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the bazar, or market-place, belonging to his own division, and to 

 the principal generals, contained many thousand tents, where 

 every trade and profession was carried on with as much regularity 

 as in a city. Goldsmiths, jewellers, bankers, drapers, druggists, 

 confectioners, carpenters, tailors, tent-makers, corn-grinders, and 

 farriers, found full employment; as did whole rows of silver, iron, 

 and copper-smiths; but those in the greatest and most constant 

 requisition, seemed to be cooks, confectioners, and farriers. How- 

 ever erroneous their tenets, I should be unpardonable to omit men- 

 tioning the veneration paid to public worship in the Mahratta 

 camp: in the different divisions was a temporary dewal, or tent, 

 consecrated to religious duties, where brahmins regularly officiated, 

 and prayer and sacrifices are offered to the deities with the same 

 ceremonies as in the Hindoo temples. 



In the Mahratta camp, as in all the Hindoo governments, ex- 

 cept that of the brahminical peshwa's at Poonah, there exists a 

 class of people in many respects superior to the sovereign on the 

 throne ; this is the tribe of brahmins so often mentioned. Princes 

 and governors, as also most persons employed in the political and 

 military departments of state, belong generally to the second order 

 of the four principal castes into which the Hindoos, as a people, 

 are divided: those brahmins who are not engaged in public func- 

 tions, or the administration of religious rites, from the superiority 

 of caste alone, are treated with respect and deference by their 

 respective sovereigns. So tenacious are they of their privileges, 

 and so conscious of the preeminence to which the code of Menu 

 entitles them, that among the officers in the Mahratta army, a 

 brahmin in an inferior station would send part of his dinner ready 



