19 



it is iu order not to work any more ; they become soldiers or 

 fakirs, who are people who make • profession of having re- 

 nounced the world and live upon alms, but in reality they are 

 great rascals. It is estimated thai there are 800,000 Muham- 

 'madan fakirs and 1,200,000 among the idolaters." Tavernier 

 was a devout French Protestant Christian, and' he adds : 

 " Although these idolaters are in the depths of blindness to a 

 knowledge of the true God, that does not prevent them from 

 living morally well ; when married, they are rarely unfaithful 

 to their wives, and adultery is very rare among them." 



Section II. — The condition of the Presidency at the end of the 

 ISth century when most of the provinces of Southern India 

 were acquired by the British. 



12, In the appendix A, section II, will be found extracts from 

 official* reports describing in some detail the state of the country 

 at the commencement of' the present century when most of the 

 provinces of Southern India came under British occupation. 

 In the earlier centuries, although the country had suffered from 

 frequent wars, it had, with some intervals of anarchy, the 

 advantage of a more or less settled government. In the 18th 

 century, how^ever, the completest anarchy prevailed and the 

 condition of the people was miserable in the extreme. In the 

 beginning of the centurj^, the Moghul General Zulfikar Khan, 

 who had command of the Payen Ghat or the coimtry between 

 the Kistna and the Coleroon rivers, was engaged in incessant 

 and destructive wars for 19 years till the death of the Emperor 

 Aui'angzebe. " The express statement," says Colonel Wilks, 

 "of 19 actions fought and three thousand coss (6,000 miles) 

 marched by this officer in the coui'se of six months only may 

 afford some faint idea of the wretchedness in which the unfor- 

 tunate inhabitants were involved during that period, and these 

 miseries of war, in the ordinary coiu'se of human calamity, were 

 necessarily followed by a long and destructive famine and pesti- 

 lence. Within this period Zulfikar Khan appears to have made 

 three different expeditions to the south of the Cauverj", levjdng 

 heav}^ contributions on Tan j ore and Trichinopoly." Soon after 

 the Moghul conquest the Moghul power rapidly declined under 

 the assaults made on it by the Mahrattas. When the emperor 

 appointed a jaghirdar over a tract of country, the Mahrattas 

 appointed another, and both of them fleeced the cultivators "who 

 often had no alternative left but to leave off cultivatin"' and 

 become plunderers in their turn. Shortly after followed the 

 wars , consequent on disputed succession to the soubah of the 

 Deccan and the nabobship of the Carnatic and the struggle fo? 



