and looked with all his might towards the spot where his bride was said to be seated.  Unhappily she felt no less impatient than he did, and raised ’the fringed curtains of her eye’, as he raised his, [and] they saw each other at the same moment.  In that moment the bride, bridegroom, and uncle were all converted into stone pillars; and there they stand to this day a monument, in the estimation of the people, to warn men and womankind against too strong an inclination to indulge curiosity.  It is a singular fact that in one of the most extensive tribes of the Gond population of Central India, to which this couple is said to have belonged, the bride always goes to the bridegroom in the procession of the ‘barat’, to prevent a recurrence of this calamity.  It is the bridegroom who goes to the bride among every other class of the people of India, as well Muhammadans as Hindoos.  Whether the usage grew out of the tradition, or the tradition out of the usage, is a question that will admit of much being said on both sides.  I can only vouch for the existence of both.  I have seen the pillars, heard the tradition from the people, and ascertained the usage; as in the case of that of the Sagar lake.

The Mahadeo sandstone hills, which in the Satpura range overlook the Nerbudda to the south, rise to between four and five thousand feet above the level of the sea;[4] and in one of the highest parts a fair was formerly, and is, perhaps, still held[5] for the enjoyment of those who assemble to witness the self devotion of a few young men, who offer themselves as a sacrifice to fulfil the vows of their mothers.  When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings to all the gods, who can, she thinks, assist her, and promises of still greater in case they should grant what she wants.  Smaller promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first-born, if a male, to the god of destruction, Mahadeo.  If she gets a son, she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of puberty; she then communicates it [sic] to him, and enjoins him to fulfil it.  He believes it to be his paramount duty to obey his mother’s call; and from that moment he considers himself as devoted to the god.  Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to fulfil his mother’s vow at the next fair.  Some have, I believe, been known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the god.  When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General’s