As the 375th anniversary of the founding of Madras that is Chennai draws near, an oft-asked question keeps cropping up again and again. With no safe landing place anywhere on the three-mile long stretch of coast that was the eastern boundary of the sandy spit Venkatadri Nayak granted Francis Day in 1639, why did he accept the grant on behalf of the East India Company, realising full well what the ship-to-shore problems would be, given the rough surf and dangerous swell every landing had to contend with? I’ve in years of searching for an answer never been able to find a satisfactory one, but I keep finding descriptions time and again of that ship-to-shore passage. The latest I’ve found was a narration by a Maria Graham who travelled in India from 1809 to 1811 and had her recollections of that sojourn published in Edinburgh in 1831 under the title Journal of a Residence in India. Recording her words here is a reminder of how far we have come from the early days of the city.

Stating that a friend who had seen her ship enter Madras Roads had sent out a boat — presumably what was called a masula boat — to bring her ashore (about a mile from where the ship had anchored), she continues, “While I was observing its structure and its rowers, they suddenly set up a song, as they called it but I do not know that I ever heard so wild and plaintive a cry. We were getting into the surf: the cockswain now stood up, and with his voice and his foot kept time vehemently, while the men worked their oars backwards, till a violent surf came, struck the boat, and carried it along with a frightful violence; then every oar was plied to prevent the wave from taking us back as it receded, and this was repeated five or six times, the song of the boatmen rising and falling with the waves, till we were dashed high and dry on the beach.

“The boats used for crossing the surf are large and light, made of very thin planks sewed together, with straw in the seams, for caulking would make them too stiff; and the great object is, that they should be flexible, and give to the water like leather, otherwise they would be dashed to pieces. Across the very edge of the boat are the bars on which the rowers sit; and two or more men are employed in the bottom of the boat to bail out the water… At one end of the boat is a bench with cushions and a curtain, for passengers, so that they are kept dry while the surf is breaking round the boat.

“We were hardly ashore when we were surrounded by above a hundred Dubashis and servants of all kinds, pushing for employment. The Dubashis undertake to interpret, to buy all you want, to change money, to provide you with servants, tradesmen, and palankeens, and, in short, to do everything that a stranger finds it irksome to do for himself…”

Later during her stay in Madras, Graham visits Mahabalipuram and makes two perceptive observations. She points out that the “head-dress on the gods and principal persons represented in the sculpture rocks at this place, have not the smallest likeness to any used in this part of India, but they extremely resemble those of the countries bordering upon Tartary, and those represented in the cave of Elephanta. The figures of the Brahmins and pilgrims are (on the other hand) precisely as seen every day at present…..” Her contention would appear to be that the sculptors came from somewhere in northern India. She then goes on to state something that fellow conservationists like your columnist are saying 200 years later: “I am sorry to observe, that the Madras government has let the rocks of Mahvellipoor by way of stone quarries, and they are digging the stone so near some of the best executed caves, as to threaten them with destruction…” Nothing, it would seem has changed; the biggest threat to heritage would appear to be governments!

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Inscriptions unread

I’ve long contended that we Indians lack a sense of history and have always been regularly challenged by those who point out that there are thousands of records in palm leaves, copper plates and as inscriptions on temple walls and monuments. They’re quite right, but when it is said that Tamil Nadu has the largest number of inscriptions surviving, the nearly 20,000 mentioned seem a pitifully small number for a territory that claims a history of thousands of years or even for, let us say, the last 2,500 years which is the period of history most historians tend to look at. During such a period there must have been tens of thousands of other inscriptions in Tamizhagam and they would have been lost during the numerous wars during those centuries, or vandalised, or lost through lack of maintenance. This indifference to preserving those records of written history is why I continue to hold the view that we Indians lack a sense of history.

The preservation of what is left has been entirely due to Government institutions only a couple of hundred years old. Indeed, the Epigraphy wing of Tamil Nadu’s Department of Archaeology dates only to 1966! But even in their short life span, organisations like these have managed to build up a corpus of work from which historians could benefit.

Unfortunately, however, deciphering of these inscriptions has often led to debate based on interpretation. But what is of greater concern to me is that the publications that hold compilations of those interpretations are in such an arcane language that the ordinary student of history’s interest in them soon gets dampened. And if that is not to happen, then interpretations would need to be in everyday Tamil and, for non-Tamil scholars, in everyday English.

Such a project may be massive, but it is one that is necessary if even a modicum of interest in ancient history is to be retained.

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Spencer’s and the railwayman

It was in this column at the beginning of this year, January 13th in fact, while recalling Alan Turing, ‘the Father of the Computer’, that I mentioned that his maternal grandfather was a railwayman, E.W. Stoney, who had retired to his cottage in Coonoor. At that time, I was certain that I had come across the name Stoney somewhere but for the life of me could not remember where. Then the other day, while researching a project I’m working on, the name leapt out of the page from a book I was going through, The Spencer Legend — and to think I couldn’t remember the man I had mentioned in that book of mine!

Stoney, I had recorded, was a very good friend of Eugene Oakshott who in 1897 kick-started the growth of Spencer’s by making the proprietary firm a public limited company. And the first shareholder of Spencer & Co Ltd was E.W. Stoney, a senior manager with the South Indian Railway. How much that connection had to do with Spencer’s being the caterers for the SIR must be 1eft to the gossip-mongers, but it was a relationship that lasted well over 50 years.

How close Stoney’s connection with the Chairman, Eugene Oakshott, was can be gauged from the fact that Stoney was made a member of the Spencer’s Board in 1902 and served on it till 1904. Presumably, he had by then retired from the SIR where his service had earned him a CIE (Commander of the Indian Empire). He must have bought The Gables in Coonoor around then and watched his grandson run about in the premises.

It would be nice to know what Stoney was in the SIR. Spencer’s records mention him as being a General Manager at a time when an Agent headed the operation. A history of the SIR does not mention him at all. But to have got a CIE he must have been very senior in the organisation and an achiever. Maybe I’ll hear about it one of those days from someone in ‘Trichinopoly’ where the SIR was headquartered.