South India By Palanquin

A fascinating, insightful record of a trip round southern India in the 1840's. Stories of route, travel systems and interaction with other expatriates and indigenous workmen. All very instructive. A good read!

A unique journal, written pre-British Raj, which I suspect would be significant to historians, but is nonetheless an absorbing and enjoyable read to the lay person. The intimate first-person diaristic form brings the reader directly into imaginative contact with the time and the place of which it recounts, full of keen observations and self-reflections that conjure a portrait of both the writer himself and the South Indian land through which he traverses. The missionary, J.H. Gray, appears to be one of many British colonials enjoying grand tour-by-palanquin, borne like ertswhile maharaja's, with occasional excursions by horseback and sharing each other's palanquins. Ofcourse, we inhabit the perspective of a Victorian gentleman embedded in the cultural norms of imperialism, shot through with casual dehumanisation and entitlement, which, although mild by the standards of their day, still induces some wincing. Rather than interpreting or analysing this, the absence of commentary on the colonial dynamics at play is an intelligent choice - it serves to highlight it rather than obscure it. The reader is left wondering about the perspective of the palanquin bearers and triangulating this, and Gray's descriptions of them against contemporary analyses of European colonisation. The Victorian habit of botanical observation and description is on full display in Gray's depictions of landscape, and his evident pleasure in the Ootacamund area in the Nilgherry Hills chapter, in particular, is conveyed with such appreciative joy, one can almost smell the scenery.

This is a document which gathered dust for nearly two centuries. Was it worth putting into print? At first glance some might dismiss it as a standard missionary work. True, Joseph Gray displays a remarkably strong Protestant conviction and a Victorian harshness which at times borders on arrogance. But a closer read reveals him to be a brave, decent and thoughtful man, and at the same time he is a stylist with a sharply observant eye. Travelling in relatively unexplored territory before the railway age was a bold enterprise, and Gray was studying the land, its multifarious peoples and their strange customs and beliefs, all of which he describes vividly. Most of his journey is pretty uncomfortable, being jolted about in a palanquin and at the mercy of his bearers; one isn’t sure whether to admire his long-suffering patience or deplore his superior attitude to these “heathens”. This window into a vanished world is well worth peering through. Complementing Gray’s own quirky sketches and route-maps is a wealth of contemporary illustrations by a variety of artists including Edward Lear, and the extensive notes, unobtrusively appended to each chapter, give fascinating additional information about the historical, geographical and linguistic context.