all classes, say that they do not want our physicians, but stand much in need of our surgeons.  Here they feel that they are helpless, and we are strong; and they seek our aid whenever they see any chance of obtaining it, as in the present case.[13] Considering that every European gentleman they meet is more or less a surgeon, or hoping to find him so, people who are afflicted, or have children afflicted, with any kind of malformation, or malorganization, flock round them [sic] wherever they go, and implore their aid; but implore in vain, for, when they do happen to fall in with a surgeon, he is a mere passer-by, without the means or the time to afford relief.  In travelling over India there is nothing which distresses a benevolent man so much as the necessity he is daily under of telling poor parents, who, with aching hearts and tearful eyes, approach him with their suffering children in their arms, that to relieve them requires time and means which are not at a traveller’s command, or a species of knowledge which he does not possess; it is bitter thus to dash to the ground the cup of hope which our approach has raised to the lip of mother, father, and child; but he consoles himself with the prospect, that at no distant period a benevolent and enlightened Government will distribute over the land those from whom the afflicted will not seek relief in vain.[14]

Notes: 

1.  The garrison is stated in the Gazetteer (1870) to consist of a European regiment of infantry, two batteries of European artillery, one native cavalry and one native infantry regiment.  In 1893 it consisted of one battery of Royal Artillery, a detachment of British Infantry, a regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and a detachment of Bengal Infantry.  According to the census of 1911, the population of Sagar was 45,908.

2.  The Banjaras, or Brinjaras, are a wandering tribe, principally employed as carriers of grain and salt on bullocks and cows.  They used to form the transport service of the Moghal armies, and of the Company’s forces at least as late as 1819.  Their organization and customs are in many ways peculiar.  The development of roads and railways has much diminished the importance of the tribe.  A good account of it will be found in Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India, 3rd ed., 1885, s. v.  ‘Banjara’.  Dubois (Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd ed. (1906), p. 70) states that ’of all the castes of the Hindus, this particular one is acknowledged to be the most brutal’.

3.  See note on human sacrifice, ante, Chapter 8, note 8.

4.  In the Hoshangabad district of the Central Provinces.  The sandstone formation here attains its highest development, and is known to geologists as the ‘Mahadeo sandstones’.  The new sanitarium of Pachmarhi is situated in these hills.

5.  It has been long since suppressed.

6.  Benares is the principal seat of the worship of Mahadeo (Siva), but his shrines are found everywhere throughout India.  One hundred and eight of these are reckoned as important.  In Southern India the most notable, perhaps, is the great temple at Tanjore (see chap. 17 of Monier Williams’s Religious Thought and Life in India).