The Lays of Alha

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The Lay of Alha is a traditional epic poem from northern India, celebrating the heroic deeds of Alha and Udal, legendary warriors of the Bundelkhand region. William Waterfield's work on this epic involves translation, commentary, and preservation of the ancient ballads that highlight themes of bravery, loyalty, and valor. The poem reflects regional history and folklore, offering insight into medieval Indian warrior culture. Waterfield's edition makes this important oral tradition accessible to a wider audience interested in Indian literature and history.

William Waterfield (1832-1907) was a British writer and scholar known for his works on India and the British Empire. He specialized in documenting colonial history, culture, and administration, offering detailed accounts of India's social and political life during the 19th century.

vb Waterfield's writings contributed to the understanding of British colonial governance and Indian society, blending historical analysis with contemporary observations from his experiences.

My father, Mr. William Waterfield, the translator of these Ballads, was born in 1832, and was the eldest son of Thomas Nelson Waterfield, who for many years was Chief Clerk in the Political and Secret Department of the Board of Control, which was the predecessor of the India Office.

He was educated at Westminster School, of which he was Captain in 1849-50, and thence, having obtained a Bengal Writership, he went to Haileybury, then the training college for Service under the East India Company. He passed out Head of the College in June 1852, having been awarded many medals and prizes in Sanskrit, Persian, Bengali, Hindi, and other Indian languages, &c., and arrived in Calcutta in November 1852.

His training was completed at the College of Fort William, where he gained Certificates of High Proficiency in Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, and Bengali, and was awarded medals for Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Persian, and Arabic, and Degrees of Honour in Bengali, Sanskrit, and Hindi.

His first two Degrees of Honour were presented to him in the Council Chamber by the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, in person, a practice which had fallen into disuse, but which Lord Dalhousie had for some time wished to restore; and, as he said, 'the remarkable performance of Mr. Waterfield offered the best occasion that could be hoped for'.

In June 1854 Mr. Waterfield was appointed Assistant Magistrate and Collector of the twenty-four Parganas, and having been transferred to the Survey in 1856, he became Superinten-dent of the Northern Division of Survey in 1858. In 1859 he was removed to the Financial Department and appointed First Assistant to the Accountant-General, Madras, and then First Assistant to the Accountant-General to the Government of India. In 1867 he became Accountant-General of the North-West Provinces, and in 1877 Comptroller-General of India, retiring from the Service in 1881.

He was the author of 'Indian Ballads and other Poems' and 'Hymns for Holy Days and Seasons', as well as other poems that have not been printed. One of these has been added as an appendix to this volume; since, though it is not a part of the Lay of Alha, it deals with the predecessor of Prithiraj, who takes a prominent part in the Lay.

After my father's return to England he settled in Devonshire, residing near Exeter at first and subsequently near Dawlish, where he died in 1907. It was, unfortunately, not until after this date that the work on which Sir George A. Grierson was engaged led him to address a letter to my father to ask where he could obtain a copy of his translation of 'The Nine-Lakh Chain' (the second canto of the Lay of Alha), which had been printed in the 'Calcutta Review'; and thus much information of interest regarding my father's compilation of his translation has been lost and I am unable to state his reasons for selecting certain cantos for translation, or for not completing those which he began but left unfinished. But I put my father's MSS. and papers dealing with the Lay in Sir George Grierson's hands, and I take this opportunity of expressing my indebted-ness to him for his labours in preparing this volume for the Press and in writing abstracts of the remaining cantos, thus presenting the substance of the Poem as a whole and giving coherence to my father's translation.

For the benefit of readers who may be unfamiliar with old-fashioned English words on the one hand, or with Indian manners and customs on the other, I have thought it better not to omit any of my father's numerous explanatory footnotes.

EVERY reader of that fascinating classic, Tod's 'Rajasthan', will remember how much its author depended on the bardic chroniclers of Rajputana for his materials. In old times each Räjpūt monarch kept his court bard, who recorded the deeds of his master and celebrated the virtues of his ancestors. The most famous of the epics so composed is the 'Prithiraj Rāsau' of Chand Bardai, who died beside his master, Prithiraj the Chauhan of Delhi, in the 'Great Battle of A.D. 1192, when India fell under Muslim domination. It comprises a hundred thousand stanzas in sixty-nine books, and Tod accurately describes it as a universal history of the period in which its author wrote. It, and many other similar works, were composed by educated men, familiar with the traditional rules of composition and of poetics. Such chronicles were carefully preserved in manuscript and exist in that form to the present day.

The work of which an account is given in the following pages is of a somewhat different character. No old manuscripts of it have ever been discovered. Parmal, whom it celebrates, disappeared from history in ignominy, and Mahoba, his capital, ceased to exist as a royal town only eleven years after the death of Chand and Prithiraj. The very name of its author is unknown except for a tradition of little value that it was composed by Jagnaik, sister's son of Parmal. Nevertheless, it is, without doubt, the most popular poem of its kind in Hindostan. It is the property, not of educated men, but of illiterate minstrels who are found scattered over northern India from Delhi to Bihar. These 'Alha Ganewalas', as they are called, make it their profession to recite the Alh-khand, or 'Lay of Alha', handed down to them from generation to generation by their predecessors. Under such circumstances the text varies from place to place, and the language has changed as time elapsed. It now presents the singular appearance of a poem composed in the twelfth century, yet containing such English words as 'pistol', 'bomb', and Sappers and Miners'.

It had never been redúced to writing till Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Elliott, when in Farrukhabad in the late sixties of the last century, found some three or four minstrels, and employed one of them to compile a complete set of the entire cycle from their joint memories. Farrukhabad is close to Kanauj, one of the places with which the heroes of the cycle were closely connected, and so the text, as we have it, may be called the Kanauji recension of the poem. This is the only complete version of the cycle of which I am aware. The popularity of the Kanauji edition, which has been several times reprinted, has induced other publishers to produce sections of the poem from the mouths of other reciters, and I myself have published portions collected by me in Bihär¹ and by Mr. Vincent Smith in Bundelkhand. Mr. Elliott drew the attention of Mr. W. Waterfield, of the Bengal Civil Service, then Accountant-General of the North-West Provinces, to the cycle which he had had compiled, and that gentleman undertook the task of translating the whole into English ballad metre. A portion of this translation appeared in instalments in vols. lxi to lxiii (1875-6) of the Calcutta Review, under the name of 'The Nine-Lakh Chain or the Maro Feud', but that periodical was read by few people whose home was not in India, and it followed that Mr. Waterfield's spirited version did not acquire more than a local reputation. The style adopted by him, that of the English Border ballads, is excellently suited to the subject, and the occasional use of antique words and phraseology gives just the right idea of the rough and somewhat antique Bundeli Hindi dialect of the original.

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