aithful,
should be compelled to wear a close veil over their face and figure
whenever they went abroad.'

In Arabia and Persia the females are allowed to walk or ride out with a
sort of hooded cloak, which falls over the face, and has two eye-holes for
the purpose of seeing their way.[11] They are to be met with in the streets
of those countries without a suspicion of impropriety when thus habited.

The habit of strict seclusion, however, originated in Hindoostaun with
Tamerlane the conqueror of India.

When Tamerlane[12] with his powerful army entered India, he issued a
proclamation to all his followers to the following purport, 'As they were
now in the land of idolatry and amongst a strange people, the females of
their families should be strictly concealed from the view of strangers';
and Tamerlane himself invented the several covered conveyances which are
to the present period of the Mussulmaun history in use, suited to each
grade of female rank in society. And the better to secure them from all
possibility of contamination by their new neighbours, he commanded that
they should be confined to their own apartments and behind the purdah,
disallowing any intercourse with males of their own persuasion even, who
were not related by the nearest ties, and making it a crime in any female
who should willingly suffer her person to be seen by men out of the
prescribed limits of consanguinity.

Tamerlane, it may be presumed, was then ignorant of the religious
principles of the Hindoos. They are strictly forbidden to have intercourse
or intermarry with females who are not strictly of their own caste or
tribe, under the severe penalty of losing that caste which they value as
their life. To this may be attributed, in a great degree, the safety with
which female foreigners travel daak[13] (post) in their palankeens, from
one point of the Indian continent to another, without the knowledge of
five words of the Hindoostaunie tongue, and with no other servant or
guardian but the daak-bearers, who carry them at the rate of four miles an
hour, travelling day and night successively.

The palankeen is supported on the shoulders of four bearers at once,--two
having the front pole attached to the vehicle, and two supporting the pole
behind. The four bearers are relieved every five or six minutes by other
four, making the set of eight to each palankeen,--this set conveys their
burden from eight to ten miles, where a fresh party are in wait