India -- History -- 1526-1765 -- Fiction; Maratha (Indic people) -- History -- Fiction
Certainly the plan had been well laid, and as yet well executed. No
very deep persuasions were necessary with these simple unsuspecting
people. The mother and daughter had yielded long ago; and the result
of the examination of the Shastree's Junum Putr had removed the last
obstacle which concerned him. The matter, as arranged, should be broken
to him that evening on his return from the temple. And the lady Sukya
suggested that he should examine her niece's horoscope as corroborative
of his own.
So Moro Trimmul had that day put the finishing touch to his work. He
had been concealed when the lady Anunda brought the paper we have
mentioned; he had rapidly copied the principal points in the table, and
noted all the most remarkable of the latter indications exhibited; and
he knew that, before evening, he could prepare a corresponding document
regarding his sister, which the Shastree himself could not detect.
This was a branch of science which Moro Trimmul had studied deeply;
and it was with perfect confidence that he followed the astrological
combinations relating to the Shastree, and constructed, yet not with
too minute detail, the table in his sister's name.
Few Hindu parents care to have the Junum Putr, or "birth letter," of
their daughters worked out; but after Moro Trimmul had cast the table
itself on an imaginary date of birth, two years later than the real
age of his sister, and as if it had been done carelessly and then
abandoned, he followed up several of the formulæ indicated, leaving
the last incomplete. He felt assured, therefore, when the paper was
submitted to the Shastree, that he would himself carry out the last
calculation, which had been so arranged as to lead to the present time,
and to a combination with his own.
All had been finished. The paper on which it was written was new,
but it was not paper of that part of the country; it was from his
own district. An ornamental border was quickly drawn round it, in
red, black, and yellow lines; the signatures of the witnesses to his
sister's original and true Junum Putr were carefully copied; finally,
the whole document was held over wood-smoke till it was of a proper
brown colour, then rubbed and frayed at the edges, and creased here and
there as if it had been often examined; and, lastly, it was perfumed
with camphor to remove the smell of wood-smoke, and with the odour of
benzoin and sweet pastille. No one, without much difficulty, could have
detected the forgery; and, without suspicion, the Shastree had set
himself to work out the problem left unfinished--the occupation which
we have already noted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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