Men armed with
matchlocks can scarcely get a shot except by adopting artifices
similar to those described in the text.
3. Sixteen species of hawks, belonging to several genera, are trained
in India. They are often fed by being allowed to suck the blood from
the breasts of live pigeons, and their eyes are darkened by means of
a silken thread passed through holes in the eyelids. 'Hawking is a
very dull and very cruel sport. A person must become insensible to
the sufferings of the most beautiful and most inoffensive of the
brute creation before he can feel any enjoyment in it. The cruelty
lies chiefly in the mode of feeding the hawks' (_Journey through the
Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, p, 109). Asoka forbade the practice by the
words: 'The living must not be fed with the living' (Pillar Edict V,
_c._ 243 B.C., in V. A. Smith, _Asoka_, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 188).
4. The wording of this sentence is unfortunate, and it is not easy to
understand why the author mentioned Bhopal. The principality of
Bhopal was formed by Dost Mohammed Khan, an Afghan officer of
Aurangzeb, who became independent a few years after that sovereign's
death in 1707.
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