1 RAJAH LALL SING, AND THK SLAVE-GIRL MUNGELA. 161
2 tensible means by which Peeroo and his family earned their
3 livelihood ; but they had a more plentiful though secret resource
4 in the business of procuring and dealing^ in slaves. By a
5 variety of means, some of them strongly tinged with cruelty,
6 they collected female children for the Bunda Frashes, as
7 the wholesale dealers in human beings are there called, who
8 resorted to the neighbourhood to procure their supplies of slaves.
9 Among these slave merchants Peeroo and his wife were cele-
10 brated for their skill and success in luring away young girls from
11 their homes, and in induciug the half-starved people of the
12 district to dispose of their offspring as a means of relieving their
13 own necessities. The children thus collected were afterwards
14 carried away by the wholesale dealers who sold them to the
15 highest bidder among* the Kangers, or pimps, about Lahore,
16 Umritsir, Dewannuggur, &c. Notwithstanding this apparent-
17 ly profitable source of revenue, Peeroo and his family were
18 remarkable among their neighbours for their abject poverty,
19 which the simple people around looked upon as heaven's pun-
20 nishment on them for the cruel practices by which they carried
21 on their trade. That this poverty was real and not assumed as
22 a mask to deceive their neighbours, is testified by the fact, that
23 about the close of the year 1825, they found themselves under
24 the necessity of selling their own only daughter, then about
25 ten years of age. The girl was sold to an itinerant Doom for
26 about twenty-five rupees. The purchaser took her to Kano-ra,
27 where he was compelled to dispose of her to a Kanger of the
28 place, in satisfaction of a trifling debt of some twenty rupees.
29 In the house of her new master the girl was initiated into
30 all the evil arts and practices of a courtezan's life. However,
31 about the year 1830, she being then about fourteen years old,
32 she contrived to insinuate herself so far into the favour of
33 one Jessa, a moonshee of Kangra,, that he was induced to pur-
34 chase her from the Kanger for forty rupees. Accordino- to
35 another account, however, she absconded from the house of the
36 x