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armed with daggers, and with a loud voice proclaimed a dreadful 

 sacrifice: they once more prayed for an exemption, which being 

 refused, they rushed furiously upon each other, and a consi- 

 derable number perished before our astonished troops could dis- 

 arm them. One man, more cool and deliberate than the rest, 

 brought his family to the area before the durbar: it consisted of 

 two younger brothers, and a beautiful sister, all under eighteen 

 years of age; he first stabbed the unresisting damsel to the heart, 

 instantly plunged the dagger into the breast of one brother, and 

 desperately wounded the other before he could be prevented ; 

 indeed the whole horrid deed was in a manner instantaneous. I 

 afterwards heard this man boast of having sacrificed his father a few 

 months before in the glorious cause for which he had now become 

 a fratricide. 



A particular sect of brahmins claimed the same privilege of 

 exemption: on being refused, they likewise vowed revenge; but 

 acting more wisely than the Bhauts, they purchased two aged 

 matrons of the same caste, who having performed the duties 

 of life, were now past the enjoyment of its pleasures, and quietly 

 submitted to the sacrifice. These ancient ladies were sold by their 

 daughters for forty rupees each, to enable them to defray the 

 expense incurred by the funeral ceremonies, on which the Indians 

 all lay a great stress. The victims were then conducted to the 

 market-place, where the brahmins, calling aloud for vengeance, 

 dispatched them to another state of transmigration. After these 

 sacrifices neither brahmins nor Bhauts thought it any disgrace to 

 pay their share of the imposition. What an anomaly is sometimes 



