John McCosh

“ The great mass of the population is either Hindoo or Mussulman. In outward appearance there is but little distinction,but in reality no bond of union,no social intercourse subsists between them. They are equally intolerant of each others religion, repugnant to intermarrying, incapable of sitting down to the same feast, or partaking of the contents of the same cup; so much so that a high caste Brahmin would consider himself defiled by putting a dish used by a Mussulman to his lip, and this only to be expunged by a long course of ablution and devotion. ”

“ We have only to go to any of the Murdah Ghauts, above the mint, the public places of incineration, and there we shall see the old, the middle aged, the young and the beautiful of both sexes, exposed in their last agonies, with only three or four hired mourners preparing their funeral pile, and a party of vultures, grim, gory, and abominable as harpies, hopping near them, eagerly watching when the vital spark shall be extinct. ”

“ The life that Assistant-surgeons lead at an out-of-the-way civil station is not a very desirable one; every one is busy but himself; his own duties do not occupy a tenth part of his time; and, unless he be able to draw largely upon his own resources, he is very apt to fall a victim to his old enemy, ennui. Moreover, his pay is less than he would have with a regiment, and, compared with the rest of the civilians, not a third part of theirs. ”

“ BATHING.—— The universal practice of bathing has, I have no doubt, a bad effect upon the health of the people. In a country such as India where so much of the person is exposed to the accumulation of dust and perspiration, it was no doubt a wise and provident law that instituted ablution as a religious rite, for no other plan so effectual could have been devised to insure cleanliness and a healthy state of skin. ”

“ EUNUCHISM.—It is somewhat remarkable that this unnatural practice,so common from time immemorial, yet so directly opposed to human nature, and the welfare of the commonwealth, should never have engaged the attention of the legislation. It is notorious that the attendant of every Zenana, and many of the favourites about native courts, are creatures of no sex at all: emasculated in early boyhood like pigs and rabbits with impunity—and with the same object in view, that of bringing a higher price in the market than ordinary humanity ”

“ In no country is the public peace more seldom broken; is private property more secure; do the population enjoy the ordinary comforts of life, at less toil and trouble, or enjoy more civil and religious liberty; and if exceptions do take place, they are owing to the perversion of the law, by the natives themselves. ”

“ No one likes to be the lowest paid official in the sphere in which he moves. Hence most Assistants, if unmarried, prefer the duties of a regiment, and the society of officers on the same scale of pay as themselves. Civil stations are left to married men, or to a new class of indigenous qualifications—Sub-Assistant-surgeons.
The principal medical duty of a civil station is medical jurisprudence. The natives, with all their gentleness, are a most revengeful and blood-thirsty race amongst themselves. ”

“ But I fear bathing is often abused, that it is considered in the light of an ordinance of their religion, and is practiced without due regard to the season of the year, the state of the weather, or the condition of the body as to health and disease. There are numerous cold, raw, rainy days even in the summer season, and bleak withering days in winter, when people even in good health would be much better in their beds at home than thus doing penance on the banks of a river ”

“ But caste is an attribute of all nations,in our own country as well as in all countries, and if society throughout the world were analyzed, there would be found nearly the same amount of exclusiveness and intolerance.
Strangers are prone to form a wrong idea of the natives, and to identify them with the African,or the West Indian,and to call them niggers; but in reality they are a very handsome race, and were it not for their copper-colour, they would be acknowledged as fine specimens of the human species, even in our own exclusive isle. ”

“ The inhabitants of Upper India are a race very superior to the Bengalies, being tall, stout, and manly, very handsome in figure, and in feature as different from the African as these are from the European. Every man goes out armed with his spear, his matchlock, or his sword and shield, or loaded bludgeon, and looks down upon his Bengali compatriot with slight and contempt. The inferior animals are as superior as the natives,and the cattle of the upper provinces are alone found fit for artillery draught. ”

“ EXPOSURE OF THE DYING.—Ill-timed bathing is not the only instance of the religious laws of the country aggravating the diseases of the people, and adding to the bills of mortality. The practice of the Hindoos hurrying persons dangerously ill to the banks of the river, and exposing them in the open air, on a bed, with their feet hanging over in the water, and their bodies besmeared with the slime of the river, till the ordeal puts an end to their existence, must be considered as a frequent cause of death ”

“ We have put down Sutteeism,female infanticide and human sacrifice,but we forget that in the most populous cities of India, even in the city of Calcutta, sacrifices of life no less atrocious are every day perpetrated. ”

“ Ladies travel unprotected from one end of it to the other. Private property is no where so safe, for bolts and bars are unknown; the doors stand open night and day, and robberies are less common than in England. Much has also been said respecting the dishonesty, the rapacity,and the want of principle of the natives, yet few residents keep even their own keys, or even their own purses, entrusting everything they have to a servant, whose wages are only fifteen shillings a month. ”

“ It is an essential custom of both the Hindoo and the Mussulman, and the time has not yet come, when it can be safely meddled with. The following remarks extracted from the Friend of India, are worthy of remembrance.
"That polygamy is a mighty social evil,few Europeans will ever be disposed to question. If we could abolish it at once and for ever, introduce a purer morality, and a loftier standard of social life, no sacrifice would be too great for such an end. ”

“ The friends of a poor dependent,unfortunate widow, incited her to the commission of suicide, in order to rid themselves of a relation who might claim a maintenance among them; the friends of a person hopelessly ill, take advantage of his helplessness and his superstition, and hurry him off to the river as the most appropriate place to die, and if he should happen to survive the infliction, and recover, he is considered an outcast and a vagabond because he did not die. ”

“ None is more deleterious than the half-cured or wholly putrid fish so much in use by the poor. Such amess requires little salt and goes a greater way than if fresh or properly cured; but in proportion as it saves the means of the consumer, it excites a predisposition to disease. Raw rice, underbaked bread,raw vegetables, deficiency of salt,or wood ashes used instead of salt, and the inveterate practice of smoking tobacco mixed with some intoxicating drug, generally hemp-seed (called bang) , have also a powerful effect in lowering the standard of health. ”

“ The Burmese also build their houses upon large timbers, let into the ground, with an open space below the planked floor, where they generally keep their cattle. The walls are planked, and the roofs either planked or thatched. The Burmese houses are more capacious and more comfortable than those of any native race in India. ”

“ The natives are emphatically a religious nation, and pay more attention to its rites than perhaps any other people living, for there is hardly an act of their life that they do not associate with their religion.
8. CONVERSION.—Much disappointment has been felt at the slow progress of conversion to Christianity, but those who have watched the obstacles to be encountered will not be surprised at the small number of converts. The propagation of the gospel in India is attended with many difficulties, peculiar to the country. ”

“ None but the most expert,whose hands are stiff with the blood of a hundred victims, or whose address in the art of decoying has shone forth pre-eminent, dare aspire to the honour of commanding a gang; in point of rank to the chief, come the stranglers, or decoyers; while those who have never had the prowess to put a human being to death, are condemned to perform all menial offices ”

“ One should have thought, that the first object of the Thugs would be to fly from the place of blood; but, no: they often encamp over the very graves, cook their food, eat and sleep upon the spot, and thus efface all trace of their crimes. There are as many grades of distinction in a band of Thugs, as in a troop of disciplined soldiers. ”

“ In her condition it was dangerous even to raise her: nevertheless, she was placed upon a bed, carried through a labyrinth of narrow passages and staircases out of a very hot room into the cold night air, and jolted along on men's shoulders through the streets to the river, because Hindoo superstition assures a blessed immortality to all who die on the banks of the Sacred Ganges. ”

“ I feel assured that those who have lived under purely native rule,bless the day when they came under the dominion of the Company, and that those still living under independent native potentates would had the annexation of their country as a boon. ”

“ They are gifted with a wonderful power of self-possession, and their intercourse with one another is the very beau ideal of good manners; diffidence or bashfulness are unnatural to them, and the child of six years of age, the adult of fourteen, and the man of sixty, are endowed with an ease and grace of manner throughout all castes, such as would be envied by the ornaments of European society. ”

“ The improved mode of transport by steam boats has monopolized the commerce of the great rivers,and the railway will soon run the steamers off the Ganges; for, contrary to all expectation, the natives have shown the utmost partiality for all transit by rad. The schoolmaster is abroad in our universities; our colleges, our city academies,and our village schools;a taste is sprung up for European literature and science, and young Bengal is adopting the costume, the manners and customs of the governing classes. ”

“ He venerates his profession, as the means of providing for the comfort and happiness of himself and family;pity or compassion has no hold upon his mental faculties,—horror no power to alarm him,—remorse never deprives him of an hour's sleep. ”

“ I believe the practice of appearing in a bazar, picking the flesh off a thigh bone is often done by way of horrifying the natives, and extorting money from them as an inducement to go elsewhere.
14. IMPURE WATER.—No part of diet is more generally objectionable than the water they drink. One would expect that the natives of India, so excessively careful of defilement in their manner of eating and drinking, would be very particular about their water, their only beverage;and that nothing less than distilled water from the spring, or rain water from the clouds, would satisfy them ”

“ COOLINISM.—Another practice equally inconsistent with the increase of the population is that of Coolin-Brahminism. A Coolin Brahminis in Hindoo religion believed to be a quintessence of every thing sacred and mundane; to form a matrimonial alliance with such men is an object of ambition with the highest families, and to admit of the largest extension of such marriages, they are licensed by the priesthood to plenary indulgence in the number of their wives. They therefore lead a roving sort of life ”

“ The persons of the victims were plundered immediately after death; their bodies invariably stabbed in some vital place, the breast or the eyes, so as to destroy all chance of re-animation, and thrown into graves dug upon the spot where they were murdered—into wells,or deep pools, or into thickets, where they were devoured by tigers. In some parts of the country, where the soil is so shallow as not to admit of a grave deep enough, the bodies were cut to pieces and buried piecemeal ”

“ Paint is much used by the men; devices of all sorts and forms being painted on the forehead, of red, white, or yellow, to denote their caste. The men are very fond of golden necklaces and rings; and the females actually, load themselves with ornaments; golden rings in the nose, two or three inches in diameter, with a precious stone in the centre; rings all round the ears, necklaces, armlets, anklets, finger rings, and toe rings, beyond counting.
The Burmese practice tattooing to a very great extent, and with great skill ”

“ The Thug considers his trade quite as legitimate, in his own estimation, as that of any other calling; he practices it with as little compunction as a butcher or a gamekeeper; offers sacrifices to the goddess of destruction, Kali, to grant him success;and dedicates a fixed portion of his plunder to her altar, in gratitude for her protection. ”

“ Many think that because they go almost naked, that they must necessarily be pinched with poverty, but their grandees, who drive their own carriages, take their airing with the upper portion of their persons bare, or covered by transparent muslin; and even those of the poorer classes have gold and silver ornaments in use that would purchase raiment for themselves many times over. ”

“ The extent to which Thuggee has been carried on for many years, appears altogether incredible, and the drain upon human life, in any other country less populous than India,must have been manifest and unaccountable. ”