840 Observations upon the past and present [Oct. 



of extracts from the quran, but I was too pressed for time to stay and 

 decipher the nearly obliterated letters which were placed too high to 

 be read from the ground. But few of the other Musalman buildings 

 merit description. In the heart of the city and close together, the 

 tombs of two ladies stand in quadrangles, enclosed by walls. One 

 covers Rekmat Bi'bi', a person more celebrated for liberality than 

 modesty, for she annually expended in a tazeea 700 rupees of the 

 wages of prostitution. The occupier of the next tomb would be 

 shocked at its vicinity to so unchaste a character. She was the 

 beautiful wife of a Nawab Bakhtar Khan, whose affection for her 

 induced him, in her last illness, to summon a learned Hakim from 

 Surat. But in spite of the arguments and prayers of her friends the 

 prudish lady would not consent to her pulse being felt by a stranger. 

 The doctor suggested that she should hold one end of a string, passed 

 through as many doors and walls as she pleased, while he by feeling 

 the other end would judge of the state of her body. The lady seem- 

 ingly consented, but tied her corner of the string to a cat's neck. 

 Alas ! cried the doctor from without, that cat is starving to death, 

 pray give it something to eat. The husband enraged with the fasti- 

 diousness of his wife insisted upon her again holding the string, 

 but when he left the room she tied it to a post. The doctor who 

 was not to be deceived instantly in a rage quitted the house, and the 

 lady fell a martyr to her too-scrupulous delicacy. Much treasure is 

 supposed to have been buried with her, but it is now no longer 

 searched for, for it is believed that a party formerly employed in the 

 unholy act of endeavouring to rob the dead, lighted upon the spot 

 where the body was deposited. It was found lying in a sandal wood 

 cradle and the face so piously concealed during life, became by a 

 cruel fatality exposed after death to the vulgar gaze of these sacrile- 

 gious men. The worm had not outraged the fair lineaments, and 

 the modesty* of the beautiful features struck such remorse into the 

 hearts of the plunderers, that filled with pity and shame they immedi- 

 ately covered up the grave, and no one has ever since been impious 

 enough to violate its sanctity. These two tombs are adorned both 

 externally and in the interior with slabs of white marble, having sen- 

 tences of the quran sculptured on them. I looked in vain for any in- 

 scriptions which would certify to the occupants of the buildings, as I 

 have heard them ascribed to different individuals than those to whom 

 I have assigned them. 



Of the other tombs, one to IsmaelKhan Rumi' occupies a conspi- 

 cuous situation, the crest of one of the hills of the old city. Of the 



