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There
are two silver urns placed prominently in the City Palace in
jaipur. Visitors often express themselves puzzled by their
presence, particularly since the attendants are quick to
point out that these are the largest silver objects in the
world, as recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
But more interesting is the reason these urns — there were
three altogether, but one has since been lost — came to be
made. According to Hindu belief, crossing the seas to
journey to distant lands inhabited by heathen races was an
act so unholy, it brought upon the perpetrator untold
calamities. Not content with that, it was deemed that the
contaminated person would also lose his caste in the Indian
social context.
Till such time as travel remained in the realm of the
impossible, this suited everybody just fine, but with
increased interaction with the British in India, and the
regular plying of the P&O liners to Mumbai, the temptation
to travel to England and other pockets of Europe became too
strong to resist. Sometimes, of course, travel was
necessitated by the demands of the office: a war had to be
fought in distant Haifa, or a treaty signed in Versailles.
When the Maharaja of Jaipur expressed his desire to travel
to London, the consternation in his court was managed
somewhat with the thought that he would bathe with water
carried from the river Ganga, and dine on food cooked
by his accompanying chefs who would use the same 'Indian'
water for their culinary preparations.
The large silver urns served their maharaja well, but left
no one in doubt about the seriousness with which the people
of Rajasthan took their rituals. A martial race, they went
to the battlefields with their gold amulets and damascened
swords to kill and be killed: but equally obligatory was
their visit to their temples where they damascened swords to
kill and be killed: but equally obligatory was their visit
to their temples where they paid obeisance before their gods
and goddesses. If they were killed, their wives committed
jauhar, the mass leap into funeral pyres which, we are
informed by the state's bards who still sing of such trials,
was conducted with dignity, and in the nature of a
celebration. Difficult to believe? Perhaps, but the
voluntary imprints left behind by their tiny hands at the
entrance walls of forts before they came to their fiery end,
tell a somewhat different tale. The honour of a fort, we are
again informed by the same minstrels, lay not in remaining
unconquered, but in the number of such handprints collected
at its entrance gate. |
