Volume 1

Rambles and recollections of an Indian official / [Sir William Henry Sleeman].

  • William Henry Sleeman
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rambles and recollections of an Indian official / [Sir William Henry Sleeman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    however, soon disappearing, and its possessors being obliged either to conceal it or go out of the country to enjoy it. Such rulers thus found their courts and capitals deprived of all those men of wealth and respectability who adorned the courts of princes in other countries, and embellished, not merely their capitals, but the face of their dominions in general with their chateaus and other works of ornament and utility. Much more of this sort passed between us, and seemed to make an impression upon him ; for he promised to do all that I had recommended to him. Poor man ! he can have but a short and miserable existence, for that dreadful disease, the leprosy, is making sad inroads in his system already.^ His uncle, Raghunath Rao, was afflicted with it; and, having understood from the priests that by drowning himself in the Ganges (taking the “samadh”), he should remove all traces of it from his family, he went to Benares, and there drowned himself, some twenty years ago. He had no children, and is said to have been the first of his family in whom the disease showed itself.* 1 This chief died of leprosy in May, 1838. [W. H. S.] ^ Raghunath Rao was the first of his family invested by the Peshwa with the government of the Jhansi territory, which he had acquired from the Bundelkhand chiefs. He went to Benares in 1795 to drown him- self, leaving his government to his third brother, Sheoram Bhao, as his next brother, Lachchhman Rao, was dead, and his sons were considered incapable. Sheoram Bhao died in 1815, and his eldest son, Krishan Rao, had died four years before him, in 1811, leaving one son, the late Raja, and two daughters. This was a noble sacrifice to what he had been taught by his spiritual teachers to consider as a duty towards his family ; and we must admire the man while we condemn the religion and the priests. There is no country in the world where parents are more reverenced than in India, or where they more readily make sacrifices of all sorts for their children, or for those they consider as such. We succeeded in 1817 to all the rights of the Peshwa in Bundelkhand, and, with great generosity, converted the viceroys of Jhansi and Jalaun into independent sovereigns of hereditary principali- ties, yielding each ten lakhs of rupees. [W. H. S.] The statement in the note that Raghunath Rao I. “went to Benares in 1795 to drown himself” is inconsistent with the statement in the text that this event
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