His pay was seven rupees, or fourteen shillings, a month. Small as this sum may appear to us, it was amply sufficient to endow the sepoy with far higher social consideration than is enjoyed by a private soldier in European countries. The purest of pure Brahmins, his faith forbade him from spending much money on the gratification of his appetite. The most confirmed gourmand in the battalion could never dream of a better dinner than some coarse fish from a neighbouring tank, flavoured by a handful of spices ground between two fragments of a gravestone abstracted from the last English cemetery on the line of march. Such luxuries as these could be procured at a rate that left even the private soldier a large margin whence to provide for any other calls that might be made upon his purse. He accordingly was regarded as a very considerable personage by the native populace. A peasant-proprietor or small shopkeeper thought it no small honour to receive an offer of marriage for his daughter from a gentleman serving in the ranks of the Company's army: and the sepoy was not slow to make use of his matrimonial advantages. A column of native troops on the march was accompanied from station to station by an endless string of small carts, each containing one or two veiled ladies, presumably young and pretty; one or two without veils, very indubitably old and ugly; together with a swarm of dusky brats with enormous stomachs, stark naked, with the almost nominal exception of a piece of tape fastened round the loins.
In spite of his excellent pay, the native soldier was almost invariably deep in debt. A strong sense of family ties, an extreme generosity towards poor connexions, is a marked trait in the Hindoo character, amiable indeed, but not encouraging to the student of Social Science. Whenever an Indian official steps into an income, relations of every degree flock from all parts of the continent to prey upon his facile affection: and the prospect of sharing the corner of a sepoy's hut and the parings of his pay proved sufficiently attractive to bring into cantonments herds of country cousins from Rohilcund and Shahabad. Neither would seven rupees a month adequately defray the occasional extravagances enjoined by "dustoor" or custom: dustoor, the breath of a Hindoo's nostrils, the motive of his actions, the staple of his conversation, the tyrant of his life. It has frequently happened that a private soldier has celebrated a marriage feast at a cost of three hundred rupees, to obtain which he must sell himself body and soul to one of those griping ruthless usurers who are the bugbears of Oriental society.