MAHADAJEE SCINDIA. 
225 
he is represented to have been rigidly tenacious of form 
in his public intercourse with his superiors or equals, 
as the following passage from Sir John Malcolm's 
“ Memoirs of Central India” will show. f£r Although, 
by the treaty of Salbye, Sindia was recognised, as far 
as related to the British Government, an independent 
prince, he continued to observe, on all other points 
which referred to his connexion with the Poonah go- 
vernment, the most scrupulous attention to forms. 
When he became master of Shah Allum and his capi- 
tal, he made the degraded emperor sign a commission, 
appointing the Paishwa vicegerent of the empire, and 
received from the head of the Mahratta state one as his 
deputy in that high office ; but when he came to Poo- 
nah, during the rule of the second Madhoo Bow, a scene 
was exhibited, which stands, perhaps, alone amid all 
the mummery to which the mock humility of artful 
and ambitious leaders has resorted to deceive the 
world. The actual sovereign of Hindostan from the 
Sutlej e to Agra; the conqueror of the provinces of 
Bajpootana ; the commander of an army composed of 
sixteen battalions of regular infantry, five hundred 
pieces of cannon, and one hundred thousand horse; 
the possessor of two-thirds of Malwa, and some of the 
finest provinces of the Deccan,— when he went to pay 
his respects to a youth who then held the office of 
Paishwa, he dismounted from his elephant at the gates 
of Poonah, placed himself in the great hall of audience 
below all the hereditary nobles of the state, and when 
the Paishwa came into the room and desired him to 
be seated with others, he objected, on the ground of 
being unworthy of the honour ; and, untying a bundle 
