of Sagar[2] drove out the influenza that afflicted the people
so much in 1832, while he was there on a visit to me. He told me that
he took no part in the ceremonies, nor was he aware of them till
awoke one night by 'the noise, when his attendants informed him that
the queen and the greater part of the city were making offerings to
the new god, Hardaul Lala. He found next morning that a goat had been
offered up with as much noise as possible, and with good effect, for
the disease was found to give way from that moment. About six years
before, when great numbers were dying in his own little capital of
Pithoria[3] from a similar epidemic, he had, he said, tried the same
thing with still greater effect; but, on that occasion, he had the
aid of a man very learned in such matters. This man caused a small
carriage to be made up after a plan of his own, for _a pair of scape-
goats_, which were harnessed to it, and driven during the ceremonies
to a wood some distance from the town, where they were let loose.
From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats
never returned. 'Had they come back,' said Sarimant, 'the disease
must have come back with them; so he took them a long way into the
wood--indeed (he believed), the man, to make sure of them, had
afterwards caused them to be offered up as a sacrifice to the shrine
of Hardaul Lala, in that very wood. He had himself never seen a
_puja_ (religious ceremony) so entirely and immediately efficacious
as this, and much of its success was, no doubt, attributable to the
_science_ of the man who planned the carriage, and himself drove the
pair of goats to the wood. No one had ever before heard of the plan
of a pair of _scape-goats_ being driven in a carriage; but it was
likely (he thought) to be extensively adopted in future.'[4]

Sarimant's man of affairs mentioned that when Lord Hastings took the
field against the Pindharis, in 1817,[5] and the division of the
grand army under his command was encamped near the grove in
Bundelkhand, where repose the ashes of Hardaul Lala, under a small
shrine, a cow was taken into this grove to be converted into beef for
the use of the Europeans. The priest in attendance remonstrated, but
in vain--the cow was killed and eaten. The priest complained, and
from that day the cholera morbus broke out in the camp; and from this
central point it was, he said, generally understood to have spread
all over India.[6] The story of the cow travell