What do a Ching dynasty emperor and Promenade Road have to do with each other? At first thought, nothing at all. But a strange set of events that started centuries ago have ended with a huge iron bell dedicated to Emperor Chien Lung (or Qianlong) to find a home in Bengaluru. The bell, approximately four feet tall and three feet wide, has Chinese inscriptions wishing for the well-being of the emperor and his empire like good harvests, regular seasons, and the consolidation of the emperor’s power.
According to reports from the time, when rung, its sonorous clang could be heard all the way from Ulsoor to the Pete area surrounding Bangalore Fort. But with a huge crack running lengthwise along it, the bell has remained silent for over a century. The story behind this is rather peculiar. Without alarms to set on yet-to-be-invented smart phones, the bell had to be rung by a sepoy day and night every hour. But who wouldn’t get bored of a job like this, especially on a rainy day? And that’s exactly what happened. “It is said that on a rainy day, the sentry on duty, instead of going out in the rain to strike the bell, took a heavy ball (probably a cannonball) and threw it. This damaged the bell with a vertical crack and made it useless,” says history researcher Arun Prasad.
Nobody knows what happened to this sepoy, but by author and host of the podcast History of Bangalore, Ramjee Chandran’s speculations, not much. He laughs, saying, “I doubt anything major happened to him. I don’t think he would have been court martialled or anything like that. He may have gotten a scolding or made to squat and walk across the field,” adding, “We don’t know exactly what happened to him as there are no records.”
How did the bell get to Bengaluru in the first place? The answer can be found in The Opium Wars, fought between the Chinese and the British for control over the money-minting opium trade, with the Madras Sappers sent to Nanking in East China. There, the bell caught the eye of a British soldier. “[Archaelogoist] BL Rice met a retired officer named Cribb who recounted that when the Sappers were sent to Nanking, Captain G Hall found the bell in a joss house on top of Nanking Hill. After the war, in 1842, the bell was brought by ship to Madras. It was later shifted to Bengaluru where it found utility,” says Prasad.
Contested Lore
Records say that the bell was placed in front of the quarter guard’s troop, the location of which is unknown, and an old picture shows the bell placed on the ground near Kempegowda Tower but whether it was there when it was damaged is contested. “It is said that after it was cracked, it was removed and placed on the ground. The question is if it was somewhere else or hung right there before it was placed on the ground. I don’t think that a bell that heavy would have been transported all the way uphill to Kempegowda Tower after it was cracked because it’s quite a climb. The only flaw is that its unlikely that there was a pile of cannon balls on top of Kempegowda Tower,” says Chandran. Prasad too is unsure, saying, “The sepoy couldn’t have thrown a heavy ball from the low level to the higher level.”