’I understand, Rao Sahib, that Khushhal Chand, the banker, is supposed to have augmented the virulence of the disease by burning his boy; was it so?’

‘Certainly,’ said my friend, with a grave, long face; ’the disease was much increased by this man’s folly.’  I looked very grave in my turn, and he continued:- ’Not a child escaped after he had burned his boy.  Such incredible folly!  To set fire to the goddess in the midst of a population of twenty thousand souls; it might have brought destruction on us all!’

‘What makes you think that the disease is itself the goddess?’

’Because we always say, when any member of a family becomes attacked by the small-pox, “Devi nikali”, that is, Devi has shown herself in that family, or in that individual.  And the person affected can wear nothing but plain white clothing, not a silken or coloured garment, nor an ornament of any kind; nor can he or any of his family undertake a journey, or participate in any kind of rejoicings, lest he give offence to her.  They broke the arm of their god, and he drove them all mad.[l3] The elder brother set out on a journey with it, and his nephew, cousin, and sister-in-law fell victims to his temerity; and then Khushhal Chand brings down the goddess upon the whole community by burning his boy![14] No doubt he was very fond of his child—­so we all are—­and wished to do him all honour; but some regard is surely due to the people around us, and I told him so when he was making preparations for the funeral; but he would not listen to reason.’

A complicated religious code, like that of the Hindoos, is to the priest what a complicated civil code, like that of the English, is to the lawyers.  A Hindoo can do nothing without consulting his priest, and an Englishman can do nothing without consulting his lawyer.

Notes: 

1. Ante, Chapter 24, following note [4].

2.  Sagar was ceded by the Peshwa in 1818, and a yearly sum of two and a half lakhs of rupees was allotted by Government for pensions to Rukma Bai, Vinayak Rao, and the other officers of the Maratha Government.  A descendant of Rukma Bai continued for many years to enjoy a pension of R.10,000 per annum (C.P.  Gazetteer (1870), p, 442).  The lady referred to in the text seems to be Rukma Bai.

3.  A village about twenty miles north-west of Sagar.  The estate consists of twenty-six revenue-free villages.

4.  The Jewish ceremonial is described in Leviticus xvi. 20-26.  After completing the atonement for the impurities of the holy place, the tabernacle, and the altar, Aaron was directed to lay ’his hands upon the head of the live goat’, so putting all the sins of the people upon the animal, and then to ’send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited:  and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness’.  The subject of scape-goats is discussed at length and copiously illustrated by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough, 1st ed., vol. ii, section 15, pp. 182-217; 3rd ed. (1913) Part VI.  The author’s stories in the text are quoted by Mr. Frazer.