with their chateaus and other works of ornament and utility.  Much more of this sort passed between us, and seemed to make an impression upon him; for he promised to do all that I had recommended to him.  Poor man! he can have but a short and miserable existence, for that dreadful disease, the leprosy, is making sad inroads in his System already.[14] His uncle, Raghunath Rao, was afflicted with it; and, having understood from the priests that by drowning himself in the Ganges (taking the ’samadh’), he should remove all traces of it from his family, he went to Benares, and there drowned himself, some twenty years ago.  He had no children, and is said to have been the first of his family in whom the disease showed itself.[15]

Notes: 

1.  December, 1835.

2.  Now the head-quarters of the British district of the same name, and also of the Indian Midland Railway.  Since the opening of this railway and the restoration of the Gwalior fort to Sindhia in 1886, the importance of Jhansi, both civil and military, has much increased.  The native town was given up by Sindhia in exchange for the Gwalior stronghold.

3.  This chief is called Raja Rao Ramchand in the N.W.P.  Gazetteer, 1st ed.  He died on August 20, 1835.  His administration had been weak, and his finances were left in great disorder.  Under his successor the disorder of the administration became still greater.

4.  Dowagers in Indian princely families are frequently involved in such intrigues and plots.  The editor could specify instances in his personal experience.  Compare Chapter 34, post.

5.  An adopted son passes completely out of the family of his natural, into that of his adoptive, father, all his rights and duties as a son being at the same time transferred.  In this case, the adoption had not really taken place, and the lad’s duty to his living natural father remained unaffected.

6.  This statement will not apply to those districts in the United Provinces where elephants are numerous and often kept by gentry of no great rank or wealth, A Raja, of course, always likes to have a few mounted men clattering behind him, if possible.

7.  The ‘prayaschit’ is an expiating atonement by which the person humbles himself in public.  It is often imposed for crimes committed in a former birth, as indicated by inflictions suffered in this. [W.  H. S.] The practical working of Hindoo caste rules is often frightfully cruel.  The victims of these rules in the case described by the author were a boy ten years old, and his child-wife of still more tender years.  Yet all the penalties, including rigorous fasts, would be mercilessly exacted from these innocent children.  Leprosy and childlessness are among the afflictions supposed to prove the sinfulness of the sufferer in some former birth, perhaps thousands of years ago.