for some reason unperformed.  In the expressive popular phrase, he is ‘deprived of water’ (aud).  The pious make oblations to his cenotaph twice a year, and propitiate his ghost with offerings of water to allay his thirst in the lower world.  The primaeval serpent-worship is perpetuated in the reverence paid to traditional village-snakes.  Of the local ghosts some are beneficent.  Sometimes they are only mischievous, like Robin Goodfellow, and will milk the cows, and sour the milk, or pull your hair, if you wander about at night in certain well-known uncanny places.  A more dangerous demon is heard in the crackling of the dry leaves of the date-tree in the night wind; and some trees are haunted by a vampire, who will drag you up and devour you, if you venture near them in the darkness.’ (N.W.P.  Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii. Supplement, p. 4.) See also the same author’s work Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 2nd ed., 2 vols.  Constable, 1896.

6.  Compare the story of Ramkishan in Chapter 25.  Books on anthropology cite many instances of deaths caused by superstitious fears.

7.  Arrian, Indica, chap. 12:  ’The sixth class consists of those called “superintendents”.  They spy out what goes on in country and town, and report everything to the king where the people have a king, and to the magistrates where the people are self-governed, and it is against use and wont for them to give a false report;—­but indeed no Indian is accused of lying.’ (McCrindle, Ancient India, as described by Megasthenes and Arrian, Truebner, 1877, p. 211).  Arrian uses the word [Greek text 1]; in the Fragments of Megasthenes quoted by Diodorus and Strabo, the word is [Greek text 2].  The people referred to seem to be the well-known ‘news-writers’ employed by Oriental sovereigns (ante, chapter 33, note 7); a simple explanation missed by McCrindle (op. cit. p. 43, note).  The remark about the truthfulness of the Indians appears to be Arrian’s addition.  It is not in the Fragment of Megasthenes from which Arrian copies, and the falsity of the remark is proved by the statement (ibid., p. 71) that ’a person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of his extremities’.  But in Fragment XXVII from Strabo (op. cit., p. 70) Megasthenes says, ‘Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem’; and in Fragment XXXIII (ibid., p. 85) he asserts that ’the ablest and moat trustworthy men’ are appointed [Greek text 2].

8.  Up to the year 1827 ‘grand larceny’, that is to say, stealing to a value exceeding twelve pence, was punishable with death.  The Act 7 George IV, cap. 28, abolished the distinction of grand and petty larceny.  In 1837, the first year of Queen Victoria’s reign, the punishment of death was abolished in the case of between thirty and forty offences.  Other statutes have further mitigated the ferocity of the old law.