the appearance of a range of gigantic round bastions projecting into what was perhaps a lake, and is now a well-peopled, well-cultivated, and very happy valley, about twenty miles wide.  The river crosses and recrosses it diagonally.  Near Jubbulpore it flows along for some distance close under the Satpura range to the south; and crossing over the valley from Bheraghat, it reaches the Vindhya range to the north, at the point where it reaches the Hiran river, forty miles below.

Notes: 

1.  This is a slip, probably due to the printer’s reader.  There are no chimney-sweepers in India.  The word should be ‘sweepers’.  The members of this caste and a few other degraded communities, such as the Doms, do all the sweeping, scavenging, and conservancy work in India.  ‘Washerwomen’ is another slip:  read ‘Washermen’.

2.  The ‘under-woman’, or ‘second ayah’, was a member of the sweeper caste.

3.  The title Mir Sahib implies that Salamat Ali was a Sayyid, claiming descent from Ali, the cousin, son-in-law, and pupil of Muhammad, who became Khalif in A.D. 656.

4.  The sweeper castes stand outside the Hindoo pale, and often incline to Muhammadan practices.  They worship a special form of the Deity, under the names of Lal Beg, Lal Guru, &c.

5.  No avatar or incarnation of Brahma is known to most Hindoos, and incarnations of Siva are rarely mentioned.  The only avatars ordinarily recognized are those of Vishnu, as enumerated ante.  Chapter 2, note 4.

6.  This theory is a very inadequate explanation of the doctrine of avatars.

7.  ’Women . . . are most careful to preserve their hair intact.  They pride themselves on its length and weight.  For a woman to have to part with her hair is one of the greatest of degradations, and the most terrible of all trials.  It is the mark of widowhood.  Yet in some sacred places, especially at the confluence of rivers, the cutting off and offering of a few locks of hair (Veni-danam) by a virtuous wife is considered a highly meritorious act’ (Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, p, 375).  Gaya in Bihar, fifty-five miles south of Patna, is much frequented by pilgrims devoted to Vishnu.

8.  All the places named are in the Central Provinces.  Ratanpur, in the Bilaspur District, is a place of much antiquarian interest, full of ruins; Mandla, in the Mandla District, was the capital of the later Gond chiefs of Garha Mandla; and Sambalpur is the capital of the Sambalpur District.  If the story is true, the selection of a Brahman for sacrifice is remarkable, though not without precedent.  Human sacrifice has prevailed largely in India, and is not yet quite extinct.  In 1891 some Jats in the Muzaffarnagar District of the United Provinces sacrificed a boy in a very painful manner for some unascertained magical purpose.  It was supposed that the object was to induce the gods to grant offspring to a childless woman.