in order that they might be the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the gods.  Mahadeo performs a part in the great drama of the Ramayana, or the Rape of Sita, and he is the only figure there that is represented with a white face.[10]

I was one day praising the law of primogeniture among ourselves to a Muhammadan gentleman of high rank, and defending it on the ground that it prevented that rivalry and bitterness of feeling among brothers which were always found among the Muhammadans, whose law prescribes an equal division of property, real and personal, among the sons, and the choice of the wisest among them as successor to the government.[11] ‘This’, said he, ’is no doubt the source of our weakness, but why should you condemn a law which is to you a source of so much strength?  I, one day’, said he, ’asked Mr. Seaton, the Governor-General’s representative at the court of Delhi, which of all things he had seen in India he liked best.  “You have”, replied he, smiling, “a small species of melon called ‘phut’ (disunion); this is the thing we like best in your land.”  There was’, continued my Muhammadan friend, ’an infinite deal of sound political wisdom in this one sentence.  Mr. Seaton was a very good and a very wise man.  Our European governors of the present day are not at all the same kind of thing.  I asked Mr. B., a judge, the same question many years afterwards, and he told me that he thought the rupees were the best things he had found in India.  I asked Mr. T., the Commissioner, and he told me that he thought the tobacco which he smoked in his hookah was the best thing.  And pray, sir, what do you think the best thing?’

’Why, Nawab Sahib, I am always very well pleased when I am free from pain, and can get my nostrils full of cool air, and my mouth full of cold water in this hot land of yours; and I think most of my countrymen are the same.  Next to these, the thing we all admire most in India, Nawab Sahib, is the entire exemption which you and I and every other gentleman, native or European, enjoy from the taxes which press so heavily upon them in other countries.[12] In Kashmir, no midwife is allowed to attend a woman in her confinement till a heavy tax has been paid to Ranjit Singh for the infant; and in England, a man cannot let the light of heaven into his house till he has paid a tax for the window.’[13]

‘Nor keep a dog, nor shoot a partridge in the jungle, I am told,’ said the Nawab.

‘Quite true, Nawab Sahib.’

‘Hindustan, sir,’ said he, ’is, after all, the best country in the world; the only thing wanted is a little more (rozgar) employment for the educated classes under Government.’