86 



COL. T. HOLBEIN flENDLEY, C.1.E V ON THE 



whom the Mahrattas could not keep in order, were treated by 

 them as outlaws, and they permitted their lowest officers to take 

 their lives without trial. Torture was freely used. Exposed 

 to the sun with his nose slit and his ears shaved from his head 

 the Bhil was burned to death, chained to a red-hot iron slab. 

 Hundreds were thrown over a cliff at Antur, and large bodies, 

 assembled under a promise of pardon, were beheaded and blown 

 from guns. Their women were mutilated, or smothered by 

 smoke and their children dashed to pieces against the stones." 

 At this time they too came under the protection of the British. 

 The country never suffered in this way from the Rajputs, who 

 if they did light with each other, or with the common foe, 

 protected the peasant, and were on good terms with the wild 

 Bhil. 



It is not wonderful that the Mahrattas and the Mohammedans 

 lost empire. As to the latter, when the intolerant Aurangzeb 

 imposed the polltax on all who were not Musalmans, he lost at 

 the same time the support of the Rajputs, and the Moghul 

 Empire soon fell to pieces, but even, at their best, the Moghuls 

 after Akbar did not know how to treat a brave people. The 

 emperor Jehangir, for example, writes of his efforts to put down 

 what he calls the robbers of these countries, and mentions as a 

 proof of the difficulties of the task, that in his own lifetime half- 

 a-million of them had to be put to death, but without much result. 



It was some time before Malwa and Rajputana recovered from 

 this terrible strain, and even now the recollection of the past 

 must go far to reconcile the inhabitants to the rule of a humane 

 paramount power, even although it is not of their own faith or 

 race. 



The immense improvement in the masters of these regions is 

 shown by the opinions of those who saw something of the horrors 

 of the past ; thus, for example, Sir John Malcolm, the great 

 Political Officer and historian of Central India, says, "the 

 unbounded liberality of the East India Company is quite un- 

 known in England, and indeed in the more remote parts of 

 Hindustan. Their munificence is proverbial amongst the whole 

 of the native powers with whom they have been concerned ; 

 their extreme liberality and good faith in all treaties, which has. 

 never been tarnished, establish them on a rock which no power 

 can shake." It can easily be imagined with what relief the mild 

 rule and non-interference of such a power must have been 

 received after so much oppression and misrule, and after the 

 unfortunate Barlow period there has been nothing to shake this 

 confidence as far as the treatment of the natives of those pro- 



