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REMAPPING

THE INDIAN

POSTCOLONIAL

CANON
Remap, Reimagine and Retranslate

NIRMALA MENON
Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon
 Nirmala Menon

Remapping the Indian

Postcolonial Canon
Remap, Reimagine and Retranslate
Nirmala Menon
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
Indore, India

ISBN 978-1-137-53797-3    ISBN 978-1-137-53798-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53798-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958532

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: © Kimberly Kersey-Asbury

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 To
Ajith and Swathi
 Acknowledgements

This book has been a culmination of extensive research that has been intel-
lectually challenging and fulfilling in many ways; it has also set me on
my second phase of research in the exciting area of Digital Humanities-­
working projects that are a direct outcome of my findings here. But of
course a project of this length and magnitude could not be possible with-
out the support, encouragement, engagement and love from so many
people along the way. It would be impossible for me to name every one of
them so a sincere thank-you to all those friends and family who were a part
of this. I will mention just a few names whose support was always present
in my work in visible ways.
My mentor Professor Judith Plotz, Professor Emeritus of The George
Washington University will always be an inspiration in more ways than
one. Even though we were on different continents as I revised my dis-
sertation research to a monograph, the rigor she has instilled and always
expected was a responsibility I always remembered. Similarly Kavita Daiya
and Jonathan Gil Harris, advisors from my doctoral days, always remind
me of the myriad ways of being intellectually engaged and finding con-
nections between academic work and the world around us. I will always
be thankful that I had the opportunity to work with and learn from the
example they set and continue to be awed by their enormous and continu-
ing contributions to research and pedagogy.
I am fortunate to have known and interacted with so many wonder-
ful scholars around the world. Rita Kothari and her work on translations
from Indian languages to English got me thinking in many ways about
the need for a theoretical vocabulary of translations that is productive

vii
viii Acknowledgements

in a ­postcolonial set up. I have learnt from and drawn on the works of
scholars such as Harish Trivedi, Susan Bassnett, Prasenjit Gupta and oth-
ers who authored some of the first works on Indian postcolonial transla-
tions. Dorota Kolodziejczyk a Professor and Director of the Institute of
Postcolonial studies at the University of Wroclow, Poland is a friend who
widened my horizons of thinking about multiple postcolonialisms with
Polish and other Eastern European examples. A shout out to more recent
academic friends from the Digital Humanities scholarly community from
India and elsewhere; their wonderful work helps me to once again “trans-
late” my research to my current digital projects while theorizing its new
digital locations- Alex Gil, Rahul Gairola, Radhika Gajjala, Dibyadyuti Roy,
Padmini Ray-Murray, Sumandro Chattopadhyaya, Isabel Galina, Christina
Sandru, Ashok Thorat and many many more. I look forward to being a part
of a robust and vibrant global DH conversation in India. A special mention
of Paul Arthur of Western Sydney University- I am inspired by his work as a
Digital Humanist in Australia; I deeply value and thank him for his support
and friendship. These invaluable intellectual intersections across borders
allow for dialogues and collaborative projects that push the boundaries of
research and initiate thinking in new and exciting ways.
I am also grateful to my students at IIT Indore who are intelligent and
inquisitive and who inform my research outcomes in expected and unex-
pected ways. It is a joy to interact with and learn from my PhD graduate
students-Reema Sukhija, Wati Longkumer, Ashna Jacob, Shanmugapriya
T and Shaifali Arora- and I thank them for inspiring me in many ways. I
would specially like to thank Shanmugapriya T for helping me with some
of the data mining and visualization graphs for the first chapter.
There are of course friends and family, too numerous to name but I will
try. My parents of course are always there with their unconditional sup-
port and love for anything that I undertake. They also make sure that my
daughter Swathi is always cared for and spoilt and loved like only grand-
parents can and beyond. The carefree comfort that allowed me to write
and lecture and travel to conferences and be engaged cannot be expressed.
There is none like my dad for always believing that there is nothing I
could not achieve. Through this period, my mom was diagnosed with
a degenerative condition that is debilitating and yet I can see her always
looking out for me. I know that for all her frailties, my smallest success
or achievement will always make her smile. I also remember my uncle,
Prof K Gopalakrishnan a scholar of Malayalam literature who is no more,
but whose life and work has always been inspiring. My sister Pritha is an
 Acknowledgements  ix

uncritical supporter of my work and always assures me it is brilliant! (And

yes, we all have moments of self-doubt when that is so crucial!)
And finally friends! To friends in India and in the US, whose friend-
ship has been valuable through good times and bad. My colleagues at
Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, US where I worked for four
years before moving to India-many of who have become friends for life.
Kimberley Kersey Asbury the professor of arts who has designed both my
book covers; Sara Smits Keeney, Ahida Pilarski, Ann Norton Holbrooke,
Meg Cronin, Gary Bouchard, Bindu Malieckal and many more. Friends
from graduate school who can always call your bluff- Joe Fisher, Matt
Fullerty, Niles Tomlinson, Aliya Weise, Abigail Constantine, Almila Ozdek
and others; I am glad we are still in touch. A special mention for Jia Jiang,
Director of International Studies at American University, Washington DC
who was my first friend in the US many years ago and continues to be a
close one. And then the friends who go back a long way, too many to be
named, I will mention just two- Hema Ganapathy a close friend for more
than two decades and Lakshmy Menon, a childhood friend now a pedia-
trician who knows all the ugly sides of me (and also has threatened me
with dire consequences if she is missing from here!). I owe them all a deep
gratitude for being in my life.
To my husband, Ajith, who makes my life and work meaningful in more
ways that I can possibly express. And finally, to our ever-precious daughter
Swathi—everything is for you.
 Contents

1 Introduction: The Rationale for Re-mapping

the Postcolonial Canon: Why Re-map?   1

2 Representing the Postcolonial Subaltern:

A Comparative Reading of Three Subaltern
Narratives by O.V. Vijayan, Arundhati Roy
and Mahashweta Devi  35

3 The Hullabaloo About Hybridity: Kiran Desai’s

The Inheritance of Loss, Girish Karnad’s
Yayati and Heaps of Broken Images and Lalithambika
Antherjanam’s Cast Me Out If You Will  71

4 Re-Imagining Postcolonial Translation Theory 111

5 Re-Map, Re-Imagine, Re-translate 149

Appendix A 153

Appendix B 173

xi
xii Contents

Works Consulted 187

Index 197
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Survey of MLA bibliography indicating scholarly

articles published about these authors during
the years 1980–2006 9
Fig. 1.2 Representation of selected writers from 2007–2015 in MLA
bibliography11
Fig. 1.3 Figure shows the distribution of English and
other language authors and their works for the said periods 13
Fig. 1.4 Graph showing literary production in five Indian
languages during the period 1986–2006 16
Fig. 1.5 Representation of selected writers from 2007–2015 in MLA
bibliography17
Fig. 1.6 Liberty production and representation in postcolonial theory 17
Fig. 1.7 This figure is a comparative analysis of the
previous three graphs 18
Fig. 1.8 Representation of selected Indian writers form
JSTOR database 2007–2015 19
Fig. 1.9 Representation of scholary articles and criticism
in JSTOR database 2007–2015 19
Fig. 4.1 Dhvani-Bhava-Rasa theory 139

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Rationale for Re-mapping

the Postcolonial Canon: Why Re-map?

This means, above all, seeing the imperial and capitalist metropolises as a spe-
cific historical form, at different stages: Paris, London, and Berlin, New York.
It involves looking, from time to time, from outside the metropolis: from the
deprived hinterlands, where different forces are moving, and from the poor
world, which has always been peripheral to the metropolitan systems. This need
involve no reduction of the importance of the major artistic and literary works,
which were shaped within metropolitan perceptions. But one level has cer-
tainly to be challenged: the metropolitan interpretation of its own processes
as universals.
—Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism

In a book chapter in the wonderful edited collection Re-routing the

Postcolonial, I made an argument for “re-routing” the postcolonial
through the language mazes of the postcolonial geography of India. In
trying to make an argument for a multilingual postcolonial canon, I did
a survey of major databases for literature and the representation of world
literature as a disproportionately monolingual one (Menon, 2010). So, as
I begin to examine that argument in much more detail through the course
of these pages, I have to once again consider the question: What does
the current map look like? My study then looked at the possible maps of
representation through roughly the early 1990s when postcolonial studies
began to be acknowledged as an emerging area of research, until 2007.
My findings were very clear—the putative postcolonial canon includes
texts from India, Africa and the Caribbean, with new entrants from Latin
America adding to the diversity. When it came to the Indian subcontinent,

© The Author(s) 2016 1

N. Menon, Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53798-0_1
2 N. MENON

study of works of writers such as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Vikram

Chandra, and Shyam Selvadurai far outnumber study of works by writers
in languages other than English. It was true that while the emerging canon
did represent many postcolonial geographies, they did not reflect the lin-
guistic diversity of those geographies. Quite the contrary. Almost all of the
representative works in scholarship were exclusively written in English. I
retain the discipline’s skepticism of “canons” per se but argue that, when
the same texts and writers are anthologized and critiqued to the exclusion
of others, it is equivalent to creating a canon. I begin with the assumption
that engaging with the rich literatures in diverse languages coming from
different postcolonial spaces will simultaneously underscore the plurality
of the discipline and open new avenues for postcolonial enquiries. As Neil
Lazarus charges:

To read across postcolonial literary studies is to find, to an extraordinary

degree, the same questions asked, the same methods, techniques, and con-
ventions used, the same concepts mobilized, the same conclusions drawn—
about the work of a remarkably small number of writers (who are actually
more varied, even so, than one would ever discover from the existing critical
discussion). (422)

My project argues that, while postcolonial scholarship has successfully

challenged Eurocentrism, the stagnation in the theory that Lazarus talks
about can be confronted if we look to the wide base of literatures available
in multiple postcolonial languages. In short, it is now time to extend the
dimensions of the discipline into a multilingual field.
I define multilingual as moving beyond Anglophone and Francophone
literatures to varied literatures in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Tagalog and Swahili,
to name just a few. I attempt to initiate such a discourse by analyzing litera-
tures from three regional languages in India, both in translation and in the
original, and aim to direct a linguistic re-mapping of postcolonial literary
criticism and demonstrate the ways in which such a re-­mapping can open
theoretical concepts to new complexities. I engage with two critical con-
cepts that have defined postcolonial theory—hybridity and subalternity—
and describe the current discourse about these two concepts, showing new
ways of reconfiguring them and expanding them by using texts from differ-
ent languages. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s
The Inheritance of Loss are juxtaposed with texts from other languages, such
as O.V. Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak (Malayalam) and Girish Karnad’s Heap
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 3

of Broken Images (Kannada). I argue that these texts can be used to reform,
redefine and revise our understanding of the concepts hybridity and subal-
ternity. My project seeks to enable a ­conversation that will expand the liter-
ary archive of postcolonial literature and allow a self-reflexive criticism of
its theoretical premises. Such a conversation can also inspire new concepts
in the postcolonial critical vocabulary. In my final chapter on postcolo-
nial translations, I identify such a new approach and develop a new critical
translation model that addresses the discipline’s unique challenges.
Recent studies have identified some of the issues with postcolonial schol-
arship. Some of the most critical writings of the discipline have come from
materialist critics who allege, among other things, that attempting to find
complex nuances of interactions between the colonizer and the colonized
has resulted in a rejection of dualism in all forms. Consequently, the criti-
cism alleges, postcolonial theory has delegitimized even complex models
of struggle-based politics. Lazarus lists in schematic fashion these materi-
alist criticisms of postcolonial theory: “[a] constitutive anti-­Marxism; an
undifferentiated disavowal of all forms of nationalism and a corresponding
exaltation of migrancy, liminality, hybridity, and multiculturality; an aver-
sion to dialectics; and a refusal of antagonistic or struggle-based model
of politics” (423). None of the above components appear unreasonable
or problematic by themselves; however, the discomfort arises from the
way these categories have been consecrated to the exclusion of exploring
others and the narrow ways that postcolonial studies has defined these
concepts. According to Lazarus and some of the other materialist critics,
literary scholars working in postcolonial studies have tended to write with
a woefully restricted and attenuated corpus of works because of the nar-
rowness of the theoretical assumptions. In this Introduction and in the
book, I will argue that, while it may be true in the case of works already
in the orbit of postcolonial criticism that works need to be looked at from
beyond existing critical perspectives, the argument can also be turned
around. In other words, I contend, the very narrowness of the range of
works invoked for the field is by itself restrictive and limits the theoreti-
cal assumptions. I examine the literature of a single postcolonial state,
India, to support the argument that for postcolonial studies to be more
representative and varied, the diverse works in multiple regional languages
must be examined. In the interests of both representations and aesthetics,
postcolonial studies needs to look beyond literature written in just one
language—English. Lazarus examines the book Interviews with Writers
of the Postcolonial World and queries: “What thematic concerns, h ­ istorical
4 N. MENON

conditions, or existential predicaments can plausibly be said to license the

inclusion of such authors as Ngugi, Ghose, and Ihimaera under any shared
rubric, let alone that of postcoloniality?” (425). Lazarus asks this rhetori-
cal question to underscore the wide differences between the writers them-
selves and unacknowledged disparities in their respective postcolonialities.
To answer Lazarus, all the writers are representative of geographies that
are, for varying and different reasons, postcolonial. They also form an
emerging canon of postcolonial literature representative of these places.
Last, but not least, they all write in English.
Such a consecration of postcolonial works from metropolitan centers
and select metropolitan writers has dominated the discourse of postcolonial
criticism, thereby centralizing a select genre and universalizing it as repre-
sentative of postcolonialism per se. Thus, Raymond Williams’ critique of the
politics of modernism may be read as analogous to postcolonial criticism.
The key criticism is the similar tendency of “metropolitan interpretation of
its own processes as universals.” (Introduction). The stagnation in some
of the categories of postcolonial criticism has not gone unnoticed among
many scholars in the field, and in the last few years, there have been many
articles and essays challenging some of the field’s current preoccupations vis-
à-vis its foundational assumptions. Susie Tharu (roundtable by Yeager), for
example, discusses the transformation of Edward Said’s groundbreaking text
Orientalism as it traveled in postcolonial theory. Said’s original thesis empha-
sizes that Orientalism has little to do with the Orient. In fact, one of Said’s
foci is the Euro-American academy and the power-knowledge axis of that
institution. Initial research in postcolonial studies, including some of Spivak’s
less cited essays, built on Said’s formulation of Orientalism. The beginning of
Spivak’s seminal “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a scathing critique of Western
intellectual complicity in Western capitalist production, but it is a section
that is usually ignored by subsequent critics. Instead, postcolonial studies
has developed a purportedly anti-binary approach that seeks to dismantle
East/West or North/South dualisms. This shift in perspective appears to
be headed toward a more complex analysis of fast-changing global realities;
however, Tharu has this to say about the trajectory of the discipline:

Abandoning the responsibility of engaging western power/knowledge in

its entirety, the new postcolonial studies, with anthropology in the lead,
has concerned itself with a problematic designed to unearth residual or
continuing colonialism in the ex-colonies. This is the untold story that
accompanies and in fact precedes the widely circulated account of postco-
lonial studies as coinciding with the arrival of third world critics in the First
World academy. (Yeager 643)
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 5

Tharu calls for a return to postcolonial studies’ embrace of “Saidian

history.” I interpret Tharu’s call not as a return to colonial/anti-colonial
binaries, but rather as a call for a more self-reflexive critique of the inclu-
sions and exclusions of the field and a call to adjust our critical lens to
account for political and academic realities. Such an exercise is perhaps
necessary for many of the discipline’s subfields of literature, economics or
history. Postcolonial history has perhaps inaugurated such a line of criti-
cism with the subaltern studies group’s provocative questioning of its own
disciplinary practices. In this book, I intend to take a self-reflexive look at
the field of literature and the forming of the postcolonial canon.
At the Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) conference in North­
ampton in 2008, I presented a paper arguing for a linguistic expansion
of the postcolonial canon. Bill Ashcroft, one of the keynote speakers at
the conference, attended our panel presentation. During the question-­
answer session, he asked me why I needed to use the word canon: Could
I not make the same argument about including more works from differ-
ent languages without making it the postcolonial canon? His argument
was that, as an interventionist discipline, postcolonial studies is invested
in dismantling canons (starting with the European canon) and that we
do not need to replace it with a postcolonial one. It is a difficult question
because “The Postcolonial Canon” is a difficult term. It is also similar
to the notion of nation in postmodernism. The post nation is a luxury
that stateless refugees or those fighting for their territorial space cannot
comprehend or sympathize with. Similarly, a canon does not cease to exist
because we refer to an exclusive selection of works or writers by different
names or pretend they do not exist. Deconstructing the European canon
does not mean that it no longer exists or is not perceived as exceptional.
The development of the canon is, in itself, interesting. Whether we agree
on the existence or irrelevance of canons, whether postcolonial canon is a
self-contradictory term or not, I want to argue that, as the field is formu-
lated as of now, select writers and literary works dominate the discourse to
the exclusion of other writers, works and languages. The exclusive selec-
tion of texts, writers and themes, I contend, becomes the foundation for
critical analyses and conclusions about postcolonialism. Such a circular
movement between texts, writers and themes results in: (1) an emerging
postcolonial “canon” whether we acknowledge it or not and (2) theoreti-
cal conclusions based on that n ­ arrow selection of literatures that are then
extrapolated to the larger field. The domination of a few select literary
texts and writers defines the field, and they are often uncritically referred
to and unselfconsciously understood as the postcolonial perspective. My
6 N. MENON

argument is that a linguistic re-­mapping is the key to expanding the post-

colonial canon. Before we take a critical look at the postcolonial canon,
a look at the development, formation and history of canons and canon-
building is instructive.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term canon as “a body of
literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant and
worthy of study (italics mine), those works esp. western literature consid-
ered to be established as being of the highest quality and most endur-
ing value; such a body of literature in a particular language, or from a
particular culture, period, genre, etc.” (OED). The introduction of the
word canon in the English language remains obscure, and according to
Ingrid Johnston, the Oxford English Dictionary published between 1884
and 1928 does “not contain in its twenty-five listings any word approxi-
mating the modern meaning of an approved catalog of books” (42). In
the earlier meanings, the closest “canon” is defined as a “collection or
list of books of the Bible accepted by the Christian Church as genuine
and inspired” (42). According to Johnston, it was not until 1972 when
the above meaning was supplemented to bestow the exclusive—and thus
exalted—status of “secular authentic authors.” The definition of canon
moved from the exclusively biblical to the selectively secular in the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, unsurprisingly coinciding with the rise
of the British Empire and global power gravitating toward the European
capitals of London and Paris.
Jusdanis states that a study of canonicity is equivalent to a study of
power; the role of interest and the dynamics of struggle are all intricate to
its formation. Certainly, the deployment of Shakespeare in the colonies is a
fine example of the nineteenth-century version of what globalization cheer-
leaders today call “soft power.” Economic might and cultural supremacy
are equally treasured by imperial powers, and certainly for British colonial-
ism, British literature was one of the tools deployed as evidence of civiliza-
tion. Homi Bhabha’s essay about the subversive potential of reading and
receiving the Bible in a native language is an insightful interpretation of
the complex processes. However, the premise of imperialism and empires
is that they control the narrative and the discourse, which is what led
Macaulay to claim “that all the great literatures of India and Persia could
not hold a single shelf of books” (124). Canonicity, therefore, is not so
much about texts as it is about power, status symbols and the dominant
discourse according to which not only individual authors but entire move-
ments and discourses find themselves in or out as the “flavor of the era.”
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 7

Furthermore, Toni Morrison has unequivocally compared canon-­

building to empire-building. The process itself is a curious double bind.
Texts deemed “worthy of study” are transmitted, translated, critiqued and
anthologized, all of which processes ensure that they are embedded in lit-
erary memories. And those that are transmitted, translated and passed on
are, in turn, considered “worthy of study.” Obviously, texts that stand the
test of time also, in many ways, endure the test of power. As Gerald Bruns
(qtd. in Landow) says:

A text, after all, is canonical, not by virtue of being final and correct and
part of an official library, but because it becomes binding upon a group of
people. The whole point of canonization is to underwrite the authority of
a text, not merely with respect to its origin … but with respect to the pres-
ent and future in which it will reign and govern as a binding text … from a
hermeneutic standpoint … the theme of canonization is power. (149)

The OED also records the changes and expansion of the meaning of
the canon brought about by the intellectual debates, specifically those of
feminist and postmodernist disciplines. Thus, a 1992 supplement to the
meaning of canon now adds: “A body of works considered to be estab-
lished as the most important or significant in a particular field.” All this
brings us to the original discussion about the validity of a “postcolonial
canon.” As we can see, the OED has not declared the word or its meaning
obsolete, and it still means a select or exemplary collection of works in any
field. So, for my purposes here, with all the necessary skepticism, I will rely
on the expanded meaning of the term canon and continue to use the term
“postcolonial canon.”
Edward Said has been one of the most stringent critics of canons. Said,
along with Foucault and Derrida, has supported a new kind of canon that
operates from “nomadic centers” (Introduction), provisional structures
that are never permanent and that offer new forms of continuity, vision
and revision. Said’s vision values the potential over the institutional and
is open-ended. His proposed literary shelf resembles what Jan Gorak has
termed “a kind of mental bazaar: a place of many tongues, a variety of
goods, and an endless circulation of people and goods” (215). Said’s
“nomadic centers” are indicative of the way postcolonial theory and
­literature compelled a re-examination of assumed centers and proposed
alternative centers of thought. The idea of “nomadic centers” is compel-
ling even though it reiterates the inevitability of “centers,” poststructur-
alism notwithstanding. One of the ways that Said’s “nomadic centers”
8 N. MENON

can be interventionist is through a periodic appraisal of such centers and

their dismantling so that no particular center can claim permanence. In
terms of the postcolonial literary shelf, I think that time is now.
Postcolonial literature has now established itself as a discipline “worthy
of study.” And the conscious and unconscious formation of a postcolo-
nial canon has been an inevitable part of the process of developing the
theoretical structure of postcolonialism. The development of the body of
literature that is now called postcolonial literatures is an interesting one.
It is worthwhile at this point to remember a relic called “commonwealth
literature,” literature in English written by writers from the former colo-
nies of Britain. Salman Rushdie, in a scathing critique of the nomencla-
ture, noted:

“Commonwealth literature,” it appears, is that body of writing created, I

think, in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white
Britons, or Irish or citizens of the United States of America… [B]y now
“commonwealth literature” was sounding very unlikeable indeed. Not only
was it a ghetto, but also it was actually an exclusive ghetto. And the effect of
creating such a ghetto was, is, to change the meaning of the far broader term
“English Literature”—which I’d always taken to mean simply the literature
of the English language—into something far narrower, something topo-
graphical, nationalistic, and possibly even racially segregationist. (62–63)

John McLeod has commented that commonwealth literature was

“really a subset of canonical English literature.” Though scholars have dis-
puted the use of terms like “commonwealth literature” and “third world
Literature,” substitute postcolonial literature for the above description
and it is evident that all that has changed is the nomenclature. Rushdie’s
critique would still be valid. Postcolonial literature, as it is currently for-
mulated, is a “body of writing, in the English language, by persons who
are not themselves white Britons or white citizens of the United States.”
(The Irish are part of the postcolonial.) Thus, the selection is still an
exclusive ghetto under a different name. The irony is the two-­way exclu-
siveness—Rushdie’s simple formulation of “English Literature,” which in
my opinion is a right one, is still non-existent; on the other hand, these
writers have been re-territorialized into an exclusive group of postco-
lonial literature, where writers from the same postcolonial geographies
writing in languages other than English are not included. Postcolonial
literature, much like its predecessor, Commonwealth literature, exists as
an island that brings in a lot of goods (and stories) of postcolonialism
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 9

while the metropolitan center surveys the marketplace and takes what it
needs from the island.
So, Said’s notion of provisional and non-permanent canons can be a
useful self-reflexive critical tool with which to examine the postcolonial
canon. The emerging canon has been received with unbridled enthusiasm,
bitter criticism and everything in between. Is the narrow literary base of
postcolonial theory justified? What is the range and number of works that
are published for a given time period, and is that diversity reflected in
theoretical representation? Can we channel such criticism to advance valu-
able research in the field? What is the distribution of writers, languages
and works in postcolonialism?
These are all elaborate and complex questions that will necessarily have
different answers for different postcolonial spaces. For my purposes here,
I am analyzing only the literary production in one postcolonial space—
India1—and examining its representativeness in theory. My findings are
based on an analytic study of three different scholarly journals/web-
sites that publish critical writings in postcolonial literature and theory. I
begin by reproducing a graph of my findings from the Modern Language
Association (MLA) Bibliography, as illustrated in Fig. 1.1 (Menon, 2010).
The horizontal axis represents a sample for each of five different authors
while the vertical represents the total number of critical articles found on
those particular authors. The cluster groups represents the years of their

Representation of Selected Indian Writers From MLA

Bibliography 1980-2004
600
490
500
400
290
300
200 120
50 60
100 14 7 27 34
5 7 20 6 20 46
0
1980-1985 1985-1993 1994-2004

Salman Rushdie Arundhati Roy Premchand

Rabindranath Tagore Naguib Mahfouz

Fig. 1.1 Survey of MLA bibliography indicating scholarly articles published

about these authors during the years 1980–2006
10 N. MENON

publication. For this sample, I have chosen three time periods: 1980–1985,
1985–1993 and 1993–2006. The reason for the unevenness of the three
time periods is that the shifts in critical attention change during those
junctures. I have differentiated them by using blue, maroon and yellow,
respectively, for the three distinct periods. I picked 1980 as the starting
point of my investigation as it signifies the time when postcolonial studies
was slowly beginning to attract academic attention. Rushdie’s acclaim and
the popularity of other postcolonial authors accelerated that interest, and
by the early 1990s, the discipline had a firm foothold in academia. As we
will see, it is around the same time that certain authors, writers and lan-
guages began to dominate the discourse and, I contend, have continued
to do so until the present.
In the above graph, the uneven and disproportionate concentration of a
few writers across the theoretical spectrum is obvious. Of the 3483 entries
for “postcolonial” as a category, 177 entries were about Francophone
postcolonial and the remaining 3306 were nearly exclusively Anglophone
postcolonial. Of these 3306 articles, Rushdie alone is the subject of 794
articles in the survey, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is
discussed 67 times. Many Indian writers in English, including Githa
Hariharan, Bharati Mukherjee, Vikram Chandra and Shashi Tharoor, also
have a good number of articles between them. Needless to say, critical
articles about authors in languages other than English are few. As shown
in the above graph, most of these articles are barely visible between the
scales of 0 and 100. While I have chosen to represent some of the Indian
language authors here, it is the same for authors in African languages too.
The other notable point is the size of the bars that represent the span of
years 1980–1985. Articles about authors in Indian languages were more
prominent in the 1980s and progressively declined over the years, with the
latest between 2000 and 2006 nearly invisible on the graph. For example,
while Tagore and Premchand have 120 and 27 entries and Ghalib 34 in
the 1980–1985 category, they are virtually non-existent as subjects of
articles in the 1990s and completely disappear in the new millennium.
A surprising omission is Mahasweta Devi, whose translations by no less a
postcolonial authority than Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ensure a regular
presence in postcolonial curriculum. But that pre-eminence has not trans-
lated into closer study by other scholars in the field. Authors writing in any
language other than English do not register on the postcolonial critical
map. Some like Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar and Umashankar Joshi
are discussed for their films and plays but rarely as postcolonial exponents
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 11

Fig. 1.2 Representation Representation of Selected Writers from 2007-2015 in MLA

of selected writers from Bibilography
2007–2015 in MLA
2 20
bibliography 4

78
55

33
19

Amitav Ghosh Anita Desai Kiran Desai

Arundhati roy Premchand Salmon Rushdie
Rohinton Mistry

of either genre. Karnad is more visible than the others, partly because he
is a bilingual playwright who writes and translates between Kannada and
English.
Now, there are some changes between 2007 and now. So, to have a
comparative idea, I looked at the same database with a series of different
keyword searches but limited my results to between 2007 and 2015. The
MLA database now looks as shown (Fig. 1.2):
I also analyzed two other important journals of postcolonial research
and came to similar conclusions as those presented above. I looked at
Interventions, a radical publication for postcolonial studies, and The
South Asian Review (SAR), published from the University of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. As I mention in the beginning of the Introduction, a nar-
row selection of works also leads to a narrow range of theoretical assump-
tions. As we saw in the analysis of the MLA Bibliography, the range of
authors discussed was limited to postcolonial authors writing in English.
Even among those, select authors and their works dominated the dis-
course. Rushdie and Roy together accounted for 861 articles. In other
words, 25 % of the total number of critical articles were based on approxi-
mately four texts. I cannot imagine how the theoretical assumptions that
draw from such a small corpus could be either representative or com-
prehensive of diverse and disparate postcolonial realities. This disparity
will be further confirmed by an analysis of the postcolonial themes and
subjects covered in the two journals. Going through the issues from 1983
to 2005, Interventions has entire issues devoted to: (1) global diasporas
and (2) postcolonial American studies. In addition, a number of articles
12 N. MENON

in recent years focus on empire and neo-imperialism or US imperialism.

Transnationalism is also a constant presence, and postcolonial theory is
seen in the larger contexts of globalization, WTO and the environment.
The role of the diasporas dominates the conversation and articles, such
as “Postcolonial States and Transnational Resistance,” and underscores
their importance in the changing global scene. Some of the authors who
are repeatedly mentioned include Rushdie, Achebe and Coetzee; rarely is
any other author or work mentioned. In the issues from the mid- to the
late 1980s, there is not a single article about works or authors from either
South Asia or Africa, arguably two of the largest postcolonial spaces in
geographical terms.
The SAR paints only a slightly different picture. The canonical bifur-
cation continues here, with the bulk of articles focused on the same few
authors and the same themes. Interestingly though, the journal’s issues
of 1980, 1981 and 1982 have a much more varied selection of topics
and writers. One issue has articles comparing the writings of Gandhi and
Tagore, an analysis of different nationalisms. Another article in the 1982
issue compares Chandi Das with Dante and Raja Rao with TS Eliot. The
1981 issue discusses EM Forster’s A Passage to India. The same issue also
discusses Bhasa’s Pratima Natika and the folk form of Bhavai and its
position in Indian theater. Natyashastra and Yakshagana are compared
for their intersections of form and content dispelling or at least complicat-
ing the binary of classical-folk hierarchy. The 1982 issue of the journal is
exclusively devoted to a discussion of South Asian languages and linguis-
tics. I mention this to underline that from canonical twentieth century
writers to classical works, the journal published scholarship that covered
the range even if intermittently. This attention to different literatures from
the subcontinent has steadily declined in the 90s and to being almost
invisible in the new millenium.
In the graph in Fig. 1.3 below, I plot the contents of the SAR. Again,
I use the years 1980–2005 for the analysis.
During the given periods, I plot the percentage of articles that discuss
authors or their works in English, the ones that discuss authors or works
in languages other than English, and articles that do a comparative analysis
of both. The percentages are indicated on the X-axis, and the Y-axis has
the three categories. The Z-axis represents the three different time periods
for the analysis. As in the previous graph, yellow, blue and purple denote
the years 2000–2006, 1985–2000 and 1980–1985, respectively. As we
see, the purple tower is significantly higher during 1980–1985 and then
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 13

Representation of Scholarly Articles and Criticism in South Asian

Review 1980-2006
100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
English Comparative Analysis Other Languages

1980-1985 1985-2000 2000-2006

Fig. 1.3 Figure shows the distribution of English and other language authors
and their works for the said periods

progressively declines, while the yellow tower for English literally towers
over the other languages during the period 2000–2006.
The trend toward a focus on—and later, domination of—postcolonial
works written in English begins with a shift in the late 1980s and early
1990s, an exciting time with Indo-Anglian writers who were, to quote
Jusdanis again, “the flavor of the era.” Rushdie had become acclaimed,
and other Indian writers in English were being noticed and read and, most
importantly, were winning awards. It is naturally an exciting time for criti-
cal research too, and many of the above-mentioned journals started pub-
lishing more and more about these writers. It was certainly refreshing to
begin with, but when you see the same writers, the same questions and the
same themes continuing in these journals over the years, perhaps it is time
to pause and reflect: Is this interventionist field becoming more exclusive
than inclusive? Have we exhausted the limits of literary works available for
the discipline and explored all the challenges of postcolonial subjectivity?
A survey of major journals, articles and theorists in the discipline in the
last decade indicates a closing in rather than an opening of the discipline.
The SAR issues from the year 2000 onward are exclusively about the same
few authors and works introduced in the early 1980s, so they continue
to present articles about Salman Rushdie, Raja Rao and Arundhati Roy.
The same themes also continued with little variation of interpretation, the
focus moving from the hybrid to the migrant to the 2005 issue, a special
about “global diasporas.”
14 N. MENON

The disparities are even more pronounced when the articles for discus-
sion of authors in non-English (and non-French if the Francophone post-
colonial is included) languages are examined. Referring to the complexities
of African postcolonialism, Mamadou Diouf (Yeager roundtable) states
that the African continent has been subjected to colonialism from at least
the beginning of the slave trade, continuing in different forms until the
present one of Western imperialism. In this context, he says, African litera-
ture “underscores issues of continuity, not discontinuities, resurgences and
posts” (7). Diouf charges that most of the scholarly debate about postco-
lonialism and globalization about Africa is led by scholars in American and
Canadian universities. His complaint though is that “in Africa, postcolonial
studies speaks English, not French” (8). Postcolonial studies should actu-
ally speak not just English or French but a host of other active languages
that experience the postcolonial condition in many of these places. And
that is really the point here. Postcolonial spaces are vast and multilingual,
and no single language—be it English or French—can by itself be repre-
sentative of all the diversities of experiences and literary forms that emerge
from these places. The need is to decentralize the different representations
so as to imagine the much more linguistically varied spaces as they are.
David Damrosch observes that in “world literature” as in some Miss
Universe literary competitions, an entire nation may be represented by a
single author: Indonesia, the world’s fifth largest nation, is usually seen, if
at all, in the person of Ananta Toer. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar
divide the honors for “Mr. Argentina” (Damrosch, 2003). This may be
said for postcolonial literature too, except that in this case, each of the
nations is represented by a handful of writers writing in English. What is
more interesting in these two representations is the “othering” process.
“World literature” is a quaint and problematic term because it represents
not so much the “world” but reiterates the binary of the West and the rest.
Western canonical authors are not included in this group; it is a token ges-
ture of acknowledgement of “other” authors from the less important parts
of the “world.” Similarly, with postcolonial literature, acknowledging only
writers writing in English as part of a postcolonial literary corpus smacks
of an imperial influence, not a postcolonial stance. Damrosch also points
to the existence of a shadow canon in postcolonial studies—writers who
everybody “knows” but are rarely discussed in print. Munshi Premchand
and Mirza Ghalib may be counted in that category.
The aim of the analysis is not to suggest that Rushdie is redundant.
The point here is that while Rushdie, like Wordsworth, is a wonderful
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 15

figure to discuss for many purposes, we do not have to keep coming back
to the same people and works. Expanding the canon allows us to expand
the ­varied and different representations that may or may not be similar
to the ones we have encountered, and offers exciting prospects of new
discoveries. By restricting ourselves to a select few authors in a single lan-
guage, we are creating a hypercanon within the field, even before a coher-
ent or inclusive postcolonial canon can be discerned.
I have demonstrated the narrowness of the Anglophone postcolonial
canon and its limitations in widening the theoretical concepts. It must be
obvious that there are literary works in different languages that have either
largely been ignored by the discipline or received only token acknowl-
edgement. To make the case for multilingual expansion of the canon, yet
another category was analyzed—in this case, regional language literature
from India. It is important to note that a linguistic expansion is already
underway in postcolonial criticism. This is almost an inadvertent devel-
opment with the entry of former Soviet Republics into the postcolonial
conversation. In addition, Latin American literature has added an entirely
new dimension to the discipline. Latin American postcolonialism is per-
haps the first truly bilingual conversation in the discourse because many
of the writers are read in translation. Not surprisingly, Latin American
postcolonialism also has some of the most vibrant translation theories,
which many in multilingual criticism may greatly benefit from. While hav-
ing such new entrants with different perspectives is exciting, the possibili-
ties and potential for postcolonial studies is by no means saturated in the
South Asian region. We do, however, need to look beyond Anglophone
literature to the many regional language literatures that thrive in the post-
colonial region.
A survey of the Sahitya Akademi awards for literature from 1980 to
2005 reveals that an average of 23 works in 22 different languages have
won the award, thereby being acknowledged as good fiction each year. In
the same time period, approximately 500 literary works were released in
these languages; those won some literary acclaim and have been translated
into other Indian and Asian languages and many into English too. Each of
these works should qualify as postcolonial. Not all of them will be literary
masterpieces or offer groundbreaking theoretical concepts, but if postco-
lonial scholarship does not even attempt to connect the dots or explore
new ones, then the theory will just be thinner for it. Figure 1.4 below
presents a graph for the Sahitya Akademi awards for fiction, poetry and
criticism in five different languages. Sanskrit is included in the graph only
16 N. MENON

Production of Indian Literature in Five Indian Languages Based

on Sahitya Academy Award
28
30

25

20
13 13 14
15 11
8 9
10 6 6 6
4 4 3 4
5 1
0
Hindi Malayalam Telugu Sanskrit Gujarati

Fiction Poetry Collection Criticism

Fig. 1.4 Graph showing literary production in five Indian languages during the
period 1986–2006

to demonstrate that even a language that is not as widely spoken as the

others, and that has been consecrated as an exclusively religious language
visible in the public sphere only in the areas of Ayurvedic medicine and
Yoga, has a healthy literary production.
The graph is plotted with the number of award-winning works on the
X-axis and the different languages on the Y-axis. I have further separated
fiction, poetry and criticism. I have randomly selected five different regional
languages. According to the information on the Sahitya Akademi’s website,
a graph of any set of languages will look more or less the same. I chose to
narrow my database by selecting the Sahitya Akademi awards for two rea-
sons: (1) Narrowing the database results in a manageable number to work
with and (2) these awards are instituted by the government and have gained
a certain respect among writers and critical circles in India. It should also
be mentioned that political considerations sometimes arise and that some
noteworthy writer or book in a given language may be missing from the list.
The scenario has changed little between 2007 and 2015. A similar
study of databases looks like this now (Fig. 1.5): A search on postcolonial
scholarship on JSTOR for 2007-2015 gives us the following visuals. As we
can see, our comparative analysis bar graph demonstrates the percentage
of English postcolonial works from India form 65% of the works whereas
those from Indian languages are abour 7%- a tiny improvement from the
1980-2004 scale but still very disproportionate.
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 17

Fig. 1.5 Representation Representation of Selected Writers from 2007-2015 in MLA

of selected writers from Bibilography
2007–2015 in MLA 2 20
4
bibliography
78
55
33

19

Amitav Ghosh Anita Desai Kiran Desai

Arundhati roy Premchand Salmon Rushdie
Rohinton Mistry

Literary Production and Representation in Postcolonial Theory

120%
100%
80%
60%
98% 87%
40%
20%
13% 2%
0%
Literary Literary Literary Literary
Production of Representation of Production of Representation of
Anglophone texts Anglophone texts Regional language Regional Language
texts texts

Fig. 1.6 Liberty production and representation in postcolonial theory

And a comparison of the representation of different language litera-

tures in postcolonial discourse and research is as shown in the following
graph (Fig. 1.6).
For those who argue that such comparative study is the domain of com-
parative literature departments, I contend that “postcolonial” is, by defi-
nition, multilingual and is thus obliged to be comparative. So what does
this survey mean for postcolonial theory? How can it be a useful resource,
and can it widen our understanding of postcolonialism? Does it raise new
questions that might call for new tools and methodologies for understand-
ing? In Fig. 1.7, a comparative study of the three previous graphs gives
the following picture about postcolonial theory and discourse: The X-axis
is the two comparative bars for literary production vis-à-vis their repre-
sentation in postcolonial theory. As we can see, the Anglophone literary
18 N. MENON

Fig. 1.7 This figure Representation of Scholarly Articles and Criticism in JSTOR
is a comparative Database 2007-2015
analysis of the
previous three graphs
15%

27% 57%

Postcolonial Literature from India

Postcolonial Literature in English
Postcolonial Literature in Other Indian Ianguages

production in India is much lower than that in regional languages but is

disproportionately represented in the theoretical structure. Bar 1 is for
postcolonial theory and the second comparative bar is the literary produc-
tion, both approximately calculated for the years 1980–2005.2
For the years 2007-2015, I also look at another very important schol-
arly database JSTOR. The results are not very different as seen in the
graphs below. Indian writers in English continue to dominate the schol-
arship and theory draws majorly from the same select writers and the
themes have changed but little. Even as postcolonial theory has expanded
to include partition studies, one notices that comparative analysis between
texts of different language literatures are conspicuous by their invisibility.
A comparative graph of writers and literatures and languages in JSTOR
is presented below. There are too few literary texts and writers that the
theory depends on for formulating its concepts. These critical terms repeat
themselves in very similar interpretations. Thus, a handful of texts and a
few critical terms dominate the discourse to the exclusion of others. It is
easy to conclude that if the criticism keeps rotating between the same few
texts and same few writers only writing in English, the theoretical vocabu-
lary is hardly likely to expand. In my opinion, the case for a multilingual
expansion is fairly obvious. (Figs. 1.7, 1.8, 1.9)
The above analysis is not entirely new. Many scholars and especially
many of the materialist critics have pointed out the extraordinarily narrow
base of postcolonial literary theory and criticism. Aijaz Ahmad, Arif Dirlik,
Biodun Jeyifo, Neil Larsen, Benita Parry and Tim Brennan—to name a
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 of children—Increase of crime—Arrival of money from
England—Orphanage—Labour question—Kūmishah—
Village ruffian—His punishment—Prince’s accident—The
kalāat—Mode of bringing it—Invitation to the ceremony
—Procession—Gala dress of the prince—The arrival of
the firman—Assemblage of grandees—The kalāat—The
Kawam’s kalāat—Return to town—Sacrifice of an ox
CHAPTER XXIV.
I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF BRIGANDS.
A call to a patient—Start on post-horses—No horses—I carry
a lantern—The Bakhtiaris—Fall among thieves—They
strip me—And march me off—Mode of disguise of
thieves—Attacked by footmen—Division of spoils—Fate
of a priest—Valuing my kit—Ignorance of my captors—A
welcome sight—My escape—I get a horse—Reach
Yezdikhast—Old women get thorns out of my feet—Want
of hospitality of head-man of Yezdikhast—Arrive at
Kūmishah—Kindness of a postmaster—More robbers—
Avoid them—Am repaid for my lost kit—Fate of my
robbers 259
CHAPTER XXV.
SHIRAZ.
The Muschir—His policy and wealth—His struggle with the
king’s uncle—He is bastinadoed—His banishment to
Kerbela—The Kawam—Mirza Naim—Siege of Zinjan—
Cruelties to Mirza Naim—Reply to an author’s statement
—Cashmere shawls—Anecdote—Garden of Dilgoosha
—Warm spring—“Sau-Sau-Rac”—The Well of Death—
Execution—Wife-killing—Tomb of Rich—Tomb of Hafiz—
Tomb of Saadi—A moral tale—Omens—Incident at tomb
of Hafiz 270
CHAPTER XXVI.
SHIRAZ—PERSIAN CUSTOMS.
The Tazzia—Persian pulpit—Prince’s flirtations—Month of 279
 mourning—Details of performance—Breast-beaters—
Hymn in honour of the king—The performers—
Processions—Detail of the tragedy—Interludes—
Rosehkhaneh—The Ramazan—The fast—Hospitalities
—Zalābi—Religious affectation—Reading poetry—A
paraphrase—A quotation—Books and their covers—
Calamdans—Writing a letter—Sealing—Specimen of an
ordinary letter—Apparent piety—The evil eye—
Talismans—I procure one
CHAPTER XXVII.
SHIRAZ.
Bagh-i-Takht—Jews’ burial-ground—Christians’ cemetery—
Its desecration—Sergeant Collins’s murder—Capture
and execution of the robbers—How it was brought home
to them—Memorial to Collins—Health of the staff—
Persians as servants—Persian cuisine—Kabobs,
varieties of—English dinners—Confectionery—Fruits—
Vegetables—Pickles, etc.—Cook-shops—Trotters—
Mode of selling meat—Game—Eggs—Wild vegetables—
Potatoes—Disinclination to use new seeds, and its
cause—Narcissus—General use of flower decoration—
Tame birds—Wild birds—White ants—Damaging the line
—Hamilton poles 292
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BEASTS, BIRDS, FRUITS, AND FLOWERS.
Tamed pigs—“Marjahn”—Mongoose—Persian cats—Their
value—Van cats—A fierce cat—How to obtain a Persian
cat—Grey-hounds—Toolahs—Watch-dogs—Monkeys—
Tame lions—Tame and cage birds—Superstition
concerning house-snakes—I kill a clockwinder—Wild ass
—Fighting rams—Tame partridges—Gardening—
Ordinary flowers—The broom-plant—Vine-culture—
Quinces and pomegranates—Orchards—Garden parties 302
CHAPTER XXIX.
 PERSIAN CHARACTER, COSTUMES, AND MANNERS.
Character of the Persians—Exaggeration—Mercifulness—
Anecdote—Costumes of men—Hair—Beards—Arms—
Costumes of women—Jewellery—Glass bangles—Nose-
rings—Painting of the face—Tattooing—Hair—Out-door
costume—Dress of children—Their manners—Strange
custom—Love of mothers—The uncle—Cousins—
Slaves—Servants—Slavery 314
CHAPTER XXX.
TRAVELLING—ART WORK—FOODS.
Travelling—Difficulties of posting—Saddles and bits—Cruel
joke—Old stories—Pastimes—Enamels—Persian
pictures—Curio buyer—Carvings—Metal-work—
Calligraphy—Kahtam—Incised work on iron—
Embroideries—Silver-work—Washing of linen—Ironing—
Needlework—The bath—Washing the hair with clay—
Bread and baking—Unleavened bread—Other kinds—
Travellers’ food—Inordinate appetites—Food of the poor 328
CHAPTER XXXI.
EDUCATION—LEAVE, AND RETURN VIÂ INDIA.
Education—Schools—Punishments—Love of poetry—
Colleges—Education of women—Religion—March to
Bushire—Extremes of cold and heat—Good luck—Go
home to England—Leave viâ India—The “Boys”—Lisbon
—Algiers—Port Said and Suez—Jeddah—Donkeys—
Coral reef—Sea-slugs—Aden—Madagascar oranges
—“Grimes”—Kurrachee—Drives—Visit to the alligators
at Muggerpir—Disgusting scene—A legatee—Black-
wood furniture—A lost bargain—Persian Gulf—Bushire
—Leave for Shiraz 337
CHAPTER XXXII.
FROM THE PERSIAN GULF TO ISPAHAN.
Our start for Shiraz—Camp out—Borasjūn—Spring at Dalliké 347
 —Kotuls—Kazerūn—Buy a horse—A tough climb—
Place of Collins’s murder—Arrive in Shiraz—Hire a
house—Settle down—Breaking horses—Night marching
—Difficulties of start—Mūrghab—Find our muleteer and
loads—Abadeh—Yezdikhast—Kūmishah—Mayar—Marg
—Arrive in Julfa
CHAPTER XXXIII.
JULFA.
Hire a house—Coolness of streets—Idleness of men—
Industry of women—Stone mortars—Arrack—Hire a
vineyard—A wily Armenian—Treasure-trove—The
“Shaking Minarets”—A hereditary functionary—A
permanent miracle—Its probable explanation—
Vaccination—Julfa priests—Arrack as an anæsthetic—
Road-making—Crops of firewood—Fire temple—Huge
trees—The racecourse—Disappearance of ancient brick
buildings—Donkeys—Healthiness of Julfa—Zil-es-Sultan
—His armoury—Prospects of the succession to the
throne—Bull-terriers—Mastiffs—Politeness and
rudeness of the prince 359
CHAPTER XXXIV.
JOURNEY TO AND FROM TEHERAN.
Proceed to Teheran—Takhtrowan—Duties—Gulhaek—Lawn- 368
tennis—Guebre gardener—A good road—The Shah—
Custom of the Kūrūk—M. Gersteiger—Cossack
regiments—Austrian officers—New coinage—Count
Monteforte—New police—Boulevard des Ambassadeurs
—English Embassy—Tile gates—Summer palaces—
Bazaars—Russian goods—Demarvend—Drive to
Ispahan—Difficulties of the journey—Accidents—Danger
of sunstroke—Turkeys—Keeping peacocks—Armenian
tribute of poultry—Burmese and Japanese embassies—
Entertainment and fireworks—Cruel treatment of Jews—
Oil paintings—Bahram and his queen—Practice makes
 perfect—Pharaoh and the Red Sea—Pharaoh and the
magicians
CHAPTER XXXV.
WE RETURN VIÂ THE CASPIAN.
New Year’s presents—Shiraz custom—Our cook’s
weaknesses—He takes the pledge—And becomes an
opium-eater—Decide to go home—Dispose of kit—Start
for Europe—Our own arrangements—Diary of our
journey home—Arrival 379
APPENDIX A.
Table of Post Stages and Ordinary Marches from Bushire,
Persian Gulf, to Teheran 410
APPENDIX B.
Duration of our Journey from Ispahan to London 412
APPENDIX C.
Travelling in Persia 413
APPENDIX D.
RUSSIAN GOODS VERSUS ENGLISH.
The Karūn River route—The best means of reaching the
Commercial Centres of Persia—Opinions of Experts—
Wishes of Merchants 417
Glossary of Persian Words 420
Index 429
LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.
SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY Frontispiece.
PERSIAN BAND To face page 91
FEMALE DANCERS AND EQUILIBRIST ” 114
THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS (NAKSH-I-
RŪSTAM) ” 119
ARMENIAN WOMEN ” 132
THE BASTINADO ” 147
THREE SHOPS IN BAZAAR ” 189
THE PUL-I-KOJŪ ” 195
TENT LIFE—WANDERING TRIBES ” 262
A ROSEH-KHANA, OR PRAYER-MEETING ” 283
LION AND LUHLIS ” 307
MIDDLE-CLASS PERSIANS—PERSIAN BOY ” 317
OUTDOOR DRESS OF PERSIAN WOMEN ” 325
DR. WILLS’S HOUSE IN JULFA ” 360
A CHUPPER-KHANA, OR POST-HOUSE ” 386
 IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN.
 CHAPTER I.
I GO TO PERSIA.

Wanted, a doctor—The Director-in-chief—Doubt and distrust—Simple advice—Am

referred to ‘Hadji Baba’—My kit—Saddle for riding post—Vienna—Rustchuk—
Quarantine—Galatz—Kustendji—Constantinople—Turkish ladies—Stamboul
—I have my hair cut—“Karagews”—Turkish coffee—A philo-Turk—Shooting
party—The theatres—The Opera—Armenian theatre—Gambling-house—A
Bashi-bazouk—We leave, viâ the Black Sea—The Russian captain—
Unarmed vessels—White Crimean wine—Foreign wines in Russia—Deck
passengers—Sinope—Batoum—Poti—The post-house—Difficulty in getting
food—Travelling en tröika—Kutais—A tarantass—Apply for horses—An
itching palm—We start—Tiflis—Lecoq’s beer—A happy reprieve—The joys of
travel—Chief of the Telegraph in Tiflis—Uniforms—Persian Consulate—
Coffee and pipes—Smoking an art—Effects on the tyro—Tea—The Consul—
His age—Dyeing the hair—The Opera, varied costumes at—The Tiflis ballet—
Leave Tiflis—Erivan—The Pass—We lighten our load—Hotel—Washing—
Nakchewan—Julfa, the frontier of Persia.

I think that there is no more painful position than that of the young
medical man. I had “passed,” and had got my qualifications. An
assistant I did not wish to be, and I therefore consulted the
advertisement columns of the Lancet, and was prepared to go
anywhere, if I might see the world, and have what Americans call a
good time.
At my first attempt I came on an advertisement of three
appointments, under the Indian Government, in Persia; the address
was the Adelphi. Off I started for the Adelphi, which I had always
looked on as a neighbourhood full of mystery, and whose inhabitants
were to be mistrusted. Timeo Danaos.
A first-floor—this looked well. I knocked, was told to enter. Two
gentlemen, kneeling on the floor, looked at me in a disturbed
manner. The whole room is strewn with sheets of written foolscap,
and it appears that I have arrived inopportunely, as official
documents are being sorted. I am asked to take a seat, having
stated to the elder of the two that I am come to see the director on
business.
Now I couldn’t at that time fancy a director who knelt—in fact, my
only idea of one was the typical director of the novel, a stout,
bechained man—and my astonishment was great at being quietly
informed by one of the gentlemen that he was Colonel G⸺, and
should be glad to hear anything I had to communicate. I stated my
wish to obtain such an appointment as was advertised; the duties,
pay, &c., were pointed out, and I came to the conclusion that it would
suit me as a “pastime” till the happy day when I should have a brass
plate of my own. But if my ideas of a director were lofty, my ideas of
a colonel were loftier; and I said to myself, one who combines these
two functions, and can be polite to a humble doctor—must be an
impostor.
I was asked for my credentials. I gave them, and was told to call in
the morning, but distrust had taken hold of me; I got an ‘Army List,’
and, not finding my chief-that-was-to-be’s name in it, I, forgetting that
we had then an Indian as well as an English army, came to the
conclusion that he must be an impostor, and that I should be asked
for a deposit in the morning, which was, I believed, the general way
of obtaining money from the unwary.
With, I fear, a certain amount of truculent defiance, I presented
myself at the appointed hour, and was told that my references were
satisfactory, that a contract would be drawn up that I should have to
sign, and that I should be ready to start in a fortnight; but, rather to
my astonishment, no mention was made of a deposit. “I think there is
nothing more,” said Colonel G⸺.
This, I concluded, indicated the termination of the interview; and,
after considerable humming and hawing, I came to the point, and
blurted out that, after searching the ‘Army List,’ I couldn’t find any
Colonel G⸺, and that no one had ever heard of the Telegraph
Department in Persia.
Instead of being annoyed, the Colonel merely asked if I knew any
one at the War Office. As it happened I did. “Well, go to him, and he
will tell you all about it.”
Off I went to the War Office, found my friend, and, to his horror,
told him that I wanted to know if the Persian Telegraph Department
existed or not, and if the director was or was not a myth. He easily
satisfied me, and I felt that I had been stupidly suspicious.
I then announced to my friends and relatives my probably
immediate departure for Persia. Strange to say, they declined to see
it in any other light than a peculiarly elaborate and stupid joke.
Instead of congratulations, I was treated as an unamiable and tiring
lunatic, and from none of my friends was I able to get any
information as to Persia. One man had a son in Baghdad! but it was
no good his writing him, as it took six months to get an answer.
After a day or two I again presented myself at the office, and I had
the country described to me, and various recommendations as to
outfit given me, and I also was introduced to Major C⸺, the
assistant-director. His advice was delightfully simple. “You’ll be able
to wear out all your old clothes; don’t buy any new ones; have a
‘Dayrell’ bridle; get nothing but flannel shirts.” Colonel G⸺ certainly
took great trouble to explain to me all about the country, and, taking
me out to lunch with him, bought me Morier’s ‘Hadji Baba,’ saying,
“When you read this you will know more of Persia and the Persians
than you will if you had lived there with your eyes open for twenty
years.” This is going a long way; it is seventeen years since I went to
Persia, and I read ‘Hadji Baba’ now, and still learn something new
from it. As Persia was in Morier’s time so it is now; and, though one
sees plenty of decay, there is very little change.
Two other candidates came forward, to whom I was deputed to
explain matters. They accepted the conditions, and, the deeds being
prepared, we all three went to the India Office and signed a contract
for three years.
On going to the Adelphi I was told that a sum of one hundred
pounds had been handed to each of my two colleagues to take them
to Persia. But I was glad to seize the opportunity kindly given me by
Colonel G⸺ of travelling with him, and he told me to meet him in
Vienna on a certain day.
 I had now no time to lose, and proceeded to buy my kit; what that
kit was it is as well the reader should know.
I got enough ordinary clothing for three years, such as we use in
England for morning or country wear, also two pairs of riding-boots;
these fitted me, and were consequently useless, for I soon found that
in riding long distances boots much too big are the thing, as then the
foot is neither cold in winter or crippled in summer; a knife, fork, and
spoon, to shut up; a revolver; a small bradawl, with the point buried
in a cork, for boring holes in straps; a military saddle (hussar
officer’s), with wallet-holsters and a high cantle (this cantle keeps
one’s rugs off one’s back when riding post, which is the only way of
quick travelling in the country); a double-barrelled fowling-piece
(nearly useless). My kit was packed in a couple of bullock-trunks,
and my saddle sewn up in my rugs, which were thick and good. I
also had a blanket-lined waterproof sheet.
I gave myself a week in Paris previous to my nominal start, and
thence I proceeded to Vienna, to be ready to leave with Colonel G
⸺ as soon as he arrived there.
I went to the “Golden Lamb,” a very comfortable hotel which the
Colonel had chosen, and beguiled my time pleasantly enough in
going nightly to the theatre to hear Offenbach’s operas done in
German. I saw ‘Bluebeard,’ ‘La Belle Hélène,’ &c. I was a fortnight in
Vienna, and I began to pick up a smattering, for, of course, the
German learnt at school is useless; my Offenbach system I found
more effectual than the usual one of “the gardener’s wife has
brought the hat of the merchant’s little boy,” &c.
A week after the Colonel’s arrival our stay in Vienna ended. We
left for Basiatch (by rail twenty-seven hours); slept there, and started
early in the morning for Rustchuk by steamer. There we found that
passengers from up the river were in quarantine; and the letters
were taken with a pair of tongs, with immense precautions, for
fumigation; we were advised not to land, as we should certainly have
to go to the lazaretto; and we were told that if we quietly went on to
Galatz, and said nothing, we could return the next day as from a
healthy port.
 We were lucky in taking the advice, as a passenger did venture on
to the lighter, and was, willy-nilly, marched off to what we learnt
afterwards was a six weeks’ quarantine.
We went on to Galatz, which we reached the next day.
Galatz is like a rural Wapping, but muddier. We went to bed, to find
ourselves under weigh in the morning. We soon got to Tchernavoda,
which seemed a mere village. There we landed, and thence, by a
very slow train indeed, to Kustendji. At this place we heard the
ravages of the cholera had been very great. We slept there that
night, and started at noon next day for Constantinople by steamer.
It blew hard, and we were very glad indeed to find ourselves in the
Bosphorus. There the scenery became splendid; no description of
mine can do justice to the castles and palaces hanging on the
water’s edge; the crowded picturesque villages that were reflected in
the clear blue water; the shoals of porpoises that accompanied the
ship at full speed, ploughing the water with a loud noise, and then, in
their course, leaping, still continuing the race, from the water; and
then entering it again amid a shower of spray. This wonderful scene
continued for eighteen miles. At 5 p.m. we anchored in the Golden
Horn. The scene was indescribable; all I had ever seen or read of
paled before it. We were too late to land, as one cannot do so after
sunset.
Next morning we went ashore in a caique, rowed by very
picturesque boatmen in white kilts, passed the Custom House, and
went straight to Misseri’s, preceded by our baggage, borne by three
porters. These “hammals” bear gigantic burdens, and as in most
Eastern towns there are no carriage-roads, they are of great use,
and generally form a distinct corporation.
At Misseri’s the Colonel was well known, having stayed there
several times before. In Constantinople, happily for me, instead of
going on at once, my chief was delayed by orders from home for
nearly two months; and I was enabled to see a good deal of the
town.
 Great was my delight to watch the Turkish ladies, their muslin
yashmaks lending a fictitious delicacy to their complexions, going
about in handsome carriages. Innumerable were the mysterious
stories I heard after table d’hôte of these veiled beauties. Many a
time have I gone on long expeditions into Stamboul with Mr. Ayrton,
a brother of “Board of Works Ayrton,” who, with a thorough
knowledge of Turkey and the Turk, took me under his wing in his
daily pilgrimages to the most unsavoury but interesting nooks of the
Mahommedan portion of the city. We went to coffee-houses, and
listened to story-tellers; we dined on savoury kabobs; and, alas! I
well remember my philo-Turk friend persuaded me to have my hair
cut by a Turkish barber. It was only too well done; when the satisfied
shaver handed me the glass I was as a sheep before the shearer,
dumb, but with horror; my head was pink, so closely was it cropped,
and my only consolation was the remark of my introducer to oriental
life, that “in the East they generally did things thoroughly.”
I saw too the Turkish Punch (“Karagews”), a most immoral puppet;
and the mildest and most favourable description of him was that “his
manners were none, his customs disgusting,” but then my mentor
said he was “very oriental”—perhaps the terms mean much the
same thing.
As the coffee seemed particularly delicious in the native cafés, I,
after some trouble, ascertained the real receipt for coffee à la Turca
(not à la Turque), as they call it. Here it is; for each tiny cup (about a
small wineglassful), a teaspoonful of coffee fresh roasted, and
ground at once while hot to a fine powder in a brass hand-mill, or at
times pounded in a mortar, is thrown into a small and heated
saucepan; add the required quantity of boiling water. Place on the
embers; when it threatens to boil over, remove; replace, and remove
a second and a third time; serve. All the dregs go to the bottom. No
sugar or milk used—never clean the saucepan!
At these cafés long chibouques with yellow clay heads are
smoked, the heads being rested on a brass tray. A ball of live
charcoal is placed on the long-cut Samsoon tobacco (or if the
customer be liberal, Macedonian), the stem is jasmine or cherry
wood, and the grander the pipe the longer the stem; rich customers
bring their own mouth-pieces, which have a long inner conical tube
that fits any stem. These mouth-pieces are of amber, and are
frequently ornamented with a hoop of brilliants. The pieces of amber
are two in number, and if of large size and of good colour cost two
pounds, upwards to even five-and-twenty: the ordinary fashion is to
separate these two pieces by a thin circle of lapis-lazuli or other
stone.
The narghilé is also much used. It will be fully described as the
“kalian” further on. In it is smoked the tumbaku of Persia. A few
pence is charged for the whole entertainment of coffee, smoke,
shelter, and music, such as it is, generally a guitar or flute-player,
who is glad to play to order for a cup of coffee. The customers sit on
little low stools like the French church chairs without their backs. In
some of the grander cafés divans, and even chairs, are provided.
Mr. Ayrton had spent many years in Egypt. He wore a coat made
by a Turkish tailor, a shawl waistcoat and a fez, and with his cropped
grey hairs (it was his barber who operated on me) and his big
chibouque with the amber mouth-piece (he had a large collection of
them) with the ring of diamonds, he looked a thorough Turk, and I
fancy posed and was treated as such. I remember myself thinking
that the get-up was assumed for the purpose of getting a deeper
insight into Turkish life. From what I know now, I merely suppose
that, from his wearing the fez, he was, or had been, in Turkish
employ; all government servants in Turkey have to wear it. Dr.
Millengen, in whose arms Byron died, and who was an old
government employé (physician to three Sultans), wore it; so did his
son, who was in the Turkish Government Telegraph; and another son
of his, I afterwards met in the Turkish Quarantine Service at Teheran,
told me he wore it always while in Turkey.
I was introduced to a M. la Fontaine, a most enthusiastic
sportsman, and his many nephews, and by him I was given a day’s
cock-shooting, and there was plenty of it. As for me, I was an utter
muff and cockney, or rather town-reared; but had I not a new pin-fire
breechloader, and was it not my first day’s real shooting? And as I
really did shoot two brace, I returned a delighted but tired youth. That
night will be ever memorable. I ate my first pillaw, with fowls boiled to
rags in it, and followed by curds with thick cream on the top called
“yaourt.” How we all ate!
We had come from Pera, crossing in a steamer, and had to ride
some twenty miles on rough little ponies to the sleeping place, and—
horror of horrors!—on Turkish saddles. Now to the timid rider a
Turkish saddle is at first a delight, for to leave it without great effort is
impossible, and there is a pommel which is so high that it appears
the height of folly not to cling to it; but when one’s knees are in one’s
mouth, when one’s saddle is hard as iron and cuts like a knife, when
one has new and heavy shooting-boots on, and one’s
unmentionables have a tendency to ruck, besides having the glory of
carrying a forty-guinea gun slung (oh, demon cockney gun-maker!)
by a sling that slips along the barrel, and was highly recommended,
with the addition of one hundred loaded cartridges distributed over
the many pockets of a very new shooting-coat, in the sun, with a fur
cap on—is it to be wondered at that the sufferings of the tortured
Indian at the stake were child’s-play to what I endured without a
groan, and repeating constantly assurances of my delight and
enjoyment?—and remember, reader, we went at a brisk canter all
the time.
How glad I was to lie down! How grieved I was, at 4.30 a.m. the
next day, to be called, and, after a hurried wash, to start in the half
dawn in my tight and heavy boots! But the firing began; I forgot the
tightness of my boots, the stiffness of my back. Do you remember
how stiff you felt after your first riding lesson, my friend? and you
hadn’t one hundred loaded cartridges about you, and an intermittent
garotte with your knees in your mouth; and I thanked Heaven I need
not sit down, for weighty reasons.
Of course I fired wildly; of course I missed continually, but it was
my first day, and I never enjoyed anything so much in my life. I
hobbled bravely on till there was no more daylight, but I did feel
thoroughly done on getting in, and I did not enjoy my ride back the
next day.
I used to try and learn Persian in my idle hours, and I soon
mastered the printed character and could read fluently, but without
the slightest idea of meaning. Kind Colonel G⸺ gave me many a
lesson, but I fear that loafing in Stamboul by day and going to the
French or Italian theatre in the evening had greater attractions.
I was always passionately fond of the stage, and, as we were
always going in a day or two, I used, on the principle that I might
never be able to go to the play again, to go every evening.
Of course there was only a third-rate French company, but how
very good they were! The term “stick,” so justly applied to many of
our actors, could not be attached to any player in the little band. All
were good, and all were good all round, and though the leading man
might be everything in the drama, yet he didn’t object to play the
lover in the little vaudeville, and played it well. An Englishman, in the
event of anything so dreadful happening to him, would soon let his
audience see that he was only doing it under protest.
At the Opera the prima donna was ridiculously fat, and to a man
unmusical this somewhat destroys the illusion—but then the fauteuils
d’orchestre only cost ten francs. I also went to an Armenian theatre,
but it had the national characteristics, squalor and misery, and I did
not repeat the visit. I failed even to see an Armenian piece (if such a
thing exists), but sat out a fearful edition of ‘The Chiffonier of Paris;’
and I was told that all the pieces played in Constantinople (Pera) in
Armenian were mere translations.
Even the delights of gaming were permitted in Pera. A few doors
from Messeri’s was the Café “Flam,” as it was affectionately called
by the Pera youth. “Café Flamand” was, I fancy, its real title. Here
were played “pharaon” and roulette. I was recommended the former
game, for economical reasons—it took longer to lose a napoleon.
Nobody seemed to win at either game, but pharaon certainly “took
longer.” I was not tempted to make frequent visits, as I had played
for some small sums at Baden-Baden a year or two before. There
one was at least cheated fairly; here the robbery was open.
A few days after the New Year the Colonel told me that we should
really leave for Persia by the very first opportunity. I bid farewell to all
the kind friends I had made, had my photo taken in breeches, boots,
and revolver at Abdullah’s—a weakness every Englishman who
reaches Constantinople is guilty of. It does not do to be too oriental.
At Abdullah’s I purchased a fearful-looking type, marked a Bashi-
bazouk, and found it out afterwards to be the portrait of a man whose
acquaintance I made in Persia, the Dutch Consul in Bushire; but he
made a very good type, being a big man; and he literally bristled with
weapons, and seemed capable of any atrocities.
One fine afternoon, on January 5th, 1867, we were rowed on
board the Russian steamer Oleg. We had an English-speaking
captain, who was genial and communicative. My chief was confined
to his cabin; and as there was nothing to read and nothing to do, I
saw a good deal of the Russian. He told me that all the commanders
of their mail-boats were naval officers, and that all the mail-boats
could be turned into war-steamers at a few hours’ notice, merely
requiring the guns to be put into them: “so that, as you English don’t
let us have war-vessels on the Black Sea, we run a superior class of
mail-boat” (built, however, on the Clyde). And a very superior boat
she was.
I was told by the captain to avoid the high-priced wines, and stick
to white Crimean. This was a particularly delicious light wine, like a
good Sauterne; and I find, from after experience of Russian railway
buffets, which far exceed anything of the sort we have in grandeur,
that, as a rule, the liquor is simply fair red and white country wine,
the only difference being in price and label.
In some of these labels the Muscovite imagination fairly runs riot.
You see “Château d’Yquem,” “Schloss Johannisberg,” &c., but
nobody ever seems to drink them, and they are mere table
ornaments. The rich drink nothing but champagne of known and
expensive brands, and bottled stout; while the middle classes stick to
“piver” (Russian beer) and vodki.
Tea, in tumblers, was continually being served, with a big slice of
lemon in it. The deck passengers, among whom were many rough
Circassians, all armed to the teeth, cuddled down into the nooks of
the cargo, and managed to keep themselves warm as best they
could. They too always were drinking tea, but they adopted a plan to
economise sugar that I have noticed constantly among the Russian
poor: a bit of sugar is placed in the cheek, and then the tea is
swallowed in gulps; the poor fellows thus keeping up a sort of
delusion that they are swallowing sweet and hot tea, though the
mouth only, and not the tea, is really sweetened. There was none of
the exclusiveness of the Englishman. A made tea, and regaled B, C,
and D; then B treated the rest, and so on; when not asleep, eating,
or tea-drinking, the deck people were card-playing and smoking. The
short pipe was a good deal used, and passed from hand to hand,
while the trader class smoked the cigarette. All the men, and most of
the women, wore a sort of rough butcher-boot; and, from the state of
the roads at Poti, any other foot clothing for pedestrians would have
been impossible.
We lay to off Sinope on the 7th (here the Russians, our little
captain took care to remind me, destroyed the Turkish fleet), but
could not land passengers, a gale blowing. We changed steamers at
Batoum on the 10th.
The scenery at Batoum is very fine; the sea, without a wave, of a
deep blue; well-wooded hills and the Elburz range of the Caucasus
covered with snows forming the horizon. So warm was it here that
we lay on the beach throwing stones into the tranquil sea.
At last we arrived at Poti, being the fifth day from Constantinople.
We were put on a lighter with our baggage, and taken direct to the
Custom House; thence we got on a little steamer that was to take us
up the Riom river, and of this we had some twelve hours, the great
part of the time being occupied in getting aground, and getting off
again.
From Poti to Merand we went in a telega, en tröika, some sixty
versts, over what was rather a track than a road, in thirteen hours.
A telega, or road-waggon, is easily described as an oblong box on
wheels, and of the severest simplicity. The box is about five feet by
three feet six inches at the top, and five feet by three feet at the
bottom, with a plank in the front for the driver. There are no attempts
at springs; strength and lightness are all that is aimed at; these are
attained—also the maximum of discomfort. To this machine are
harnessed three horses: one trots in the shafts with a yoke four feet
high, the other two, in traces at either side, gallop. The harness is
rope, the driver often drunk.
Travelling thus is monotonous, and after a time very painful. To the
Russian officer, with his big pillow, little or no luggage, and plenty of
hay, a tröika is comparatively comfortable, for he can lie stretched
out, and be tolerably free from bruises, but, doing as we did, we
suffered grinding torments. One telega was full of our luggage, and
in the other we sat on a portmanteau of the Colonel’s; at each jolt we
were obliged to clutch the edge of the machine to prevent knocking
one against the other, and there was no support of any kind. To
people accustomed to ride on springs our sufferings would only be
apparent if they had once tried what it was to travel in this way for
many hours over the roughest roads, day and night and at full speed,
and without springs of any kind. When our hands got painfully
bruised we changed sides, and bruised the other ones, for we were
forced to hold on. When we were lucky enough to get a broadish
telega we got some hay, and sat on it, thus resting our knees.
On our way we only saw one woman and, say, a hundred men.
The country seemed to me very thinly populated after teeming
England. On our arrival at the post-house at Merand we were shown
a room with two plank bedsteads and a fireplace. I little thought that
in Persia the post-houses hadn’t even the plank bedsteads.
Neither of us could speak one word of the language; we tried
French, German, Italian, Turkish, Persian—all of no avail—and we
had no food. At last we obtained fire and a samovar, or Russian tea
urn; the first by pantomime, the second by looking fierce and
repeating the word.
We pointed to our mouths, heads were shaken (perhaps they
thought we wanted a dentist); at last I had a happy thought, and, by
drawing a hen and egg, and hopping about the room clucking, the
postmaster’s wife at last produced the required eggs; they then
brought bread and sausage, the latter much decomposed.
Colonel G⸺ was taken ill in the night, and I feared we could not
proceed. But by 8 a.m. (of the 12th) we were again on the road, and
did the thirty-four versts on a good military road by noon. The 12th is
with Russians New Year’s Day, and we found the town of Kutais for
the most part drunk and letting off its firearms.
Here our landlord informed us that there was an opportunity to buy
a tarantass, which we could dispose of when we reached the
Persian frontier or at Tiflis.
I was greatly delighted when the Colonel decided on purchasing
this very primitive carriage. Fancy an old-fashioned open carriage to
hold two, with cushions stuffed in prehistoric ages with hay, a
tarpaulin apron, a huge hood provided with a leather curtain which,
when dropped, plunged the traveller into black darkness, but kept
the wind and rain out; a gigantic box and boot, the whole slung on a
perch from four posts by thick straps, and having very small fore and
very large hind wheels, a plumb-line dropped from the top of the
latter being quite a foot beyond the bottom. But it kept us warm and
dry, would hold all the luggage, and would in theory enable us to
travel with three horses instead of six. We found out afterwards that
we had to take five, when we were lucky enough to get them.
I fancy the whole machine cost one hundred and fifty roubles, or,
at the then exchange, fifteen pounds. Then came a wheelwright, and
he took some seven hours at the wheels. At length, about five, all
was pronounced ready, and we sent our “padoroschna,” or permit to
take post-horses, to the postmaster for horses. Reply: “None just at
present; would send them over as soon as they came in.” To lose no
time, we carefully filled the boot with our luggage, and my bullock-
trunks were firmly roped on behind.
We took tea preparatory to our start, and laid in provisions of
bread, beer, &c., with a couple of fowls; for we were told we should
find nothing but black bread and hot water on the road. Still no
horses.
We went to the post-house, where we found nine beasts, but were
told that these were all reserved for special service. The Colonel
then smelt a rat; but what were we to do? the postmaster (a major)
was dining out, and no one knew where he was.