White Mughals (53 page)

The
Khazan wa-Bahar
, another contemporary Deccani gardening treatise, contains a great deal of detailed information which would have been of interest to James. This is especially so in the section on the planting of fruit trees, which it recommends should be done by the light of the waning moon if the gardener wishes to promote the growth of fruit rather than the trees’ size. To prevent disease the earth should be fertilised with pigeon dung and olive-leaf extract, while wild onions should be planted around the tree’s base. The anonymous writer also has advice to those, like James, who had problems getting their mango trees to fruit. A barren tree, he advises, will suddenly spring into life if it is loudly threatened with the axe, or if the appropriate Koranic verses are tied to its branches.
⁷³
Had James read the
Khazan wa-Bahar
he would have learned that he could have produced seedless grapes by applying musk and opium to the roots of his vines; grow bright-red apples by pegging down the lower branches with an iron bar; and stimulate his peach trees to fruit by inserting pine or willow cuttings in the roots. He would also have learned of some intriguing methods of ecologically sound pest control: black hellebore and mustard planted at the entrance of a garden would keep away snakes, while filling his vegetable patch with turnips, cabbage, radish and broad beans would free the garden from mosquitoes.

Another concept that James would have come across among the garden connoisseurs of Hyderabad was the lovely idea of the evening garden. By day, the ‘flowers of the sun’ were there to be admired for their beauty; but as the sun set at the end of the day, other ‘flowers of the night’ came to the fore, to be enjoyed for their scent or for the glow of their foliage in the light of the moon. In these specially planted areas, marble pavilions would be arranged with bolsters and carpets for nights of wine, music, poetry and the company of women, all surrounded by beds of carefully selected night flowers. Here the heady perfume of tuberose would mix with that of
chandni
, the moon-flower, said to diffuse the sweetest perfume on nights when the moon shone brightly. The importance of such scents was a central concept in Islamic thought, an idea which derived from the Hadith, attributed to the Prophet: ‘Scent is the food of the soul, and the soul is the vehicle of the faculties of man.’
⁷⁴

It is impossible now to say whether James was familiar with the finer points of the aesthetics of the Deccani garden, and whether he made an attempt to maintain his Residency
char bagh
according to these traditions. However, given what is known about his fondness for Hyderabadi food, architecture, clothes, poetry and women, and given his feeling for plants and gardening, it would be extraordinary if he did not. Certainly there are two clear hints that he was indeed as
au fait
with current fashions in Hyderabadi garden design as one would have expected. The first is his eclectic choice of trees for the Residency, many of which are still alive and which show a close similarity to those selected at the same time by Mah Laqa Bai Chanda in the shady walled garden she built to surround her mother’s tomb below the hill of Maula Ali, notably the extensive use of the relatively rare
mulsarry
(or Indian medlar).
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The second hint is the Residency pigeon tower, and the pigeon pots which still survive in the ruins of Khair un-Nissa’s
mahal.
Pigeon-fancying was never a feature of the Georgian gentleman’s house, and no other examples are known in British India. It was however central to the idea of refinement in the social life of a Mughal nobleman, with flying pigeons regarded as an essential part of the cultivated enjoyment of a gentleman’s pleasure garden. This seems to have been especially the case in Hyderabad: the
Khazan wa-Bahar
dedicates a whole chapter to the subject of the pigeon and its place in the garden of a civilised Hyderabadi
amir.

Not only were pigeons supposed to keep snakes away, and their excrement deemed ideal for the cultivation of fruit trees; their voices—or rather their billing and cooing—were believed to be stimulating for the human intellect. The anonymous author of the
Khazan
advises his reader to burn incense and to mix
mastaki
(mastic or terbinth) and honey in the pigeons’ water, in order to keep them content and happy in the garden.
⁷⁵

Somehow, it seems impossible to imagine that James and Khair un-Nissa did not closely follow this advice.

After the departure of the Palmers in April 1802, explicit details of the daily life and routine of James’s two children and their young mother become frustratingly elusive. It is as if they have retreated out of the sudden shaft of sunlight provoked by the visit of Fyze and the General, and disappeared back into the shadows. We know they are there, and it is clear that James is increasingly spending his time with them; but only occasionally do the clouds roll back to let the sun briefly break through once more. One day Khair and Sahib Allum are glimpsed sending their greetings and more parcels of bangles to Fyze and Fanny Palmer; on another the two children are being sent off to Dr Ure to be inoculated against smallpox, or possibly cholera: as James reported to the General in October 1802, ‘Both my little ones here have been
vaccinated,
and are enjoying excellent health and spirits … By the bye, I have prevailed on Nizzy and Solomon to render vaccination general, by introducing the practice into their own families.’
⁷⁶

Nevertheless, reading carefully between the lines, it is possible to piece together some fairly detailed information about James’s domestic life and the choices that he made as to the upbringing of his young family. It is quite clear, for example, that the children were brought up by Khair and her mother—assisted by a great retinue of serving girls,
aseels
and wetnurses—in a more or less entirely Hyderabadi environment. They were raised as Muslims, had Mughal names, spoke Persian (or possibly Deccani Urdu) as their first language (Khair un-Nissa spoke no English
⁷⁷
) and wore typical aristocratic Hyderabadi dress. They do not seem to have been introduced to the Europeans of the Residency,
⁷⁸
and given their aristocratic status were probably not encouraged to play with the other Anglo-Indian children on the campus, such as Henry Russell’s child by his unnamed (and therefore probably non-aristocratic) mistress.
⁷⁹
All the indications are that the
mahal
was like a detached fragment of the old city dropped into the middle of the semi-Anglicised world of the Residency, and that James’s children mixed mainly with the children of the
zenanas
of other Hyderabadi nobles, and especially with the inhabitants of Aristu Jah’s mansion.
⁸⁰

Held firmly within the cultural and religious embrace of Mughlai Hyderabad, the children must presumably have undergone the normal cycle of ceremonies and initiations that would mark the childhood of any other Deccani Muslim child of their rank and status. The birth itself was the first staging-post on this ceremonial journey. On the day of delivery, almost as soon as the baby had been cleaned and swaddled, the call to prayer, the
Azan
, would be recited into the babe’s right ear, followed by the
Kalima
(or creed), which would be read into the left. The idea was to introduce the holy words into the ears of the child as it first opened its eyes, after which
paan
would be distributed among eagerly waiting friends and relatives. Then a little piece of dried date, chewed by a respected scholar or
qazi
, would be inserted into the child’s mouth, followed shortly afterwards by a little honey water, sucked through a piece of clean, soft cloth—the former being a Middle Eastern custom, the latter a Hindu one, both of which were absorbed into and became part of the composite Deccani Mughal culture. After this, the child would be applied to the breast for the first time. As was the custom among aristocratic Mughal women, Khair un-Nissa did not breastfeed her children herself, instead giving them to a wetnurse, who in some Mughal
zenanas
could continue feeding the child up to the age of three or even four.
⁸¹

The choice of a wetnurse was considered a matter of the greatest importance, as it was believed that with her milk were transferred some of her spiritual and moral qualities. Honest, pious, good-tempered women of unimpeachable reputation were sought out for the job, especially those from grand or Sayyid families who had for one reason or another fallen into poverty; after they had finished suckling, they and their own children were brought to live in the family mansion as honoured and respected members of the household.
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fq
Nothing is known of the family backgrounds of Sahib Allum and Sahib Begum’s wetnurses, Ummat ul-Fatimeh and Maham Aloopaim[?],
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but both continued to live in Sharaf un-Nissa’s household, with their sons and daughters, and were still there forty years later when Sharaf un-Nissa sent their greetings to her two beloved grandchildren.
⁸³

Two or three days into breastfeeding a girl, another small rite of passage took place. In India it has always been the custom—though the practice is completely unknown in the West—to squeeze the nipples of a suckling child so that small ‘milkdrops’ emerge. This is believed to be of great medicinal value, and is said to ensure the future well-being of the breast. In the case of female babies of Mughal families, the brother of the infant was asked to suckle the ‘milkdrop’ so produced; this was believed to create a deep bond of love between a brother and his sister, as the Emperor Jehangir recorded in his diaries. His sister Shakar un-Nissa Begum was, he writes,

The custom is still current among many Indian families—Hindu and Muslim—today. It was certainly the practice in Mughal families of James Kirkpatrick’s period, and the women of Khair un-Nissa’s
mahal
would no doubt have expected Sahib Allum to taste his sister’s ‘milkdrops’ in just this manner.
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fs

On the sixth, seventh or ninth day after the birth, a Mughal family would normally hold the
chatthi
, or birth celebration, when the mother and child would be bathed and clothed in costly new dresses—another Mughal borrowing from Hindu tradition. The same day, the
aqiqa,
or the first shaving of the child’s head, would take place with a silver razor; the shaved head was rubbed in saffron, and goats sacrificed (two for a boy, one for a girl) to remove impurities and preserve against the evil eye. Alms would then be distributed among the poor.

The evening of the
chatthi,
tradition dictated that the house would be cleaned and illuminated, and guests entertained by fireworks, singers and dancing girls, as well as feasted with the most precious and costly food. Guests would present gifts of infants’ clothes, such as embroidered
kurtas
and
topis
(long shirts and skullcaps), with further trunkloads of presents—jewels, toys and sweetmeats—being presented by the mother’s relations. Finally, at the climax of the
chatthi
, the mother of the child, along with her girlfriends, would carry the infant into an open courtyard and then, for the first time, ‘
tare dikhana
’, show the child the stars in the night sky. While this was happening, so the Mughals believed, the child’s destiny was written by the angel whose duty it was to record a person’s fate.
⁸⁶

Khair un-Nissa, one can presume, would have insisted on all the basic traditional ceremonies being performed for her children: the remark in Sahib Allum’s birth note, that Khair called her son Ali after dreaming of the Prophet’s son-in-law, would seem to point to her particular piety. Nor does James seem likely to have opposed his children being brought up as Muslims. He had, after all, been prepared himself to undergo a formal conversion ceremony to marry Khair, and although there is no unequivocal evidence that he regularly practised his new faith, or regarded himself as an active Muslim, his mother-in-law, who lived closely with him, certainly believed him to be such, as did his Munshi, Aziz Ullah.
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What is certain is that James respected Islam and made sure, for example, that the Residency gave money to Hyderabad Sufi shrines. But his attraction to the faith is likely to have been as much cultural as religious. His own letters to Europeans deliberately use vague and Deist terms for God—he refers at one stage for example to ‘Bounteous Providence’
⁸⁷
—rather than more specifically sectarian terms such as ‘Christ’ or ‘Allah’, and this vague approach to religious boundaries would seem to have fitted in well with the widespread Indian belief, very much lying at the heart of Deccani culture with its strong Sufi and Bhakti influences, that all faiths were really one, and that there were many different paths up the mountain. Hyderabad’s principal festivals, after all, were Shi’ite but were attended by Sunni Muslims, Christians and Hindus alike. Clear European ideas of the firm and heavily defended frontiers separating different religions were quite alien to Hyderabadi culture, and in this fluid and porous atmosphere James’s broadly Deist approach to his faith would have fitted in easily both with those Europeans who had embraced the ideas of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and with the general outlook of the Hyderabadis around him.
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