Oriental-
ists in the controversy on Ver-
nacular Education in India,
310.
Prinsep, fames, 252,
302.
R.
Rajffies, his ornithological work in
the East,
305.
Raghunath Pandit, 145, 153-4,
159,
160, 162-3, 170, 193.
Raje7tdra Lata Mitra. SeeWvXxz..
Ra7ibir Singh, 142-4, 174.
Ra7ija7ig Pandi, leader of the
Pandi faction in Nepal, 145-96.
Ra7ijit Si7igh,
137, 176.
Rawli7iso7i , 289.
Reid, T. Wemyss, his Life of
Lord Houghto77,
247.
Re7nusat, Abel,
279.
Rena7i,
331.
Reptiles, Hodgson's collection of,
307-8, 375-6.
Ricketts, Sir Henry, K.C.S.I.,
19.
Robertson, Hon.
f.
C, 223-5.
Rockhill, Woodville, student of
Northern Buddhism, 280.
Rohillas, in Kumaun, 38-9.
Roll, Sir John, 330.
Ross'-of-Bladensburg, 61-2.
Rousseaii, fean Jacques,
4,
5.
Russia, its trade in Asia, 112-3,
127.
INDEX. 389
S.
Sainte-Beuve, 302.
Salisbury, Lady, 19.
Sanpu, the, 288.
Sanskt'it MSS., Hodgson's. See
Manuscripts and Buddhism.
Sarat Chandra Das, 280.
Schiefner, A., 281.
Schlangintweit, 280.
Schmidt, I.
y.,
280.
Scoit, Miss Anne, daughter of
General H. A. Scott, R.A., her
marriage with B. H. Hodgson,
255
; her illness in Darjiling,
295. 325 ;
her death,
327.
Scott, Ge7ieral Heitry Alexander,
R.A.,
255 ;
his death, 328.
Secret Consultations. See India
Office MSS.
Segauli, treaty of, 62, loi.
Selections from the Records
of
the Govertztnent
of
Bengal,
Vol. XXVII., 104, 108, III,
1 17-8, 300.
Shaw,
305.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley,
7,
25.
Shore, Hon. Frederick, 19.
S?nith, Lieutenant P., 217.
Smith, Dr. George, 27.
Smyth, William,
7
;
his influence
on Hodgson's early life, 15.
Societe Asiatique de Paris, Hodg-
son's gifts to, 261, 266-7, 281,
2>'S1^ 339-43, 349-50,
353 ;
its founder and first secretary,
279
; bestows a gold medal on
Hodgson, 268,
277, 333.
Society for Promoti?ig Christian
Knowledge,
319.
Stangyur, two hundred and
twenty-four volumes containing
commentaries on the Kahgyur
andtreatises on Tibetan religious
rites, ceremonies, arts, philo-
sophy, and sciences,
269, 270
;
two sets presented by Hodgson
to the India House and the
College of Fort William,
270, 338.
Stewart, Captain,
319.
Strachey, Sir John, 34-5.
Stuart, Robert,
55.
Summers, Professor
f,,
his
Phcetiix, a monthly magazine
for Eastern Asia, 104, 272.
Surya, a Hindu god, 121.
Suilej, the, its source, 287.
Sykes, his ornithological work in
the East quoted, 305.
T.
Tarai, the,
34,
loo-i,
105 ;
its
revenue, 106; its boundaries,
128; its unhealthiness,
199;
Lady
Canning dies of fever caught in
passing through,
253 ;
Hodgson
prevented from crossing, 212
;
Sir
J.
Hooker's description of it,
253-4 ; the proposal to restore
the Western Tarai to Nepal,
257;
language of its people, 292.
Tawney, Professor, 330.
Teignmouth, Lord, 19.
Temminck, 305.
Thackeray, IV. M.,i^.
Thappas, the faction headed by
Bhim Sen, 145, 172.
Thompson, his Flora Lndica, 287.
Thornton, Edward, his History
of
the British Etnpire in Lndia
quoted, 206, 224, 233.
Th7igs, 150, 183, 199.
Tibet, its commerce via Nepal,
113;
its language and litera-
ture, 262-3 ; its manuscripts,
263-4 ;
the early use of paper in,
265 ;
Hodgson's collections of
Tibetan classics, 269-71,
338 ;
the Buddhism of, 273-6, 283
;
the dog of, 302.
Tickell,
J.
.^., his Excerptsfrom
the Letters
of
the Resident at
Kathmandu to Government,
128-9,
139. Hi> 143. 149.
154, ^59.
160, 162-4, 169, 174-5, 178-9,
182 ;
his ornithological work in
the East,
305.
Townshend, Rev. Chambre, of
Derry, 328.
Townshend, Susan, 328.
Traill, George William, 36-56,
57,
116, 215; his Report 072
Kumaun,
33-55.
Jrevelyan, Sir Charles, 310.
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, M.P.,
310,313-
390
INDEX.
Tri;puri, the Maharani, 95-8,
102
;
her death,
127
; its effect on
Nepalese affairs, 129-31, etc.
Trotter, Captam L.
y.,
200.
Turnour,
279.
V.
Vansittart, Ca;ptain Eden, his
Notes on the Gurkhas, no.
Varuna, a Hindu god, 121.
Vasarnafi Ujsag,
309.
Vernacular Education in India,
Hodgson's efforts towards ex-
tending, 251-3, 310-24;
schools
and colleges for, 316-9,
321-2,
324
;
Macaulay's view,
313 ;
Hodgson's opposition to that
view,
313-5,
318 ;
Mr. John
Adam's view, 318-9.
W.
Waddell, L. A ustine, M.B.,
280-97.
Walden,
305.
Walter, Henry,
15, 46.
Weber, Albrecht, 268, 277-8,
280-1.
Wellesley, Marquess,
13,
60
;
his
"
Politicals,"
93
; his system of
Protectorates,
99.
TVigram, Percy, 11.
wTlloughby, Sir Johft Pollard,
19.
Wilson, C. R., 262.
Wilson, Dr. John, 320.
Wilso?i, Horace Hay?nafi, 61.
Wood, Sir Charles,
357.
Wootten Lodge, Staffordshire,
4.
Wright, Daniel, M.A., M.D.,
95-6, 98,
100, 127, 163, 196, 326.
Yak, the Himalayan cow,
45,
302.
Yatna, a Hindu god, 121.
Yule, Sir Henry,
330.
Zoology, Hodgson's papers on
collections, and donations, 240-1,
244,
302-9, 363,
368-78.
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