II. P. 94.) The Ill Success In Breeding Horses Was
Exaggerated To Impossibility, And Made To Extend To All India.
Thus a
Persian historian, speaking of an elephant that was born in the stables of
Khosru Parviz, observes that
"Never till then had a she-elephant borne
young in Iran, any more than a lioness in Rum, a tabby cat in China (!),
or a mare in India." (J.A.S. ser. III. tom. iii. p. 127.)
[Major-General Crawford T. Chamberlain, C.S.I., in a report on Stud
Matters in India, 27th June 1874, writes: "I ask how it is possible that
horses could be bred at a moderate cost in the Central Division, when
everything was against success. I account for the narrow-chested,
congenitally unfit and malformed stock, also for the creaking joints,
knuckle over futtocks, elbows in, toes out, seedy toe, bad action, weedy
frames, and other degeneracy: 1st, to a damp climate, altogether inimical
to horses; 2nd, to the operations being intrusted to a race of people
inhabiting a country where horses are not indigenous, and who therefore
have no taste for them...; 5th, treatment of mares. To the impure air in
confined, non-ventilated hovels, etc.; 6th, improper food; 7th, to a
chronic system of tall rearing and forcing." (MS. Note. - H.Y.)]
NOTE 14. - This custom is described in much the same way by the
Arabo-Persian Zakariah Kazwini, by Ludovico Varthema, and by Alexander
Hamilton. Kazwini ascribes it to Ceylon. "If a debtor does not pay, the
King sends to him a person who draws a line round him, wheresoever he
chance to be; and beyond that circle he dares not to move until he shall
have paid what he owes, or come to an agreement with his creditor. For if
he should pass the circle the King fines him three times the amount of his
debt; one-third of this fine goes to the creditor and two-thirds to the
King." Pere Bouchet describes the strict regard paid to the arrest, but
does not notice the symbolic circle. (Gildem. 197; Varthema, 147;
Ham. I. 318; Lett. Edif. XIV. 370.)
"The custom undoubtedly prevailed in this part of India at a former time.
It is said that it still survives amongst the poorer classes in
out-of-the-way parts of the country, but it is kept up by schoolboys in a
serio-comic spirit as vigorously as ever. Marco does not mention a very
essential part of the ceremony. The person who draws a circle round another
imprecates upon him the name of a particular divinity, whose curse is to
fall upon him if he breaks through the circle without satisfying the
claim." (MS. Note by the Rev. Dr. Caldwell.)
NOTE 15. - The statement about the only rains falling in June, July, and
August is perplexing. "It is entirely inapplicable to every part of the
Coromandel coast, to which alone the name Ma'bar seems to have been given,
but it is quite true of the western coast generally." (Rev.
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