Hearing then that I had left Datiya, and seeing no signs of the sipahi, he opened the purse, and found that the rupees were all copper, with a thin coating of silver.  The man had changed them while he went into the shop for a turban, and substituted a purse exactly the same in appearance.  After ascertaining that the story was true, and that the ingenious thief was not one of my followers, I insisted upon the man’s taking the money from me, in spite of a great deal of remonstrance on the part of the Raja’s agent, who had come on with us.

Notes: 

1.  The editor has failed to trace this quotation, which may possibly be from the Mishkat-ul-Masabih (ante, Chapter 5, note 10).  Compare ’"There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a sheep”, said de Marsay’ (Balzac, Lost by a Laugh).

2.  The English doggerel expresses the opposite sentiment,
     ’My son’s my son till he gets him a wife;
      My daughter’s my daughter all her life.’

3. Ante, chap. 29, text at [4], and before [7].

4.  Edward II, A.D. 1327.

5.  The principle, so bluntly enunciated by the author, is true, though the truth may be unpalatable to people who think they know better, and it applies with as much force to European officials as it does to Indian princes.  The ‘shaitan’ is more familiar in his English dress as Satan.  The editor has failed to find any such phrase in the works of Montesquieu.  In chapter 9 of Book III of L’Esprit des Lois that author lays down the principle that ’il faut de la crainte dans un gouvernement despotique; pour la vertu, elle n’y est point necessaire,’

6.  It can no longer be said that universities do not exist, at least in name, in India.  Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad are the seats of universities, and new foundations at Dacca and Patna are promised (1914).  The Indian universities, when first established, were mere examining bodies, on the model of the University of London.  But changes, initiated by Lord Curzon, are in progress, and the University of London is being remodelled (1914).  The Indian institutions are not frequented by young princes and nobles, and have little influence on their education.  Attempts have been made, with partial success, to provide special boarding schools, or ‘Chiefs’ Colleges’, for the sons of ruling princes and native nobles.  The most notable of such institution are the colleges at Ajmer, Rajkot in Kathiawar, and Indore.  The influence of the zanana is invariably directed against every proposal to remove a young nobleman from home for the purpose of education, and obstacles of many kinds render the task of rightly educating such a youth extraordinarily difficult and unsatisfactory.  In some cases a considerable degree of success has been attained.

7.  Armed follower.  The word is more familiar in the corrupt form ‘sepoy’.

CHAPTER 35