PERAWA, - MALWA.
|
‖ Perawa.—A small town in Malwa; doubtless, even within the last few years, witness to scenes like those sketched in the text. Like most mountain countries, the whole district was inhabited by a warlike and turbulent race; a curious anecdote of the inflammable nature of the people, is told in the History of Central India. "The war with the Pindarries was over, and the country was in a state of tolerable tranquillity, when a sudden agitation was produced among the peaceable inhabitants, by a number of cocoa-nuts being passed from village to village, with a mysterious direction to speed them in specific directions. The signal flew with unheard-of celerity. The potail of every village, wherever one of these cocoa-nuts came, carried it himself with breathless haste to another, to avert a curse, which was denounced upon all who impeded or stopped them for a moment. Every inquiry was instituted; the route of the signal was traced for several hundred miles, but no certain information was obtained; and a circumstance, which produced for upwards of a month a very serious sensation over all Central India, remains to this moment a complete mystery."—Elliot. It is really quite delightful to think that there should be such a thing as a mystery left in the world.
