AND PRACTICES OF THE HINDUS. 363 



NOTE. 



Having lately received some further documents on 

 the subject of the Dhurna, which I did not possess 

 when the preceding paper was read to the Society, I 

 have extracted from them what appears to me requi- 

 site to elucidate this extraordinary practice. From 

 these documents it appears that several cases of Dhur- 

 na hau btcn brought before the Provincial Court of 

 Juflice at Benares, and as a penalty had been annexed 

 to the performance of this mode of importunity, it be- 

 came necessary to define with precision the rules con- 

 stituting Dhuma, according to the Shaster and Usage. 



For this purpose a question was proposed to. se- 

 veral Pandits, inhabitants of the province and city of 

 Benares - 3 and the answer subscribed by twenty-three 

 T audits is as follows : 



" Any one who fits Dburna on another's door, or 

 in his house for the realization of a debt, or for other 

 purpose, in which the party sitting takes with him 

 some weapon or poison, and sits down ; nor does he 

 eat himself, nor allow the party against whom he is 

 sitting, or his family, to eat; nor does he allow any 

 person ingress into that person's house nor egress from 

 it, '^d addressing himself in terms of the strongest 

 oaths to the people of the house, he says, f< If any of 

 <f those of your house shall cat victuals, or go into your 

 " house, or go out of it, I shall either wound myself 

 f< with this weapon, or swallow this poison;" and it 

 does sometimes happen that both these events take 

 place, and that he who sits in Dburndis not to remove 



from 



