’True, Nawab Sahib, we might, no doubt, greatly multiply this employment to the advantage of those who got the places, but we should have to multiply at the same time the taxes, to the great disadvantage of those who did not get them.’

‘True, very true, sir,’ said my old friend.

Notes: 

1.  January, 1836.

2.  Faridpur is a mistake for Faridabad, a small town sixteen miles from Delhi, founded in 1607 by Shaikh Farid, treasurer of Jahangir, to protect the high road between Agra and Delhi.

3.  The beds are dry in the cold season, but the streams, which flow from the hills to the south of Delhi, are torrents in the rainy season.

4.  But the education in such schools is of very little value, being commonly confined to the committing of the Koran to memory by boys ignorant of Arabic.

5.  In modern India the British buildings are far more varied, and many aspire to some architectural merit.

6.  Muhammad is said to have received these communications in all situations; sometimes when riding along the road on his camel, he became suddenly red in the face, and greatly agitated; he made his camel sit down immediately, and called for some one to write.  His rhapsodies were all written at the time on leaves and thrown into a box.  Gabriel is believed to have made him repeat over the whole once every year during the month of Ramazan.  In the year he died Muhammad told his followers that the angel had made him repeat them over twice that year, and that he was sure he would not live to receive another visit. [W.  H. S.]

7.  The Muhammadan year consists of twelve lunar months of 30 and 29 days alternately.  The common year, therefore, consists of only 354 days.  But, when intercalary days in certain years are allowed for, the mean year consists of 354 11/30 days.  Inasmuch as a solar year consists of about 365 1/4 days, the difference amounts to nearly 11 days, and any given month in the Muhammadan year consequently goes the round of the seasons in course of time.

8.  The Muharram celebration takes its name from the first month of the Muhammadan year, during which it takes place.  Ali, the cousin of Muhammad, was married to the prophet’s daughter Fatima, and, according to the Shia sect, must be regarded as the lawful successor of Muhammad, who died in June, A.D. 632.  But, as a matter of fact, Omar, Abu Bakr, and Othman (Usman) in turn succeeded to the Khalifate, and Ali did not take possession of the office till A.D. 655.  After five and a half years’ reign he was assassinated in January, A.D. 661, and his son Hasan, who for a few months had held the vacant office, was poisoned in A.D. 670.  Husain, the younger son of Ali, strove to assert his rights by force of arms, but was slain on the tenth day of the month Muharram (10th October, A.D. 680) in a great battle fought at Karbala near the Euphrates.  These events are commemorated yearly by noisy funeral processions.  Properly, the proceedings ought to be altogether mournful, and confined to the Shia sect, but in practice, Sunni Muhammadans, and even Hindoos, take part in the ceremonies, which are regarded by many of the populace as no more solemn than a Lord Mayor’s show.