ringleaders of the bund, or insurgents. He fully communicated his scheme to Amur Singh, and obtained his assent to exert himself to accomplish the object they had in view. A rumour was now to be circulated that Amur Singh was for various reasons to be dismissed from office, to be accused of peculation, and want of energy in his administration, &c. that he might shortly expect his dismis sal, and who were better calculated to take charge of the district, and protect it from all external enemies than Bhoany Naik and his cousins, from their known talents and energy of character. The various atrocities they had committed were not all to be credited, and what they had done, must have been at the instigation of evil disposed persons. A letter conveying Amur Singh's order of dismissal was in due course of time received by him; and another letter containing a commission was forwarded to Bhaony and his cousins, who were required to look minutely into the accounts of the district. It was necessary that Amur Singh should prepare an account of his receipts, and disbursements, and hand over charge of his office publicly to the Naiks; then they would grant him the usual receipts. The three Ramoossy Naiks repaired to the village kucherry (or court) accompanied by a large body of their followers for the purpose of assuming charge of their new appointment. All Amur Singh's adherents were assembled, and on the alert, besides many of the inhabitants were present to hear the new commission read. Amur Singh was lounging against the pillows close to the village koolkurny, and the villagers all arranged on one side. When the Naiks were listening to the koolkurny, three of Amur Singh's relations standing at the further end of the court levelled their matchlocks at the three Naiks; two of the guns went off, and Bhoany and Runggoo were shot dead on the spot, but the third burnt priming. Narroo instantly sprung up to run off, but Amur Singh struck a severe blow at him which nearly severed his shoulder from his body; he succeeded however in running outside and was immediately afterwards cut down. When the Naik's followers (about one hundred men) Rajpoots, Moossulmans, Ramoossies, and Mangs, learnt that the Naiks had been attacked, they rushed towards the entrance of the kutcherry to rescue their friends. Amur Singh had however adopted precautions to guard against such a surprise; ten of the followers were killed, and the rest fled, and tranquillity was restored in the district..

Amur Singh died a few years ago and his two sons Bappoo and Chee. mun Singh were the chief instruments employed to persuade the Ramoossies to seize Oomiah Naik.

The sketch I have here attempted to give of the history of the Ramoossies might be considered incomplete without an account of their marriage rites, and these, although the subject may prove somewhat tedious and uninteresting, I shall now endeavour to explain. In the hope of imparting to it a character of greater interest, it will be as well to illustrate the principles of that portion of their judicial astrology which immediately applies to these ceremonies.

The overpowering influence which the illusive system of Judicial Astrology, and the worship of the host of heaven, placed in the hands of the Brahmun priesthood, has always enabled them to exercise a most profitable, but at the same time, a most pernicious sway over the other classes of the Hindoos.

The many sacrifices and offerings, required to be made on the occasion of performing the prescribed rites, and ceremonies connected with the nativity, marriage, and death of a Hindoo, whether of the most pure or the inferior tribes, besides the innumerable duties exacted of them, in connection with their spiritual and temporal interests through life, seem to be nothing more or less, than a criminal imposition practised upon the people by the crafty priesthood, which has produced much misery and wretchedness among them, and the malign influence of which is unceasing.

It is very well known, that the ceremonies of espousal or betrothment among the Hindoos, as well as those of their nuptials are celebrated at a very early age, invariably long before pubescence. The rules to be attended to, relative to these matters, are very minutely but perplexedly described in their writings.

The expense that is incurred in celebrating these ceremonies, or I should more properly say the imprudent prodigality in which the parents of the children indulge on these occasions although at the time gratifying to their vanity, is even to many of those that may be accounted wealthy a source of subsequent regret, and to such as possess large and dependent families, it is but too frequently the cause of lasting misery.

In this extravagance, they seem prompted by a species of false pride (a feeling which appears to have become engrafted in their nature) or an absurd desire to make such a show which they consider necessary to uphold, not only their own credit, but also that of their ancestors. To effect this, they not uncommonly (I mean the poor, whether they are of the Brahminical or other castes) expend whatever ready money they may have in hand, frequently the hard earned fruit of many years labour; moreover, they will deem it necessary to pledge some of the golden ornaments of their females,

or to mortgage part of their dwelling house or the land they hold on the meerassy tenure to raise funds for this purpose. There are instances also of persons of the lower classes (I have known instances of poor Brahmuns) who may have attained the prime of lifewithout having been married, owing to the poverty or death of their parents, who borrowed money to enable them to enter into the matrimonial state. To redeem the obligation they have thus rendered themselves liable to, they enter into an engagement to serve the person who accommodated them with the loan for a certain number of years, at a fixed rate of wages, the creditor in the interim merely providing them food and clothing.

The task of explaining the abstract of their system of Judicial Astrology here applicable, will, I fear, be found to be very imperfectly executed and undeserving of any notice; as being nothing better than puerile trash, the meshes of its mysterious net being only calculated to enthral the minds of an enslaved and superstitious people for whom it was formed.

(To be continued.)

II.-On the state of Slavery in Southern India by A. D. Campbell, Esq. M. C. S.

(Extracted from Appendix to Report from Select Committee on the affairs of the East India Company.)

In the territories under the Madras Government, slaves are of two distinct descriptions: the one includes the great slave population termed "agrestic slaves" or such as are usually employed in the field, though occasionally also in other labour. These consist exclusively of Hindoos, who become such by birth alone, in the peculiar castes which the usage of India has doomed to hereditary bondage. This species of slavery does not exist at all in the central provinces of the Indian peninsula, such as the Ceded Districts, or Mysore, peopled by the Carnatacka nation; and I believe it is also unknown in the Northern Circars, Nellore, &c. or in the country where the people speak the Telinga language; but it is common in the Southern provinces of the peninsula, or wherever the Tamil language is spoken, and it assumes its worst form on the western coast of the peninsula, or in the provinces of Malabar and Canara. The other description of slaves consists of those who may be termed domestic, from being employed only in the house itself. This kind of slavery may be found all over the Madras territory, but it is

exceedingly rare. Individuals generally become domestic slaves by being sold when children by their parents, in years of scarcity approaching to famine; for famine itself, in the British territories, is happily now nearly unknown. A Hindoo, however, who buys a child on such an occasion, treats it as a Briton would; not as a slave, but rather as a servant to whom food and raiment are due, and whose wages have been advanced to maintain the existence of the authors of its being, authorized by nature to contract for its service until it is old enough to confirm or cancel such compact. The text of the Hindoo law, as well as its practice, clearly maintains such compacts to be temporary only, for it expressly mentions the gift of two head of cattle as annulling them, and entitling the child to legal emancipation; but such fine is entirely nominal; it is never practically exacted; and on the child attaining maturity it is, in practice, as free amongst the Hindoos as amongst Britons, unless long habit or attachment induces it voluntarily to acquiesce in a continuation of its service. The Mussulman law acknowledges the legality of treating as slaves all infidels conquered by the faithful; but its text is entirely opposed to the purchase of free children for the purpose of reducing them to a state of bondage; yet, in practice, compacts such as are described above, confer permanent rights on the Mahomedan purchaser; for, under the spirit of proselytism which characterizes the Mussulman faith, a male infant is no sooner purchased than it is circumcised; and, whether male or female, it is invariably brought up in the Mahomedan creed, which, if it be a Hindoo (as is usually the case) irrevocably excludes it from all return to its parents or relations. Besides the purchase of children in years of scarcity, I have heard of natives, to cancel a debt, voluntarily selling themselves as domestic slaves for a certain number of years, but this is unusual; and though classed as a species of servitude, it more resembles that of persons serving under written articles in Europe, than slavery of even the most qualified description. There can also be no doubt that children are sometimes kidnapped and sold as slaves, without the knowledge of their parents. As superintendent of Police at Madras, I succeeded in 1818 in restoring several such children to their parents, amongst the lowest and poorest of the Hindoos; and their anxiety to recover infants, whom they in all probability found it very difficult to support, would have done honor to the highest classes of European Society. I may add, that from Malabar, a province on the western coast of the peninsula, where the ancient institutions of the Hindoo government have

descended to our own times nearly unimpaired, I recollect one trial having come before the Sudder Foujdary Court in 1830, in which the members of a high-caste Hindoo family, to conceal the disgrace to which they would have been exposed from retaining one of the daughters whose chastity was more than suspected, forcibly carried her off to a distant province, where they were taken up, on account of endeavouring to dispose of her as a domestic slave.

In the Madras provinces, it is the collectors and magistrates alone who can give any correct returns of the population. In the Bellary division of the Ceded Districts, where I first held that situation, I have already stated that no agrestic slaves whatever exist. In Tanjore, on the contrary, they amount to many thousands; but I cannot, from memory, give any correct estimate of their number. The house or domestic slaves in neither district can exceed one or two hundred, in a population of above a million of souls, in each of these provinces respectively.

There is no doubt that the Hindoo law recognizes slavery, domestic as well as agrestic, though practically amongst the Hindoos under the Madras Presidency, domestic slavery, as before explained, can hardly be said to exist, except as regards female children, occasionally purchased by dancing women, for the purpose of bringing them up to their own unhappy profession of prostitution, or the dancing women themselves, attached to the several Hindoo temples. I have already stated that the Mussulman code, though opposed in its text to the reduction of free Mahomedans to a state of bondage, not only recognizes and sanctions, in practice, slavery in general, especially that of conquered infidels, amongst whom it may fairly include the Hindoos, but encourages domestic slavery in particular, especially by the purchase of children, in order to increase, by their conversion, the number of the faithful. Notwithstanding the modification of the Hindoo and Mahomedan laws respecting slavery, recommended in the papers on that subject. printed by order of the House of Commons, I am sorry to state that the Government of Madras have hitherto left them entirely unaltered by any enactment of their own. At the close, indeed, of the papers in question, notice is taken of a former enactment by the Government at Madras, contained in clause 14, Section 18, Regulation ii. 1812, prohibiting the exportation of slaves from the province of Malabar: but the result of the reference mentioned to have been made to the Advocate general, was the formal repeal of that enactment, on the just ground that the Act of Parliament of the 51 Geo. 3, c. 23, against the slave trade, sufficiently prohibits