LETTER CLXI.
To BUDRÛZ ZUMÂN KHÂN; same Date. (25th November.)

YOU have done well in making prisoners of the turbulent and seditious, including Kurry-tummah,* with their women and children. These last must be detained. With respect to Kurry-tummah, if he be one of the insurgents he must be suspended on a tree.

[A verse.] “The head of an enemy is best when hurled from the “point of a javelin: as a path-way is best, from whence the bramble “has been rooted out.”

After properly securing the passes, you must proceed, with your collected force, in quest of the rebels, making prisoners of as many of them as possible. We some time ago wrote to you, desiring you would contrive some means of getting possession of the person of Moona Kool;* and we now again write, to say that he must be secured, by stratagem or deeeit. Let a roll, moreover, of the number of men and women already made captives, be transmitted to us.

OBSERVATIONS.

The foregoing letter commences with three or four words, of which I am not able to make any sense. The transcriber may, probably, have miswritten them. They appear thus in my manuscript: <Arabic> which may, no doubt, be so read as to be interpreted, “You must put [or keep] the cardamums in a pit.” The writer then proceeds to say, “You have done well, &c.” But if the fore­going passage be understood literally, it will appear to be a strange and very unin­telligible order, to be addressed to an officer at the head of a body of troops employed on active service. On the other hand, if it be taken in a metaphorical sense, it will be no easy matter to assign a plausible meaning to it. Cardamums, I believe, are a principal article of the natural produce of the country in which Budrûz Zumân Khân was, at this period, stationed, and which I suppose to have been Bidnore, and the districts situated between that and the sea coast: possibly, then, by the word cardamums, the Sultan (who sometimes affected to express himself enigmatically) might intend to designate some particular individuals, or class, among the refractory inhabitants of that quarter, whom he wished to be disposed of under ground. It must be owned, however, that this conjecture is too slightly supported to be entitled to much consideration; and I shall, therefore, being unable to suggest a better, leave the difficulty to exercise the ingenuity of some of my oriental readers.

With respect to the Kurry-tummah (as I have written it) mentioned in this letter, I am not clear whether it is the proper name of an individual, or an official designation. However this may be, it seems extraordinary that the Sultan should be under any uncertainty with regard to his being one of the seditious, or insur­gents; a doubt of which would seem to be implied, by the qualifying word, if. The meaning, however, might be, that if Budrûz Zumân Khân had any reason to believe him to have been particularly forward or active in the insurrection, he was, in that case, to be hanged.

Budrûz Zumân Khân was one of the principal men at the court of Tippoo Sultan, and seems to have possessed the confidence and esteem of his master in a consider­able degree.* He commanded at Dhârwâr, when that place was besieged by the united English and Mahrattah forces, in 1791; and though it appears, by the correspondence of that period, that the Sultan was not perfectly satisfied with his defence of that place, yet it may be inferred, from subsequent events, that no permanent impression to his disadvantage was produced on the occasion. Budrûz Zumân Khân, and his son, Mirza Bâkir, were among the chiefs of Mysore who survived their sovereign; and who, submitting to the British authority, were liberally pensioned by the Company’s government.

We have, in the present letter, another example of the flagitious policy which the Sultan was, at all times, ready to pursue, for the accomplishment of his views. Provided Moona Kool was seized, he did not care by what atrocity that object was effected.