Indian Antiquary Vol 47

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 294

274
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
NOVEMBER, 1918
The name Gaurthi, the place from which the letter is said to be written, is obscure. No such town or village in the neighbourhood of Plassey can be traced on any 18th century map, but it must have been close to Plassey and in the camp of Rai Durlabh. A contemporary plan of the battle of Plassey by Major Rennell, reproduced in Broome's History of the Bengal Army and also by Mr. Hill in his Bengal in 1756-57, vol. I, p. cxcv, gives "the Nawab's Hunting House" on the river, close to Plassey Grove. As Rai Durlabh was the Nawab's diwan, his headquarters were no doubt in that building. Assuming this to be the case, we may take it that Gaurthi is a corruption of chauthri, through a metathesis chaurthi, such as is common in India, and it would then mean a pavilion in a garden (chabútra ), just the kind of place where such an interview as that between Rai Durlabh and Omichund would take place at night. 79
All students of the period covering the career of Omichund are indebted for this additional light on his methods of dealing with the English to the discovery by Sir George Forrest of the Armenian letter and its copy. Both documents have been deciphered, translated and annotated by Mr. S. M. Gregory, formerly of the Federated Malay States Civil Service, and it was by the help of Mr. Gregory's accurate translation that I was able to identify it with the incomplete and free rendering supplied to Watts and handed over to Clive. My thanks are also due to two Armenian friends, Mr. John Apcar and Colonel G. M. Gregory, for assistance leading to the decipherment by Mr. S. M. Gregory of documents which proved a stumbling-block to many scholars.
The language of the letter is that of an inferior addressing a superior, which shows that Watts was not quite correct in saying that the letter to Petros had been written by his brother.73 What Petros meant to convey was that his brother was present and was aware of its contents. There is, in fact, no indication of the scribe's name..
The original (Plate I) is wri'ten in a difficult cursive hand, full of contractions, even of foreign words, sometimes marked by a line (pativ) drawn above the contracted words in the familiar European manner, and sometimes without any signs to mark them. The copy is, however, clearly written in a fine legible hand, despite the contractions.
The language of the letter is a vulgar form of the Julfa dialect of Armenian, current in India in the 18th century, in which the use of foreign words was common. Indeed, as will be seen from the footnotes, the letter is full of Persian, Turki, and even Hindustani terms, adapted to Armenian colloquial forms.
Reviewing the conditions surrounding this remarkable letter, one cannot help considering what would have happened had Agha Petros acted as Omichund desired and kept Watts in Murshidabad until Suraju'ddaulla had him in his power. Clive's letter of 5th June 1757 to Watts (supra, pp. 182-3) shows that had Watts failed in his mission, as he would have done if Omichund had had his way, Clive, for some months at any rate, would have dropped his scheme of deposing Suraju'ddaula and setting up Mîr Ja'firas Nawab Nâzim under British suzerainty, and the world-famous battle of Plassey would not have been fought. No doubt 80 worthless a prince as Suraju'ddaula would not long have retained his power, and no doubt Clive would in time have found means to obtain supreme authority in Bengal, but it would have had to be achieved in some other way. There was nothing then but the loyalty of Agha Petros to prevent the success of Omichund's proposal and a complete change in the story of British supremacy in India as we know it. The letter we have been discussing therefore just missed being of the first importance to history.
12 For the derivation, senses and uses of the chauthrt, see Travels of Peter Mundy, ed. Temple (Hak. Soc.), vol. II, pp. 26 (and f.n.), 44-45.
13 See the letter of the 8th June 1757, quoted above, p. 183,