I could never find the cowherd who was said to have seen this vision, and, in speaking to my old friend, the Sadr Amin, learned in the shastras,[20] on the subject, I told him that we had a short saying that would explain all this:  ‘A drowning man catches at a straw.’

‘Yes,’ said he, without any hesitation, ’and we have another just as good for the occasion:  “Sheep will follow each other, though it should be into a well".’

Notes: 

1.  We are told in 2 Samuel, chap. xxiv, that the Deity was displeased at a census of the people, taken by Joab by the order of David, and destroyed of the people of Israel seventy thousand, besides women and children. [W.  H. S.] The editor, in the course of seven years’ experience in the Settlement department, six of which were agent in Bundelkhand, never heard of the doctrine as to the incestuous character of surveys.  Probably it had died out.  Even a census no longer gives rise to alarm in most parts of the country.  The wild rumours and theories common in 1872 and 1881 did not prevail when the census of 1891 was taken, or during subsequent operations.

2.  This theory is, of course, erroneous.

3.  The flax plant (Linum usitatissimum) is grown in India solely for the sake of the linseed.  Linen is never made, and the stalk of the plant, as ordinarily grown, is too short for the manufacture of fibre.  The attempts to introduce flax manufacture into India, though not ultimately successful, have proved that good flax can be made in the country, from Riga seed.  Indian linseed is very largely exported.  (Article ‘Flax’ in Balfour, Cyclopaedia, 3rd ed.)

4.  Spores is the more accurate word.

5.  That is to say, cattle-trespass.  Cattle do not care to eat the green flax plant.  The fields are not fenced.

6.  The rust, or blight, described in the text probably was a species of Unedo.  The gram, or chick-pea, and various kinds of pea and vetch are grown intermixed with the wheat.  They ripen earlier, and are plucked up by the roots before the wheat is cut.

7.  Chap. 4 of the Koran is entitled ‘Women’, and chap. 24 is entitled ‘Light’.  The story of Ayesha’s misadventure is given in Sale’s notes to chap. 24.

8.  Muhammad died A.D. 632.  Abu Bakr succeeded him, and after a khalifate of only two years, was succeeded by Omar, who was assassinated in the twelfth year of his reign.

9.  Basrah (Bassorah, Bussorah) in the province of Baghdad, on the Shatt-ul-Arab, or combined stream of the Tigris and Euphrates, was founded by the Khalif Omar.