INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK. 
 
f , ■ /'f- 
 
 
 ^. 
 
 W K. PANDIAiN. 
 
 S 1 . H. I'AINJJlAiN. 
 
INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 XTbetr Merles au^ Ma^s 
 
 T. B. PANDIAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'ENGLAND TO AN INDIAN EVE,' ETC, ETC. 
 
 ^ 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 THE VILLAGE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 1. The Householder ----- 3 
 
 2. The Inn ------- 7 
 
 3. The Clock - - - - - - - n 
 
 4. Fire in an Indian Village - - - - H 
 
 
 
 
 
 II. 
 
 
 
 
 TRADES, ETC. 
 
 ,. 
 
 The 
 
 Washerman 
 
 
 
 2. 
 
 The 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 
 
 3- 
 
 The 
 
 Blacksmith 
 
 
 
 4- 
 
 The 
 
 Goldsmith 
 
 
 
 5- 
 
 The 
 
 Shoemaker 
 
 
 
 6. 
 
 The 
 
 Barber 
 
 
 
 7- 
 
 The 
 
 Potter - 
 
 
 
 8. 
 
 The 
 
 Bricklayer 
 
 
 
 9- 
 
 The 
 
 Well-digger 
 
 
 
 10. 
 
 The 
 
 Stonemason 
 
 
 
 II. 
 
 The 
 
 Basket-maker 
 
 
 12. 
 
 The 
 
 Oil-presser 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 13- 
 
 The 
 
 Sweeper 
 
 - 
 
 
 14. 
 
 The 
 
 Farmer 
 
 
 
 15- 
 
 The 
 
 Shepherd 
 
 
 
 16. The Swineherd 
 
 17. The Bazaar-man 
 
 23 
 32 
 35 
 38 
 44 
 47 
 53 
 56 
 59 
 62 
 66 
 71 
 76 
 78 
 93 
 99 
 102 
 
 ;i60808 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 III. 
 
 PROFESSIONS. 
 
 1. The Poet 
 
 2. The Schoolmaster 
 
 3. The Physician 
 
 4. The Priest - 
 
 5. The Musician 
 
 6. The Money-lender 
 
 7. The Devil-dancer 
 
 8. The Fortune-teller 
 
 IV. 
 PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
 The Magistrate - 
 
 The Court of Arbitration 
 
 Lawsuits 
 
 The Watchman 
 
 The Accountant - 
 
 6. Savings Banks 
 
 V. 
 
 LEISURE HOURS. 
 
 1. Amusements 
 
 2. Sports 
 
 3. Athletic Exercises 
 
 4. Gambling 
 
 5. The Fair 
 
 PAGE 
 
 105 
 
 "3 
 118 
 124 
 132 
 134 
 139 
 143 
 
 151 
 
 153 
 158 
 163 
 167 
 170 
 
 177 
 186 
 191 
 194 
 196 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Attitude of the Villagers towards Western 
 
 People --.-... 203 
 The Power of the Gospel in the Villages - - 209 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 T. B. Pandian - 
 
 Rice-pounding 
 
 Grinding Curry Powder 
 
 The Washerman 
 
 The Potter 
 
 The Well 
 
 The Oil-presser 
 
 Ploughing 
 
 The Poet- 
 
 Money-lender 
 
 A Day of Joy 
 
 The Wrestler 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Facing 5 
 
 6 
 
 26 
 
 54 
 60 
 
 72 
 90 
 ic8 
 134 
 i7« 
 ,, 192 
 
INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK. 
 
 L 
 
 THE VILLAGE. 
 
I. THE HOUSEHOLDERS. 
 
 SOME idea of a village house in India will be given 
 in the chapters describing the different handicrafts. 
 It is proposed to begin this book with a faithful 
 account of the habits and customs of the inmates of a 
 village house in a tropical climate. To give a clear idea of 
 the actual life of the people, it will be necessary to describe 
 carefully a selected typical house. All the dw^ellings in a 
 village are built in the same way; and though there are 
 serious disadvantages in the method of construction, the 
 houses are precisely adapted to the needs of those who have 
 to live in a hot country. 
 
 The house of Mr. Raman lies in the centre of a village 
 called Puttupore. Its walls are built of sunburnt bricks and 
 clay, and its roof is covered with palmirate palm-leaves. It 
 has two outer pials facing the street, one on each side of the 
 main entrance. Immediately on entering we find an open 
 hall, which is known as the koodam. In this hall male 
 visitors are received, and the inmates of the house meet and 
 chat together in leisure hours. It is also used as a bedroom 
 for the elderly members of the family. After an open space 
 of about fifty feet in circumference we come to the house 
 proper, which faces the north, and has a large hall, a store- 
 room, and a kitchen. The hall is used both as a dining 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 and sleeping room, and there is seldom any furniture to be 
 seen in it, save a common village cot in one corner, and a 
 few mats and pillows rolled up and kept in another corner. 
 In the storehouse are the provisions for living preserved in 
 earthen vessels, and the clothes and other valuables of the 
 inmates. In the kitchen are various earthen vessels need- 
 ful for cooking, and the brass pots and vessels which are 
 used for eating and drinking. Near the kitchen there is a 
 doorway which leads into a back yard. This is used as a 
 kitchen-garden, and has in it drumstick-trees, peas, greens, 
 pumpkins, cucumbers, onions, etc. On the eastern side of 
 the house a cattle-shed is placed, and in this the cows, 
 bullocks, and buffaloes are sheltered. All these buildings 
 are encircled with mud walls, in which there is only one 
 opening, and this is available for both man and beast. The 
 apartments kept for the use of the inmates receive the light 
 and air only through the doors, as there is not a single 
 window in the entire building. There is, however, quite 
 sufficient provision for free ventilation through the bottom 
 of the roof. 
 
 The inmates of the house get up very early in the morning. 
 The male members of the family go for their morning ablu- 
 tions, and while they are away the female members sprinkle 
 cow-dung over the outer and inner yards, and occupy them- 
 selves in sweeping the house, and cleaning the cooking and 
 eating vessels. In their turn they then march to the 
 watering-places, where they bathe themselves, and wash 
 their clothes, and bring water home for family use. The 
 morning bathing is not, however, universal among all the 
 classes of the village community. 
 
 In the house of Raman there are two females, Raman's 
 wife and his mother. When they have returned from the 
 watering-place they attend to the work of feeding the men, 
 
RICE-POUNDING. 
 
eir / 
 
 THE VILLAGE 5 
 
 and preparing for the noontide meal. About eight o'clock in 
 the morning Raman and his brothers come in for their 
 morning meal, which is generally some cold rice, with 
 butter-milk, and some pickle or chutney, or some cold 
 sauce. Having taken their morning meal, the superior 
 creatures of the house leave in order to attend to the culti- 
 vation of the land or other works. As soon as the men 
 have finished their meal the female members help themselves 
 to what is left of the dishes. 
 
 In taking their meals they all use the floor as their table 
 plantain-leaves or brass vessels as their plates, and th 
 hands as spoons. 
 
 Following the female members in their daily routine, we 
 find them busily engaged in pounding the rice and grinding 
 the curry-stuff, and dressing a few vegetables and greens in 
 preparation for the noontide meal. Between twelve and one 
 o'clock the men return home hungry, and then there is placed 
 before them a sufficient quantity of cooked rice, with some 
 vegetable sauce, greens, and pulse— not to mention the 
 attendant butter-milk or curd. The men cheerfully partake 
 of this simple village-meal, and then go to their outer hall 
 and chew betle-nut. Then the females take their noontide 
 meal ; after which they rest for an hour, or even two, and 
 during this time the men and the women converse together 
 on common topics of the village. At about four o'clock the 
 female portion begin to occupy themselves with preparations 
 for their evening meal, and in arranging the household 
 things. At six o'clock Raman's wife places a light in a hole, 
 which is prepared for the purpose in the wall, and then 
 prostrates herself before the lamp, and smears a small 
 quantity of ashes on her forehead. The other members of 
 the house on first seeing the lamp do the same. About 
 eight o'clock the men take their supper, which usually consists 
 
6 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 of some pepper-water, rice, and vegetables, and the re- 
 mainder of the sauce that was prepared for the mid-day 
 meal. The female members follow the men in taking their 
 supper, and all the eating for the day is over by nine o'clock, 
 and then they all retire to bed. One day's life of Raman 
 and his family is a picture of all, for only slight differences 
 are made even on festival days. 
 
 It is common among the women of the village to make 
 their own tnrattees (lumps of dried cow-dung) for their fire- 
 places ; and they are also engaged in their leisure hours at 
 the country spinning machine. Sometimes they go to the 
 fields, and assist at the work which is being done by the 
 labourers. In the family of Raman it is the mother who 
 generally does the outdoor work, his wife attending to the 
 duties of the house ; and this is generally the case when the 
 mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law live together. It is a 
 very common thing to find uncomfortable relations prevailing 
 among the village mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. 
 Perhaps ten out of a hundred mothers-in-law live peaceably 
 with their daughters-in-law, but 90 per cent, quarrel inces- 
 santly. Sometimes they may even be seen fighting like 
 )easts of the field, using vulgar language, holding in their 
 hands each other's hair, and pelting each other with mud or 
 stones. Still, it must be understood they are not to be 
 regarded as enemies until their death. To-day they fight 
 one another, to-morrow they laugh together. One day's 
 fighting does not destroy another day's peace. If the male 
 members interfere at all in this fighting, they generally take 
 the part of the daughter-in-law. This sad condition of things 
 is largely due to the ignorance of the villagers, and the 
 absence of all culture of self-restraint. When education is 
 ntroduced, a better state of things will be developed in the 
 rural districts of India. 
 

 
THE VILLAGE 7 
 
 Observing the varied duties and claims of our friend Raman, 
 we cannot fail to admire the laborious spirit of this village 
 cultivator. He is busy with many things. He has the care 
 of his family, as he is the head of his house ; and he has to 
 direct his farm-labourers and his brothers in attending to 
 the work of the field. He must answer to the different 
 calls of the village officers. He is invited to a wedding or 
 to a funeral in his own village, or to some distant village 
 where he has relatives or friends. On some of these 
 joyful or sorrowful occasions he takes his wife with him. 
 Sometimes, if he is ill or otherwise engaged, he sends his 
 wife or mother with one of his brothers to represent his 
 family. There are many calls on Raman's poor purse. 
 The priest, the beggars, the poets, the pious, the village 
 policemen, the weddings and the funerals of his relatives — 
 all of them have a share in Raman's earnings. 
 
 2. THE INN. 
 
 The people who live in the Indian villages take delight 
 in giving alms to the helpless and the needy, and also to 
 the religious mendicants who go from place to place on 
 pilgrimage, begging as they go. They have also provided 
 suitable and convenient places in which travellers and 
 strangers may rest, without any charge being made for 
 their accommodation. These inns are called chafim?n, 
 oottoopiiray and inaddum. 
 
 The chatirani is a place built by a Hindoo king or chief, 
 by one of the Hindoo governors of former times, or by some 
 wealthy Hindoo man or woman, or by a certain class of 
 
8 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the Hindoo community, and it is usually sufficiently en- 
 dowed for its maintenance. These buildings are generally 
 large and spacious, having separate apartments for cooking, 
 sleeping, etc. They are placed outside the village, and 
 usually near a stream. To provide bathing and cooking for 
 the travellers, a well is dug by the side of the chatirani^ and 
 the grounds are planted with fruit-bearing trees and flowering 
 plants. In some of these chatii-ams the authorities engage 
 Brahmin cooks, who supply with food a certain number of 
 Brahmin travellers only, each day free of charge. In some 
 chatirams the travellers are both fed and housed entirely 
 without charge, but in others the travellers get their lodging 
 free, but have to provide their own food. When wealthy 
 men or women find that there are no children to inherit 
 their property, they lay out the whole, or at least the greater 
 portion, in building and endowing chati7'aius for the public 
 good. These charitable institutions may be numbered by 
 the hundred in the country districts of India. 
 
 In the villages of Travancore, the ' land of charity,' there 
 are sixty-four ooffoopurays, i.e., 'feeding-houses,' established 
 by the ancient Hindoo kings of Travancore, and still main- 
 tained by the Maharaja of Travancore in quite a grand style. 
 In these ' feeding-houses ' the Brahmins are fed by the 
 hundred every day with sumptuous meals, and they are 
 provided with other comforts at the expense of the State 
 of Travancore. Many homeless and helpless Brahmins 
 subsist by travelling from one feeding-house to another, and 
 in this way they spend the whole year in quite an enjoyable 
 manner, without any care as to 'what they shall eat, or 
 what they shall drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed.' 
 
 The simplest and plainest kind of charitable public 
 lodging is called the ' 77iadduin,^ and this is built in many 
 instances at the expense of the villagers themselves. In 
 
THE VILLAGE 9 
 
 these maddums a poor man, who has some reputation for - 
 piety, is engaged as manager by the villagers. This man 
 gradually becomes an ascetic. He clothes himself in an 
 orange-coloured tokai, and is called sanniasin by every 
 villager. The duty of this saimiasin is to see that the 
 village inn is kept clean, and lighted regularly every evening. 
 He has also to beg meals from the villagers, both morning 
 and evening. A certain portion of the meals thus collected 
 by the innkeeper is taken for his own use, and with the 
 remains the poor travellers are fed. 
 
 If any respectable travellers come in to rest, either for the 
 day or for the night, the innkeeper gives them all necessary 
 attention, and he will even at times induce some rich 
 villager to feed the strangers who may have come in late at 
 night. The lighting of the inn is left to the well-to-do 
 villagers, and they supply the lamp-oil by turns. The 
 clothing of the innkeeper, which is, however, but a 
 little matter, is provided from the village 'general fund.' . 
 The organization of the village inn is quite simple and 
 inexpensive, and the benefit derived by the travellers is very 
 great. During the hot summer months the innkeeper - 
 supplies butter-milk or cold water to the thirsty travellers 
 who are proceeding on their way. 
 
 There are a few famous and well-established maddums, 
 with their maddthipathies, i.e., 'governors of inns,' which were 
 originally established on the simple principle of the village 
 inn. Now these remarkable maddums have grown enor- 
 mously, and are large establishments with numerous 
 supporters and followers. The most prominent of these inns 
 are called dharmapura maddum, and tiruvddooihuray. l^he 
 governors of these celebrated Hindoo inns established a 
 brotherhood of Hindoo monks, and these monks became the 
 heads of the respective inns ; they are, as a rule, sound verna- 
 
lo INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 cular scholars, and well versed in Hinduism in all its phases. 
 They maintain ceHbacy. These inns have four or five hundred 
 men who feed in their respective places, where their disciples 
 and visitors flock together in large numbers. The heads of 
 these are not Brahmins, and .so they are not exclusively kept 
 for that caste. The non-Brahmin community, indeed, form 
 the bulk of their supporters. The insolvent and broken-down 
 merchants, and those who have become disgusted with life 
 through various disasters, forsake their homes and relations, 
 and enter this brotherhood of Hindoo monks ; they are 
 then cared for all the days of their life. Some of those who 
 join this society are sent out by the head of the establish- 
 ment to represent their cause at their branches. All those 
 who become governors of these inns are vegetarians by 
 birth and Sivites by religion, and their successors are trained 
 and kept in readiness by the governors, illthough the 
 governors themselves are bachelors who have not much 
 earthly enjoyment, as they try to show, yet their relatives are 
 greatly benefited by their honoured and exalted positions. 
 They spend the money out of the treasury of the inn just as 
 they please, and sometimes in very profligate ways. They 
 live in princely comfort, and their intelligence and culture 
 give them a high position and influence in the Hindoo 
 community. Some of them are really enlightened men, 
 and these come to the front and sympathize with public 
 movements, more especially those of a religious and educa- 
 tional character. 
 
 There is no doubt that these inns and other charitable 
 institutions of India will work wonders, if only the organizers 
 of these institutions and their governors will recognise the 
 fatherhood of God and ihe brotherhood of man. 
 
 r 
 
THE VILLAGE n 
 
 3. THE CLOCK. 
 
 The villagers are men of simple habits, and they often 
 make good use of things which are natural and inexpensive. 
 To regulate the business and the orderly movements of the 
 villagers, there is no such thing as a clock-tower in a con- 
 spicuous position, or even a clock or timepiece in the 
 villagers' homes. It is quite a novelty to see a watch in the 
 hands of a villager. However, they have their own clocks, 
 timepieces and watches, and these are found in the blue sky, 
 in the open fields, and in every orderly household arrange- 
 ment. Probably there is no class of people in the world 
 who get up so early as the Indian villagers do. 
 
 Some of these timekeepers have wonderful alarums in 
 themselves, and these help the villagers to get up punctually 
 at appointed hours of the night in order to attend to their 
 respective occupations. By looking at these clocks they 
 also register the exact times of the births of their children, in 
 order to help the astrologer in writing out their horoscopes. 
 In this way the lucky hour is found in which to perform the 
 marriage ceremony. 
 
 The first and most inexpensive clock is the sun^ the 
 
 ' light-giver, whose movement is watched through the day by 
 
 I different classes in the village community in order that they 
 
 I may properly attend to their work. When the sun appears 
 
 I to the villagers as the dayspring, those of them who attend 
 
 j to the work of supplying flowers to the village temples, and to 
 
 the villagers, set out for their gardens in order to pluck their 
 
 . flowers. The female portion of the village show themselves 
 
 to the goddess of ill-luck, who is supposed to have waited 
 
 before the door all the night. They drive her away by 
 
 sprinkling cow-dung over the front and back yards of their 
 
12 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 ^houses ; they also immediately engage in sweeping their 
 ^houses, cleaning their cooking utensils, and their eating and 
 'drinking vessels. 
 
 When the sun has risen to a certain height (9 a.m.) the 
 villagers call it ahdoo yahiinbugira ndrdm^ i.e.^ the hour at 
 which the sheep get out of their folds. This is the general 
 time appointed by the villagers for seeing one another on 
 business \ this is also the time for the village schoolmaster to 
 send the children for their morning meals. When the sun 
 is in the middle of the sky (12 a.m.) the villagers have their 
 noon-tide meal, whether they stay in the house or labour in 
 the fields. 
 
 When the sun sets the villagers bring all their active work 
 in the fields to a close. The shepherds turn their sheep into 
 the folds, the village priests go to the temples to offer 
 evening prayers and sacrifices to the village gods, and the 
 children rush out from the school and make their way 
 homewards with their books on their backs, hx. all other 
 times the villagers measure their shadow in order to find out 
 the exact hour ; and they do this even for the satisfaction 
 of the traveller, who may have a handsome watch in his 
 pocket which keeps correct time. 
 
 During the night there are several timepieces which 
 enable the villagers to find out the exact hour in which to 
 attend to their business, if they have any. When the silver 
 light of the moon shines on the quiet and retired village, it 
 assists the inhabitants in finding out the time; when the 
 moon disappears by natural causes, the shining stars play the 
 part of a timepiece through the night, and the villagers call 
 these stars by different names. One of them is called 
 Aram Koottam, a group of six stars, and the position of the 
 group denotes a certain time of the night. By observing 
 the movement of these stars the richest and the poorest 
 
THE VILLAGE 13 
 
 villagers attend to their duties in the night. The morning 
 star leads the business of the village. The farm labourers 
 set out to feed their cattle, and they get ready to start to 
 their fields at the first appearance of the morning star. They 
 talk to each other thus : ' Valli yalumbittoo !' i.e., 'The star 
 has risen, hurry on !' The priest makes his way to the 
 temple to awake the gods by blowing the holy shell {shankoo) ; 
 their parents awake schoolboys to get ready for the school ; 
 the men who work at the village water-lifts start their work 
 of drawing water from the wells to feed the vegetables, plants, 
 and greens. The songs which these men sing are called 
 ydthapdttoo, and amuse the travellers who are passing at 
 that time from village to village, often carrying heavy burdens ; 
 and the Brahmin priests start off to the neighbouring 
 villages to receive their incomes from the villagers by attend- 
 ing to some ceremonies ; mothers put their babes in their 
 cradles, and sing in praise of their darlings, or in praise of 
 their gods or departed relations, and so put their babes to 
 sleep. This gives them time to attend to their early-morning 
 duties and to go for the water. The shepherds leave their 
 flocks and herds in the fields in charge of dogs and young 
 lads, and go home to take their morning meal, and to bring 
 food for the dogs and for the lads, and also to fetch grass, 
 or certain herbs with which to feed the tender and lame 
 sheep. Just at this time the hunters go and hide themselves 
 under the bushes between the jungle and the fields, in order to 
 shoot deer and antelope, which are returning from the fields 
 to the jungle ; and the oilmongers start off with oil-vessels on 
 their heads to sell their oil in the distant hamlets. 
 
 The villagers decide to do certain work at twelve o'clock 
 in the night, or to start off to some distant place to attend 
 to some business, or to take part in a festival of a famous 
 temple, at three in the morning. Then exactly at twelve 
 
14 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the first alarm is given by the cock — the village clock — 
 beating its wings loudly, and thus calling to the slumberers 
 to awake from their sleep. Again, at three, a number of 
 these village clocks give their continued and loud alarms, 
 and raise the sleeping folks. While the most expensive 
 clocks often become speechless and useless through some 
 little mistake in the works, the village clocks strike hour by 
 hour systematically and punctually. 
 
 During the time when the thick clouds are passing and 
 heavy rains are falling, the celestial world is darkened, and 
 life in the village becomes dull and inactive. But through 
 the chill and cold of the Indian winter the blackbirds fly to 
 and fro, and in and out of the villages, and announce the 
 dawn of day with their strong voices. These are sure winter 
 clocks, and of a matchless kind to a humble community. 
 
 r 
 
 4. FIRE IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE. 
 
 \ There are from one hundred to a thousand houses in 
 \each village of India. Almost all of them are built with 
 I mud walls, and covered with thatch roofs. The streets are 
 [narrow, and the houses are very close to each other. The 
 Mow roofs and the light building materials cause great 
 calamities whenever a fire breaks out. 
 
 There are times in which the houses are burnt to ashes 
 by accidental fires, which are caused by carelessness in 
 cooking, or by the children playing with lucifer-matches. 
 These accidental fires take place all the world over, and no 
 special reference need be made to such cases. When we 
 
THE VILLAGE 15 
 
 refer to village fires we mean the periodical fires which 
 take place during every summer month, and which cause 
 great damage to property, and even loss of life. 
 
 These periodical fires take place in almost every village, 
 and are serious evils. Houses are destroyed, straw and hay 
 are consumed, and the villagers are often left without homes, 
 and their cattle without food. There is no fire brigade; 
 there are no fire-engines, or even water-pumps, that can be 
 used to bring the fire under control. 
 
 Other houses are situated in the open plain, without any 
 shelter from the westerly winds, which bring dust-storms, 
 and add to the flames, and swiftly spread the conflagration 
 all over the village. When the fire takes place in the day- 
 time, most of the villagers will be away in the fields, and 
 they become alarmed at the sight of volumes of ascending 
 smoke at a distance. The men rush back at once to their 
 village, and the females follow them ; but their efforts are 
 all in vain ; before they can reach home they find their 
 grain, pulse, cotton, hay, straw, clothes, and all their other 
 belongings, burnt to ashes ; they have to be thankful if their 
 children have not also perished in the flames. Who can 
 describe the deplorable condition of the villagers whose 
 houses are thus burnt, with all their belongings ? The poor 
 creatures become homeless ; they remove the ashes, and 
 make an effort to live within the shelter of the burnt, bare 
 walls. There are no philanthropic persons in these villages, 
 such as are found in Western countries, who will come to 
 the rescue of such homeless folk. The Government cannot 
 possibly give any help. So the only alternative for these 
 poor people is to borrow money from well-to-do men of 
 their village, or of the neighbouring villages, and spend it in 
 rebuilding their homes. When this is done they may go 
 on smoothly for a fortnight or so, only to have their houses 
 
 2 — 2 
 
1 6 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 burnt down again. Then they are really broken down. 
 However, they try their best to affect another loan, and put 
 up their thatched roofs. Having done this, all the villagers 
 are set upon watching to find out who it is that has done 
 the mischief. While they are watching day and night, and 
 waiting carefully to catch the enemy, the fire gets in some 
 western corner of the village, the high wind carries it round 
 till all the houses are burnt down, and the third time the 
 home goes. Alas! their hearts are melting; tears are 
 running down their cheeks from their eyes ; the men curse 
 their gods, and behave as savages to one another ; the 
 women beat their breasts, and cry aloud ; the children 
 become mournful and disorderly — everything goes crooked, 
 and the poor villagers are completely ruined. It takes a 
 long time to recover from such heavy blows. In some 
 villages there are fires almost every day for about two to 
 three months. Fire here, fire there, is the cry continually. 
 When one house takes fire, the people jump on the roofs of 
 the other houses, and rapidly uncover them, in this way pre- 
 venting their houses from catching fire. The fire also takes 
 place in the heaps of palm-leaves and straw with which the 
 houses are covered. When the villagers see that the fire 
 mischief has commenced, they unroof their houses, and 
 live exposed under the burning sun during the day time and 
 in the heavy dew of the night. It can easily be imagined 
 what it is to live in the summer time under the burning sun 
 without a roof. 
 
 During our short stay in Palumcottah we saw fires almost 
 every day in some direction of the village. The harmless 
 and simple-minded shepherds lost many of their houses, 
 and the remaining few had their roofs uncovered. As 
 it is a place where there is a strong police force, we heard 
 the fire-bell ringing every now and then. During the whole 
 
THE VILLAGE if 
 
 months of February and March, the fire-bells were ringing 
 almost every day. These bells went, on an average, six 
 or seven times a day. If we stood outside the village, on 
 an elevated place, which would give a view of five miles 
 around, on dark nights we could see flames of fire either 
 in the village houses or in the field-stacks. 
 
 It is simply extraordinary to observe that these fires in 
 the villages appear periodically every year, zvithoutany attempt 
 to check them. This adds to the money troubles of the poor 
 cultivators, who have many other drains on their purses. 
 It is said that if a set of thieves enter into a house in the 
 night they will leave some things behind them which they 
 consider to be of no use to them ; but when a fire takes 
 .place in a house it burns down everything and spares 
 nothing. We know that the great fire of London stamped 
 out the terrible plague in the year 1666. Out of the ashes 
 of her burning the mighty and enterprising Chicago has 
 risen again ; but out of the ashes of the Indian villages 
 which are burnt in these periodical fires only more poverty, 
 a harder struggle for existence, and pressing hardships of 
 life have arisen. 
 
 Having stated some features of village fires, we shall 
 now proceed to investigate their causes. There are different 
 opinions prevailing. The first and foremost opinion of the 
 village people is that it is yaaval, i.e., the action of a 
 devil. Some enemy of the mWd^gz—tattapary, for instance 
 — engages a famous wizard or witch, a native of Travancore, 
 and pays him or her a large sum of money to induce his or 
 her ' familiar ' to set fire to the houses of that village. It is 
 said that the wizard or witch occupies a house somewhere 
 in the neighbouring village, and sends the devil to do the 
 mischief. The amazing part of it is that generally the fire 
 begins at the top of the roof of the house. If the fire is 
 
18 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 put out at an early stage, then the people discover a round 
 ball of cloth, from which the fire originated ; and, still more 
 amazing, when the people are engaged in trying to put out 
 the fire, other fires break out in two or three houses in 
 another street, and all at the same time. Within five minutes 
 there is a fire in two or three houses in the western street, 
 and this makes the ignorant mass to believe that it can be 
 nothing but the action of the devil. 
 
 Perhaps our readers may be interested in the theory of 
 engaging a devil even to do the most menial service. It is 
 this : If a man desires to get a devil to be his ydva/ — i.e., ser- 
 vant—who will do anything for his master, he must undergo 
 certain ceremonies and master certain mantrains, i.e., 
 charms. First of all, he must have a sloth, and he must 
 also be a man of undaunted courage, strong will, and great 
 physical endurance. He must spend a whole Friday in 
 fasting and praying, and then he must take the sloth in his 
 left hand, and must proceed to the cremation-ground, which 
 is far away from the village. As soon as he arrives at the 
 ground he takes the water from the eyes of the sloth and 
 applies it to his own eyes. Then he sees an army of small 
 devils assembled on that cremation-ground, each holding 
 a rod of office in his hand. They all come round the man 
 to tease and frighten him, and they will do him all kinds of 
 mischief. Some devils pull his nose, some his hands, some 
 his legs, and some his long hair. If the man is at all 
 frightened by the threats and troubles of the devils, they 
 will kill him on the spot. Whilst the fight is going on in 
 this way between the devils and the man, the man is trying 
 to gain his object. So he sharply snatches a rod from one 
 of the devils. At once all the devils go a stone's throw 
 away, and hold a meeting among themselves. The chief 
 among them issues an order to all the devils to the effect 
 
THE VILLAGE 19 
 
 that the devil who lost his rod will not be admitted into 
 their community, and he will be looked down upon as one 
 who has lost his office, his connection, and his relationship 
 until he regains his rod. By this time the man who has 
 got the devil's stick makes his way towards home, with the 
 devil following, teasing, and frightening him. But the man 
 is firm as a rock. Then the devil begs and cringes to the 
 man, beseeching him to hand the rod back to him ; but all 
 in vain, the man will not yield an inch to the devil, and 
 goes home, and keeps the rod in his safe box, shutting it 
 with padlock and key. The devil waits at the gate as a 
 slave, ever ready to obey the man's orders. Now is the 
 chance for the man to do anything he likes through the 
 devil. He can get the fruits of the mountains in five 
 minutes' time ; he can get sweets, flowers, scents, and any 
 eatables ; but the man must pay the price of the articles, so 
 that the devil may take it along with him to fetch the 
 articles. And this devil will also set fire to a house if he 
 receives orders to do so from his master. Whenever the 
 man wants a thing to be done, he takes hold of the devil's 
 rod in his hand, and issues the order to the devil, who 
 immediately proceeds to perform it. 
 
 There is a class of people called purada vannans, />., 
 washermen for the out-caste people. Some of the men and 
 women of this class are supposed to be notorious wizards 
 and witches. They cannot read or write their vernacular 
 language, and they are as a class very ignorant. Whenever 
 this people send word to a village they get what they want. 
 In fact, they tax the poor villagers to give them an annual 
 contribution. If any villagers refuse to give this tax, the 
 next day the fire commences in the village. There was a 
 famous woman belonging to this class of people who was 
 known as ' Fire-setting valli.' She was simply a terror to 
 
20 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the villagers. She had a regular perennial harvest from 
 them. If she sent word to the oilmongers, oil came to 
 her ; if she sent word to the shepherd, he brought her sheep 
 and lambs ; if she wanted anything from the gardeners, they 
 supplied her with any quantity of vegetables. Of course, 
 all these things were free of charge. These wizards and 
 witches frighten the people to the best of their ability ; and 
 they use phosphorus in order to set places on fire in a way 
 that cannot be readily discovered. There is quite an art in 
 engaging certain rascals to do this devilish trick. 
 
 There are quarrels and divisions also among the villagers, 
 and one party will set fire to the houses of the other party. 
 What is joy to a jackal is death to a lamb ; and when two of 
 the villagers are trying thus to ruin each other, there is untold 
 misery in store for all the village folk. 
 
 Whatever may be the causes of these fires, one thing is 
 certain : many poor, harmless, and innocent people are made 
 to suffer beyond measure annually by the brutal action of 
 the rascals who indulge their resentment by burning the 
 houses of their neighbours. The law of the land is very 
 strict, and when these ' little devils ' are found they are 
 severely punished, but they often escape without being 
 caught. 
 
II. 
 
 TRADES, ETC. 
 
 (MEN WHO LIVE BY THEIR HANDS.) 
 
1. THE WASHERMAN. 
 
 WESTERN people have very imperfect ideas of the 
 Indian washerman. Most of the families in the 
 West either do their own washing at home, or 
 send it out to a laundry. There is no separate class or 
 caste of people that does the work of cleaning the clothes 
 and ironing them. Anyone who takes to this work may 
 take his place in society if he has the necessary learning 
 and accomplishments. The son of a washerman may freely 
 move in good society, and take his stand among men of 
 light and learning. Nobody will look down upon him 
 because he happens to be the son of a washerman. He 
 may marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and even 
 become a member of Parliament in England, or a Senator 
 or a Congressman in the United States of America. In the 
 course of years his children may become members of the 
 best society in the land in which they live. Sufficient 
 wealth and advanced education, together with a certain 
 amount of knowledge of the ' art of living ' with others, can 
 make the descendants of a washerman take rank as ladies 
 or gentlemen ; but nothing of this kind can happen in the 
 case of the washermen of the villages of India. The 
 term vunnan is taken from the Sanscrit varnam, which 
 means ' colour ' or ' beauty.' There are 140,000 washermen 
 
24 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 in Southern India alone. In Malabar the females of this class 
 wash the clothes, and the men have taken to the trade of 
 tailoring, or to the profession of devil-dancer. 
 
 The vannan is called, in consideration of his innumerable 
 and unscrupulous services, 'the son of the village.' He 
 washes all the clothes of both the men and women, his wife 
 assisting him in some parts of his work. When she goes to 
 fetch the clothes from the women's apartments, the women 
 of the house receive the ' daughter of the village ' warmly, 
 and entertain her with interesting conversation for a few 
 minutes ; then they give her a little oil with which to anoint 
 her head, and feed her with a cold meal. Sometimes they 
 also give her some home-made cakes to take back with her 
 to her children. The washerwoman leaves the house highly 
 pleased. She carries the soiled clothes of the women hooked 
 on a stick, lest she should be contaminated by the touch of 
 them. She takes the things to the fuller's ground, at a pool, 
 or river, or tank, and submits them to a regular process of 
 cleansing. First she throws each article into the water and 
 sets it aside. Then she herself plunges into the water, in order 
 to remove any defilement which she may have contracted in 
 the process. She then places all she has collected in the heap 
 of other soiled clothes from the village which her husband 
 has brought. The dhoby (washerman), as a rule, does not 
 consider himself to be polluted in ordinary cases when he 
 carries the soiled clothes. 
 
 The dhoby has his house in some corner of the village, 
 and it is built on a piece of ground belonging to the village. 
 The walls of his house are raised at the expense of the 
 village people, and they themselves pay for the thatched 
 roof. They also contribute to the purchase of a spirited 
 donkey or two. Of useful household articles the dhoby has 
 hardly any ; only a few earthen vessels in which to cook his 
 
TRADES, ETC. 25 
 
 food, and to serve for washing purposes. His business 
 apparatus consists of only a few large earthen pots, and 
 these are filled with water and placed on an oven, which is 
 built of mud, and in a triangular shape. This oven is heated 
 v/henever he wants the soiled clothes to be steamed. Before 
 they are steamed he dips them over and over again in 
 alkaline water, which is obtained by him at very little cost. 
 This alkaline water is nothing more than a mixture of pure 
 water with fuller's earth, or washing-soda. When the process 
 of steaming is done, the dhoby and his children start off at 
 about four o'clock in the morning to the fuller's ground. The 
 poor, uncared-for donkeys move about in the dull streets 
 and waste lands of the village all the other days and nights 
 except the night in which the dhoby intends to start for his 
 work. The unfed beasts are then made to carry the heavy 
 loads of wet clothes. The moment they are loaded they 
 start off in advance from the house of their unkind master, 
 as they know well the place of destination, and the way to 
 it is quite familiar to them. The dhoby with his children 
 follow them, each carrying a heavy load on his back, and 
 even on his head. As the dhoby passes through the streets 
 he cheers his beasts by whistling, and uttering encouraging 
 words such as these: ' Poda sami,' />., 'Go, master'; 
 •Manum kappata,' i.e., 'Save my reputation'; ' Kartua 
 thoraya,' i.e., 'black gentleman'; ' Addyada singar,' i.e., 
 'Walk as a lion.' When he reaches the water-side — and 
 this is often a good distance away — first he throws off his 
 own load, and removes the loads off the backs of his beasts, 
 and then the donkeys are left to find their own pasture. 
 
 In cases where there are fields in cultivation, one of the 
 grown-up children of the dhoby minds the brutes while they 
 are grazing. Then the dhoby unties the bundle of clothes, 
 and keeps them within his reach near water, where the 
 
26 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 rough stones are kept, for bleaching. He takes up a cloth 
 in his hand and dips it in the water, and beats it against 
 the stone, with an invocation to his God, the common 
 Father. Then he places the cloth on the stone, and raises 
 his right hand to his forehead, as he stands in a bending 
 attitude, in order to indicate that he seeks the benediction 
 of Heaven to rest upon the labours of the day. 
 
 The work of a dhof?y in an Indian village is tedious and 
 difficult. He has to cleanse from two to three hundred 
 cloths of various lengths and breadths, many of them in an 
 exceedingly dirty state. He beats cloth after cloth with his 
 full strength on the coarse stones. His children also share 
 the work of their father, taking for their part the tiny clothes 
 of children like themselves. 
 
 While he is beating the cloths he sings songs of his own 
 making, or that were made by his forefathers. These are 
 very peculiar in their composition, and they are quite unin- 
 teresting to anyone beside himself. There is in them no 
 melody, and there is not eVen any beating of time. He 
 sings in praise of his ass, or of his wife, or he narrates his 
 love, patience, earnestness, in relation to his sweetheart 
 before his marriage. Sometimes he sings in praise of his 
 father-in-law. Sometimes it is a mournful song about an 
 old and faithful ass which he has recently lost. 
 
 While the dhoby is busily engaged with the washing of 
 the clothes, his wife will turn up carrying a potful of cold 
 food, which she has been obtaining from the village folk 
 during the previous night. Every house in the village is 
 bound to give twice daily a handful of cooked food, either 
 made of rice, millet, maize, or some other Indian grain. 
 She also carries a second small vessel, which is filled with 
 cooked Indian vegetables and greens. These have also 
 been given to her by the villagers. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 27 
 
 A {f/iol^y receives as wages from every village house an 
 average of sixpence per annum. If in the house there is a 
 large family the wages are increased to a shilling per annum. 
 Besides this allowance, he gets a small gift of grains, prob- 
 ably a few measures, at the time of harvest. If he goes 
 to the fields when they gather the crops, he also will get a 
 small bundle of ears. At wedding festivities and at funerals 
 he is entitled to a fee of fourpence. When the villagers 
 offer a blood -sacrifice to the bloodthirsty gods, they 
 generally kill a fat ram by severing the head from the body, 
 and this head goes to the waiting d/iol^j as a part of his 
 wages. In some villages the d/io^y is used as a messenger 
 to communicate ominous intelligence to the parties con- 
 cerned. For this he gets, in the form of gold and silver 
 bangles, or a pair of new cloths, or a pagoda, about the 
 value of four shillings. This is all that the d/io/?y receives 
 in the form of wages. 
 
 Now let us turn back to the place where we left the d/io/^y 
 washing the clothes. He has been beating them against 
 the stone, one after another, from early morning until 
 10 a.m., and he is now quite exhausted, and quite ready for 
 his morning meal. The wife, who has brought his meal, 
 joins her husband, and the children also partake of it. 
 They all sit on the grassy slope of the riverside or pool. 
 The d/io/^y and his children sit facing the woman, who holds 
 the earthen pot in her hand. They fold their hands 
 together, so as to serve them instead of a cup, and the 
 watery meal is poured into their hands. The woman first 
 stirs up the contents of the earthen pot with her right hand, 
 and adds some butter-milk and salt. This luxurious food 
 satisfies the tired and hungry d/w^y and his children, and 
 refreshes them so that they cheerfully resume their work. 
 The woman, after serving the meal to her husband and 
 
28 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 children, supplies her husband with betel-nut, and chunam 
 and tobacco to chew. The dhoby, having received these, 
 sits beside his wife, and gossips with her, while she helps 
 herself to the remaining food. When she has done the 
 dhohy lays his head on her lap and rests awhile. She relates 
 to him some incidents of the village life which have recently 
 come to her knowledge. In half an hour the dhoby and 
 his wife, with their children, get up to resume their work. 
 They hurry on the bleaching of the clothes till 2 p.m. ; 
 then they begin to wash the beaten clothes in a large 
 earthen pot, which is filled with pure water. In this a 
 small portion of indigo is dissolved, or a little piece of 
 lime. In this mixture all the clothes are dipped and rinsed 
 well. Then they undergo another process of dipping in a 
 similar pot filled with water, in which a small quantity of 
 starch, prepared from rice or other Indian grain, has been 
 put. This process makes the clothes somewhat stiff. All 
 these processes cleanse the clothes very thoroughly. If the 
 clothes are new they have to go twice through all these 
 processes, and in addition to this they are also dipped in 
 water mixed with cow-dung or goat-dung. This process 
 gives the clothes a smart appearance. 
 
 Most of the villagers wear white clothes, consisting of a 
 pair of cloths of three or three and a half yards each. 
 Some of them have also turbans or headpieces. 
 
 As the day is getting on the d/ioby and his wife and 
 children now hurry off to dry the clothes, either on grassy 
 meads or on sandy banks. At about three o'clock the d/ioby 
 and his family go up together to some shady banyan or tulip 
 or margosa or tamarind-tree ; one or other of these is sure 
 to be found near an Indian village. Here they partake of 
 the remainder of the meal, seated in the manner which has 
 been described. At aljout five o'clock they gather together 
 
TRADES, ETC. 29 
 
 the clothes and fold them up. Now the children go 
 to find the donkeys, who are to carry the loads of bleached 
 clothes back again to their home. The {^/lo^y and his wife 
 themselves carry bundles of the clothes on their heads and 
 on their backs ; they go slowly back to their village. 
 
 The following morning the d/io/^y and his wife unloose 
 the bundles of washed clothes, and arrange them for delivery ; 
 both of them are very busy making up the piles according 
 to the marks on the clothes. As a rule, the dhobys in India 
 are very skilful in sorting the clothes according to the marks 
 given them. There is no such thing as the marking of the 
 clothes by their owners with coloured threads or the initials 
 of their names. All marks on clothes are made by the dhobys 
 themselves, and they cannot usually write their own names. 
 If any one of the villagers is in a hurry for his bleached 
 clothes he has to go to the door of the dhoby and fetch them 
 for himself. Generally, the dhoby delivers at each house. 
 
 I'he Indian villagers never use linen or any form of dress 
 that is made by tailors, and therefore there is no need for 
 ironing. 
 
 The dhoby not only washes the clothes of the villagers, but 
 he also provides them with torches, made out of the rags 
 which he gathers and stores up from the worn-out clothes 
 given to him. These torches are generally used in festival 
 and marriage processions ; and he also renders service by 
 holding the torches on such occasions. T\\q^ poor people of 
 the village, by courting his friendship, get from him inarihii, 
 i.e., the loan of cloths for little or nothing. At the time of 
 funeral processions he spreads cloths on the way leading to 
 the cremation ground. His services are also sought to 
 decorate with cloths the roof of the marriage pandal or 
 booth. On all these occasions he uses the cloths of the 
 villagers. When the village dramas are held in the open-air 
 
 3—2 
 
30 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 at night he spreads on the ground a few bleached white 
 cloths for the more respectable men of the village to sit upon. 
 
 The ' son of the village,' who is fed by the villagers, has 
 also the privilege of clothing himself, as well as his family, 
 with the clothes of the villagers. To-day he turns up in a 
 
 new attire which he has got from Mr. A for washing ; 
 
 similarly his wife shines in the borrowed feathers of Mrs. 
 
 C . To-morrow he walks in the street with the clothes 
 
 of Mr. C ; and likewise his wife appears smart and 
 
 tidily dressed with a beautiful sari or draping belonging to 
 
 Mrs. R . On the following day the husband and wife 
 
 will carry all the clothes in which they dressed themselves on 
 the previous day to the fuller's ground, and will cover them- 
 selves with their worn-out ordinary clothes in a state next to 
 rags. If any of the owners see these common children of 
 the village wearing their clothes they take no notice of it. 
 The village d/iohy, who has this privilege of wearing other 
 people's clothes, has also the free use of the village clothes 
 as his bedding. It is evident, therefore, that it costs little 
 or nothing to maintain himself and his family. 
 
 The fuller's ground becomes the centre for several village 
 dhobys^ and to it the young unmarried men and the young 
 maids go to wash the clothes of their respective villages. 
 These young people have thus fine opportunities of knowing 
 one another better, and of forming close friendships. They 
 cannot, however, have private conversations about their 
 
 matrimonial affairs. Supposing the young man A has a 
 
 tender regard for the young maid C , he sings some love 
 
 songs while beating the clothes, and in these he describes to 
 the best of his abilities the position, parentage, and beauty 
 of the girl who probably stands close beside him, also 
 beating clothes. These love-songs of the young d/wby, who 
 is quite taken up with the girl whom he has in his mind, 
 
TRADES, ETC. 31 
 
 have a charming effect upon the girl, and she in return 
 raises her sweet voice with songs of allurements. She 
 assures him in an indirect way of her appreciation, alluding 
 to his personal beauty : ' O thou young man, black as oil, 
 strong as stone, sweet as sugar-cane, I cannot ever forget 
 thy face. Thou hast become the subject of my night- 
 dreams. Whenever I think of thee I become useless to do 
 the work of my parents. Thy love makes me uneasy in the 
 day and restless in the night. My mother has promised to 
 give me the young and beautiful colt as my dowry, and my 
 father has promised me the right of washing the clothes of 
 the whole village when he gets old and helpless, as I am 
 the only daughter to my father. I saw thy foot-print and 
 the foot-print of thy black donkey. When will the day 
 come in which I may get a handful of betel-nuts from thy 
 hands ?' 
 
 When the young man hears these songs it is enough to 
 break his heart, and he sings out loudly, assuring her of his 
 burning love for her, calling \\q.x thana (honey); ma7ia (deer); 
 afinama (O swan !) ; pitrava (O dove !). ' l^hy love kills 
 me. I can give my four donkeys as a price for thee. I 
 will work for thy father and for thee all the days of my life. 
 If I have thee in my house there is no need for a light. C) 
 thou dove ! in still waters on my left-hand side show me 
 thy face to remove the gloom of my thoughts.' Thus the 
 young dhoby and the maid sing out the songs of love at 
 their meetings at the washing-ground. When the parents of 
 these young folk see their attachment to each other, they 
 arrange to have them settled in marriage, and to follow the 
 profession of a village dhoby. 
 
 The washermen are a distinct class or caste. The son of 
 a washerman is a washerman by compulsion. He cannot 
 follow any other trade but the trade of his forefathers. He 
 
32 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 cannot intermingle with other classes of people, as this 
 would be opposed to the social customs of the country. 
 
 r 
 
 2. THE CARPENTER {Taccthan). 
 
 The carpenter is one of the five useful artisans of the 
 village. The people of a large village usually have a 
 carpenter living in their midst. But when the village is 
 small, the carpenter has to take up the work of other 
 villages in order to secure a sufficient maintenance. He 
 makes the yoke and other wood implements for ploughing, 
 the handles for hoes, spades, axes, weeding tools, sickles, 
 and other necessary implements for agricultural purposes 
 and for the irrigation of land. He makes ornamental door- 
 posts, and also doors, rafters, plain bedsteads, wooden 
 spoons, and stools of various sizes for domestic use. At the 
 time of village festivals, according to the requirements of the 
 occasion, he makes portable cars or stages, for taking the 
 idols in procession. Several of these, mechanics unite in 
 making a portable temporary car, at a cost of 1,750 rupees, 
 for the temple of Madura every year. All the temples of 
 India have large and magnificent ornamental cars, which 
 can only be drawn by thousands of men, and these are 
 made by the skilful carpenters. Images of different kinds 
 and forms are also made by the /acct/ia?i. He makes village 
 carts for the conveyance of passengers and loads. He gets 
 in the form of wages a certain number of bushels of grain 
 from each farmer ; and, as usual, he also gets a bundle of 
 corn, and certain measures of grain, at the harvest time. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 33 
 
 But he makes a separate charge for constructing carts, 
 vehicles, doors, and doorposts. 
 
 He wears a sacred thread on his shoulders, like the other 
 artisans. His wife never helps him in his manual labours. 
 There are 31,237 carpenters in Southern India alone. 
 
 In a certain large village there was a carpenter who was 
 celebrated for his artistic skill, especially in making wooden 
 images. He had shown good taste in this direction from 
 his boyhood ; he had attracted the attention of the other 
 artisans when he was but a boy of fourteen. His fame went 
 abroad as a renowned carving carpenter, and several of the 
 native village chiefs, hearing of his reputation, sent for him 
 to their respective places, and got him to do work for them. 
 When the work was accomplished they would present the 
 young carpenter with gold bangles and other ornaments, 
 besides money gifts, in order to indicate their esteem for 
 him, and their appreciation of his skill. In course of time 
 the young carpenter became very popular, and enriched 
 hiniself by his artistic abilities. One summer morning this 
 carpenter happened to pass through a street in which a 
 Roman Catholic priest lived. The carpenter, out of 
 curiosity, went into the church, and there noticed some 
 of the images that had been made in France. He 
 declared that he could make images equal to any of these. 
 At once he was brought to the notice of the priest, who 
 asked him to make an image of St. Xavier out of the trunk 
 of a solid tulip-tree, and promised him a handsome present 
 if he did it well. The carpenter, having consented to do 
 the job in a month's time, went to his home and commenced 
 upon the work. Some six months before a Hindu had 
 given him a large trunk of a tulip-tree, from which he wanted 
 him to make an image of one Karuppana Sawmi, a blood- 
 thirsty village god. The carpenter, having executed that 
 
34 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 work, kept the remainder of the wood, and now found it 
 very serviceable to him. With great care and skill he 
 carved the image of St. Xavier, and presently took it to the 
 priest, and received his reward. The priest then arranged 
 for the festival of the saint. A grand procession was formed 
 to carry the image through all the streets of the village. 
 Amongst the other spectators was that Hindu who had given 
 the wood to the carpenter. In the midst of this great 
 procession this Hindu, who had no distinct ideas about 
 religious matters, shouted out in the very midst of the 
 people, ' Ah, how nice the image looks ! Is it not the 
 younger brother of our Karuppana Sawmi, the village god ?' 
 The enthusiastic Catholic worshippers beat him severely for 
 uttering such defiling and blasphemous words. The 
 Hindus then rose against the Catholics who had beaten the 
 Hindu, and so there was a great commotion and uproar in 
 the village. 
 
 On the following day they brought a charge before the 
 nearest magistrate against the Hindu who had blasphemed 
 their saint. The magistrate, on investigation, found out 
 that the Hindu was an ignorant man, and that, in his 
 ignorance, he believed St. Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, 
 the forerunner of their mission, and Karuppana Sawmi, one 
 of the many tutelary Hindu gods, were" really brothers, as 
 both these images had been made out of the one piece 
 of tulip-wood which he had given to the carpenter. The 
 carpenter was summoned to give evidence before the 
 magistrate. The magistrate, being a Hindu himself, laughed 
 at the idea of image-worship prevailing among a certain 
 class of Christians, and dismissed the case, saying to the 
 Roman Catholics, 'Your image is no better than the Hindu 
 image.' 
 
 Among the carpenters there have been several renowned 
 
TRADES, ETC. 
 
 35 
 
 poets who distinguished themselves at different periods in 
 India. One of them was the great Suppra thepa Kavyrayer, 
 a poet, and a contemporary with Father Beschi ; and it is 
 he who, after his nominal conversion to Catholicism, helped 
 Beschi in composing 'Tembavani,' a poetical work in High 
 Tamil literature, containing a graphic and descriptive 
 account of the Holy Land, Palestine. 
 
 3. THE BLACKSMITH {Kul/ati). 
 
 As India is an agricultural country, the services of the 
 blacksmith and carpenter are indispensable. The village 
 blacksmith generally has a circuit of his own. If a black- 
 smith lives in a village called Pandiapuram, he has several 
 other villages attached to it, and does the work also for 
 them. If a village is a large one, he may limit his labours 
 entirely to it. In some, smaller villages the carpenter does 
 the work of the blacksmith as well as his own. During the 
 time of ploughing the blacksmith finds it difficult to meet 
 all the demands of the villagers, for he must make iron 
 blades for their ploughs, and repair their old ones. He also 
 supplies the villagers with heel-tips, hinges, hooks, locks and 
 keys, axes, knives, sickles, spades, crowbars, 'uramonuis,' />., 
 kitchen-knives ; choppers, ' panaarooval,' i.e., reaping-hooks ; 
 and other useful implements. Some blacksmiths have their 
 workshops under trees, while others have theirs in thatched 
 huts. The blacksmith has a few hammers of different sizes, 
 a bellows, and some pincers, and with these instruments he 
 works to the satisfaction of the villagers. The workshop 
 of the blacksmith is usually crowded with men who have 
 
36 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 come in from other villages belonging to the circuit of the 
 blacksmith, in order to get their implements repaired or 
 new ones made. 
 
 The ironsmith is not such a schemer as the village gold- 
 smith, but he will take his own time in doing his work. 
 Indian villagers are seldom in a hurry, and the ironsmiths 
 are very fond of chatting with the people who bring their 
 work to them. The blacksmith is, in truth, a great gossip, 
 and delights in fishing out every secret of the village. 
 
 This chatterbox goes to his work about 7 a.m , and 
 returns home late in the evening. If a villager comes to 
 him to sharpen an axe, say at about 8 a.m., he is kept in the 
 workshop till 5 p.m. During this time the ironsmith will 
 try his best to waste his visitor's time by introducing vain 
 conversation, and endeavouring to extract news from him. 
 
 To begin with, he desires to know how Mr. A is getting 
 
 on ; how Mr. D and Mr. C have settled their dispute ; 
 
 why Mr. G 's cow died; why Mr. F sold his big 
 
 bullock ; why the girl B is not married ; when are they 
 
 going fishing in the Western Tank ? , Do not you know that 
 the sea-fish is very cheap now ? — such things as these begin 
 wearying conversations. The poor villager, who has been 
 actually starving, at last takes up his axe and walks home, 
 having waited about the workshop nearly the whole of the 
 day. The work of sharpening a worn-out axe should not 
 take more than an hour. 
 
 As a rule, the smith never goes to fetch work, and never 
 returns it to his customer. The villagers always bring their 
 own work to the workshop, and take it back when it is 
 finished. In many cases they will have to wait in his work- 
 shop day after day, and watch him doing the work for them. 
 He is all the day away from the village, working in his lone- 
 some workshop If he has any male members of his family 
 
TRADES, ETC. 37 
 
 he makes them assist in his work, but the female members 
 never help him. One of them brings him his noonday meal 
 to his workshop. 
 
 In the form of wages, the ironsmith gets a fixed fee from 
 every house, which varies according to the position of the 
 tenants. There are others who pay at once for the work 
 that is done for them. The cultivator usually engages his 
 services for the whole year, and gives him a fixed allowance, 
 as well as special gifts, such as a bundle of ears at harvest 
 time, and a few measures of grain, and some money, on the 
 occasion of important festivities. 
 
 Some of the ironsmiths are well versed in the vernacular 
 of the country, and have a general knowledge of the works 
 of their poets. One day, a certain Tamil poet came to a 
 blacksmith's workshop with the intention of getting some 
 help from him. As soon as the poet entered the workshop 
 the blacksmith said : ' Varum pulavara erumbadium ' — 
 i.e., 'Come on, poet, sit down and sing.' The latter word, 
 ' erumbadiam,' has two meanings ; the one is, ' sit down 
 and sing,' and the other is, ' sit down and beat the iron.' 
 The poet misunderstood the ironsmith, and gave the latter 
 meaning to the word ; so he showed an unpleasant counte- 
 nance. Then the blacksmith addressed the poet in a very 
 courteous manner, ' Erumbadium.' At this the poet became 
 angry, and said : ' Thou fool ! don't you know that I am a 
 poet? How dare you ask me to sit down and beat the 
 iron !' The blacksmith for the third time begged the poet 
 to sit down and sing, using the same Tamil word, ' erumba- 
 dium.' At this the poet became furious, and called the 
 ironsmith ' a dog and a stupid ass.' Again the blacksmith 
 said : ' What is the matter with you, poet? Don't be angry; 
 sit down and sing.' But he again used the same Tamil word, 
 * erumbadium.' The poet now lost control of his temper. 
 
38 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 and beat the blacksmith with his walking-stick. Then the 
 smith took one of his hot bars, and branded the poet with 
 it in several places. Immediately a charge was brought 
 against the smith before the chief of the village. On in- 
 quiring into the case, the magistrate pitied the ignorant 
 poet, but punished the witty blacksmith. 
 
 There are 13,741 of this useful class of artisans in 
 Southern India alone. 
 
 4. THE GOLDSMITH (T/iaUan). 
 
 A marked characteristic of Indian life is an excessive 
 fondness for jewellery. This distinguishes even the lower 
 classes of society, and it is one of the chief causes of 
 national poverty. Hence the services of the goldsmith 
 cannot be dispensed with in Indian villages. He is one of 
 the five artisans of India. The men of this class do not 
 intermarry ; they have their own priests, and do not allow 
 any of the Brahmin priests to officiate for them ; but they 
 imitate the Brahmins in all their ceremonies. Their girls 
 must be married before they attain womanhood, and widow- 
 marriage is strictly prohibited. The use of flesh and of 
 alcohol is nominally forbidden. But, nevertheless, they in- 
 dulge in drink, and eat fish and flesh, to a large extent. This 
 particular class of artisans bury their dead in a sitting 
 posture, but cremation is also practised amongst them. 
 They have the general title of Achari^ and some of them 
 are called Pattan^ which is the equivalent of the Brahmin 
 Bhatta. Every village has a goldsmith, who, like other 
 artisans, belongs to a separate and distinct class. The son 
 
TRADES, ETC. 39 
 
 of a goldsmith cannot be anything else but a goldsmith. 
 He is unlike a d/iol?y or a barber, in rendering his services 
 to the villagers. Money is always flowing into his hands. 
 In some places he lives in grand style, like the landlords. 
 He has his workshop in his own house, and his tools are a 
 few hammers of different sizes, pincers, and tongs, a few 
 moulds, and a furnace made out of a broken earthen vessel ; 
 with these wonderful instruments he turns out really beau- 
 tiful jewellery. He makes ear-rings and finger-rings for 
 both sexes. He also makes bangles, nose-jewels, ankle- 
 jewels, toe-jewels, upper ear-ornaments, belts, head-orna- 
 ments, etc., and these are of good workmanship. He 
 makes other jewels for children — kungumany and aramoody^ 
 to conceal the nakedness of boys and girls. Some make 
 these jewels in gold, and others in silver, according to their 
 circumstances. He employs one or two to assist him in his 
 work, and all of them are well-trained rogues. Suppose a 
 
 village goldsmith receives 150 rupees (^10) from Mrs. A 
 
 for making a pair of gold bangles, on January 15, 1897- 
 He assures her that she can have her jewels on February i, 
 1897. He takes the money, and goes home. As soon as 
 he reaches his house, his wife comes to meet him with a 
 smiling countenance, to find out whether he has brought 
 money with him. The goldsmith then gives the money to 
 his wife, who keeps it in his box. After this he takes his 
 meal, and sits to his work. Then his wife comes near to 
 him, and whispers in his ears of the vows which they have 
 to fulfil to their family gods. She says that it is very 
 dangerous to put off the fulfilment of the vows to some 
 future time, as she had some strange and fearful dreams last 
 night. In fact, she says that one of her children is suffering 
 from fever, and surely the god will be angry with him if 
 they do not pacify him at an early date. So she readily gets 
 
40 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the consent of her husband to the offering of a blood 
 sacrifice to their family god. They fix an auspicious day for 
 that purpose, and she freely makes use of the money from 
 
 Mrs. A in purchasing a fat ram, fruits, flowers, cocoanuts, 
 
 perfumes, and other necessary things. In this way she 
 spends some 40 rupees, and the remaining no rupees are 
 utilized by the goldsmith for making jewels for which he 
 has already taken money from others, and used for his own 
 
 benefit. In the meantime Mrs. A visits the house of 
 
 the goldsmith, in order to find out what progress he has 
 made with her jewels. The goldsmith receives her with 
 great courtesy, and treats her with kindness. He expresses 
 his sorrow for not being able to purchase gold of good 
 quality, as the market has been dull for some days, and so 
 he has sent his man to a distant town to buy some good 
 
 sovereigns. With this satisfactory word Mrs. i\ returns 
 
 home. About February 15 Mrs. A goes to the gold- 
 smith to fetch her bangles. But now she finds the gold- 
 smith is absent. She goes on the following day, but still in 
 vain. She goes again and again, but she cannot find him. 
 At last she reports the shabby treatment of the goldsmith 
 to her husband. Now the husband goes, with the deter- 
 mination to take from him either the money or the bangles. 
 This would be about the beginning of March. Now the 
 
 village goldsmith is caught by Mr. A . The goldsmith, 
 
 with his usual cunning, takes out a long piece of gold which 
 
 he had bought for somebody else, and shows it to Mr. A , 
 
 and begs him to exercise a little more patience — at least, 
 
 for a week longer. About March 20 Mr. A turns up 
 
 again at the goldsmith's house. Now the goldsmith has 
 gone to a neighbouring village on some business. His wife 
 
 appears, and shows Mr. A all the spirit that a woman 
 
 can show, and pacifies him with kind words and promises. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 41 
 
 SO that he consents to wait for another week. For the third 
 
 time Mr. A goes to the goldsmith at the beginning of 
 
 April, and uses harsh words, such as 'scoundrel,' 'rogue,' 
 and ' liar ' in the presence of many people. At this time 
 the goldsmith is working on a jewel for somebody else, 
 
 and this Mr. A appropriates as security. At last the 
 
 village goldsmith finishes the bangles within three days, and 
 
 takes them to Mr. A ; he, being satisfied with the weight 
 
 and quality of the gold of the bangles, accepts them, and 
 pays his wages — six shillings. 
 
 After some time Mrs. A is disposed to sell her bangles, 
 
 so she sends them to market. But all those who desire to 
 buy the jewels value them for less than four sovereigns, 
 because they find too much copper inside the bangles. This 
 is but an illustrative instance of hundreds of cases which 
 occur in the rural parts of India. 
 
 The village goldsmith reaps a fine harvest when people 
 make their marriage-tie (fall). As a rule, none of the 
 villagers will care to find out the weight, or to test the 
 quality, of the gold out of which the fali is made, for it is 
 considered amongst them as a bad omen either to weigh or 
 to find out the value of the fa/i. Hence this offers a fine 
 opportunity for the village goldsmith to rob more than half 
 of the gold given to him for this purpose, and to make a 
 large addition of copper. 
 
 There are often poor people who, having given money to 
 the goldsmith to prepare jewels for them, get tired of visit- 
 ing the goldsmiths, so these men succeed in dodging them 
 for years together. 
 
 The village goldsmiths are up to all sorts of schemes. They 
 sometimes leave their own village and live in another village, 
 where they show great honesty and strict punctuality in 
 delivering jewels. Thus they gain the goodwill and confi- 
 
42 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 dence of these villagers, who consider f/iet'r goldsmiths to be 
 exceptional people of that class. Having gained the confi- 
 dence of the people, the goldsmith will induce the village 
 ladies to order valuable jewels. When he has collected 
 enough from them he simply bolts from the village with the 
 money. Sometimes the goldsmith works in the daytime in 
 one village and spends his night in another village ; and so 
 he dodges about. If anyone goes to a goldsmith while he 
 is working, he may see as many as ten persons, in an hour's 
 time, bitterly complaining of his long delay in making their 
 jewels. 
 
 In the case of rich and influential villagers, such as the 
 headman of the village, or some other leader of the place, 
 the goldsmith goes to his house, and opens his workshop 
 there until he has finished his jewel. But here also he finds 
 out how to dodge. He works the whole day in the house 
 of the villager, and in the night he works in his own house, 
 and so he finishes two jewels at the same time. Somehow 
 he robs the villager of /lis jewel, and replaces it with his 
 own, which he prepared in his house during the nights. 
 The jewel of the goldsmith is nothing but a large addition 
 of copper with gold. 
 
 Sometimes the village goldsmith gives to the people their 
 jewels weighing more than the weight given to him. If the 
 villager gives to the goldsmith gold weighing two sovereigns, 
 he gives in return a jewel weighing two and a quarter 
 sovereigns. If the villager asks why it is so, then the gold- 
 smith demands from him extra money. But, in fact, the 
 undue proportion of copper causes the overweight. 
 
 It is said of the goldsmith proverbially that ' thai poon- 
 neelum ma poon adduppan,' i.e., a goldsmith will rob even 
 something out of what is given him by his mother for a 
 jewel. There is a common saying among the people that 
 
TRADES. ETC. 
 
 43 
 
 the god Siva himself is afraid of a goldsmith, and so he 
 wears a cobra round his neck. Hence the poet sang, 
 'Thattanuku angee alio anninthan arran surpathayia.' It 
 is also said that no one could cope with a thattan (gold- 
 smith) in lying. The poet himself bursts out in his melody 
 in praise of this liar, saying, ' Thattan pulukukku yatta thu 
 kannum ratna supapatheya.' 
 
 On one occasion a high-caste Brahmin woman gave a 
 goldsmith some money to make a jewel for her. As usual, 
 the goldsmith delayed in making the jewel. The woman, 
 being greatly annoyed at the long delay, went to the gold- 
 smith's house at mid-day, and addressed the goldsmith in a 
 rough way, and called him all sorts of names. Then she 
 spread her upper garments on the floor and laid herself 
 down, telling the goldsmith that she would not leave the 
 house unless he gave her either the jewel or the money. 
 The thattan^ in his usual shuffling way, was working with 
 the jewels belonging to someone else. But the woman was 
 quietly lying down in the workshop. As the day was hot, 
 and she was very tired, she went to sleep. Seeing the 
 determination of the courageous Brahmin woman, the 
 cunning thaitati was up to his mischief. He went near the 
 Brahmin woman, who was fast asleep, and applied the gum 
 to her eyelids. When the woman awoke from her slumber, 
 she found that she could not open her eyes. She cried 
 loudly, and called to the thattan for help. ' What is the 
 matter with you ?' said the goldsmith. ' I find that I cannot 
 open my eyes,' said the Brahmin woman. ' I see our goddess 
 has made you blind. You have been abusing me all this 
 day. I was patient ; but my goddess was not patient with 
 you, and so she made you blind,' said the goldsmith. ' Very 
 well ; what can I do ?' asked the Brahmin woman. ' You 
 should make an offering to my goddess,' replied the gold- 
 
 4 
 
44 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 smith. ' Yes ; you can give all the money which I gave 
 you for a jewel to your goddess and get me back my sight, 
 as I have a large number of children and a husband to care 
 for,' said the Brahmin woman. Immediately the goldsmith 
 washed her eyes with cold water, and she was able to open 
 them, and went on her way thanking the thattan^ and 
 thinking what a powerful goddess the village goldsmith's was. 
 We could multiply instances to show the cunning of the 
 village goldsmith. But space does not permit. Suffice it 
 to say that the village goldsmith, with all his craftiness, 
 supplies the villagers with ornaments of excellent workman- 
 ship, and that the villagers are loaded with jewels. The 
 village goldsmith can say, like Demetrius of old, * Sirs, ye 
 know that by this craft we have our wealth.' 
 
 5. THE SHOEMAKER {Chiickler). 
 
 One of the lowest and most despised classes is that of the 
 poor and ignorant shoemakers. These people are found in 
 almost every big village of the country, and they are classi- 
 fied as a sub-division of the Naidu caste. Their settlements 
 are separate from the villages, as they are out-of-caste 
 people. They live in filthy and miserable huts, surrounded 
 with ditches and stagnant waters. They are half naked, ill- 
 clothed, and often emaciated. There is hardly anyone of 
 them who can either read or write. Those, however, who 
 have embraced Christianity are gradually making a step 
 upwards, and are securing some education. The very hut 
 in which they live is the birthplace of cholera and other 
 epidemics. To add to their insanitary condition, there are 
 holes round the huts which they utilize as tanneries. They 
 
TRADES, ETC. 45 
 
 eat the dead animals which they receive from the villagers 
 as a part of their wages. 
 
 The shoemakers make shoes for men and women and 
 children ; they also make skin robes for the cultivators, and 
 they are employed by the villagers as messengers and 
 sweepers. In some places they are required to watch the 
 cremation-grounds and the cornfields. 
 
 In the form of wages the shoemakers receive a scanty 
 fixed annual allowance from each villager, that is, from 
 those who are unable to pay a nominal fee for the work 
 done for them by the shoemaker. Those who have mercy 
 on these poor creatures give them some food, and make 
 them cut firewood, and attend to their kitchen gardens. 
 
 The marriage ceremonies of the shoemaker class are 
 unusually interesting. When a young man wishes to be 
 married his party take a bottle of arrack to the intended 
 bride's house and give it to the father to drink. If he con- 
 sents to the proposed marriage, he gives another bottle of 
 arrack in return for the bridegroom's father to drink, and 
 then an astrologer is consulted to secure his opinion as to an 
 auspicious day for the intended marriage. 
 
 A parisam of six and a quarter rupees, one kotta of 
 cholem, five measures of rice, and some oil, with saffron and 
 cocoanuts, should be taken to the bride's house, together 
 with a string of beads and an o/ai. The bridegroom's sister 
 should carry some of these on her head. The string of 
 beads is then tied by the bridegroom's sister on the bride's 
 neck. This is the ^/la/i. From this day she is considered 
 a wife. Then for five panams taken out of the parisam 
 arrack and other spirits are bought. Both parties drink 
 freely of these spirits. 
 
 On the muhiirtha day a vessel full of milk is brought, and 
 all the relations of the bridegroom take handfuls of it and 
 
 4—2 
 
46 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 pour it on the bridegroom's head, and his friend rubs it well 
 in. After he has bathed in cold water, he is taken outside 
 the village to a place where there is an auverei-plant (Cassia 
 auriculatd). Three little sticks are placed so as to form a 
 triangle, and a potful of rice is cooked between the three 
 sticks, which are supposed to represent a little hut. The 
 bridegroom and his relations partake of the food. 
 
 The bridegroom then starts for the residence of the bride, 
 but stays somewhere outside the village while the bride 
 bathes in the same way as he has done. The bride is then 
 taken outside the village, where the bridegroom is waiting, 
 and there at the side of an auverei they place two sets of 
 three sticks as a hut for each of them, and there they cook 
 food. Their respective uncles take a handful of rice, wave 
 it round their heads, and throw it behind them, to avert the 
 evil eye. The remaining rice is eaten by the entire com- 
 pany, with the bride and the bridegroom. 
 
 The bride is taken round the huts three times by her 
 uncle, who also places her right hand in the bridegroom's 
 left. 
 
 Then both the bridegroom and the bride are taken to the 
 house of the bride. While going there the bridegroom's 
 sisters wave a lighted camphor before the bride, and receive 
 money from her father or brothers. 
 
 Then in the front of the house the bridegroom sits on a 
 stool with a cloth on it, and the bride pours water on him. 
 The bride then puts on the same cloth and sits down, and 
 the bridegroom pours water on her, and thus both bathe. 
 
 In the same place the bridegroom makes a plough of two 
 sticks and ploughs the ground, which is wetted with the 
 water in which they have Ijathed, and the bride takes conjee 
 to him in a pot. She also takes a little child with her, which 
 she gives to the bridegroom, who kisses it and returns it. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 47 
 
 After this two or three rings are cast into a pot of water, and 
 they both are made to take them out with a view to 
 ascertain which of them will in future have power over the 
 other. 
 
 Then they both are taken into the house. When entering 
 they dip their hands near the doorposts inside into a salt- 
 pot by way of amusement, and the bridegroom's relations 
 beat the bride by way of a joke. 
 
 The marriages of this caste are conducted with brawling 
 and noise, owing to the quantity of spirits consumed on the 
 occasion, and they do not hesitate to divorce each other 
 even for trifles. I have known a man of this caste to be 
 married three times to different women dui-ing a single 
 year. 
 
 r 
 
 6. THE BARBER {Ktiddymaken). 
 
 The village barber, as well as the dhoby, is known as the 
 'son of the village.' He has no shaving-saloon as the 
 barber has in Western countries ; he provides no chairs 
 of any kind for his customers. 
 
 His appliances are very few ; he has no soap or even 
 brush ; he never carries Rodger's razors nor Sheffield 
 scissors ; French perfumes are not used by him ; German 
 hair-oil is not in his stock ; he has neither hairbrush nor 
 comb, but for all that he is the village barber, and he 
 thinks that he knows his business well. He glories in his 
 own skill ; he has a few rough-made iron razors with very 
 little of steel about them, a rusty pair of scissors, a tiny brass 
 cup to hold water, a small piece of iron sharpened at the 
 
48 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 end to pare the nails of the fingers and toes, a thorn 
 extractor, a coarse pincer, a rough bone, and an old piece 
 of leather. These are the instruments which he uses for his 
 work. 
 
 The barber, like the d/ioi?y, lives in a corner of the 
 village. His house is also built at the cost of the inhabi- 
 tants ; he gets about sixpence per annum from each house 
 and a handful of food daily ; he has his privileges and his 
 annual corn at the time of harvest ; he is not refused by any 
 gardener when he asks for vegetables ; he gets gifts of 
 different kinds when there are festivals and pleasure days. 
 A certain fee is allowed him when he shaves the hair of 
 a firstborn child for the first time, and he also gets a cloth 
 from the village bridegroom when he seeks the help of the 
 barber to dress his hair and to shave his face just before his 
 wedding. The village barber has no fixed place where he 
 can take people for shaving ; he is at the beck and call of 
 anybody. He receives his customers or patients under the 
 shade of a tree, or on the bank of a pool or a tank or at a 
 stable, or in the veranda of a house. 
 
 The barber will go to the corner of the backyard of a house 
 and there sit down conveniently with his customer. Then he 
 begins to sharpen his razor on a small bone, finishing it off on 
 a small piece of leather — this smooths the edge of the razor. 
 He wets the head with water and rubs it well with his hand, 
 and uses his razor at the spot he has rubbed, whether it be the 
 head or the face. The Indian villagers do not wear beards as 
 a rule, but the Mahomedans do. The barber has to make a 
 clean shave of everything except the moustache. When a 
 man submits himself to a barber he is cruelly tormented ; 
 some parts are sure to be bleeding ; there are several cuts 
 on his face and head ; every inch shaved by the barber will 
 have a burning sensation for hours together. When a man 
 
TRADES, Etc. 49 
 
 is being shaved he cries out ' /ippa ' (' O father !') if he feels 
 much pain ; but the barber goes on shaving, though the 
 man still shrinks, and utters ' Awiadii T (' What do you mean, 
 fellow ?'). Then the barber tries to sharpen the razor on the 
 skin of his right leg or on the skin of his left hand. This is a 
 very peculiar, and by no means successful, method of 
 sharpening a knife. Then he applies it again, and if he still 
 iinds that his razor is but a handsaw he commences to tell 
 his customer some stories of young girls of the village, and 
 with these the man forgets for the time his pain. If he 
 belongs to that class which requires a clean shave from 
 head to foot he has to exercise his patience for an hour 
 or two. 
 
 When the barber shaves the neck-hair some men are 
 accustomed to try and please the barber by promising to 
 give him a pair of new cloths on the next festival day, or a 
 sheep or a fowl to be killed at the next New Year's Day. 
 In this way they renew and multiply their promises without 
 any intention of fulfilling them. The barber, too, takes his 
 own turn and plays tricks. If he finds that a customer of 
 his does not pay his annual allowance, or bestow his usual 
 gifts, he dodges him by saying that he will come down to 
 his house and shave him and his male children at a fixed 
 time— on the 12th, Friday next; but he does not mean to 
 go on that day. If the barber again be questioned he fixes 
 another date, another, and yet another, till the man gets 
 tired. Then the man brings a charge against the barber to 
 the village court. The village ' Court of Arbitration ' settles 
 the dispute between the barber and the villager. 
 
 If a barber finds a worse customer in the village he 
 determines to disgrace him. He goes straight to the house 
 of his bad customer and calls him out to be shaved. Both the 
 villager and the barber then go to the shade of a tree a little 
 
50 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 way from the village. There they sit down, and the barber 
 begins to shave the man. While one side of the head is 
 being shaved the barber offers an insult to the customer, 
 which the man cannot bear. So he begins to abuse the 
 barber, and a regular quarrel takes place. The barber uses 
 only some indecent expressions, and takes care not to hurt 
 the man. The villager, being a man of higher caste than 
 the barber, cannot control his passion, and so he strikes the 
 barber. That is exactly the thing that the barber wanted. 
 He leaves the villager there half-shaved and takes up his 
 belongings and runs off to the village court-house, where he 
 lodges his complaint against the villager, whom he has left 
 half-shaved. It is a great disgrace to be seen walking 
 through the village half-shaved, and it is a very strange 
 spectacle in any nation. The poor villager covers his head 
 with his upper cloth and goes home filled with sorrow and 
 shame. 
 
 The kuddymaken, or the * son of the village,' does not 
 always keep himself to his profession. Sometimes he turns 
 village surgeon. He has a peculiar lancet, and with this he 
 performs his wonderful operations. If a villager happens to 
 have some eruption upon him he seeks the aid of a barber. 
 The manner in which he operates is altogether unscientific 
 and troublesome. If he has to operate on a boil he cuts it 
 in a cross form with his crude knife without any considera- 
 tion of its fitness for opening. He does not know how to 
 apply chloroform, but he puts the patient under the influence 
 of alcoholic liquors. However clever he may think him- 
 self to be, his operation is neither more nor less than 
 torturing and butchering ; but we must bear in mind that 
 his charges are next to nothing. 
 
 The village barbers are wonderful fellows for cock-fighting ; 
 they generally rear fighting cocks, often half a dozen of them. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 51 
 
 The privilege of getting food from their neighbours enables 
 them to feed these cocks. Some of them are very skilful in 
 handling the fighting cocks when the lancets are attached to 
 their feet. They smartly catch their own cock when he flies 
 against his rival. The barbers who delight in cock-fighting 
 will carry their cocks even to a distance often miles, and there 
 they will spend a whole day — without having any noontide 
 meal — till nine or ten at night. If the cocks are wounded 
 in fighting the men are full of anxiety concerning them. 
 They chew a bit of dry ginger and blow into the mouth, 
 nostrils and ears of the wounded and fainting birds ; they 
 put a wet cloth on the head of the wounded creature and 
 pour a few drops of water into its mouth in order to refresh 
 it. If a barber happens to win with a bird it is a day of great 
 joy and victory for him. When he approaches his village he 
 sends for the parish drums, and to the deafening noise of 
 these drums he marches through the dull streets of the 
 village to his home. On the following day he runs down to 
 the house of the goldsmith with a piece of silver, of which 
 he wants a ring made to decorate the leg of his victorious 
 bird. 
 
 We have said enough about the inefficiency of the barbers 
 in shaving ; but there is a story current which serves to show 
 that there are honourable exceptions among them. It 
 appears that a king happened to be on a visit to his country 
 seat. While there, a barber was summoned to shave his 
 face. When the barber arrived he found that the king was 
 sleeping. He took courage, however, to approach the king, 
 who was sleeping in the outer court of his country seat, and 
 actually succeeded in shaving him without awaking him. 
 Then the barber went away. When the king awoke he 
 ordered his attendant to bring the barber in. The barber 
 came in, and prostrated himself before the king, and in- 
 
52 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 formed his highness, with his body trembUng, that he had 
 already shaved him while he was sleeping. The king was 
 highly pleased with his country barber, and loaded him with 
 gifts. 
 
 The wives of barbers are nurses, and are useful in attend- 
 ing sick children. When children suffer from coughs or 
 bronchitis the barber's wife knows a herb with which to treat 
 them. Throat complaints are cured by these women, who 
 insert some mixture with the help of their fingers. Although 
 this application of the finger seems a cruel kind of treatment, 
 it certainly relieves the pain of the children, and causes them 
 to sleep well. 
 
 The barber's wife is also serviceable to the village Brahmin 
 widows. She is called in by them twice a month or so in 
 order that she may shave their heads. 
 
 She sometimes plays the part of the village fool by carrying 
 messages to strange lovers, for which she is amply paid. 
 Her services are very highly appreciated by profligate village 
 women, to whom she is helpful in the carrying out of their 
 unlawful schemes. The barber woman is also known as the 
 midwife of the village. The mother of a barber, or a 
 widowed sister of a barber, takes up this profession, but the 
 midwife is too often an angel of death. She treats her 
 patient with extreme inconsiderateness, and even with cruelty. 
 Not having the slightest knowledge of medical science, or 
 instruments with which to meet cases of difficulty, many 
 lives are lost in consequence of her rough and unskilful 
 treatment. Reform in relation to these family exigencies 
 is urgently needed to save the lives of the women of India. 
 
 
TRADES, ETC. 53 
 
 7. THE POTTER {Kusavan). 
 
 No Indian village could exist without the help of a potter. 
 According to the classifications of India, the potter belongs 
 to a subdivision of one of the classes in this land of caste. 
 He wears a sacred thread in order to indicate that he 
 belongs to the old Aryan stock, and he has a tuft of hair on 
 the front part of his head, which distinguishes him from all 
 other classes of the community, except a certain class of 
 Brahmins in the Travancore country, and a certain class of 
 people in Malabar. The term kusavan (a potter) is said to be 
 derived from the Sanscrit word ku, signifying 'earth,' which 
 is the material in which he works. Avan is a personal termi- 
 nation. There are 124,332 potters in Southern India itself. 
 
 The potter lives in a village which he finds suited to his 
 calling, and this he makes his centre. He has a district of 
 villages to which he supplies his pots. He is unlike the 
 d/ioby and the barber, for he does not get his wages from the 
 villagers generally. He has a simple machine, which has 
 remained unaltered for some two thousand years. He takes 
 no trouble to improve his machinery or to lessen his manual 
 labour. He and his family are the workers in his workshop. 
 The material he works with is clay, and this he prepares at 
 great cost of time and labour. He digs up the earth, and 
 brings it home, and begins by straining it. Then he puts 
 this earth in a corner of his yard, and pours water over it 
 constantly. He and his wife spend hours together in 
 treading this clay. Then he takes it, and puts it in a mill, 
 which grinds it suitably for his purpose. According to the 
 design he has in his mind, he takes up a certain quantity of 
 clay, and forms it into a round ball, which he places on the 
 top of his machine. This machine is made out of a few 
 
54 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 pieces of wood in the form of a wheel. He puts the wheel 
 in motion, and when it revolves he touches the clay ball 
 with a well-shaped small wooden piece on all sides of the 
 ball to give the formation of the vessel which he wants to 
 bring out. 
 
 The method and instruments with which he works are 
 simple, but the skill that he displays in shaping the particular 
 form of vessel he requires is very remarkable. After turning 
 the vessel upon the wheel, he takes it into his hands, and 
 touches it here and there with a piece of wood. When he 
 finishes in this way a certain number of vessels for cooking 
 and other purposes, he exposes them to the sun to be dried. 
 For this purpose the winter season is not suited. When the 
 vessels are dried they are kept in a hole and covered up with 
 stubble, dry cow-dung and straw. When the vessels are 
 burnt in a kiln, they are left in it to be cooled during one 
 day and one night. Then the potter brings them home. 
 He separates the vessels according to the number of orders 
 which he has received. He lays up all the pots, numbering 
 twenty-five to thirty, in a nest made out of ropes. He 
 carries a load himself, and engages others also to carry the 
 loads, and walks to some distant village, where he supplies 
 the goods that were ordered. 
 
 If the villagers are in a hurry for the vessels they go to 
 his house to fetch them. 
 
 Among the different kinds of vessel which a potter makes 
 are pots, small or large, for cooking food ; hollow pans for 
 making Indian curries or soups; flat pans to fry meat or 
 Indian vegetables ; waterpots of large and small size ; tubs 
 for watering the domestic animals; a number of pots, both 
 large and small, in which to store up the provisions, and 
 these are generally called adduku panais (studded pots in 
 rows). This row of pots is used to secure the valuables ; the 
 
TRADES, ETC. 55 
 
 small pots and vessels are used to carry the food of a farmer 
 to the fields. The poor class of people use earthen articles 
 for the purpose of eating and drinking. Besides these, the 
 potter makes earthen rings for water wells, and small, 
 movable jars to hold grain. 
 
 In the form of wages, the potter has a fixed measure of 
 grain annually from every farmer to whom he supplies the 
 necessary vessels twice in the year. If they want any vessel 
 during the interval, they must pay the usual price for it. 
 The labouring class should pay the price of every vessel 
 which they purchase from him. In a wealthy farmer's house 
 might be found about 300 vessels, large and small. In 
 the house of a labourer there would be from ten to thirty 
 vessels of the most necessary kinds. Some of the village 
 officials get vessels forcibly from the poor potters by 
 exercising an undue authority over them. 
 
 Whatever may be the usefulness of the potter, one thing 
 is certain, he creates innumerable gods and goddesses for 
 the villagers. And he also makes for them images of dogs, 
 elephants, cows, tigers, horses, cocks and hens, children^ 
 men and women, of monstrous size and having a frightful 
 appearance. These images are offered by the villagers at 
 the demon temples. 
 
 The potters, as a class, are simple-minded, harmless folk. 
 They will never face a man who tries to pick a quarrel 
 with them. They, like other villagers, find no opportunity 
 to educate their children. They move in a limited circle, 
 and it is little wonder they do not care to improve them- 
 selves, for they have always to meddle with mud, and mud 
 alone. To illustrate the simplicity of a potter, we may give 
 here one instance. On a certain day, the village chief sent 
 his peon to the village where the potter lived, and he was to 
 bring certain vessels from the potter for nothing. Knowing 
 
56 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 of this, the potter went to a palm-grove, and hid himself 
 there. The peon who passed by that way saw a man stand- 
 ing under a palm-tree. But the peon was not able to make 
 out that he was the potter. So he simply asked him : ' Why 
 are you standing there ?' The man replied : ' I am looking 
 at the palm-tree, and thinking whether I could make a 
 plough for myself.' The peon then said : ' Ah ! you are a 
 kusavan ' (a potter or a fool). * Would anyone use a palm- 
 tree for a plough? It is quite unusual' Then said the 
 potter : ' Ah ! how could you know that I was here ?' At 
 once the peon knew that he was the village potter, to whom 
 he was going, and caught him by the hand, and said : ' Lo, 
 fellow ! you have been hiding yourself under the palms. 
 Now come on and give me the vessels.' 
 
 r 
 
 8. BRICKLAYERS {Kiittars). 
 
 There is no particular class of people who are called 
 ' bricklayers.' The unfashionable and uninteresting build- 
 ings do not require skilful and well-trained bricklayers. 
 However, there are bricklayers, who go about with their 
 trowel and plumb-line in their hands. These men generally 
 belong to the vellala class ; they are known as kuitars. 
 They are engaged to build houses for the upper and middle 
 classes of villagers. The lower class of villagers do the 
 work of raising the four walls of their own huts. Sun-burnt 
 bricks, clay, and rough stones are the materials with which 
 the village bricklayer works. He need not spend much 
 time in planning to raise his buildings, for the village build- 
 ing is simple and plain. He has to raise, for a middle-class 
 
TRADES, ETC. 57 
 
 villager, a long hall, two rooms, and a kitchen, with tho 
 usual Indian veranda, called piai. To erect this building 
 the bricklayer works for some months. The bricks are 
 made and dried in fields before they are removed to the 
 site of the buildings. Then the bricklayer engages a few 
 boys and girls, who are cdiW^d sitials, and also a few working- 
 class women, to help him in his work. 
 
 One may see a village bricklayer using his plumb-line, in 
 order to make the owner of the building think that he shows 
 great ingenuity in making the walls upright. But in fact he 
 only wastes his time, for the walls appear to the naked eye 
 quite crooked. The head-bricklayer gets daily wages of 
 eight annas, or eightpence. The minor workers get three- 
 pence per day, the women get fourpence. In some villages 
 the woman is classified with a minor worker, and then she 
 is paid only threepence per day. While raising the walls 
 the bricklayer carefully avoids making openings for ventila- 
 tion. He puts no side-windows in the walls. When the 
 time comes to put the door-posts into position, the bricklayer 
 gets drunk, and makes himself merry at the expense of the 
 owner of the house. If the owner of the house is a man of 
 means, he makes the day one of great rejoicing to all his 
 workers. 
 
 He offers a blood sacrifice of a lamb at the door-post, 
 and breaks cocoanuts, and burns incense, and thus he 
 invokes the blessing of his family god, in order to prevent 
 the house from falling, and to get him to stand at the door- 
 post, so as to prevent the angel of death from entering the 
 house. He also paints the lintel with a red paste, as a sign 
 of the blood sacrifice he has offered to his god. Possibly 
 the Jewish sacrifice of the Passover, instituted by God, has 
 found its way to these remote Indian villages, where it is 
 still practised in different forms. After this ceremony the 
 
 5 
 
58 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 roofing of the building takes place. Almost all the Indian 
 houses have thatched roofs, and this is a cause of great 
 calamities, and even loss of life and property, in the rural 
 parts of India, because fire breaks out so readily in them. 
 
 When the building of a house is finished, the bricklayer 
 is rewarded by the owner with a pair of new cloths and a 
 turban. The owner also invites his friends and relations, 
 and feeds them with a sumptuous meal at the opening of 
 the house. In some cases he also gives alms to the poor of 
 the village. He is bound to invite his family priest to per- 
 form the ceremonies on an auspicious day. He sends some 
 of his relations to the nearest town to procure plantain, 
 plantain-leaves, cocoanuts, and vegetables of all kinds. And 
 thus he collects some of the necessary things which he 
 could not procure in the village. Very early in the morning 
 of the opening day he and the members of his family 
 go to a tank, or well, and there they finish their bathing 
 and their piija/is before the sun rises. At a fixed hour the 
 family priest comes to the house to perform the ceremonies. 
 He kindles a holy fire in the middle of the house, and 
 places a lamp, two earthen pots filled with holy water, 
 several measures of rice, heaped on plantain-leaves, with 
 plantains, vegetables, and flowers, nicely arranged. Before 
 these offerings sit the family, the i)riest, and his companions, 
 and he utters prayers for about an hour. Then he blesses 
 the owner of the house and his family, and sprinkles the 
 urine of a cow all over the building. Then he blesses the 
 ovens and fireplaces, in which the lady of the house places 
 an earthen pot, boils milk and cooks food for herself and 
 family and invited guests. Immediately the female members 
 and female friends commence the cooking for the day. Of 
 course, some of the male members also take part in this. 
 The family priest bundles up the rice, fruits, vegetables. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 59 
 
 and other offerings, and carries them off to his home to 
 enjoy them. The village bricklayer also puts in an appear- 
 ance on this occasion, and makes himself quite at home. 
 
 Of late it has become the fashion for well-to-do classes to 
 build stone houses, in order to save their dwellings from the 
 danger of fire, and to protect themselves from the strong 
 and merciless hands of the burglars. In these the brick- 
 layer has displayed his skill by placing a few artificial pea- 
 cocks and other shapes of animals in different parts of the 
 house. There are some houses having upper stories built 
 by the bricklayer, but these are used as storehouses for 
 different kinds of grain, and they are only suited for such a 
 purpose. 
 
 r 
 
 9. THE WELL-DIGGERS (OUars). 
 
 These people are natives of Otlyam, a country north of 
 Madras. The term ' Oddan ' seems to be a corruption of 
 ' Odhra ' (modern, * Orissa '). There are 172,202 oUars in 
 South India. The eldest members of the caste officiate as 
 priests. Their marriage ceremony is brief and very inex- 
 pensive. While the bridegroom ties a ^/la/y to the bride's 
 neck, the relatives present throw some rice mixed with 
 turmeric on the heads of the bridal pair. Widow marriages 
 are both permitted and practised. They drink alcoholic 
 drinks freely ; even their women and children partake of this 
 tempting cup. In relation to the rite of marriage, these 
 people have little or no principle, hence polygamy and 
 divorces are very common among them. A man is freely 
 allowed to marry any number of wives and to discharge 
 
 5—2 
 
6o INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 them at his pleasure, but the woman is strictly restricted 
 from changing partners after having had eighteen husbands 
 already. They favour a woman who has divorced six 
 husbands, and is married to a seventh man ; the blessing 
 of such a woman on a bridal pair is greatly prized. 
 
 The oUars spend all their days in digging the earth. The 
 wells which supply pure and ffesh water to villagers, the 
 reservoirs which quench the thirst of cattle and provide 
 opportunity for the ablutions of villagers, the channels 
 which carry the river waters into the bosom of the country 
 to supply the tanks, are all dug by the ottars. They are a 
 very active and energetic people, born to die as diggers of 
 the earth. Their coarse baskets, rough spades, long crow- 
 bars, and country pickaxes, are property handed down from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 These men are scattered throughout the length and 
 breadth of India. They pitch their movable huts wherever 
 they can find work. Men dig the earth with their spades or 
 pickaxes, and the women do the work of carrying it in their 
 baskets. They get their wages according to the amount of 
 work that is executed. As both sexes labour hard they are 
 healthy and strong in physique, simple and harmless in 
 mind, and very temperate in their habits. There is suffi- 
 cient evidence to prove that this class of people were once 
 very serviceable to ancient kings and princes as sappers and 
 miners. 
 
 There are two classes of oftars, the /nun ottars (earth 
 diggers) and the kuHottars (stone-cutters). They monopolize 
 all the earth-diggings of the villagers, who treat them very 
 kindly, and advance them money with confidence. The 
 landowners who have extensive tracts of lands engage these 
 earth-diggers to make their lands fit for cultivation, to deepen 
 their tanks, to raise their banks, and to open new channels. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 6l 
 
 They work willingly and patiently from morning to sunset, 
 taking only an hour for their noontide meal. Their principal 
 articles of food are raggee and different kinds of rats. In 
 India there are more than eighteen different kinds of rats. 
 The o/far can choose any one of these eighteen kinds of rats 
 for his dinner. The wife, on returning from work, prepares 
 the meal out of raggee flour and makes some fine rat-soup. 
 When the man returns home he bathes in cold water, and 
 then relishes the dish which has been prepared by his wife, 
 and takes for his drink water. There is hardly a more hard- 
 working man in India than the of/af% and he enjoys sound 
 health, and finds himself quite equal to his work. The 
 rough ways are smoothed, and the crooked paths are made 
 straight by these ottars. They are also remarkable for their 
 cleanliness. 
 
 A very interesting story is current that the god Siva once 
 assumed the form of an oitan. Near the famous Madura city, 
 which is situated on the bank of the Vyga, a holy river, 
 which had descended from heaven, was at a certain time 
 overflowing. By the furious force of the current a large 
 breach was made on the bank of the river, and this involved 
 extreme danger for the magnificent city. Being alarmed at 
 this threatened breach, the king Pandyan summoned a man 
 from every house in the city. The king himself headed the 
 band, and they set to work to repair the breach. There was 
 a widow in the city who was earning her livelihood by selling 
 puddu (rice-pudding). The peons who were collecting men 
 for the work of repairing the breach went to this widow, and 
 demanded a man from her house. I'he woman being a 
 child-widow, and not having any male member in her family, 
 was unable to obey the order of the king. However, she 
 saw a young man by her side, and said to him, * Go and do 
 the work for me, and I will feed you this day with my puddu .' 
 
62 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 This she said without knowing that he was the incarnated 
 Siva. The young man readily consented, and followed the 
 peon to the breach. The task-masters numbered the men 
 according to the number of the houses, and found them all 
 correct. While the band was busily engaged in the work, the 
 young man who represented the widow was dodging about 
 here and there, and presently he went to the widow and asked 
 for some pudding. The woman willingly gave him some 
 puddu, and hurried him to the bank. But the young man 
 was found by the taskmasters to be lazy and inactive, and he 
 often absented himself from the work. He was warned to 
 stick to his business, but all in vain. It was nearly the time 
 for the king to come on a visit of inspection, and everyone 
 was doing his best, but this young man was between the 
 pudding and the river water. This they brought to the 
 notice of the king, who, being provoked in anger, struck the 
 young man. At once the young man disappeared, and the 
 stroke was felt by all the people of the city, as if it had been 
 struck on the back of each one of them. The queen in the 
 palace, the poor widow at her eating house, and the king 
 himself felt it. By this the king, the peons, the taskmasters, 
 and the poor widow all knew that the young man who had 
 played the part of an otian was none else than the god Siva, 
 who had come to help the poor widow in her time of need. 
 
 r 
 
 lo. THE STONEMASON. 
 
 The village stone-cutter belongs to the group of five 
 artizans of the village. He generally lives where there is 
 solid rock which will suit his purposes. He opens his 
 
TRADES, ETC. 63 
 
 workshop under the burning sun on the open rock. He 
 has a few chisels of different kinds and some iron hammers. 
 With these simple tools he turns out some really good 
 and useful work. He makes the stone for grinding 
 curry materials ; the mortar in which to pound rice ; and 
 the mills — which are primitive in style — for grinding 
 the flour. He can also make stone steps, pillars, beams, 
 doorposts, jars, stands, troughs for watering the cattle, 
 and other useful articles that are required for domestic 
 use. He is not a monthly or annually paid artizan, but 
 he receives suitable payment from the people for all the 
 articles with which he supplies them. He does not go 
 about to collect grain and vegetables from the villagers. 
 If any villager chooses to give him a gift in the form 
 of grain or fruit, of course he is only too happy to 
 accept it. 
 
 The skill of the famous Indian stonemasons has been 
 displayed in the erection of the temples of India. The 
 remarkable way in which groups of animals and human 
 figures are carved out of the solid rock in some of the most 
 famous ancient Hindu temples, speaks volumes for the skil- 
 fulness of the Indian stonemason. There is a temple (con- 
 secrated to the Hindu god Subrawanian, the second son of 
 the god Siva) at Kalugumalai, in the Tinnevelly district of 
 Southern India, which is noted for its singular situation 
 under a solid rock. The cave itself is well worth a visit, 
 and the carvings in solid rock are simply marvellous. 
 
 In the temple of Sirramgam, in the Trichinopoly district, 
 there are several indications of the skill of the stonemason. 
 There are many beautiful pagodas, which shoot up into the 
 sky to a lofty height, in the midst of hundreds of palm-trees 
 and mango-trees, between the two great rivers, the Kavery and 
 the Kolliram. The beautiful and attractive stone pillars, 
 
64 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 which stand in some of the temple mandapam (cloisters) 
 were first conceived in the mind of the stonemason, and 
 then fashioned into shape by his skilful hands. At the 
 bottom of the pillar is the figure of a bear ten feet in height ; 
 in the middle of the pillar is a horse about eight feet in 
 height ; on the back of the horse there is a hero holding a 
 long spear in his right hand, which is passing through the 
 bear that holds up the pillar. On the top of the pedestal 
 there hang different kinds of Indian fruits. There are 
 several pillars of this kind, and they differ only in the forms 
 given to the animals. 
 
 The stonecutters also make innumerable gods and god- 
 desses for the people. They make gods with human bodies 
 and animal heads, or with animal bodies and human heads. 
 Their fingers have formed images of all the living creatures 
 of India, and placed them in the sacred buildings of the 
 Hindu community. 
 
 It is a general complaint that the ancient Indians did not 
 leave any proper record of the history of their land. The 
 stonecutters have to some extent made up for this deficiency. 
 They have told the histories and mysteries in the works of 
 their hands. The inscriptions carved by them in various 
 temples some two to three thousand years ago are still read 
 with interest, and they are often used in deciding the 
 disputes as to the rights of the peasants, the priests, and the 
 princes of the land. 
 
 There are many stories connected with the scientific 
 knowledge of the stonemasons. There is a beautiful and 
 even magnificent temple in the historical and ancient city 
 of Madura. This temple was built by the founders of the 
 Pandyan Dynasty, and afterwards much improved by 
 Terumal Naick, the latest Hindu ruler of Madura. In 
 this temple there is a royer gopuram (the great pagoda), which 
 
TRADES, ETC. 65 
 
 was built by Terumal Naick. There are two large stone 
 pillars in this royer gopiiram. A certain stonemason, by 
 order of the king, brought the stones from the mountain^ 
 and placed them in the pagoda, and then died. His 
 son came, and attempted to follow in the footsteps of 
 his father in erecting the royal monument to the goddess 
 Meenatchi, and then he died. By-and-by his son came to the 
 temple to pay his vows. As he entered the royer gopiiram 
 he saw the great stone pillars. As he looked at them he 
 thought that his grandfather had made a mistake in bringing 
 one of the stones and placing it in the sacred place, and he 
 gave expression to his feelings while he was standing in the 
 temple, saying that the temple was polluted according to 
 ' building science,' inasmuch as in one of the two huge 
 pillars a frog was still alive at a certain spot towards the top 
 of the pillar. This statement was brought to the notice of 
 the king, and the man was summoned at once into his 
 presence. The king asked the stonemason, 'Have you 
 said that my temple is polluted on account of one of the 
 pillars being placed in the main entrance of the temple ?' 
 ' Yes, your highness,' politely said the man. ' If you cannot 
 prove your statement to be true, remember your head will 
 be severed from your body,' said the king in a very severe 
 tone of voice. Having placed his life as the pledge for 
 the truth of his statement, the stonemason boldly asked 
 the king to follow him to the temple. The king and his 
 courtiers went. The stonemason requested one of the 
 servants of the king to place a ladder beside the pillar, 
 and to go up to the top, and break off a certain portion of 
 the pillar with a hammer. When several small pieces had 
 been broken off a stone frog actually fell down, to the great 
 surprise of the king and his advisers. The king imme- 
 diately ordered his servants to bring gifts from the palace, 
 
66 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 and these he presented to the stonemason, and he even 
 bestowed upon him royal honours. 
 
 'f 
 
 II. THE BASKET-MAKERS (A';/;v7Z'^r:f). 
 
 The word kui-avaj's means ' mountaineers.' Since the 
 men from the mountain districts have come into the fertile 
 plains they have taken to the occupations of fortune-telling, 
 bird-catching, and basket-making. Some of the men and 
 women are inveterate robbers ; the eyes of the public are 
 kept on them. Their pilfering habits prevent their moving 
 freely among the other tribes, so they have to lead a 
 secluded life. When the villagers would do business with 
 them they bring them into the front yards of their houses, 
 settle matters there, and then quickly send them away. 
 
 On some of the large Hindu temple festivals thousands 
 of people come from all parts of the country to pay their 
 vows and to worship. These large masses of people are 
 obliged to spend their da)s and nights under the trees, in 
 the open fields, and in temporary sheds. There is, of 
 course, great confusion and uproar with the noise of the 
 devotees, the merrymakers, the pleasure-seekers, and the 
 buyers and sellers. At such scenes the kiiravars find a fine 
 opportunity for exercising their pilfering skill. Here a woman 
 cries out that her earring is gone ; there a man cries out 
 that his handkerchief, with some money in it, is lost ; here a 
 lad is crying out that his upper-cloth is lost ; there a girl is 
 complaining that her finger-rings are missing. Everyone 
 will be sure to suspect the kuravars, who are stealthily 
 
TRADES, ETC. 67 
 
 moving about. Constantly kurava men and women are 
 being caught, examined, and illtreated by the pohce otificers. 
 During the time of harvest the kurava women are 
 scattered abroad in the villages, with their funny baskets and 
 their curious cane, trying to tell fortunes. They go to every 
 house, especially when the men are out, and find fine oppor- 
 tunities for deceiving the ignorant women. The fortune- 
 teller will catch hold of a young unmarried woman or her 
 mother and will tell her all sorts of things about her future 
 husband, the direction from which he will come, and his 
 wealth and beauty. Sometimes she will also fix the time 
 of marriage for the waiting young woman. This naturally 
 pleases the inmates of the house, who are glad to give some 
 measures of grain to the fortune-teller, and in this way she 
 goes on from house to house receiving grain for her support. 
 
 Some of these people are engaged in making baskets, 
 which are made from palm-leaves and the branches of other 
 trees. The men, women, and children are engaged in making 
 them for several days together. They make baskets for the 
 use of those who sow grain, for carrying the grain, for re- 
 moving cow-dung, for the use of the rice and grain in the 
 house. These baskets are taken in large numbers to the 
 general market {Sandy), which is held once a week in some 
 central village, to which people gather from the villages 
 around. Having sold their baskets, the kiiravars purchase 
 grain with their money and take it to their homes. 
 
 They dwell in small huts. They make free use of arrack 
 and toddy in all their ceremonies, and even on ordinary 
 occasions they indulge somewhat freely in alcoholic drinks. 
 
 They are, like some other aboriginal tribes, devil- 
 worshippers, and social morality is no concern of theirs. 
 Their elders often hold a court of divorce in order to settle 
 disputes between the husbands and wives of the clan. 
 
68 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 The customs connected with the settlement of disputes 
 between a husband and a wife are exceedingly curious. If a 
 basket-maker has a charge to bring against his wife he must 
 call a court of divorce. This court consists of about a 
 dozen elders of the tribe. The man who makes the charge 
 must summon these elders ; he himself must go to every 
 village and inform each elder of the nature of the charge 
 which he is preferring against his wife. When all the parties 
 are informed they fix a day on which the court is to sit. 
 The sitting of the court commences about eight o'clock in 
 the morning, under a tree outside a village. The judges, 
 having partaken of their morning meal, sit on the ground 
 facing one another, but leaving a sufficient space in the 
 centre. The two parties with their witnesses must wait at a 
 sufficient distance to be out of hearing. The man who 
 brings the charge must provide a big jar full of arrack and 
 place it in the centre of the group ; then he must prostrate 
 himself before the elders. In some cases he is required to 
 place one or two roast fowls with the arrack. The plaintiff 
 must also take special care to bring a ullakku (one-fourth of 
 an Indian measure) or a few cocoanut-shells. The judges 
 divide themselves into two parties, one taking the part of the 
 plaintiff and the other the part of the accused. The chief 
 judge fills the measure with arrack and drinks, then he asks 
 the plaintiff to state the charge which he brings against his 
 wife before all the judges. As soon as the suit is heard the 
 chief judge fills the cup with the liquor and passes it to the 
 judge next to him, addressing the plaintiff with the words 
 ' Well done.' Now the cup goes around, and each judge gets 
 a drink ; the cup goes round once again, and then the judges 
 begin to get excited and proceed to argue out the case very 
 elaborately. Suddenly one of them will stop the proceed- 
 ings of the court by asking the judges to have a drink. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 69 
 
 The cup then goes round again. Perhaps one of the judges 
 will then throw a new light on the case, which will greatly 
 add to the confusion and excitement. The accused is not 
 yet brought in to give her statement, but the jar full of 
 liquor is consumed by the judges and they become drunken 
 to a helpless degree, so that they have to postpone the case 
 until some future time. The judges then disperse without 
 even taking leave of each other. The poor plaintiff now 
 must wait until he can find money enough to purchase 
 another jarful of liquor. When he manages to get that the 
 judges assemble again, under the same tree, and behave in 
 precisely the same manner. In this way it may take years 
 for a man to get a divorcement from his wife in the court of 
 the kiiravar judges. If a woman prefers a case against her 
 husband she must go through the same routine. Hence the 
 proverb, ' Appadi sol valakki aven keyel kodu olakki,' />., 
 ' Say so the case and give the cup in the company's hand.' 
 
 The marriage customs of this caste are also peculiar 
 — each party endeavours to ascertain the mind of the other 
 party privately. Having ascertained it, they consult a 
 Brahmin about the intended marriage. If he gives a 
 favourable answer the bridegroom's party proceeds to the 
 bride's house to arrange for the marriage. They take arrack 
 with them and give it to the bride's father. He also 
 procures arrack, and both parties drink freely of it, dis- 
 tribute the betel, and then begin to settle the conditions of 
 the marriage. The bridegroom's father asks the bride's 
 father whether he intends to give his daughter in marriage to 
 his son. If he replies in the affirmative the bridegroom's 
 father gives him a little arrack in a cocoanut-shell and also 
 a piece of tobacco. This is called * the arrack and tobacco of 
 confirmation'; also Tijembu full of water is placed before the 
 couple, and a grass named thiirbai {i.e., Agrestis linearis) is 
 
70 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 put into the water. This is regarded as an oath between 
 the couple. 
 
 A feast then follows, with arrack and toddy. The parties 
 again meet after dinner to settle the parisani or nuptial 
 present, which, if the bride be related to the bridegroom, is 
 four )iarungus. One narungu is equal to rupees 8 34. 
 Of these one is paid immediately, together with rupees i 3-4, 
 which are spent in feasting. The other three nariingus are 
 paid at the rate of one per annum. 
 
 But if the bride be not related to the bridegroom, 
 the parisani amounts to ten or twelve narungus, out of 
 which four are to be paid immediately, together with 
 rupees i 3-4 for the feast, and the remainder is to be paid 
 within five years. If these sums are not paid regularly, the 
 bride should be sent away to her father's house. 
 
 In cases where separation occurs, the sum given as the 
 nuptial present should be returned, and anyone wiUing to 
 pay the same amount may take the woman again in marriage. 
 
 On the imikurtham^ or marriage-day, dLpandal'is constructed 
 in the bride's house. The bridegroom shaves himself, 
 bathes, and is dressed in new clothes. Having drunk some 
 arrack, the bridegroom starts for the bride's house, with 
 garlands on his neck, attended by his relations and friends. 
 The bridegroom's sister goes to the room where the bride is, 
 dresses her with new clothes, puts garlands on her neck, 
 and ties on the tha/lei, and the couple are then regarded as 
 married. 
 
 The bride and the bridegroom sit under ih^t panda/, facing 
 the east, and a piece of timber is covered with a clean cloth. 
 The bride's father takes the right hand of his daughter, and 
 places it in the right hand of the bridegroom, who holds it. 
 Then they both stand up, holding each other's hands, and, 
 having walked round the inanavarai three times, retire to a 
 
TRADES, ETC. 71 
 
 room, where they are seated looking eastwards. Then 
 follows a feast of arrack. The next morning the bridegroom 
 and bride, with their relations and friends, start for the 
 bridegroom's house. 
 
 In this caste children are promised in marriage even 
 before their birth. Two men, who wish to have a marriage 
 between their children, will say one to the other, ' If your 
 wife should have a girl and mine a boy, or yours a boy and 
 mine a girl, they must marry.' And to bind themselves 
 to this pledge, they exchange tobacco, and the bridegroom's 
 father makes a feast of arrack or toddy to the coming bride's 
 relations. But if, after the children are grown up, the 
 Brahmin should pronounce the omens unpropitious, the 
 marriage is not consummated, and the bride's father pays 
 the cost of the arrack and other spirits that were used at the 
 betrothal. 
 
 r 
 
 12. THE OIL-PRESSERS {Vaniars). 
 
 The oll-pressers form a very distinct class, and they have 
 a priest of their own caste. They do not live in every village, 
 but they choose a central village, so that they may have 
 easy access to other villages. They wear a sacred thread, 
 and they belong to the Siva sect. They are flesh-eaters and 
 total abstainers They marry their daughters very early, 
 and their widows do not re-marry. They are a quiet and 
 inoffensive people. There are 151,919 oil-pressers in 
 Southern India. 
 
 Their oil-mill is called chekkoo^ and it is made out of 
 the trunk of a large tree. This mill is still in its primi- 
 
 6 
 
72 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 tive state (see illustration). The forefathers of the oil- 
 pressers introduced this mill for pressing oil some two 
 thousand years ago, and no improvement of any kind has 
 been made in it. The mill is usually worked by two 
 bullocks, but some can be worked by a single bullock. 
 Some of the mills are therefore known as ' double bullock 
 oil-presses,' and others as * single bullock oil-presses.' 
 
 The oil-pressers buy their own oil seeds, such as gingelly, 
 lamp-oil, cocoanut, pinaykai^ and ilippay seeds, and they 
 sell the oil to the villagers. The oil-pressers generally carry 
 the oil in earthen vessels. The villagers buy the gingelly 
 oil, and rub it on themselves from head to foot, either on 
 Saturdays or on Wednesdays, and then wash it off with 
 seeyakkay or poonack, the Indian soap. They also use it in 
 preparing their curries (sauces) and cakes and sweets. For 
 these purposes cocoanut-oil is used in some parts of India. 
 The other oils are used for burning in the lamps. 
 
 There is a characteristic Indian story connected with these 
 oil-pressers. A certain oilmonger went to a village to sell 
 oil. While he was on his way he began to aspire to some- 
 thing higher than his lot. He had heard of the beauty and 
 accomplishments of the king's daughter, in the country in 
 which he lived. He had indeed seen her himself on several 
 occasions when she was driving with her father. So the 
 idea came into his mind that he would like to marry the 
 king's daughter, and if he did not he would die a bachelor. 
 Wiih this resolve in his mind, he was walking along, 
 meditating upon the advantages that he would gain by 
 marrying her. He thought that if he married a princess he 
 would be highly respected by the people, and everyone 
 would raise both hands over the head, and salute him when- 
 ever he came out of the palace. Then he thought that it 
 was his duty to return the salute. So he abruptly let go the 
 
6 — 2 
 
TRADES, ETC. 73 
 
 hands with which he was holding the oil-vessel, in order to 
 lift them in returning the salute, and, of course, the oil- 
 vessel fell down from his head, and broke to pieces, and the 
 oil was lost. Now the poor fellow began to realize his 
 position, and he thought he had made a mistake; but it was 
 too late. As the loss was a serious one to him, he sat down 
 by the wayside and began to cry and abuse his gods for 
 bringing this misfortune on him. 
 
 Just at that moment a certain king's son with his followers 
 happened to be passing that way, and he saw the poor man 
 crying bitterly by the wayside. Having compassion on him, 
 the prince sent one of his followers to find out what was the 
 matter with him. When the prince's follower went to the 
 oilmonger, he told him that he had lost his oil and oil- 
 vessel, and all through his ambitious imaginations. The 
 prince's followers took him to the prince, and made him 
 relate his own story. When the oilmonger told the prince 
 that he was thinking of marrying a certain king's daughter, 
 this prince laughed at the idea. But he ordered the oil- 
 monger to follow him to the nearest village. There he 
 ordered him to be shaved and bathed, and then he gave 
 him his own royal robes to put on, and made him ride in 
 his palanquin, the prince disguising himself as an ordinary 
 companion, and giving strict orders to all his men not to 
 reveal the trick, but to address the oilmonger as if he were 
 indeed the prince of Manianagar. He ordered them also 
 to tell everyone whom they might meet on their way that 
 this prince was an athletic champion and a great teacher of 
 Vedanta philosophy, and a master of Hindu literature. 
 Besides this, they must show him the most profound respect, 
 and never reveal the fact that he was only an oilmonger 
 whom they had picked up on their way. The prince himself 
 played the part of a chief attendant. All of them entered 
 
74 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the town in which the famous princess dwelt. The name 
 of this princess was Panchaletchmi, which means, 'The 
 possessor of beauty, wealth, courage, virtue and wisdom.' 
 
 As soon as they entered into the royal palace, they sent 
 word to the king that Prince Kampeeran of Manianagar had 
 come to marry the princess of Allagapuri, his famous 
 daughter. The king, having heard the news, jumped for 
 joy, for he had been waiting for several years to find .a 
 suitable husband for his daughter, who was the gem of his 
 family. He at once ordered his courtiers to attend to the 
 comforts of the prince and his companions. The prince of 
 Manianagar and his followers were lodged in a separate 
 palace, and there they were entertained according to the 
 Oriental custom. 
 
 On the following day the princess of Allagapuri sent her 
 maidens to see the new prince, and get some information 
 about him from his followers. As soon as the maidens 
 entered into the palace, the chief attendant received them 
 courteously and treated them kindly. Some of the maidens 
 were intelligent and well educated. When they saw the 
 manners and the attainments of the chief attendant, they were 
 struck with wonder. ' What need is there for us to see the 
 prince ? We have seen the chief attendant's manners, 
 attainments and beauty ; how nmch more wonderful must 
 the prince be !' said these clever maidens among themselves. 
 
 However, one of them said, ' Let us go and stand at a 
 distance, and see the prince before we return to our palace.' 
 
 So the chief attendant gave them a chance of just seeing 
 the prince at a distance, and then sent them away. The 
 maidens, having returned to the palace of the princess of 
 Allagapuri, reported very flatteringly concerning the prince 
 and his courtiers— so much so, indeed, that the princess 
 made up her mind to marry him. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 75 
 
 The king of Allagapuri sent several of his wise men to see 
 the prince, and they were all met by the chief attendant, who 
 answered every question that was put to him in relation to 
 philosophy and literature to their entire satisfaction. They 
 also returned with similar impressions to the maidens, and 
 reported to the king, who was highly pleased, and made all 
 arrangements for the marriage. 
 
 A certain auspicious day was fixed, and grand preparations 
 were made, and at last the marriage was over. No sooner 
 did the prince enter into the princess's palace than his chief 
 attendant and his followers dispersed one by one. 
 
 There was a full moon when the marriage took place, 
 and so the newly-married couple went up to the upper 
 chamber of the palace on the full moon night. They 
 walked on the terrace, looking at the sky, and the princess 
 explained several things about the stars to the prince, who 
 had been warned privately by the chief attendant to keep 
 quite silent for a few days after the marriage. However, the 
 poor husband could not control his tongue. He began to 
 talk on the very day of his marriage, and, pointing to the 
 full moon, he said, ' Ah, how^ nice the moon is ! I like it. 
 If I were in my home, I could press fifty measures of 
 gingelly seed in my mill in this moonlight, and extract the 
 oil before the sun rises.' 
 
 At once the heart of Panchaletchmi was broken, and 
 she fainted and dropped down. Then the maidens came to 
 her help, and conducted her to her bed. When she had 
 recovered herself, she called her husband, and asked him to 
 tell her the truth about himself, fearing that he must be an 
 oilmonger in caste. She, being satisfied with his statement, 
 then requested him not to reveal this to anyone, and she 
 made him truly a wise man in her father's kingdom. 
 
76 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 13. THE SWEEPER (To^y). 
 
 The village /ofy or sweeper is a menial servant of the 
 village, and is under the direct control of the watchman. 
 He sweeps the common places of the village, feeds the catde 
 in pounds, takes invitations or letters to the village officers, 
 carries accounts, etc., to the district officer, and helps at the 
 time of collecting the taxes from the ryots. He gets 
 nominal pay from the Government. In addition to this, the 
 villagers themselves give him a small annual grant. The 
 sweeper is always taken from the out-caste classes of South 
 India, so he cannot enter into any of the houses of the 
 villagers. 
 
 If he feels thirsty while he is working in the hot summer 
 days, he cries out for some water as he stands outside the 
 house, or at a distance from the public well. Then someone 
 who has compassion, either from the house or from the well, 
 wull pour water into his hands. The village sweeper is the 
 poorly-paid menial of the village. What he gets from the 
 Government and from the villagers is hardly sufficient to 
 maintain himself and his family. Yet he is an energetic 
 and hard-working fellow, and ever ready to obey the orders 
 of the village officers. 
 
 If any district officers or zamiiidars happen to pass through 
 the villages where there is no railway communication, the 
 village officers receive an order from them to keep post 
 bulls ready to draw their conveyances. As soon as the 
 order is received, the village toty is summoned at once, 
 whether it be night or day. 
 
 * Take the bulls, run up to that place (which may be 
 about fifteen miles off), and wait till the master comes ; when 
 he arrives, hand over the bulls to his cart-men, and also 
 
TRADES, ETC. 77 
 
 these fowls,' says the village munsijf in an authoritative 
 tone. 
 
 ' I have not taken my gangee {i.e., meal), sir,' says the 
 ioty. 
 
 ' What do we care about that, you fellow ! Go at once ; 
 run quick ! carry a bundle of straw on your head for the 
 bullocks,' says the village immsiff. 
 
 ' 1 have only just returned from the Tahga Office, where 
 master sent me with the letter ; my wife is boiling some rice 
 for me. Permit me to eat it and go, sir,' says the toty. 
 
 ' Watchman, beat the beggar for his impertinence,' says 
 the village judge. While this is going on, some kind- 
 hearted villager turns up and intercedes with the judge on 
 behalf of the toty, begging him to let the poor fellow take 
 his meal before he starts with the pair of post bullocks. 
 These usually belong to some villager, and are taken by 
 force to serve the authority. 
 
 When the task is over the toty cOmes back to his officer, 
 who orders him to go and watch his field, to keep the cattle 
 out, and to drive away the wild beasts. In the villages near 
 the mountains the toties are often wounded, and even killed, 
 while they are attending to their duties. On the whole the 
 toties are not treated with consideration by the village officers, 
 and they are very ill-paid, but they are a patient and hard- 
 working class. 
 
 r 
 
78 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 14. THE FARMER (Samusary). 
 
 Farming in India is still in its primitive state. No 
 scientific modes of operating on the soil have yet been 
 introduced. As most of the villagers are ignorant, they 
 are unable to form any idea of the art of tilling. Still, the 
 farmer does his best in ploughing, weeding, sowing, reaping, 
 and threshing. He keeps to the old style of his forefathers 
 in all his operations. He never fails to manure the ground 
 with cow-dung and goat-dung in order to enrich the soil, 
 In the case of wet cultivation he brings an enormous 
 quantity of different kinds of plants and scatters them over 
 the fields, in order to take away the salt from them, and to 
 help the plants to grow richer. Farming in India is quite 
 unlike that in the Western world. To begin with, the 
 farmer himself does not live in the midst of his fields. He 
 lives in a village two or three miles distant from the ground 
 which he is cultivating. His farm labourers, generally 
 poor out-caste people, live m a settlement of their own 
 about half a mile distant from the farmer's village. A 
 wealthy farmer has about 200 acres of land, all freehold ; 
 he pays the annual tax of about four shillings per acre 
 for dry land ; and for the wet cultivation, when he grows 
 rice, he has to pay from seven to twenty shillings per acre 
 of land for one year. If the farmer lives in za)nindar 
 villages, he has to give 50 per cent, of the grain at the time 
 of harvest (za)nindar land is like the estates of dukes and 
 lords in Europe). 
 
 There is a farmer in a village called Kylasapuram, who is 
 a Reddy by caste. He has a large house built with mud 
 walls in a square form, and having a thatched roof. At the 
 entrance of his house he has two large piais, one on each 
 
TRADES, ETC. 79 
 
 side, which are intended for guests. On these />/(i/s several 
 palm-leaf mats are kept ready, but the guest must be con- 
 tented with the artificial pillows made of earth. The mat 
 and this pillow make a comfortable bed for anyone who 
 visits this farmer's house. In a corner of one of these J^ia/s 
 there is a small room in which the farmer makes his daily 
 p?fja// (prayers). In the inner circle of the house there are 
 several rooms for keeping valuables in. At one corner of 
 the house there are granaries, which are peculiarly built of 
 small branches of trees and plastered with mud. This part 
 has a thatched roof, and a small entrance provided with a 
 lock and key. When anyone enters one of these granaries 
 he is nearly suffocated for want of air, but the farm labourer, 
 having opened the entrance awhile, is able to enter the 
 granary, and even to remain there for an hour. Some of 
 them sing songs of joy while they are removing the grain 
 from the granary. By the side of these granaries there is a 
 cattle-shed, in which are kept the milking-cows and buffaloes. 
 There is no farmer in India without several milking buffaloes 
 and also a few cows for his own domestic use. In some 
 other part of his spacious house there are stone troughs for 
 watering his cattle. He has a separate kitchen-house built 
 in Oriental style, and fitted with hundreds of earthen vessels 
 for cooking, and for keeping water for himself and his 
 servants. The female members of the family and several 
 males will be busily engaged in the kitchen preparing food 
 for the family and for the farm labourers. There is also a 
 neatly-built house in one corner of this farmer's yard, which 
 is utilized as the private apartments. On another side of 
 the house there is a shed for the bullocks which draw the 
 bandies (carts). The farmer also has a large cattle-shed out- 
 side the house in an enclosure. There he has some forty 
 or fifty bullocks kept ready for ploughing-work. In this 
 
8o INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 building there are one or two large rooms in which he keeps 
 the cotton -seeds for feeding the bullocks. He has also 
 two separate sheds, one for the buffaloes and another for 
 the cows who are not yielding milk. Besides these, he has 
 temporary enclosures in the fields, some for his sheep, and 
 others for his goats. This farmer has 500 sheep and about 
 700 goats. Outside of his village he has several large stacks 
 of straw for his cattle. To manage all this business he has 
 a head man, known 2iS pannai karan^ but the farmer and 
 other members of his family are also actively engaged. There 
 is no confusion in attending to their duties by any of the 
 farm servants. There are about twenty men who are allowed 
 to go in and out of the farmer's house to carry on the daily 
 routine. Besides these men, there is quite a number of 
 supplementary farm labourers. The men who have the 
 privilege of moving in and out of the house are usually of 
 the farmer's own caste. These men divide the daily work 
 among themselves, and some of them have fixed work to 
 attend to. For instance, four or five men come about four 
 o'clock in the morning to remove the cow-dung, to prepare 
 the cotton-seed, to dress the straw, and to attend to other 
 matters which the farmer directs them to do. In fact, some 
 of the labourers by turns sleep in the farmer's house. Some 
 of the labourers carry the noontide meal from the farmer's 
 house to the labourers who are working in the fields. On 
 high days and holidays all the labourers are fed in the 
 farmer's house with a grand meal. The farmer himseli gets 
 up from his bed at about four o'clock, and directs his men to 
 attend to their duties. If it is the time of sowing, he goes 
 himself to the field, and stays there for some hours. If it 
 is the time of weeding, he visits several fields every day. 
 'Inhere are different gangs of labourers engaged in weeding, 
 and each group has a reliable head, who supervises their 
 
TRADES, ETC. 8i 
 
 work. Harvest is the busiest and most pleasant time with 
 the farmer and his labourers. 
 
 In a farmer's house there is paddy, raggi, millet, and 
 different kinds of pulse, which have been grown in his own 
 fields. These he utilizes for the family food. He has also 
 poultry and sheep from which to make the dishes. These 
 consist of some kind of sauces with fried meat. He has his 
 milk, which he makes into curds and buttermilk and ghee 
 (melted butter). He grows different kinds of Indian 
 vegetables, chillies, coriander, and other things, which 
 form the chief ingredients in preparing the curry. A village 
 farmer can justly boast that what he gets from his field and 
 farm is sufficient for his household except salt, ^saffron, 
 pepper, and one or two other things which he is obliged to 
 buy from a bazaar. A guest who goes to this farmer's house 
 finds plenty to eat. 
 
 In Indian villages the farming is done by different classes 
 of the people. Nowadays almost all the classes of the 
 innumerable Indian castes have settled themselves down as 
 peaceable cultivators of the soil ; but the large portion of 
 tlie most enterprising farmers are Vellalors, Reddys, and 
 Naickers. All these three classes are known as the best 
 village cultivators. A few of their social customs will be 
 interesting to the reader. 
 
 The following is a description of the marriage ceremony 
 among the Vellalors. ' When a young man is of an age to 
 be married, his parents and relations begin to talk about 
 girls who live both far and near. When they are satisfied 
 about the parentage and appearance and possessions of a 
 certain girl, the first thing they do is to go to the bride's house, 
 and ask the parents of the bride for her sathagam (horo- 
 scope), which they examine carefully. Likewise the bride's 
 relations examine the bridegroom's horoscope. If both 
 
82 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 horoscopes agree in the eleven essential points, the parties 
 come to a settlement about the marriage. They invite an 
 astrologer, and consult him as to an auspicious day. When 
 the day is fixed, the bridegroom's nearest relations are 
 invited to the bride's house, and they are provided with a 
 good feast. The bride pays particular attention to the 
 bridegroom's mother, and tries to win her affection and 
 goodwill. After the meal a Brahmin comes to them, and to 
 him several offerings are made in the form of fruits, rice, 
 money, etc. ; these are placed before him, and he is earnestly 
 requested by both parties to foretell, by the practising of his 
 art, how long the parties are likely to live a happy and 
 pleasant life, and how many male and female children they 
 will have. In part of one of the rooms a large square is 
 formed of cluiunain (lime-powder), in the south-western 
 corner of which a brass lamp is placed, and near it some 
 cocoanuts are broken, and plantains are placed upon one 
 or two large plantain-leaves. This lamp is worshipped by 
 all those who have gathered together. The bride bathes, 
 and puts on the new cloth brought by the bridegroom's 
 relations ; and then, well adorned with flowers and orna- 
 ments, she is placed facing the east ; the bridegroom's 
 sister brings a basket containing three cocoanuts, three or 
 nine plantains, some areca-nuts, and saffron. These presents 
 are divided into three parts. One is given to the bride, 
 which she returns to the bridegroom's sister, and the other 
 two are given to the bride for her relations and friends. 
 They then settle about the nuptial present, which, when 
 agreed upon, is put into a piece of white cloth and given to 
 the bride's father, who accepts it with great demonstrations 
 of joy. 
 
 ' Having received the certificate from the Brahmin priest, 
 the parties go out in order to purchase necessary things for 
 
TRADES, ETC. 83 
 
 the wedding. It must be remembered that one of the 
 causes of Indian poverty is the foohsh way in which money 
 is spent at marriages. If the parties are rich they spend a 
 great deal. If their means are h'mited, they borrow to a 
 fearful extent by mortgaging some of their property. Perhaps, 
 if the bridegroom was the master of his house at the time of 
 his marriage, he is afterwards burdened with the marriage 
 debt. Soon after his marriage he becomes a care-stricken 
 and miserable man. The poorer classes, when they are 
 married, begin to live a most miserable life. They have to 
 work hard day and night for their wages, and out of these 
 they have to pay a portion regularly towards the marriage 
 debt, often for several years. 
 
 ' Now we turn back to the marriage party which we left 
 purchasing the things required for the wedding feast. The 
 first thing they buy is saffron. A quantity of rice is boiled 
 in a new and coloured pot, and a cocoanut is broken 
 near the bottom of the pot. Before giving gold to the 
 goldsmith for ornaments for the bride, they ascertain a 
 lucky hour and minute, and then take some sovereigns from 
 the nuptial present and give them to him to be wrought into 
 the required ornament. At a determined lucky minute they 
 lay down the first brick in the south-west corner of the place 
 appointed for the ma7i(warei {2i square dais of earth erected 
 in the centre of the pandal) and construct it. A branch 
 from a fig-tree is set up in the south-west corner of the yard 
 as a imiku7'tJiakal (or marriage post). Areca-nuts are first 
 sent to the priest of the temple of Siva, and afterwards to 
 all the relations. This serves as an invitation-card to the 
 marriage. On the appointed night a good number of the 
 bride's relations are sent to fetch the bridegroom, who comes 
 in a palanquin to the bride's house with great pomp, and 
 there he is joyfully received. When approaching the door 
 
84 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 some maidens wave their alaitJii (lighted camphor) in token 
 of respect ; and on entering he is placed on a cot inside a 
 room. Having partaken of milk and plantain — as it is sup- 
 posed that he will be in need of some food — he comes out 
 to the viimavarei^ and sits towards the east. A mango twig, 
 to which are tied mango leaves dipped in saffron water, is 
 placed in his hands, and this he takes to the south-western 
 corner of the pa?idal, and there plants it. Then he enters 
 another small room to have his face shaved by the barber. 
 
 ' The bride is taken in a palkee to a tank, and there she 
 bathes, with her maidens, and returns. 
 
 ' Now commences the ceremony of tying on the thali. A 
 Brahmin seats himself on a part of the manavarei facing 
 the north, and before him a bright lamp burns ; beneath this 
 a pilliar (belly-god) is made out of cow-dung, and by the 
 side of it are placed a measure of rice, some plantains, 
 cocoanuts, and betelnuts. 
 
 ' The adorned bridegroom receives sacred ashes from the 
 Brahmin, and takes his seat on the other side of the mana- 
 varei^ facing the east, with his young friends standing by 
 him. The bridegroom's uncle {i.e. his mother's brother) 
 sits by him, and receives his gifts. Afterwards the bride- 
 groom is taken into a room, and the bride is adorned and 
 brought to the manavarei^ and seated upon it, facing the 
 east. The bride's mother's brother, who sits by her, receives 
 her gifts, and then retires with her from the manavarei into 
 another room. 
 
 'After the bridegroom and the bride have retired to their 
 respective rooms, the new cloths bought for them both are 
 brought to the manavarei on two brass trays, and the 
 Brahmin and other aged men there bless the cloths, and 
 send them into the rooms. 
 
 ' At the order of the Brahmin, the adorned bridegroom is 
 
TRADES, ETC. 85 
 
 now brought back to the fnanavarei, and seated facing the 
 east. The bride is also called for, and being adorned by 
 her maidens with the new cloth, flowers, and jewels, she is 
 taken into the kitchen, where there is a new pot. The 
 bride draws three lines on it with saffron, and ties three 
 betel leaves with a yellow string to its neck. The pot being 
 placed on the fire, the bride pours into it a water-pot full of 
 water, and goes to the manavarei. Here she sits on the 
 bridegroom's right side. 
 
 ' The bridegroom and the bride get down from the mana- 
 varei^ and make a humble obeisance to the assembly, receive 
 sacred ashes from them, and then go back to their respective 
 places on the manavarei. The thali is put into a little 
 wooden pot, and brought before the guru (priest), who 
 blesses it himself and then gives it to the assembly for their 
 blessing. They bless it and return it to the Brahmin. 
 
 'The barber keeps continually blowing the saugoo. A 
 coloured pot is laid on an elephant (either real or earthen), 
 the drums are beaten, and the trumpets are blown. The 
 Brahmin pronounces some mandiras (prayers), and gives 
 the thali to the bridegroom, v»'ho ties it slightly round the 
 bride's neck ; the bridegroom's sister, however, ties it tightly, 
 and takes off one of the bridegroom's garlands, and puts it 
 on the bride's neck. The bridegroom also takes one from 
 his neck himself, and puts it on the bride's. The bride 
 then takes one of hers and puts it on the bridegroom's. 
 This is the end of the ceremony of tying the thali. The 
 marriage is now complete, but there are still other cere- 
 monies to be gone through. 
 
 ' The Brahmin ties an iron ring and a bit of saffron to 
 both of their hands. The bride's father then says to the 
 bridegroom's father, " I have given my daughter in marriage 
 to your son." The couple then unite their hands, and walk 
 
86 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 round the inanavarei three times, tread upon the grinding- 
 stone, look up in the sky at a star, and enter the room. 
 Then the feast commences, and those who have come for 
 the wedding make their money gifts to the bride's father.' 
 
 The Kammavar Naickers. — There is a most hard-working, 
 persevering farming class known as Kammavar Naickers. 
 These people have several village settlements of their own 
 in India. They follow their forefathers' occupation in 
 cultivating the soil. Every Naicker village has ten or fifteen 
 landlords of the caste, each possessing several acres of land, 
 several heads of cattle, and a large number of farm-labourers. 
 To see an Indian model farmer one must go to this class. 
 They cultivate all the different kinds of Indian grains and 
 pulse in their fields ; they also grow cotton in their alluvial 
 and fertile soil, and this brings them in a large revenue. 
 
 Their women also work hard, both in the house and in 
 the field. They are very simple in their mode of living, and 
 exceedingly ignorant and superstitious. 
 
 These people belong to the Vishnu religious sect, but 
 they worship all the gods and demons of India. They 
 have some marked peculiarities. They are constandy 
 spending large portions of their earnings in law-suits, and 
 they are always ready to pick a quarrel. Their hard-earned 
 money goes in this way to support the lawyers of the cities 
 and towns. 
 
 If a man is married to a girl belonging to this caste he is 
 taken to the bride's house and allowed to stay there for 
 several months as a guest. If the bride's father is a rich 
 man, the bridegroom is allowed to stay for a full year. 
 During his stay in his father-in-law's house he is well 
 entertained and fed. We have had the pleasure of seeing 
 him soon after his marriage. It is simply marvellous to see 
 
TRADES, ETC. 87 
 
 how well this bridegroom fares. We give the entertainment 
 provided for a single day. 
 
 At about seven o'clock in the morning the bridegroom 
 gets a dozen large rice-cakes, about two dozen sweet cakes, 
 two ounces of ^^/lee, five ounces of sugar, and a dozen 
 plantains. Our friend consumes all these, and a large 
 che}nbooful of butter-milk. At about twelve o'clock half a 
 measure of cooked rice, with different kinds of vegetables 
 and a large quantity of pulse, four ounces of ghee with 
 pepper-water, eight ounces of curds, sometimes one cooked 
 fowl, three limes pickled, and a few other sauces are served. 
 The young man patiently and steadily eats all these things 
 up in about an hour's time. After this he takes his ' forty 
 winks.' At about three o'clock there comes before him a 
 small basketful of sweet cakes, called paniarani, about five 
 dozen plantains, some finger-cakes, a large quantity of Indian 
 pudding, and about ten or fifteen twisted cakes, called 
 murookoo. Having taken these eatables, this champion of 
 eaters goes for an evening walk. At about 8 p.m. a meal 
 similar to that served at noon again comes before him. 
 
 One of these bridegrooms, while he was staying at his 
 rich father-in-law's house (he was a man with about 400 
 acres of land), at the time of the harvest, saw his father-in- 
 law busily engaged with his men in cutting the stalks. On 
 a certain day, while they were having a meal, the bride- 
 groom asked his father-in-law, ' How many acres of land of 
 stalks to be cut?' 'Several acres,' said the father- in law. 
 ' Well then, I shall be glad to be engaged in cutting the stalks 
 from a hundred acres of land,' said the bridegroom. The 
 following morning the bridegroom was taken by his father- 
 in-law, and went to the field. Standing on an elevated 
 ground, he ppinted out with his finger the four boundaries 
 of the acres of land in which the bridegroom had consented 
 
 7—2 
 
88 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 to work. The father-in law left the young man in the field, 
 and went home. There is unbearable heat in the months of 
 April and May in India, and, unfortunately, the task was 
 undertaken in the month of April. No doubt there was 
 a great deal of good intention in him. He commenced to 
 cut the stalks for about fifteen minutes, but the heat was so 
 severe that it melted his fat. His whole body began to 
 perspire. The poor fellow became altogether exhausted- 
 He was like a dog inhaling and exhaling the air ; his breath 
 became short, but he kept up his courage for awhile. At 
 about lo a.m. he returned home, having found himself quite 
 unable to cut the stalks, even in a circumference of five yards- 
 In the house his father-in-law was giving out that his 
 son-in-law had undertaken the task of cutting the stalks from 
 a large part of his lands. As soon as he saw him return, he 
 was anxious to know how he had got on in the field. The 
 young man with shame replied that he was unable to cut the 
 stalks to a distance of five yards, as the heat was so great and 
 the day was burning hot. So he politely asked his father-in-law 
 to set apart only ten acres of land for him, and to leave the rest 
 for the other labourers to cut. On the following day the young 
 man went at about eight o'clock in the morning, to the field, 
 and remained there till nine, but found himself utterly useless 
 even to cut the stalks for two yards. When he returned 
 home at ten o'clock, he informed his father-in-law, with 
 great reluctance, that the distance of ten acres of land was 
 too great, and so he would like to have it reduced to four. 
 The other parts of land must be given to other labourers. 
 The father in-law readily consented to the request of the 
 young man, who went to the field in the forenoon, and 
 was cutting the stalks when his father in-law came to him. 
 The bridegroom took a stick, drew a line, and asked his 
 ather-in-law to permit him to cut that part of the land only, 
 
TRADES, ETC. 89 
 
 and leave the rest to the farm labourers. Late in the evening 
 his father-in-law came to see him. By this time the young 
 man was quite exhausted, and lying prostrated under a thorn- 
 tree. He got up when he saw his father-in-law, and told him 
 that he was unable to cut even the few yards which he had 
 marked out, and so he begged his father-in-law to allow him 
 to cut that distance of land which was marked out by turning 
 his head round, practically the few stalks which stood under 
 his foot. Hence arose the saying in this country—* Mappillay 
 Naicker thattay aruthapol,' i.e., 'As the bridegroom of the 
 Naicker caste attempted to cut down the stalks.' 
 
 ' The marriage customs of this caste keep them close to 
 their occupation. The rule with this caste is, that the men 
 shall marry the daughters of their sisters, i.e.^ their nieces. 
 Marriages are consequently made by persons between whom 
 there exists a strange disparity of age. Oftentimes the 
 bride is a mere infant, while the bridegroom is a full-grown 
 man, and %'ice versa. There is therefore no need to consult 
 an astrologer in choosing a wife, though they do consult him 
 in order to ascertain a lucky day for the wedding. 
 
 ' On the day named by him the bridegroom's relations take 
 with them a new cloth for the bride, a string of glass beads, 
 the pari sa?n, betel, saffron, sandalwood powder and flowers, 
 and visit the bride's house, either on foot or in l>a?idies. 
 
 'There they have a grand feast. This being over, the 
 bride is directed to bathe, and afterwards she is taken to a 
 room where they adorn her with flowers, saffron, and sandal- 
 wood powder, tie the string of beads round her neck, and 
 put on the new cloth which the bridegroom's relations have 
 brought. They then serve out betel to the whole assembly. 
 This they call " the betel of confirmation." 
 
 * Half the marriage is solemnized, they say, on this day. 
 The amount oi pa7-isam given by the bridegroom's father is 
 
90 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 now placed in a palkee adorned with flowers and fragrant 
 stuffs, carried round the village, and brought back. The 
 bride's father takes the parisam. 
 
 ' Both parties prepare the several articles required for the 
 wedding ; at a lucky minute they begin to boil the first pot 
 of paddy in order to make rice. The Muhurtha Kal is 
 raised, and areca-nuts are sent to all the relations. A 
 pa7tdal is made, and the manaiHirei constructed under it. 
 
 * On the auspicious day for the wedding several of the 
 bridegroom's friends and relations go to the bride's house 
 to conduct her to the bridegroom's. The bride is 
 adorned with costly ornaments, dress, and flowers, and 
 taken round the village in ?i palkee in solemn procession, and 
 thus brought to the bridegroom's house. A loud sound of 
 drums and trumpets announces her arrival. A place is 
 chosen contiguous to the dwelling-house, which is fenced 
 round precisely in the same manner as a fold or pen for 
 cattle, and the fence is high and strong ; within this a 
 temporary shed is erected, in which the Naicker and his 
 bride are married, '■ in order to remind them that their fathers 
 were without dwelling-places, tending their flocks in the 
 fields." A pole is then erected, and upon it a few branches 
 of the margosa-tree {Me/ia azidarachta) is tied, by the side 
 of which the bridegroom stands. Some of his female 
 relatives approach, and, dipping their forefinger in milk or 
 oil, touch his forehead, shoulders and chest. After this a 
 portion of rice is tossed over his head ; he is then seized by 
 a finger and led into the house. 
 
 ' They next procure ten or fifteen earthen pots, which are 
 ornamented with lines drawn with coloured chalks upon the 
 outer surface, and place them in a convenient place, one over 
 the other, the females of the house meanwhile chanting in 
 Telugii. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 91 
 
 'At the directions oi the ^s^ur?/, the bridegroom retires to a 
 room to adorn himself. The barber, having previously 
 cleansed it with cow-dung, forms a pillaiyar, and, placing it 
 in a corner, offers it a measure of rice, plantains, cocoanuts 
 and betel. After performing these ceremonies he shaves the 
 bridegroom's face and body, and washes him thoroughly, 
 with the exception of the feet, the toe-nails of which are cut 
 in the presence of the bridegroom's relations. The barber 
 brings a cup of milk, with which he washes his feet, and then 
 he cuts the nails. The milk which remains he carries round 
 to the assembled guests, many of whom throw money into it. 
 
 'The carpenter prepares a branch of any milk-tree {e.^^., 
 fig-tree, etc.) in the south-west corner under the pandal^ and 
 offers cocoanuts and plantains to the pillaiyar : then the 
 bridegroom, in his full dress and ornaments, plants the 
 branch, and seats himself on the 7tm7iavarei. The guru 
 utters some inantras and finishes the ceremonies. 
 
 ' The bridegroom and the bride, in grand procession, go to 
 the altar of their god, worship him, and break cocoanuts. 
 Having come home, they sit on the mafiavarei facing the 
 east, with the bride on the bridegroom's left. The thali is 
 put in a little wooden box, the guru first blesses it, and 
 sends it round the assembly to get the blessing of the old 
 men present. This done, the gum receives the thali back, 
 and, approaching the ma^iavarei, orders the young couple 
 to stand up, the bridegroom with his face towards the bride. 
 The bridegroom now treads upon the bride's left foot with 
 his right ; a cloth is held between them as a veil ; the 
 bridegroom receives the thali from the guru, and puts it on 
 the bride's neck from the other side of the veil, and his 
 sister ties it round the bride's neck. Just at this time the 
 drums are beaten and the trumpets blown, and the women 
 who stand round raise a deafening shout. 
 
92 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 ' In the presence of the whole assembly the bride's father 
 comes forward and says, "I have given my daughter in 
 
 marriage to Mr. N 's son." This he says three times, 
 
 and pours water on the joined hands of the couple. After 
 this they tie their hands with a coloured handkerchief. 
 
 ' The bride and bridegroom are then seated upon two 
 stools, and their respective friends pour milk on their heads, 
 and give them sacred ashes with which to besmear their 
 foreheads, and this they do. When all these ceremonies 
 have been completed, the couple walk round the manavarei 
 three times, and then retire into a room where the friends 
 of the bridegroom sing adulatory songs. 
 
 ' At night there is a procession of the young couple round 
 the village in great pomp. On the third day a lighted 
 candle is placed on the manavarei, a pillaiyar placed at the 
 bottom of the lamp, and cocoanuts, plantains, betel and 
 flowers offered to it, with a measureful of uncooked rice. 
 The bride then bathes, and cooks some rice. The rice 
 being ready, the bride and the bridegroom stand facing the 
 east, and their friends take two dishes of the rice and wave 
 them before the face of the couple, and then throw a handful 
 of rice behind them to avert the evil eye; the remainder 
 of the cooked rice is given to the barber and the washerman. 
 
 ' A new plough is made by the carpenter, with which the 
 bridegroom turns up the earth for about two or three yards 
 around. The bride levels the earth thus turned up, and 
 then sows some seed in it. The bride's brother pricks the 
 bridegroom with an ox-goad, and the bridegroom's sister 
 fills up the holes into which the bride had dropped the seed. 
 While doing so the bride asks the bridegroom's sister: 
 " Why do you fill the holes that I made ?" To this she 
 replies : "If you give your daughter in marriage to my 
 son I will open them." Thus saying, she runs before the 
 
TRADES, ETC. 93 
 
 couple, and makes a feint of preventing them entering the 
 house. When asked to open, she answers : " Yes, if you 
 promise to give your daughter in marriage to my son." If 
 her request is complied with, she opens the doors and lets 
 them in. 
 
 ' This is followed by a very unnecessary sort of farce. 
 Under the pandal four sticks are placed so as to form a 
 square, and a thread is passed round the four sticks ; by the 
 side of each of the sticks is placed a pot, one of which holds 
 cunjee water, another saffron-water, another eandal-water, 
 and another betel. The bride's sister pours some from each 
 of the pots on the bridegroom's head, who ejects betel-juice 
 on her head in return.' 
 
 r 
 
 15. THE SHEPHERDS {Eddaiars). 
 
 Village shepherds are proverbially the most harmless 
 and simple-minded folk of all the Indian tribes. The 
 term eddai means 'middle,' as they were originally living in 
 the land between the mountains and fertile plains, as it was 
 a suitable place for grazing their cattle. There are 627,953 
 shepherds in South India. The occupation of this com- 
 munity is keeping catde. They never intermarry with any 
 other classes of Hindus. A few of them tend sheep and 
 goats for the village landlords. But a large portion of them 
 mind their own sheep and goats. They live in all parts of 
 the land, and in every village they are welcome to fix their 
 abode. Some of these men are employed as bearers of 
 palanquins to the Zamindars (lords). As a rule, the men 
 and women of this caste are very active and hard-working. 
 
94 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 The shepherds' attachment to their sheep is very great, 
 and they spend with them a greater part of the time, in the 
 open fields, the thick forests, the rough hills, the grassy 
 plains, and the deep valleys, in order to procure pasture for 
 them. They sleep by turns in the open fields to watch their 
 sheep. The heavy dew, the dust-storms, the dry western 
 winds, the burning sun, the summer lightnings and thunder, 
 the downpour of heavy rains, will not separate a shepherd 
 from his sheep ; they keep to them at all times and under 
 all circumstances. The shepherds will often go and search 
 for a lost sheep in the jungle and thick forest ; sometimes 
 they search the whole day, starving themselves, and even 
 going without water to drink. We have ourselves seen, in 
 our earlier days, shepherds carrying their lost sheep or lamb 
 when they found it in the jungle, and they have told us 
 where they have been wandering for days together seeking 
 their sheep that went astray. They never murmur, nor 
 break the legs of the sheep, nor treat them unkindly. 
 
 India is subjected to frequent famines, during which 
 time the shepherds suffer much in securing their own 
 support and pasture for their cattle. We have seen the 
 genuine self-sacrifices shown by the shepherds in the interest 
 of their sheep during the memorable famine of the year 
 1877. They sold the few acres of land they possessed, and 
 spent some portion of the proceeds on the support of their 
 wives and children, leaving them in their native village, and 
 starting off to distant districts for the purpose of finding 
 pasture for their cattle. Travancore and other lands of hill 
 tracts, was the place which attracted them, and there they 
 remained till they heard that the rain had fallen in their 
 own native country, and that there was grass and water 
 again. They told us, after their arrival in their native 
 country, of the hardship, the trial, the difficulty, they had to 
 
TRADES, ETC. 95 
 
 endure to protect the lives of their cattle and find pasture 
 for them. The valleys of the vast ranges of the lofty 
 mountains were the places of their sojourn. The nights 
 they spent at the foot of these mountains they had bitter 
 experiences. They were watching, one after another, to keep 
 out the wolves and jackals and foxes, not to speak of the 
 man-eating tiger, against whom they have to contend. 
 For all these troubles nothing seems to take place to dis- 
 turb the earnestness of purpose and calmness of mind with 
 which they watch over their sheep. 
 
 The shepherds keep their folds in the night in the fields 
 near the villages during the winter, but at other times they 
 keep changing from field to field. One of the best methods 
 of manuring the fields is to arrange for the sheep and goats 
 to rest in them during the night ; for this the landowners 
 pay a certain amount in grain or money to the shepherds. 
 This is the chief source of income to the shepherds. They 
 eat, however, the flesh of the animals that die of natural 
 causes, and drink the milk of the sheep. It is a remarkable 
 thing among the shepherds that none of them will kill a 
 sheep to eat its flesh, except on the occasions when they 
 offer the rams as a sacrifice to their gods. 
 
 The shepherds, as a class, being very simple and ignorant, 
 the devil-dancers and fortune-tellers make a good living out 
 of them. Every now and then the shepherds will be brought 
 within their clutches. If a child of a shepherd is sick the 
 poor man goes to the fortune-teller or the devil-dancer 
 to find out the cause of his child's sickness, and both of 
 them agree in telling the shepherd that the sickness of the 
 child is due to the anger of his family goddess, or else that 
 some devil got hold of the child while it was playing under the 
 tamarind-tree on a certain Friday afternoon. In both these 
 cases the poor shepherd will have to spend some money 
 
96 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 either to drive the devil away or pacify the anger of his 
 goddess. In the meantime the illness of the child will 
 increase before they can fetch the wonderful native doctor, 
 who comes with his medicines of herbs and plants, pills and 
 powders. 
 
 There are several narratives given which serve to show 
 the ignorance of these shepherds. 
 
 There was a shepherd, Valu by name, in a village 
 situated at the foot of the western g/za/s. He followed the 
 trade of his forefathers. One day he missed a certain lamb 
 when counting his flock. At once he started off in search 
 of this lamb. He wandered about till mid-day. At about 
 2 p.m. he came to a well, quite exhausted, in order to quench 
 his thirst. When he began to look down into the well for 
 the purpose of finding the steps, he saw a man in the well 
 with the very lamb on his neck. The shepherd at once 
 grew very angry with him. ' Oh, robber ! I have got you at 
 last ; bring up my lamb, or else I will pelt you with stones,' 
 said the shepherd, and stooped down to pick up stones with 
 both his hands, when the lamb, which was on his own neck, 
 fell down. Such was the wisdom of the shepherd. 
 
 There was a money-lender in a village who was in the 
 habit of taking money to the different villages to lend the 
 ryots, at enormous interest. On a certain day he took 
 loo rupees with him, and engaged a shepherd to go 
 alone with him to a village situated near a hillock. The 
 distance they had to travel was about twenty miles. They 
 left about three o'clock in the evening. Before they had 
 passed the tenth mile, they lost their way, and it was about 
 nine o'clock at night. As they had to go through a 
 jungle, the money-lender was afraid of the robbers, and told 
 his companion, the shepherd, to lie down in some place 
 without speaking a word or making any noise, while he went 
 
TRADES, ETC. 97 
 
 a little distance and hid himself under the bushes. About 
 midnight a gang of robbers passed that way. One of them 
 said : ' Look here ! take care ; here is a log of wood lying 
 down on the way ; don't knock against it.' 
 
 ' Will a piece of wood in your village have five panams 
 tied in a piece of cloth round its waist ?' said the shepherd 
 who was lying down. ' Oh, here is a fellow ; catch him !' 
 said the robbers. So they caught the shepherd, and 
 snatched away the five pa7iams, and left him, and went on 
 their way. ' I wonder whether this money is false or true 
 coin,' said one of the robbers. The shepherd, having heard 
 this, called out to the robbers loudly : 'What do you mean? 
 If you have any doubt about my coins, you had better find 
 out whether they are true from the chettiar (money-lender), 
 who is here by my side in the bush.' ' Ho ! ho ! there is 
 another, is there ? Catch him !' said the robbers. The 
 chettiar was caught, and was beaten unmercifully, and the 
 robbers went away with his loo rupees, and the chettiar 
 returned to his village in the morning, having learned a 
 bitter lesson by taking an ignorant shepherd as his com- 
 panion. 
 
 There was a king ruling over a fertile country. He had 
 only a daughter, and to her he gave a liberal education. 
 When the princess came of age the king asked her consent 
 to be married to some one of the kings' sons of the neigh 
 bouring kingdoms ; but the princess politely declined to 
 marry any of the kings' sons unless they could equal her in 
 mental attainments and other general accomplishments. 
 This news got abroad among all the princes, and several of 
 them applied and failed. At last one of the princes of a 
 flourishing kingdom, and a master of Hindu literature, 
 proceeded to the town where the famous princess was. 
 The prime minister of the prince was a vain man, with 
 
9S INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 a fondness for practical joking. He advised the prince not 
 to marry the princess at all, but to humiliate her in some 
 way. As they were nearing their destination, they got hold 
 of a shepherd who was minding his sheep in a forest. They 
 got the shepherd to shave his head and moustache, and 
 they put on him the royal dress, placing him in one of the 
 palanquins, and giving out to the people that he was the 
 prince who was going to marry the celebrated princess. 
 They gave strict orders to the shepherd to be silent. 
 Whatever questions might be put to him by the princess or 
 by any of her followers, he was only to point to the two 
 schemers with his finger in answer to questions, as implying 
 that the question must be directed to the prime ministers. 
 
 At length they entered the royal palace, and intimated 
 to the king and princess their intentions. The shepherd, 
 who was in a palanquin, was brought to the royal seat, and 
 the disguised prince and prime minister played the part of 
 prmie ministers. The princess sent certain questions to the 
 prince, who pointed to his followers to answer them. 
 Finding his answers were correct, the princess was surprised 
 at the attainments of the prime ministers, and thought how 
 much more must be the attainments of the prince who had 
 come to marry her. So the parties were agreed, and the 
 wedding took place, after which the prime ministers left for 
 their kingdom. The bridegroom entered into his chamber, 
 and the bride, the princess, came to the chamber of the 
 bridegroom with all her maids at a fixed lucky hour. When 
 she entered the room she saw the prince fast asleep in his 
 bed. She waited patiently at his bedside for several hours, 
 but there was no sign of the prince getting up from his bed ; 
 in fact, he was still snoring. The princess attempted to 
 awake the prince by sprinkling scent. The false prince was 
 at the time dreaming that he was sleeping in the midst of 
 
TRADES. ETC. 
 
 99 
 
 his sheep, and when he felt the sprinkling of the scent, he 
 cried, * Hiss ! away, you ram !' The princess was much 
 surprised at this remark. Then she began to throw some 
 flowers on him. Then he cried, ' Tush ! get away, you 
 foolish sheep !' Now the princess felt sure that something 
 had gone wrong, and that there really must have been some 
 mistake in her marriage. So she drew off her sword, and 
 held it in her right hand, awaking the sleeping man with her 
 left. As soon as the man was awake, she said: * Vou tell 
 me the truth about yourself, or I shall kill you.' The man 
 was trembling while he confessed that he was but a 
 shepherd, that he belonged to a distant village, and that the 
 prince who had accompanied him took him by force, and 
 made him enter into all these schemes. Immediately the 
 princess gave money to the shepherd, and bade him run 
 away from the palace, and then she put an end to her own 
 Hfe. 
 
 There is a custom prevailing among a certain class ot 
 shepherds which permits the daughters only to inherit the 
 possessions of their fathers. The sons, when they are grown 
 up, get married at the expense of the father, and then are 
 sent to the wife's house with only the gift of a few sheep. 
 
 r 
 
 i6. THE SWINEHERDS {Kulavars). 
 
 One of the wandering tribes of India is the kulava?- 
 or swineherd. This people are said to have followed 
 Rama the Conqueror in his expedition against the King 
 of Ceylon. They live in small portable huts, which they 
 
 8 
 
lOo INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 carry from place to place, but there are several camps of 
 them scattered throughout the country. They are quite 
 harmless, most ignorant, lazy, half naked, and ill fed ; they 
 are the gipsies of the plains. They keep herds of swine ; 
 their chief has a large number of followers, and a very large 
 number of swine. To-day they will pitch their tent in one 
 place, to-morrow they will remove it to another. They 
 always pitch their tents near a tank in the centre of several 
 villages, so as to give them a chance of getting into the 
 villages in order to beg. 
 
 The women of the kulavars will go to the villagers' 
 houses, and cry out, ' O Rama, Rama, Rama !' and repeat 
 the word over and over again till the inmates of the house 
 are moved to give them some alms, either in the shape of 
 cooked meal or grain. The male members, while they are 
 minding their swine, will be hunting wild rats. Towards the 
 evening the women bring what they have begged to the 
 huts, and the men turn up with some rats which they have 
 caught. The women, when they go to beg, tie their babes 
 on their back, hold a soraikudukkai (an Indian vegetable) 
 in their left hand, and a small stick in their right. 
 
 Polygamy is rampant among this class. There are, 
 however, some good men among them who desire to lead a 
 better life. One of them has twenty wives, and he has 
 regulated their daily life in the following manner : Ten of 
 them must go to beg, five of them must mind the swine ; 
 the remaining five must be in his hut to attend to his 
 personal comforts. One of these five must press his legs 
 while he is lying down, another must keep his head clean, 
 another must press his body, and the other two must be 
 engaged in cooking his meals. The next day those who 
 were minding the swine must remain in his hut, and those 
 who were in the hut must go to beg, while five of those who 
 
TRADES, ETC. loi 
 
 went to beg must now go to mind the swine. So he changes 
 the work of his wives every morning. 
 
 There are some kulavars who have married ten wives, and 
 make them all beg for the food, while the husband enjoys 
 his lazy life in the house. 
 
 The kuhwars eat the pigs themselves, and sell a large 
 number of swine to the people. Out of this money they 
 buy their cloths, and spend for their marriage and other 
 festivals. They worship devils and their departed relations, 
 and make a special reference to those who are dead and 
 buried. During festivals they dance through the whole night, 
 and make a free use of liquor. 
 
 When a girl is young she is espoused to a young man. 
 On the day of espousal a person is sent all round, wherever 
 the huts may be, and when all are assembled the espousal 
 is settled, and the bridegroom gives a feast of a fat pig and 
 several bottles of arrack. 
 
 After this the espoused girl remains in her father's house 
 until she has attained a suitable age or until the bridegroom 
 is in a condition to provide for her. 
 
 On the day of marriage the bridegroom should give his 
 father-in law three pigs of the value of three and a half rupees 
 each ; or, if he cannot afford to give these, three fowls or a 
 dog should be given as a parisam. Two pigs are killed for 
 the feast. The young couple are seated upon a piece of 
 wood inside a screen of cloth, holding each other by their 
 little fingers. The parents of the couple mark their heads 
 and foreheads with a mixture of pounded saffron and cotton- 
 seeds, c/iunna?n and rice. The bridegroom ties a little piece 
 of silver of the value of eight or twelve annas round the 
 bride's neck, and two new-coloured pots, filled with water, 
 are placed before them, and a brass ring is put into each of 
 them. The couple are ordered to take them out from the 
 
 8—2 
 
I02 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 pots, and the one who first takes up a ring is reckoned the 
 cleverer of the two. 
 
 The bridegroom takes hold of the bride's little finger, and 
 leads her to his hut, and gives to his relation three panams 
 as a present, and thus ends the ceremony. 
 
 r 
 
 17. THE BAZAAR-MAN. 
 
 There is no village in India which has not a bazaar 
 of its own. If the village is large, there is a keen com- 
 petition among the bazaar-men. The bazaar is a queer- 
 looking place, having a room, with a narrow front, in which 
 the bazaar-man sits, leaning against the wall. He has 
 jaggery, chillies, coriander, saffron, pepper, cloves, dried 
 ginger, tamarind, betel-nuts, tobacco, salt, onions, garlic, and 
 a few other things which are required for the ordinary doily 
 use of the villagers. Besides these, he keeps cocoanuts, 
 plantains, dates, dried grapes, sugar, and sugar-candy for 
 occasional use. During the harvest time he keeps a few 
 extra things to attract the attention of the young folks, such 
 as boiled pulse, nuts, sugar-cane, country buns, and cakes 
 called moorookoo. The latter articles are greatly patronized 
 by young folks of both sexes, who bring grain from the 
 threshing-floor and cotton from the field to the bazaar-man, 
 with or without the knowledge of their parents or guardians. 
 Sometimes these village youths become indebted to the 
 bvizaar-men, who will let them have these articles on credit. 
 When the payment is made the bazaar-man allows a free 
 margin in measuring the grain or weighing the cotton which 
 are brought by these young creditors. 
 
TRADES, ETC. 103 
 
 The irregularity and confusion created by the bazaar-man 
 when he sells his articles are very great. Mornings and 
 evenings are the times in which the bazaars are over- 
 crowded. The bazaar-man receives the money from the 
 woman who comes to purchase salt and chillies, and he puts 
 the money in his box and then makes the woman wait ; he will 
 ask the next person to give his money and inquire what he 
 wants ; then he will ask another person for his money or 
 grain, and, having received this, he will ask another person 
 to give his or her cotton, and he will yet again ask another 
 to do the same. Having received all these, he will 
 make them all wait, though each one is bawling out : 
 ' Chettiar ! chettiar ! give me salt and chillies !' ' Give me 
 jaggery !' ' Give me dried ginger !' ' Give me tamarind !' 
 ' Give me pepper !' ' Give me pulse !' In the midst of this 
 confusion and disorder the chettiar replies : ' Ghee, poroo !' 
 — I.e., ' Wait, you dog !' — to every one of them. If the people 
 bawl out still more, the bazaar-man grows furious, and asks 
 one of the people : ' Rajatteeo ? Poruka goodatho ?' — 
 I.e., ' Have you become a queen ? Gan't you wait ?' Then 
 he asks yet another person to tell him what he wants. So, 
 to see disorder and confusion, one needs to go to the village 
 bazaar-man. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the village bazaar-man is that he 
 seldom gives a definite reply to a person who wants a certain 
 article if he has not got that article with him. Suppose 
 Setu, a village doctor, goes to the bazaar-man, and asks 
 him to give him an anna's worth of dried ginger ; if the 
 article is out of stock, ' I have got fine jaggery,' will be the 
 reply of the bazaar-man. If the doctor again asks the 
 bazaar-man to give ginger, and not jaggery, ' I have got new 
 and good pepper,' will be the reply of the bazaar-man. 
 After the third or the fourth time of asking, the doctor will 
 
Id4 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 come to his senses and understand that the bazaar-man has 
 not got the article he wants in stock. For the bazaar-man 
 to say that he has not got the article is regarded as a bad 
 omen. 
 
 The village bazaar-man invests only some thirty to fifty 
 rupees on his bazaar. With this capital he thrives and 
 comfortably earns his bread. 
 
 There are some village bazaar-men who keep their stalls 
 under trees, and in open fields, and sometimes they travel 
 from place to place and keep their stalls in highways and 
 public thoroughfares. 
 
 There is no particular caste or sect from which the village 
 bazaar-men come. All castes and creeds of Indian people 
 sell in the village bazaar, and they think themselves great 
 merchants in their little world. 
 
 Some of the bazaar-men are very fond of hearing gossip 
 from the women who come to make purchases. The 
 stupidity of the thing is that while hearing the gossip the 
 man makes the other customers wait. 
 
III. 
 
 PROFESSIONS. 
 
I. THE POET. 
 
 INDIA is famous for its poems, songs, and hymns. The 
 innumerable medical works of the eighteen sithatJiees 
 (devotees) are all written in verse. The descriptive accounts 
 of the laws of the kings, with their commentaries, are 
 poetical works. The great books on ethics, and the im- 
 practicable teachings of the Vedanta philosophy, are also to 
 be classed as poetry. 
 
 If a beggar goes round begging, he will hold a harp in 
 his hand and sing songs of praise to his gods and goddesses. 
 The ordinary moral teachings and proverbs are all written in 
 simple poetical style. The schoolboys in the villages, after 
 learning their vernacular alphabet, are taught to read and 
 write in poetry before they are taught to spell words of three 
 syllables. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find so 
 many village poets. Every village has a poet of its own, 
 and they are generally poor men. The picture of an old 
 village poet is given in illustration. He is holding his 
 palm-leaves in his hand, and putting down his poetical 
 thoughts with his peculiar pen. In the poet's house maybe 
 found several of these palm-leaf books. If a poet is in want 
 of a daily meal he writes out a new poem in praise of 
 some rich villager or bazaar-man. 
 
 On one occasion a village poet was lying down in his 
 
io8 . INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 house, and looking up at the sky through the thatched roof, 
 a portion of which had been removed by the wind. He saw 
 a heron flying over the top of the house, and addressed it 
 thus : ' O heron ! O heron ! Hear the voice of the poet, 
 whose house is uncovered, whose children are starving, 
 whose wife is naked, and who is living in the kingdom of a 
 flourishing and charitable king without being noticed by 
 that king. Can you not at least tell the king of the country 
 to which thou art going and bring me some help, bearing it 
 on thy beautiful wings, and so save my life from death ?' 
 
 The king of the country in which the poet lived happened 
 to pass by the house that night in disguise. He heard the 
 poem, and sent for the poet in the morning. He found 
 him a really gifted poet, who had many excellent qualities, 
 and therefore added him to the number of poets who were 
 supported by the State. 
 
 These village poets travel from place to place at times, and 
 sing songs in praise of well-to-do villagers, from whom they 
 get temporary help. Some of these poets keep schools, and 
 
 ( get a nominal fee from the boys, but it is hardly enough to 
 keep their bodies and souls together. There is, however, a 
 fine chance of getting a good gift from the villagers when 
 they are asked to expound the great works of the Rama 
 yana and the INIahabharata. This exposition is generally 
 given during the summer months, when the harvest of the 
 country is finished. That is the time for all kinds of amuse- 
 
 / ments and pleasure-taking for the villagers. The poet 
 who expounds the Ramayana or Mahabharata commences 
 about eight o'clock at night, and keeps on till two or three 
 in the morning. It is a remarkable thing that the village 
 folk are found so attentive when these great works are 
 explained. Of course, there are always some in the com- 
 pany who sleep while the explanation is going on ; in fact. 
 
PROFESSIONS 109 
 
 they are allowed to sleep if they like to do so. This kind of 
 exposition lasts sometimes for six months, and even sometimes 
 for twelve months, with a break in the middle. To pay for 
 these expositions the villagers contribute each a certain sum, 
 and present it to the poet when his work is finished. 
 
 Sometimes the poets are taken in procession in SLpa/kee, 
 with great Oriental pomp. On the last day of the exposition 
 the well-to-do portion of the village present the poet witli 
 new cloths and gold rings. 
 
 In the large Indian villages where the ryots live the poets 
 are well cared for. The children of the ryots are taught by 
 the poet to expound carefully some of the poetical works, 
 such as the Naidatham^ or descriptive account of King 
 Nalla and his wife Demayanti, the mother of beauty; the 
 Harischandra poorana, or descriptive account of the King 
 Harischandra, the truth-sayer, which is written in a very high 
 style, and is exceedingly difficult to interpret. 
 
 We have often enjoyed the company of these poets when 
 we have travelled through the villages. They never speak 
 for more than five minutes without repeating some song, 
 either of their own composing or composed by a friend. 
 They have a song at their command for every conceivable 
 thing and on every imaginable occasion, and the songs are 
 often full of funny and witty anecdotes and sayings. Our own 
 father was himself a village poet, and he wrote several songs, 
 which we have still in our possession. There was, however, 
 some difference in the case of our father, for he did not 
 closely follow the customs of the village poets, seeing that 
 he was a relative of a Zamindar, and a big landowner. We 
 ourselves attempted to compose some songs in our early 
 days. One song we composed in order to send to the father 
 of the girl with whom we were in love before our marriage. 
 
 There is one great source of weakness in the village poets. 
 
no INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 They know little or nothing of the grammar of their 
 language ; all they care for is to fill their brains with various 
 poetical works, and store poems and clever sayings in their 
 memories. In a sense we may compare them to the parrot, 
 which can repeat only what it has been taught. Neverthe- 
 less, their power of imagination is remarkably developed. 
 Their great fault is letting their imagination run riot on 
 things which are both unreal and unsound. For instance, 
 in describing the beauty of a woman, they compare her fore- 
 head to the new moon, her two arms to the loftiest heights 
 of the Himalaya Mountains, her words to drops of honey, 
 her voice to the Indian nightingale {hiil), and her general 
 appearance to the appearance of a peacock. In praising a 
 man, they will compare his house to the abode of the 
 evening sun and moon, and the walls of the house to gold ; 
 the breaks of the roof to diamonds, the beams to silver, his 
 garden to the birthplace of precious stones, his maidens to 
 celestial beings, his enjoyments to the felicities of the gods 
 themselves, his wife to the mother of wealth, his daughter to 
 the mother of wisdom, and his sons to the rulers of the 
 celestial world. If they begin to run down a man they will 
 compare him to an ass, to a dog, to a monkey, to a buffalo, 
 or to an unlucky woman, and his fields and houses are to 
 be the abodes of thorns and thistles. And if they begin to 
 curse a man they will say that the man will contract a 
 loathsome disease, and his wife and his cattle will become 
 barren. These cursing poems frighten the villagers greatly, 
 and consequently they stand in awe of these poets, and do 
 not like to offend them. 
 
 The Hindu Rajahs and Zamindars have their own poets, 
 and some of them are celebrated men. For the support of 
 these poets the princes will set apart several acres of land, 
 and let them be cultivated free of rent. In some cases they 
 
THE POET. 
 
PROFESSIONS III- 
 
 have given the profits of whole villages for their support. 
 Many of them have received valuable gifts from princes, such 
 as finger-rings and earrings, necklaces, silver or gold belts, 
 palanquins, milking cows, horses, and lace cloths. In return, 
 these poets compose new songs in praise of the prince or his 
 family, in praise of the prince's particular hunting-dogs, horses, 
 elephants, camels, quails, partridges, etc. When the prince 
 goes to the jungle to hunt, his poet accompanies him, and he 
 has to watch the movements of the prince, his followers, his 
 dogs, and his horse. If a bison or deer or antelope has been 
 shot by one of the followers of the prince, the praise has to be 
 given to the prince in the song which celebrates the day's 
 hunting, and not to the man who actually shot the animal. 
 Flattery is not lacking in these poems. If the prince feels dull 
 while he is in his palace, he sends for the palace poet, who 
 comes into the presence of the prince, and amuses him and his 
 courtiers with interesting or funny stories. One day, when 
 we were present in a Hindu prince's palace, the poet related 
 the following story : It appears that a jackal had been living 
 for a long time under the foot of a lofty mountain, where all 
 the big wild animals lived. The jackal often thought 
 himself to be very weak, and the least influential animal in 
 the mountain district. But one day he saw a magnificent 
 elephant marching along the valley, and he coveted the flesh 
 of that big animal. He ran to him, and prostrated himself 
 before him, and begged him to listen to a message which he 
 had to deliver. The elephant stopped, and asked the 
 jackal what it was. ' Ah, I know,' said the jackal, ' that 
 thou art the prince of thy race, and that there is no one 
 equal to you in beauty and strength or fighting power. But 
 how is it, I wonder, that a certain elephant of the other 
 jungle always speaks disparagingly of you and of your 
 noble family ?' ' Does he ?' replied the elephant ; ' then I 
 
112 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 am not going to let that fellow alone ; I will see him, and 
 pay him off for his vain pride.' And so the elephant 
 returned immediately to take his revenge. The other 
 elephant was quietly standing at least a mile away. Before the 
 elephant could find the road up to the place where that other 
 elephant was, the jackal ran on before, saw the elephant, 
 and spoke to him in the same strain. As soon as the two 
 elephants approached each other they began to fight. They 
 fought desperately for several hours, until at last one of them 
 was killed. The jackal was hiding himself in the jungle, and 
 watching the battle. He was delighted to see one of the 
 elephants dead before him, and soon he began to eat the flesh 
 of the softest part of the animal. The jackal was regular in 
 his mode of preying on the animal, and so gradually worked its 
 way into the creature's stomach. When these things 
 happened, it was the summer season, the heat was very 
 great, and the body of the elephant shrank while the 
 cunning jackal was in the stomach eating to the full. After 
 having had a really good feed, the jackal wanted to get out, 
 but he found that the passage had so shrunk that it was 
 impossible to force his way through. 
 
 Now the cunning jackal was caught, and could find no 
 way of escape. At once he called out ' Sampo ! Sampo !' 
 The god Siva, with his wife Parvathy, happened to pass that 
 way, and they saw the dead elephant in the jungle, and 
 heard the voice coming from it. Siva went near the 
 elephant, and asked the supernatural being who was within 
 it to reveal himself to him. The being that was shut up in 
 the stomach asked Siva to send for Indra, the god of rain. 
 Siva, in order to please this being, at once sent for this god, 
 and with him came heavy rain and wind. The body of the 
 elephant, being well soaked with water, swelled, and gave 
 an opportunity for the jackal to escape. In the meanwhile 
 
PROFESSIONS 113 
 
 Siva had invited all his celestial attendants to come and see 
 this supernatural being who was in the belly of the elephant. 
 When at last only a jackal came out, both the celestial 
 beings and Siva had a hearty laugh before they went back 
 to their world. 
 
 r 
 
 2. THE SCHOOLMASTER (Watiiar). 
 
 In every Indian village there is a school, or academy, 
 which is known as the pial school. These academies are 
 either conducted in the village inn or in a separate building, 
 which is erected at the common expense of the villagers. 
 It is usually a very plain and simple building with a thatched 
 roof. The necessary annual repairs are attended to by the 
 inhabitants themselves. There are no seats for the boys, 
 nor books, nor slates. The books which are in use are 
 written upon palm-leaves, and they are kept in a bookshelf 
 belonging to each boy. These bookshelves are only two 
 pieces of wood joined together with threads. At the top a 
 hook is fixed. The boy, whenever he wants to take his 
 books, lifts up the upper piece of the wood. He finds a 
 place in the school to hang his bookshelf up. There may be 
 fifty or a hundred of these shelves, or cases, hanging in the 
 school when the school is opened. When the school is 
 closed the boys take their bookcases to their respective homes. 
 
 It is the custom in the village schools for the boys to get 
 up very early in the morning and to be at the school by four 
 or five o'clock, without washing their faces or taking their 
 morning meal. They must, however, have the marks of the 
 sacred ash on their foreheads, as the token of their devotion 
 
 9 
 
114 
 
 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 to the god Siva. The teacher himself comes at about six J 
 o'clock in the morning, drills the boys in their lessons for 
 about two hours, and then dismisses them for their morning 
 meal. The boys go away, and come back to school again 
 at about nine o'clock. They keep on studying until twelve, 
 when they are sent back for their noon-tide meal. They 
 meet again at two, and the day's work closes at 6 p.m. 
 During the school-time they are sent home one by one for 
 drinking- water;, or for other domestic reasons. 
 
 In the houses the boys are required to study until eight 
 or nine o'clock at night, and they should bring a r///V to the 
 teacher from their relatives to show that they really were 
 studying on the previous night. During this long course of 
 study in the school the teacher appoints a grown-up boy, 
 one of the most advanced scholars, to be a monitor, and he 
 manages the school during the absence of the teacher. The 
 boys, as a rule, spend about nine hours in the school, but 
 the head-teacher spends at most four or five hours with 
 them ; during the remaining hours they are left entirely to 
 the management of the monitor, who too often beats the 
 children unmercifully, and treats them most cruelly. Those 
 who have gained the favour of the monitor are allowed to 
 play in the school, or to do nothing; or they are sent to 
 fetch sweetmeats, which they gladly share with the monitor. 
 But those who are not able to please the monitor are forced 
 by him to study their lessons over and over again, and are 
 not allowed to idle away their time. 
 
 The village teacher is not always a poet ; he is usually a 
 ' man of quite ordinary education, who has but little acquaint- 
 ance with the grammar of his language, and is generally 
 totally ignorant of geography, the history of the world, or the 
 history of his own country. He does not know whether 
 Windsor Castle is in the north of Africa or in the south of 
 
PROFESSIONS 115 
 
 Asia. He does not know that there are such things as the 
 Red Sea, the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea. He does not 
 know whether Akbar, the Emperor, was the son of William 
 the Conqueror or of Alexander the Great of Macedon. He 
 cannot tell whether Jesus Christ was born in Judaea or in 
 Abyssinia, or in Mexico, or in Lapland. But he knows 
 that there are several milk oceans, fire oceans, ghee rivers, 
 honey rivers, in the world, somewhere near the majestic 
 Himalaya Mountains. He does not know whether the 
 Empress of India has one or many sons ; whether Her 
 Majesty lives on curry and rice or bread and-butter. Never- 
 theless, he knows that he is the schoolmaster of the village 
 academy. Some of these village schoolmasters are good at 
 arithmetic, figures and fractions being at their fingers' ends. 
 Those who have gained a good education in the village 
 schools under these teachers are generally clever in arith- 
 metic. 
 
 The method of teaching in the village academy is very 
 peculiar. The boys are asked to bring their lessons one by 
 one. Some boys are allowed to write in the sand on the floor, 
 some on the palm-leaves ; some are studying their lessons ; 
 some are repeating their lessons to the teachers ; some 
 are undergoing punishment for not studying their lessons 
 properly. The punishments of the boys are exceedingly 
 severe. A boy under punishment is placed in a corner of 
 the school, and required to stand on one leg while the other 
 is bent and held in his hand. Here a boy is left a long 
 time in a bending attitude ; there another is made to 
 sit and stand a hundred or even two hundred times in 
 succession without ceasing. Another boy is hung up by 
 his hands. While the boy is hanging a sharp knife is 
 fixed on the ground, projecting upwards, so that he may not 
 rest his feet on the ground. Sometimes the student is kept 
 
 9—2 
 
ii6 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 in a bending attitude, and another boy is made to ride on 
 his back. And at times the student has to starve the whole 
 day ; and not infrequently the teacher unmercifully wields 
 his cane of office. 
 
 In some schools the schoolmasters are old and helpless 
 men, and they try to adopt the above plans in punishing 
 their students. But these teachers are sometimes taught a 
 useful lesson by the boys. The whole school is spread with 
 sand, which is raised in a certain place. A palm-leaf mat is 
 spread on this raised part, which forms the seat of the 
 teacher. When the teacher grows furious, and comes down 
 on the boys, some of the naughty ones combine together 
 and scheme to hurt the teacher. When the teacher goes 
 home to take his meal, these mischievous ones bring more 
 sand, elevate the teacher's seat, and hide lots of thorns in it. 
 As soon as their old teacher returns in the heat from his 
 home, he usually rests awhile by lying down on the seat. He 
 then orders some of the boys to press his legs, and some of 
 them to fan him, so that he may have an hour's rest and 
 good sleep. When the teacher goes to his seat and lies down 
 on his back, he finds that something is pricking him through 
 the mat, and so he turns this way and that way until his 
 whole body is pricked by thorns. Of course the teacher 
 gets up, and punishes the wicked lads, and takes special 
 care about his seat in the future. Still, the boys will continue 
 to trouble him in some way. 
 
 All the village teachers are in the habit of taking snuff. 
 Our old friend, when he is hard up, sends one of the 
 students to fetch some snuff from the bazaar. The student 
 keeps a snuff-box full of cayenne-pepper or chillie-powder, 
 which he brings, and leaves gently on the seat of the 
 teacher. The teacher, in a hurry, takes a large pinch of 
 snuff and inhales it, and then has a dreadful burning sensa- 
 
PROFESSIONS 117 
 
 tion in his nose and brain. Tears flow down ; he coughs 
 over and over again. ' Oh, great sinner ! big fool !' he 
 cries, but at his distress the students roar with laughter. 
 
 The school-fee is collected from every boy in the 
 school, some paying from twopence to sixpence, others 
 a few measures of grain, and others pay in kind. When 
 a boy is newly admitted his parents send some money, 
 according to their circumstances. Before the alphabet is 
 taught to the new-comer the teacher expects to receive an 
 offering from the parents, either plantains, cocoanuts, fried 
 rice, or betel-nut. These are placed before the god in whose 
 presence the initiation ceremony takes place. If the income 
 of a school is insufficient for the maintenance of the school- 
 master, the village gives the teacher some measures of grain 
 during the time of harvest. The schoolmaster will some- 
 times send the boys in charge of the monitor to sing through 
 the streets of the village, and beg some oil, chillies, and 
 cow-dung from every house, and these the teacher takes 
 home for his own use. The teacher and the pupils go about 
 once a yeai for a week or two to collect money from the 
 villagers to m^ike J>oq/a to Sarasvathy, the Goddess of Know- 
 ledge. This is a good time both for the pupils and for the 
 teachers. The parents of the students take special care to 
 purchase new cloths for their children, and dress them as 
 neatly as possible in quite an Oriental fashion. On this 
 occasion they are instructed by the teacher to sing action- 
 songs. Out of the collection that is made the teacher takes 
 the lion's share, and the remainder is spent in giving a treat 
 to the children on the desara, or festival days. 
 
 Learning in the village academy is a very tedious and 
 heavy business, so the pupils anticipate with pleasure the 
 holiday times. These they get at both the new moon and 
 the full moon for two days. Besides these four monthly 
 
ii8 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 holidays, the important Hindu festival days are also observed 
 as holidays. The day on which a new-comer is admitted 
 to a school also becomes a holiday after the ceremony is over. 
 There are no long holidays in the village academy except at 
 the beginning of the year, when they have four or five days. 
 
 The curriculum of the village academy includes the 
 alphabet, which is often one year's study ; the multiplication- 
 table ; arithmetic, including fractions ; proverbs ; sayings ; 
 dictionary ; composition ; writing — all this is for ordinary 
 students. For the advanced there is 'Kural,' a great 
 work on ethics, ' Bharatta,' ' Ramayana,' and ' Naidatham.' 
 In a few village schools grammar is also taught. If a 
 boy enters the village academy at the age of seven, he is 
 kept there till the age of sixteen or eighteen. If he is studious 
 and smart he can master all the subjects above mentioned. 
 
 Now, under the British Government, local fund schools 
 are opened in a few villages of certain districts, and a better 
 system of education prevails. The missionary bodies of 
 different denominations also have village schools, which are 
 conducted in a better style. But all this is a mere drop in 
 an ocean. It will be a hopeful time when every village 
 has a good school, in which elementary history, geography, 
 science, and religion may be taught. 
 
 
 3. THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 There are two or three physicians or doctors in each 
 village, but they do not belong to any particular sect or 
 caste. Sometimes the barber also practises medicine. 
 
. PROFESSIONS 119 
 
 Sometimes a Vellala or a Brahmin will become the doctor 
 of the village. The study of medicine is a prolonged 
 business. There is no school or college which gives special 
 medical instruction, but there are countless works on 
 medicine, which have been written by the eighteen doctors 
 of medicine of ancient times. Some of their names are 
 Agastiar, Thaarayar, Bogar, Konganavar, Machamuni, 
 Tholkappiar. It is a life-long study to master all these 
 medical works, and to learn how to practise their rules, as 
 they are written in a technical language. Those who have 
 studied these works carefully find themselves with some 
 effective medicines at their command, and they are often 
 very successful in healing the sick. They administer 
 different kinds oi laghiumo and thailams for different diseases, 
 especially to improve and purify the blood. If any of them 
 find out a specific, they use it during their lifetime, but will 
 not reveal it to any other doctor. When the finder dies, 
 the remedy also dies with him. The doctors are able to 
 make some fine powders and pills from nine kinds of 
 poisons. They use copper, iron, gold, quicksilver, mica, 
 pearls, and corals. These are usually administered only to 
 the rich and the noble ; but some of these medicines also 
 help the physicians in treating the diseases of the common 
 folks. There are some fine decoctions made of various 
 herbs, seeds, roots, leaves, and barks. These are often 
 very effective, and bring almost instant relief to the sufferer. 
 Ginger and dried ginger are frequently used for various 
 kinds of disease, but especially for diarrhoea, indigestion, 
 rheumatic complaints, cold, and fever. Pepper is used for 
 cough, and for clearing the throat. Chillies or cayenne- 
 pepper is a wonderful remedy for rheumatic pains and 
 swellings. Besides these, the doctors make ointments from 
 onions, eggs, snakes, frogs, wild rats, and they make use of 
 
I20 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 them as remedies for serious sickness. These physicians 
 cure fever, dysentery, rheumatic pains, headache, earache, 
 toothache, eye-diseases, skin-diseases of all kinds, bronchitis, 
 cold, in some ease snake poison, dyspepsia, and other 
 ordinary diseases, and they have remarkably efficient 
 remedies for all kinds of venereal diseases. But they 
 make fatal mistakes when the patients get organic diseases, 
 such as heart, liver, and lung complaints. The steam-bath 
 in a primitive form is used by these physicians in certain 
 cases ; but leprosy, consumption, and lunacy are quite in- 
 curable by them. 
 
 The patients who are under the treatment of these village 
 physicians have to undergo very trying diet, especially if the 
 patient is suffering from fever. In some cases the physicians 
 require the patients to abstain from certain things for a 
 period of forty days. 
 
 To find out the symptoms of a disease, they feel the pulse 
 in the morning, noon, and evening. Then they decide the 
 nature of the sickness. The village doctors consequently 
 get into a delightful muddle. If a man is suffering from 
 heart-disease, they are sure to treat him for headache. If a 
 woman is suffering from some disorder of the womb, they 
 are sure to treat her for stomach-ache. If a man is suffering 
 from consumption, they will order him an oil- bath twice a 
 week, as they believe that his body is over-heated. Their 
 knowledge of anatomy is most imperfect and limited, and 
 this accounts for their constantly misjudging the nature of 
 the disease. 
 
 The worst class of village physicians are the men of only 
 ordinary knowledge in the art of medicine, and this, un- 
 fortunately, is the class that is represented in most of the 
 Indian villages. They have no real knowledge of medicines, 
 and those which they use are very few and simple; but 
 
PROFESSIONS 121 
 
 their charges for the medicine and their fees for attendance 
 are also very low. They have pills for all kinds of diseases 
 that can be thought of. These medicines they keep in a 
 cloth bag, which is carried under their arms wherever they 
 go. Ten out of a hundred patients who are suffering from 
 serious diseases will be sure to lose their lives, and so one 
 of their pills is sarcastically called ' Vaigunda-mattira,' i.e., 
 ' The pill that sends into the other world.' As most of 
 the villagers are very poor, the cheapness of the remedy is 
 important, and they readily call in the quacks, who will 
 receive fourpence or perhaps sixpence for the medicine, or 
 perhaps a shilling for all their visits ; or it may be they will 
 take a hen, both for their medicine and their fee. But these 
 cunning ' angels of death ' often demand a separate and 
 extra sum for pretending to drive the devil from a sick 
 patient. When the patient is dead, these physicians put 
 the blame upon the departed man's relations, accusing them 
 of not watching the patient, or not observing closely the 
 diet which was prescribed. There are many persons, both 
 young and old, who complain of having lost their upper 
 teeth, or the lower teeth, or grinders, or even the whole 
 set, by taking medicine from these doctors. They are 
 accustomed to administer quicksilver which has not been 
 properly purified. Thousands of the people in India die 
 for want of proper medical aid. The Government has 
 opened local fund dispensaries in some centres, and these are 
 a great boon ; but there are still thousands of villages which 
 are left to the tender mercies of these incompetent quacks. 
 
 The village optician is remarkably clever in attending to 
 eye diseases. When a person is suffering from cataract or 
 other eye-disease, he invites the optician to attend on him, 
 and he receives a fee from the patient according to his cir- 
 cumstances. He operates on the eye wij;h his crude knife, 
 
122 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 and applies his rough iron bars, eight inches long, to the 
 eye. Doubtless the patient is often left to tell the sad story 
 of his eyes being lost through the bungling of the optician. 
 These opticians travel from village to village, with the result 
 of making many people blind. Out of the 50,000 blind 
 persons in South India there are few who have become 
 blind through natural causes. Now the news is getting 
 abroad that eye-diseases can be cured in the Eye Infirmaries 
 of the cities, and sometimes the richer classes in the villages 
 avail themselves of this opportunity. 
 
 There are dentists who often have an extensive practice 
 through a district. If a person complains that he or she 
 has toothache, these dentists apply some paste to the jaw, 
 and give some powder with which to cleanse the teeth. If 
 this does not cure they make the patient inhale steam, and 
 this will often bring instant relief. In some cases the 
 dentist is asked to pull out the tooth which causes the pain. 
 He then takes out his pincers and nips a tooth, most 
 probably not the decayed one, but the next to it. His 
 mode of drawing it out causes great agony, and sometimes 
 is even followed by death. 
 
 There are also village surgeons. The surgery of the 
 village is chiefly practised by the barbers. For severe 
 wounds they apply cold water. They wrap up the part 
 well with cloth and pour cold water on it for hours together. 
 In this way they often succeed in healing the wound. 
 
 In the villages where the Mohammedans live the surgeons 
 are the men who effect the act of circumcision. They bring 
 round their patient after the operation by applying cold water 
 to the wound. 
 
 India being a country of extreme heat, piles are a 
 common disease among those who constantly expose them- 
 selves to the sun, as the tillers of the soil must do. Those 
 
PROFESSIONS 123 
 
 who live on alluvial soil and drink saltish water suffer from 
 the painful sickness occasioned by internal or external piles. 
 There are hundreds, both of men and women, who suffer 
 from this irritating disease. The pile doctors are clever 
 men in their way, and they get a good living, as they have 
 their headquarters in one village, and travel about the 
 country. They demand a fixed fee from every patient, no 
 matter whether he is rich or poor. They apply some 
 poisonous stuff, bandage the part well, and allow it to 
 remain for three days. On the third day the piles are 
 found to have decayed, and they may even have fallen 
 away, leaving a large hole, and this has to be healed by 
 the specialist, who applies some medicine and gives good 
 nourishment. In this way the pile specialist is successful in 
 many cases, but the poison may get into the system if it is 
 applied in excess, and then blood-poisoning follows and the 
 patient dies. It is always a case of life or death with the 
 village pile-doctor. 
 
 There are several works written on cattle disease, and 
 there are specialists who have studied these works and treat 
 the various diseases of the cattle. Some of them are very 
 successful veterinary surgeons. The worst part of the treat- 
 ment of animals is branding them with red-hot iron bars on 
 all parts of their bodies ; and even worse still is their trying 
 to decorate the animal with ornamental marks made with 
 the heated iron. The village veterinary surgeon appoints a 
 time for seeing sick animals once or twice a week, and there 
 is always quite a multitude of them waiting for treatment. 
 There will be cows and bullocks and buffaloes, and often 
 also sheep and goats. For all the sicknesses of these useful 
 domestic animals the village veterinary surgeon has only one 
 grand remedy — branding of the legs, faces, and bodies of 
 he beasts. 
 
124 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 Sometimes the veterinary surgeon will be busy from six 
 in the morning to six in the evening, with only one short 
 break in the interval for a meal. He receives a fixed fee for 
 every animal he attends. He makes use of the men who 
 bring the cattle to heat the irons. Having accomplished his 
 first and last operation, he advises the owner of the bullock, 
 cow, or buffalo to mix certain herbs with the cotton-seed 
 which he gives to the animal. Doubtless this is the remedy 
 that really cures the animal. We wish the Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would interfere in the 
 matter, and put a stop to this cruel and useless custom of 
 branding. 
 
 4. THE PRIEST. 
 
 >^ There is no village in India without its priest. The 
 people themselves believe that they ought not to live in 
 a village where there is no koiV, i.e., the house of a god. 
 Every village koi7 has a priest of its own, who attends to the 
 many duties of the koi7, no matter whether it be a Sivan 
 koii or a Vishnu koil or a Pillayar koil, or a koil belonging 
 to some local god or goddess. The duties of the village 
 priests are not simple and easy, but they do not require 
 any great skill or profound learning. There are two classes 
 
 \ of village priests — the one Brahmin, the other non-Brahmin. 
 
 ^' The former are acknowledged as the proper priests of the 
 village. They may serve in a village temple or not, but 
 they have the right and privilege of enjoying an annual 
 income from the people. It is not necessary that these 
 priests should live in the village where they attend to their 
 
PROFESSIONS 125 
 
 duties. They may live in a more suitable and convenient 
 one, and this they often do, visiting other villages whenever 
 there is work for them to do. Each priest is usually in 
 charge of more than one village. 
 
 The villagers go to their priest in order to consult him 
 about business matters which they have in hand. If there 
 are marriages to be arranged, they ask the priest to examine 
 the horoscope of both the young man and the young woman 
 who want to be married. They consult him to fix a day for 
 beginning to plough, to fix a day for sowing, and to fix a 
 day in which to begin the harvest. Before they start on a 
 distant journey they ask the priest to fix a day on which 
 they can get the smile of a good star. They consult him 
 when a child is born, a girl attains her womanly age, or when 
 a person has fallen sick. They invite the priest to perform 
 their marriage ceremony, their funeral ceremony, and the 
 anniversary of a relative's death. The service of the priest 
 is also needed in all the purification days, and in the 
 opening of a new building. On all these occasions the 
 priest receives offerings in the shape of money, rice, paddy, 
 vegetables, milk, g/iee, fruits, plantain-leaves, etc. These 
 things form the staple food of a Brahmin priest ; hence he 
 is not imprudent in collecting such necessaries of life. As 
 he is a vegetarian, he never demands a hen or a lamb. He 
 is always on the look-out, and moving frequently among the 
 villagers, in order to remind them of the approaching //ii//ii, 
 or annual ceremony for the dead. Through these cere- 
 monies the Brahmin priests make large incomes. 
 
 These ceremonies were introduced many centuries ago, 
 and their object is to secure the forgiveness of the sins of the 
 departed father, mother, or forefathers of the man who 
 spends his money in getting the ceremony performed. 
 Before this annual ceremony day comes round, the priest 
 
126 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 gives to Ramasamy a long list of things to be bought. On 
 the day of the ceremony the priest and his male relations 
 reach Ramasamy's house at about 9 a.m. By the time the 
 priest arrives, Ramasamy and his household, having bathed 
 and dressed themselves in clean cloths, are ready to receive 
 him. They first take him into a spacious room or hall, in 
 which there are twenty-one plantain leaves spread out on 
 the floor, each of these being filled with six measures of 
 rice, heaps of vegetables of all kinds, plantains, pulse, g/iee, 
 curds, honey, new cloth, money, and other things. The 
 twenty-one leaves represent the twenty- one departed fore- 
 fathers of Ramasamy, and the priest freely, willingly and 
 gladly pronounces forgiveness of all the sins of omission 
 and commission which have been charged to those twenty- 
 one departed souls of the forefathers of Ramasamy. If Rama- 
 samy is a man of limited means, he only supplies three leaves 
 to the priest, and then the priest can see his way clear to for- 
 give the sins of only three of the departed souls of Rama- 
 samy's ancestors, his parents and his grandfather. If 
 Ramasamy is a rich man, he can get the sins of any number 
 of his departed ancestors forgiven, provided he can supply 
 plantain-leaves full of good things, in the name of his fore- 
 fathers. The priest readily forgives the sin of any man who 
 can give him a good offering. 
 
 It is regarded as a great sin for a villager to receive any- 
 thing from a Brahmin priest free of charge; but it is a 
 blessing to him to give anything that he has. If a man has 
 a fine black cow, it is considered advantageous for him to 
 give it to the priest, and in return to receive the forgiveness 
 of all his own sins as well as those of his forefathers. It is 
 inculcated by the priest that it is a sin to keep a black cow 
 in the village. The Brahmin priest consequently gets an 
 income on which he can live very comfortably. Of course. 
 
PROFESSIONS 127 
 
 his Aryan blood and his long ages of civilization and culture, 
 give him an important position in village society. He is 
 really the most intelligent man in the village, and he has 
 introduced several useful institutions in the name of 
 religion, for which the villagers ought to be thankful. 
 Wherever the institutions and regulations of the priest are 
 observed, the savageness and vulgarity are certainly 
 moderated. 
 
 The union, craftiness, precaution and intelligence of the 
 earlier village priests were so great that they induced the 
 ancient village rulers to establish charitable institutions for 
 their own sole benefit and for that of their posterity. These 
 institutions are continued from one generation to another, 
 and they are now enormously wealthy. There are several 
 chatranis^ i.e., inns ; there are innumerable temples, which 
 have great endowments, consisting of lands, villages and 
 money ; the income arising from the property is entirely 
 consumed by the priests. Having these privileges, the 
 priests have too often dishonoured the true religious life, 
 and become carnal-minded. In many cases they have 
 altogether lost the true conception of God and of the life 
 that is pleasing to Him. They have, as it were, paralyzed 
 their religious ceremonies and devotions, and grown ever 
 more licentious through materializing their religion. They 
 multiply their institutions, and often seriously differ from 
 one another in their teachings, and they cause the people to 
 go to all sorts of unnecessary expenditure, and so they suck 
 the life-blood out of the people. Having secured a large 
 income, the priests sit down to enjoy their curry and rice, 
 pulse and ghee, in quietness with their families. It is 
 unfortunately also the case that they utilize their incomes in 
 supporting concubines. The worst of the Hindu system is 
 the support of public prostitution in connection with the 
 
128 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 Hindu temples. Women have the privilege of dancing and 
 singing before the processions of Hindu gods, and support- 
 ing themselves from the temple funds. These village priests 
 are not, perhaps, much worse than the Druid priests of 
 v/ ancient Britain, or the learned priests of ancient Egypt, 
 Greece or Rome. 
 
 One of the important institutions of the priests is 
 Brahmaiia hojana^ i.e.^ the feeding of Brahmins. This 
 takes place either in a large chatrain, or in a temporary shed 
 which has been* erected for the purpose at the expense of a 
 rich villager. This rich villager sends out invitations to 
 the Brahmins of the different villages to attend the feast- 
 Having done this, he engages the priest of his own village 
 to manage the feeding of the Brahmin guests. If the 
 Brahmins know in time — as they generally do — that there 
 is going to be a ' feeding of Brahmins ' in such and such a 
 village, they actually eat little or nothing for two or three 
 days, and thus keep themselves in readiness for a good feed. 
 
 At the appointed hour all assemble — none but Brahmins. 
 Perhaps it will be a gathering of a hundred, or even two 
 hundred, people of both sexes. The villager who has 
 undertaken to feed them supplies several earthen vessels 
 full oi ghee^ curds, buttermilk and milk, some measures of 
 honey, a large quantity of sugar, and all sorts of fruit and 
 other necessaries, such as rice, curry - stuff, vegetables, 
 plantain-leaves, sago, pappadanis and asafoetida. The 
 cooking is all done by the Brahmins themselves, asafoetida 
 and inulukidamiy being used as substitutes for the brandy and 
 wine of the West. This host of Brahmin guests feed them- 
 selves well, so much so, indeed, that they are often unable 
 to get up from the floor and walk as far as the back-yard to 
 wash their hands. All the good things that were prepared 
 for them have found ready consumers, and the guests can 
 
PROFESSIONS 129 
 
 seldom walk, in the evening, to their respective villages, 
 because of their heavily-laden stomachs. The saying that 
 the 'Brahmin is a bojana pirya' i.e., 'the Brahmin is fond 
 of eating,' is verified on such occasions. 
 
 There were, on one occasion, two Brahmin feeding-parties 
 in a village, and each party, having done justice to their 
 calling, returned to their respective homes. One of the 
 Brahmins of the party who had their feeding-place on the 
 west was making his way towards the east, and another 
 Brahmin, who had his feeding with the eastern party, 
 was going up to the western side. They met midway. 
 One of them had a pair of shoes on his feet, but he was not 
 able to look down to see whether he was really wearing 
 them or had left them in the feeding-house ; and so, as soon 
 as he saw the other Brahmin coming towards him, he 
 addressed him thus : ' O friend, do you see a shoe on my 
 foot?' Unfortunately, that Brahmin also had enjoyed a 
 good feeding, like his brother, and he, too, was unable to 
 look down at the foot of the Brahmin. He looked round 
 about, here and there, towards the sky. ' Ha ! I do not see 
 the pair of shoes there.' Such was the helpless condition of 
 these two Brahmins who were returning from the scene of 
 'feeding the Brahmins.' It is said that a Brahmin, not 
 knowing how much to eat in a feeding company, ties round 
 his stomach a piece of thread, and eats until the thread 
 bursts with the distension of the stomach. 
 
 There are also non-Brahmin priests in the villages who 
 are in charge of the temples of the local gods and goddesses. 
 These priests bathe in cold water very early in the morning, 
 and then go to the flower-gardens and pluck flowers and 
 leaves ; these they boil with a measure or half a measure of 
 raw rice in a brass vessel, and place the same, together with 
 a broken cocoanut, flowers, etc., before the image. They 
 
 10 
 
I30 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 then wave incense and ring the temple bell. On hearing 
 this the people of the village, wherever they may be, raise 
 both hands towards the temple. Sometimes the villagers 
 go to the temple, when the priest performs the /'ooj'a, which 
 takes place twice a day. It must be remembered that these 
 priests serve in the temples which are consecrated to the 
 minor gods, who are very numerous in the villages. 
 
 The expenses of the dsiWy pooja are met by the gifts and 
 offerings of the villagers, and also by the revenue accruing 
 from the endowment of the temple. The annual festival 
 will cost from loo to 150 rupees, and this sum is collected 
 among the villagers themselves by compulsory subscrip- 
 tions. If there is any surplus left after spending for the 
 annual festival, that is added to the general fund of the 
 temple. 
 
 The priest is constantly going about among the people, 
 and telling them of the wonderful things that have been 
 done by their gods to this or that person. By interpreting 
 dreams as visions given to the people by the gods, he is 
 constantly inducing somebody to pay a special vow to the 
 gods. He gets the money, and makes the necessary pre- 
 parations for the special pooja. This extraordinary pooja is 
 performed by the priest simply by adding some extra cere- 
 monies to the ordinary course. On these occasions people 
 assemble to receive the answers to their prayers, which are 
 supposed to come through the medium of lizards. Some 
 of them wish to know the will of their god in regard to 
 some particular matter which they have in their minds. 
 For instance, if (iopal desires to marry Soundry, he comes 
 to the temple to get information from the god as to whether 
 that marriage will prove a success or a failure. He tells the 
 priest that he desires to know the will of the god concerning 
 a certain matter, without letting him know what it is. The 
 
PROFESSIONS 131 
 
 priest at once goes to his private chamber, takes one red 
 flower and one white one, puts each in a separate leaf, rolls 
 them round and ties them well ; then the priest brings these 
 two small bundles and leaves them at the foot of the image. 
 Then he tells Gopal to take one of these bundles, and says to 
 him : ' If the god is willing to answer you favourably, he 
 will give you the white flower ; and if he is not willing to 
 give you a favourable answer, you will get the red flower/ 
 At once Gopal prostrates himself before the image, and 
 takes up one of the bundles, which he gives back to the 
 priest. He opens it in the presence of Gopal and the others 
 who may be present in the temple. If the flower happens 
 to be the white one, then Gopal leaps for joy ; but if it is 
 the red one, he goes away low and dejected. There may 
 be many others present who are also anxious to know the 
 will of the god about some matter of personal or family 
 interest. The priest adopts the same plan in revealing the 
 will of the god to them, but sometimes he will point out to 
 them the right side of the temple on which to get a favour- 
 able answer through the lizard. People will wait for hours 
 together for the answer of the lizard. There may come the 
 voice of the god through the lizard on either the one side or 
 the other, but it is oftener on the right side, for the priests 
 are careful to kill the lizards on the left side of the temple 
 building when the people assemble to know the will of their 
 god. 
 
 These non-Brahmin priests cannot get as much income 
 from the people as the Brahmin priests can. Nevertheless, 
 they lead a very easy and comfortable life at the expense of 
 the villagers. This class of priest is not cultured or in- 
 telligent, as the Brahmin priests are, and consequently they 
 sometimes have to cultivate their lands in order to meet the 
 demands of their families. They believe in matrimonial 
 
132 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 transactions, and some of them are men with large families, 
 and their male descendants become their successors. 
 
 r 
 
 5. THE MUSICIAN. 
 
 No joyful or sorrowful occasion m a village passes without 
 an accompaniment of music. They have music on the day 
 of their marriage, and music in connection with their deaths. 
 They must have music at the purificatory ceremony of a girl 
 who has attained her womanhood. They cannot make 
 their united offerings to their gods and goddesses without 
 music. No ceremony, no festival of the village, can go on 
 without a musical accompaniment. 
 
 There are three kinds of music, the paray kottoo, pal/an 
 kottoo^ and raja inalaam. The paray kottoo is a very 
 peculiar kind of music. It is played by the pariahs, the 
 out-caste people of Southern India. There are four or five 
 round drums, and one or two Indian trumpets. These 
 instruments make up the full set of the paray nialaatn. 
 When the men beat the deafening drums and blow the 
 trumpets, it is enough to rend the air, to frighten the 
 children, and to drive the beasts from the neighbouring 
 forests. These musicians know no tunes, and all that they 
 do is jump hither and thither while they beat the drums. 
 The villagers are not expected to pay anything when these 
 pariahs are asked to play, but they have to feed them. 
 
 The pallan kottoo is very little better, either in sound or 
 in method. There are two or three drums and a country 
 clarionet, and with these the /i^/A?;'^ keep on playing only one 
 
PROFESSIONS 133 
 
 tune of their own through the whole day, and even some- 
 times through the night. If these musicians commence to 
 play in the night, the sound will be heard two or three miles 
 away, and it has a charming effect upon the uncivilized 
 masses. These musicians also render their services for 
 little or no payment when they are required by the villagers. 
 The raja malaam is a far superior kind, and the most 
 decent of all the three musical sets. It is owned by a class 
 of people called Octhan, who are allowed to move about 
 freely in the inner and outer yards of the village houses. 
 This musical set consists of two or three drums of a peculiar 
 shape, which are beaten only on one side, and a drum which 
 can be beaten on both sides, a cymbal, two clarionets, and 
 an instrument called othos — i.e., helping instrument — which 
 keeps only one note, like the drone of a bagpipe. These 
 instruments form the whole set of 7-aja via/aam. These 
 men know several tunes, and they also understand the notes of 
 the Oriental music, but they cannot be classified as experts 
 in the art of music. They also play some Mohammedan 
 tunes. This set of musicians cannot be found in every 
 village, and they have to be engaged by the party who 
 requires their service for a fixed sum of money, which must be 
 paid promptly at the close of their service. During marriage 
 times there is usually a great demand for this kind of music. 
 
 r 
 
134 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 6. THE MONEY-LENDER {Muthalallie). 
 
 The evils attendant on borrowing money are not un- 
 known to the villagers of India. There are scores of 
 people who are in the clutches of the money-lenders, who 
 try desperately to get out of their hands, but fail in their 
 attempts. There are both general and special causes which 
 account for the villagers running into debt. The entire 
 energy and enterprise of the villager is put into agricultural 
 pursuits. There is not a soul in the villages who can boast 
 of being a manufacturer of any useful article. Consequently, 
 money is not passing into the hands of these people at all 
 seasons of the year, but only at the harvest-time. They are 
 consequently driven in the time of necessity to the money- 
 lender. The ignorant and heavily-burdened villagers have 
 many occasions for getting small or even large loans at 
 exorbitant interest. They must borrow money to meet the 
 demands of the tax-gatherers ; they must seek for loans, 
 mortgaging their lands or their jewels, in order to perform 
 the marriages of their sons and daughters. In some cases 
 they cannot manage to perform the funeral ceremonies with- 
 out getting into debt. And, over and above all, they cannot 
 be quiet, but must commence a lawsuit of some kind against 
 either friend or foe, in order to teach him a lesson for his bad 
 behaviour at a marriage, or on the occasion of a village 
 festival. In such ways the villagers become the slaves of 
 those creators of misery, the money-lenders. 
 
 The more prominent class of the people that is engaged 
 in the business of money - lending is called Nattookottay 
 chetties. They live in the village of Nattookottay and its 
 surroundings, in the Madura district ; from thence they travel 
 all over the country, and they have even gone to the Indian 
 
MONEY-LENDER. 
 
PROFESSIONS 135 
 
 colonies, in order to ply their money-lending tricks on the 
 poor villagers who have left their homeland to try and make 
 their fortunes. The habits and modes of living of this class 
 of money-lenders are simple and plain. They have fine, 
 substantial, stone-built houses in their villages, in which the 
 female members of their families remain when they go on 
 circuit. These females have very few jewels, and they are 
 savage looking, illiterate, and little more than half clothed. 
 The men have clean-shaved, bald heads, big holes in their 
 ears, a shrewd, business-like appearance, and a black skin. 
 They belong to the Siva sect, but their sympathies go 
 towards any Hindu temple and any charitable objects of the 
 Hindu community. They are very united among them- 
 selves. If a man belonging to their community fails in 
 business, all the others contribute a small sum per head, and 
 the amount will reach about 40,000 or 50,000 rupees at the 
 lowest. One of them will then take the fallen man, and 
 the money that has been given to him by their community, 
 and make him a partner in his business. They have also 
 a general charity fund, to which every member of the com- 
 munity must contribute three per cent, of his annual profits. 
 This fund is swelling to an enormous amount, and it is kept 
 under the management of an influential person of their com- 
 munity, who lends it out at interest. 
 
 Their dealings with village communities are ruinous. 
 They have the ' deceitfulness of riches ' ; they ' devour 
 widows' houses ' ; and they freely spend a certain portion 
 of their income in embellishing the pagodas of the famous 
 Hindu shrines. There is no class that can equal them in 
 craftiness. They know the ins and outs, the needs and 
 wants, of the people, and are always on the watch for the 
 most favourable occasion on which to further their own 
 interests. If two brothers are fighting for their rights after 
 
136 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the death of their father, the money-lenders step between 
 them and render such financial help as enables them to 
 bring their dispute into the law-courts. Of course, they 
 charge twenty per cent, compound interest on the money 
 they have lent. Probably the fighting of the brothers will 
 continue for about seven years, the case passing from the 
 lower courts to the highest tribunal in the land. During 
 that period thousands of rupees have to be spent. At last, 
 when their disputes are settled, there are heavy debts to 
 clear. In winding up the accounts they discover that their 
 property is only just enough to pay their debts, and that 
 pauperism is the only thing left for them. 
 
 The many village chiefs, landlords, zamindars, who have 
 become the miserable victims of these avaricious money- 
 lenders, are living monuments of the misery caused by 
 them. They remind one of the monkey who settled the 
 dispute between the two foolish cats. 
 
 There were two cats in a village, which got hold of a lump 
 of sugar-candy and took it to the meadows. As soon as they 
 reached the grassy slopes they began to fight for the sugar- 
 candy. Each of them wanted to consume the whole of it. 
 While the fight was going on, there came a monkey and 
 spoke thus to the cats : ' Peace be to you. What is the 
 matter that you are fighting about ? Tell me, please.' ' This 
 sugar-candy is mine,' said one of the cats ; but the other 
 declared that it was his. ' Well, then, you both, my friends, 
 seem to have a share in the candy. Let me help you by 
 dividing it. Bring me a pair of scales, please,' said the dis- 
 interested monkey. The scales were brought at once by one 
 of them. Holding the scale in his hand, the friendly monkey 
 divided the sugar-candy, and placed the two pieces, one on 
 each pan of the scale, 'i'he cats were most thankful to find 
 such a wise and ready helper. The monkey, in weighing, 
 
PROFESSIONS 137 
 
 found that one portion of the sugar-candy was a httle heavier 
 than the other, so he tried to make them equal by cutting 
 off a piece of it and throwing it into his mouth. And now 
 he saw that the other portion was a httle heavier than the 
 one which he had tried to adjust, so he cut off a piece of 
 that and threw it into his mouth. Again he found an 
 inequahty between the two shares, and therefore he repeated 
 the process of adjusting the scale until he had consumed 
 the whole of the sugar candy, little by little. 'After all, I 
 took only my share for the trouble which I have taken in 
 dividing the sugar candy for you, my dear cats. Now I 
 can do nothing for you but wish you every success. Good- 
 morning,' said the monkey, and went on his way. 
 
 This illustration is precisely applicable to the village 
 money-lenders, who step in between parties who are fighting 
 over their properties. They are sure eventually to get them 
 out of their hands. 
 
 These money-lenders have another evil habit : they spoil 
 young men who are of age, and are living a profligate life 
 while under the management of their parents. For instance, 
 if the money-lender hear of a wealthy man's son, he induces 
 him to borrow money without the knowledge of his parents. 
 A document is prepared and executed by the young man 
 for a loan of, say, 30,000 rupees, and the document is duly 
 registered at the registrar's office, the money-lender paying 
 the full amount of the loan to the young man in the 
 presence of the registrar. When the parties have got out 
 of the office, the money-lender takes back the sum of 
 20,000 rupees from the young man, and sends him off with 
 only 10,000 rupees. At the due time the money-lender files 
 a suit to recover a sum of 45,000 rupees, to which the loan 
 has swelled with the added interest. This demand of the 
 court alarms the rich father, who redeems his son in quite 
 
138 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 an honourable way, and thus saves his own reputation. 
 But the loss he sustains by the wicked dealings of the 
 money-lender with his son is ever after a most painful 
 memory to him. 
 
 This money-lending class are always busy in devising 
 schemes and plans that will further their own interest and 
 ruin the interests of others. Their faults are many, and 
 their virtues are few. The most prominent of the latter is 
 their completing temple buildings left unfinished by Hindu 
 kings and chiefs, and supporting the Hindu temples. All 
 the temples in India have ready, generous, and munificent 
 helpers in the money-lending Nattookottay cJietties. Within 
 the last twenty-five years several famous but ruined temples 
 and pagodas have been rebuilt, repaired, modified, and im- 
 proved by them at the cost of lakhs of rupees. They have 
 also built several chat7'ams (inns), and have left great en- 
 dowments for the support of the Brahmin priests, in several 
 parts of the country. Probably there is no class of people 
 in the whole of India who take such an interest in spend- 
 ing their money for objects connected with the Hindu 
 temples. 
 
 There are also small local money-lenders, who lend out 
 money or grain on a small scale, and receive the same back 
 at the time of harvest, with high interest. The proposed 
 village agricultural bank will prove specially helpful to the 
 imperilled agricultural classes in the village communities. 
 
 r 
 
PROFESSIONS 139 
 
 7. THE DEVIL-DANCER {Payade). 
 
 The devil-dancers should be regarded as a third class ot 
 village priests. But, as their vulgarity and peculiarity need 
 particular consideration, it is better to treat them under this 
 distinct heading. 
 
 There is no sect or class of people who take to this 
 calling; but the most ignorant, vulgar, well built and lazy 
 scoundrels act thfs part. The temples which are consecrated *• 
 to devils are often arranged without a roof, being only an 
 enclosure of bare walls. In some cases they have a small 
 covered building attached. There is no special endowment 
 for the support of these devil temples, nor any regular estab- 
 lishment. One or two villagers will unite in undertaking the 
 work of devil-dancing. On a fixed day of the year, a certain 
 section of the villagers, if not all, assemble together, and 
 bring their offerings and their vows to the devil-temple. 
 They erect a temporary shed to accommodate them for one 
 night, and decorate this temporary building with plantain- 
 trees, evergreen-leaves, flowers, and tender cocoanuts. They 
 also engage a party to play that peculiar drum which helps 
 the devil-dancer to go mad. Men and women who comets 
 to the festival commence by boiling rice in a number of 
 vessels— each vessel representing a family. The images 
 which are in the devil temple have each before them heaps 
 of plantains, broken cocoanuts, sugar-canes, flowers, limes, 
 and arrack bottles. Lambs or cocks are sacrificed, and 
 placed at the sides of the images. At about ten o'clock the 
 devil-dancers appear before the people with peculiar long 
 caps on their heads, brass bangles on their hands and legs ; 
 they wear a peculiar /t?;/^«Az;//, full of bells, and devil-images 
 and garlands of flowers are round their necks. These 
 
I40 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 monsters help themselves freely to the bottles of arrack 
 placed before the images, and then they dance like devils. 
 They bawl out ' Ho ! ho !' with all their strength ; the 
 beaters of the drum get tipsy, and then all join together and 
 dance till one o'clock in the morning, at which time the 
 devil-dancers pretend to show the manifestation of the devils 
 
 K to the people. The cleverest and strongest and youngest 
 among them steps forward with a chutty full of rice and 
 blood of lambs. He mixes these well together, and makes 
 
 - the substance into large and small balls. Holding the vessel 
 in his left hand, he bawls out again ' Hai ! hai ! hai !' and 
 starts off immediately for the cremation-ground. A man 
 holding a torchlight in his hand and another man beating 
 a drum follow the devil-dancer. He runs hither and thither 
 on the cremation-ground, pretending that he throws off the 
 balls of rice into the sky so that they may be devoured by 
 the devils. In reality he simply dodges the two fellows by 
 saying, ' There is the devil !' or ' Here is the devil !' ' Lo, 
 an army of devils in the sky !' These statements, and the 
 tremendous noise made by the devil-dancers, stupefy the 
 two fellows who run along with him. The devil-dancer 
 seeing the frightened condition of his companions, turns his 
 back to them, and throws some balls of rice into his mouth, 
 and some on the ground, and then returns to the devil- 
 temple. Here all the congregation are lying prostrate 
 before the images, with closed eyes, lest they should be 
 killed by their devil-gods, who are supposed to have gone 
 to the cremation-ground to receive the bloody offerings. 
 When the devil-dancer comes in they all rise and stand on 
 their feet; then he distributes to them the sacred ashes 
 and flowers, and the remaining part of the night is spent in 
 dancing and singing in praise of the devils, by the devil- 
 dancers. On the following morning several rams are slain 
 
PROFESSIONS 141 
 
 as a sacrifice to the devils, and after this the people disperse 
 to their respective homes. 
 
 The devil-dancers make an income from the villagers. 
 Whenever they come to pay their vows and offerings to the 
 demi-gods, the devil-dancers extract a good deal from them. 
 Sometimes they play the part of sorcerers and fortune-tellers 
 among the most ignorant classes ; sometimes they act as 
 devil-drivers, and on such occasions they receive a cock, 
 some measures of rice, cocoanuts, fruits, and money. Hie 
 devil-dancer knows how to further his own interests. If he 
 sees anybody sick in the village, he tells that person that a 
 little devil is the cause of the sickness, and he attempts to 
 give a history of the devil which has got hold of that sick 
 person. Immediately the sick person requests the devil- 
 dancer to drive out the devil. In such ways he obtains an 
 income sufficient to keep himself and his family alive. 
 Some of these men have been known to grow rich by 
 frightening the people, and threatening them with the anger, 
 displeasure, and cruelty of the devils. 
 
 Some of the devil-dancers of the Indian villages have, in 
 late years, left their old occupation, and embraced the 
 ennobling and reforming religion of Jesus Christ. Among 
 these men there is one who is well known to us, and whose 
 character and later career are in every way remarkable. In 
 the year 1877 there was a great famine in South India, and 
 during this time of strain many poor villagers embraced 
 Christianity. It is not for us to discuss the merit or demerit 
 of their conversions. There was one among them who was 
 a famous devil-dancer, and he knew all the tricks of the 
 trade, and had never been backward in performing the 
 tricks. When he was told of a religion which could make 
 even a devil-dancer a good man, and that this religion 
 destroys the works of the devil, and helps those who believe 
 
142 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 in it to lead a profitable and happy life under all circum- 
 stances, he readily embraced it, along with several other 
 villagers ; and he gave away to the missionary all his devil- 
 dancer's dress, and the articles which he had used during 
 his dark days. The famine passed, and plenty and prosperity 
 re-visited the land, and then many of the villagers who em- 
 braced Christianity went back to their old religion, but this 
 devil-dancer was not among them. He too well understood 
 the emptiness and the falsehood of the religion which he 
 had once professed. In refusing to go back to his old 
 profession of a devil-dancer, and following his conviction in 
 relation to the new religion, he lost a good living. Poor 
 Joseph ! Although he is a loser in one sense, he keeps a 
 pure mind, a clear conscience, a happy soul, and a sound 
 body, and he works hard as a gardener to support himself 
 and his family. He is the only Christian man in his village. 
 He does not work on Sundays, and he goes five miles every 
 Sunday to attend a Christian service. We have recorded 
 this fact here because we know the man personally; we 
 spoke to him when he was a devil-dancer; we prayed with 
 him for his conversion ; we rejoiced with him after his 
 conversion ; and we make inquiries concerning him when- 
 ever we see a man from his village. We take a deep 
 interest in him, as he is not only a fellow Christian but also 
 a native of our own birth-place. We hope that the time 
 will soon arrive when the devil-dancers of the villages will 
 become worshippers of the one and holy God, in spirit and 
 in truth. 
 
PROFESSIONS 143 
 
 8. THE FORTUNE-TELLER (Astrologer). 
 
 If there is a land under the sun where men believe 
 thoroughly in astrology and fortune-telling, that land is 
 India. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, to find that 
 the villagers of India support their own sooth-sayers and 
 fortune-tellers, who give vain hopes, and bring unnecessary 
 trouble upon the much-burdened villagers. As a matter 
 of fact, these fortune-tellers dupe the ignorant people with 
 all kinds of tomfoolery and deception. The men and women 
 of the village are easily led by the nose by these astrologers. 
 The young and the old, the rich and the poor, the men and 
 the women, always have something concerning which they 
 wish to consult either an astrologer or a fortune-teller. 
 When a man or woman, a cow or a buffalo, a goat or a 
 sheep is sick, the first thing the head of the house does is 
 to consult the fortune teller, asking him to reveal the cause 
 of the sickness of the person or the beast. For this he pays 
 a fee to the fortune-teller, as well as fruits, cocoanuts, etc. 
 The villagers have a crude notion that all sickness, and all 
 the difficulties in life, are caused by their family goddess, or 
 through the schemes of some devil who is offended by their 
 behaviour towards him. 
 
 There are several kinds of astrologers and fortune-tellers 
 in the villages. Some of the Brahmin priests play this part. 
 The Vallavars (the pariah priests) and men from other 
 classes also become astrologers. These wise men write 
 sathagam (horoscopes) for all classes and conditions of 
 people who are able to pay for them. In this sathagam 
 very singular things are mentioned. Take, for instance, the 
 horoscope of Raman, a villager. In it we find described 
 several things that Raman will do during his lifetmie. All 
 
 II 
 
144 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 the enjoyments, sorrows, losses, gains, sicknesses, and 
 changes in his life are mentioned in it. It seems that 
 Raman will have several children between the twenty-fifth 
 and thirty-fifth years of his age ; he will have four male 
 children and three female children. Out of these five will 
 live to grow up, and the rest will die young. Between 
 Raman's forty-second and forty-fifth years one of his parents, 
 or both, will die. Raman himself will have serious sick- 
 nesses at the ages of twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty-two, 
 forty-eight, and fifty-five. At all these different periods of 
 sickness he may possibly die. If he escapes the serious 
 illness of fifty-five, then he will live up to threescore and 
 ten. Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five a good 
 star will be guiding our friend Raman. From the year 
 thirty-five to forty-five Raman will have a bad star to guide 
 him, and this will mean loss of property and possibly life. 
 Then again Raman will have the influence of a good star, 
 and this will bring him additional property and joy. 
 
 Without proceeding further on this subject, we may 
 remark that the obtaining of these horoscopes has done much 
 more harm than good. Consulting this horoscope at the 
 time of sickness tends to bring fears which retard recovery. 
 In times of trouble the horoscope creates doubts, and 
 induces carelessness, and so kills one's spirit. In times of 
 prosperity and happiness it foretells the miseries and troubles 
 that are to follow, and so it acts the part of an enemy to 
 human happiness. 
 
 No marriage among any class of the people can take 
 place without consulting the horoscopes of both the man 
 and the woman. This consultation often prevents good 
 matches, and may even encourage unsuitable matrimonial 
 transactions. In relation to the superstitious belief of the 
 Hindus, there is a story current which runs thus : 
 
PROFESSIONS 145 
 
 There was a celebrated king in the city of Nagapore some 
 hundreds of years ago. There was also a famous astrologer 
 who was in the habit of visiting the palace of the king. On 
 a certain occasion, ' How long shall I live ?' was the question 
 put to the astrologer by the king. Having carefully ex- 
 amined the horoscope, ' Only two years ; not more,' replied 
 the astrologer. The king's mind became troubled, his counte- 
 nance was changed, and he became sorrowful and uneasy. 
 But the Prime Minister, who was near him, suddenly called 
 the astrologer, and said to him, ' How long will you live, 
 let me know?' ' Ah, twenty years yet,' said the astrologer. 
 At once the Prime Minister drew his sword and cut off the 
 head of the astrologer. Then he addressed the king thus : 
 ' How was it possible for a man who did not know the time 
 of his own death, though it was so nigh, to predict that the 
 death of your highness will take place in two years' time ? 
 Therefore, O king ! take courage ; believe not in super- 
 stitious men.' The king was comforted, and became as 
 happy as before. Although this is a current story among 
 the villagers, they do not practise what it teaches. 
 
 Not only is the consulting of astrologers and the taking of 
 horoscopes an evil among the Hindus : it is also believed in 
 and practised by the Mohammedan rulers. The famous 
 and cruel Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, consulted the astro- 
 logers in the year 1799 a.d., when his kingdom was falling, 
 but nothing helped him to avert its ruin, or to save him 
 from the hands of the conquering British. 
 
 There is a class of fortune-tellers called Kodafigee, who 
 travel about from village to village and tax the people for 
 telling their fortunes. These men have a long pipe in their 
 hands, and adorn themselves with ear-rings, finger-rings, 
 and bangles ; but, as a rule, they are men who cannot read 
 or write their own language, though they show that they 
 
146 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 are possessed by a goddess named Sakkamadavi, who 
 reveals to them the unknown future. They go to every 
 house in the village, and if anyone has any particular thing 
 he or she desires, he pays the man a measureful of grain, 
 or a penny or two, who at once takes his long pipe and 
 blows on it for a few minutes. In blowing this pipe there 
 is no very charming musical sound to be heard, but he 
 pretends to call out to his goddess by this means, and ask 
 her to reveal this secret to him. Then he mutters a few 
 words carrying a double meaning, and then he blows his 
 pipe for a minute or two more, and so he goes on until he gets 
 some clue to an answer from the people themselves. If a 
 villager has lost his cow, and wants to find out its where- 
 abouts, he consults this fortune-teller. As soon as he has 
 blown his pipe, he reveals the secret to the villager that he 
 was very seriously thinking about some liuvian being. If the 
 villager is quiet and serious in his attitude, the fortune-teller 
 goes on to say that he was thinking of the marriage of his 
 daughter, and so his goddess revealed to him that a fine and 
 suitable husband would come from the northern direction 
 to marry his daughter. In some cases the fortune-teller 
 will talk to a villager, and get out of him all the secrets of 
 each house, and then go to the other houses, easily telling 
 everybody their fortunes. 
 
 There are some people who practise palmistry in the 
 villages. They do not go, as a rule, from village to village, 
 but the people who want to have their palms read go to the 
 special man, and get their fortunes told or written by him. 
 For this they have to pay a fee of from four to five shillings. 
 Some of the villagers keep the written 'fortune' in their 
 houses, and refer to it as often as they can. We cannot say 
 anything as to the truth or error of palmistry as a science. 
 There are people in the Western countries who believe in it. 
 
PROFESSIONS 147 
 
 though it has not gained the approval of recognised scientific 
 men. 
 
 There is another class of fortune-tellers called Kurigar, 
 who are a set of women of the Koravar caste. These 
 Kurigars are entirely ignorant people, but somehow they 
 have the knack of getting at the female portion of the 
 villagers, and they pretend to reveal the fortunes which are 
 in store for them, and of course extract something from 
 them in return. They carry with them a basket and a cane. 
 With the cane they touch the hands of the women as they 
 go on telling their fortunes. These fortune-tellers are con- 
 sidered out-caste people, and therefore they cannot touch the 
 women of the higher castes of the village. The young un- 
 married women of the villages try to get into the good 
 graces of these Kurigars by giving them some measures of 
 grain or some money. Their object is to find out the 
 temper, beauty, position, and parentage of their future 
 husband, and some of them even try to ascertain the time 
 of their marriage. Poor creatures ! This evil is due to 
 the custom of not allowing these girls to choose husbands 
 according to their own preferences. 
 
 There is yet another class of fortune-tellers, who beat a 
 drum while they tell fortunes. These men give out that 
 they are possessed by a devil, who reveals to them the 
 mysteries of the world. These are very boisterous and 
 noisy men ; they frighten their clients with their loud 
 voices and excited gestures. These fortune-tellers find a 
 suitable sphere among the most ignorant and the lowest 
 caste people. 
 
 There is another kind of fortune-teller, who frequently 
 visits the villages at midnight, rattling away his small drums, 
 and calling on Sakkamadavi and Ombathoo-Kambalam, i.e., 
 his goddess and his departed ancestors. When the people 
 
148 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 hear his voice they open the door and place a measure or 
 half a measure of grain on a fan outside the door. The 
 fortune teller takes the grain and leaves the fan behind. As 
 soon as he approaches a house he says, 'Jayam varudoo, 
 jayam varudoo,' i.e., 'Success is coming to this house.' If 
 the inmates of the house do not give him any grain, the 
 blessing will be reversed on the following night, and the 
 fortune-teller emphasizes the words, 'Aba jayam varudoo, 
 aba jayam varudoo,' i.e., ' Disaster is coming ! disaster is 
 coming !' Most of the villagers fear these fortune-tellers 
 much, and dread greatly getting a curse from them. 
 
IV. 
 PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
I. THE MAGISTRATE {Munsif). 
 
 The office of village miitisif may be compared to that of a 
 mayor, or a justice of the peace, in a town or large village 
 in Western countries. He is not elected by the people, as 
 he sometimes is in the West, but he is appointed by the 
 Government, and paid a monthly salary of rupees, five to 
 twelve, according to the nature of the village of which 
 he is put in charge. This salary is paid from the ' village 
 service fund.' The village inimsif is generally a man of 
 some position, and his office is hereditary. He is the head 
 officer of the village, and he has magisterial and judicial 
 powers. As a magistrate, he punishes persons for petty 
 assaults and offences ; and as a judge he tries suits for 
 sums of money, or other personal property, up to the value 
 of ten rupees ; and there is no appeal against his decision. 
 If parties agree, he calls 2i panchayet (court of arbitration), 
 which can adjudicate suits up to the value of one hundred 
 rupees. 
 
 Most of the village vmnsifs are ignorant men who do not 
 understand what justice means, or what the law of the land 
 is. For all that, the munsif V.novf?> that he is justice of the 
 peace, and he does not hesitate to deal with the villagers 
 just as he may please. 
 
 We have no grudge against any village munsif^ or any 
 
152 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 Other village officer, but we are compelled to speak the 
 truth in the interests of the millions of India. 
 
 The corruption and fraud of the subordinate native village 
 officers are not known either to the Government or to their 
 superior officers. A village is too often a hot-bed of trouble, 
 and a place of tyranny and wickedness. In comparing the 
 village accountant with the village munsif^ the former must 
 be regarded as better than the latter, because he has no 
 judicial or magisterial power. Both are sworn robbers, 
 students of one school, and 'birds of the same feather.' 
 Indeed, they are a great curse to the village. The inunsif 
 will sell a man for a farthing, and kill a man for a penny. 
 Everyone in the village fears this monster, not because of 
 the office he holds, but because of the evil which he is able 
 to work. In view of the mischief which can be done to the 
 villagers by this officer, we cannot help saying that he is an 
 unnecessary evil, and that the present staff of men ought to 
 be deposed, and a new set of men, with better training and 
 better supervision, ought to be appointed in their places. 
 The collectors and tahsildars of districts and the police 
 officers should have their eye upon them. The hereditary 
 nature of these offices ought certainly to be abolished. In 
 fact, there ought to be a strict and immediate check over 
 village viunsifs. Not till then will the peace of the Indian 
 villages be secured. 
 
 What is said elsewhere of a village accountant may be 
 said also of a village inunsif. He often abuses his authority 
 and becomes a great source of discomfort, inconvenience 
 and trouble to the villagers. What famine, pestilence and 
 war are to a nation a village inunsif is to the poor Indian 
 villagers. How many crimes are hushed up by receiving 
 bribes from the offenders ! How many innocent people 
 are sentenced to rigorous imprisonment, and how many 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 153 
 
 innocent people are hanged by the neck ! How many 
 innocent people are sent to the penal colonies, as life 
 prisoners, by the false reports of this reckless village officer ! 
 And how many homes are destroyed by his jealousy and 
 ill-will ! 
 
 By the assertion of his authority he gets milk daily, free of 
 charge, from one villager ; pulse, grain and vegetables from 
 another ; lambs and rams from some poor shepherd ; and 
 firewood is supplied even by the poor pariahs. On cere- 
 monial days he gets oil from the oilmonger, flowers from 
 the flower-sellers, and straw and hay for his cattle, and even 
 makes the poor villagers plough and work in his fields for 
 him as a tribute to his honour. 
 
 r 
 
 2. THE COURT OF ARBITRATION. 
 
 In almost every village disputes are settled by the 
 panchayet^ or court of arbitration. Without involving 
 themselves in any serious costs, the village folk have settled 
 disputes of all kinds for centuries at these courts. There 
 are two kinds of panchayets. One is called the jathee- 
 koottam, i.e.y the panchayet of different castes. This court 
 may consist of five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, or a hundred. 
 The other court of arbitration is called the village /^/^^//^rj'^/, 
 and consists of five members only. The members of this 
 panchayet are elected by the villagers themselves, and they 
 may belong to any class save the lowest order. They 
 receive no payment whatever from the villagers. They are 
 generally men of position who enjoy the confidence of the 
 villagers. 
 
154 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 In eacli village there is a place called Madam (village 
 inn), which is used as the court of the panchayet. The 
 court sits at 8 p.m., after the judges have taken their supper. 
 They order the watchman of the village to bring the parties 
 who have disputes before them. The eldest of the members 
 of the panchayet becomes the chief judge of the court, and 
 he receives money from the parties as security. When the 
 case is decided, he returns the money to them. 
 
 The panchayet decides suits of all kinds, such as land 
 disputes, petty quarrels, divorce, division of property, debts, 
 temple disputes, disputes between the barber and the 
 villagers, the washerman and the villagers, disputes between 
 the artizan classes and the villagers. If they find any of 
 the villagers become disobedient and troublesome to the 
 panchayet^ they unanimously adopt the plan of letting him 
 be an isolated man in the village. No villager is allowed 
 to speak to him, or to exchange fire, or any other necessary 
 with him. In former times he was even forbidden to take 
 water from the public well. 
 
 The manner in which the panchayet inquires into the 
 case is very interesting. If there is moonlight, they keep 
 no lamp in the court-house, but they make use of the ' poor 
 man's lantern.' During other nights they light the lamp 
 belonging to the inn. This lamp is made out of stone, and 
 kept in a corner. It is filled with lamp-oil, and a piece of 
 thread is put in it, which is lighted. The light is very dim, 
 and only just enough to allow the people to see that there 
 is a lamp in the corner. The judges, the parties in the suit, 
 and the spectators are alike indifferent about light, because 
 there is nothing to be transacted in writing, except the 
 muchilika^ i.e.^ the agreement, and this is drawn up during 
 the daytime. 
 
 When the court is opened, the watchman of the village 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 
 
 155 
 
 calls out for the parties to appear. The plaintiff is first 
 summoned. When he enters the court-house he prostrates 
 himself before the judges. ' Get up,' says the chief judge. 
 When the man gets up he states his complaint. If all the 
 parties are present, the judges go through the case, other- 
 wise they postpone it until the following week. On hearing 
 the complaints of the plaintiff in a petty quarrel, the judges 
 ask him to bring his evidences. Then they hear the state- 
 ments of the defendant and his witnesses. Before they 
 sum up the case, and give their judgment, they ask all those 
 present in the inn to retire, and then they talk about the 
 matter for some hours among themselves. When they have 
 arrived at a conclusion, they call the parties to come in, and 
 the chief judge delivers the judgment. If the judges find 
 the accused to be guilty of the charge brought against him, 
 he receives the following judgment : ' Thou fool ! bad 
 donkey ! pariah dog ! Have not you got any work to do ? 
 How dare you assault the woman who has brought this 
 charge against you ? Beware ! beware, you donkey ! we 
 charge you, in the name of our village goddess Kali, to 
 bring ten cocoanuts as a sacrifice for the sins referred to in 
 this case, and, besides this, you will give three rupees to the 
 village fund as a fine.' On hearing the judgment delivered 
 by the chief, the offender prostrates himself before the 
 judges, saying, * You must forgive me this time ; you must 
 forgive me this time.' Of course, this is the form of appeal 
 he makes against their decision. If any one of the judges 
 thinks that the man is not in very good circumstances, he 
 whispers to the other judges to reduce the sentence ; if not, 
 they insist upon the man paying the fine, and breaking the 
 cocoanuts to the goddess. 
 
 All other cases are tried by them in a similar manner. 
 This system of panchayet is very convenient, and it is not 
 
156 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 expensive for the poor villagers ; but we are sorry to 
 say that this system is not much in use at present, since 
 the Indian Bar is overcrowded by lawyers in all the 
 cities and towns, and these are a great drain on the poor 
 ryots of India. They induce the villagers to go to the 
 regular courts for every imaginable thing, and there they 
 suck the blood out of them. If the Government of India 
 would only encourage the pa?tchayei system, the mass of the 
 people would be greatly benefited, and the wicked village 
 munsifs, and the rascally village accountants, and the wily 
 lawyers, would not be so well able to disturb the peace of 
 the village. 
 
 The panchayet of the Marava class was held under 
 the shade of a large tamarind-tree near a village named 
 Karisa Kalam, in the Madura district. When we were in 
 our lodging we heard one day the voice of the Indian 
 trumpet, about 8 a.m., for clan panchayets are held during 
 the daytime, as well as in the night. The people who came 
 from different villages heard the noise of the trumpet, and 
 assembled under the tree. It was quite an imposing sight, 
 for there were crowds of men of different ages and positions. 
 They all sat down on the ground under the tree. They 
 had appointed a man to keep the accounts, and to register 
 the names of the parties in the villages who had disputes to 
 be settled. There were only five men to settle all the 
 disputes. The cases came on, one after the other. A wife 
 brought a charge against her husband ; a father brought a 
 charge against a son, and the son brought an answering 
 charge against the father ; one brother brought a charge 
 against another brother ; a stepmother brought a charge 
 against a stepson. There were also land disputes and 
 property disputes. All these disputes were amicably settled. 
 They excused some parties, punished some, and reconciled 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 157 
 
 some. All this was done in good order, without the slightest 
 confusion or irregularity, and with much saving of time and 
 expense to the people. 
 
 In the district of Tinnevelly we were present at a similar 
 kind of meeting of this class, but the court was then assembled 
 in the night, about 8 p.m., when all the parties concerned 
 had returned from their day's work. It was quite a large 
 meeting. All the parties assembled in the centre of the 
 village, in the moonlight. Of course, we were there as 
 visitors. The chief of the court began the sitting by dis" 
 tributing betel-nut, sandal-wood and flowers to all that were 
 present. These things are purchased from the funds 
 collected in the way of fines. There were two cases heard 
 that night. In the one case, a young man brought a charge 
 against his wife, and in the other a boy brought a charge 
 against his father. Both of these cases were exceedingly 
 interesting, and even amusing. In the former case, the 
 young man accused his wife of unfaithfulness. The young 
 man, when only eighteen years, had gone to a certain 
 wedding of some relatives. His wife, who, it appears, was 
 then twenty-five years of age, had gone to that same wedding, 
 and there the two first saw each other, and fell in love. 
 They fixed the day for their marriage without seeking the 
 consent of their parents or other relatives. Three months 
 after their marriage the woman began to sleep in her 
 sister's house, having left her husband to sleep in his own 
 house. The man advised her, scolded her, and even 
 beat her, but all in vain — she persisted in sleeping in her 
 sister's house. And this gave him room to suspect her con- 
 duct. The woman, in her statement, mentioned that her 
 husband was quite a boy, who did not know how to manage 
 a wife, and he was playful and stupid, and did not earn 
 enough to support her. Besides this, every meal that was 
 
158 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 prepared in the house was consumed by her husband, 
 leaving her hardly anything to live upon, and therefore she 
 was compelled to go to her sister's home and get some food. 
 The wise judges, after hearing the statements of both sides, 
 advised them to forgive each other, and to lead a peaceful 
 life. 
 
 In the latter case, the boy brought a charge against his 
 father for marrying another woman and leaving him and his 
 mother without proper support. The judges, on hearing 
 both sides, decided that the father of the boy should give 
 maintenance to both his wife and his son. 
 
 ? 
 
 3. LAWSUITS. 
 
 Ignorance and lawlessness usually go together, and a 
 singular love for lawsuits is characteristic of the less civilized 
 Indian people. It is an admitted fact that one of the 
 principal causes of the poverty of the people is this fondness 
 for litigation. 
 
 There are always some men in every village who are 
 engaged in a lawsuit of some kind, either civil or criminal. 
 There is sure to be some case pending in the Ta/?/k Court, 
 or in the Deputy Collector's Office, or in the Mimsif's Court, 
 or in the District Court, or in the District Collector's Office. 
 There are cases that hang on for months together in the 
 High Court, at the Revenue Board, or in the Governor's 
 Office ; and there are appeals waiting for decision even in 
 the English Privy Council. Both the plaintiff and the 
 defendant have plausible reasons for affirming that they have 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 159 
 
 a good case to fight out ; and their advocates are still more 
 clever in exaggerating the importance of the cases. Each 
 party has this assurance from his own legal adviser ; and 
 these men annually take a large share of the villagers' hard- 
 earned money, with which they build fashionable houses in 
 the cities and towns, and purchase the best of properties in 
 the country. 
 
 The contentions which induce the ryots to squander their 
 money in litigation often arise out of very simple things. 
 If two brothers fall out about some trivial matter, one of 
 them will take a plough, and turn over the soil a cubit 
 beyond his proper line of demarcation. This wilful action 
 of the elder brother, Ramsing, is quite enough to annoy his 
 younger brother, Gopalsing. A dispute consequently arises 
 over this piece of land; which is not worth more than five 
 shillings Gopalsing starts at once to arrange for the 
 settlement of the dispute in court. Of course, Ramsing is 
 quite willing to stand against his brother. Both go to some 
 legal adviser, and get his opinion on the merits of their 
 case. Both seem to have good grounds for their action, 
 and both have sufficient witnesses and documents at hand. 
 Gopalsing has engaged an able lawyer of the town — at 
 least, so he thinks; and he pays him a sum of ^10 as 
 lawyer's fees, and ^3 as out-fees, promising a further sum 
 of ^20 if he wins the case. The shrewd lawyer assures 
 Gopalsing that his is undoubtedly a 'winning case,' and 
 that he has never met with a case so good and clear as 
 his. These kind words of the lawyer cheer his spirits, and 
 he returns home in a hopeful frame of mind. On his 
 arrival in the village, he publishes among his friends what 
 his lawyer has told him, and he feels quite sanguine of his 
 success. In the meantime Ramsing has got hold of a lead- 
 ing barrister, and has paid him a good sum of money as his 
 
 12 
 
i6o INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 fee. This barrister assures Ramsing that his opponent, 
 Gopalsing, has no case at all, and that it is very foolish of 
 him to attempt to fight the case in the court. But he asks 
 Ramsing to see him on the following morning. Ramsing 
 gets up very early the next morning, and hurries up to the 
 lawyer's house, and the lawyer gets his clerk to read the 
 answers which he has written on the plaint. As soon as 
 Ramsing hears the answers he leaps for joy. ' Would you 
 like to have any more answers ?' politely asks the learned 
 counsel. ' No, sir ; there are plenty,' replies Ramsing. 
 'All right— you can go; I shall attend to the matter,' says 
 the lawyer. Fortunately, Ramsing had dreamed a dream 
 during the previous night which indicated his success, and 
 this, together with the lawyer's words, redoubles the joy of 
 Ramsing, who boldly gives out through the village that he 
 is certain to succeed. The suit is filed in the Lower Court. 
 There are many postponements of the case, and on all these 
 occasions both of the parties, and all their witnesses, have 
 to go up from their village to the town, which may be twenty 
 or thirty miles distant, spending, of course, a considerable 
 sum of money in travelling and food. 
 
 At last the day for hearing the case arrives. The parties 
 are all present, the witnesses are heard, the documents are 
 examined, and the counsel for each party pleads his cause 
 well. Then the judge, having weighed the evidence, gives 
 his judgment, perhaps, in favour of Gopalsing. Ramsing's 
 counsel at once puts the blame of the result entirely upon 
 the carelessness of the judge, and makes his own uncharit- 
 able remarks about him. However, he is quite sure that the 
 judgment will be reversed on appeal, and he induces 
 Ramsing to make the appeal at once. That means another 
 expenditure of twenty to thirty pounds, which his client 
 brings readily enough and gives to him. The lawyer appeals 
 
PUBLIC LIFE i6i 
 
 to the District Court against the decision of the Lower 
 Court, and perhaps wins his case after some months of 
 waiting. The tables are now turned on Gopalsing, who, 
 nothing daunted, goes to the High Court in Bombay, where 
 there are so many vakils^ barristers, advocates, and attorneys- 
 at-law. These men, who are working at the highest court 
 of the presidency, are supposed to be great men, who cannot 
 take cases for the same fee that Gopalsing has paid for 
 counsel at the Lower Court. Their demand is at least 
 double or treble fees. Gopal has to lay out some fifty pounds 
 for lawyer's fees, and about fifteen pounds as out-fees. 
 Ramsing also engages a barrister to watch his interest in 
 this highest court. After much anxiety and delay, the High 
 Court Judges confirm the decision of the District Courts 
 Gopalsing has lost his case, and Ramsing has won it ; but 
 both of them are serious losers. They have spent more 
 than a hundred pounds each over a piece of land which is 
 not worth more than five shillings. And to their money 
 losses must be added their loss of working time in the three 
 years during which they have been wandering about, speak- 
 ing and thinking and planning in connection with the case. 
 This is but one instance out of a thousand which are con- 
 stantly occurring. 
 
 That justice is only to be bought at a ruinous cost is a 
 fact that cannot be denied. The stamp fees, the court fees, 
 the lawyers' fees, travelling expenses and other out-fees, all 
 help to bring to ruin the villager who enters into litigation. 
 His health is broken, some of his lands have to be 
 mortgaged, the fields are left without proper cultivation, and 
 he gets into the clutches of the money-lenders. All this is 
 the consequence of his giving way to his passion, neglecting 
 the \\\\3igQ panchayet and favouring the law-courts. There 
 are ninety cases out of every hundred which could be easily 
 
 12 —2 
 
i62 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 and amicably settled among the viliagers themselves, without 
 incurring any loss of money or time for the villagers, if they 
 only had better sense and understood 'the art of living 
 peaceably together.' 
 
 One of the chief reasons for the villagers getting mixed 
 up in lawsuits is the craftiness, wickedness, foolishness, 
 and rascality of the village officers, who are better known to 
 the public under the designations of village tmrnshees and 
 village accountants. These two public officers, instead of 
 maintaining peace in the villages, get up false cases to bring 
 the villagers into trouble and to destroy their peace and 
 prosperity. In all the lawsuits of the villagers these two 
 officers come out as witnesses, either on the plaintiff's side 
 or on the defendant's. I'he higher authorities generally 
 believe the evidence of these men, because they are public 
 and responsible officers ; but we know that they often come 
 to the public courts and utter shameless falsehoods in giving 
 their evidence. The less their evidence is believed, the 
 better it is for all the parties concerned. 
 
 English legal terms are used among the villagers in a very 
 corrupted and diverted form. The word * rule ' is used, 
 and pronounced among the villagers as nool^ meaning 
 ' thread ' ; the word ' acts ' as dgattoo, meaning * yes.' The 
 word ' subpoena ' is used as subbaniia, the name of a person. 
 The term ' evidence act ' is used yavadomeioo kattoo^ mean, 
 ing ' asking the whereabouts ' ; the word ' issue ' as Ydsoo^ 
 meaning 'Jesus'; the word 'hearing 'as eerankee, vnesLning 
 ' having come down ' ; the word ' statement ' as sattoonietto ; 
 the word ' cross ' as kecrao — and a host of other words are 
 confusedly or oddly used. 
 
 r 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 163 
 
 4. THE WATCHMAN {Kavalkar). 
 
 It is proverbial that India is a country full of villages. 
 Every village is isolated in itself. The inhabitants of the 
 villages are of different castes, and therefore, when there is 
 public danger to their persons or their property, they are 
 quite unable to present a united front. There are always 
 some persons in every village who are in the habit of stealing 
 petty things, such as fruits, vegetables, cocoanuts, cotton, 
 straw, plantain-leaves, flowers, and even cattle and fowls. 
 House-breaking, highway robbery, and dacoity are also 
 common in the villages. To prevent such crimes the 
 villagers employ one or more kavalkars, or watchmen. 
 Their duty is to protect the life and property of the villagers. 
 In the Tinnevelly and Madura Districts this kaval occupa- 
 tion has fallen into the hands of a class of people known 
 as maravars, who are a brave and warlike people, and whose 
 forefathers were the founders of the Pandian and Chola 
 dynasties of South India. The strength and valour of this 
 class gave them a pre-eminence in the kingdoms of the 
 different Hindu and Moghul monarchs of past times. A 
 history of this class has been written by the author of the 
 present work, under this title, ' The Ancient Heroes of the 
 South Indian Peninsula.' A study of this will enlighten our 
 readers concerning this peculiar race. Other classes of 
 people are also employed as village kavalkars. This village 
 police force does not wear any uniform, but each of its 
 members holds a rod of office. They receive no monthly 
 payments from the villagers, but they have an annual 
 income from each house in the shape of both grain and 
 money. P)esides this, the gardeners will occasionally oblige 
 them with presents of vegetables. During the festivals 
 
i64 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 they get a certain sum of money and gifts. This income 
 is divided among the kavalkars, if there are many of them. 
 
 There is a kaval system known as sthalain kaval — />., 
 protection of districts. A certain influential and well-to-do 
 man takes the kaval (watch) of several villages together, 
 and then he appoints his own men in each village to do the 
 work of the kavalkar, and he pays them a certain sum 
 when they have collected all the contributions of the 
 villagers and lorought them to him. This moving spirit is 
 called thalamaykar — i.e,^ 'the headman.' 
 
 The village watchman goes round the village several times 
 during the night with his staff in his hand, which is from ten 
 to eleven feet long. A blow from this club will almost be 
 a death blow. Some of these watchmen go to the corn- 
 fields in the night to prevent the crops from being stolen. 
 During the day the watchmen attend to the work of the 
 village, and they wait for the orders of the pajichayet^ the 
 village accountant, and the village nmnsif. They also help 
 in collecting the taxes. 
 
 If any of the villagers prove unfriendly to a watchman, or 
 refuse to pay his wages, the watchman will teach him a 
 lesson. All of a sudden he will go to the man who refuses 
 to pay his wages, and tell him a story of this kind— that 
 he has lost a fine and beautiful hen from his yard, and that he 
 saw the footprint of a big jackal which had doubtless done the 
 mischief. The simple-minded villager will sympathize with 
 the poor watchman. Then the watchman spreads the news 
 of his loss about amongst the villagers. Having done this, 
 he allows a day or two to pass by, and then he himself plays 
 the part of a jackal by stealing a fowl from the very man who 
 has refused to keep the usual terms with him. If the man 
 who has lost his fowl complains to the watchman, he has his 
 answer ready. He at once reminds him of the fowl that he 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 165 
 
 himself lost, and assures him that he saw the jackal coming 
 from the jungle in the night. ' Ah yes, I will watch and 
 catch the jackal rascal within a night or two ; but will you 
 kindly pay up my arrears,' says this honourable watchman. 
 If this does not induce the villager to settle the account, the 
 watchman goes a step further. He takes his comrades, 
 and goes to the fields of the villager, and they help them- 
 selves to the ears of corn, and return home in the dead of 
 night. In the morning the villager is aroused by this very 
 watchman, and told that his field has been robbed, and on 
 inquiry he finds that an enemy has done it. ' However,' 
 continues the watchman, ' I am not going to leave the 
 robber so easily, but I should be glad if you would settle my 
 account.' If the villager is still indifferent about paying up 
 the arrears, he has to learn a further lesson. The watchman 
 arranges with his friends, and steals one of the beasts of the 
 villager, and sends it off a hundred miles away, and then 
 waits patiently to enjoy the fun. When the villager reports 
 the loss of his beast, the watchman is the first man to suggest 
 to him that he ought to have recourse to witchcraft. ' I 
 know a person in the village of Peryakoolam, fifty miles 
 distant, who is clever in giving a clue which will help you to 
 find the cattle-robbers. If you want me to, I shall be happy 
 to go up there and bring him back ; but please settle my 
 account,' says the watchman. If the villager agrees to settle 
 the account of the watchman, well and good ; if not, the 
 watchman plans a house-breaking or a dacoity. In the 
 latter case he works so well as to bring men from a distant 
 place to teach a lesson to the hard-hearted, self-willed, and 
 miserly villager. When all the people have retired to their 
 beds, a gang of robbers, with torchlights, clubs, knives, 
 swords, slings, and other weapons, surround the house of the 
 villager. The watchman, with his staff, goes to every house 
 
i66 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 in the village and awakes the people, calling upon them 
 to come out and help him in defending the person and 
 the property of the villager, named, perhaps, Balu. But 
 none of the villagers have the courage to follow the watch- 
 man. By the time the watchman has informed all the 
 villagers of the attack, by going from house to house, half 
 of Balu's property has been seized by the robbers, and 
 some of the members of Balu's family have been wounded, 
 especially if they have offered any resistance. At last the 
 watchman and a few of the more courageous villagers come 
 to the spot, to save Balu and his property, but they find 
 the house surrounded by armed men of undaunted courage 
 and valour. To satisfy the villagers, the watchman takes 
 his big stick, and rushes at the gang, saying, ^ Rodoo, podoo! 
 (Strike, strike !) Where have you come, you robbers ? 
 I will kill you all at one blow of my club. Why will you 
 die ? Get back, get back ; run away, run away !' This is 
 the voice of the watchman while he is rushing at the gang. 
 He twirls his stick about, and tries to beat some of the 
 robbers ; but he gets it back from the robbers, and soon the 
 blood rushes from his head and from the wounds in his legs 
 and hands. Down he falls, and lies speechless and motion- 
 less, until the robbers have had time to clear away from the 
 village. 
 
 The institution of the village watchman is somewhat 
 peculiar. His work is hereditary, and he has no source of 
 income for his maintenance besides his office, so that he is 
 dependent upon the villagers for his support. His work 
 does not give him time to do any additional jobs, and as a 
 rule, he is not fitted for doing anything else. Hence, he 
 adopts these wicked methods for compelling the villagers to 
 give him his annual allowances. We cannot approve of the 
 watchman's schemes for securing his wages from the villager. 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 167 
 
 but neither can we approve of the wilful stubbornness of 
 the villager, who shirks his duty in not supporting the man 
 who is appointed to protect his life and property. 
 
 The Government of India has not put a stop altogether 
 to the village dacoity, but it is not now what it once was. 
 It is a great advantage to the villagers to keep the watch- 
 man regularly paid his allowance, and to treat him in a 
 proper manner. For the watchman is responsible for any 
 theft that takes place, and he ought to pay the cost of the 
 lost property out of his own pocket. And while this is the 
 rule, it is manifestly improper for the villager to quarrel with 
 the watchman, or to become irregular in paying his appointed 
 wages. 
 
 5. THE ACCOUNTANT iKar?iam). 
 
 The karnam, or village accountant, generally belongs to 
 the caste known as Vellalas. He is an important revenue 
 officer, and has several important duties to discharge. He 
 has to collect the land taxes of all kinds from the villagers. 
 He confines his work to one village if it provides a sufficient 
 income ; if not, he adds the accountantship of one or two 
 other villages. The office is hereditary. No one has a 
 right to be appointed a village accountant who does not 
 belong to the family of some revenue officer. They are 
 intelligent and crafty and clever at figures. They always 
 carry about with them a knife and an iron pen (a long 
 piece of iron, in the shape of a large needle, attached to 
 the knife). With this pen they write on palm-leaves. 
 
 In the villages which belong to the Government, the ac- 
 
1 68 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 countant is under the authority of the higher revenue officers. 
 In the villages which belong to Zamindars or other pro- 
 prietors, the accountant is under their orders ; but they 
 have no power to dismiss him from his office. All they can 
 do is to bring a charge against him before the district judge, 
 and he, after careful investigation, may dismiss the account- 
 ant, and appoint in his stead one of the accountant's family 
 who may be eligible for the office. 
 
 The accountants who are under the direct control of the 
 Government receive a fixed monthly salary, varying from 
 7 to 12 rupees, according to the amount of work they 
 have to do. In the Zamindari villages the accountant 
 has endowments of lands, the revenue of which goes towards 
 his support. And this is not all ; every village accountant 
 can demand from each villager a certain quantity of grain 
 at the time of harvest. Besides this, he gets from them a 
 considerable supply of vegetables, fruits, and other produce. 
 The accountant is always bent upon making money by fair 
 means or foul. In every dispute and quarrel of the villagers 
 the accountant has a hand. He has power to do and undo 
 things in the village. He thinks that to allow a village to be 
 in peace is to injure his own interests. So ' Divide, and 
 rule, and gain,' is his motto. A careful investigation will 
 lead to the conclusion that the accountant is at the bottom 
 of almost all the troubles and difficulties rising in the 
 villages. 
 
 In treating of the dishonesty and tyranny of the ac- 
 countant, it is difficult to know where to begin and where 
 to end. When we see him writing the village accounts, we 
 find that he is a man of business, tact, shrewdness, and 
 ability. It is truly said that * an accountant should swallow 
 tiie accounts, or the accounts will swallow the accountant,' 
 but in writing the accounts he is really scheming to destroy 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 169 
 
 the social and domestic happiness of some of the villagers. 
 It must be remembered that most of the villagers are so 
 ignorant as not to be able to read and write their own 
 vernacular language. Hence the accountant plays the part 
 of teacher, lawyer, philosopher, guide, and rogue. The 
 great time of harvest for the wily accountant is the distribu- 
 tion of annual pattaiv. Every landowner of the village must 
 give something to the accountant when he receives the 
 pattmv. There are villagers who have failed to give their 
 offerings to their family gods ; there are villagers who have 
 failed to keep their vows to the demons. But this blood- 
 sucker of the village — the accountant — will leave no one 
 without getting some harvest from him. If a man fails to 
 get the money, the accountant will put off giving his pattaw^ 
 and make him wander up and down, or else he will make 
 some wilful mistakes in the pattaw. And he will go so far 
 even as to give one man's pattaw to another, and thus he 
 will make a delightful muddle. 
 
 The accountant is noted for his document-writing, for he 
 is the only man who is able to write with pen and ink in the 
 village. He gets money for every document he writes. 
 Besides this, he will write false documents, in order to bring 
 his enemy or his friends' enemy into trouble". Suppose that 
 Gopal is an enemy of a village accountant. The accountant 
 writes a false document, and says it has been executed by 
 Gopal to Raman, the friend of the accountant, for 500 rupees, 
 which have been borrowed by the former from the latter. 
 The accountant knows that Gopal can only make his mark 
 — he cannot sign his name. The accountant, having 
 strengthened the document with some false witnesses, gets 
 his friend to file the suit in due time in the Court of the 
 Subordinate Judge. He keeps Gopal in entire ignorance o^ 
 what he is doing. When the summons is issued by the 
 
I70 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 court, calling on Gopal to pay 500 rupees, he faints and 
 drops down ; his wife beats her breast, rolls on the ground, 
 and knocks her head against the wall ; and his poor children, 
 just returned from the field, cry without knowing what is the 
 matter with their parents. And so there is a great com- 
 motion in the house of Gopal. The judge forms his 
 opinion upon the facts before him. He has a respectable 
 village accountant, who gives his evidence that he has 
 written the document, and that Gopal received the 500 rupees 
 in his presence ; and there are other witnesses also. In the 
 face of all this, the judge gives his judgment against Gopal, 
 and Gopal is ruined, for his few acres of land, which were 
 his only means of support, have to be sold. 
 
 In seeking for the reasons why Gopal has incurred the 
 displeasure of the accountant, we come utterly to hate the 
 wretch. Probably it is this : Gopal's wife refused to yield 
 to the evil desires of this monster ; or it may be that Gopal, 
 being a poor man, refused to pay the unreasonable taxes 
 that were demanded from him. 
 
 r 
 
 6. THE SAVINGS BANKS. 
 
 It is not an easy matter to find a large capitalist in a 
 village community. The properties of the villagers are dry 
 and wet lands for cultivation, cocoanut palm topes — i.e., 
 groups of trees — palmyra palm topes, and mango and plan- 
 tain topes. But the currency of money among the villagers 
 is a difficult thing at all times. Therefore, in order to have 
 lump sums of money, they have wisely organized a system 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 171 
 
 of village savings banks. The main object of this system is 
 to clear the debts which they incur, and, if possible, to 
 purchase more lands to meet the demands of their increasing 
 families. The system of banking is this : An influential 
 landlord opens a bank in a village, and he contributes 
 10 rupees a month, and also gets other twenty or thirty 
 persons of the village to join this chit, as it is called. When 
 all the parties have joined and contributed the first instal- 
 ment, the bank-owner takes the money — say, 200 rupees — 
 the contributions of twenty members during the first month, 
 and he spends the money as he pleases. In the second 
 month, nineteen names of the other members are written 
 on small pieces of palm - leaves and cast before the 
 members when they are assembled. A boy or a girl is 
 commissioned to pick up one of these pieces, and hand 
 it over to the banker, who announces the name to whose lot 
 the second drawing has fallen. Then this person takes the 
 money, after giving a proper security to the banker, who is 
 responsible for all the money deposited by the members. 
 In this way the bank lottery runs on every month, until the 
 last man gets his 200 rupees. The advantage of joining 
 this bank is the interest that a depositor gets on 200 
 rupees before he can deposit as much as 30 or 40 rupees. 
 Those who receive the money by lottery before the tenth 
 month is out, have a great gain, and those who receive 
 afterwards have a less gain, but they get the money in 
 a lump sum. This system of banking is called the chit. 
 There is no clerk, no office, no paid establishment of any 
 kind, in transacting this business, but the advantage to the 
 banker is that he takes 200 rupees on the first drawing, 
 which he lends out on interest, or takes to meet his own 
 requirements. 
 ' There is another system of saving money. A landlord 
 
172 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 opens a bank on the lines we have described, except that 
 he takes ten or twenty per cent, out of the 200 rupees 
 from the party who gets the money each month, and 
 distributes it as compound interest. In this way the thing 
 goes on till the end of the term. When the whole term is 
 over, the banker again starts his bank with more or fewer 
 members, according to circumstances. 
 
 There is yet another system of money-saving going on 
 among the villagers. A wealthy and reliable landlord gets 
 fifty members each to contribute 10 rupees a month, on 
 the same principle as described above, but the term-money 
 collected is not distributed by lottery, as in the other two 
 cases. In the beginning of the month, the parties meet 
 on a pia/ (veranda) of the banker's house, and bring the 
 500 rupees, and put it up to auction. None but the 
 members can bid. Whoever bids the lowest rate is allowed 
 to draw the money for that month, and this scene is repeated 
 each month. The member who bids for the money at the 
 lowest rate loses 100 to 200 rupees, as the case may be, 
 out of the subscribed sum of 500 rupees. When he draws 
 the 300 rupees from the banker, he gives him a document 
 promising to pay the full amount of rupees. The money 
 which is gained by the auction is distributed among the 
 other members who have not taken any money in the bank 
 auction. So this system gives a great profit to those who 
 simply keep depositing their money till the term is over. 
 It is also in a way helpful to those men who bid for the 
 money at the auction in paying up some of their urgent debts 
 which they have incurred either by law-suits or by family 
 trouble. 
 
 The savings-banks are not only organized on the monthly 
 system of depositing money, they are also constituted to 
 meet bi-monthly, or quarterly, or three times a year, or even 
 
PUBLIC LIFE 173 
 
 half-yearly. The latter system is called the Poo chit, i.e., thu 
 system of saving money at the time of harvest. There are 
 two rice crops in a year for those who have wet cultivation. 
 Hence the system of saving their money half-yearly by one 
 of the foregoing systems. 
 
 There are female bankers in every village, who are working 
 on a small scale as the men do. 
 
 Although there are several defects in the present system 
 of village banking, which cannot be approved by civilized 
 nations, yet it is a great benefit to the poor villagers, who 
 could not otherwise command a lump sum of money to 
 meet their urgent needs. 
 
V. 
 LEISURE HOURS. 
 
 13 
 
I. AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Probably there is not a people on the face of the globe, 
 whether rich or poor, civilized or uncivilized, white or black, 
 that does not find time for recreation and amusement. 
 There are differences in the nature of the amusements, but 
 everywhere time is found for some kind of pleasure-taking. 
 Civilized societies, as we know, purchase their pleasure at a 
 great cost, but the barbarous and the semi-barbarous obtain 
 theirs at very little cost. The influences of these relief-times 
 are much the same in both cases. The town folk of India 
 have their expensive amusements, and the village folk have 
 their inexpensive ones. 
 
 The most important are the village dramas. These are 
 performed during the summer months, when all the harvests 
 are over, and all the hard work of the year is finished. 
 Then the tillers of the soil have a good deal of time on 
 their hands. At such times a dramatic company will come 
 into a village. The most familiar and famous of these 
 dramatic companies perform two important dramas, namely, 
 the drama of 'Harishandra' and that of 'Markanda.' These 
 stories are most familiar to all the villagers, and therefore 
 they take great delight in seeing the performances, and 
 hearing the stories told over and over again. The former 
 one relates the history of a king Harishandra, who lost his 
 
178 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 kingdom because he persisted in maintaining the principles 
 of truthfulness to the very end, and had to leave his throne, 
 and render menial service, being separated from his queen, 
 Chandramadi, and from his only son and heir, Logida. 
 The queen and her son became domestic servants in a 
 priest's house. While they were in the priest's house, the 
 son was bitten by a snake, and died. The king, who was 
 forced to take a watchman's position in the cremation 
 ground of a town, cremated his child without knowing 
 whose child it was, as the child was brought to him in the 
 night. The story on the whole is most pathetic, and even 
 heartrending. We have seen many men and women moved 
 by a clever actor who performs the part of Chandramadi 
 weeping over her child's death. There was one very famous 
 man, Jagasami by name, who skilfully played the part of the 
 Queen Chandramadi. He showed a great deal of originality 
 in representing the story, and he composed some new airs 
 for some of the pathetic parts. His sweet feminine voice 
 and wonderful gestures had a charming effect upon his 
 audience wherever he went, and he was really a celebrated 
 man of his time. 
 
 The story concerning ' Markanda ' is this : His parents 
 were entreating Siva to bless them by giving them a male 
 child. Siva appeared to them, and said that he would grant 
 them a male child, and he should become an honourable. 
 God-fearing, excellent, beautiful and cultured young man, 
 but would die at the age of sixteen. Or, if they preferred, 
 he would grant them a son who would be most wicked, 
 irreligious, indifferent, and ugly-looking, but would live for 
 a hundred years. ' Which of these blessings do you choose?' 
 said Siva. The parents asked for the former. So the child 
 was born, and he grew in knowledge, strength, and devotion 
 to the gods. When he was fifteen years of age, his parents 
 
i 
 
LEISURE HOURS 179 
 
 began to be very unhappy and sorrowful, in thinking of the 
 fast approaching doom of their son. The sensible lad was 
 curious enough to ask the cause of this unhappiness of his 
 parents. They then told him the fact, that he, their only 
 and dear son, could live only one year more with them, and 
 that this had been revealed to them by Siva. On receiving 
 this news, the lad became alarmed. However, he took 
 courage, and made the necessary arrangements to go to a 
 jungle, where a mighty river was flowing. As the time was 
 drawing nigh for his death, as fixed by his creator, he 
 hastened to that solitary place, leaving his home and his 
 parents. There he commenced to pray to Siva most 
 earnestly to grant him a few more years of usefulness, and 
 not to take his life at the early age of sixteen. Nevertheless, 
 as prearranged, the angel of death came to him riding on 
 a he-buffalo, and shot at hiui several sharp and poisoned 
 arrows of affliction and death. But the lad continued in his 
 prayers to Siva, and his devotion was such that the arrows 
 proved harmless. Then the angel of death, with all his 
 strength, sent a host of arrows of fiery trials, but these did not 
 in the least hurt the lad, nor was the angel able to disturb 
 him from his devotion. Then the angel of death repeated 
 his arrows of various kinds, but still all in vain. The angel 
 of death grew furious, and approached the lad, and attempted 
 to take his life with the sword; but then Siva appeared, 
 drove away the angel of death, and extended the age of 
 Markanda, who was to live on for ever as a young man of 
 sixteen years old. These two popular dramas are ever fresh 
 and attractive to the villagers. 
 
 In a suitable centre of a group of villages, the dramatic 
 company open their performances by erecting a temporary 
 shed. At about nine o'clock at night the open ground will 
 be crowded by villagers of both sexes and grown up children ; 
 
i8o INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 there will be a sea of heads. Some of them come from 
 distant villages in their bullock-carts. There will be a few 
 petty bazaars, full of eatables, betel nuts, tobacco and snuff; 
 there will be scarcely any lights among the crowd ; the few 
 there are will be near the stage. The performances are 
 usually arranged in moonlight. The drama will commence 
 at about ten o'clock, and will continue till four in the 
 morning. As usual in all Indian dramas, the buffoon or 
 merry-maker will occupy an hour or so at the commence- 
 ment, and will cause the people to roar with laughter by his 
 innumerable comical and humorous sayings and gestures. 
 When the play commences the people are very attentive and 
 orderly. Of course, those that are inclined to sleep will find 
 the drama has a soporific effect upon them. Generally the 
 performance of one of these famous stories will be repeated 
 for twenty to thirty days. At the close of every night's per- 
 formance a large white cloth will be spread near the stage, and 
 the people will be invited to contribute money, and they throw 
 the money on to the white cloth, while the dramatic party 
 sing some sweet songs with musical accompaniments. When 
 a man or woman throws money on the cloth, the jester 
 mentions the name of that person to the crowd three times 
 in a loud voice. Some of these villagers like this honour, and 
 repeat the act of throwing money on the cloth. The 
 oftener they throw money, the more they are praised and 
 cheered. When the \vhole story is finished, at the end of 
 twenty or thirty days, the villagers collect some money 
 among themselves, and give it to the dramatic company, 
 who keep moving from centre to centre till the autumn 
 begins. Some of the villagers are so enamoured as to 
 follow the dramatic company to a distance of thirty to forty 
 miles. 
 
 In some villages a set of young men join together to dance 
 
LEISURE HOURS 181 
 
 and sing in the moonlight. They have a leader, who leads 
 and trains them in singing and dancing. These young men 
 commit to memory songs that are known as kiiinmies. These 
 kuiiimies are descriptive accounts of the heroes of the past, . 
 and the famous works, the ' Ramayana ' and the ' Bharatta,' 
 are also arranged in himmi form ; and these are frequently 
 used in the village dances. The young men dress them- 
 selves in white cloths, and wear dyed turbans on their heads. 
 They hold a handkerchief and a fan in their hands. They 
 march through the streets singing and dancing, and the 
 villagers watch them with great admiration. Sometimes 
 they go to each house, and dance before the inmates. \{ 
 the young men know that there are only some unmarried 
 young women in the house, they sing and dance smartly. 
 Every one will try to show that he is the cleverest of the lot, 
 both in dancing and singing, so that he may win the affec- 
 tion of some girl in the house, and lead her to take him as 
 her partner. This kind of dancers do not receive any money 
 for their work ; they simply amuse themselves and the 
 villagers. 
 
 There are several other kinds of amusement, some of 
 them of a vulgar character. Bull- fighting, cock-fighting, 
 and ram-fighting are common. 
 
 The bull-fighting must not be regarded as like the familiar 
 bull-fighting in Spain, or any other Western country. This 
 fight is called sallikattoo, and takes place during the 
 day. A large plain is chosen for the purpose, and the 
 villagers collect money among themselves with which to 
 meet the necessary expenditure. They send out invitations 
 to the people of other villages, and inform them of the fixed 
 day for the bull-fight. This news spreads abroad among all 
 classes of the people, who come in numbers in bands and 
 parties, both men and women, to the spot appointed. The 
 
i82 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 people of the village who have arranged for the bull-fight 
 erect temporary sheds at their own cost in order to accom- 
 modate their visitors. As it is a public meeting-place, the 
 sellers of various articles flock to it with their different kinds 
 of goods. 
 
 At about eight o'clock in the morning all assemble in the 
 plain. Sometimes there are thousands of people met on 
 such occasions. Several fighting bulls will be brought by 
 villagers from different districts. The owner of each bull 
 ties a new cloth round its neck. In some cases the owner 
 puts money in a corner of the cloth. He takes the bull to 
 the headman of the assembly, and bows his head to him. 
 Then the headman inquires concerning the man's parentage 
 and name, if he does not happen to know him. Then he 
 asks the herald or crier to beat his drum three times loudly. 
 This is a sign for the people to understand that a fighting 
 bull will be let loose in the midst of the assembly. This is 
 the signal also to the men who have come to fight the 
 bull, and take the cloth and the money, from its neck, that 
 they must hold themselves in readiness. The owner of the 
 bull takes him to the centre of the assembly, and there he 
 lets him loose by warning the bull to take care of himself, 
 and to make his way through the crowd to his shed. As 
 soon as ever the bull is set free, ten or fifteen men come to 
 the front of the assembly without either stick or knife, and 
 they face the bull manfully. Some of the clever bulls defend 
 themselves for hours together, hurting many of those men, 
 and sometimes killing one or two ; at last they escape from 
 their hands and go home, leaping and frisking for joy. 
 There are many bulls who are known to be great fighters, 
 and who never allow anyone to take the cloths from their 
 necks. Whoever takes the cloth is considered to be a 
 hero. The bullocks are brought in to fight, one after 
 
LEISURE HOURS 183 
 
 another, the whole day through, and sometimes this terrible 
 struggle between man and beast will be continued for two 
 or three days. Some of the owners of the bulls offer a large 
 sum of money to anyone who can arrest their bulls before 
 the assembly. These beasts are very knowing and clever in 
 their fighting ; they stand quietly before the assembly, and 
 do not run or jump ; but if anyone approaches them, they 
 hit him with their horns or legs as quickly as a flash of 
 lightning. 
 
 The people who come to witness the fight occupy the 
 ground for half a mile in a crescent form. Some will sit and 
 some will stand, just as they may please, and most of them 
 will be exposed to the wind and the sun ; but this they 
 consider as nothing compared with the pleasure they derive 
 from watching the bull-fight. The public do not pay a 
 farthing on occasions of this kind. 
 
 Another amusement is the inhuman and barbarous habit 
 of cock-fighting, and this is a common thing in almost all 
 the villages of India. As a rule, the ]3rahmins and olher 
 Sivites do not join in this pastime, but all other classes take 
 great delight in it. The fighting cocks are of two kinds 
 — the country breed and the Moghul breed. The Moghul 
 breeds are fine, strong, well-made birds. They are kept in 
 separate places, and not allowed to see each other. If a 
 villager is a well-to-do man, he keeps five or six of these 
 cocks. If he is a big landlord, he keeps about a dozen, and 
 he engages a special man to look after them. His duty it 
 is to feed them both morning and evening, and to give them 
 water at noon. Besides this, he must spend ten or fifteen 
 minutes with each cock in the evening in wetting their necks 
 well with cold water, and specially in pressing with both his 
 hands the neck of each cock. He takes each cock to the 
 tank, and dips its whole body well into the water, and lets 
 
i84 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 it swim for awhile. This kind of preparation goes on for 
 some time before the owner ventures to take them to the 
 fighting-ground. The country breeds are also prepared in the 
 same manner, with the exception of the rubbing of the necks. 
 The spot for the fighting will be fixed according to the 
 convenience of the villagers. The parties always choose a 
 place where there is [)lenty of water and shade, and as far as 
 possible away from a village. To this fighting amusement 
 the fair sex do not go, but the men of all ages are exceed- 
 ingly fond of it. Some of them journey miles in order to 
 attend such scenes. The fight commences at ten o'clock in 
 the morning. A pair of cocks is set up. Each of these 
 belongs to a different party, and generally they do not care 
 to fix matches between cocks of the same village. One of 
 these fights is known as Vattoopore ; the other is called Kathy- 
 pore. In the former the cocks are engaged in fighting 
 without having any double edged, small knife attached to 
 their right legs ; but in the latter kind they have the knives, 
 and this makes it a most terrible and cruel scene. Soon 
 after these cocks are set up, they severely wound each 
 other, and when one of them dies or runs away, the fight is 
 considered to be ended. The defeated cock is always 
 presented to the owner of the conqueror. In the case of 
 the fighting without knives, one of the cocks must either die 
 or run away. The owner of the cock which conquers its 
 opponent is entitled to the defeated cock, or to a certain 
 sum of money. This kind of amusement sometimes brings 
 great rows, with fighting and loss of money to the owners of 
 these cocks. If a man in a village has a champion cock, it 
 rouses the envy of the people of other villages, who spend a 
 lot of money in purchasing a proper match to it. There is 
 a great deal of skill shown by the men who catch the cocks 
 with knives, even while they are flying against each other. 
 
LEISURE HOURS 185 
 
 Sometimes the men are severely wounded while thus 
 attempting to catch the cocks. This must be regarded as a 
 most cruel and degrading way of getting amusement. 
 
 There is another kind of village amusement. It is the 
 ram-fight. Poor harmless lambs are taken from the bosom 
 of the shepherds, and are reared by the pleasure-seekers of 
 the village for a considerable time. Some of them teach 
 these rams particular signs, to help them in fighting. This 
 amusement also is solely intended for the men of the village, 
 who assemble in large numbers under the shade of the 
 trees. When the parties meet for this purpose they bet 
 large sums of money, which are usually given to the owner 
 of the ram that conquers. 
 
 In one of these ram-fights there was a Mohammedan 
 who brought a ram to fight with a ram of a Hindu. 
 There was a large number of spectators to see this fun. 
 The Hindu had his own party of people, and the Moham- 
 medan had his. They met in a fine shady place away 
 from the village, and set their rams to fight at about 
 eight o'clock in the morning. Two of the rams had a 
 previous reputation. The one belonging to the Mohamme- 
 dan was, indeed, a champion ram. They fought their 
 battle courageously till four o'clock in the evening. The 
 fight was so terrible that the creatures were bleeding from 
 the nose and the ears. Pieces of skin from their heads flew 
 about, and drops of blood fell continually to the earth. 
 Yet neither of these rams showed its back to its rival. At 
 last, the Mohammedan's ram lost one of its horns, and 
 became very weary, and presently fell to the ground facing 
 its enemy. The Hindu's ram was also almost heli)less, 
 and was standing in its position facing its enemy. 'J'he 
 Mohammedan, who saw his ram broken down, and without 
 strength, spoke to it encouraging and cheering words. As 
 
,86 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 soon as the ram heard the comforting, encouraging, and 
 strengthening voice of its master it stood up on its legs, and 
 with greatly revived spirit and renewed strength fell upon 
 its enemy and fought desperately for ten minutes more, then 
 fell down helpless on the ground. But he heard the voice 
 saying, ' Go on !' ' Get up !' ' Fight !' ' Courage, courage !' 
 from his master. This voice, to the surprise of the spectators, 
 and the man himself, gave new strength to the fallen ram, 
 who rose again, and made another desperate fight. The 
 conflict was so severe that the Hindu had to force the 
 Mohammedan not to speak a word again to the ram. 
 
 So the signs and voices with which the rams are trained 
 help them to fight to the very last. Some of the big 
 Zamindars and landowners have ruined themselves by the 
 madness of this ram-fight. We regard the fact with supreme 
 sorrow, that some of our own relations have ruined them- 
 selves through this evil habit. 
 
 r 
 
 v/ 2. SPORTS. 
 
 That Turanian blood runs in the veins of the South 
 Indian villagers is a fact which cannot be denied. Although 
 these mountaineers now live in the fertile plains, yet their 
 fondness for hunting, their readiness to endure a jungle 
 life, and their love for the bow and arrow of their ancestors, 
 l)etray their original mode of living in the high mountains, 
 wild jungles, and thick forests. Their natural love of 
 hunting even now makes them at times leave their ploughs, 
 their home comforts, and their businesses, and betake them 
 
LEISURE HOURS 187 
 
 to the forest reserves of the Zamindars, or to the rough 
 hills and deep valleys, in order to hunt for wild animals. 
 This habit makes even the poorer villager equip himself 
 with a kuratfookamboo, i.e.^ a short stick with iron rings, 
 which is thrown at the animals, and with a dog. Some of 
 them have matchlocks, bows, and spears. These hunting- 
 weapons are used only in the forests of the plains, and in the 
 mountains. 
 
 The hounds which the villagers have belong to three 
 different breeds : the Polygar dogs, the Persian breeds, and 
 the Pariah breeds. The Polygar dogs are of medium size, 
 well-built, with strong legs, projecting ears, and firm heads. 
 They are swift in running, and courageous in attacking any 
 animal, and they are very watchful, sensible, and faithful. 
 The Persian dogs are in breeding mixed with the Polygar. 
 Their height and length of body, their thin long head and 
 folded ears, their gentle and beautiful appearance, and their 
 thin tail and soft hair, are very attractive. They are swift 
 in running, and very quick in catching animals, but furious 
 when they are wild. The Pariah breeds are short, ill-made, 
 ugly-looking, dirty, emaciated and cowardly. This dog does 
 not stick to any particular home, and therefore knows no 
 one to call his master. It often barks at people, and is 
 troublesome, slow, and dull-looking. All these three breeds 
 are to be found in the villages. 
 
 On high days and holidays a number of men will join 
 together and set out to hunt in the nearest forest reserves. 
 They start very early in the morning, after taking their 
 morning meal, each of them having a dog or two leashed in 
 a thong made out of palmgrass fibre. They also carry a 
 short stick in their hands. Those who have the matchlock 
 or the spear do not have any dogs in their care. As they 
 march on towards the forest they arrange among themselves 
 
l88 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 to leave a few of their number here and there outside the 
 forest, watching for the movements of the animals. The 
 majority of this hunting party go on into the forest, and 
 beat the bushes from one end of it to the other. As they 
 march on they disturb hare, deer, and jackals, and these 
 animals run hither and thither. They set the dogs to pursue 
 and so kill many of them. If there is a chance they shoot 
 the animals. Some of these men, being skilled sportsmen, 
 throw their short and stout sticks at the animals as they run 
 past, and they often either break their legs or kill them on 
 the spot. At about twelve o'clock they all assemble at one 
 end of the forest, in order to quench their thirst and that of 
 their dogs. They are specially careful to wet the bodies of 
 their dogs, so as to enable them to bear the heat of the day. 
 The men take with them no food to eat while they are 
 hunting. All that they ever take with them is a piece of 
 jaggry, which they swallow, and they drink spring-water. 
 This tiffin suffices to give them strength to run after the 
 animals during the remainder of the day. Some of them 
 take a small quantity of jaggry and dried ginger pounded 
 together, and this is considered the best refreshment they 
 can have. In the evening each set of villagers assemble 
 separately, and share the game. If five of them from one 
 village killed five hares, and the whole party from that 
 village were fifty, they equally share among themselves, 
 without any ill-feeling or grudge. 
 
 The villagers who live at the foot of the mountains take 
 delight in hunting tigers, hogs, and sometimes elephants. 
 For hog-hunting the villagers set out during the moonlight, 
 taking with them strong and specially selected dogs, match- 
 locks, spears, and big knives, for they do not know at what 
 moment they may meet with a man-eater (tiger). The hogs 
 often come to the cultivated fields near the mountains, and 
 
LEISURE HOURS 189 
 
 do great damage to the farmers' crops by rooting up the 
 soil. The hunters hide themselves in the bushes and watch 
 these hogs. When the hogs return from the fields one by 
 one they set the dogs on them. A large number of these 
 surround the hogs, and they frequently break the legs of the 
 dogs, or smash their heads, or tear their breasts ; but the 
 dogs will not let the hogs escape easily. Some of them 
 catch hold of the hind-legs of the hog, and keep him from 
 escaping. While a hard struggle is going on between the 
 hogs and the dogs, the hunter runs to the spot, and kills 
 the hog with his long spear. The hunting of hogs is con- 
 sidered manly work, for sometimes the hunters lose their 
 lives, or get severe wounds in this sport. While they are 
 hunting the hogs they may suddenly meet with a tiger, 
 which they face manfully and try to kill. 
 
 Tiger-hunting is very frequent with those who live in the 
 hill tracts. They go in large numbers, taking their guns, 
 drums, trumpets, knives, and spears ; but they do not take 
 their dogs with them. Those who have the guns climb the 
 trees near the forests, and all the others go into the forest 
 and drive the animals by beating the drums and blowing the 
 horns. The tigers, when they hear all this disturbance 
 at a distance of four or five miles, begin to move towards 
 other parts of the forest. When the deer, spotted deer, and 
 antelopes begin to leave their places in advance, their 
 movements are a sure sign that the tigers will follow, so 
 those men who are in the trees in different places hold 
 themselves in readiness with their guns, and keep quiet, 
 letting all the other animals pass by one by one. A group 
 of deer run off to escape for their lives. A large number of 
 beautiful spotted deer run in haste to save their lives. The 
 antelopes, lifting and shaking their beautiful heads, run by. 
 Then the cunning jackals, with their stuffed tails, run by. 
 
 14 
 
I90 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 All this procession of animals having passed, there is half an 
 hour of waiting-time. The hunters on the trees are watch- 
 ing as calmly as possible. Now they see the bushes shaking, 
 and the plants and leaves being crushed by the majestic and 
 dignified walk of the princes of the forest — the tigers. As 
 they advance towards the trees, some of the men lose their 
 courage and presence of mind, and drop their guns, but the 
 men of undaunted courage aim at the man-eater, and fire. 
 If they are smart men, they shoot the tiger in the right spot 
 and kill him at once. If not they only wound him, and 
 then the whole forest is shaken by its roars. If a tiger is 
 killed it is considered as great game. They carry him in 
 procession, some beating drums, some dancing before it, 
 and in such ways rejoicing over the death of this enemy of 
 mankind. Sometimes tigers come to eat a dead bullock or 
 cow which has been tied to a tree. The hunters get into 
 the trees round about the dead animal, and watch night 
 after night. Perhaps on the second or the third night the 
 tiger will put in his appearance, and begin to eat the flesh of 
 the animal, and then the men in the trees quietly take aim 
 and shoot it. In some cases they face the tiger manfully 
 on the plains, standing face to face and struggling with him. 
 We have seen a hunter wrestle thus with a tiger while he was 
 hunting. The half of the left hand of the man was in the 
 mouth of the tiger, and the right leg of the beast was round 
 the back of the man, while the man, with his right hand, was 
 lifting the upper jaw of the tiger. The tiger tried his best to 
 extricate his upper jaw from the hand of the man, but the 
 man held on for about an hour, when another hunter came 
 with his gun and shot the beast. 
 
 There was a famous villager who was in the habit of 
 hunting tigers and hogs with his long spear. He killed 
 several tigers and hogs by facing them on the plain. His 
 
LEISURE HOURS 
 
 191 
 
 fame went abroad, so much so that when a tiger was in the 
 district the villagers used to send for him to kill the brute. 
 On one occasion, when this man had just recovered from a 
 serious illness, he was informed that a tiger had killed 
 several sheep in a neighbouring village, and that it was still 
 prowling about there. This news aroused the spirit of the 
 man, who went to the spot where the tiger was, taking, 
 however, along with him his follower, Mullya Naickeen by 
 name. These two stood in the paddy field and saw the 
 tiger coming towards them. As the tiger was approaching, 
 the man told his follower of the weak state of his health, and 
 that he must help him in keeping down the animal after his 
 dagger had gone through the beast's body. The Naick 
 faithfully assured his master that he would jump on the 
 beast before his master, and kill him with his spear. But 
 when the animal came near them the Naick began to shiver 
 with fear, and altogether lost his presence of mind. The 
 'mighty hunter' speared the beast, and jumped to the other 
 side of the animal ; but the Naick struck his spear into the 
 embankment and then fainted away. After the tiger was 
 killed the Naick was awakened from his unconscious state. 
 
 3. ATHLETIC EXERCISES. 
 
 Most villagers are a quiet and unwarlike race, but they have 
 several kinds of athletic exercise. They have both outdoor 
 exercises and indoor exercises. Although there is no society 
 or club to promote their physical interest, yet their lads and 
 
 14—2 
 
192 
 
 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 young men are regularly and actively engaged in these bodily 
 trainings. 
 
 There is an exercise called killitattoo. Several straight 
 lines are made in the sand with the foot, leaving eight or ten 
 yards between each line, and those who are assembled for 
 the play are divided into two parties, the one advancing, the 
 other opposing. They advance by standing in a regular 
 row. The party who oppose the advance elect the best 
 among them to be their leader, and he is called killi. This 
 killi always stands on the last line, and watches the move- 
 ment of the advancing party. This is really a running game. 
 It is often played in the evenings and in moonlight nights. 
 Generally they choose one of the village commons as their 
 play-ground. In this, and other games, the villagers observe 
 a certain amount of regularity and rule, though they have 
 nothing to pay for it. 
 
 They also play a kind of cricket at all seasons, but not in 
 the refined and orderly way with which Westerns are familiar. 
 All the villagers who assemble on the play-ground stand on 
 one side, and allow one man to hold both the bat and ball ; 
 he strikes it in such a way that it may rise to a great height, 
 in order to give a chance to the people to catch it as it 
 comes down. Whoever catches the ball becomes the striker, 
 so the game really resembles somewhat the English 'catch- 
 out.' 
 
 There is another open-air exercise, called giidoo-gudoo. 
 It resembles to a great extent the football of Britain. Two 
 parties meet on the common, and separate themselves by a 
 line drawn on the earth. One takes the lead, by sending 
 one of his men to cross the line, and touch one of the 
 opponents, without being caught by him. While he is doing 
 this he must utter, without taking breath, the words 
 ^ gudoo, gudoo' If he cannot hold his breath, and repeat 
 
THE WRESTLER {Vast hath). 
 
LEISURE HOURS 193 
 
 ^ gudoo, gudoo' until he crosses the line that divides the 
 parties, he is considered as a ' dead ' man on the field, and 
 he is not allowed to play again till one of his party gains. 
 
 There is another exercise called nianthy. This is one of 
 the difficult village games. Men assemble on the grassy 
 plains, and divide themselves into two parties, and adopt 
 the same rules as in playing killitattoo ; only each of them 
 sits on his legs, and passes his two arms between the legs 
 and grasps his feet, and then he runs like a kangaroo. It 
 is in this play that some break their teeth, or smash their 
 heads against the earth, or hurt their legs or hands. 
 Nevertheless, this play is still loved and practised in all the 
 villages. 
 
 There is yet another exercise, called sihif/ibam, which is 
 both an exercise and an art of offence and defence. There 
 are teachers who give instructions in this art, and some ot 
 them, are very clever men. Those who wish to learn this 
 exercise must pay some money or grain to the teacher. 
 Some of these teachers have a large number of pupils under 
 them, and they meet either in the night or very early in the 
 morning, in some lonely place. Each of the pupils must 
 have a long and strong stick in his hand, and the teacher 
 has a similar one, with which he instructs the pupils how to 
 twirl the stick about in defending or in attacking. In 
 twirling the stick there is a great deal of cleverness displayed. 
 This art of silambam was originally taught to the warriors of 
 ancient times. 
 
 The villagers have still another exercise called thelloo, or 
 * round and black seeds.' This is played in the open fields 
 with the fingers. The principle is more or less the same 
 as in marble playing, but the methods adopted are some- 
 what different. 
 
194 
 
 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 4. GAMBLING. 
 
 The villagers, being mostly of the agricultural class, 
 cannot find much time for gambling. But the idle, and 
 also the well-to-do among them, both men and women, do 
 often spend their time in this way. The most popular 
 game is known as T/iayam. This is played by splitting 
 tamarind seed, and making about forty-eight or fifty files 
 on the floor. On these each party has a row of small 
 stones, or broken pieces of earthen vessels. Each party 
 make a move according to the number they get by throwing 
 these tamarind seeds. Their men must go on each other's 
 files on the way they take their opponents. However, there 
 is not much skill in this game. 
 
 There is another game which is commonly played by the 
 fair sex, and this is called pandy. Eight or ten holes are 
 made on each side of a plank. The parties who play this 
 game each try to fill these holes with five tamarind seeds, 
 so that they make a pile. They commence to play with 
 seeds of one pile ; and again they take the seeds of the pile 
 on which the last seed fell. They repeat the process until 
 they come to an empty pile on which they have no seed to 
 place. If they have the last seed to place in it, then the 
 opposite party commences to play, otherwise the party who 
 met the first empty hole takes all the seeds contained in the 
 pile next to the empty one. In this way they reduce each 
 other's seeds. When all the seeds are taken from one side 
 the game is ended. The party who has the largest number 
 of seeds is considered to have won the game. 
 
 There is another game which is called otiay-rattay. 
 This is played by both sexes. Taking a handful of tamarind 
 seeds, or telloo, and holding the hand closed, one asks the 
 
LEISURE HOURS 
 
 »9S 
 
 other whether it is odd or even. If the party says that it is 
 odd, while it is really even, then the party who holds the 
 seeds gets an equal number of seeds from the other, 
 otherwise they are taken by the opposite party. 
 
 There is another most intellectual and thoughtful game, 
 called pathinaynthoo nay and pidi^ which means ' fifteen 
 dogs and tigers.' This is really the village chess. One 
 man takes the fifteen dogs, that is fifteen small stones, and 
 keeps them in his hand. His opponent takes three small 
 pieces of earthen vessel, and keeps them on the top of 
 certain lines that are drawn on the floor, thus : 
 
 It is the duty of the man who holds the dogs to arrest the 
 tigers without making any further move, and at the same 
 time he must take care that his dogs are not killed by the 
 tigers. Some clever men arrest the tigers by playing only a 
 few dogs, while others lose all the dogs and fail to arrest 
 the tigers. Some of the villagers are very fond of this 
 game. While the two are playing, several others will be 
 watching with great interest. 
 
196 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 5. THE FAIR. 
 
 There is nothing so useful, nothing so needful to the 
 villagers, as the institution of the village fair, which meets 
 the needs of both the rich and the poor of the village 
 community. Although every village has a bazaar of its 
 own, where curry-stuff, eatables, and provisions are sold to 
 supply the daily requirements, yet it is absolutely necessary 
 to have a fair for the reasons which we propose to explain. 
 
 There are hundreds of village fairs held throughout the 
 length and breadth of the country. A suitable and con- 
 venient centre is chosen, to which the people from different 
 villages, within twenty miles circumference, assemble at 
 about seven o'clock in the morning to sell their goods and 
 to purchase what is necessary for themselves. The dealers 
 in goods come very early in the morning, and open out 
 their petty bazaars on plains, either under some trees, or 
 the shade of a country umbrella, or in the temporary sheds 
 that are erected by private parties to whom they pay a small 
 rent for privilege of occupation. 
 
 The fairs are held outside the village, where there is a 
 sufficient water-supply for the men and cattle, and where 
 there is a stretch of plain without any enclosure. These 
 fairs are held once a week in each centre, and they last for 
 twelve hours. When we enter the fair we find a sea of 
 heads moving up and down ; men and women of all sorts 
 and conditions will be there. In one part will be rows of 
 green vegetables of all kinds ; then great heaps of different 
 kinds of grain, the staple food of the villagers. There will 
 also be bags of all sorts of pulse and horse grain. Turning 
 from these, we find bundles of straw and grass kept ready 
 for cattle, and then a row of cloth merchants with different- 
 
LEISURE HOURS 197 
 
 coloured cloth bundles for the use of men and women and 
 boys and girls. There are also baskets of eatables kept by 
 women in the centre of the fair. Curry-stuff of all kinds, 
 tamarind, sugar, jaggery, salt, nuts, betel leaves, and fruits 
 are in abundance. There are rows of mats made of palm- 
 leaves and grasses, and pillows stuffed with cotton, which 
 forms the bed of the villager. Our eyes are dazzled, and 
 our minds are puzzled, with looking at all these petty shops 
 which are opened upon out-spread carpets. These shops 
 contain other useful articles, such as combs, feeding-bottles, 
 beads, knives, marbles, brass and lead jewels for the lower 
 orders, and other things. And these movable shops are 
 owned by a class of people called Lubbays^ a low class of 
 Hindus who embraced Islam during the oppression of 
 Tippu Sultan. This community has now become very 
 enterprising and hardworking. There are many bullock- 
 bandies (or carts) standing both outside and within the fair, 
 which have brought the above-described articles. 
 
 Buying and selling in a fair is a great art in itself, for the 
 buyers are sure to try to cheat the sellers, and the sellers 
 are equally anxious to cheat the buyers ; and both the 
 buyer and the seller will be duped by the middleman. 
 When we take a general glance at one of these movable 
 shops, we find a good number of people waiting at it, some 
 standing and some sitting, some taking an article and turning 
 it up and down to see whether it is good or bad, some 
 asking the price of this or that particular article which they 
 wish to buy, some begging the shopkeeper to reduce the 
 price, some paying a less sum of money than the price 
 fixed by the shopkeeper, and here a row takes place between 
 the buyer and the seller, the former trying to walk away 
 with the article, and on being detected begging the 
 pardon of the seller ; some finding fault with the seller for 
 
198 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 selling a bad or broken article on the last market-day; 
 some moving from place to place to find out where the 
 best and the cheapest can be had ; some asking the seller 
 the price of this article, and some asking him to let them 
 know the lowest value of that article. While the buyers 
 and sellers are in this state, the beggars pass through 
 the crowd hither and thither, beating their drums and 
 singing their songs. The red-turbaned policemen are 
 pushing about, exerting their authority, and frightening the 
 ignorant people, not only to keep the place in order, but 
 chiefly to help themselves by way of greasing their palms. 
 When a man or a woman gets tired of driving bargains, he 
 or she may listen to the sweet voice of the harmless 
 shepherd girls, who are calling out, 'more, more,' i.e., 
 'buttermilk, buttermilk,' or Uhire, thire^ i.e., 'curd, curd,' 
 to quench their thirst and to refresh themselves. Having 
 passed the open place where the bulk of the people are 
 engaged in dealing with general goods, we find a few yards 
 away a busy cattle market, where sheep, goats and buffaloes 
 are sold. The sellers, buyers, and brokers are having a 
 hard time of it under the burning sun ; and therefore we 
 find a great deal of noise, uproar, confusion, and disorder 
 prevailing. After twelve hours are passed, there is no more 
 selling or buying ; there is no voice of man, or woman, or 
 beast to be heard ; there is no smelling of the flowers, or 
 the singing of beggars. The bazaars are closed and removed 
 from their places, the moving shops are gone; in short, 
 the day has gone and the night has approached, the village 
 fair is closed — all has disappeared. The Hindu poets have 
 compared the present world and all its enjoyments to the 
 'assembly at a fair'; and John Bunyan, the immortal 
 dreamer, has compared the activity, the common life, and 
 the pleasures of this world, to ' Vanity Fair.' 
 
LEISURE HOURS 
 
 199 
 
 The village fair is of great advantage to the poor as well 
 as to the rich. The poor buy their weekly supply of grain, 
 and curry stuffs, and the rich avail themselves of the oppor- 
 tunity to get other needful things for themselves. The 
 shoemaker brings his shoes, and buys his food at the fair; 
 the poor women who work at their own hand -spinning 
 machine (the raht) sell their thread, and with the money 
 buy the necessaries of life. The flower-seller sells his 
 flowers, which will wither away in the evening, and with the 
 proceeds meet his own demand. The arrangements made 
 to fix these fairs are very efficient. They are usually held 
 on the Mondays in Ramanad, on Wednesdays in Pallana- 
 thame, on Saturdays in other places, each at a distance of 
 twenty miles ; on the other days they are held somewhere 
 else. So the fairs give a good chance to the petty merchants, 
 who keep shifting their movable stalls from place to place. 
 
 Whatever may be the advantages and disadvantages of 
 these village fairs, there is one very noticeable fact in con- 
 nection with them : the things are sold at a cheaper rate 
 than at the local bazaars of the villages, and things which 
 cannot be had in the village bazaars can be purchased at 
 the fairs. They also afford an opportunity for supplying 
 the best quality and large quantities of any article that is 
 useful in village family life. 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
THE ATTITUDE OF THE VILLAGERS TOWARDS 
 WESTERN PEOPLE. 
 
 NOTHING is more amusing and entertaining to the 
 villagers of India than to see a white person in their 
 midst, whether he comes from Europe or from America, 
 because they very seldom come into contact with European 
 people. The grown-up men, women, and children, rich 
 and poor, are greatly astonished at the dress, colour, lan- 
 guage, and mode of living of the Western people. Their 
 smiple life and their harmless character cause them to he 
 a great novelty in the eyes of the natives. At the mere 
 appearance in a village of a lady or a gentleman from the 
 Western country, a great crowd of villagers is sure to 
 gather round them ; the women who are returning from 
 the watering-places, carrying the water-jars, stare at these 
 white angels with great astonishment. The children, who 
 play in the streets, run after these strangers, and stand 
 before them amazed, and folding their hands, but none of 
 them dare to give any trouble, or throw stones, or make a 
 noise, or behave rudely towards the foreigners. The men 
 of the village receive the strangers who have come among 
 them with great cordiality and reverence, and they are 
 ready to oblige them with any article of food or other 
 things, as far as is in their power. If the foreigner happens 
 
 15 
 
204 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 to Stay in a village, either in a tent (which is the case 
 generally) or in a village inn, he will find several young 
 men waiting his command, and willing to do anything he 
 may please. But the working classes, who earn their food 
 by daily wages, expect to get something from the foreigners 
 when their service is required. In some urgent cases they 
 will, however, help the foreigners without any remuneration. 
 The life and property of the Westerns are considered as 
 sacred by the village people. When the Westerns go to 
 the villages, with their tents, servants, bullock-carts, horses, 
 and other paraphernalia, the villagers show all kindness, 
 
 ^ profound respect, and great submission. They are not 
 only ready to oblige the Westerns who pass through their 
 villages with an establishment of their own, but when an 
 unfortunate single European or American happens to pass 
 alone on foot from one city to another in search of employ- 
 ment, they show great hospitahty and extreme kindness to 
 them. We know several cases in which such unfortunate 
 individuals have had to pass through the rural districts 
 under great disadvantage, through not knowing the language 
 of the people and not being accustomed to their food. 
 One of these individuals informed us of the manner in 
 
 I which the villagers had treated him. They gave him milk 
 and butter-milk for his breakfast, and cooked rice and 
 vegetable curries for his dinner and supper. And some of 
 them, when they saw him walking on foot, made him ride 
 in their bullock-carts, and helped him thus to go a certain 
 distance on his way. In this manner a Frenchman crossed 
 from Erode to Bangalore, and an Englishman from Madras 
 to Ooty, and other Western people have journeyed from 
 one city to another. 
 
 It is not always the case that the villagers have the 
 honour and privilege of seeing Western people as they 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 205 
 
 pass through their villages in the more interior parts of the 
 country. There are very many villages in which Western 
 people have never yet set foot. There are only two classes 
 of European people who pass through their country occa- 
 sionally. The one is that of the self-denying and energetic 
 missionaries of the West, who go on tours in order to 
 preach the Gospel of peace to the ignorant and benighted 
 people ; and the other consists of civil officers of the 
 British Government, such as engineers, survey officers, 
 forest officers, police officers, and revenue officers. Their 
 visits are not very frequent, and when they do happen to 
 visit the villages, they behave with a great deal of ' stand- 
 offishness.' But this is a common weakness among such 
 officers ; perhaps it is the best thing, too, inasmuch as they 
 take a part in governing the country. But this exclusive- 
 ness and reservedness of the European officers does not draw 
 forth the sympathy of the villagers, for, as a rule, they fear to 
 approach these officials when they get to know who they 
 are. If their help is sought by these Western officers, they 
 are usually ready to oblige them. The villagers look upon 
 all Westerns, whether they are Britons, Germans, Ameri- 
 cans, Frenchmen, Itahans, or Spaniards, as the representa- 
 tives of the ruling British nation ; and the differences that 
 exist among these nationalities is not a matter of concern 
 to the quiet and retired people of India, whose amiable 
 characters and utter ignorance of the geography and history 
 of the world make them submissive to all white people 
 whom they may happen to see. 
 
 The attitude of the villagers towards the Westerns is 
 generally favourable, and they are the largest of the com- 
 munities that form the loyal subjects of the British throne. 
 Their obedience towards any member of the Western 
 community is remarkable. They obey not only the men, 
 
 15—2 
 
2o6 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 hut even the women of the West, and they look upon them 
 as, in a way, demi-gods. 
 
 The attitude of the villagers towards the Western people 
 is not only to be seen in their spirit of obedience, but also 
 in the spirit of sympathy and in the great affection they 
 have for them. There are tales told about the horrible 
 rule and miserable government of the Mohgul emperors, 
 and the extreme wickedness of the Hindu maradars and 
 chiefs, who have destroyed the liberties, stolen the properties, 
 and dishonoured the modesty of their women for centuries 
 together. These tales were told to the village-folk while they 
 are young by their grandmothers. They form an unwritten 
 history in the hearts of the harmless villagers, whose fore- 
 fathers groaned under the iron yoke of the past tyrannical 
 rulers of India. Whenever they turn the pages of this 
 history of the past governments, they see them stained 
 with the blood of their innocent forefathers, and filled with 
 narratives of the most diabolical and inhuman deeds of the 
 Mohammedan kings and the Hindu rulers. Therefore 
 simple, ignorant, and poor though they are, they are able to 
 distinguish between the peace and liberty and prosperity 
 which they enjoy under the British flag, and the disabilities 
 and wrongs under which their forefathers laboured. Hence 
 they manifest a great love for Western persons, whoever 
 they may be and to whatever country they may belong, 
 thinking that they are Sirkar Maiishal of the Rajaihee, i.e., 
 the gentlemen belonging to the Queen's Government. It 
 will not be looked upon as presumption on our part to echo 
 the voice of the village community, and say that they are 
 ready to shed their life-blood, if the time should come, for 
 maintaining the British rule in their midst. The following 
 is from the able pen of our esteemed countryman, Mr. 
 Ahmed Hussain, M.A., B.L. : 'When, some years ngo, the 
 
APPENDIX 207 
 
 newspapers talked of a war between England and Russia, 
 I was in a village in an out-of-the-way corner of a midland 
 district. I remember well what the villagers thought 
 and tried to do then. One morning Hindus and Moham- 
 medans flocked to my tent as the postman brought my 
 newspapers. I cannot describe their excitement. They 
 begged me to read the newspapers, and tell them if the 
 Russians had really invaded Hindustan. I wished to try 
 their patience a little, and asked them what they would do 
 if the rumour were true. They said they would at once 
 hide their jewels and money, and go to the Zillah Collector. 
 "To do what?" I asked. "To fight the Russians," was 
 the unanimous reply. I wished to further test the real 
 motive of their determination. "What matters it to you," 
 said I, "if one foreigner goes out and another comes in?" 
 " Don't say so, sir," answered the headman of the village ; 
 "don't say so. Although we all grumble to pay heavy 
 taxes, we would rather have the Englishmen rule us, who 
 do not meddle with our religions, than other foreigners who 
 would forcibly convert us to Christianity"' (quoted from 
 T//e Madras Christian College Magazine of March, 1893, 
 Though they are at times grieved and disturbed by the 
 heavy taxes which they have to pay, yet they can say, in 
 the words of the poet, that they love Britain still ; ' her 
 faults are many, but her virtues are not few.' It cannot 
 be denied, knowing them as we do, that the village com 
 munities are quite contented, and most affectionate towards 
 the Western people. 
 
 The spirit of gratitude towards the Western people is 
 another remarkable attitude of the village community. 
 They often speak of the manifold streams of blessings 
 which run through their country. They know not how 
 the steam-engines draw the loaded railway-waggons and 
 
2o8 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 passenger-carriages from place to place as swiftly as a bird. 
 They know not by what means the messages of joy and 
 sorrow are despatched from one country to another, within 
 the twinkling of an eye, through the medium of the electric 
 telegraph. They do not know by what power their relatives 
 and friends are carried away from their land of birth to the 
 distant colonies, in order to make their fortunes, by the 
 steamships. They are quite ignorant of the postal arrange- 
 ment by which their letters of condolence, and their 
 marriage invitations, and their business communications, 
 run to and fro between the countries far and near at a 
 small cost. It is quite a miracle to them to see the spinning 
 and weaving machines working in different parts of the 
 rural districts. They are unable to understand how the 
 large and well-organized body of civil, military, and judicial 
 functionaries carry out their respective duties in protecting 
 the life and property of the country, and in subduing the 
 evil-doers, and in distributing justice among both the 
 innocent and the guilty. They are not told how the 
 magnificent rivers are crossed by gigantic bridges, and the 
 mighty waters scattered abroad through the lowlands and 
 the highlands, through the hills and the mountains, to the 
 plains and fertile valleys, for the convenience of the in- 
 habitants, and for the agricultural improvement of the land. 
 It is a mystery to them to see the descendants of their 
 slaves, and the offspring of their outcast people becoming 
 the great factors in the ruling machinery of the land. Yet 
 they realize that they have an altogether better time than 
 their forefathers had, and that their present benefits were 
 not even dreamt of by their ancestors. So, in the ordinary 
 conversations of the villagers, they speak of the wonderful 
 changes which have taken place during their time through 
 the noble efforts of the Western people. 
 
APPENDIX 209 
 
 THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL IN THE 
 Vn.LAGES. 
 
 The Gospel of goodwill to man and peace on earth was 
 once proclaimed by the angels to the shepherds of Bethle- 
 hem, who went abroad spreading the glad tidings of the 
 incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The influence of this 
 Gospel was felt throughout the greater part of the world 
 then known to the Romans before the end of the first 
 century. It has been asserted that the Apostle Thomas, 
 whilst labouring in India, was put to death by Brahmins of 
 Maylypure (St. Thoum), near Madras. The account, how- 
 ever, is unworthy of credit; it arose, probably, from con- 
 founding the Apostle with a monk named Thomas, who 
 lived at a much later period. 
 
 The Gospel of the Everlasting Son of God seems to have 
 been first brought from Alexandria, which was the greatest 
 and most famous commercial city in the world at the 
 beginning of the Christian era. Here the Evangelist Mark 
 taught a school for preachers for several years. It is sup- 
 posed that Indian merchants who went to Alexandria from 
 the different parts of India to sell their beautiful silks, 
 muslins, and precious pearls, found there a still greater and 
 much more valuable treasure, ' the Pearl of Great Price ' ; 
 that is, the Gospel of Christ. These Indian merchants, on 
 their return to their native country, told their relatives and 
 friends that the ' Desire of all Nations ' had come. 
 
 In the beginning of the second century an earnest appeal 
 was made for Christian teachers to Demetrius, Bishop of 
 Alexandria. Pemtoe, who was a very learned man, was 
 sent to India, and, as far as we know, he was the first 
 missionary to India. 
 
2IO INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 About the fourth century a number of Syrian Christian 
 emigrants settled along the coast of Malabar, south-west of 
 India. They obtained great favour from the Hindu King 
 of Malabar, and freely traded in the country. By-and-by 
 they increased in number and wealth ; so much so that 
 they had their own princes to rule over them for centuries 
 together. Their bishops came from Antioch, and they 
 remained Christians faithfully till Vasco da Gama came 
 from Portugal, bringing with him Roman Catholic priests, 
 who soon induced these Christians to become Roman 
 Catholics, and those who refused to accept that faith were 
 severely persecuted. 
 
 In 1599 an assembly under Archbishop Menerzes met, 
 and they unanimously ordered all the Syrian prayer-books 
 to be burned. Some of these Christians remained unshaken 
 during the persecution. When liberty was secured by the 
 British flag a great number of them left the Romish Church 
 and formed a new sect of Syrian Christians. These Chris- 
 tians are plain-hearted and simple-minded folks ; but their 
 priests need better education in Gospel truths. 
 
 The pioneer missionaries of the modern missions have 
 entered different parts of the country from time to time, 
 and have set the Gospel light to shine upon those who sat 
 in darkness and the shadow of death. More than a hundred 
 years elapsed, and millions sterling were spent and many 
 precious lives were lost in this sunny land of ours in the 
 missionary enterprise. There are over thirty-three deno- 
 minational sects represented in the field, and all of them 
 have had the pleasure of seeing converts from heathenism. 
 There are several villages with chapels, churches, preachers, 
 and teachers, and hundreds of Christians assemble together 
 at the sound of the Sabbath bells to sing the songs of praise 
 to the Redeemer of mankind, and their sons and daughters 
 
APPENDIX 211 
 
 are brought up in the faith of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. It has a charming effect on anyone who visits 
 these rural churches and observes the simple life of the 
 village Christian community. 
 
 One of these numerous village stations situated in Tenne- 
 velly, called Meigmamapuram, may be described : — When 
 the Rev. J. Thomas took charge of it the village was not 
 a large one, and had few attractions ; it was in the midst 
 of a desert of sand, occupied only by palmyra-trees, castor- 
 oil shrubs, and thorn-bushes, with here and there a banyan- 
 tree marking the road to Trichendur. It had a barren and 
 desolate appearance, and during the season when the land- 
 wind, rushing from the mountains, parches the country and 
 sweeps the falling leaves before it, the village was continually 
 enveloped in clouds of sand and dust. It has now become 
 quite an oasis. Wells have been dug by the hand of labour, 
 and streams pour forth from them in every direction ; from 
 the deep sand, vegetables, flowers, and fruit of the very 
 best kind are produced. There you may see the rose and 
 jessamine in their beauty, and the cocoanut-tree in all its 
 gracefulness, and there you may taste the plantain, the grape, 
 the pine-apple having a flavour equal to the finest in India. 
 A lofty and beautiful church, able to contain 2,000 people, 
 has been erected of stone ; every Lord's Day it is filled with 
 worshippers, who flock to it from all directions at the sound 
 of the Sabbath bells, and thus the prophecy of Isaiah is 
 fulfilled : ' The wilderness and the solitary place shall be 
 glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom 
 as the rose.' 
 
 There are thousands of villages in which the (iospel of 
 Christ has not yet been preached, and there are millions of 
 villagers who still remain in gross idolatry and sui)erstition, 
 but may we not look beyond present discouragements to the 
 
212 INDIAN VILLAGE FOLK 
 
 time when the victory shall be won and India become 
 * Immanuel's Land ' ? It will be then, as now, filled with 
 the temples dedicated to the living God. It will be thickly 
 populated with worshippers ; but they will worship God in 
 spirit and in truth. It will have its highways thronged with 
 pilgrims, but they will be travellers on the way to heaven. 
 It will have its Shastras, but they will be the sacred 
 Scriptures. It will have its songs, but they will be sweet 
 songs of praise to God and to the l^amb. Its fathers and 
 mothers, as numerous as now, will be all Christians ; its 
 youths of both sexes will all be taught the lessons of early 
 piety.' 
 
 As it is the duty and delight of every Indian Christian 
 who has embraced the ennobling religion of Christ to 
 endeavour to spread the knowledge of the Lord among his 
 countrymen, the author of this book has plunged himself into 
 the streams of Providence, and devotes his time and energy 
 to bringing his fellow-countrymen into the everlasting king- 
 dom of God, and he will join with the poet in singing : 
 
 * But the end is not. Look onward, 
 
 Much must yet be done ; 
 
 Millions, yet still unbelieving, 
 
 Must be sought and won. 
 
 ' Disappointments will be waiting — 
 Satan does his best ; 
 Yet all obstacles must vanish 
 At our God's behest.' 
 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster Ro7v, London, 
 
 2 10714 
 
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