A History of the Mahrattas v1.c24.14

v1.c24.14

(dherna) given by Lord Teignmouth in the 4th volume of the Asiatic Researches, and quoted in Mr. Mill’s History of India. I have known the dhurna practised, but never very rigorously; and I do not think that fear of the creditor’s starving himself to death would have much effect on a Mahratta debtor; his stomach would be much sooner affected than his conscience. [The Arabic word takāza (tuqazu), ‘dunning’ or ‘importunity,’ was sometimes applied to the practice of dharnā, which appears from Elphinstone (Diary, in Life, by Colebrooke, i. 174) and Broughton (Letters from a Mahratta Camp) to have been universal among the Marāthās. In Sindia’s camp, according to the latter, there were ‘many Brahmans who hire themselves out to sit dharnā for those who do not like to expose themselves to so great an inconvenience.’ Marco Polo and later travellers describe a curious variety of the practice, for debt, in south India. Sir Henry Maine has shown that the custom once existed in Ireland. Under the Indian Penal Code of 1859 the practice of dharnā is an offence punishable with imprisonment or fine, or both. (For full account with quotations see Yule’s Hobson-Jobson, 1903, ed. Crooke, p. 315.)]