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Rh time the General Service Enlistment Act had been sprung on the army, under which all future recruits would be liable for service beyond the sea, with its attendant infringement of caste rules. And again, at the end of January, the rumour had arisen, and had not been authentically challenged and disproved, that cartridges were being manufactured the use of which would involve contamination alike to Hindus and to Mussulmans. For a month this excitement took no marked shape beyond incendiarism in and about Barrackpur, near the site of the Ordnance Factories. The first mutiny that occurred was on February 27 at Berhampur, on the arrival of a Sepoy detachment from Barrackpur. During these two months, however, two circumstances had attracted notice. One was a rumour, started in the neighbourhood of Cawnpur, that flour was being collected, intended for the use of the native troops, with which bone dust (i. e. ground bones) was being mixed; the other, commencing early in the year in Central India, was the mysterious circulation of small cakes, with no order or ostensible meaning, except that for each cake or chapatti received by any individual he was to send off three or more to front and right and left. There were several conjectural reasons for this proceeding: the actual result was a vague sense in the whole native community of unrest and impending disturbance.

This state of feeling prevailed in Upper India, and the Persian war was in progress, when Sir Henry