into corporate existence, or who its founder was cannot be 

 accurately determined, but this much is certain that they 

 had a pack of hounds here many years before either 

 Madras or Bombay aspired to this dignity and distinction. 

 From the oldest available printed records it appears that 

 before 1822 there was a pack of thorough-bred fox- 

 hounds in Calcutta, and it was not until some years after 

 this that Bombay followed Calcutta's lead and imported a 

 pack every year, selling them off at the end of the season. 

 In this connection, however, it may be mentioned that there 

 is a record extant of a *' Bobbery Pack " having been in 

 existence in Bombay as long ago as 181 1, and the follow- 

 ing letter which appeared in The Asian in November 

 1906 gives some details of this fore-runner of the present 

 flourishing Bombay Hunt. 



To 



The Editor, 



The Asian- 

 Sir, 



I shall be glad to know whether there are any really old records of the 

 period when hunting with a pack of hounds first became common in India, 

 There is, I may mention, an authentic record of a bobbery pack having been in 

 active existence in Bombay in 1811 and cared for by some "Sons of Belial " as 

 a contemporary diarist terms them. The diary I allude to is that of Henry 

 Martyn, the translator of the New Testament into Hindustani and Persian. 

 As some of your readers may never have heard the derivation of the word 

 " bobbery " as given in a foot-note which refers to the late Col. Sir Henry 

 Yule's Hobson Jobson or Anglo- Indian Glossary^ I add it here as it is given : — 



'* Bap-re " — ' Oh Father ' — the exclamation of Hindus when in surprise or 

 grief, hence a noise, a row: hence a Bobbery Pack or Hunt is the Anglo- 

 Indian for a pack of hounds of different breeds or no breed, wherewith young 

 officers hunt jackals {siC) and the likes." 



The young men of 181 1 enjoyed sky races, too, but they raised Henry 



Martyn's ire by contemplating " a great race on Sunday," and he had influence 



enough as one of the Company's Chaplains to get the meeting put off by the 



aid of his secular arm. " The Members of the Bap-re Hunt," he adds, " were 



ex ceedingly exasperated ; some came to church expecting to hear a sermon on 



