Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon

For the sons of gentry, entering the British army as an officer meant buying a commission and having a private income to supplement the low pay, but this burden could be avoided by entering the army of the East India Company as a cadet and rising through the ranks by promotion – which Henry Rawlinson proposed to do. Granted a charter on the last day of December 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I, the East India Company (more correctly ‘The Governor and Company of Merchants of London, Trading into the East Indies’) had exclusive rights to trade with the ‘East Indies’, a term covering the entire south-east expanse of Asia. Initially, the Company competed with the Dutch for the Indonesian spice trade, but after the ‘Massacre of Amboyna’ in 1623 when Company merchants and their servants were tortured and executed by the Dutch, the Company turned to the subcontinent of India.

In the mid-eighteenth century the East India Company was still a purely commercial company, importing and exporting goods from its bases at Bombay on the west coast, Madras on the east coast and Calcutta on the Hooghly River in the north-east. So successful was its business that it was able to loan money to the British government, but all this began to change, because conflict with the French and the crumbling of the Mughal Empire provoked the Company’s intervention in political and military struggles in India, initially in the south and east. In 1756 the new nawab (ruler) of Bengal captured Calcutta, where scores of his prisoners suffocated in an airless room, an incident dubbed ‘the Black Hole of Calcutta’. In revenge, the Company’s army, led by Robert Clive, recovered Calcutta and took control of the entire province of Bengal. The land tax revenue from this new territory enabled the Company to build up a sophisticated civil service and an extensive army, which gave them the means to conquer further territory and defeat the French.

By this time, many Company employees found themselves able to amass huge fortunes, often by unscrupulous means, while soldiers and officers were eager for further military campaigns because of the resulting opportunities to acquire loot and prize money. These ‘nabobs’ (a corruption of nawab) would retire to Britain with their new wealth, causing much resentment of their lavish lifestyles and their efforts to gain political advancement. Perceived as being answerable only to its shareholders, the Company was the target of several hostile government reports, and with mounting debts, the Company’s Board of Directors was obliged to accept a degree of government control under Acts of Parliament in 1773 and 1784.

The East India Company, also known as John Company, became primarily an administrative rather than a commercial body, acting as an agent of the government and no longer relying on trade, but on the collection of land taxes from the territories it ruled. The Governor of the Bengal Presidency, based at Calcutta, was now also the Governor-General of India, exercising superiority over the Bombay and Madras presidencies. By the time Henry arrived in India, large swathes of the area now divided into India and Pakistan were ruled by the Company through conquest, or indirectly through alliances with hundreds of small states ruled by Indian princes. The Company’s army was 300,000 strong and was split between the three presidencies; it accounted for over three-quarters of the Company’s expenditure. Most of the East India Company troops were native sepoys (from the Persian word sipahi, ‘soldier’) and their officers were mainly British, but all were regarded as inferior to the regular British army, a judgement based on class rather than efficiency.

Having been nominated directly, Henry could have sailed for India immediately, as he was not obliged to attend the Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe, near Croydon. Instead, he chose to receive private tuition from Thomas Myers, a mathematician and geographer and formerly a professor at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. Myers was now living and teaching at Blackheath village, a small and affluent suburb just over 5 miles south-east of London. ‘Here’, Henry noted, ‘I learned Hindestanee and Persian, surveying, advance Mathematics, Military drawing, fencing and all other requisites for an Indian soldier’s life.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Numerous languages were spoken throughout India, but it was important to have some knowledge of the Hindustani language (known today as Urdu), because it was the main language of communication between East India Company officials and the natives. It had its origins in the Muslim courts and cities of northern India. For hundreds of years Persian had been the language of administration in India, although by the nineteenth century the version of Persian used in India was very different to the language used in Persia. In Persian, Hindustan meant ‘land of the Hindus’.

Impatient to embark on his new career, Henry regarded the six months spent at Blackheath with Myers as wasted. By the end of 1826 he was ready to leave on the first available ship for India, but was destined to be disappointed, because early in the new year he fell ill of typhus fever during an epidemic at Bristol when he was staying with his aunt and uncle. He was looked after by his beloved sister Maria and for that reason he later remembered this moment as one of his happiest. Spring and summer 1827 were spent in convalescence at Chadlington in the continuous company of his three younger brothers George, Richard and Edward, who were also home from school following a bout of the fever. Henry ordered them to do constant broadsword exercises, while he entertained them with tales of the war with Burma and graphically hacked the trunk and lower branches of a tree near the house in imitation of the terrible wounds he intended inflicting on his barbarian opponents. This was an idyllic time for Henry and his younger brothers, all innocent of the fact that one of them would be dead and the rest grown men before Henry set foot in England again.

After the long months of waiting, the seventeen-year-old nearly missed setting sail for India. Thinking there was time to spare, he had gone to see one of his father’s horses win in the races at Cheltenham, but a messenger rushed up to him with the news that the ship was about to leave London Docks for Portsmouth. Hurrying back to London, Henry managed to get kitted out and rapidly purchased around one hundred books. Even without the necessity of buying a commission, it was still an expensive undertaking to send Henry as a cadet to India, as his passage alone cost over £100, while his father spent a further £500 on his kit, and he himself would only be paid from his arrival at Bombay. Henry managed to reach the south coast just before the 644-ton chartered ship Neptune set sail for Bombay from Portsmouth harbour on 6 July 1827. An old East Indiaman vessel built in 1815, it was captained by its owner John Cumberlege.

The Neptune followed the fastest route available, around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, but even so the journey lasted four months. From the outset Henry was desperately homesick, missing above all else his two surviving sisters, Maria and Georgiana. Having promised Maria that he would keep a journal to send home, he often recorded his adolescent feelings of misery and anxiety in a style that was intimate, spontaneous, often poetic and lacking the polished structure and formality of his later writing. He began the journal on his very first day: ‘Shook hands with my brother Abram and stept into the boat at Portsmouth which was about to bear me from my native shore, to exchange the society of parents, friends, brothers and sisters whom I love with an affection never to be shaken for a life of misery and sorrow among strangers and barbarians. During my crossing over to the ship the beautiful blue waves, glittering beneath a July sun and placid as the calm I once enjoyed, lulled my feelings into something like repose, and I reached the ship Neptune in a species of mental stupefaction … The calling of the sea makes any head so giddy that I can hardly tell what I am about, and my fellow passengers so disturb my attention that it is only when I sit by myself on the poop and view the moon beams glancing on the silvery sea that I can believe I am wretched, miserable, alone, in one word that I am an exile.’

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Three days later, he felt no better: ‘It is now Saturday July 7th 6 o’clock in the evening and I am sitting alone in my cabin writing this commencement to my journal. Maria, if your bright blue eyes should ever chance to rest on these promised pages, know that I am now thinking of your lovely face which, perchance, I never may behold again, and I swear that I may be destined to pass the remainder of my days in banishment and misery. Whenever the natural instability of my disposition may bring me to engage in a quarrel, I will think of your angelic form, and I shall be the coolest of the cool, and though you seem to think that I shall never remember you, be informed that not a day or an hour will ever elapse without your sweet face being presented to my memory, and whatever may be my fate, prosperous or unhappy, good or bad, I never never will forget you. I think I have been writing a great deal of nonsense which can be of no interest to anyone, but I was alone, I was unhappy, the bitterness of my feelings seemed to overpower my understanding, and I have shed tears of the bitterest anguish. We are now sailing down the channel at the rate of 9 knots an hour, but every league I proceed adds but another link to the chain of my misery, for I am sailing farther and farther away from everything which I love in this world. I intend commencing hard fagging [hard work] as soon as this cabin, which I have with another man of the same following, is in tolerable order … now for a tune on my flute and then a walk upon deck.’

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The next day, Sunday, Henry wrote: ‘I am in rather better spirits today, I am come down to my cabin to proceed with my journal. We are sailing down the channel at a tolerable pace and they say today we shall pass Land’s End.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Although less homesick, he was awkward and unhappy in his relationships with the other passengers, being constrained by etiquette in approaching them. He felt especially ignored by Sir John Malcolm, who was on his way to Bombay to take up the governorship: ‘Sir John now speaks to every other passenger on board except me, and as I cannot get introduced to him I see no probability of our ever conversing.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Misery again overwhelmed Henry: ‘I am sure I shall hate India and [wish] that I was once more in England – could I but once more see Georgiana and Maria, there is no situation however menial that I feel at present I had not rather undergo in my native land than be a private among strangers and savages … the rest of my life will be merely a mechanical employment of the body … I cannot write without becoming unhappy so I had better conclude for the present and read Scott’s Life of Napoleon.’

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The advice given in The Cadet’s Guide to India was to pass the time usefully and ‘to devote two or three hours in the morning to the study of the Hindoostan language; then let reading, or drawing, fill up the space after dinner, after which he [the cadet] will be at leisure and like to walk the quarter-deck with his companions, or partake of their rational sports’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Henry began to follow this advice, as seen in his journal entry for 9 July: ‘It has been a very uncomfortable day and I have been all day in my cabin reading, fagging and playing the flute. Begin to get rather more comfortable, though I cannot as yet reflect with any comfort on my future destiny. Until I become tolerably habituated to banishment, I should deem it best to think as little as possible of my former happiness … Maria and Georgiana – I still think of you, and whatever pain the thought may cost me, the recollection of my home and infancy shall never be forgotten.’

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Henry’s ambitions began to stir when he was finally noticed: ‘Sir John drank wine with me at dinner … it will be no very difficult thing to bring myself into his notice as most of my fellow passengers are sad stupes. He scribbles poetry so I’ll try an ode … We have been crossing the Bay of Biscay these last two days and I have hitherto escaped sickness. I think myself pretty safe now for the rest of my voyage.’

(#litres_trial_promo) But for 11 July he recorded: ‘Rather stormy and very heavy sea which made me a little sick but nothing to signify – have been talking to Sir John Malcolm – shall never persuade myself to cringe and toad-eat him as some of the fellows do … indeed I cannot think he likes it as he is a very clever man himself and often says that everyone’s promotion must depend on his own talents and he will never give a place to any one unfit for it, however strongly recommended – can get no one to join me in my Hindoostanee as they are all only just beginning. Played some whist … and by a continued run of good cards cleaned them out of 14 shillings. I have now, Maria, written one sheet of my promised journal and will send it by the first conveyance.’

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The next day a severe storm threatened: ‘We have now passed the Bay of Biscay and they say the coast of Spain was to be seen … After dinner there was a tolerable commotion as the Captain … prognosticated a hurricane. The sails were all taken down or furled, the decks were cleared and we all waited in anxious suspense. The stormy Petrel skimmed along the waves, the sky became covered with lurid and spiral clouds and the waves rose portentously – however like the fable of the mountain and the mouse, while we were thus all raised to the highest pitch of expectation, a few gulls huddled fitfully among the shrouds, a few large heavy drops descended upon the deck and it was gone. The waves again subsided, the sails were unfurled and we soon left far behind us the boisterous and uneasy waters of the Bay of Biscay. This is my first adventure and I flatter myself I have described it very prettily.’

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A week into the voyage brought better weather, but Henry’s mood remained melancholy: ‘This has been the first warm day. The evening was delightful – the blue expanse of heaven where the stars glittered with ethereal splendour was lighted occasionally by gleaming meteors, and the silent and placid water over which we glided appeared frequently ignited. The luminous nature of the phosphorus sometimes sparkling and sometimes winding in wreaths of transient light around the vessel occasioned this extraordinary appearance … had I been in the company of Georgiana or Maria, I had [would have] been happy – but real pure happiness I have lost for at least 10 years if not for ever. In future every pleasure I enjoy must be embittered with the reflexions that I have no one who loves me to share it with me, and what are all the delights and enjoyments of the body compared with pure genuine and unsophisticated love!’

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The next day, Henry suffered his first proper bout of seasickness: ‘Very high sea and the waves were really for some time beautiful, but the ship rolled so, that I was for the first time sea sick and so was deprived of the pleasure of viewing them – however after I had slept for an hour, eaten a hearty dinner and drank lots of wine I was quite well.’

(#litres_trial_promo) He went on to regret the lack of women on board – these was only one (Sir John’s daughter), and she was married. Gradually, Henry became more confident with the people on board and professed admiration for Sir John, who ‘must be an exceedingly clever person, and he seems possessed of such a fund of anecdotes that though he has been unremittingly employed in telling stories ever since he came on board, he still goes on at such a rate as to keep the whole table in a continual roar in which he himself always heartily joins’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Many of his tales were of Persian history and literature, which inspired Henry to resume studying Persian when he reached India. Sir John also believed it his duty to urge all the cadets on board to strive for the greatest success, encouraging them throughout the journey by lending them books and giving them tasks to perform, such as copying out his manuscripts.

At last Henry was enjoying himself: ‘After tea we have plenty of amusements beginning with fencing and singlestick – afterwards dancing and music and finishing with chess, cards, backgammon &c. We have a little band on board belonging to the ship consisting of clarionets, fifes, trumpet, violin and drum, which they play reels, waltzes, the quadrilles as much as we like. Sir John goes on laughing, talking and story telling as much as ever … I have not yet given way to my temper at all, notwithstanding I have had many provocations.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Henry also recorded that he was now ‘quite an expert sailor, having been up higher [in the rigging] than any of the Passengers except McDougal, who is a regular dab at it. All laugh at him about his foolhardiness, but I must own that I admire it.’

(#litres_trial_promo) His own bravado and agility would later serve him well when climbing the rock face of Bisitun.

What Henry regretted was his tendency to drink too much wine, and after one particularly heavy session drinking punch, he felt quite unwell and was ‘determined to be abstemious’,

(#litres_trial_promo) though soon after he was drinking his brother Abram’s health on his birthday ‘in a bumper of claret’.

(#litres_trial_promo) He might try to be abstemious, but he could not avoid wine and beer altogether, for the water on board was so bad that Henry refused to drink it. Personal hygiene must also have been sparing, to judge from the advice given to cadets: ‘Washing of linen is not permitted at sea, as the fresh water cannot be spared for it. Hence it will be proper for the Cadet not to change his linen oftener than is absolutely necessary to his own comfort and decent appearance before other persons.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The cadet manual set great store by proper appearance, but said nothing about smell, although now they were in a warm climate, the cadets could bathe in a sail filled with sea water. On one occasion in a dead calm, they ignored the advice of the Neptune’s crew concerning sharks and dived into the sea for a swim, until a cry of ‘War Shark’ caused a frantic rush for the ship, with Henry being first to haul himself up on a rope. The crew caught the huge shark, and Henry recorded that ‘they then cut a slice out of his Cheek and gave us shark cutlets for breakfast, which I beg to state were extremely tasty’.

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After only a fortnight into the voyage, Henry was already overcoming his homesickness, as he admitted to Maria: ‘this sheet is written in a different tone from the last, but my dearest Maria, though I am now tolerably comfortable, I still and ever shall think of my absent sisters with the deepest affection and hoping they will not forget me’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Towards the end of August, he published his first issue of Herald of the Deep, a weekly newspaper, copied out by hand, for the amusement of the passengers, in which he included anonymously poems that he had written. Amusements aside, Henry could not avoid the reality that he was travelling to India to join the army, whose discipline was made apparent towards the end of the journey when a private of the Dragoons was court-martialled for impudence to his corporal and received a sentence of one hundred lashes. ‘The flagillators would not cut it in tight,’ Henry noted, ‘so that the fellow got tolerably well off, never uttering a sound during the process – the punishment was nothing to what I had been led to expect.’

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On Friday 26 October 1827, Bombay came into view, and from now on Henry regarded the date of 26 October as very special, ‘my fatal day during all the early part of my life – especially in cycles of 6 years’.

(#litres_trial_promo) As the ship approached the coast of India and the view of Bombay grew steadily clearer, Henry wrote an excited journal entry, the last of the voyage: ‘I cannot be melancholy now, but Oh! How I wish you were here to enjoy my pleasure with me – the picture is beautiful – islands, mountains, boats, ships, tents, blacks, whites, browns, greens, Oh it is lovely after 4 months of sea and sky.’

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Two: From Poona to Panwell (#ulink_f5f039be-10ed-59b0-be49-d017a83162bb)

The low-lying fortified island of Bombay (now called Mumbai) was known as Bom Bahia (‘good bay’) when it was a Portuguese possession. In 1661 it became British when ceded to Charles II as part of the dowry of his Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza, and seven years later it was leased to the East India Company for an annual rent of £10. The city with its sheltered harbour developed rapidly as more islands were reclaimed from the marshland, and apart from the fort and esplanade, there was an extensive native town. Over two decades before Henry Rawlinson’s arrival, a fire broke out in the fort, which led to the destruction of many houses, but allowed improved rebuilding along wider streets.

Rawlinson initially attended cadet classes, but was soon attached as ensign, the lowest-ranking officer, to the 2nd European Infantry Regiment, known as the Bombay Buffs. His first military duty was Saturday 1 December 1827, when he attended the early morning muster of the regiment. The next day he agreed to accompany a shooting party, explaining to his sisters that Sundays were not regarded as a holy day of rest: ‘This day is considered here as no more than any other day with respect to shooting, playing billiards &c. Indeed it is generally pitched upon us an excursion day; notwithstanding how much your ideas of propriety may be shocked, you must not consider us at anything particular in us rising at 2 in the morning, and having sent our servants on before with lots of tuck, in starting with guns, powder and shot on a shooting excursion to Kourlee in Salsette.’

(#litres_trial_promo) They arrived just as it was light enough to begin shooting, and, wrote Rawlinson, ‘No sooner had we began to beat than four quails got up, at which of course I immediately blazed away, and running to pick up my game was rather astounded at perceiving the effect of my shott in a group of beaters … lying prostrate and bleeding on the ground – they had just left the road to begin beating, and being hidden from my sight by a thin bush received the whole contents of my charge to their no slight confusion and dismay – only one was hurt at all seriously, who had about a dozen shot a few inches in his legs and face – however he was speedily reconciled to his condition by a douceur of 2 rupees.’

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This was the first time Rawlinson had seen anything of the Indian countryside, which to him appeared ‘extremely prepossessing. The woods were filled with birds of the brightest colours and butterflies of a magnitude which [would] rather surprise Georgiana.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Wildlife abounded, and conservation was never an issue, only the sport. The day’s shooting was fairly successful, and Rawlinson told his sisters: ‘The following items compose my days sport – 6 beaters, more or less damaged, 3 black pigeons, one splendid kingfisher, one muena (a most beautiful blue and scarlet bird), one hoopooe, 2 quails both lost in the long grass, one hawk, one rook, one gull, one paddy bird and eight sand snipers – we were much disappointed at not meeting with any partridges … We had lots of beer and returned home very merry at about 9 oclock at night racing our buggies all the way.’