265 



to the land, and was ploughing it, when he was interrupted by his 

 opponent. The words of Baloo are as follows: " I became angry 

 " and enraged at his forbidding me; and, bringing my own little 

 " daughter Apmunya, who was only a year and a half old, to the 

 " said field, I killed her with my sword." 



The last instance is an act of matricide, perpetrated by Bee- 

 chuk and Adher, two brothers, brahmins, and zemindars, or pro- 

 prietors of landed estates, the extent of which did not exceed emht 

 acres. There had been a dispute among the zemindars respecting 

 the revenues of the village, particularly with a person named 

 Go wry, and the immediate cause which instigated the brahmins 

 to murder their mother, was an act of violence said to have been 

 committed by the emissaries of Gowry in entering their house 

 during their absence at night, and carrying off forty rupees, the 

 property of Beechuk and Adher, from the apartments of their 

 women. Beechuk first returned to his house; where his mother, 

 his wife, and his sister-in-law, related what had happened. He 

 immediately conducted his mother to an adjoining rivulet; where, 

 being joined in the grey of the morning by his brother Adher, 

 they called out aloud to the people of the village, that although 

 they would overlook the assault as an act which could not be re- 

 medied, the forty rupees must be returned. To this exclamation 

 no answer was received, nor is there a certainly that it was even 

 heard by any person. Beechuk, without further hesitation, drew 

 his scimitar, and at one stroke severed his mother's head from her 

 body ; with the professed view, as entertained and avowed both by 

 parent and son, that the mother's spirit, excited by the beating of 

 a large drum during forty days, might for ever haunt, torment, 



VOL. II. 2 m 



