[121] The descendants of the Wild Man have at all times been celebrated for obstinate individual valour, and enduring an amount of “punishment” which seems quite incredible.
[122] Manned in those days by Hindoos. Marco Polo tells us that the people of Malabar are idolaters, and subject to no foreigner.
[123] Who retorted by hanging them upon the spot, or throwing them overboard. This style of warfare was productive of great barbarities. There is a pile of stone rising above the sea, about seven leagues north-west of Calicut, called the Sacrifice Rock, from the slaughter of the crew of a Portuguese vessel which was captured by the Cottica cruisers shortly after the settlement of the Christians in India.
[124] The sum usually paid was from eight to ten shillings, a portion of which went to the Rajah, part to the women who had lost their husbands in these predatory encounters, and the remainder was “prize-money.”
[125] Few would be disposed to consider the salt-duty a practical proof of the enlightened nature of our rule in the East, and there is no one, we believe, except a “crack collector,” who would not rejoice to see it done away with, or at least much reduced.
[126] The rajah was expected to grant lands to the families of those who heroically bound themselves by solemn vow to fight till death against the enemy. If the self-devoted escaped destruction, he became an outcaste, and was compelled to leave the country.
[127] This is the universal belief and practice of the more bigoted parts of the Moslem world, and so deep-rooted is the feeling, that it acquires a degree of power and influence truly formidable, and difficult to deal with.
[128] The natives of India generally belong to the Hanafi: the Arabs are the principal followers of the Shafei sect. Both are Sunnis, or orthodox Moslems, and there is little difference between them, except in such trifling points as the eating or rejecting fish without scales, &c.
[129] Except that a Moslem father may always allot a portion of property during his lifetime to his children.
[130] Usually they prefer the occupation of carrying the palanquin to any other bodily labour.