India
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘India’
A street urchin of Lahore takes it on himself to provide a naive Tibetan monk with a hot meal.
Young Kim O’Hara, who knows all the ways and wiles of the dusty streets of Lahore, has promised to help a Tibetan monk beg for his dinner. He has high hopes of a certain grocer’s wife, but she is not disposed to dole out charity to yet another holy man.
A dozy rabbit gets an idea into his head and soon all the animals of India are running for their lives.
The following tale from the fourth-century BC Jataka Tales was told to illustrate how Hindu ascetics blindly copied one another’s eye-catching but useless mortifications; but it might just as well be applied to stock-market rumours or ‘project fear’ politics.
A warlike king sets out to bag another small kingdom for his realms, but a monkey gets him thinking.
The Jataka Tales are a collection of roughly fourth-century BC stories supposedly from the many previous lives of Gautama Buddha. Several tell, Aesop-like, how one may learn wisdom by observing the ways of the natural world around us. In this case, a belligerent monarch draws a timely lesson from the antics of a monkey.
When Lord Salisbury asked the Russian Minister of the Interior how many agents the Tsar had in India, the reply came as a shock.
Throughout the nineteenth century, London was afraid that the Russian Empire would invade India through Afghanistan. Russian reassurances fell on deaf ears, leading to war in Afghanistan in 1838-42 and again in 1878-80. Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, issued a press crackdown, and Russophobia in the home press spiked.
James Tod brought order to Udaipur after years of turmoil, but not everyone appreciated him.
James Tod (1782-1835) was appointed Political Agent in the western Rajput states in 1818, but retired in 1822 on health grounds, after falling out with his superiors. Over in Calcutta, Bishop Heber had heard rumours, but a visit to Udaipur in 1825 cleared it all up.
Vijay Singh, Raja of Jodhpur, was left to fend for himself after his army deserted him.
The Kingdom of Marwar in Jodhpur (now in Rajasthan, northwest India) was noted for insubordination towards the fading Mughal Emperors, but in the 1750s it fell under the control of the Maratha to the south, paying a high price for their help in resolving a tangled dispute over the crown.