5. Bindāchal is in the Mirzāpur district of the United Provinces. Baijnāth is in the Santāl Parganas District of the Bhāgalpur Division in the province of Bihār and Orissa. The group of temples at Deogarh dedicated to Siva is visited by pilgrims from all parts of India. The principal temple is called Baijnāth or Baidyanāth. Deogarh is a small town in the Santāl Parganas (I.G., 1908, s.v. Deogarh; A.S.R., vol. viii (1878), pp. 137-45, Pl. ix, x; vol. xix (1885), pp. 29-35 (crude notes), Pl. x, xi).
6. Pandit Sāligrām, who was Postmaster-General of the North-Western Provinces some years ago, became one of these wandering friars, and other similar cases are recorded.
7. Seet Buldee Ramesur in original edition. The temple alluded to is that called Rāmesvaram (Ramisseram) in the small island of Pāmban at the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson, Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch., vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims have an easy task.
The Kedārnāth temple is in the Himalayan District of Garhwāl (United Provinces), at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet.
8. The author's other works show that the Thugs frequently assumed the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man disguised as a fakīr is often sent on by dacoits (gang- robbers) as a spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairāgīs and Gosāins; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakīrs.' (A Report on the System of Megpunnaism, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.
9. This incident still happens occasionally.
10. For the Rājā, see ante, chapter 20, [6].
[CHAPTER 75]
The Bēgam Sumroo.
On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the church built and endowed by the late Bēgam Sombre, whose remains are now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M. Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man—he is still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Bēgam did not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.