XIV 



THE PURBHOO 



I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who 

 moved the adjournment of the House to consider the 

 culpable carelessness of the Government of India in 

 allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the 

 moat of his own castle when he was drunk, could 

 have told you what a Purbhoo is, not though you 

 had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his 

 Gazetteer. Of course he saw hundreds of them 

 during that Christmas which he spent in the East 

 before he wrote his book ; but then he took them all 

 for Brahmins. He never noticed that the curve of 

 their turbans was not the same, and the idol mark 

 on their foreheads was quite different, nor even that 

 their shoes were not forked at the toes, but ended 

 in a sharp point curled upwards. And if he did not 

 see these things which were on the surface, what 

 could he know of matters that lie deeper ? 



Now the first and most important thing to be 

 known respecting the Purbhoo, the fundamental 

 fact of him, is that he is not a Brahmin. If he were 

 a Brahmin, one essential piece of our administrative 

 apparatus in India would be wanting, and without 

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