obliged to return to Narsinghpur, where he
died soon after from fever. No man was ever more beloved by all
classes of the people of his district than he was; and I believe
there was not one person among them who did not believe him to have
fallen a victim to the resentment of the spirit of the old
proprietor. When I went to the village some years afterwards, the
people in the neighbourhood all declared to me that they saw the cord
with which he was measuring fly into a thousand pieces the moment the
men attempted to straighten it over the first field.[5]

A very respectable old gentleman from the Concan, or Malabar
coast,[6] told me one day that every man there protects his field of
corn and his fruit-tree by dedicating it to one or other of the
spirits which there abound, or confiding it to his guardianship. He
sticks up something in the field, or ties on something to the tree,
in the name of the said spirit, who from that moment feels himself
responsible for its safe keeping. If any one, without permission from
the proprietor, presumes to take either an ear of corn from the
field, or fruit from the tree, he is sure to be killed outright, or
made extremely ill. 'No other protection is required', said the old
gentleman, 'for our fields and fruit-trees in that direction, though
whole armies should have to march through them.' I once saw a man
come to the proprietor of a jack-tree,[7] embrace his feet, and in
the most piteous manner implore his protection. He asked what was the
matter. 'I took', said the man, 'a jack from your tree yonder three
days ago, as I passed at night; and I have been suffering dreadful
agony in my stomach ever since. The spirit of the tree is upon me,
and you only can pacify him.' The proprietor took up a bit of cow-
dung, moistened it, and made a mark with it upon the man's forehead,
_in the name of the spirit_, and put some of it into the knot of hair
on the top of his head. He had no sooner done this than the man's
pains all left him, and he went off, vowing never again to give
similar cause of offence to one of these guardian spirits. 'Men',
said my old friend, 'do not die there in the same regulated spirit,
with their thoughts directed exclusively towards God, as in other
parts; and whether a man's spirit is to haunt the world or not after
his death all depends on that.'

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. Datiya (Datia, Dutteeah) is a small state, with an area of about
911 square miles,