Alton Locke is the main character of the novel of the same name, written by Charles Kingsley. Locke is a tailor and a poet who is hoping to improve the working conditions of the working class, while also falling in love and experiencing a wide range of emotions. The novel pushed the author's own social and political beliefs, largely related to the rights of laborers, and is tied with the Chartist movement. This movement was set in England and brought together the working class to bring political reform. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Kingsley#ref49691

Since the Indian rupee was historically a silver coin, the British ruling of the East India Company destabilized the currency of India as Britain and other Western countries established the gold standard. The Indian rupee lost great value after the Great Recoinage of 1816 because of the gold to silver reserve ratios and by 1850, the conversion rate with the English pound was £1:₹10. This means that the five thousand rupees that these two were promised would be worth around £500 which would be around £66,000 in 2019 (or $88,000).

Sardar, also written as sirdar in British English, is a military chief or leader of a force or army, used in India and other southeast Asian countries. It comes from the Urdu, or Persian, words sar (head) and dār (possessor).

Ganja here refers to the preparation of Indian hemp, specifically that of cannabis sativa which is indigenous to eastern Asia. The word is derived from the Sanskrit word gañjā and was used as early as 1689, and by the 1st Duke of Wellington in 1800 in "Supplementary Despatches and Memoranda of Field Marshall Arthur Duke of Wellington, K.G."

The devdaru tree, also known as the deodar cedar, Himalayan cedar, or devadar, is a type of cedar tree that is indigenous to the Western Himalayas. The Sanskrit name, devadāru, means divine tree or timber of the gods and much Hindu lore mentions the tree. The 19th century English text Penny Cyclopaedia mentions the "deodar" as a sacred tree that was venerated by the Hindus.

A dacoit is someone that is a part of the class or groups of robbers in India and other nearby countries. These robberies were often performed by armed bands. In the 1830's, the East India Company established The Thugee and Dacoity Department and The Thugee and Dacoity Suprression Acts to supress dacoits in India.