January, 1824.—The advantages of a residence in Calcutta are these: you are under the eye of the Government, not likely to be overlooked, and are ready for any appointment falling vacant; you get the latest news from England, and have the best medical attendance. On the other hand, you have to pay high house-rent; the necessary expenses are great; and the temptations to squander away money in gratifying your fancies more numerous than in the Mofussil.

A friend, now high in the Civil Service, contracted, on his arrival here about eighteen years ago, a debt of 15,000 rupees, about 1500l. or 1800l. Interest was then at twelve per cent. To give security, he insured his life, which, with his agent’s commission of one per cent, made the sum total of interest sixteen per cent. After paying the original debt five times, he hoped his agents upon the last payment would not suffer the interest to continue accumulating. He received for answer, “that interest never slept, it was awake night and day;” and he is now employed in saving enough to settle the balance.

I wish much that those who exclaim against our extravagances here, knew how essential to a man’s comfort, to his quiet, and to his health it is, to have every thing good about him—a good house, good furniture, good carriages, good horses, good wine for his friends, good humour; good servants and a good quantity of them, good credit, and a good appointment: they would then be less virulent in their philippics against oriental extravagance.

15th.—The Governor-general has a country residence, with a fine park, at Barrackpore; during the races the Calcutta world assemble there: we went over for a week; it was delightful to be again in the country. Lady Amherst rendered the Government-house gay with quadrilles and displays of fireworks; but I most enjoyed a party we made to see the ruins of an ancient fort, near Cairipoor, belonging to the Rajah of Burdwan, about five miles from Barrackpore, and thought them beautiful.

The road was very bad, therefore I quitted the buggy and mounted an elephant for the first time, feeling half-frightened but very much pleased. I ascended by a ladder placed against the side of the kneeling elephant; when he rose up, it was like a house making unto itself legs and walking therewith.

We went straight across the country, over hedges and ditches, and through the cultivated fields, the elephant with his great feet crushing down the corn, which certainly did not “rise elastic from his airy tread.” The fields are divided by ridges of earth like those in salterns at home; these ridges are narrow, and in general, to prevent injury to the crops, the mahout guides the elephant along the ridge: it is curious to observe how firmly he treads on the narrow raised path.

By the side of the road was a remarkable object:—

“The appearance of a fakir is his petition in itself[18].” In a small hole in the earth lay a fakir, or religious mendicant; the fragment of a straw mat was over him, and a bit of cloth covered his loins. He was very ill and quite helpless, the most worn emaciated being I ever beheld; he had lain in that hole day and night for five years, and refused to live in a village; his only comfort, a small fire of charcoal, was kindled near his head during the night. Having been forcibly deprived of the property he possessed in the upper provinces, he came to Calcutta to seek redress, but being unsuccessful, he had, in despair, betaken himself to that hole in the earth. An old woman was kindling the fire; it is a marvel the jackals do not put an end to his misery. The natives say, “It is his pleasure to be there, what can we do?” and they pass on with their usual indifference: the hole was just big enough for his body, in a cold swampy soil.

There is a menagerie in the park at Barrackpore, in which are some remarkably fine tigers and Cheetahs. My ayha requested to be allowed to go with me, particularly wishing to see an hyena. While she was looking at the beast, I said, “Why did you wish to see an hyena?” Laughing and crying hysterically, she answered, “My husband and I were asleep, our child was between us, an hyena stole the child, and ran off with it to the jungle; we roused the villagers, who pursued the beast; when they returned, they brought me half the mangled body of my infant daughter,—that is why I wished to see an hyena.”

Before we quitted Calcutta, we placed the plate in a large iron treasure chest. A friend, during his absence from home, having left his plate in a large oaken chest, clamped with iron, found, on his return, that the bearers had set fire to the chest to get at the plate, being unable to open it, and had melted the greater part of the silver!

It appears as if the plan of communicating with India by steam-boats will not end in smoke: a very large bonus has been voted to the first regular company who bring it about, and the sum is so considerable, that I have no doubt some will be bold enough to attempt it.

In Calcutta, as in every place, it is difficult to suit yourself with a residence. Our first house was very ill defended from the hot winds; the situation of the second we thought low and swampy, and the cause of fever in our household. My husband having quitted college, was gazetted to an appointment in Calcutta, and we again changed our residence for one in Chowringhee road.

Prince Jamh o Deen, hearing me express a wish to see what was considered a good nāch, invited me to one. I could not, however, admire the dancing; some of the airs the women sang were very pretty.

Calcutta was gay in those days, parties numerous at the Government-house, and dinners and fancy balls amongst the inhabitants.

A friend sent me a mouse deer, which I keep in a cage in the verandah; it is a curious and most delicate little animal, but not so pretty as the young pet fawns running about the compound (grounds) with the spotted deer. The cows’ milk generally sold in Calcutta is poor, that of goats is principally used: a good Bengallee goat, when in full milk, will give a quart every morning; they are small-sized, short-legged, and well-bred. The servants milk the goats near the window of the morning room, and bring the bowl full and foaming to the breakfast-table.

Feb. 27th.—My husband put into one of the smaller lotteries in Calcutta, and won thirteen and a half tickets, each worth 100 rupees: he sent them to his agents, with the exception of one, which he presented to me. My ticket came up a prize of 5000 rupees. The next day we bought a fine high caste grey Arab, whom we called Orelio, and a pair of grey Persian horses.

Feb. 28th.—Trial by Rice.—The other day some friends dined with us: my husband left his watch on the drawing-room table when we went to dinner: the watch was stolen, the theft was immediately discovered, and we sent to the police. The moonshee assembled all who were present, took down their names, and appointed that day seven days for a trial by rice, unless, during the time, the watch should be restored, stolen property being often replaced from the dread the natives entertain of the ordeal by rice. On the appointed day the police moonshee returned, and the servants, whom he had ordered to appear fasting, were summoned before him, and by his desire were seated on the ground in a row.

The natives have great faith in the square akbarābādee rupee, which they prefer to, and use on such occasions in lieu of, the circular rupee. In the plate entitled “Superstitions of the Natives,” No. 5, is a representation of this coin.

The moonshee, having soaked 2lbs. weight of rice in cold water, carefully dried it in the sun: he then weighed rice equal to the weight of the square rupee in a pair of scales, and, calling one of the servants to him, made him take a solemn oath that he had not taken the watch, did not know who had taken it, where it was, or any thing about it or the person who stole it. When the oath had been taken, the moonshee put the weighed rice into the man’s hand to hold during the time every servant in the room was served in like manner. There were thirty-five present. When each had taken the oath, and received the rice in his hand, they all sat down on the ground, and a bit of plantain leaf was placed before each person. The moonshee then said,—

“Some person or persons amongst you have taken a false oath; God is in the midst of us; let every man put his portion of rice into his mouth, and having chewed it, let him spit it out upon the plantain leaf before him; he who is the thief, or knows aught concerning the theft, from his mouth it shall come forth as dry as it was put in; from the mouths of those who are innocent, it will come forth wet and well chewed.”

Every man chewed his rice, and spat it out like so much milk and water, with the exception of three persons, from whose months it came forth as dry and as fine as powder. Of these men, one had secreted two-thirds of the rice, hoping to chew the smaller quantity, but all to no purpose; it came perfectly dry from his mouth, from the effect of fear, although it was ground to dust. The moonshee said, “Those are the guilty men, one of them will probably inform against the others;” and he carried them off to the police. It is a fact, that a person under great alarm will find it utterly impossible to chew and put forth rice in a moistened state, whilst one who fears not will find it as impossible to chew and to spit it out perfectly dry and ground to dust. An harkāra, in the service of one of our guests, was one of the men whom the moonshee pronounced guilty; about a fortnight before, a silver saucepan had been stolen from his master’s house, by one of his own servants. Against another, one of our own men, we have gained some very suspicious intelligence, and although we never expect the watch to be restored, we shall get rid of the thieves. So much for the ordeal by rice, in which I have firm faith.

May 4th.—The weather is tremendously hot. A gentleman came in yesterday, and said, “this room is delightful, it is cold as a well;” we have discovered, however, that it is infested below with rats and musk-rats, three or four of which my little Scotch terrier kills daily; the latter make him foam at the mouth with disgust. My little dog Crab, you are the most delightful Scotch terrier that ever came to seek his fortune in the East!

Some friends have sent to us for garden-seeds. But, oh! observe how nature is degenerated in this country—they have sent alone for vegetable-seeds—the feast of roses being here thought inferior to the feast of marrowfat peas!

THE TOOLSEE.

An European in Calcutta sees very little of the religious ceremonies of the Hindoos. Among the most remarkable is the worship of the toolsee, in honour of a religious female, who requested Vishnoo to allow her to become his wife. Lukshmee, the goddess of beauty, and wife of Vishnoo, cursed the woman on account of the pious request she had preferred to her lord, and changed her into a toolsee plant. Vishnoo, influenced by his own feelings, and in consideration of the religious austerities long practised by the enamoured devotee, made her a promise that he would assume the form of the shalgramŭ, and always continue with her. The Hindoos, therefore, keep one leaf of the toolsee under and another upon the shalgramŭ.—See Fig. 5, in the plate entitled “The Thug’s Dice.”

“The sweet basil is known by its two leaves[19].” Throughout a certain month they suspend a lota (earthen vessel) over the toolsee filled with water, and let the water drop upon it through a small hole. The Hindoo, in the sketch “Pooja of the Toolsee,” is engaged in this worship, perhaps reading the Purana, in which a fable relates the metamorphosis of the nymph Toolsee into the shrub which has since borne her name. The whole plant has a purplish hue approaching to black, and thence, perhaps, like the large black bee of this country, it is held sacred to Krishna, in whose person Vishnoo himself appeared on earth.

The Hindoos venerate three kinds of toolsee—the kala (ocimum sanctum), purple-stalked basil; the small-leaved toolsee; and the suffaid toolsee, white basil or Indian tea. The leaves of the latter are used by those in India who cannot afford the tea of China; they are highly aromatic. The Hindoos have faith in their power to cure diseases, and use them with incantations to dispel the poison of serpents.

This plant is held in estimation by the Mussulmāns as well as the Hindoos. It is recorded of the prophet that he said: “Hásan and Húsain are the best young princes of paradise. Verily, Hásan and Húsain are my two sweet basils in the world.”

At Benares I saw, on the side of the Ganges, a number of pillars hollowed at the top, in which the Hindoos had deposited earth and had planted the toolsee; some devotees were walking round these pillars, pouring water on the sacred plant and making sālām. My bearers at Prag had a toolsee in front of their house, under a peepul tree; I have seen them continually make the altar of earth on which it was placed perfectly clean around it with water and cow-dung; and of an evening they lighted a little chirāgh (small lamp) before it. If one of these sacred plants die, it is committed in due form to Gunga-jee: and when a person is brought to die by the side of the sacred river, a branch of the toolsee, the shrub goddess, is planted near the dying man’s head.

The shalgramŭ is black, hollow, and nearly round; it is found in the Gunduk river, and is considered a representation of Vishnoo; each should have twenty-one marks upon it, similar to those on his body. The shalgramŭ is the only stone which is naturally divine; all the other stones worshipped are rendered sacred by incantations.

A pan of water is suspended over this stone during the hottest month in the year, exactly in the same manner as over the toolsee in the sketch; and during the same month another pan is placed under the stone, in which the water is caught, and drunk in the evening as sanctified.

Ward mentions that some persons, when ill, employ a Brahmin to present single leaves of the toolsee sprinkled with red powder to the shalgramŭ, repeating incantations. A hundred thousand leaves are sometimes presented. It is said that the sick gradually recover as each additional leaf is offered. When a Hindoo is at the point of death, a Brahmin shows him the marks of the shalgramŭ, of which the sight is supposed to insure the soul a safe passage to the heaven of Vishnoo. When an Hindoo takes an oath, he places a sprig of toolsee on a brass lota, filled with the sacred water of the Ganges, and swears by Gunga-jee[20]. If a small part of the pebble god be broken, it is committed to the river. I bought several of these stones from a Brahmin at the great Mela at Prag. I gave two old Delhi gold mohurs to a native jeweller, to make into an ornament for the forehead after a native pattern. My jemmadār took the mohurs, and, rubbing them on a shalgramŭ, gave it to me to keep, in order to compare the purity of the gold on its return when fashioned, with that of the red gold I had given the man to melt. In making fine jewellery the natives put one-fourth alloy; they cannot work gold so impure as that used by English jewellers, and contemptuously compare it to copper.

In the plate entitled “The Thug’s Dice,” Fig. 6 represents the shalgramŭ, shalgram, or salagrama; it is a small heavy black circular stone, rather flattened on one side, with the cornu Ammonis strongly marked upon it.

Fig. 5 is one covered by the leaves of the kala toolsee, purple-stalked basil.

No. 7 is still heavier, perfectly black and smooth, without any marks. This was the touchstone, and a little gold still remaining upon it.

“Gold is known by the touchstone, and a man by living with him[21].”

“Some salagrams are perforated in one or more places by worms, or, as the Hindoos believe, by Vishnŭ in the shape of a reptile; some are supposed to represent his gracious incarnation, but when they border a little in colour on the violet they denote a vindictive avatār, such as Narasinga, when no man of ordinary nerve dares keep them in his house. The possessor of a salagrama preserves it in clean cloth; it is frequently perfumed and bathed; and the water thereby acquiring virtue, is drunk, and prized for its sin-expelling property.”

The shalgrams, which are in my possession, are of exactly the shape and size represented in the sketch.

July 17th.—On this day, having discovered a young friend ill in the Writer’s Buildings, we brought him to our house. Two days afterwards I was seized with the fever, from which I did not recover for thirteen days. My husband nursed me with great care, until he fell ill himself, and eleven of our servants were laid up with the same disorder.

The people in Calcutta have all had it; I suppose, out of the whole population, European and native, not two hundred persons have escaped; and what is singular, it has not occasioned one death amongst the adult. I was so well and strong—over night we were talking of the best means of escaping the epidemic—in the morning it came and remained thirty-six hours, then quitted me; a strong eruption came out, like the measles, and left me weak and thin. My husband’s fever left him in thirty-six hours, but he was unable to quit the house for nine days: the rash was the same. Some faces were covered with spots like those on a leopard’s skin. It was so prevalent, that the Courts of Justice, the Custom House, the Lottery Office, and almost every public department in Calcutta, were closed in consequence of the sickness. In the course of three days, three different physicians attended me, one after the other having fallen ill. It is wonderful, that a fever producing so much pain in the head and limbs, leaving the patient weak, reduced, and covered with a violent eruption, should have been so harmless; after three weeks, nobody appeared to have suffered, with the exception of two or three children, whom it attacked more violently than it did grown-up people, and carried them off.

The politicians at home have anticipated us in reckoning upon the probability of a Burmese war. We have hitherto been altogether successful. I saw yesterday a gold and a silver sword, and a very murderous looking weapon resembling a butcher’s knife, but on a larger scale. A necklace (so called from its circling the neck, for it was composed of plates of gold hammered on a silken string), and some little squab images, gods, perhaps, taken from a chief, whom Major Sale of H. M. 13th, dispatched in an attack upon a stockade, leaving the chief in exchange part of the blade of his own sword, which was broken in his skull by the force of the blow that felled him.

It is an unlucky business: the Company certainly do not require at present more territory on that side India, and the expense to which Government is put by this elegant little mill, as Pierce Egan might call it, is more than the worthies in Leadenhall-street suppose.

I see Lord Hastings is made Civil Governor of Malta! “To what base uses we may return!” I observe the motion to prevent the necessity of parents sending their sons to Haileybury has been lost. The grand object of the students should be the acquisition of the oriental languages; here nothing else tells.

If a young man gets out of college in three or four months after his arrival, which, if he crams at college in England, he may easily effect, he is considered forthwith as a brilliant character, and is sealed with the seal of genius. Likewise pockets medals and money, and this he may do without knowing any thing else.

To a person fresh from England, the number of servants attending at table is remarkable. We had only a small party of eight to dinner yesterday, including ourselves; three-and-twenty servants were in attendance! Each gentleman takes his own servant or servants, in number from one to six, and each lady her attendant or attendants, as it pleases her fancy. The Hooqŭ was very commonly smoked at that time in Calcutta: before dinner was finished, every man’s pipe was behind his chair. The tobacco was generally so well prepared, that the odour was not unpleasant, unless by chance you sat next to a man from the Mofussil, when the fume of the spices used by the up country Hooqŭ Bardārs in preparing the tobacco, rendered it oppressive and disagreeable.

Sept. 1st.—The fever has quitted Calcutta, and travelled up the country stage by stage. It was amusing to see, upon your return to the Course, the whole of the company stamped, like yourself, with the marks of the leech upon the temples. Its origin has been attributed to many causes, and it has been called by many names. The gentlemen of the lancet are greatly divided in their opinions; some attribute it to the want of rain, others to the scarcity of thunder and lightning this season. There was an instance of the same general fever prevailing in the time of Warren Hastings. Not a single instance has been heard of its having proved mortal to adults.