ntly assumed
the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known
to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man
disguised as a fakir is often sent on by dacoits (gang-robbers) as a
spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether
Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of
them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any
of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so
exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our
operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not
throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these
religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men
in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairagis and
Gosains; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakirs.' (_A Report
on the System of Megpunnaism_, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work
the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple
belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a
stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.

9. This incident still happens occasionally.

10. For the Raja, see _ante_, chapter 20, [6].

CHAPTER 75

The Begam Sumroo.

On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the
church built and endowed by the late Begam Sombre, whose remains are
now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M.
Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the
bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a
quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man--he is
still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Begam did
not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of
her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she
said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be
satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She
made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one
hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him
the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her
grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and
presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.

The Begam Sombre was by birth a Saiyadani, or lineal descendant from
Muhammad, the founder of the Musalman faith;