“But do not hurry in killing them, but say, ‘do not incommode me, if you do, I shall kill you.’ Then, if it goes away, so much the better; but if not, kill it, because it is an infidel genius.”
“Kill all snakes, except the small white one, which is not poisonous[47].”
Several were in the stable and hen-house. A snake-charmer came, who offered to fascinate and catch the snakes for me at one rupee a head. He caught one, for which I gave him a rupee; but as I had it killed, he never returned—the charm was broken—it was a tame fangless snake, which he had tried to pass off as the wild one.
We killed three scorpions in the dining-room, of rather large dimensions. Our friend and neighbour had much compassion on frogs. Many an enormous bull-frog he rescued alive from the jaws of the snakes he killed in his garden. The poor frogs lost their defender on his return to England, and we an excellent friend.
During the Burmese war I had presents made me of seven or eight idols: one was of gold, several of silver; some of black, some of white marble, others of bronze. The soldiers in Burmah opened the heads of many of the large idols, and found jewels within them. I have never disturbed the “reflecting gems” within the brains of my Burmese gods; they may contain, for aught I know, “heaps of gold, inestimable jewels,”—there let them rest.
Oct. 29th.—We drove to the Parade-ground, to view the celebration of the Ram Leela festival. Ram the warrior god is particularly revered by the sipahīs. An annual tamāshā is held in his honour, and that of Seeta his consort. A figure of Rawan the giant, as large as a windmill, was erected on the Parade-ground: the interior of the monster was filled with fireworks. This giant was destroyed by Ram. All sorts of games are played by the sipahīs, on the Parade. Mock fights and wrestling matches take place, and fireworks are let off. Two young natives, about ten or twelve years old, are often attired to represent Ram and Seeta; and men with long tails figure as the army of monkeys, headed by their leader Hŭnoomān.
On dit, that the children who personate Ram and Seeta, the handsomest they can select, never live more than a year after the festival—for this I vouch not—it is said they are poisoned.
One ceremony was very remarkable: each native regiment took out its colours and made pooja to the standards, offering them sweetmeats, flowers, rice, and pān, as they do to a god! At Cawnpore I saw the men of the third cavalry riding round the image of the giant, with their colours flying, after having made pooja to them.
At the conclusion of the tamāshā, the figure of Rawan is blown up by the conqueror Ram. At the great Mela at Allahabad, I procured a large marble image of Ram, which came from Jeypore; it is highly gilt and ornamented: in his left hand is the bow of power, and the quiver full of arrows in his right: the trident mark adorns his forehead, and on his head is a crown. See the figure on the left of Ganesh in the [frontispiece].
“Ram, the deified hero, was a famous warrior, and a youth of perfect beauty. He was the happy possessor of the divine bow Danush, which the giant Ravuna could not bend, and with which he contested for, and won, the hand of the goddess Seeta. It was ordained, that he only who could bend this bow, and with it shoot a fish, while revolving on a pole, through the left eye, not seeing the fish, but its reflection in a pan of oil, should espouse Seeta. The name of Ram is used beyond the pale of his own sectarists, in supplication and praise.”