Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/483

Rh (red garden,) and mourn that man should thus live and thus die.

The name of Tippoo is synonymous with "tiger," both in the memories of Christian and heathen men. Being a bigoted Mohammedan, he not only hated the English as enemies, but also the native Roman Catholic and Syrian Christians as infidels, and the Brahmins as idolaters. In Calicut, he hung up mothers with their children suspended from their necks, and tied men to the feet of elephants, to be torn limb from limb. Hindus were forced to embrace Mohammedanism to save their lives, and Brahmins were made to break their caste by eating beef. Once seeing a Brahmin pass, he called him to him, and asked, "Where will you go, if you die?" "To Weicounta," (the heaven of Vishnu,) said the Brahmin. "Then send him there," said the tyrant; and fastening rockets to his body, they blew him into the air.

It will not be wondered at that the change of sovereignty from his hands to those of England, has caused little regret among his Hindu subjects, though the Mohammedans mourn that the sceptre has passed from their hands.