The
landholders and cultivators told me, that the heavy rain we have had
has done a vast deal of good to the crops; and, as it has been
followed by a clear sky and fine westerly wind, they have no fear of
the blight which might have followed had the sky continued cloudy,
and the winds easterly. Certainly nothing could look better than the
crops of all kinds do now, and the people are busily engaged in
ploughing the land for sugar-cane, and for the autumn crops of next
season.
I had some talk with the head zumeendar of Naraenpoor about midway.
He is of the Ditchit family of Rajpoots, who abound in the district
we have now entered. We passed over the boundary of Byswara, about
three miles from our last encampment, and beyond that district there
are but few Rajpoots of the Bys clan. These Ditchits give their
daughters in marriage to the Bys Rajpoots, but cannot get any of
theirs in return. Gunga Sing, the zumeendar, with whom I was talking,
told me that both the Ditchits and Byses put their infant daughters
to death, and that the practice prevailed more or less in all
families of these and, he believed, all other clans of Rajpoots in
Oude, save the Sengers.* I asked him whether it prevailed in his own
family, and he told me that it did, more or less, as in all others. I
bade him leave me, as I could not hold converse with a person guilty
of such atrocities, and told him that they would be all punished for
them in the next world, if not in this.
Pages:
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461