older, Kewul Sing, came out and presented his offering of a fine
fighting-ram. He was armed with his bow, and "quiver full of arrows,"
but told me, that he thought a good gun, with pouch and flask, much
better, and he carried the bow and quiver merely because they were
lighter. He was surrounded by almost all the people of the town, and
told me, that the family held in copartnership fifty-two small
villages, immediately around _Barone_--that this village had been
attacked and burnt down by Captain Bunbury and his regiment the year
before last, without any other cause that they could understand save
that he had recommended him not to encamp in the grove close by. The
fact was, that none of the family would pay the Government demand, or
obey the old Amil, Hafiz Abdoollah; and it was necessary to make an
example. On being asked whether his family and clan, the Sombunsies,
preserved or destroyed their daughters, he told me, in the midst of
his village community, that he would not deceive me; that they, one
and all, destroyed their infant daughters; but that one was,
occasionally, allowed to live (_ek-adh_); that the family was under a
taint for twelve days after the murder of an infant, when the family
priest (Prohut) was invited and fed in due form; that he then
declared the absolution complete, and the taint removed.

The family priest was present, and I asked him what he got on such
occasions? He said, that to remove the taint, or grant absolution
after the murder of a daughter, he got little or no money; he merely
partook of the food prepared for him in due form; but that, on the
birth of a son, he got ten rupees from the parents. All the assembled
villagers bore testimony to the truth of what the patriarch and the
priest told me. They said, that no one would enter a house in which
an infant daughter had been destroyed, or eat or drink with any
member of the family till the Prohut had granted the absolution,
which he did after the expiration of twelve days, as a matter of
course, depending as he did upon the good-will of the landholders,
who were all of the same clan, Sombunsies. Few other Brahmins will
condescend to eat, drink, or associate with these family and village
priests, who take the sins of such murderers upon their own heads.

The old patriarch rode on with me upon his pony, five miles to my
tents, as if I should not think the worse of him for having murdered
his own daughters, and permitted others to murder