LETTER IV.

MATHARAN TO MAHABULISHWAR AND BOMBAY.

CAPITAL ponies are hired at Matharan, and you may canter down the hill all the way, while the kulis with luggage, and girl with smaller impedimenta, making short cuts, turn up now and then on the road, and receive their payments at Narel. Thence the railway ascends the Bhor Ghaut, two thousand feet by an incline sixteen miles long, and in many places carried along the edge of precipices, presents magnificent views. Four hours' travelling brings you to the city of Poona, in a wide plain surrounded by hills. A curious native bazaar, separated from the European quarter, contains many temples and lingams painted vermilion, by the roadside, an ancient fort, and at its extremity a conical abrupt hill, ascended by a flight of wide granite steps, and crowned with temples. Conspicuous in the plain, and almost as numerous as the idolatrous shrines, are handsome stone churches consecrated to the various forms of Christian worship. While admiring the prospect, a young man with no clothing but a cotton shawl round his waist, advanced, salaamed, and proceeded to state in fluent English that he was the high-priest, an office hereditary among Hindoos, which had descended to him from his father.

The centre temple, dedicated to Mahadeo contained an image covered with precious stones. Four smaller, at each corner enclosed the gods of Wisdom and Light, the Creator of the world and the goddess of Love. At the last were worshippers, looking in, and muttering. We pray at each temple in the morning," said the priest," and we hold the bull sacred, because it is stated in our Puranas that God rode on it at the creation of the world.”

Descending the hill we stopped at a grave covered by a small pedestal. Here,” said he, “were placed the ashes of the last Sati. Consequent on Government orders no widow has since been burnt.

This Sati took place fifty years ago, my father being the officiating priest. The widow was tied to the grave with the dead body of her husband." "Was she willing to be sacrificed?" "Oh dear, no! It was the custom of our religion. We tied them to prevent escape." And did not the cries of the victims horrify the spectators ?" "We never suffered them to be heard, but played the tom-tom loud and louder to drown any cries."* "You have seen

'The parents and friends of those women will most joyfully accompanie them, and when the wood begins to burne, all the people assembled shoute and make a noyze that the screeches of this tortured creature may not be heard."

a Sati?" "No, sir, the custom was abolished before my time, but I had an account of this one from my father."

The Hindoos have, however, one observance common to more humane religionists:-the plate. It lay beside the sculptured bull, that stands before and looks into the temples of the deity Krishna, Vishnu, or Mahadeva, and all down the hill you are pestered for backsheesh.

*

Prodigality or carelessness of life has been remarked as a conspicuous trait in the Hindu character; hence has arisen such an army of martyrs as no religion, perhaps, can outnumber. As well as meritorious suffering for religion's sake, suicide is in some cases legal, and even commendable: that, for instance, of the Sati, or the self-immolated widow. This triumph of priestcraft, the greatest perhaps it has to boast, occurs at Poona, in ordinary and quiet periods, annually about twelve times, on an average of as many years. As this terrible ceremony is generally performed at Poona, at the junction of the rivers, about a quarter of a mile from the skirts of the city, at which junction the English Residency is situated, and as my habitation was as near as possible to the river, on the bank opposite to the spot of sacrifice, and not more distant than two hundred yards, I most likely knew of all that occurred, and, with the exception of one that took place at midnight, attended them all.

'The first that I attended was a young and interesting woman about twenty-five years of age. From the time of her first coming on horseback to the river-side, attended by music, her friends, Brahmans, and spectators, to the period of her lighting the pile, two hours elapsed: she evinced great fortitude. On another occasion an elderly, sickly, and frightened woman, was hurried into the pile in a quarter of an hour.

"Of the first of these I took particular note. Soon after I arrived at the pile then erecting, she saw me and beckoned me to come to her; all persons immediately made way, and I was led by a Brahman close up to her, when I made an obeisance, which she returned, looking full in my face, and proceeded to present me with something that she held in her hand. A Brahman stopped her, and desired me to hold my hand out, that what she was about to give me might be dropped into it: to avoid pollution, I suppose, by touching anything while in contact with an impure person. She accordingly held her hand over mine and dropped a pomegranate, which I received in silence, and reverently retired. I was sorry it was not something of an imperishable nature, that I might have preserved it: some ornament, for instance. My wife, who was in the house on the other side of the river, observing the ceremonies through a glass, was also disappointed, and, of course, curious to know what was the article presented in so interesting a manner at such an awful time.

"After the Sati was seated in the hut of straw, built over the pile, with the corpse of her husband beside her, and just before the fire was applied, a venerable Brahman took me by the hand and led me close to the straw, through which he made an opening, and desired me to observe her, which I did attentively. She had a lighted wick in each hand, and seemed composed; I kept sight of her through the whole of her agony, as, until forced to retire from the intensity of the heat, which I did not, however, until a good deal scorched, I was within five feet of the pile."— Moor's Hindu Pantheon, pp. 318, 319.

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From Poona to the Mahabulishwar hills. The village is much resorted to in summer by the élite of Bombay, and stands on a table-land five thousand feet above the sea-level.

Leaving in the afternoon for the intermediate stage of Sherwell, at the foot of the hills, through the bazaar with its usual crowd, among which English soldiers and sickly European children are conspicuous, into the country along a macadamised road, and passing through a tunnel, you arrive at the dawk bungalow at 10 P.M. The Khansamagh, in his den asleep, was soon up to the call of the syces, and preparing dinner. Creeping into an oven, he reappeared, a flutter was heard, and a croak or convulsions. It resulted in the famous Indian dish "sudden death," a spatchcock, on this occasion garnished with truffled sausages. At dawn next morning a gang of coolies drag the carriage up the Ta'i Ghaut, but the steepest part surmounted, horses were in waiting for the upper half, and, driving through a wooded road, the travellers' bungalow was reached at 9.30 A.M. A cottage of four rooms, two bath rooms, mud floor, and some brown thatch on the roof, but at least an equal amount of blue sky. The messman, a Madrassee, apologising for a breakfast of ham, eggs, curry, and beer, provided tats, as the hill ponies are called, and a guide. Through once tigerish jungles the village was traversed, a place of sanctity in the eyes of good Hindoos, to which they resort in numbers at certain feasts, but in its work-a-day state a poor and dirty collection of mud-built huts. Natives, half or wholly naked, patching mud walls, stop their work to conduct us to the temple of Krishna. Solidly built of stone, turned to the deepest black by the action of the atmosphere (which here has this effect on all stone buildings), it is surrounded by corridors and encloses two tanks, into which passes a stream of water, issuing from the mouth of a sculptured bull. Women were filling their cans at the tank, and young girls bathing therein. Nothing was imposing or beautiful, and around jabbered and grinned a group of natives. Shown the adjoining temple, which contained a bed. "For the priest?" we ask. "No; it is kept ready for the god Krishna, who, though invisible to mortal eye, here nightly woos his drowsy brother."

In a third temple to Diva, the priest had not observed us, but as soon as we came into view, escorted by his reverend brethren, he rushed out, expectant of pice. Specimen temples of Hindoo idolatry, idleness, and folly, they do not make a favourable impression. Filth, desolation, and squalid poverty are the features of this sacred nook in the mountains.

Thence to Elphinstone Point and Arthur's Seat, which command views of opposite mountains, with valleys intervening, and peaks crowned by fortresses famed in Mahratta story. From Elphinstone Point is seen the castle-topped hill Pertabgurh.* A serrated spur

* It was near the base of this hill that the Mahratta Hindu chief, Sivajce, enticed Afzool Khan, the leader of the Muhammedan troops which had been sent to capture him, and who was betrayed, to grant him a personal interview by his follower and councillor Puntojee Gopinat, a Hindu.

“Fifteen hundred of Afzool Khan's troops accompanied him to within a few hundred yards of Pertabgurh, where, for fear of alarming Sivajee, they were, at Puntojee Gopinat's suggestion, desired to halt. Afzool Khan, dressed in a thin muslin garment, armed only with his sword, and attended, as had been agreed, by a single armed follower, advanced in his palanquin to an open bungalow prepared for the

occasion.

'Sivajee had made preparations for his purpose, not as if conscious that he meditated a treacherous and criminal deed, but as if resolved on some meritorious though desperate action. Having performed his ablutions with much earnestness, he laid his head at his mother's feet and besought her blessing. He then arose, put on a steel chain cap and chain armour under his turban, and a cotton gown concealed a crooked dagger or beechwa (the beechwa or scorpion is aptly named in its resemblance to that reptile) in his right sleeve, and on the fingers of his left hand he fixed a wagnuck. (The wagnuck, or tiger's claws, is a small steel instrument made to fit on the fore and little finger. It has three crooked blades, which are easily concealed in a halfclosed hand, a treacherous weapon well known among Mahrattas.) Thus accoutred he slowly descended from the fort. The Khan had arrived at the place of meeting before him, and was expressing his impatience at the delay, when Sivajec was seen advancing, apparently unarmed, and, like the Khan, attended by one armed follower, his tried friend Tannajee Maloosray. Sivajee, in view of Afzool Khan, frequently stopped, which was represented as the effects of alarm, a supposition more likely to be admitted from his diminutive size. Under pretence of assuring Sivajee, the armed attendant, by the contrivance of the Bramin, stood at a few paces distant. Afzool Khan made no objection to Sivajee's follower, although he carried two swords in his waistband, a circumstance which might pass unnoticed, being common amongst Mahrattas. He advanced two or three paces to meet Sivajee; they were introduced, and in the midst of the customary embrace the treacherous Mahratta struck the wagnuck into the bowels of Afzool Khan, who quickly disengaged himself, clapped his hand on his sword exclaiming treachery and murder, but Sivajee instantly followed up the blow with his dagger. The Khan had drawn his sword and made a cut at Sivajee,

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