CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 347 



farms, where thousands of long-tailed saints are provided with shel- 

 ter, respectful attendants, and three substantial meals a day, on the 

 sole condition that they shall renounce their sylvan haunts and bless 

 the neighborhood with the influence of their holy presence. Sick 

 monkeys are sent to the next bhunder-hospital, generally a well-en- 

 dowed and well-managed institution with a special dhevadar or re- 

 sponsible major-domo. The little town of Cawnpore has eight such 

 infirmaries, Benares twenty or twenty-five, some of them with a sub- 

 division for incurables and chronic dyspeptics ! 



To support these institutions is deemed a privilege as well as a 

 duty. Troops of children, with garlands around their ankles and 

 wrists, march in procession to offer the first-fruits of the season to the 

 major-domos of the next mahakhund. An embarras de richesse often 

 obliges that functionary to sell a portion of the donations and invest 

 the surplus in the guarantee funds of the institution. In very poor 

 districts, like Baroda and the northern part of the Madras Presidency, 

 a protracted famine sometimes exhausts these funds, and reduces the 

 menu of the sinecurists to two meals a day and half -measures of the 

 weekly treacle allowance, the full rice ration being generally guaran- 

 teed by deposit-drafts on a public store-house. At such times, when 

 human beneficiaries would feel grateful for the least assistance, the 

 four-handed %)roteges become peevish. They often abscond and try 

 their luck on the public highways, where orthodox pilgrims would, 

 indeed, part with their last crust rather than disregard the wants of a 

 sacred baboon. If hunger emboldens a low-caste monkey to approach 

 the precincts of a mahakhund, the irate boarders sally forth and pur- 

 sue him with a rancor as if they suspected him of being accessory to 

 the irregularities of the purveyance system. 



When the (Mohammedan) Sepoys destroyed the large monkey- 

 asylum of Behar, the citizens of Nusserabad, though themselves on 

 the verge of famine, promptly organized a relief committee. A pro- 

 vision-wagon, drawn by lean horses and leaner fakirs, drove through 

 the city collecting comestibles, while the conductor of the team, in a 

 sort of sing-song chant, recounted the sufferings of the holy long- 

 tails : " They mourn among the roofless ruins. They sit hungry-eyed, 

 waiting in vain for the arrival of a moderate refection. No bread, no 

 sago-cakes, no rice for the righteous ones, while many a sinner " (with 

 a gleam of suspicion) "regales himself, perhaps, with yed-na-saccar'''' (a 

 sort of blanc-mange). " Their young ones look leaner than scrub-palm 

 lizards. While they fast the just trembles ; the eye that looks un- 

 moved may soon be moved by retaliative calamities. Promptly, ye 

 faithful, contribute, contribute ! " (C. Ritter's " Travels in Hinclostan 

 and Siam," vol. ii, p. 210). 



Victor Jacquemont estimates that the Bengal Presidency alone 

 contains sixteen hundred monkey-asylums, supported chiefly by the 

 very poorest class of the population. In the rural districts of Nepaul 



