ill greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller
promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first-
born, if a male, to the god of destruction, Mahadeo. If she gets a
son, she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of
puberty; she then communicates it [_sic_] to him, and enjoins him to
fulfil it. He believes it to be his paramount duty to obey his
mother's call; and from that moment he considers himself as devoted
to the god. Without breathing to any living soul a syllable of what
she has told him, he puts on the habit of a pilgrim or religious
mendicant, visits all the celebrated temples dedicated to this god in
different parts of India;[6] and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo
hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five
hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[7] If the
youth does not feel himself quite prepared for the sacrifice on the
first visit, he spends another year in pilgrimages, and returns to
fulfil his mother's vow at the next fair. Some have, I believe, been
known to postpone the sacrifice to a third fair; but the interval is
always spent in painful pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of the
god. When Sir R. Jenkins was the Governor-General's representative at
the court of Nagpur,[8] great efforts were made by him and all the
European officers under him to put a stop to these horrors by doing
away with the fair; and their efforts were assisted by the _cholera
morbus_, which broke out among the multitude one season while they
were so employed, and carried off the greater part of them. This
seasonable visitation was, I believe, considered as an intimation on
the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive
to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahadeo is the
only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.[9]
He figures among the _dramatis personae_ of the great pantomime of
the Ramlila[10] or fight for the recovery of Sita from the demon king
of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether
the fair has ever been revived, but [I] think not.

In 1829 the wheat and other spring crops in this and the surrounding
villages were destroyed by a severe hail-storm; in 1830 they were
deficient from the want of seasonable rains; and in 1831 they were
destroyed by blight. During these three years the 'teori', or what in
other parts of India is called 'kesar