What the British Did For Buddhism

The feet of the Boodha at Boodha Gaya, an iconography that predates physical representations of Boodha Sakyamooni. 

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I would to-day, in these columns, respectfully invite the vast and intelligent British public to forget, for a little while, home weather and home politics, and to accompany me, in fancy, to a sunny corner of their empire... and will also show them how the Indian Government of Her Majesty, supported by their own enlightened opinion, might, through an easy and blameless act of administrative sympathy, render four hundred millions of Asiatics for ever the friends and grateful admirers of England. . .

- Edwin Arnold, 1893

Some splendid years ago the author had the opportunity to visit the magnificent and massive basalt tantric Boodhist complex at Borobador in Java. The story of the complex is a famous one. After the Mahometan conquest of the Indonesian islands, which entailed the savage eradication of both Boodhism and Hindooism in every guise, the great stepped temple at Borobador fell into complete obscurity and was swallowed by jungle and buried beneath volcanic ash. It remained that way for centuries. It was only after the British took control of Java for a brief tenure of colonial rule under Govenor-Gneral Raffles that the temple complex was accidentally rediscovered. British explorers, penetrating the dense jungles of the island, chanced upon the remnants of the temple and thereafter cleared the copious vegetation, tonnes of dust and yards of rubble under which it had been concealed. The Mahometans had no use nor recollection of it. It was British archaeologists who brought this extraordinary architectural gem, an encylopedia of Boodhist iconography in stone - in fact, the largest and most intact Boodhist temple outside of Asia - once again to the light of day. 

The Mahabhodi Temple

An eventuality similar to this, but even more auspicious, also occurred in the Indian state of Bihar, not far from the undistinguished town of Gaya. In 1810, the explorer and geographer Mr. Francis Buchanan, pushing his way through tiger-laden jungles near the river Falgoo, chanced upon a huge abandoned temple that had been devoured and buried by vegetation and silt. It was of no interest to the local Hindoos who could relate very little about it. But Buchanan quickly determined that it was a Boodhist complex from a very early date and he surmised, correctly, that it had been left to ruin after the decline of Boodhism in the Indian subcontinent in the Middle Ages. Indeed, he determined that this was none other than the long lost Mahabodhi Temple, once revered by Boodhists as marking the very place that the Boodha, Sakyamooni, achieved Enlightenment under the Peepel Tree. It had once been a place of Boodhist pilgrimage. Even more, it had once been regarded as the very centre of the Boodhist cosmos, the pivot of the Boodhist world, the axis of Boodhist spirituality. As in Java, the temple had fallen into disuse after the Mahometan invasions had eradicated the Boodhist faith. Neither the Mahometans nor the Brahmins cared for it. It was lost and forgotten.*

(*This is disputed by the Hindoos. They point out that after the departure of the Boodhists from the Gaya region, the local Brahmins gave the temple at least residual occasional care for several centuries.) 

A representation of the Mahabodhi Temple as it was found by Buchanan.

Subsequently, decades later, the British led the archaeological survey of the site and then its restoration. They determined that the temple had been built in the time of Ashoka in the third century BC, which made it one of the earliest surviving examples of Indian religious architecture. From inscriptions, coins and other evidence, they pieced together the history of the place and - with the assistance of Boodhists from Burma - cleared, cleaned and rebuilt it, returning it to its original purpose. A first restoration was somewhat shabbily done, but a second effort led by Sir Arthur Cunningham was more perfect. Cunningham wrote a thorough account of the complex which he published in 1892. His work led the restoration of this sacred place to the Boodhist religion. 

The restored temple. The four corner towers are controversial. Some believe they were not a feature of the original complex. 

Floor plan of the temple complex. 

Unfortunately, though, in law the site belonged to an Indian Mahant, and as soon as the British cleaned up the buildings it was reclaimed by the Hindoos who pretended to be puzzled by its iconography. (There is a nearby Shiva Temple and the Hindoos furthermore attempt to appropriate the Boodha as an incarnation of Vishnoo.)  This situation was what greeted the zealous Ceylonese Neo-Boodhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala who went there on pilgrimage in the late 1800s. Along with the British Theosophists, and the ager support of the Orientalist Mr. Edwin Arnold, he founded a movement to restore the site once more to Boodhism and to remove the Hindoo intruders. Since the Mahant owned the site (part of some 11,000 acres of land he owned around Gaya), and since possession is nine tenths of the law, a protracted legal battle ensued and continued right through until after the end of British rule. In 1949 Hindoos and Boodhists were given equal rights over the site and it was again open to Boodhist pilgrims. This was not, and still is not, an entirely happy situation, but the temple is now also under the protection of UNESCO and so the unimpeded access to it by Boodhist pilgrims is guaranteed.* 

(*Disputes concerning the use of the temple are on-going. There is a Shiva lingham at the site that Boodhist purists seek to have removed. But as the present author saw for himself, the nearby Shiva temple complex is now abandoned. The Boodhist revival has displaced the Hindoos, perhaps unfairly. Boodhists can be difficult.)

Thus here, as in Java, the British colonialists rediscovered and then restored a major site of Boodhist sanctity. The importance of the Mahabodhi Temple for Boodhists can hardly be over stated. This is the very place where the Boodha achieved liberation from the round of existence. In fact, in Boodhist theology, it is said that all Boodhas of every era - past and future - attained liberation at this place. For Boodhists it is synonymous with nirvana. It is the place of ultimate sanctity. It is to Boodhists what Mecca is to Mohametans and what Kashi is to the Hindoo. In this, as in other ways, the British rule of India has allowed the restoration of Boodhism in its historical homeland after the ravages of the Mahometans and the chauvinism of the Hindoos in earlier times. 

The author has been in Boodha Gaya - the small town that now surrounds the Temple - for several days. The weather is warm; the shade of the Peepel Tree is soothing. On the road in is the sign 'Welcome to Bodh Gaya, the Spiritual Centre of the Buddhist World'. It was the British, let it be known, who gave the Boodhist world back its spiritual centre. Some photographs of the temple as it is today are to be viewed below.

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We note that Boodhism, from the outset, was essentially anti-Brahminical. ("Not by birth" - tell it to the Dalai Lama!)

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic

In order to administer their great Empire of enlightened paternalism the British had to meet the formidable challenges of the Indian environment. It is said that the average lifespan of an English gentleman living in Calcutta and working for the East India Company, or later the Raj, was merely two or three monsoons. Evidence of this is plain enough in the Park Street South Cemetery. Grave after grave speaks of men – and many women too – who came to work in India and who died at an early age, usually from malaria or dysentery. The English found the heat and grime and dirt and disease of India almost unbearable.

Accordingly, they had to adopt strategies to ameliorate their situation and to overcome the challenges they faced. One such strategy was the institution of the hill station. In order to escape the conditions of the Indian plains they found cool places in the hills to which they could retreat. These were places, moreover, where they could re-create vestiges of English life as a means of preserving their own institutions, codes of civility and sense of identity amidst the exotic chaos that was India. The British hill stations were tiny enclaves of England transplanted to the cool hills of the Indian sub-continent.

On the plains, the British developed a distinctive architecture. They fused classical (Graeco-Roman) styles with many features adopted from Mahometan buildings. The Moghuls before them had developed imperial public buildings that would remain relatively cool in the scorching summers. The English took some of these features and blended them with their own architecture creating a unique Anglo-Saracen style that can be seen in such buildings as the India Museum – formerly the Royal Asiatic Society building – in Calcutta, and many other examples. Although undoubtedly British and European these buildings have broad porticos and walkways that create shade and cool spaces after the manner of Islamic buildings.

In the hill stations, however, there was no need to appropriate Saracenic styles. The cool environment meant that the British could confine themselves to European architectural modes without exotic oriental elements. In keeping with the function of the hill stations, moreover, these were private rather than public buildings and so there was more scope for individuality and personal expressions of taste and wealth. The challenges were different. There were two main ones. Firstly, the hills tended to be very steep, quite unlike the English landscape. And second, the whole environment was prone to earthquakes from time to time, a danger with which the English were not accustomed. Hill station architecture had to be adapted to these factors.

In the first place, the Victorian gothic cottage or manor house was blended with styles and modes more adapted to steep hills, specifically to Scottish baronial architecture. But this proved to be prone to earthquake. The Scottish baronial building is made of heavy stone and is several floors high. Through tribulation the British learnt that this was not well suited to an earthquake zone. Instead, they also turned to the Swiss chalet and blended elements of Swiss wooden architecture with English gothic styles. Thus they created a distinctive hill station architecture, the so-called Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic.

This is the type of architecture that one finds still in the Indian hill stations - Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic - although much of it is in advanced disrepair today. There are some well-preserved examples, but the modern Indians often show a blithe disregard for the heritage of the Raj era (and indeed for heritage in general). Worse, as well as suffering appalling neglect, Raj architecture has been crowded out by the tasteless inhuman concrete monstrosities (and earthquake death-traps) that are typical of post-colonial Indian building.

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Below readers can find a pictorial essay of such Himalayan Swiss Chalet Gothic buildings as the present writer was able to observe in Darjeeling, the great hill station once attached to Calcutta. The town was first settled as a sanitarium for British soldiers recovering from malaria, but later became the celebrated site of the British tea industry. It is now populated by Nepalis and Tibetans and Gorkas and, while still charming and a place of great beauty, much of its architecture, alas, has suffered the fate mentioned above.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Lear in Darjeeling

Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling, painting by Edward Lear

The Five Treasures of Snow (Mount Kangchenjunga), the third tallest peak in the world, is, as the author has related in previous posts, a mere fifty or so miles from Darjeeling and stands with awesome and imposing majesty upon the northern horizon. As it happens, the days have been exceptionally clear over the last week and so the mountain and its many companions in this eastern end of the Himalayas has been highly visible every morning and throughout the day. Not surprisingly, both locals and of course tourists have been taking the opportunity to photograph the mountain, while others just stand pondering from the various vantage points in the town that afford excellent views. There is, as far as this author is aware, no other major town - Darjeeling, the Queen of the British hill stations, boasts a population of about 100,000 - in such an immediate proximity to such a substantial mountain. It is what makes Darjeeling so remarkable. The British came here to escape the heat and more especially the mosquitoes (and so malaria) of the Indian plains, but they soon came to value the location just for its extraordinary natural beauty. 

Among the notable Englishmen who have resided here (leaving aside the notorious Aleister Crowley, who has been mentioned in a previous post) is none other than Mr. Edward Lear, the reputed father of the limerick and master of English nonsense. Readers may or may not be aware that the present author is a great enthusiast for the work of Mr. Lear and indeed has modelled some aspects of his own poetry and fiction upon his. Indeed, the author - writing under yet another assumed identity - has a website where he keeps his works of fiction, principally short stories, by the Leariferous name of Runcible Highway. See here. The word "runcible", need it be said, is possibly Mr. Lear's most enduring contribution to the English language, an all-purpose neologism adaptable to all adjectival occasions. He excelled at neologisms and other nonsense and brought a much-needed sense of the silly to otherwise sombre Victorian literature. The present author's own "stranded adjective technique", so-called, owes a direct debt to Mr. Lear. This was a man who was known to introduce himself as Mr Abebika Kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto Phashyph. 

What is less well known is that Edward Lear was also a (serious) painter of some note, and in particular he painted scenes from his various travels. At the top of this page readers will find a reproduction of  a painting he made of Mount Kanchenjunga as seen from Darjeeling during his time in the town. It is difficult to ascertain exactly from where the view was taken. The vantage point of Observation Hill has long been occupied by the Mahakal Mandir (Temple) and no temple is to be seen in Lear's painting, unless that is the standing object around which people are gathered in the left foreground. The path that leads into the distance would then be what is now called Mall Road, leading to the so-called 'Hermitage' near the Raj Bhavan. Certainly, the vegetation has changed, but the broad outlines of the topography are unfamiliar. All the same, the imposing presence of the mountain has not changed at all. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

John George Lang - The Usual Compliments

A sketch by John Lang.

It is some years since I first landed in Calcutta. I was in no way connected with the Government, and was consequently an "interloper" or "adventurer." These were the terms applied by certain officials to European merchants, indigo-planters, shopkeepers, artisans, barristers, attorneys, and others. It was not long before I made up my mind to become a wanderer in the East...

Too few Australians have heard of John George Lang (1816-1864). He deserves renown as Australia’s first novelist – he was an associate of Charles Dickens - but also as a traveler, an adventurer, a pioneering journalist, an orientalist and a prominent Hindoopile. He must count as one of the most colourful Australian characters of the first half of the 19th C. and yet he remains almost unknown in his native land. His Jewish father had been sent to Botany Bay as a convict with the First Fleet for the heinous crime of stealing spoons but was later emancipated and became a free citizen of early New South Wales. The colonial-born John took William Wentworth as his model and pursued a career in law as a path to better standing. With a gift for languages, he studied Greek and Latin, which won him passage to Cambridge. After that he travelled to British Hindoostan and it was there that he made his mark. His grave is there, in the hill station of Mussorie, and has recently been relocated and restored from neglect by the noted writer Ruskin Bond who has also advanced the cause of bringing Lang’s life and work to wider attention.

It was in the Modern Book Depot in Calcutta – an esteemed establishment run by the articulate Mr Prem Prekash – that the present writer encountered the new edition of Lang’s primary volume of travel writings ‘Wanderings in India and Other Sketches of Life in Hindostan’ – first published in 1859, with sections appearing earlier in Mr. Dicken’s magazine Household Words - and has been reading it during the sticky Calcutta afternoons. It is indeed a series of sketches, largely but not completely autobiographical, relating life in India with sympathetic insights into the land and people in the period prior to the Mutiny of 1857. 

Having himself first arrived in Calcutta, Mr. Lang, not being an employee of the East India Company, found himself regarded as an interloper, and taking to the role, he immersed himself into the India of his day by quickly acquiring the Hindoostanti and Persian languages. Thereupon, he entered into adventures in both law and journalism, bringing to both fields a characteristic Australian swagger, always on the wrong side of the Company. Most famously, he represented and won a landmark case for the Mahometan princess, the Ranee of Jhansi, in her struggle against the Company’s despotic policy of land seizures under the so-called Doctrine of Lapse. Where there was no male heir the Company would seize land from Indian nobles. Mr. Lang fought this injustice on her behalf with antipodean vigor and imagination and scored a major victory against the Company’s despotism.

Similarly, his journalistic career was marked by fights with the Company and with other vested interests. He led a newspaper in Calcutta called The Optimist and then, more famously, one called The Mofussilite, founded in 1845. He used these as vehicles for his quite prolific writing – stories, poems, essays, translations - and as forums for exposes of the maddening incompetence of British authorities in their dealings with Indians. This won him enemies in high places, sure enough, and he was at one time jailed for libel. Afterwards, he travelled throughout the land, enjoying the patronage of wealthy clients. In 1851 he again defeated the East India Company in a landmark legal case, on this occasion defending the rights of Mr. Jottee Prasad who had provided for British troops during the Sikh Wars but had then been cheated of what he was owed. Mr. Prasad, like the Ranee of Jhansi in the earlier instance, showered Lang with expensive gifts which enabled him to live as he pleased, game hunting, trekking and living a life of flamboyant indulgence among Indian nobility. He was, as his volume of Wanderings attests, a great lover of the Indians, often a champion of their rights, and an attentive student of their ways and customs.

For all of that, thankfully, he fails to qualify as a multicultural relativist sop in the contemporary mode. Wanderings is not a book that will please the post-colonial intellectual of our time. Lang is a British man through and through, although an Australian one, with a typical Australian disdain for overwrought authority. His advocacy for the rights of the Indians was not politically ideological. He was no traitor to the Empire. He merely believed – in an entirely English manner – in the rule of law, with an Australian egalitarian application of the same. He disliked rogues and corruption. In his untarnished view the good peoples of Hindoostan were subjects of Her Majesty, Empress of India, and as such had rights. 

Nor, might we say, was he a great writer, although he is certainly an entertaining one, direct, light, cogent, with keen observation and a good sense of humor, usually at the expense of the natives whose company he loved to keep. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the fifth chapter of Wanderings where he describes the exchange of “compliments” with a Maharajah:

THE USUAL COMPLIMENTS

Here sat the Maharajah on a Turkey carpet, and reclining slightly on a huge bolster. In front of him were his hookah, a sword, and several nosegays. His highness rose, came forward, took my hand, led me to the carpet, and begged of me to be seated on a cane-bottomed arm-chair, which had evidently been placed ready for my especial ease and occupation. After the usual compliments had passed, the Maharajah inquired if I had eaten well. But, perhaps, the general reader would like to know what are "the usual compliments."

Native Rajah: "The whole world is ringing with the praise of your illustrious name."

Humble Sahib: "Maharaj. You are very good."

Native Rajah: "From Calcutta to Cabul—throughout the whole of Hindoostan—every tongue declares that you have no equal. Is it true?"

Humble Sahib (who, if he knows anything of Asiatic manners and customs, knows that he must not contradict his host, but eat his compliments with a good appetite). "Maharaj."

Native Rajah: "The acuteness of your perceptions, and the soundness of your understanding, have, by universal report, became as manifest as even the light of the sun itself." Then, turning to his attendants of every degree, who, by this time, had formed a circle round me and the Rajah, he put the question, "Is it true, or not?"

The attendants, one and all, declare that it was true; and inquire whether it could be possible for a great man like the Maharajah to say that which was false.

Native Rajah: "The Sahib's father is living?"

Humble Sahib: "No; he is dead, Maharaj."

Native Rajah: "He was a great man?"

Humble Sahib: "Maharaj. You have honoured the memory of my father, and exalted it in my esteem, by expressing such an opinion."

Native Rajah: "And your mother? She lives?"

Humble Sahib: "By the goodness of God, such is the case."

Native Rajah: "She is a very handsome woman?"

Humble Sahib: "On that point, Maharaj, I cannot offer an opinion."

Native Rajah: "You need not do so. To look in your face is quite sufficient. I would give a crore of rupees (one million sterling) to see her only for one moment, and say how much I admired the intelligent countenance of her son. I am going to England next year. Will the Sahib favour me with her address?"

Humble Sahib: "Maharaj."

Here the Native Rajah calls to the moonshee to bring pen, ink, and paper. The moonshee comes, sits before me, pen in hand, looks inquiringly into my eyes, and I dictate as follows, laughing inwardly all the while: "Lady Bombazine, Munnymunt, ka uper, Peccadilleemee, Bilgrave Isqueere, Sunjons wood-Cumberwill;" which signifies this: "Lady Bombazine, on the top of the Monument, in Piccadilly, Belgrave Square, St. Johns Wood, Camberwell." This mystification must be excused by the plea that the Rajah's assertions of his going to Europe are as truthful as Lady Bombazine's address.

The Maharajah then gives instructions that that document shall be preserved amongst his most important papers, and resumes the conversation.

Native Rajah: "The Sahib has eaten well?"

Humble Sahib: "Maharaj."

Native Rajah: "And drunk?"

Humble Sahib: "Maharaj."

Native Rajah: "The Sahib will smoke hookah?"

Humble Sahib: "The Maharajah is very good."

A hookah is called for by the Rajah; and then at least a dozen voices repeat the order: "Hookah lao, Sahib ke waste." (Bring a hookah for the Sahib.) Presently the hookah is brought in. It is rather a grand affair, but old, and has evidently belonged to some European of extravagant habits. Of course, no native would smoke out of it (on the ground of caste), and it is evidently kept for the use of the Sahib logue.

While I am pulling away at the hookah, the musahibs, or favourites of the Rajah, flatter me, in very audible whispers. "How well he smokes!" "What a fine forehead he has!" "And his eyes! how they sparkle!" "No wonder he is so clever!" "He will be Governor-General some day." "Khuda-kuren!" (God will have it so.)

Native Rajah: "Sahib, when you become Governor-General, you will be a friend to the poor?"

Humble Sahib (speaking from the bottom of his heart). "Most assuredly, Maharaj."

Native Rajah: "And you will listen to the petition of every man, rich and poor alike."

Humble Sahib: "It will be my duty so to do."

Native Rajah (in a loud voice): "Moonshee!"

Moonshee (who is close at hand). "Maharaj, Protector of the Poor."

Native Rajah: "Bring the petition that I have laid before the Governor-General."

The moonshee produces the petition, and at the instance of the Rajah, reads, or rather sings it aloud. The Rajah listens with pleasure to its recital of his own wrongs, and I affect to be astounded that so much injustice can possibly exist. During my rambles in India I have been the guest of some scores of rajahs, great and small, and I never knew one who had not a grievance. He had either been wronged by the government, or by some judge, whose decision had been against him. In the matter of the government, it was a sheer love of oppression that led to the evil of which he complained; in the matter of the judge, that functionary had been bribed by the other party.

It was with great difficulty that I kept my eyes open while the petition—a very long one—was read aloud...

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Mausoleum of Job Charnock

Mr. Job Charnock Esq. was the man who founded the city of Calcutta, but not according to the High Court of West Bengal. In an odious piece of spiteful revisionism in 2003 the Court, led by a submission from a team of nationalist historians, ruled, to its great discredit, that Calcutta was a major trading port prior to Charnock and that all references to Mr. Charnock as founder of the city were to be erased in perpetuity from the official documents, records and school history books. This was part of the post-colonial tantrum that led to the trivial name change from the Angloform “Calcutta” to the more indigenous sounding but hardly more informative “Kolkata”.

The case of Job Charnock is a singular instance of the type of petty and juvenile revisionism with which post-colonial intellectuals and activists concern themselves. In this instance they do so against the evidence of the known facts. The simple truth is that prior to Job Charnock this salubrious location on the Hoogley River consisted of three villages and a jungle and not much else. The location, marked especially by the Kali temple at Kalighat, was mentioned in earlier documents, to be sure, but it nevertheless consisted of three villages and jungle and not much else. It was indeed Mr. Charnock, an officer of the British East India Company, who proposed it as the location for a trading base that subsequently became Fort William. And it was through the vision of Mr. Charnock that the location was developed by the East India Company, and later the Raj, as the ‘London of the East’, a great prosperous city of Hindoostan, a safe port just up river from the Bay of Bengal. Dress it up how they may, the resentful and small-minded Anglophobes who engineered the rewriting of the city’s history cannot defy the plain truth of the matter. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2008 edition, sets the record straight:

It is mostly due to Charnock's imagination, his vision, and his commitment to what he considered was right that the English transformed three small villages on an inhospitable tract of riverbank into what was to become the premier city in India ... Of all the great cities of modern India, Calcutta it is that owes its existence to the vision and commitment of one man.

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The mausoleum of Job Charnock is now in the grounds of the historic St. John’s Church near Delhousie Square in what was once the centre of Calcutta city. It is built of a local mineral named after him, Charnockite and houses the earliest European graves in Calcutta, considerably older than those graves found in the old cemetery at the south end of Park Road. (See previous post.)

The tomb of Mr. Charnock himself is marked in a beautiful Latin inscription, as follows:

D.O.M. Jobus Charnock, Armiger Anglus et nup. in hoc regno. Bengalensi dignissimum Anglorum Agens Mortalitatis suae exuvias sub hoc marmore deposuit, ut in spe beatae resurrectionis ad Christi judicis adventum obdormirent. Qui postquam in solo non-suo peregrinatus esset diu reversus est domum suae aeternitatis decimo die 10th Januarii 1692. Pariter Jacet Maria, Iobi Primogenita, Carole Eyre Anglorum hicci Praefecti. Conjux charissima. Quae Obiit 19 die Februarii A.D. 1696–97.

Translation:

In the hands of God Almighty, Job Charnock, English knight and recently the most worthy agent of the English in this Kingdom of Bengal, left his mortal remains under this marble so that he might sleep in the hope of a blessed resurrection at the coming of Christ the Judge. After he had journeyed onto foreign soil he returned after a little while to his eternal home on the 10th day of January 1692. By his side lies Mary, first-born daughter of Job, and dearest wife of Charles Eyre, the English prefect in these parts. She died on 19 February AD 1696–7.

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The mausoleum also includes the notable grave of William Hamilton, the British surgeon who, famously, cured the Mughal Emperor Farrukseer of swelling in the groin. The emperor had been due to marry a princess from Jodhpur; it was Hamilton’s cure that permitted the marriage to proceed. Farrukseer was delighted. Hamilton was handsomely rewarded. The East India Company was given the right to trade duty-free out of Calcutta and Hamilton received an elephant, a horse, five thousand rupees in money, two diamond rings, a jewelled aigrette, a set of gold buttons, and models of all his instruments in gold. His plaque includes an inscription in Persian:

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More intriguing than these notable graves are those marked in the paving around the mausoleum. In many cases they are so worn that the names, dates and inscriptions cannot be made out. These too are early graves of the men and women of the East India Company who first created a fort and trading post on the Hoogley River near the Bay of Bengal. What makes these graves intriguing is that most of them display the skull and cross bones. As with the graves in the Park Road cemetery there are no indications of Christian piety, and least of all crucifixes. Instead, in these cases, the conspicuous iconography is of the skull and crossed bones. Here are some samples:

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Park Road South Cemetery

A great treasure lies at the end of up-market Park Street, just before the Park Street Circus, in old Calcutta, namely the Park Street South Cemetery, the burial ground used by the British East India Company up until the mid 1800s. Once completely overgrown and subject to scandalous neglect in post-colonial India, it has now been cleaned up, guided by the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, and is open to the public. It is an oasis of calm and cool green beauty, with its monolithic tombs covered in emerald moss, an escape from the mad bustle of the modern streets. Here are some of the present author's photographs from two visits there:

Although ostensibly a Christian graveyard, it is noticeable that there are very few overtly Christian graves. There is not, for example, a single crucifix to be seen. (These, presumably, were regarded as excessively "papish" at the time.) But even the grave inscriptions rarely make reference to Christian piety. The inscription speak of the virtues of the deceased, their service, their commitment to duty, their dedication to their families, but only rarely is there a mention of their Christian beliefs or quotations from the Christian scriptures. All that is sacred is the memory of the departed. Here are a few sample inscriptions to illustrate the point:

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Two tombs in this remarkable graveyard stand out for special comment; that of Charles Stuart and that of Elizabeth Barwell, two of the more notable and extraordinary characters from British Calcutta in that era. 

CHARLES STUART

Charles Stuart, who travelled to India as a teenager, is better known as Hindoo Stuart and is commemorated under that appellation on his plaque. He lived in Calcutta for over fifty years. During that time he increasingly took on local customs and eventually identified himself as a Hindoo. He bathed in the Ganges every day, adopted Hindoo dress and practiced the devotions of the Hindoo religion. This in no way prevented his advancement in the army; he rose to the office of Major-General. Nor did he entirely reject the Christian faith; rather he seems to have understood Christ as an incarnation of deity alongside Krishna. He often exhorted his fellow Britishers to embrace Hindoo customs and, famously, wrote a pamphlet urging British ladies to shun European vestments and to take up comfortable Hindoo apparel. Its full title was: The Ladies Monitor, Being A Series of Letters First published in Bengal on the Subject of Female Apparel Tending to Favour a regulated adoption of Indian Costume And a rejection of Superfluous Vesture By the Ladies of this country With Incidental remarks on Hindoo Beauty, Whale-Bone Stays, Iron Busks, Indian Corsets, Man-Milliners, Idle Bachelors, Hair-Powder, Waiting Maids, And Footmen.

Stuart was buried, not cremated with his ashes cast into the Ganges according to Hindoo practice, but his grave is marked by the small Hindoo-style temple (mandir) that is one of the outstanding eccentricities of the Park Street burial ground. As a point of interest, British atheists in Calcutta, such as David Hare, were denied a tomb in "Christian ground", but this sensitivity did not extend to the "heathenism" of Hindoo Stuart.

(The present author, let it be noted, currently resides in Stuart Lane, just off Sudder Street, in central Calcutta.)

              

The Mandir-Style tomb of Hindoo Stuart

ELIZABETH BARWELL (Nee Sanderson)

It is reported that when young Elizabeth Sanderson arrived in Calcutta every bachelor in the city fell in love with her. She is famous for her great beauty, the Helen of British India. Young British officers and officials of the East India Company lined up for her hand. In one famous incident, she informed her suitors of her intention to attend a certain ball and let it be known what dress she would be wearing so that the young men could attire themselves in concert with her. On the occasion, no less than a dozen young men turned up at the ball all dressed in the same pea-green clothing. Eventually, she married the womaniser and gambler Richard Barwell, but tragically died of "fever" (malaria?) shortly afterwards. The tomb of Elizabeth Barwell - a huge stone pyramid - is the largest in the cemetery. 

              

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black