[1]. [Kismet, fate.]
[2]. From the Sanskrit mri, ‘to die.’
[3]. [Examples of this magical expulsion of disease are common. At the Bhadrakāli temple at Nāsik a Māng woman, supposed to be possessed by the cholera goddess, when the epidemic prevails, is solemnly placed in a cart, and driven out of the city (BG, xvi. 520 f.). The Bhīls practise a similar rite, and Sleeman records the custom at Sāgar (C. E. Luard, Ethnographic Survey Central India, 49, 62; Sleeman, Rambles, 162), also see Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 2nd ed. i. 141 f.; Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., The Scapegoat, 109 ff.]
[4]. I have in other parts of my work touched upon this terrific scourge, from which it will be seen that it is well known throughout India under the same appellation; and it is not one of the least curious results of my endeavour to prove that the Hindus had historical documents, that by their means I am enabled to trace this disease ravaging India nearly two centuries ago. At Vol. II. p. [1022] it is thus described in the Annals of Marwar: “This, the sakha (putting a garrison to the sword) of Sojat, was when S. 1737 ended, and S. 1738, or A.D. 1681-2, commenced, when the sword and Mari (pestilence) united to clear the land.” Orme, in his Fragments [ed. 1782, p. 200], mentions a similar disease in A.D. 1684, raging in the peninsula of India, and sweeping off five hundred daily in the imperial camp at Goa; and again, in the Annals of Mewār, Vol. I. p. [454], it is described in the most frightful colours, as ravaging that country twenty years before, or in S. 1717 (A.D. 1661); so that in the space of twenty years, we have it described in the peninsula, in the desert of India, and in the plains of Central India; and what will appear not the least singular part of the history of this distemper, so analogous to the present date, about the intermediate time of these extreme periods, that is about A.D. 1669, a similar disease was raging in England. I have no doubt that other traces of the disorder may appear in the chronicles of their bards, or in Muhammadan writers, judging from these incidental notices, which might never have attracted attention had not Mari come to our own doors. I have had many patients dying about me, but no man ever dreamed of contagion; to propagate which opinion, and scare us from all the sympathies of life, without proof absolutely demonstrative, is, to say the least, highly censurable. There is enough of self in this land of ultra civilisation, without drawing a cordon sanitaire round every individual. The Udaipur prince was the first person seized with the disease in that capital: a proof to me, against all the faculty, that to other causes than personal communication its influence must be ascribed. I will not repeat the treatment in this case (see p. [1002]), which may deserve notice, though prescribed by the uninitiated.
[5]. [The progress of Bhīlwāra has hardly realized the Author’s predictions: but it is now an important trading centre. Bishop Heber, who visited the town in 1825, speaks highly of Tod’s efforts to improve it (Erskine ii. A. 97 f.).]
[6]. [Bārahdari, ‘a room with twelve doors’; ‘a pavilion.’]
CHAPTER 10
Inauguration of the Rāo Rāja, August the 5th.—The ceremony of Rajtilak, or inauguration of the young Rao Raja, had been postponed as soon as the Rani-mother heard of my intention to come to Bundi, and as the joyous ‘third of Sawan,’ Sawan-ki-tij, was at hand, it was fixed for the day following that festival. As the interval between the display of grief and the expression of joy is short in these States, it would have been inauspicious to mingle aught of gloom with the most celebrated of all the festivals of the Haras, in which the whole city partakes. The queen-mother sent a message to request that I would accompany her son in the procession of the Tij, with which invitation I most [694] willingly complied; and she also informed me that it was the custom of Rajwara, for the nearest of kin, or some neighbouring prince, on such occasions, to entreat the mourner, at the termination of the twelve days of matam, to dispense with its emblems. Accordingly, I prepared a coloured dress, with a turban and a jewelled sarpesh,[[1]] which I sent, with a request that the prince would “put aside the white turban.” In compliance with this, he appeared in these vestments in public, and I accompanied him to the ancient palace in old Bundi, where all public festivities are still held.