But I think I hear a raw reader exclaim, “Griffins!—are there griffins in the East?” “Assuredly, sir. Did you never hear of the law of Zoroaster quoted in _Zadig_, by which griffins’ flesh is prohibited to be eaten? Griffins are so common at the different presidencies of India that nobody looks at them, and most of these animals are very tame.” I will not, however, abuse the traveller’s privilege. _Griffin_, or more familiarly a _Griff_, is an Anglo-Indian cant term applied to all new-comers, whose lot has been cast in the “gorgeous East.” Whether the appellation has any connection with the fabulous compound, the gryps or gryphon of armorial blazoning, is a point which I feel myself incompetent to decide.[2] A griffin is the Johnny Newcome of the East, one whose European manners and ideas stand out in ludicrous relief when contrasted with those, so essentially different in most respects, which appertain to the new country of his sojourn. The ordinary period of griffinhood is a year, by which time the _novus homo_, if apt, is supposed to have acquired a sufficient familiarity with the language, habits, customs, and manners of the country, both Anglo-Indian and Native, so as to preclude his making himself supremely ridiculous by blunders, _gaucheries_, and the indiscriminate application of English standards to states of things to which those rules are not always exactly adapted. To illustrate by example:—a good-natured Englishman, who should present a Brahmin who worships the cow with a bottle of beef-steak sauce, would be decidedly “griffinish,” particularly if he could be made acquainted with the nature of the gift; nevertheless, beef steak, _per se_, is an excellent thing in an Englishman’s estimation, and a better still with the addition of the before-mentioned condiment. But to return to our subject. At the termination, then, of the above-mentioned period, our griffin, if he has made the most of his time, becomes entitled to associate on pretty equal terms with those sun-dried specimens of the _genus homo_, familiarly called the “old hands:”—subs of fifteen years’ standing; grey-headed captains, and superannuated majors, critics profound in the merits of a curry, or the quality of a batch of Hodgson’s pale ale. He ceases to be the butt of his regiment, and persecutes in his turn, with the zeal of a convert, all novices not blessed with his modicum of local experience.