Robert Orme

Robert Orme

Robert Orme (25 December 1728 – 13 January 1801) was a British historian of India. Son of a British East India Company physician and surgeon, he entered the service of the Company in Bengal in 1743. He was regarded as an authority on India.

Quotes

Historical Fragments (1782)

Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, the Morattoes, and English Concerns in Indostan; from the Year MDCLIX (London: F. Wingrave, 1805 [1782])

• A few petty Rajahs were lured by better appointments to conversion, but the people clung to their pagodas; some preachers were put to death, which increased the spirit of martyrdom...The religious vexation continued. Labour left the field and industry the loom; until the decrease of the revenues drew representations from the governors of the provinces; which induced Aurengzebe to substitute a capitation tax, as the balance of the account between the two religions.
  • "Historical Fragments", sec. 1: s.a. 1679

• The mechanic or artificer will work only to the measure of his necessities. He dreads to be distinguished. If he becomes too noted for having acquired a little more money than others of his craft, that will be taken from him. If conspicuous for the excellence of his skill, he is seized upon by some person in authority, and obliged to work for him night and day, on much harder terms than his usual labour acquired when at liberty. Hence all emulation is destroyed; and all the luxury of an Asiatick empire has not been able to counteract by its propensity to magnificence and splendour, the dispiriting effects of that fear which reigns throughout, and without which a despotick power would reign no more.
  • "General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan" (1 September 1753) bk. 1, ch. 4, p. 405

• The Moors of Indostan may be divided into two kinds of people, differing in every respect, excepting in the profession of the same religion. Under the first are reckoned the descendants of the conquerors; Tartars continually naturalizing themselves in Indostan, through the encouragement which their martial spirit is sure to receive; Arabians and Persians who have quitted their own, to seek their fortunes in this country. The second rank of Moors comprehends all the descendants of converted Gentoos – a miserable race, as none but the most miserable of the Gentoo casts are capable of changing their religion.
  • "General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan", bk. 2, ch. 1

• The Tartars are known amongst themselves to be of honest and simple manners; and if at times fierce and cruel, they cease to be so when they cease to be enemies of war.
  The conquest of Indostan was made by them with little difficulty, and has since been maintained with less: a distinction of religions (that of Mahomed, and that of the Gentoos) has ensued, whilst the conqueror may without control vaunt his own, and insult that of the subject; the subject, by being more numerous has only become more despicable, from this proof of not daring to exert his strength. Almost the whole wealth of this vast territory is divided amongst the Moors, the effect of their tenaciousness in keeping all offices of the government amongst themselves. The principle of the government has nevertheless reduced all these mighty lords to be as much the slaves to some powers, as others are slaves to theirs. A licentiousness and luxury peculiar to this enervating climate, have spread their corruption, and instead of meeting with obstacles from laws or opinions, is cherished as the supreme good to the utmost excesses.
  All these will surely be deemed causes sufficient to have changed, in the present Moors of Indostan, the spirit which their ancestors brought with them into it: and from hence many and dreadful vices are now naturalized amongst them.
  A domineering insolence towards all who are in subjection to them, ungovernable willfulness, inhumanity, cruelty, murders and assassinations, deliberated with the same calmness and subtlety as the rest of their politics, an insensibility to remorse for these crimes, which are scarcely considered otherwise than as necessary accidents in the course of life, sensual excesses which revolt against nature, unbounded thirst of power, and an expaciousness of wealth equal to the extravagance of his propensities and vices – this is the character of an Indian Moor, who is of consequence sufficient to have any character at all.
  • "General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan", bk. 2, ch. 2

• We find...amongst the Moors, the ceremonies of outward manners carried to a more refined pitch than in any other part of the world, excepting China. These manners are become a fundamental of their education, as without them a man would, instead of making his fortune, be liable to lose his head.
  An uncivil thing is never said amongst equals: the most extravagant adulation, both of gesture and words, is lavished upon the superior. The grandee is seated in his Durbar, where all who approach to pay their respects are ranged according to their respective degrees of station or favour. All is attention to his countenance: if he asks a question, it is answered with the turn that will please him: if he asserts, all applaud the truth: does he contradict, all tremble: a multitude of domesticks appear in waiting, as silent and immovable as statues. This is the ceremonial of paying court. I speak not of the Durbar as the tribunal of justice: there injuries must cry aloud, or will not be heard.
  • "General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan", bk. 2, ch. 3

• The texture of the human frame in India, seems to bear proportion with the rigidity of the northern monsoon, as that does with the distance from Tartary; but as in the southern monsoon heats are felt at the very foot of Mount Caucasus, intense as in any part of India, very few of the inhabitants of Indostan are endowed with the nervous strength, or athletic size, of the robustest nations of Europe.
  On the contrary, southward of Lahore we see throughout India a race of men, whose make, physiognomy, and muscular strength, convey ideas of an effeminacy which surprizes when pursued through such numbers of the species, and when compared to the form of the European who is making the observation. The sailor no sooner lands on the coast, than nature dictates to him the full result of this comparison; he brandishes his stick in sport, and puts fifty Indians to flight in a moment: confirmed in his contempt of a pusillanimity and an incapacity of resistance, suggested to him by their physiognomy and form, it is well if he recollects that the poor Indian is still a man.
  The muscular strength of the Indian is still less than might be expected from the appearance of the texture of his frame. Two English sawyers have performed in one day the work of thirty-two Indians: allowances made for the difference of dexterity, and the advantage of European instruments, the disparity is still very great; and would have been more, had the Indian been obliged to have worked with the instrument of the European, as he would scarcely have been able to have wielded it.
  As much as the labourer in Indostan is deficient in the capacity of exerting a great deal of strength at an onset, so is he endowed with a certain suppleness throughout all his frame, which enables him to work long in his own degree of labour; and which renders those contortions and postures, which would cramp the inhabitant of northern regions, no constraint to him. There are not more extraordinary tumblers in the world. Their messengers will go fifty miles a day, for twenty or thirty days without intermission. Their infantry march faster, and with less weariness, than Europeans; but could not march at all, if they were to carry the same baggage and accoutrements.
  Exceptions to this general defect of nervous strength are found in the inhabitants of the mountains which run in ranges of various directions throughout the continent of Indostan. In these, even under the tropic, Europeans have met with a savage whose bow they could scarcely draw to the head of a formidable arrow, tinged with the blood of tigers whose skins he offers to sale. Exceptions to the general placid countenance of the Indians, are found in the inhabitants of the woods, who, living chiefly on their chace, and perpetually alarmed by summons and attacks from the princes of the plains, for tributes withheld, or ravages committed, wear an air of dismay, suspicion, treachery, and wildness, which renders them hideous; and would render them terrible, if their physiognomy carried in it any thing of the fierceness of the mountaineer.
  The stature of the Indian is various: the northern inhabitant is as tall as the generality of our own nation: more to the south their height diminishes remarkably; and on the coast of Coromandel we meet with many whose stature would appear dwarfish, if this idea was not taken off by the slimness and regularity of their figure. Brought into the world with a facility unknown to the labours of European women; never shackled in their infancy by ligatures; sleeping on their backs without pillows: they are in general very straight; and there are few deformed persons amongst them.
  • "Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Indostan"

• Water is the only drink of every Indian respectable enough to be admitted into their assemblies of public worship, as all inebriating liquors are forbore through a principle of religion; not that the soil is wanting in productions proper to compose the most intoxicating, nor themselves in the art of preparing them for the outcasts of their own nation, or others of persuasions different from their own, who chuse to get drunk. They have not equally been able to refrain from the use of spices and these the hottest, without which they never make a meal. Ginger is produced in their gardens as easily as radishes are in ours; and chilli, the highest of all vegetable productions used for food, insomuch that it will blister the skin, grows spontaneously: these, with turmeric, are the principal ingredients of their cookery, and by their plenty are always within the reach of the poorest. A total abstinence from animal food is not so generally observed amongst them as is imagined; even the Bramins will eat fish; but as they never prepare either fish or flesh without mixing them with much greater quantities of spices than Europeans suffer in their ragouts, animal food never makes more than the slightest portion of their meal, and the preference of vegetables, of which they have various kinds in plenty is decisively marked amongst them all. The cow is sacred every where: milk, from a supposed resemblance with the ‘amortam’ or nectar of their gods, is religiously esteemed the purest of foods, and receives the preference to vegetables in their nourishment.
  If the rice harvest should fail, which sometimes happens in some parts of India, there are many other resources to prevent the inhabitant from perishing: there are grains of a coarser kind and larger volume than rice, which require not the same continuation of heat, and at the same time the same supplies of water, to be brought to perfection: there are roots, such as the Indian potatoe, radish, and others of the turnip kind, which without manure acquire a larger size than the same species of vegetables in Europe, when assisted with all the arts of agriculture, although much inferior to those of Peru, of which Garcilassa della Vega gives so astonishing a description: there are ground fruits of the pumpkin and melon kind, which come to maturity with the same facility, and of which a single one is sufficient to furnish a meal for three persons, who receive sufficient nourishment from this slender diet. The fruit-trees of other countries furnish delicacies to the inhabitant, and scarcely any thing more; in India there are many which furnish at once a delicacy and no contemptible nourishment: the palm and the coco trees give in their large nuts a gelatinous substance, on which men, when forced to the experience by necessity, have subsisted for fifty days: the jack-tree produces a rich, glewy, and nutritive fruit: the papa and the plantain-tree grow to perfection, and give their fruit within the year: the plantain, in some of its kinds, supplies the place of bread, and in all is of excellent nourishment. These are not all the presents which the luxuriant hand of nature gives as food to the inhabitant of India; but as the natural history of this country is reserved for more diligent and able enquirers, this imperfect enumeration is fufficient to prove that the Indian, incapable as he is of hard labour, can rarely run the risk of being famished...The sun forbids the use of fuel in any part of the year, as necessary to procure warmth; and what is necessary to dress their victuals, is chiefly supplied by the dung of their cows.
  • "Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Indostan"