Travels in India (Tavernier) 154.5

154.5

We remained till midnight with the President, who manifested much joy at seeing us again. On the following day at 10 o’clock a.m., when going to the palace, together with my brother and a Dutch surgeon, who was prescribing for one of the King’s wives, we passed along a road where one has the river on one side and on the other a large garden enclosed by a palisade, and there were intervals between each pair of posts. Behind the palisade there was concealed a rascal of a Bantamese who had returned from Mecca and was running a muck, which means in their language, that when some one of the lower class of Muhammadans, who has returned from Mecca, takes it into his head to seize his crease in hand, which is a kind of dagger with generally half of the blade poisoned, he runs through the streets and kills all whom he meets who are not of the Muhammadan faith, until he is himself killed. These enraged persons think they do a service to God and to Muhammad by killing the enemies of his law, and that in consequence they will be saved. As soon as they are killed the Muhammadan mob inter them as though they were saints, and every one contributes to give them splendid tombs. Often some great mendicant who dresses himself as a Dervish makes a hut close to the tomb, which he is careful to keep tidy and on which he places flowers.