India 
 
 the cunning goldsmith saw his chance. He slipped to her 
 side and rubbed a certain kind of gum on her eyelids. 
 Then he went back to his work and made such a noise 
 with his hammer that the woman woke up. When she 
 found she could not open her eyes, she cried out in terror, 
 and called upon the goldsmith for help. 
 
 "Is there something wrong ?" asked the goldsmith in 
 tones of wonder. 
 
 " I am blind !" cried the woman. " I cannot open my 
 eyes. Oh, what shall I do % What has happened to me ?" 
 
 " Ah IV said the goldsmith, " I see what has happened. 
 You came here and called me by every evil name you could 
 think of. I bore your abuse in silence and patience. But 
 the goddess of our craft will not be so patient ; she has 
 struck you blind for reviling me." 
 
 "What can I do to regain my sight ?" said the woman. 
 " I have many children and a husband to care for." 
 
 " There's only one thing to be done," replied the gold- 
 smith, gravely. "You must make an offering to my 
 goddess, and then she will forgive." 
 
 " Gladly will I do it," cried the poor woman. " Take 
 every rupee that I brought to you and offer them up 
 to her, if that will give me back my sight." 
 
 "It is enough," said the goldsmith ; and he took some 
 cold water and washed the woman's eyes, and she found, 
 to her great joy, that she could see as well as ever. Then 
 she went away, thanking the goldsmith for restoring her 
 sight, and marvelling at the wonderful power of the 
 goddess of the goldsmith's craft. 
 
 As we leave the goldsmith's house, we meet the dhoby, 
 the village washerman, and his wife, carrying along the 
 
 16 
 

 A POTTER 
 

 X 
 
 0. 
 
 %4 
 
 $> 
 
 & 
 
 & 
 
 
 4 
 
 £> 
 
 
 
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PEEPS AT 
 MANY LANDS 
 
 HOME LIFE IN INDIA 
 
Published in 19 12 in the 
 
 " Homes 0/ Many Lands " Series. 
 
 Reissued imq\j in the 
 
 Peeps at Many Lands " Series 
 
 AGENTS 
 
 AMERICA .... THE MACMTLLAN COMPANY 
 
 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue. NEW YORK 
 
 AUSTRALASIA . . . OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 20 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE 
 
 CANADA » THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA. LTD. 
 
 St. martin's House. 70 Bond street, TORONTO 
 INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY. LTD 
 
 M VCMILLAN BUILDING. BOMBAY 
 
 3 <«9 Bow Bazaar Street, CALCUTTA 
 
> -. ■ ? » *. 
 
I . t I , 
 
 AN INDIAN GIRL. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE HOME OF THE RYOT 1 
 
 II. AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK — I. 5 
 
 III. AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK— II. 12 
 
 IV. AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK — III. ------- 19 
 
 V. AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK — IV. ------- 26 
 
 VI. THE SPORTS OF THE VILLAGE 35 
 
 VII. HOW THE VILLAGE IS RULED ....... 42 
 
 VIII. OFF TO THE MELA - - - - - - - - -47 
 
 IX. INDIAN JUGGLERS - 53 
 
 X. HOMES IN THE CITY - - 60 
 
 XI. FROM BIRTH TO MARRIAGE 67 
 
 XII. THE HOME OF THE RAJAH --------73 
 
 XIII. HOMES OF THE WILD FOLK -81 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1. an Indian girl ' Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 2. A WOMAN AT THE WELL 9 
 
 3. A POTTER 16 
 
 4. THE VILLAGE POET 25 
 
 5. EVENING IN THE VILLAGE - 32 
 
 6. BY THE SACRED RIVER 41 
 
 7. NATIVE SHOPS - - 48 
 
 8. A BEGGAR --- 57 
 
 9. A BULLOCK-CART 64 
 
 10. A MINSTRELS' BALCONY 73 
 
 11. THE rajah's ELEPHANT - 80 
 
 12. AN INDIAN boy On the Cover 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The first world of which a child has knowledge is, of 
 course, the little world of home. As his interests extend, 
 it is but natural that he should feel a curiosity as to the 
 homes of children of other lands. He may be quite 
 content with his own nest ; he may sing, with Mr. 
 Stevenson, 
 
 " Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow, 
 Little frosty Eskimo, 
 Little Turk or Japanee, 
 Oh, don't you wish that you were me ?" 
 
 and, at the same time, take the keenest pleasure in 
 hearing of the everyday round amid surroundings so 
 different from his own. This series will give clear and 
 vivid pictures of homes under other skies, and thus form 
 an introduction to the life of the world under the con- 
 ditions of existence which the child-imagination can 
 grasp most easily. 
 
 493760 
 
INDIA 
 
 THE HOME OF THE RYOT 
 
 " Tell me, Hindu, tell me truly, in your home is nothing more 
 Than some tatties, and some chatties, and some pratties on the 
 floor! 
 
 Quoth the Hindu, ' Nothing more.' " 
 
 Now, a tattie is a screen woven of grass, and a chatty is a 
 water- vessel, so that with these and some kind of bedstead 
 or bedding the furnishing of a Hindu home would seem 
 to be a very simple affair. The above lines are, of course, 
 written in a humorous vein, but for all that they contain 
 a great deal of truth. There is scarcely a simpler home 
 in the world than that of the Indian ryot, the husband- 
 man, one of those many millions of quiet, simple, brown- 
 faced men whose patient, never-ending labour lies at the 
 base of all the wealth of India. 
 
 Let us glance at an Indian peasant village, lying in the 
 vast plain of the Punjaub, and basking in the hot sun 
 which follows the winter rains. The vast stretch of level 
 land spreads like a sea from horizon to horizon, and, like 
 the sea in some lights, it is green, for it is one huge carpet 
 of young wheat. Nothing breaks the smooth run of the 
 country save the village, which rises like an ant-heap in 
 
 IN. 1 
 
. ;: ; : :;;;*•.*:;: ; .»v India 
 
 a flat meadow. It is no tiny hill upon which it stands, 
 but it is raised upon the ruins of many former villages, 
 and when this hamlet crumbles to the ground, fresh 
 huts will stand upon a pedestal a foot higher than 
 to-day. 
 
 Around the village lie a number of shallow tanks, dug 
 in the soil, and filled with pools of water after the rains. 
 These tanks are the cradle of the hamlet. From them 
 the mud was dug to build the houses, and so they were 
 formed. From them the mud will be taken afresh when 
 new houses are wanted, and so they will grow larger. 
 Mud is all the peasant needs to build his simple abode. 
 Mud are the walls, mud the floors, and very often roofs 
 also are of mud, though some builders use thatch. There 
 are no windows, no chimneys. The latter are not often 
 needed, for cooking is generally carried on out of doors. 
 But when the rains drive the housewife within to boil 
 the rice or bake the wheaten cakes at the fireplace, built 
 of a few mud bricks, the smoke eddies about the room 
 until it finds its way out at the door. 
 
 When you enter one of these single-roomed mud 
 cottages, you are surprised to see how little it contains, 
 and with what slight means the ryot can carry on his 
 existence. You are not certain to discover even a 
 bedstead, for in some huts there is none, but each 
 inmate curls himself up in a blanket and lies con- 
 tentedly on the floor. There are no chairs or tables, 
 for the people sit on the floor and eat from it ; and 
 when the housewife cleans the latter, she plasters it 
 with cow-dung. You look in vain for a hundred things 
 which you would call necessities in a home. But the 
 
 2 
 
The Home of the Ryot 
 
 ryot does not need them, and does not feel the want of 
 them. If he has a shelter from the rain, his plot of land 
 to grow food for himself and his family, a blanket to 
 wrap himself against the cold, one or two strips of cotton 
 cloth for clothing, he is quite satisfied. We read of the 
 man who took up his bed and walked ; the ryot very often 
 could take up his bed and all the furniture of his house 
 and run with it, so easy would be the load. 
 
 Yet we must not think that he is bound to be poor. As 
 a rule he is poor — very poor — a man whose income is a 
 penny or twopence a day, and his whole belongings 
 scarce worth a sovereign. But his simple style of living 
 is not always a sign of poverty. In a mud hut you may 
 see a woman and her daughters busy about the household 
 work with great silver bangles clustering on their wrists. 
 Those form the family wealth. Into them the spare 
 cash has been put ; and if the ryot has more rupees still, 
 he stows them away in a secret hole in the ground. He 
 does this because he knows nothing of banks, and would 
 not trust them if he did. But he has heard of thieves, 
 and takes great care that no one shall know where he has 
 hidden his pile of silver coins. It will happen at times 
 that, by some accident, he dies without having told any- 
 one where to find the family treasure, and then there is 
 great weeping and wailing, and his heirs are very sorrowful. 
 
 The ryot's week has seven working days, and his 
 holidays are very few and far between ; and the imple- 
 ments with which he tills his field are as simple as his 
 furniture. He has a plough which is a mere piece of 
 bent wood, scratching the soil as the harnessed bull or 
 buffalo drags it along. He has a rude spade, and a heavy 
 
 3 
 
India 
 
 mattock, and a fork, and with these he prepares the soil 
 and grows his crops. 
 
 He works from daybreak to sunset. He is off to the 
 field at dawn, taking some food with him to support him 
 till noon, when his wife brings his dinner. He eats it, 
 lies down for a sleep in the nearest shade, gets to work 
 again about three, and labours till sunset. His wife does 
 the work of the household and her share in the toil of 
 the fields. Her household labours largely depend on 
 the nearness of water and fuel. Sometimes she has to 
 go a great distance to a well, a tank, or a stream, to draw 
 her water, sometimes a long way to a patch of jungle to 
 cut wood. In many parts wood is very scarce, and then 
 she collects cow-dung and works it up into "cakes," and 
 dries the latter in the sun for fuel. 
 
 The ryot's wife displays wonderful industry and 
 thriftiness. She may be seen carefully sweeping a field 
 of corn or rice after harvest with a hand-broom to draw 
 together any grains that may have fallen. She watches 
 the cropS closely as they ripen, and carefully gathers the 
 forward ears, lest they should shed their contents before 
 the rest are ready. And when she grinds the corn for the 
 family meal, she judges to a marvel how much grain to 
 take, so that not a pinch shall be wasted. It is not 
 often that she sets rice before her household, for, except 
 in districts where rice grows in great plenty, it is far too 
 great a luxury for the ryot's fare. As a rule, he eats the 
 coarser kinds of grain, such as millet and pulse, and spices 
 his food with salt, or sharp, pungent herbs and chillies. 
 
II 
 
 AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK— I 
 
 In many a large village of India, life goes on just as it 
 went on five hundred years ago. The people of the village 
 know that the white masters rule the land ; they pay 
 taxes, perhaps, to the British Raj — the British Govern- 
 ment — but they very rarely see a white face, and they 
 live their own life under their own native headmen, as 
 they have always done. Very often the native huts are 
 clustered together in a village, which may have from a 
 hundred to a thousand houses in it. This custom comes 
 down from times when bands of marauders swept across 
 the land, and no man felt safe unless his home lay 
 within the shelter of the mud or stone wall which 
 encircled the local hamlet. These walls still exist in 
 many places, though the British peace now lies over 
 India, and within them is to be found the ancient, 
 old-world village life of the Indian farmer, artisan, and 
 peasant. 
 
 The streets of the village are very narrow— mere alleys 
 threading their way among the rows of mud huts in 
 which the peasants live. These close-packed houses suffer 
 very severely when fire breaks out. The flame leaps from 
 thatch to thatch, from street to street, and the fires are 
 most furious in the scorching heat of summer, when every- 
 
 5 
 
India 
 
 thing that will burn is like tinder. Very often a whole 
 village will be destroyed, and the homeless people are 
 left without shelter or food, for their store of grain has 
 been burned with the rest of their belongings. They 
 beg help, or borrow money, wherever they can, and 
 rebuild their ruined homes. 
 
 The home of a well-to-do farmer stands in the village, 
 though his farm may be two or three miles away. It is 
 entered through a main gate in a high mud wall, and the 
 wall will run right round his premises, so that all, men 
 and beasts, must pass in or out at the one point. Inside 
 the gate is an open hall, where male visitors are received 
 and the men of the family sit when they are at leisure. 
 Next comes an open space, beyond which lies the house 
 proper, a mud and thatch building, containing a large 
 room, where the members of the family eat and sleep, a 
 store-house, and a kitchen. The dining and bedroom is 
 as bare as the house of the ryot, and the family bedding 
 consists of a few mats and pillows rolled up and set in a 
 corner. The store-house is filled with grain, and the 
 kitchen is stocked with vessels of brass and earthenware, 
 for cooking, eating, and carrying water. The cattle-sheds 
 are built at the eastern side of the house ; at other points 
 granaries are set up ; and the rest of the enclosure is a 
 garden where herbs and plants are grown for the kitchen. 
 
 The work of this house, and of every other house in the 
 village, begins very early in the morning. The first 
 glimpse of the morning star is the signal for everyone to 
 rise. The peasants set off to the fields, and the farmer 
 urges his labourers with the cry : " Haste, haste, the star 
 has risen !" From the mud temple of the village comes 
 
 6 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 the loud blast of a holy shell blown by a priest : he is 
 awaking the village gods. Travellers rise and resume 
 their journey. Schoolboys are seen running to school, 
 and the work of the day begins in earnest. 
 
 Numbers of the men go down to the river or to the 
 village tank to bathe, while the women sprinkle the front 
 and back yards of their dwellings with cow-dung. This 
 is done to drive away the goddess of ill-luck, who will 
 not come to a place where the cow, a sacred animal in 
 the eyes of all Hindus, is present. Next the women 
 sweep out their houses, milk the cows and goats, clean 
 their cooking- vessels, and make ready the first meal. 
 To this the men return at about eight o'clock, and sit 
 down on the ground to eat rice or chuppaties. The latter 
 are flat, round, unleavened cakes of meal, and form the 
 daily bread of both rich and poor. With these foods they 
 use various sauces and condiments, pickles and curries, 
 and drink buttermilk. When the men have finished 
 eating, the women take what is left in the dishes. The 
 food is eaten from brass plates or plantain-leaves, and 
 raised to the mouth with the hands. 
 
 The men now go back to their labour in the fields 
 or their workshops, and the women fetch water, collect 
 fuel, weave, pound rice or grain, grind spices for curry 
 powder, and get the midday meal ready and serve it at 
 noon. This is mainly of rice and vegetables, served with 
 curds and the usual sauces ; and after dinner comes a 
 break while they rest and await the heat of noon to pass. 
 The supper-hour is eight o'clock, when the remainder of 
 the food prepared that day is eaten. But among some 
 classes fresh food is made ready for every meal, for it is a 
 
 7 
 
India 
 
 law with them to throw or give away all food left uneaten 
 at a meal. Soon after supper all retire to bed, for they 
 must be afoot at early dawn. 
 
 The busiest spot in the village is the well, for women 
 are coming and going to it all day long. They stand and 
 chatter and laugh while each in turn fills her tall water- 
 jar, and then, when the jar is filled and balanced on her 
 head, moves away with swift, graceful carriage. Some 
 have good whole robes, some are in little better than rags, 
 but everyone has a corner of her robe drawn across her 
 face as a veil, and the veil is never dropped until she is 
 within her own door. A little beyond the well, and 
 seated full in the sun, is a very strange figure. It is that 
 of an old man, almost naked, and very thin, every bone 
 starting through the skin of his meagre body, and his 
 legs and arms looking like mere sticks. From head to 
 foot he is plastered with mud and filth, and his wild eyes 
 glitter through a tangle of matted hair. He takes no 
 notice of anyone, but stares straight before him as if lost 
 in thought ; and when the women see him, they become 
 silent. It is a beggar — a religious mendicant. 
 
 Now there comes round a corner near at hand a Hindu 
 gentleman, very handsomely dressed. He wears a great 
 turban of pink muslin and a rich robe of silk ; he shines 
 in the sun like a flower. He walks forward without seeing 
 the beggar, and all of a sudden the latter bursts into an 
 angry roar, and assails the gentleman with a torrent of 
 abuse. He calls him every name you could imagine, and 
 a great many you could not imagine, and the politest of 
 them all is to call him the son of a dog and a pig, two very 
 unclean animals. What is wrong ? Why, the gentleman » 
 
 8 
 
C € . C 
 
 A WOMAN AT THE WELL. 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 came so near the beggar that his shadow fell on the 
 latter. And what reply does he make to the stream 
 of angry language ? He bows most respectfully, and 
 entreats pardon in the most abject tones, for at a 
 glance he has read the painted marks on the beggar's 
 face. 
 
 This seems all very strange, but it is really quite simple : 
 the beggar is a high-caste Hindu, the rich man is of a lower 
 caste, and his shadow, to the beggar, is unclean. What is 
 caste ? Caste is the class into which every Hindu is 
 born. There are four great castes : the priest caste, the 
 warrior caste, the merchant caste, and the labourer caste. 
 But these castes have been so divided and subdivided 
 that there are now thousands of castes in India, and every 
 member of each caste looks upon the other members as 
 brothers, and those outside his own caste as strangers 
 and men apart from him. In whatever caste a Hindu 
 is born, to that he belongs to the day of his death, unless 
 he is deprived of it. He may fall out of caste, but he 
 can never rise to a higher one. He loses caste by break- 
 ing the laws of caste. It would be impossible to say here 
 what all those laws are, for they are very numerous, but 
 these are a few of the chief. Men may only marry in their 
 own caste, eat with their own caste, or touch food pre- 
 pared either by a man of their own caste or a man of 
 higher caste. No man may allow another of lower caste 
 to touch his cooked food, or even to enter the room where 
 it is being made ready. The higher-caste man is denied 
 if a lower caste touches him, or brushes against him, or 
 if he allows the shadow of an inferior to fall upon him. 
 A Hindu may not marry a widow or leave India without 
 
 in. 9 2 
 
India 
 
 losing caste. He at once loses caste if he becomes a 
 Christian or a Moslem. 
 
 What is the punishment of a man who loses caste ? 
 It is the most thoroughgoing boycott in the world. His 
 friends and relatives and all the members of his caste 
 give him the cold shoulder at once. They will not speak 
 with him, eat with him, drink with him, smoke with him. 
 His children remain unmarried, and this is a terrible 
 thing in Hindu eyes, for no family will be connected with 
 him in any form. He cannot obtain the services of a 
 priest, a barber, or a washerman, and he is refused 
 aid at every turn of his way. The caste system is of 
 tremendous power in Hindu social life, and its whole 
 might is directed with crushing force against the man 
 who has broken his caste and been driven out from his 
 fellows. 
 
 The consequence is that the Hindu will do anything 
 sooner than break a law of caste. He will starve rather 
 than touch food which may have been denied in any way 
 by an inferior ; if he is a bad man, he will cheerfully 
 commit every crime in the criminal calendar, but he will 
 not offend against caste. And, finally, caste is the one 
 subject upon which every Hindu will tell the truth. No 
 man can have dealings with a stranger unless he is sure 
 of the latter 's caste, and the stranger will be bound to 
 tell truly to what order he belongs. Caste is the be-all 
 and end-all of the Hindu. He may be false to every- 
 thing else, but never to that. 
 
 Caste is not a matter of wealth or position. The 
 highest caste includes beggars who scarce know where 
 to find a handful of rice ; the lowest may have men of 
 
 10 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 great wealth among its members. So now we see why 
 the beggar roared out in angry and haughty disdain, and 
 why the finely dressed merchant bent low and asked 
 pardon humbly, and made haste to get out of the way. 
 The one is a Brahmin, a member of the priestly caste, 
 and the other a man of lower caste. And if that rich 
 merchant were to bribe with all his wealth — ay, and a 
 hundred times his wealth — he could not persuade the 
 poorest Hindu to look upon him as the equal of the naked 
 beggar. 
 
 11 
 
Ill 
 
 AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK— II 
 
 The group near the well breaks up . The merchant hurries 
 from the spot, the women run off with their water, and 
 the Brahmin mendicant also goes his way, still muttering 
 angrily, for he must now busy himself with his purifica- 
 tion. He must wash the caste mark from his forehead, 
 perform many ablutions, and again smear himself with 
 earth, ashes, and cow-dung before he can be clean from 
 the defilement of the merchant's shadow. 
 
 A little farther is a large shed under a great tree, and 
 round the shed are broken carts, and planks of wood lie 
 about. This is the carpenter's shop, and the carpenter 
 is a very important man in the village, for he is one of the 
 five useful artisans of Indian life. The others are the 
 potter, the shoemaker, the weaver, and the blacksmith. 
 With these men ready to work in wood, in pottery, in 
 leather, in weaving, in iron, the village can exist without 
 outside help : it is sufficient in itself at every point. 
 
 Here, again, caste comes in. Each trade forms a caste 
 of its own, and all born within the trade follow it. There 
 is no talk in a Hindu family of what a boy shall be, or 
 what he would like to be. That is settled from the 
 moment of his birth. If he be born in a carpenter's 
 family, he will be a carpenter ; in a weaver's family, he 
 
 12 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 will be a weaver ; the son of a potter will become a 
 potter ; and so on. In this way there is a great inherited 
 skill in the fingers of an Indian workman when he comes 
 to practise his craft, and the carpenter whose shed we 
 are approaching can afford us a striking proof of this. 
 Among his tools there is one of which he makes great use, 
 a peculiar kind of adze. This tool is very difficult to 
 manage in the hands of an unskilled workman, yet there, 
 just within the shed, is the carpenter's son, a little thin 
 boy, barely ten years old, using it with the greatest 
 dexterity. A grown man, not of the carpenter caste, 
 could not use it so well after five years' practice. But 
 that boy's ancestors for a hundred generations have 
 been swinging that tool, and their skill lives again in 
 him. 
 
 The carpenter is hard at work on a new cart, and he is 
 clad only in a turban and a waistcloth, and we notice 
 that he has a thread across his shoulders. This is the 
 sacred thread which shows that he belongs to one of the 
 five orders of great artisans. He has always plenty of 
 work to do, for he must make yokes, ploughs, and handles 
 for tools, door-posts, doors, rafters, bedsteads, and 
 wooden spoons. He builds the carts which are drawn 
 by the slow-moving bullocks, and at times he has to 
 build a great car on which the village idol is borne in 
 state at the annual festival. If he is a clever carver, he 
 is sometimes employed to carve the image of a village 
 god, and when it is set up in the temple he receives a 
 handsome present. 
 
 Each farmer for whom he works gives him so much 
 grain, and he charges a certain amount for making special 
 
 13 
 
India 
 
 things, such as finely carved bedsteads for well-to-do 
 people, and ornamental door-posts and decorations for 
 fine houses. But, as a rule, he is not paid a great deal in 
 money ; people give him food and things which he needs, 
 in return for his labour, and so he makes a comfortable 
 living. 
 
 As this is a large village, there is bound to be a black- 
 smith in it, for the farmers and peasants need the car- 
 penter and the blacksmith above all other craftsmen. 
 His shop is proclaimed, as it is in every country, by the 
 clang of hammers, and by the knot of men standing 
 about, waiting for their tools to be mended or new ones 
 to be made. His tools are very simple. He has a few 
 hammers, some pincers, and a pair of bellows. Yet he 
 does all the iron work of the village, and gives satisfac- 
 tion to his customers. He makes hinges, locks, and 
 keys for doors ; spades, reaping hooks, axes, sickles, and 
 crowbars for work in the woods and fields ; knives and 
 choppers for use in the kitchen ; and many other imple- 
 ments. 
 
 The tap-tap of lighter hammers calls us to the work- 
 shop of the goldsmith, who lives a little farther on . Every 
 large village has its goldsmith, and he is one of the 
 busiest workers in the place. Not only are the Indian 
 peasants very fond of jewellery, but, as we have seen, 
 the spare cash of the household is turned into ornaments 
 and worn by the women. From morning till night 
 women are coming and going to the shop of the goldsmith. 
 One brings a small bag of coins to be made into a bangle, 
 a necklet, a nose-ring, an ear-ring, or an anklet ; another 
 has a broken ornament which needs mending ; a third 
 
 14 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 has an old ornament which she wishes him to melt down 
 and remake in a new shape. 
 
 But the goldsmith is a sad rogue. Of all the crafts- 
 men in the village, he has by far the worst character. 
 He is full of cunning, and the sly tricks by which he cheats 
 the simple country folk are legion. A woman brings a 
 piece of gold to be made into a rich bangle. It is made. 
 Some time afterwards the family needs money, and the 
 ornament is turned into cash. But the purchaser only 
 offers half of the value of the original gold. Why ? The 
 goldsmith has filled the inside of the bangle with copper 
 and kept part of the gold for himself. The country people 
 tell stories without end of the thievish tricks and sly 
 ways of the goldsmith, and here is one of them. 
 
 One day a woman brought a bag of rupees to a gold- 
 smith, and told him to make them into a silver bangle, 
 and he promised he would do so at once. But his promise 
 was, as usual, worth nothing at all, and the woman came 
 time after time, and the bangle was not ready. At last 
 she flew into a great rage/, called him by every kind of 
 evil name, and said that she would not leave his work- 
 shop without either the bangle or the rupees. The gold- 
 smith seemed to pay no heed to a word that she said, 
 and went on shaping a nose-ring as if she had not been 
 there. The truth was that he had nothing to say : he 
 had spent every one of the rupees, and knew not what to 
 do. The woman spread her upper garments on the 
 floor, lay down on them, and said once more that there 
 she would stay, day and night, till she had her own. 
 The day was very hot, the woman had walked a long way, 
 and was very tired, and before long she fell asleep. Now 
 
 15 
 
India 
 
 the cunning goldsmith saw his chance. He slipped to her 
 side and rubbed a certain kind of gum on her eyelids. 
 Then he went back to his work and made such a noise 
 with his hammer that the woman woke up. When she 
 found she could not open her eyes, she cried out in terror, 
 and called upon the goldsmith for help. 
 
 "Is there something wrong ?" asked the goldsmith in 
 tones of wonder. 
 
 " I am blind !" cried the woman. " I cannot open my 
 eyes. Oh, what shall I do ! What has happened to me ?" 
 
 " Ah !" said the goldsmith, " I see what has happened. 
 You came here and called me by every evil name you could 
 think of. I bore your abuse in silence and patience. But 
 the goddess of our craft will not be so patient ; she has 
 struck you blind for reviling me." 
 
 "What can I do to regain my sight ?" said the woman. 
 " I have many children and a husband to care for." 
 
 " There's only one thing to be done," replied the gold- 
 smith, gravely. "You must make an offering to my 
 goddess, and then she will forgive." 
 
 " Gladly will I do it," cried the poor woman. " Take 
 every rupee that I brought to you and offer them up 
 to her, if that will give me back my sight." 
 
 " It is enough," said the goldsmith ; and he took some 
 cold water and washed the woman's eyes, and she found, 
 to her great joy, that she could see as well as ever. Then 
 she went away, thanking the goldsmith for restoring her 
 sight, and marvelling at the wonderful power of the 
 goddess of the goldsmith's craft. 
 
 As we leave the goldsmith's house, we meet the dhoby, 
 the village washerman, and his wife, carrying along the 
 
 16 
 
» »» • > 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 street the big bundles of dirty clothes they have just 
 collected from the houses of the village. They go to the 
 houses together, because the dhoby himself may not ven- 
 ture into the women's apartments, so his wife goes there 
 to fetch the soiled clothes of the women, and often stays 
 a long time to tell the ladies what is going on in the village. 
 The wife of the dhoby carries the dirty garments on a 
 hooked stick, for she would be denied by their touch ; 
 but the dhoby himself is free from that caste rule, and his 
 shoulders are loaded with as big a burden as he can carry. 
 Behind them comes one of their children, carrying a big 
 pot. In this is placed the food which the washerwoman 
 has collected from the customers as part payment for 
 her husband and herself. 
 
 The dhoby is used for all kinds of odd jobs as well as 
 washing, and thus he has won the name of " son of the 
 village," and his wife is the " daughter of the village." 
 The village people supply him and his wife with a hut 
 on some patch of ground belonging to the village, give 
 them food and a little money, and some small presents 
 when the dhoby makes himself useful at a wedding or a 
 funeral. If it is a long way to the river or tank where 
 he washes the clothes, they supply him with a donkey or 
 two to carry the packs ; but if the water is near at hand, 
 he and his family must carry the bundles for themselves. 
 At the waterside the clothes are dipped and rinsed and 
 beaten against stones till the dirt is driven out of them, 
 starched, and laid out to bleach and dry in the sun. 
 Next they are folded and packed ready to take back to 
 their owners. The dhoby and his wife may have to wash 
 hundreds of garments, large and small, at a time, and the 
 
 in. 17 3 
 
India 
 
 owners never mark their clothes, yet the dhoby never 
 makes a mistake. He has his own marks, and they 
 serve him well ; the pile of clothes handed in at each door 
 is certain to be correct. 
 
 As a rule, the dhoby and his wife are very poor, and are 
 dressed in rags. But on great occasions they will come 
 out as grand as anyone. This is because they claim the 
 right to use the clothes which may be in their hands at 
 any time. At a wedding the dhoby attends in a rich robe 
 belonging to a village magnate ; the dhoby's wife is draped 
 in a beautiful sari, a gown which is the property of the 
 wife of the wealthy money-lender. The owners turn a 
 blind eye on these birds who thus flaunt in their fine 
 feathers ; it is an understood thing, and if the clothes are 
 brought home in a day or so, nicely washed and neatly 
 folded, no notice is taken. 
 
 18 
 
IV 
 
 AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK— III 
 
 The noontide heat is now past, and the boys are going 
 back to school. They take their way to a large mud and 
 thatch building in the shade of a great tree, and enter the 
 door. This is the school, and it is built and kept in 
 repair by the village. It is an old-fashioned native 
 school, and inside there are no desks or seats, no books 
 as we know them, or slates or paper. Pens there are, 
 but no ink. The floor is strewn with sand, and the 
 boys sit down upon it. At one end of the room is a 
 bank of sand, and here the teacher sits upon a reed 
 mat. 
 
 As each boy enters, he goes to his bookcase, takes his 
 book, and sits down to learn his lesson. The bookcase 
 is formed of two pieces of wood bound together by a cord. 
 Inside are a number of palm leaves with writing on their 
 faces. These are the boys' books, and every boy has his 
 own case, so that perhaps forty or fifty cases are hanging 
 on the wall of the school. When the time for the writing 
 lesson comes, the boys use pens made of a sharpened 
 stick of wood, or a reed, and form the characters in a 
 smoothed - out bed of sand. Some of the advanced 
 scholars write on palm-leaves with a reed pen. 
 
 The boys go to school at break of day, and are there 
 
 19 
 
India 
 
 for two or three hours before breakfast. Each must take 
 care that he has marked his forehead with the sacred 
 ash, in honour of the god Siva, or he will be severely 
 punished by his teacher. From eight to nine he has his 
 breakfast. School goes on again from nine to twelve, 
 when he goes home to his dinner. The afternoon session 
 runs from about two to six, when the school closes for 
 the day. 
 
 Sometimes the schoolmaster is the village poet, some- 
 times he is a Hindu scholar ; quite often he is a rather 
 ignorant man, who has hit upon that way of making a 
 living. If he knows his own language and a little arith- 
 metic, he will give perfect satisfaction to the parents of 
 his scholars. He does not know, and they do not know, 
 anything of the world outside India, and little enough 
 of their own country outside their own province, but 
 that does not trouble them. In geography the master 
 divides the oceans into milk oceans and fire oceans, the 
 rivers into ghee (butter) rivers and honey rivers. He has 
 heard of the mighty Himalaya Mountains, and tells his 
 pupils that the world rests on them. But many of these 
 teachers are really good at simple arithmetic, and handle 
 numbers with ease and freedom. They teach reading 
 and writing, arithmetic as far as fractions, the composing 
 of letters and essays, and store their pupils' minds with 
 a wealth of proverbs and wise sayings. Where the master 
 is a Hindu scholar, the upper classes study grammar and 
 the great Indian classics, the Mahabharata and the 
 Ramayana. 
 
 The master expects a small payment in money from 
 the parents of each scholar, more or less, as the parents 
 
 20 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 are rich or poor, and offerings of food, especially at harvest- 
 time, when measures of grain are sent to him. If the teacher 
 finds he has not enough to live upon, he will send his 
 scholars to sing through the streets of the village, at which 
 time they beg for him at every house, and carry to him 
 the offerings. Once a year comes the school festival, 
 when worship is offered to the goddess Sarasvati, the 
 Goddess of Knowledge. The boys are dressed in their 
 brightest and freshest robes, and the master and his 
 scholars go from house to house, singing and performing 
 and collecting money for the celebration. In a large 
 village, or if the scholars come from smaller hamlets in 
 the neighbourhood, a whole week or more will be spent 
 in this way, and it is the most joyous time of the school- 
 boys' year. When the collection is ended, the master 
 takes the greater part of it for himself, and the rest is 
 spent in giving the boys a treat. 
 
 Holidays are not frequent. When the moon is new, and 
 when it is full, the school is closed for two days, making 
 four days in the month. The school is also closed on 
 the day of a great Hindu festival, and for a few days at 
 the beginning of the year. There are no long holidays in 
 a native school. As for the boys' life in school, a native 
 writer says : " 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 teacher ; some are undergoing punishment 
 for not studying their lessons properly. The punishments 
 of the boys are exceedingly severe. A boy under punish- 
 
 21 
 
India 
 
 ment 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 atti- 
 tude ; there anothei 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 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." 
 
 Now we see how things go on in a boys' school ; and as 
 for a girls' school, it would be useless to look for such a 
 thing. The girls of the village are at home, helping their 
 mothers, and they are never taught anything but domestic 
 duties. 
 
 Still farther on, at the edge of the village, stands the 
 shed of the potter, whose trade is one of the oldest and 
 most famous crafts in the land. He sits at his wheel, 
 surrounded by shreds and fragments of pots which have 
 failed, and turns out with steady, skilful hand the host of 
 pots which the village requires. Trade is never slack 
 with him. In the house of the poorest ryot there are 
 ten or a dozen pots ; in the house of the wealthy farmer 
 there are three or four hundred. And besides the 
 breakages of every day, when a birth or death happens 
 in the family, every pot becomes unclean, and is broken 
 in pieces, and replaced with new vessels from the 
 potter. 
 
 22 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 It is most interesting to watch the potter at his work. 
 He has a simple wheel, which in shape has not been 
 altered for thousands of years. A hundred generations 
 ago his father's fathers used the potters' wheel and shaped 
 the vessels with the thumb or a small piece of wood, and 
 so does he to-day. Upon the wheel he places a mass 
 of wet clay, and the wheel begins to spin. Under the 
 deft touches of his thumb the clay begins swiftly to take 
 the shape he has in mind : a long neck draws out above, 
 a globe-like body opens out below, and soon there is a 
 pot, one of a certain number of shapes, each useful for 
 a certain purpose. The potter has a fixed round of 
 designs. The idea of asking for a new kind of pot 
 would never enter the head of any housewife, and if 
 it did she would not get it. Custom is sacred : his 
 father always made pots in certain sizes and shapes ; 
 the potter will do the same, and so will his son 
 after him. 
 
 When the vessels are made, they are set in the sun to 
 dry and burned in a kiln, the fire in which is often fed 
 with the refuse of the village. Yet the pot is clean, and 
 even a Brahmin may drink from it, for, as the old rhyme 
 runs : 
 
 " Though the clay be base and the potter mean, 
 The pot brings water to make souls clean." 
 
 Still, though the high-class Hindu may drink from the 
 pot, he must break it afterwards ; such is the law of his 
 caste. The low caste may keep the pot unbroken and 
 use it again. 
 
 The potter makes earthen vessels for many purposes : 
 
 23 
 
India 
 
 for cooking food ; for carrying water from the well ; for 
 storing grain and provisions ; for keeping valuables ; for 
 carrying food to the fields — in short, at almost every 
 turn of a native's life there is some use for one or another 
 of the many vessels purchased from the potter. Besides 
 articles of use, he shapes images in clay, images of gods 
 and goddesses, of men, women, and children, of beasts 
 and birds, rudely formed and painted, to be used as idols 
 for shrines or offerings to a temple. 
 
 As we return along the main street, we see a man stand- 
 ing near the well, a wretched-looking man in a ragged 
 turban, and plastered with mud, as if he had just finished 
 a very dirty piece of work. He is uttering from time to 
 time a mournful cry, but no one seems to attend to him. 
 Is he a beggar ? No ; he is the village toty, the scavenger 
 and sweeper, the man who does the dirtiest work about 
 the place, the menial of the hamlet. What does he want ? 
 The poor fellow is very thirsty, and would like a drink of 
 cool water from the well. Why does he not draw it at 
 once. Ah ! he dare not do that on any account. He is 
 a man of no caste at all, an outcaste — a Pariah — a man 
 to whom the most defiling tasks can be given. If he 
 were to touch the well or the water, both would become 
 unclean, and the villagers, even of the lowest caste, 
 would not drink from the polluted source. Nor 
 will anyone among them allow the toty to enter his 
 house, for the place would become defiled by his mere 
 presence. 
 
 Again the toty raises his sad cry, and now a kind-hearted 
 woman comes from a house near at hand and brings a 
 pitcher to the well. She fills it and approaches the 
 
 24 
 
THE VILLAGE POET. 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 sweeper. But she takes care not to touch him, nor does 
 she allow him to touch her vessel. If she did, she would 
 have to break the pitcher at once. But the toty stands 
 at a safe distance, and deftly knits his hands into a cup. 
 The woman pours water into the hollow of his hands, 
 and he drinks and is refreshed. 
 
 in. 25 
 
AMONG THE VILLAGE FOLK— IV 
 
 A cloud of dust now rises at the far end of the village 
 street. It moves forward, and we can see a flock of 
 sheep coming on, passing through the village on their way 
 from pasture to pasture. They are in charge of two or 
 three men, quiet, simple-looking fellows, w T ho stare round 
 them in wonder, gazing upon the houses and alleys of 
 the village as a countryman gazes on the sights of a great 
 town. And the village is a wonder to them, for these 
 are shepherds — men who spend their lives in lonely 
 places where no two huts stand together, men whose 
 days are passed in the open field, and to whom a roof over 
 their heads would be a strange and new thing. Each 
 man carries a heavy iron-shod staff, which serves him for 
 support and as a weapon against the wild beasts which 
 love to prey on his flock. His sheep have many enemies. 
 He must be ever on the watch against wolves, jackals, 
 and foxes, and sometimes the fierce and terrible tiger 
 swoops down on his helpless charges. But the shepherd 
 never deserts his sheep. He is famous for the care and 
 kindness which he shows to his flock. If he loses a 
 sheep or a lamb in the thickest jungle, he will search day 
 and night until it is found, when he bears it back on his 
 shoulders with great joy. 
 
 26 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 A shepherd is called an eddaiar, from the word eddai, 
 which means " middle." This is because they used to 
 live in the middle grounds, the land between the naked 
 mountains and the cultivated farms — places where they 
 could find grazing for their flocks without fear of tres- 
 passing on the crops. As they live apart from other 
 men, and have no share in the village life which sharpens 
 wits, they are very simple and ignorant. The villagers 
 love to tell stories of shepherds — stories which show the 
 childlike simplicity of these wanderers in lonely places. 
 Here is one of the stories : 
 
 One day a money-lender was going to a distant village 
 with a large bag of rupees to lend to the ryots at great 
 interest. He took a shepherd with him to guide him and 
 protect him on the road, and the shepherd carried five 
 pieces of money in a bag at his waist — all the money he 
 possessed. But night fell before they reached the village, 
 and they lost their way in thick jungle. Nothing could 
 be done before morning, so the money-lender told the 
 shepherd to lie down and rest, and be sure neither to 
 move nor make a sound, while he would hide himself and 
 his bag of rupees in some thick bushes near at hand. At 
 midnight a band of robbers passed that way, and one 
 of them stumbled over the shepherd. 
 
 " Here's a log in the way," said the robber. 
 
 " A log !" cried the simple shepherd ; " and do you 
 suppose a log could have five pieces of money in a bag at 
 its waist ?" 
 
 "It is a man," said the chief of the robbers ; " seize 
 him and search him !" 
 
 27 
 
India 
 
 This was done, and the shepherd lost his money. As 
 the robbers went away, one of them said : " This money 
 feels rather light. Perhaps it is bad." 
 
 The shepherd was angry when he heard the robber cast 
 doubts on his money, and shouted out : " But, indeed, it 
 is nothing of the sort. And if you don't believe me, just 
 ask the money-lender who is over there in the bushes." 
 
 " A money-lender !" cried the robbers in delight, and 
 ran to seize him. They searched the bushes, and had 
 him in their grip in a twinkling. They not only took 
 his bag of rupees, but gave him a tremendous beating 
 into the bargain, for everyone hates a money-lender. And 
 the next morning the money-lender had to creep home 
 without his money, but with a body full of sore bones, 
 and vowing that he would never again engage a simple 
 shepherd to journey with him. 
 
 So the day wears on in the village, and as the dusk draws 
 near, the mothers call in the children playing in the village 
 street. The word has gone round that wolves have been 
 seen near the hamlet, and the dusk is a favourite time for 
 one of these savage creatures to dash down the village 
 street, seize one of the playing children in its jaws, and 
 carry it off into the jungle. Great numbers of children 
 in certain parts of India are carried off and devoured 
 by wolves. Sometimes one charges into the village, 
 sometimes there are two. In the latter case one wolf 
 calls off the attention of the people, while the second 
 seizes a baby and escapes with it. 
 
 It is on record that one wolf carried away more than 
 seventy children ; it was the terror of a whole country-side, 
 
 28 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 and was well known because of its peculiar way of running. 
 At length it was shot by an English officer, with a baby in 
 its jaws. He found that the dreaded creature was a small 
 she-wolf, an under-sized, mangy little beast, with a lame 
 leg. Very likely its lameness was the reason why it took 
 to seizing children : it was not swift enough to catch its 
 usual prey. 
 
 The Indian natives believe firmly that children are 
 sometimes spared, and, instead of being eaten, are 
 suckled by the mother-wolf and brought up with the 
 wolf cubs. Many cases have been known of these wolf 
 children. They have been found living with wolves in 
 a den, running on all fours, tearing the food with their 
 teeth, and biting severely those who captured them. 
 One boy was found when he was about seven years old, 
 and he was a wolf in all his actions and ways. He ran 
 about on his elbows and knees ; he ripped off clothes 
 when they were put on him ; he ate from the ground, and 
 tore meat from a bone with his teeth. In time he was 
 taught to walk on his feet and wear clothing, but he could 
 never be taught to use human speech, though he would 
 gnash his teeth and growl and snarl like a wolf. The 
 only human habit he developed was that of smoking 
 cigars, and if one were given him he would puff at it with 
 signs of the most hearty enjoyment. 
 
 But we must now go back to our village. 
 
 Here comes a herd of buffaloes returning from the 
 swamp a mile away. What huge, shaggy, fierce-looking 
 creatures they are, with their wild eyes, tossing manes, 
 and great, spreading, sharp-pointed horns ! Yet the 
 watcher of the buffaloes is not a man, nor even a youth ; 
 
 29 
 
India 
 
 he is a tiny, dark-skinned, naked little boy, barely seven 
 years old. But he sits on the leading buffalo as proudly 
 as a king on his throne, and screams orders in his small 
 shrill voice, and thwacks his huge charges with a stick, 
 and is obeyed as promptly as possible. Upon gaining 
 the village street the herd breaks up, and every buffalo 
 seeks the shed of its master. To-morrow morning they 
 will reassemble, and the child will take them to the swamp 
 again to feed. 
 
 It is his father's buffalo on which the boy is riding, and 
 as he reaches his own door, his mother comes out to wel- 
 come him. The child at once begins to relate the hap- 
 penings of the day. There was a big tiger in the swamp ; 
 the boy saw him two or three times, and saw his foot- 
 marks many times, as the great savage beast circled 
 about the herd, hoping to cut off a straggler and kill it, 
 and drag it off for food. The mother listens with in- 
 terest, but without fear for the child's safety. The tiger 
 might be the biggest and fiercest of his kind, but the 
 boy, amid his buffaloes, was as safe as in his own home. 
 On such an occasion as this the intelligence of the big 
 shaggy beasts is wonderful. No sooner do they scent a 
 tiger than they draw together and face him, with the tiny 
 herdsman in their midst. The tiger will never charge 
 them. He knows better. Those long sharp horns, those 
 stamping hoofs, would soon make short work of him. 
 A single buffalo will make a splendid stand against a 
 tiger, and a number would kill him easily. The tiger's 
 chance is to catch one unawares, and spring upon it, and 
 deal a fatal blow before it can face round and get its 
 terrible horns to work. 
 
 30 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 Next come the cows and goats from the pastures near 
 at hand, and the women are soon busy milking and 
 fastening them up in the sheds for the night. The men 
 arrive at all times, some early and some late, for the 
 latter have perhaps walked three or four miles home 
 from distant fields. After supper comes the leisure hour 
 of the day. The villagers meet to chat, and smoke, and 
 chew betel-nuts, and a favourite place is near the well 
 in the shade of a great tamarind- tree. 
 
 Here the gossip of the village passes, and the crops and 
 the weather are discussed as countrymen discuss them 
 everywhere. Perhaps among the company may be the 
 village poet, or a wandering poet who passes from hamlet 
 to hamlet, singing songs and begging. As a rule, the poet 
 is a very poor man, and earns a great portion of his living 
 by writing a poem in praise of a wealthy neighbour, who 
 is then expected to make him a present. When the 
 villagers are at leisure he amuses them with songs and 
 stories, or, if they are in a serious mood, he recites 
 and explains to them portions of the great Indian 
 classics, such as the Mahahharata. The villagers sit 
 down to listen to him after supper, and often half the 
 night will pass while he recites and expounds portions 
 of a great poem, and his audience listens with the 
 greatest attention. 
 
 At seasons of the year when work does not press, this 
 nightly session may be continued for several months, and 
 at the end of the period each listener pays a small sum to 
 the poet, or gives him a present of food or grain, or new 
 clothes or an ornament. 
 
 The poet has a wonderful memory, which is stored with 
 
 31 
 
India 
 
 songs, stories, poems, anecdotes, and proverbs, so that he 
 can meet every occasion of life with some fitting verses 
 or tale, and can suit every audience with a poem or a 
 story adapted to their understanding. On this evening 
 the village poet is with the company under the tamarind- 
 tree, and he is amusing them with this story : 
 
 Once upon a time there was a jackal, who lived in a 
 hole under a rock at the foot of a great mountain, where 
 many great and powerful wild animals were to be found. 
 Of all these animals the jackal was the poorest and 
 meanest, and he had such great difficulty in finding food 
 that his bones stood out through his hide. Yet, as we 
 shall see, he found means to feed upon the grandest and 
 most majestic of his neighbours. One day he saw a 
 splendid elephant browsing on the shrubs of the valley, 
 and he thought how fine it would be to feed upon the flesh 
 of such a magnificent animal. So he ran to the elephant 
 and bent low before him, and humbly begged him to 
 listen for one moment. 
 
 " What have you to say ?" asked the elephant. 
 
 " I wish to tell my lord the elephant," replied the 
 jackal, " that I believe him to be the chief in all this 
 country for beauty, and strength, and valour. Yet in 
 the jungle at the foot of the valley there is an elephant 
 who dares to speak in the most disrespectful manner of 
 you and of your noble family." 
 
 " I will seek him out," said the elephant, " and teach 
 him a lesson that he will not speedily forget." So he set 
 off with slow and stately step towards the jungle. 
 
 But the jackal ran on ahead, slipping unseen through 
 32 
 
EVENING IN THE VILLAGE, 
 
Among the Village Folk 
 
 the bushes, and made his way to the elephant of the 
 jungle. To him he told a similar story, and when the 
 two elephants met they engaged at once in a terrible 
 battle, and in the end the first elephant was killed. The 
 jackal had watched the fight from the jungle, and as soon 
 as the winner went away he rushed to the place and began 
 with great delight to feed upon the fallen elephant. He 
 ate and ate until he had made his way into the elephant's 
 stomach, where he still went on eating. Now, it was 
 the hottest time of the year, and the elephant's body 
 shrank in the great heat, and the opening into the stomach 
 shrank also. Thus, when the jackal had eaten his fill, 
 he could not get out, for the opening was smaller, and he 
 had swollen himself with food. So he began to cry for 
 help. 
 
 It happened that the great god Siva and his wife were 
 passing that way, and they were very greatly astonished 
 to hear a voice coming from the body of a dead elephant. 
 
 " There is some wonderful spirit shut up there," said 
 Siva, and he approached the body, and called upon the 
 spirit to reveal itself to him. 
 
 " I cannot," replied the voice, " unless you first send 
 for the god Indra, the god of rain." In order to please 
 the strange being, Siva sent for the god Indra, and with 
 Indra came pouring rain and driving wind. Many other 
 gods and goddesses came as well upon hearing of this re- 
 markable being shut up in the body of a dead elephant. 
 The rain soaked the dead body and swelled it, until the 
 opening was as wide as it had been before. But when, 
 instead of a wonderful spirit, only a mean jackal crept 
 from the body of the elephant, then Siva and his friends 
 
 in. 33 
 
India 
 
 laughed till they made the skies ring, and went to their 
 own world greatly delighted with the joke. 
 
 The villagers, too, laugh with equal delight at the story 
 of the cunning jackal, and then the meeting breaks 
 up, and the men go home to bed. As they pass down 
 the street they hear the cry of several jackals prowling 
 round the village in search of food — a long, whining cry, 
 which is answered by the yelps of the pariah dogs. These 
 are miserable curs which belong to no man in particular, 
 but slink about the village, mangy, half-starved and 
 miserable, 'devouring every Jmorsel ofjrubbish which is 
 eatable, and so aiding the scavenger in his labours. Soon 
 the last door is shut, the last dim light put out, and the 
 pariah dogs have the village streets to themselves, and 
 they scour hither and thither in search of garbage, and 
 fight and snarl over any scrap of offal which falls in 
 their way. 
 
 U 
 
VI 
 THE SPORTS OF THE VILLAGE 
 
 In their leisure hours the villagers amuse themselves in 
 various ways ; the older men play chess, the younger 
 men and the boys play a kind of hockey, and a simple 
 form of cricket. In the latter game one player holds both 
 bat and ball and the rest field. The striker hits the ball 
 into the air as high and as far as he can. The rest run 
 to catch the ball, and the one who makes the catch 
 takes the place of the striker. They also play at a game 
 resembling " prisoner's base," and all, both old and 
 young, are fond of flying kites. 
 
 In some parts where the villagers are active and 
 athletic, they have bouts with the quarterstaff, and 
 wrestle. In playing with the quarterstaff sometimes 
 only the long stick is used ; sometimes the player has both 
 a stick and a shield, using the latter to intercept the blows 
 of his opponent. In a well-matched contest with the 
 quarterstaff a battle will often be fought out for a long 
 time, and the play will be as clever and determined as 
 ever was seen on a village green in the old days when 
 our English yeomen were fond of this weapon. At times 
 the players get so excited, and the combat so furious, 
 that the older men have to interfere lest serious harm 
 should be done. 
 
 35 
 
India 
 
 But many of the village sports are not so innocent as 
 these. The cruel sports of cock-fighting and ram- 
 fighting are very favourite ones, and when a pair of 
 famous birds or animals is matched, a great crowd of 
 men will gather from many villages to watch the combat. 
 A first-rate fighting cock is the pride of the village, and 
 the wealthier inhabitants will wager heavy sums on him 
 when he is entered to fight the bird which is the boast of 
 a neighbouring hamlet. He is usually prepared for the 
 battle by the village barber, who understands this work 
 very well. As a native writer remarks : 
 
 " The village barbers are wonderful fellows for cock- 
 fighting ; they generally rear fighting cocks — often half 
 a dozen of them. The barbers who delight in cock- 
 fighting will carry their cocks even to a distance of ten 
 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 injured creature, and pour a few drops of water into its 
 mouth in order to refresh it. If abarber 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^jdecorate the leg of his victorious bird." 
 
 Manyj[Hindu and Moslem gentlemen, large land- 
 
 36 
 
The Sports of the Village 
 
 owners and rich merchants, have a great passion for 
 ram-fighting, and great sums are spent in obtaining rams 
 which have won a famous name in the ring, and still 
 greater sums exchange hands according to the issue of 
 the fight. The trainers of these rams teach the animals 
 certain signs and words by which they can guide them in 
 the combat, and the courage and resolution of these 
 creatures is such that the cruel contest will continue 
 for many hours. The owners of the rams lay such sums 
 on their favourites that often they are ruined by the 
 defeat of the animal, just as men ruin themselves in our 
 own country by betting on race-horses. 
 
 When a big bull-fight is announced, the people throng 
 from all the villages near at hand to the plain where the 
 contest is to be held. This bull-fight is not in the least 
 like the bull-fights held in some parts of Europe, or the 
 bull-baiting which once took place in England. The 
 bull, as a rule, is quite uninjured ; it is the men who have 
 to look out for themselves. The owner of the bull turns 
 him loose in an open space, and the bull has a new cloth 
 tied round his neck. In this cloth there is a sum of 
 money, and the man who can master the bull and take 
 the cloth from his neck wins the cloth and the money. 
 
 When the spectators have taken their places, the 
 crier beats a drum loudly, as a signal that the contest is 
 about to begin. The master of the bull leads his animal 
 to the centre of the open space, and there turns him loose, 
 bidding him make the best of his way home to his shed. 
 At the same moment a score of men place themselves in 
 the bull's path, ready to do their utmost to win the 
 prize. These men have no weapons in their hands ; 
 
 37 
 
India 
 
 if they master the bull, it must be done by sheer strength 
 and skill, so that it is a genuinely sporting affair. A well- 
 trained bull understands perfectly well the rules of the 
 game. He will stand quite still, keeping a most wary 
 eye upon his opponents until a man springs at him and 
 tries to secure a grip. Then the horns flash, or a leg 
 delivers a kick, or he charges full on his enemy. Next 
 he wheels like lightning, for a man has darted up on his 
 flank, and now they come thick and fast against him 
 from every side, and he strikes, kicks, charges, sending 
 his opponents over like ninepins, and working his way 
 through them until he is either caught and held or is clear 
 of the ring. In the latter case he gallops off home. He 
 is a victor, and he knows it. It can be seen in his joyous 
 bounds and leaps. 
 
 Sometimes bulls are brought forward which very few 
 men will care to face. They are old fighters, and such 
 past masters of every trick in the game that they have 
 never once been held. There is great danger, too, in 
 tackling such a bull. He often wounds, and sometimes 
 kills, his man, so that, however great a sum of money is 
 in the cloth, no bull-fighter will venture against him. 
 So the proud owner parades him in the face of the multi- 
 tude, calling in vain for opponents, and then a less famous 
 animal is brought forward, and the men come out against 
 it at once. 
 
 There is one amusement of which the villager never 
 tires, and that is the play. It is a great day in the hamlet 
 when a band of actors arrives in the place. If it is a 
 moonlight night, the rude stage will be set up by the time 
 the villagers have had their suppers, and the play will 
 
 38 
 
The Sports of the Village 
 
 begin about ten o'clock at night, and go on till four in 
 the morning. The first hour of its performance is given 
 over to the funny man, the buffoon, who makes his 
 listeners roar with laughter at his queer antics and ges- 
 tures, his jokes and stories. Then a play is given, and it 
 is followed with close attention. At the end of each 
 performance the players spread a cloth near the stage 
 and invite the audience to throw money into it. While 
 this is being done, some of the actors sing and play on 
 musical instruments. At one corner of the cloth the 
 buffoon is posted, and as each person throws his contri- 
 bution on it, the buffoon shouts out the name of the man 
 at the top of his voice, and says something amusing in 
 praise of the giver. This makes the crowd laugh, and 
 encourages others to give, and those who like to hear 
 their generosity well spoken of will contribute three or 
 four times, getting a louder chorus of thanks and praise 
 each time. 
 
 The players have only a small stock of dramas — two 
 or three well-known stories — but the villagers never tire 
 of them. Time and again they listen to the same play, 
 and seem at each performance to find it as fresh and 
 attractive as ever. Here is the story of a play, of which 
 they are very fond, the famous " Markanda " : 
 
 Once there were a man and a woman who had no son, 
 and they prayed to the great god Siva and entreated that 
 he would bless them with a child. In answer to their 
 prayers, Siva appeared to them, and said that he would 
 give them a son, but they must make a choice. He would 
 give them a son who would be beautiful, good, devoted 
 
India 
 
 to the gods and to learning, but must die at the age of 
 sixteen ; or he would give them a son who would be 
 u gty> wicked, and heartless, but would live to be a 
 hundred. " Now," said Siva, " which do you choose ?". 
 
 The parents chose the good son. The child was born, 
 and he was as beautiful as the day, and as good as gold. 
 He was named Markanda, and he grew up strong, and 
 brave, and handsome, and at length he gained the age 
 of fifteen years. Now, he observed that his father and 
 mother grew grave and unhappy, and that every day 
 their sorrow increased. He urged them to tell him what 
 was wrong. At first they would not, lest they should 
 sadden the days of life which remained to him. But he 
 pressed them, until at last he learned the cruel truth, 
 that he had only a year to live, and that his fate was 
 settled without hope of change, for the god Siva had 
 decreed it. 
 
 Markanda felt very sorrowful when he heard this 
 dreadful news, but he continued to pray to the gods, 
 hoping that his devotion might yet save him from the 
 fate which threatened him. As the fatal day drew near, 
 he left his home and his parents, and went forth into the 
 depths of the jungle, where a mighty sacred river was 
 flowing. He bathed in the stream, and continued in 
 this solitary place to pray without ceasing to Siva that 
 his life might be spared, and that he should not be cut 
 ofHn the flower of his days. 
 
 The day came, and the Angel of Death appeared riding 
 on a buffalo. He shot at Markanda, and his arrows were 
 the sharp, poisoned shafts of affliction and death. But the 
 youth continued his earnest prayers to Siva, and his devotion 
 
 40 
 
BY THE SACRED RIVER. 
 
The Sports of the Village 
 
 was such that the arrows turned aside and did him no harm. 
 Next, the Angel of Death loosed a multitude of fiery shafts, 
 shooting upon Markanda with all his strength, but not one 
 inflicted a wound, nor did all the terrors of the dread 
 angel disturb the boy for a moment from his prayers. 
 Again the Angel of Death emptied his quiver of its most 
 deadly arrows, and again all was in vain. 
 
 Then the Angel of Death grew furious — he who never 
 before had known defeat — and drew his terrible sword, and 
 advanced upon Markanda, to slay the boy with his own 
 hand. But at this moment Siva appeared, and drove 
 away the Angel of Death, and granted the boy his life. 
 But the word of a god must not be broken. Siva had 
 said that Markanda should not pass the age of sixteen, 
 so he gave him an eternity of youth, commanding him to 
 live for ever as a lad of sixteen ! 
 
 in. 41 
 
VII 
 
 HOW THE VILLAGE IS RULED 
 
 The little community is ruled by its own officers, the 
 chief of whom is the headman. This office descends from 
 father to son, and the headman is a kind of perpetual 
 mayor and magistrate of the place. He is the chief of 
 the " Council of Five Elders," the village court known as 
 the panchiyat. The village elders are elected by the 
 people themselves, and they may belong to any class save 
 the lowest ; they are, as a rule, responsible men who have 
 gained the respect and confidence of their fellow- villagers. 
 
 The panchiyat deals with all sorts of small offences and 
 disputes. It hears complaints, arranges quarrels, and 
 arbitrates upon all cases where the suit concerns matters 
 up to the value of one hundred rupees. In cases of serious 
 crime, or disputes affecting large sums, the matter goes 
 up to the higher courts — the Government courts. But 
 these cases rarely happen in a village. As a rule, the 
 Council of Five Elders can easily handle and straighten 
 out all the tangles of village life. 
 
 They deal with cases of petty theft, of misbehaviour, 
 of fighting and quarrelling, of trespassing animals, of 
 disputes with regard to the ownership of land, and such- 
 like matters. If one of the village workers — the barber, 
 the washerman, the carpenter — has not received his dues 
 
 42 
 
How the Village is Ruled 
 
 from a villager, he brings his case before the elders, and 
 it is argued out before them. It is not often that the 
 decision of the Council of Five Elders is disobeyed. 
 When it is, the punishment is simple, but severe. The 
 offender is sent to Coventry ; no one is allowed to 
 speak to him, or to have any dealings with him in any 
 shape or form. In a community where a close social 
 life is the rule, this punishment soon brings a disobedient 
 man to his senses, and he is glad to carry out the decision 
 of the Council and remove the ban from himself and his 
 household. 
 
 When any person has a case to bring before the village 
 court, he informs the watchman, and the latter will 
 summon the parties before the elders. The watchman 
 is a very important member of the hamlet. It is his 
 duty to guard the place from thieves, and raise an alarm 
 at night upon any sign of fires breaking out. He lies 
 down to sleep by day, and with the dusk he is expected 
 to be afoot, not only to patrol the village, but to watch 
 the fields near at hand, lest thieves should plunder the 
 crops. Sometimes he carries a spear, sometimes a great 
 staff, which is often ten feet long. He wields this 
 immense club with great dexterity, and cases have been 
 known where a watchman has killed a thief with a 
 single blow. 
 
 At the sitting of the panchiyat it is the watchman who 
 brings the parties to the dispute before the judges, and 
 he asks the person interested in the case to give him some 
 money as security. This money is handed over to the 
 chief judge, who holds it until the case is decided, when 
 it is restored. The sitting is held either in a court- 
 
 43 
 
India 
 
 house belonging to the village or in the open, under a tree 
 or beside a fountain. Very often the meeting is at night, 
 after the work of the day is finished and the judges have 
 had their supper, and if there is a moon, the people 
 gather in the centre of the village in the moonlight. If 
 it is dark, they go to the court-house, where there is a 
 lamp so dim as scarcely to make darkness visible. But 
 it is ample for their purposes ; everything is settled by 
 word of mouth, and if an agreement has to be drawn up 
 in writing, that will be seen to the next day. 
 
 But in cases where people from hamlets near by are 
 concerned, the meeting must be held by day, for no one 
 is willing to go far from his home after darkness has 
 fallen. Such a meeting very often presents a most 
 striking and picturesque sight. Crowds of people of all 
 ages and ranks swarm around the great tree under which 
 the court is to be held. The Council of Five Elders, in 
 their best robes, sit beneath the tree, and around them 
 sit the spectators in close-packed rows, a mass of striking 
 colour, with turbans and robes of every shade that the 
 dyer's art can tint. 
 
 The cases come on one after the other. The judges 
 listen to the evidence of the parties concerned and their 
 witnesses. They ask shrewd questions, for they are 
 past masters at dealing with all these difficulties of 
 village life, and soon arrive at the heart of- a matter. 
 The spectators follow question and answer with eager 
 interest, and roar with delight when a keen question drags 
 the truth from an unwilling witness, or an apt retort is 
 made. The judges always do their best to maintain peace 
 among the villagers. If it is a quarrel between husband 
 
 44 
 
How the Village is Ruled 
 
 and wife or among relations, they try to reconcile the 
 parties ; if the complaint is trivial, they let the offender 
 go with a caution ; if the case calls for punishment, they 
 inflict a fine. Here is a description of the panchiyat, 
 given from personal observation by a native Indian 
 gentleman. In this case one man accuses another of 
 striking his wife : 
 
 "When the court is opened the watchman of the 
 village 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 com- 
 plaint. If all the parties are present, the judges go 
 through the case, otherwise they postpone it until the 
 following week. On hearing the complaint of the 
 plaintiff in a petty quarrel, the judges ask him to bring 
 his evidence. Then they hear the statement of the 
 defendant and his witnesses. Before they sum up the 
 case and give their judgment, they ask all those present 
 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 scamp ! 
 bad donkey ! pariah dog ! Have you not got any work 
 to do ? How dare you assault this 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 
 
 45 
 
India 
 
 give three rupees to the village fund as a fine V 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 decisions. 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." 
 
 Sad to say, there are many villagers nowadays who are 
 not willing to bring their disputes before this ancient and 
 convenient court, which costs nothing. They prefer to 
 carry their cases to one or other of the lawyers who now 
 abound in the land, and these men fasten upon the 
 ignorant peasant and encourage him to carry a case from 
 court to court until he is wellnigh or entirely ruined. The 
 Indian ryot is very fond of going to law, and it is not 
 uncommon to hear of a small farmer spending a hundred 
 pounds over a trifling affair worth, perhaps, a few shil- 
 lings. He is so sure of winning his case that he will 
 borrow the money to carry it on from the money-lender, 
 and this means a loss of his land and a descent from com- 
 fort to poverty. Many a ryot has had bitter cause to 
 rue the day when he went to a lawyer and took his case 
 into a law-court instead of leaving it to the judgment of 
 the panchiyat, the Council of Five Elders. 
 
 46 
 
VIII 
 
 OFF TO THE MELA 
 
 What is a mela ? It is a great Hindu fair — a festival 
 which draws to itself the country-folk from every side 
 for many, many miles. In the village of which we have 
 been speaking, there comes a morning when the people 
 are astir long before the dawn, and the break of day sees 
 them setting out in bands for a great mela to be held at a 
 town ten miles away — a town standing on the banks of 
 a sacred stream, and containing a great temple with the 
 image of a famous god. This image is to be drawn 
 through the streets in a grand procession, and every 
 Hindu over a wide stretch of country will get to the town 
 to-day if he can. 
 
 Off go the village folk — men, women, and children, for 
 this is the one holiday for the women — some on foot, and 
 some in carts. The carts, with big, creaking wheels, are 
 drawn by bulls or buffaloes, and are covered by large 
 hoods to keep off the fierce rays of the sun. As they draw 
 near to the town where the mela is to be held, their 
 country by-road runs into a great main road, and this is 
 thronged by bands of people coming from other villages 
 and hamlets, and the closer they get to the town, the 
 thicker grow the streams of people pouring into the road 
 at every turn of the way. At length they reach the town, 
 
 47 
 
India 
 
 and the first thing for everyone to do is to go down to 
 the sacred river and bathe in its holy waters. There they 
 will wash away their sins, and be fit to take part in the 
 festival in honour of the god. 
 
 At the side of the river there is a ghat — a series of wide 
 stone steps running down into the water, and the ghat 
 is covered with crowds and crowds of people going and 
 coming, sitting down to talk, bathing at the edge of the 
 stream, many even drinking of the holy water. Here 
 and there are seated figures engaged in prayer or wrapped 
 in contemplation. Down the steps come the folk from 
 our village, and many of them wear round their necks 
 garlands of flowers purchased from the priests who sell 
 them. The wearers of the garlands wade out into the 
 stream and bend lower and lower until the current raises 
 the garlands from their necks and the flowers float away 
 on the stream. They then return to the steps and re- 
 move their dripping robes and put on dry ones they have 
 brought with them. The wet robes will be spread out, 
 and be dried in a very short time in the powerful sun. 
 
 As the time of the procession draws near, the crowds 
 swarm into the city and take up their places along the 
 sides of the principal streets. What a wonderful picture 
 they make as they throng the way and jostle each other 
 good-humouredly, and with broad smiles on every face ! 
 In the marvellous medley of colours in turbans and 
 jackets, petticoats and saris — the robes of the women — 
 nothing seems to strike a false note. Shades which it 
 would seem impossible to blend under a dull sky seem 
 here to melt one into the other under the glowing rays 
 which pour from the marvellously blue sky overhead. 
 
 48 
 
w 
 
 NATIVE SHOPS. 
 
Off to the Mela 
 
 The ornaments of the women glitter till they make your 
 eyes blink — every woman and girl has put on her best 
 to do honour to this rare holiday — and bangles, necklets, 
 nose-rings, anklets, bracelets, flash and shine in the sun 
 as their wearers pass by. 
 
 There is great excitement when the sound of tom- 
 toms announces that the procession is approaching. The 
 tom-toms are the native drums beaten at every kind of 
 ceremony, and their monotonous rub-a-dub-dub is one 
 of the most familiar sounds of Indian life. Nearer come 
 the drums, and now the onlookers begin to shout in their 
 eagerness, and hail the god with cries of devotion. They 
 can see the huge and splendidly decorated car on which 
 the image is placed, high above the heads of the crowd- 
 The car is drawn by sacred white oxen decorated with 
 flowers, and is escorted by priests, while great numbers of 
 devotees march before and behind. The image is that 
 of the god Ganesa — a huge figure, having the body of a 
 man and the head of an elephant — Ganesa, the elephant- 
 headed god, he who can remove obstacles from the path 
 of his worshippers and give them success in all their 
 undertakings. Thus it is that the Hindu, ere he starts 
 upon some new venture, makes offerings to Ganesa, and 
 implores the aid of the powerful deity. 
 
 When the procession has passed, the rest of the day is 
 given up to pleasure, and the merry-makers seek the fair 
 on the outskirts of the city. Here a vast number of 
 booths have been set up on an open stretch of plain, and 
 all kinds of amusements are going on. Many of the little 
 stalls are stocked with cakes or sweetmeats or pretty 
 trinkets, to tempt the young people to spend their money. 
 
 in. 49 7 
 
India 
 
 The narrow alleys which run through the rows of booths 
 are thronged with crowds, always merry and good- 
 tempered, and full of fun. There is no roughness or 
 drunkenness, and the people enjoy themselves like 
 troops of good-natured children. There is plenty of music 
 performed by native bands, in which are found two or 
 three kettle-drums, beaten only on one side ; a big drum 
 beaten on both ; a pair of clashing cymbals ; and one or 
 two trumpets ; and with these instruments the players 
 make a tremendous noise. Their performance sounds 
 far from musical to the ears of Europeans, but it gives 
 great pleasure to the villagers. 
 
 Besides the stalls of eatables and trinkets, there are 
 many where useful articles are exposed for sale — things 
 which the villagers can only see on some such occasion 
 as this, and they move to and fro and compare articles 
 and prices for a long time before they purchase such 
 things as clothes, mats, combs, mirrors, knives, blocks of 
 salt, and so on. 
 
 All sorts of performers and jugglers have come to the 
 fair, and here and there are rings of people watching 
 them as they perform their feats. There are snake- 
 charmers who play on their pipes as the great snakes 
 coil round their bodies or their necks. Here is a man with 
 a sparrow on his finger. He sits down at the wayside, 
 and the children gather round him, for they love to see 
 the performing sparrow. The bird-tamer places the 
 sparrow on the ground, and the little creature hops here 
 and there, turning its wise head from side to side, and 
 glancing at the children, but never attempting to fly 
 away. Now its master takes a handful of beads from a 
 
 50 
 
Off to the Mela 
 
 fold of his robe and lays them on the ground in a little 
 heap. Then he holds a thread dangling in the air. Up 
 jumps the sparrow, takes the end of the thread in its 
 claws and climbs up it nimbly like a man climbing up a 
 rope. Up and down it goes, and next it takes a bead and 
 slips it on the string. One after another the beads are 
 threaded, and the little bird does its work so gaily and 
 cleverly that the children are never tired of watching it. 
 
 There are acrobats who dance on ropes and twist their 
 bodies into all kinds of shapes, and some of the best of 
 these are mere children, boys and girls who roll their 
 little bodies into balls, tie themselves into knots, and act 
 as if their joints were made of indiarubber. A little 
 girl will bend back until she is a perfect hoop, and with 
 her eyelids pick up two straws set in the ground ; or 
 perhaps she performs the sword game. In this game she 
 balances herself on the back of her head and her heels. 
 Two swords are crossed on her chin, with their blades 
 pointing inwards ; another pair of swords is crossed under 
 her neck. She then begins to revolve rapidly, and twists 
 her body over the swords without touching the points. 
 Only the greatest skill can save her from being wounded, 
 but she never makes a mistake. There are also men who 
 lead bears, and others who have performing monkeys. 
 
 As for the jugglers, there are many of them, and each 
 juggler has his own audience. Some of them are so 
 clever, and the tricks they perform are so strange, that we 
 will speak of them again. Among the crowd pass the 
 fakirs — the religious devotees — each with his begging bowl, 
 in which the people lay their offerings ; then there are the 
 real beggars, one mass of sores or horribly deformed, 
 
 51 
 
India 
 
 some of them lepers, from whom all shrink in horror. 
 But the leper is one of the boldest in demanding charity, 
 for if he is refused, he will retaliate by cursing those who 
 deny him, and everyone dreads a " leper's curse "; it is 
 certain to bring the worst of ill-luck. 
 
 As sunset draws on, the throngs begin to break up, and 
 streams pour from the city in every direction. It is a 
 slow journey home on foot or by bullock-cart, and they 
 must be on their way, lest night should overtake them 
 farther on through the jungle, where the tiger will be 
 abroad. As they go, the people talk over the incidents 
 of the day. For weeks they have been discussing the 
 coming of the mela. For weeks again they will recall 
 everything that happened : it is the red-letter day of 
 their year. 
 
 52 
 
IX 
 
 INDIAN JUGGLERS 
 
 A traveller was one day dining at the table of a great 
 official, when the talk turned upon the feats of Indian 
 jugglers. The traveller had seen some tricks performed, 
 and gave it as his opinion that the place of the per- 
 formance had been prepared. An argument arose upon 
 this, and an appeal was made to the host — a man who 
 had spent a lifetime in India, spoke the language like a 
 native, and was a great authority upon native life and 
 customs. 
 
 The host shook his head. " I don't know how they are 
 done," he replied ;"I cannot explain the feats of a really 
 good juggler. I have seen such a man perform hundreds 
 of times, and I am certain only of one thing : the place 
 was not prepared, and the mysterious skill of a clever 
 performer is so great that he does not need any such aid. 
 More, I will prove it to you. There is a family of jugglers 
 living in the village not half a mile away. They shall 
 come here and perform the usual feats, and I shall be 
 glad if anyone will explain to me how the thing is done." 
 
 He gave orders to an attendant, and when the company 
 went out to the broad verandah after dinner they found 
 three men and a boy squatting at the end of the verandah 
 awaiting their pleasure. Of the men, one was an old 
 
 53 
 
India 
 
 man, two middle-aged, and the boy was about ten years 
 old. They were father, sons, and grandson, and all 
 jugglers, for that was the family calling. 
 
 " Now," said the host to his disbelieving guest, " choose 
 your own place for the performance, and they shall 
 begin." 
 
 The gentleman had sat down in a large armchair, 
 and he pointed, laughing, to the ground before him. 
 " Here, at my feet," he said. 
 
 The host smiled and nodded, and then called out a few 
 words in the native tongue to the jugglers. The old man 
 at once rose and came forward, holding a flower-pot in 
 his hands. " He is going to do the mango-tree trick," 
 said the host, and pointed out to the old juggler the spot 
 at which he was to perform. The old Hindu at once 
 squatted near the feet of the guest. It was quite certain 
 that he had nothing hidden about him, for he was almost 
 naked. His whole clothing consisted of a turban and a 
 waist-cloth. He emptied out a little dry earth from the 
 pot and held it up to show that it was now quite empty. 
 He then put the earth back, laid a mango-seed in the 
 earth, set the pot at the feet of the watcher, threw a light 
 cloth over it, and then drew back a distance of some 
 three or four feet, so that he was well away from the 
 flower-pot. In a few minutes he stretched out a long 
 bare arm and raised the cloth. A tiny plant had thrust 
 itself above the soil. He replaced the cloth and drew 
 back, and all present watched him with the utmost 
 attention, but could detect no movement on his part 
 as he sat for a short time as still as an image. Once more 
 he stretched out his arm and raised the cloth. The 
 
 54 
 
Indian Jugglers 
 
 plant was beginning to put out branches, and leaves were 
 springing. A third interval passed, and when he now 
 raised the cloth there was a mango-tree fully two feet in 
 height, with branches, leaves, and flowers, as complete 
 as if growing in a garden ! About twenty minutes had 
 passed since he came forward, and the tree was real — 
 there could be no doubt about that, for the guest handled 
 it, and broke off branches and plucked the flowers. 
 
 The old man salaamed and retired, and his elder son, 
 bearing a long sword, came forward, accompanied by the 
 boy. The boy was carrying a basket. " Watch them 
 closely," said the host ; M this is the famous basket 
 trick." The guest took the basket in his own hands and 
 examined it carefully. It was a large basket, with a 
 deep lid, made of common wicker-work, and the eyes of 
 the spectators assured them that it was quite empty. 
 The basket was set down, and the boy jumped into it. 
 The lid was put on, but the boy seemed far too large for 
 the basket, and the lid would not close by several inches. 
 The man sprang on the cover and forced it down, the boy 
 disappearing from sight little by little as the cover was 
 driven down upon him. At last the cover was in its place, 
 and was made fast. 
 
 The juggler stood back, and began to talk with the 
 boy, whose answers came clearly from the basket. The 
 answers appeared to make the man angry, for suddenly he 
 whipped up his sword and drove it clean through the 
 basket. There was a piercing scream from the im- 
 prisoned boy, and the sword was drawn back running 
 with blood. But again and again it was thrust through 
 and through the basket, and the man's anger, the shrieks 
 
 55 
 
India 
 
 of the victim, and the streaming blood, seemed so real 
 that the guest sprang from his chair to interfere. He 
 would have done so had not his host laid a restraining 
 hand on his arm. Suddenly the juggler stepped back 
 and squatted motionless before the basket. A few 
 moments passed, and then he darted out one of his long 
 bare legs, and gave the basket a sharp kick with his 
 naked foot. It rolled lightly and easily to the feet of the 
 guest. The latter opened it, and, to his astonishment, 
 it was empty. There was no sign of the prisoner, no 
 sign of blood. At this moment the spectators began to 
 applaud. He looked up and saw the boy coming from the 
 far end of the verandah, bowing and smiling as he came. 
 But how had he got out of the basket and left the spot ? 
 That was the mystery that the onlookers could not 
 solve. 
 
 The second son now came forward, and his performance 
 was a simple trick, but as hard to explain as any. He 
 asked for a small earthenware vessel, and a tray was 
 brought from the kitchen containing a number of pots. 
 From this tray he chose a pipkin with a spout on it, not 
 unlike a teapot. He handed it to the guest, and the 
 latter looked carefully at it, inside and out, and was 
 satisfied that it was a common earthenware pot, such as 
 is often used in native cookery. The juggler did not 
 touch the pot again, but asked the gentleman to fill it 
 with water and place it where he liked. This was done, 
 and the man seated himself on the ground a dozen feet 
 from the pipkin. In a short time he turned towards the 
 little pot and beckoned it, at the same time chanting, 
 Ao ! Ao I (Come! Come!) To the wonder of all, the 
 
 56 
 
> * ■» > 
 
'■'.'' 
 
 A^EGGAR. 
 
Indian Jugglers 
 
 pot at once began to jump towards him, the water 
 spilling over its side at every jump it gave. When it 
 was about seven feet from him he ordered it to stop, and 
 it stopped. Then he began to wave his hands in circles, 
 and the pipkin described a complete circle round him at 
 the word of command, finally pausing at the feet of the 
 gentleman who had filled it, and had been the last to 
 touch it. There the juggler left it. He rose, salaamed, 
 and returned quietly to his companions. 
 
 The final trick was now performed by the old man, and 
 it seemed to everyone the most wonderful of all. He 
 came forward, just as lightly clothed as before, and 
 holding in one hand a dried snake-skin. He offered this 
 to the gentleman, who took it in his hands, felt it, and 
 examined it carefully. It was a dry, shrivelled skin, 
 which crackled beneath his fingers as he turned it over 
 and rubbed it. He gave the skin back to the old juggler 
 who held it out at the full length of his naked right arm 
 for some moments. Then he began to stroke the skin 
 gently with his left hand, keeping both bare arms at full 
 stretch all the time. He stroked and stroked, and, to the 
 wonder of all, it was seen that the skin was swelling with 
 life. The dull shrivelled skin took upon it the hues it 
 had lost, and with every movement it rounded and grew, 
 until within ten minutes the old juggler held a large 
 cobra writhing in his hand and winding its folds about 
 his long thin arm. He tossed it deftly to the ground 
 and it reared at once, hissing and darting out its forked 
 tongue, and expanding its hood, as if eager to strike its 
 prey. Now the elder son, who had followed his father, 
 squatted down near the terrible deadly snake, and began 
 
 in. 57 8 
 
India 
 
 to charm it, playing a soft slow air on his pipe. In a 
 short time he had stilled the fierce reptile, and before 
 long he secured it safely in a wicker basket. Now it 
 could be closely examined, and all could assure them- 
 selves it was alive, and its poison fangs were untouched, 
 and that a stroke from those gaping jaws would have 
 meant certain death. 
 
 The host turned to the guest with a smile. " That is 
 a good trick," he remarked. " Can you explain how it's 
 done ? I can't." And the guest had to admit that he 
 could not explain either, and that he was satisfied that 
 the ground had not been prepared on this occasion. 
 
 At this moment the head-man of the village appeared, 
 and announced that, after the family of jugglers had been 
 summoned, a wandering fakir had arrived in the village, 
 and now wished to display his powers. The host con- 
 versed for a few moments with the fakir, then turned to 
 the guests and said : " He will show us the rope- trick." 
 
 The fakir called for a rope, and a strong piece of cord, 
 such as is used to fasten goods on a country cart, was 
 brought to him. He took it, whirled it a few times round 
 his head, and tossed it into the air. It stood up straight 
 and firm, as if it were hanging down from a support, 
 though it appeared to have no support of any kind. The 
 little boy now came forward and went up the rope nimbly 
 hand over hand. Up and up he went, and suddenly the 
 fakir threw the end of the rope up after him, and nothing 
 was to be seen. For a few seconds the fakir stood 
 motionless, then he began to climb. He rose steadily 
 from the ground, making all the motions of a man climbing 
 a rope, though no rope was there. On and on he went, 
 
 58 
 
Indian Jugglers 
 
 until his form grew smaller and smaller, and he seemed to 
 vanish into the sky. The amazed guest was still staring 
 in wonder into the empty air, when someone said : 
 " Hullo ! here they come." He looked down, to see the 
 fakir and the boy approaching the spot as if they had 
 emerged from a clump of bushes fifty yards away. 
 
 " How is it done ?" he gasped. 
 
 "It is some form of illusion," replied his host ; " but 
 how they produce the illusion upon us I cannot say. But 
 I am certain they have powers we do not understand." 
 
 Nor could the guest understand it, but he had no more 
 to say about an easy explanation of the jugglers' tricks, 
 and he looked upon the party with deep interest as they 
 bowed low and uttered many thanks for the rupees with 
 which they were rewarded. 
 
 59 
 
HOMES IN THE CITY 
 
 The homes of an Indian city are many, for the houses lie 
 close packed along the narrow streets, and they vary from 
 the tiny one-roomed cottage of the labourer to the fine 
 mansion of the wealthy merchant. Of the great mass of 
 dwellings where the working poor live there is little to be 
 said. The single room contains mats, perhaps a native 
 bedstead, and an array of cooking-pots — that is all. 
 The younger children tumble about in the sun ; the elder 
 are set to some task as soon as they can earn a pice — 
 which is worth one farthing — and the parents toil as 
 coolies, bearing heavy burdens, in order to keep the wolf 
 from the door. 
 
 In the chief streets the houses are of two or more 
 stories, with balconies and flat roofs, where the people 
 take the air, and often sleep when the nights are very 
 hot. Sometimes the balconies are of woodwork, beauti- 
 fully carved in quaint shapes and figures, and painted in 
 bright colours, so that the street looks very gay in the 
 sunshine. On the ground-floor are the shops, each like 
 a big cupboard in the wall, with the doors thrown back. 
 Inside the shop sits the owner. If he is^a craftsman, he 
 is'hard at work at his trade, and you see him making the 
 very goods he has to sell. If he is a trader, he squats 
 
 60 
 
Homes in the City 
 
 on a rug and waits for customers, nor does he by sign or 
 sound attempt to call upon the passers-by to examine his 
 wares. 
 
 The street is packed with a throng of men and women, 
 mostly bare-footed, some clad in robes of bright colours, 
 some men wearing so little that they look like bronze 
 statues come to life; through the crowd jostle ox-carts 
 laden with goods, and sacred bulls wander about as 
 calmly as if they owned the place. And so they do. 
 The bulls which belong to a Hindu temple ramble about 
 the streets as a pet-dog rambles about the home of his 
 master. If the bull sees something he would like to eat 
 in a shop, he marches in and eats it, and the dealer bows 
 low before him. If he smells something nice in a house, 
 in he goes and sniffs round till he finds it. No one dreams 
 of driving him out or of refusing him the dainty. He 
 is at once offered the best the people have, and his 
 entrance is looked upon as an honour, and sure to bring 
 a blessing on the house. 
 
 The homes of wealthy natives lie in a part of the town 
 well away from the busy quarters. The houses are some- 
 times built close together, with only very narrow alley- 
 ways between them, and the alleys twist and wind 
 between high walls. This makes for safety. It is not 
 possible for large mobs to enter these winding ways, and, 
 again, there is often a very strong door placed at the 
 entrance of a lane, so that the people within can shut 
 themselves up in times of disorder. From the alley the 
 house is entered by a doorway, beautifully carved, and 
 on the flat walls near at hand are paintings of animals or 
 gods. The visitor enters a court around which the house 
 
 61 
 
India 
 
 is built. The men's rooms are on the ground floor, and 
 the upper walls are pierced by windows, which are closed 
 by latticed shutters. These windows give light and air 
 to the zenana — the women's portion of the house — and 
 through the slats of the shutters the ladies can peep into 
 the court and see the coming and going of those who call 
 at the house. 
 
 They never see visitors more nearly than that. A 
 Hindu lady of high caste is shut up closely in the 
 zenana, and no man save her husband ever sees her 
 face. She very rarely leaves her apartments, but occa- 
 sionally \he does pay a visit to another zenana. Then 
 she is carried in a palanquin so closely curtained that no 
 one may peep into it, and when she leaves her own house 
 or enters that of her friend, some of her women surround 
 her and enfold her in a sort of small tent of muslin, so 
 that she moves quite unseen. 
 
 The rooms on the ground floor of this dwelling may be 
 paved, but the upper rooms have, of course, floors of 
 wood. But the wood is not seen. It is not considered 
 clean enough to eat from, and all Hindus use the floor as 
 a table. So the planks are covered with earth, and the 
 earth is finally plastered with cow-dung. This floor is 
 very carefully swept, and the plastering renewed as it 
 wears away. uw. y'SACJLCfl^ , 
 
 The crowd of people in a Hindu household would seem 
 remarkable to a Western visitor. There are a number of 
 men, and if a lady goes into the zenana, she finds a large 
 number of women and swarms of children tumbling about. 
 The reason is simple. The Hindu son does not set up a 
 house for himself when he marries. He stays on at 
 
 62 
 
Homes in the City 
 
 home, and, as every Hindu marries, there are as many 
 families as there are sons, all under the one roof. 
 
 Where are the Hindu daughters ? There is not one 
 over twelve years of age to be found in the house. They 
 have all been married and gone to other homes. It is 
 the custom among the Hindus for all girls to be married 
 at an early age, and, as a rule, by the age of twelve 
 every girl is a wife or a widow. The Hindu father and 
 mother consider it a most sacred duty to see that every 
 daughter is married, and to be sure that this shall happen, 
 they betroth and marry children, even sometimes babies 
 in the cradle. Many a little girl is fetched from her play 
 at three or four years of age and made to go through a 
 marriage ceremony. When it is over, she returns to her 
 doll, and years pass before she is sent to her husband's 
 home. 
 
 She may, perhaps, be ten or eleven when this occurs, 
 and her future happiness depends entirely upon what 
 kind of people she goes among. She can never hope for 
 any more help or comfort from her own father and 
 mother. She is now completely cut off from her child- 
 hood's home, and is altogether in the hands of her hus- 
 band and his friends. She goes into the zenana of the 
 new abode, and finds it ruled by the oldest woman 
 there— her husband's mother, or, if he is a boy much of 
 her own age, perhaps his grandmother. Then there may 
 be a bevy of other women, wives of other sons of the 
 house. If the old lady at the head of affairs is kind and 
 good-hearted, all goes well for the little bride, but if she 
 is cruel and the other women are unkind, there is no one 
 to help the unlucky child. 
 
 63 
 
India 
 
 Sometimes she is treated with great cruelty — beaten, 
 half-starved, made to do the roughest and hardest work. 
 But she has no hope of escape, and no hope of assistance. 
 It is of no use for her to think of running back to her 
 parents ; they would not take her in. If she left her 
 husband's home, it would bring great disgrace upon her 
 father ; it would cause him to lose caste, so he will not 
 support her in the smallest degree against her husband's 
 family. Mrs. Fuller gives an example of an unlucky 
 child-marriage, which would stand for many others. 
 She says : 
 
 " The girl's appearance did not suit the young husband, 
 and if she went near him to serve him with food, he would 
 hit her on the crown of her head with his knuckles. 
 Though she was but ten years old, they expected her 
 to do every kind of work. She did the household work, 
 brought water for all, cleaned the utensils and the floor, 
 did the washing, milked the cow, and kept its stable 
 clean. If the cow did not yield the proper quantity of 
 milk, she was punished. Her father-in-law would hang 
 her up to the beam of the roof and beat her pitilessly. 
 He would sometimes suspend her to the same place by 
 the ankles, and under her head, thus suspended, place a 
 vessel with red-hot coals, on which he sprinkled red 
 pepper to almost suffocate her. Sometimes when he 
 had hung her to the rope, for fear she should be tempted 
 to break the rope and fall, he would lay branches of 
 prickly pear on the floor beneath her. When her father 
 heard of all this cruelty, he exhorted her not to run 
 away, but to stay and die." 
 
 Sometimes a little girl is a widow : the boy or man to 
 
 64 
 
1 c « T ' V «* * * * ' 
 
 f < <■ c < < < C f I 
 
Homes in the City 
 
 whom she has been married has died before she became 
 old enough to be sent to her husband's home. The fate 
 of all Hindu widows is a very sad one. A Hindu girl or 
 woman of good caste may not marry again, and she is 
 treated in a very harsh and unkind fashion. The Hindu 
 widow has her head shaved at once upon her husband's 
 death, she is clad on that day and for all days afterwards 
 in the meanest and coarsest garments ; she is only 
 allowed to eat one meal a day, and upon two days in 
 each month she does not get even that single meal ; she 
 has to strip off all her ornaments and jewels ; she may 
 never attend any festivity or merry-making; and if she 
 went near any joyful meeting, she would be at once 
 driven away, for her mere presence is regarded as bringing 
 the worst of ill-luck. No one will eat or drink food or 
 water upon which her shadow has fallen, for it is looked 
 upon as unclean. If a man, upon starting a journey, 
 catches sight of a widow, he will turn back ; he has seen 
 a thing of ill-omen, and the journey would have an 
 unlucky ending. 
 
 The saddest fate is that of children who have never 
 known anything save widowhood. A girl is married as 
 a mere infant ; her husband dies while she is very young. 
 The child knows little or nothing about it, and only 
 understands in a very vague manner what it all means. 
 She plays about as merrily as ever, for she will not be 
 called upon to enter the state of widowhood until she 
 reaches the age at which she is sent to her husband's house. 
 It is true she gets a foretaste of her future state if she 
 should wander near a wedding-feast or some such merry- 
 making. She is driven away as a sight of evil. 
 
 in. 65 9 
 
India 
 
 When she reaches the age of ten or eleven, her head is 
 shaved, she is dressed in the coarse sari, the single gar- 
 ment of widowhood, and she is exposed to the insults 
 and abuse of her husband's friends. The latter show the 
 greatest ill-will against her. They believe that in some 
 former life she has committed a great sin, and this has 
 brought upon her the curse of widowhood in her present 
 existence. The Hindu religion teaches that souls return 
 to this earth for life after life in various bodies, and 
 that a sin committed in some former existence may bring 
 punishment in the new life. The friends of the husband 
 say that it was the fate of this child to become a widow, 
 and because of that her husband died. Had he married 
 someone of a better fate, he would have lived. 
 
 In the old days widows used to commit suttee — that is, 
 they were burned alive in company with the husband's 
 dead body. Hindus do not bury their dead. The bodies 
 are placed on a great pile of wood and burned to ashes. 
 But the British Government put down suttee, and also 
 made it lawful for widows to remarry. Yet, so strong 
 is custom among the natives, that, though there are 
 many millions of Hindu widows, only a score or so of 
 them are remarried in a year. 
 
XI 
 FROM BIRTH TO MARRIAGE 
 
 When a baby is born in a Hindu home, it will be received 
 very gladly if it is a boy ; the parents rejoice because 
 the gods have given them a son. If the father is rich, he 
 will show his pleasure by making a splendid feast for the 
 priests and his friends. All the beggars in the country- 
 side will flock to the house, for they know well that the 
 wealthy man will distribute food and money among them, 
 that all may rejoice with him on the birth of his son. 
 
 If it is a daughter, there is quite another face on things. 
 The mother is sad, the friends shake their heads as if sorry 
 for the misfortune which has befallen the house, and the 
 father thinks that the gods are angry with him because they 
 have sent him a daughter. This seems very wrong and 
 unreasonable to us, but the causes must be sought in the 
 views of the Hindus and their way of life. In the first 
 place, a Hindu believes that after his death he cannot 
 be happy in the next world unless his son has performed 
 certain rites and ceremonies on his behalf. A daughter 
 cannot do this, so he earnestly wishes for a son. In the 
 second place, a son is a son always — the prop and support 
 of the house. He will never leave his parents, but their 
 home will be his home until the day of his death. But 
 a daughter is a daughter only for a very few years ; she 
 
 67 
 
India 
 
 will marry and go to her husband's house, and thence- 
 forth she has neither share nor part in the home in which 
 she was born. Whatever the need of her parents may be, 
 she cannot tend or aid them : she belongs entirely to her 
 husband's family. Among the higher castes the separa- 
 tion is so complete that a father may not visit his married 
 daughter's home, and a man has been heard to boast 
 that he had not even drunk water from the well of the 
 village in which his married daughter lived. 
 
 In the third place, there is the question of the dowry. 
 The Hindu husband often expects to receive a large sum 
 of money with his wife ; so that if there are many 
 daughters of a house the parents are pinched to provide 
 dowries. And we must remember that every daughter 
 must be married. Nothing would more horrify Hindu 
 parents than the idea that a daughter might remain un- 
 married at the age of fourteen. It is against every 
 custom of their life, and custom is a tyrant in India. 
 
 Upon these scores, then, daughters are, as a rule, 
 unwelcome — so unwelcome that, in the old days, they 
 were often put to death. When a father heard that a 
 daughter was born, he said nothing, but raised his hand, 
 with the thumb clasped round the fingers. The sign 
 meant that it was not to live, and the child was killed. 
 The British Government set to work to stop this crime, 
 and it is no longer done openly. But it is said that in 
 some parts of the country it still goes on in secret, and it 
 may easily be so, for the law stops short on the threshold 
 of the zenana, where no man may be admitted save the 
 master of the house. 
 When a child is born one of the first things done is to 
 
 [683 
 
From Birth to Marriage 
 
 fetch the fortune-teller. He comes and looks very care- 
 fully at the marks on the baby's head. These are the 
 lines between the bones of the skull, such as all children 
 show. But the Hindus believe that in these marks the 
 fate of the child can be read, and this very old story is 
 told about them : 
 
 Long, long ago a daughter was born to the great god 
 Brahma, the creator of all things, and his wife begged 
 that he would tell her the fate of their child. Brahma 
 was seated with his back towards his wife and the infant, 
 but he stretched out his hand behind him towards the 
 child. In his hand he held a pen of gold, and with this 
 pen he wrote on the infant's head. He could not see 
 the letters he was forming, but his wife could, and she 
 cried out in alarm, for she saw that a dreadful fate was 
 promised for her child. She called upon Brahma to 
 change the writing at once. He did so, but her terror 
 increased, for this fate was worse than the last. Again 
 she begged him not to leave so cruel a fate on the head 
 of their daughter. Brahma wrote a third time, but now he 
 did not give his wife a chance to urge him anew. Before 
 she could say a word, he hurled his golden pen far from 
 him, and since that day he has never written but once 
 on the head of each child ; so that when a child is born 
 the fortune-teller is called in, and he pores over those 
 markings in the tiny skull, and calls them the writings of 
 Brahma. In those writings it is believed that the child's 
 fate is set down, and the parents listen with great eager- 
 ness and anxiety as the fortune-teller prophesies what 
 will happen to their little one. 
 
 For the first few years of a child's life he is allowed to 
 
 69 
 
India 
 
 tumble about and play just as he fancies, nor is any atten- 
 tion paid to what he says or does, for he is regarded as 
 having no soul until he has attained the age of seven years. 
 At about eight or nine years he is considered old enough to 
 enter his caste, and this entrance is conducted, in the case 
 of a high-caste boy, with many ceremonies. He now puts 
 on the sacred thread which is the mark of his caste. He 
 wears it over his right shoulder, and from the moment 
 he puts it on he must obey every caste rule. The priest 
 who puts the thread on him for the first time also whispers 
 in his ear the mantra — the sacred text or saying of his 
 family. This mantra he must repeat every morning and 
 evening, and he must always bathe before he tastes food. 
 Besides the sacred thread, he is shown how to paint his 
 caste marks on his face and body. There are many 
 marks for the different castes, and a Hindu has* only to 
 glance at the mark on a man's forehead to know at once 
 to what caste he belongs. 
 
 Ere long the day of his marriage arrives, and marriage 
 is the greatest event in the life of a native. His wedding 
 is celebrated, not only as well as he or his parents can 
 afford, but often in a style which is absurd when the 
 means of the family are considered. Friends and rela- 
 tions are invited from far and near ; splendid dinners are 
 spread ; the priests are feasted and receive rich presents ; 
 musicians and dancing-girls are hired, at great expense, 
 to amuse the guests ; the poor crowd to the place and 
 clamour for gifts, which must be provided ; horses and 
 palanquins are obtained ; fine robes and ornaments are 
 bought ; and the day often closes with a magnificent 
 exhibition of fireworks. 
 
 70 
 
From Birth to Marriage 
 
 All this means money, and a great deal of money. It 
 must be done, for custom demands it. How is the 
 money found if the people are not well off ? By loading 
 their land with mortgages, or by borrowing from the 
 money-lender. It is a very common thing to discover 
 that a family has been utterly crippled for years by a 
 wedding ; it is left staggering under a load of debt, and 
 if it gets into the hands of a grasping money-lender, that 
 often leads to utter ruin. 
 
 The wedding-day is the day of her life to the bride. 
 Hitherto she has been merely a daughter, and looked 
 upon as a sort of encumbrance ; for the future she will 
 be a wife and retire to the seclusion of the zenana. But 
 for that day she is in the centre of the stage, the observed 
 of all observers. She wears a splendid dress of scarlet. 
 If her family is wealthy, her robe is shot with gold and 
 flashes with gems ; if her station is humble, it glitters 
 almost as brightly with tinsel. 
 
 The ceremony of marriage is performed in many dif- 
 ferent ways in different parts of India, but certain rites 
 are found everywhere. The chief of these rites are three 
 in number. First, the pouring of rice or wheat, according 
 to the district, over the heads of the bridal pair. This 
 is done to bring good luck, and to obtain a blessing on 
 the union. This custom has passed from India to Europe, 
 and it is a common thing in our own country to throw rice 
 after or over a wedded pair for good luck. Second, the 
 bride is received into her husband's family, for in future 
 she will belong to it entirely. This is carried out by 
 the solemn eating of food by the bridal pair from the same 
 dish. When this is over, the bride's forehead is marked 
 
 71 
 
India 
 
 with "scarlet, the symbol which shows that she is a married 
 woman. In former times the mark was made with blood 
 drawn from both, but now it is painted. The third rite — 
 that of the sacred fire — is very ancient and of great im- 
 portance, for it is considered to be the binding rite of the 
 marriage. A fire is solemnly lighted by the priest, and 
 bride and bridegroom step seven times round it. It is a 
 survival of early forms of fire-worship, and as the hearth 
 fire is supposed to stand for the home, so the moving of 
 the bride and bridegroom round the sacred fire is sup- 
 posed to bind them closely together in the service of the 
 home. 
 
 72 
 
A MINSTRELS' BALCONY. 
 
XII 
 
 THE HOME OF THE RAJAH 
 
 The Rajah, the Indian Prince, has a palace, just as the 
 ryot has a hut. But without the ryot there would be 
 no Rajah, for the latter maintains his princely state upon 
 the revenues which spring from the labour of the peasants 
 who till the soil of his kingdom. There are many Rajahs 
 in India — nearly a thousand of them — for the land is 
 full of native states, large and small. The chief of these 
 rulers are very great Princes indeed, and their provinces 
 are as large as some European countries ; but at the 
 bottom of the scale are Rajahs of very slight consequence. 
 A well-known writer on India, speaking of the smaller 
 Rajahs, remarks : 
 
 ■* One I knew would hobnob with my servants, and 
 his revenue from his hereditary kingdom was considerably 
 less than £200 a year. He lived in a most picturesque 
 old castle, inhabited chiefly by snakes, scorpions, and 
 bats ; but he spent most of his life in the neighbouring 
 British law-court, defending actions for debt. I remember 
 entering a walled town in Kattywar and seeing what 
 looked like a loafer drinking spirits out of a bottle as he 
 squatted in the gateway. ' Who are you V I asked. 
 1 The King of this country,' he replied, with perfect truth. 
 
 m. 73 10 
 
India 
 
 He boasted an ancestry that was supposed to go back 
 to the sun." 
 
 ^There are no grander homes in the world than the 
 palaces in which the great Kajahs live. Such a palace 
 may stand on a ridge of the hills, or on a broad stretch 
 of sun-baked plain, or beside a great stream ; but it is 
 built of the most costly materials, and finished with great 
 beauty of workmanship. You enter such a palace by a 
 magnificent gateway leading into a great courtyard, and 
 from the courtyard the halls of audience may be gained. 
 These halls, where the Rajah sits in state to receive his 
 visitors, are vast apartments, often open on one or two 
 sides, and walls and floors are of great slabs of pure white 
 marble, often inlaid in rich and delicate colours. In the 
 walls are set pierced marble screens framed in jasper, 
 agate, lapis lazuli, and other precious stones, and the 
 open sides are guarded by balustrades of marble wrought 
 into patterns so delicate that they seem like lace-work. 
 Within are the private rooms of the palace, spacious, so 
 that they may be as cool as possible in the terrible heat 
 of the Indian summer, and in the marble floors there are 
 often channels cut, so that water may flow through the 
 palace in times of the greatest heat, and help to cool the 
 air. The women's apartments — the zenana — lie together 
 at one corner of the great building, and are most strictly 
 and jealously shut off from the rooms to which men may 
 be admitted. Lovely gardens spread round the palace, 
 and the garden nearest to the zenana may be walled in 
 for the use of the Rajah's women-folk ; but in some of 
 the stricter Hindu palaces the women never leave the 
 shelter of the zenana walls. 
 
 74 
 
The Home of the Rajah 
 
 The rooms of the palace which are furnished in native 
 fashion look simple and bare to Western eyes. The 
 floors may be covered with handsome mats and carpets, 
 and there are piles of cushions for the Kajah and his friends 
 to sit upon, with their legs tucked under them. There 
 are also small tables, beautifully carved and gilded, upon 
 which pipes and cups are placed ; but of furniture in 
 the usual sense of the word there is very little. But 
 many Rajahs have a number of their apartments filled 
 with English furniture, and in these they receive their 
 European guests. A Rajah who has travelled and spent 
 much time abroad will have this furniture set in proper 
 order, but a ruler who has been little outside his own 
 State often arranges things in a very odd fashion. 
 
 One writer, who had a letter of introduction to a Rajah 
 who dwelt in a distant corner of the Indian Empire, 
 speaks of being received in a room which his host fondly 
 believed to resemble an English sitting-room. It was a 
 huge apartment, crammed from end to end with furni- 
 ture from Tottenham Court Road. In one corner stood 
 a massive brass bedstead ; on it there was no bed, but at 
 least a score of clocks, all ticking away, and telling all 
 sorts of time. Of these clocks some were of fine workman- 
 ship, some of the cheapest make. Scattered about the 
 spacious floor, higgledy-piggledy, without the slightest 
 semblance of order, were tables, chairs, and sofas of all 
 sizes and qualities, while dozens of mirrors were fastened 
 on the walls, and a huge hat-rack occupied a place of 
 honour in the middle of the room. There was a great 
 library-table, covered with morocco leather, and care- 
 fully set on the broad surface were half a dozen towel- 
 
 75 
 
India 
 
 rails ; and when the visitor was offered a seat, he found 
 it was a cheap cane-bottomed bedroom chair. Every 
 article was coated with dust and dirt. 
 
 But, you may ask, where was the Rajah's wife, and 
 had the lady no better idea how to arrange her house ? 
 She was in the zenana, and had never been out of it 
 since the day of her marriage. The Rajah belonged to 
 the strictest caste of Hindus, and his wife had never seen 
 the furniture, had never even set foot in the room where 
 it stood. 
 
 Over this small city of chambers, corridors, pavilions, 
 baths, and gardens, the Rajah reigns absolute ; but his 
 power in the country round about is not so great as it 
 was before the British Government was set up in India. 
 In the old days he was an autocrat, and the life and 
 wealth of every man in his State was at his mercy. Now 
 the power of life and death does not rest in his hands, nor 
 may he seize the property of his subjects. At the Court 
 of every native ruler there is a British Resident, who 
 keeps an eye on the manner in which the Rajah rules, 
 and who does not permit him to interfere in matters 
 outside his own kingdom. 
 
 Still, a Rajah has immense power among his own 
 people, and his influence for good or ill is very great. A 
 Rajah who is enlightened and progressive can raise his 
 people as none other can. They will learn from him 
 and follow him as they would follow no other man. And 
 a Rajah who is ignorant and backward can keep his 
 people back in like fashion to himself. The poorest ryot 
 has a sympathy with his lord and master. He is as proud 
 of the Rajah's magnificence as if it were his own. When 
 
 76 
 
The Home of the Rajah 
 
 the Prince rides out in a golden howdah set on an elephant, 
 whose splendid trappings of gold brocade glitter with 
 gems, the ryot does not compare the Rajah's pride with 
 his own poverty, and reflect that it is from his toil that 
 this glory springs, like a lily from a mudbank. The 
 peasant is deeply interested in his lord's train of richly 
 dressed horsemen, of retainers in silks and jewels, of 
 attendants and servants. And if the Rajah does not 
 " squeeze " his ryots too heavily in the way of taxes, he 
 is regarded with respect and devotion. 
 
 At the Court of the Rajah are many officials, such as 
 his Ministers of State and the officers of his army, and 
 among his attendants are some that would seem strange 
 to us. For instance, there is the Court Astrologer — a 
 wise man, who reads the stars, and casts horoscopes, and 
 gives advice as to future events. All Hindus, high and 
 low, are fond of consulting astrologers and fortune-tellers, 
 and nothing is done until a fortune-teller has picked out 
 a lucky day for the action. He is consulted as to whether 
 a marriage will be prosperous ; whether a purchase or 
 a sale will be favourable to the buyer or seller ; how the 
 verdict will go in a lawsuit ; how an illness will turn out ; 
 when will be a favourable time to betroth a son or 
 daughter ; or how long the inquirer will live. 
 
 The last is a very favourite question, and in connection 
 with it, a story is told of a Rajah who had a very famous 
 astrologer at his Court. One day the Rajah asked the 
 astrologer : " How long shall I live ?" " My lord, I 
 must consult the stars," he replied. He did so, and 
 returned. " Oh, my lord," said he, " you will live for 
 two years." 
 
 77 
 
India 
 
 The Rajah was aghast. " Only two years ?" he 
 cried. " Not more," replied the astrologer. The Rajah 
 trembled, and his face became sad. Now, the Prime 
 Minister was attending upon his master, and he stepped 
 forward. 
 
 " Oh, my lord," said he, " be not uneasy. This man 
 speaks foolishness." 
 
 " Who can prove that ?" murmured the Rajah. 
 
 " I can," said the Prime Minister ; and he turned to 
 the astrologer. 
 
 " Hast thou consulted the stars for thyself ?" asked the 
 Prime Minister. " Knowest thou the length of thy 
 days ?" 
 
 " I do," replied the astrologer boldly ; " and I shall yet 
 live for twenty-three years." 
 
 The words were scarce out of the astrologer's mouth 
 when the Prime Minister whipped his broad scimitar 
 from its sheath. With a single stroke of the keen 
 curved blade he swept the astrologer's head from his 
 shoulders. Then he pointed to the body with his 
 dripping blade. 
 
 " Oh, my lord," said he, " could a man who knew not 
 how near was the hour of his own death tell you truly how 
 near was the hour of yours ? Take comfort. Did I not 
 say that he spoke foolishness ?" 
 
 Then the Rajah was easy in mind once more, and 
 praised his clever Minister, and gave him a robe of 
 honour and many rich presents. 
 
 Yet, though Hindus may tell stories like these, they 
 do not act up to them, but give the predictions of the 
 fortune-teller a great place in their minds, and follow 
 
 78 
 
The Home of the Rajah 
 
 the directions of the astrologers as to lucky and unlucky- 
 days with the closest care. 
 
 Another officer is the falconer, for falconry was the old 
 royal sport of India, and many Rajahs are still attended 
 by the falconers bearing the keen-eyed hawks on the 
 wrist or on a frame. The birds are loosed beside the 
 marsh, or river, or lake, where they strike down teal 
 and wild-ducks, or on the open plain, where they find 
 partridge or quail. But a well-trained hawk will not 
 strike a bird when flying over water, for it understands 
 the danger of falling with its prey and being drowned. 
 
 Many a Rajah lives, as it were, a double life. In his 
 palace he is a great Indian ruler, clothed in rich silken 
 robes, with a great muslin turban on his head, a scimitar at 
 his side, and slippers on his feet. He rides out on a war- 
 horse or an elephant, and is attended by a train of retainers, 
 who are dressed and armed as the retainers of his house 
 have been dressed and armed for centuries. His subjects 
 bend to the ground before him, and to the English on- 
 looker the conditions of his life seem to belong to old 
 romance and the days of the Arabian Nights. But 
 when he wants a holiday, he slips off to London or Paris, 
 and appears there as a brown-faced gentleman, clad in 
 the most correct form of European dress, and not to be 
 distinguished, save by the shade of his skin, from any 
 other man about town. 
 
 If, however, he belongs to one of the higher castes, this 
 crossing of the sea — -the " Black Water," as the Hindus 
 call it — will give him much trouble when he reaches home 
 again. For the crossing of the Black Water throws a 
 man out of caste, and caste is more powerful than any 
 
 79 
 
India 
 
 Rajah. To put himself right again, he must submit him- 
 self to the priests and undergo a process of purification. 
 In this process the cow takes a foremost place, for she 
 is the sacred animal of the Hindus, and it is believed that 
 she can free the Hindu from sin. The out-of -caste man 
 must not only bathe in water which has been mixed with 
 milk and cow-dung, but he must also drink some of the 
 compound, and when he has done this, and made a 
 splendid feast for the brethren of his caste, and given 
 great fees to the Brahmin priests, he is once more in 
 caste and easy in his mind. 
 
 80 
 
> : j > 
 
 THE RAJAH S ELEPHANT. 
 
XIII 
 
 HOMES OF THE WILD FOLK 
 
 In the depths of the Indian jungle and among the hills 
 there still exist wild tribes whose members are little or 
 no better than savages. 
 
 Some of these tribes are believed to be the ancient 
 inhabitants of the land — the old, old stock which lived 
 in India before a Hindu or a Moslem had crossed 
 the barrier of the Himalayas. Among them are found 
 the simplest and rudest kind of dwellings, and some con- 
 struct no dwelling at all, but creep into caves and take 
 shelter in holes in the rocks from night and storm. 
 
 Many of these wild primitive tribes are found in 
 Southern India, and a tribe called the " Juangs " build 
 about the smallest huts that human beings ever set up 
 and called dwellings. The hut of a Juang measures 
 about six feet wide by eight feet long, and is never tall 
 enough for a man to stand upright in. The door is so 
 tiny that it is a wonder how the inmates can get in at all, 
 even on all fours. Yet, scanty as is the space within, a 
 partition cuts the hut into two divisions. Of these, one 
 is used as a storehouse, the other as the sole living apart- 
 ment. Into the latter, not much bigger than a good- 
 sized dog-kennel, the members of the family, with the 
 
 m. 81 11 
 
India 
 
 exception of the boys, pack themselves to sleep. The 
 boys have a little hut to themselves. 
 
 The Todas, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills, live in a 
 village which is known as a Mund. A Toda Mund is a 
 collection of a few huts inside a loose stone wall, and 
 the houses are bigger than those of the Juangs certainly, 
 but still of no great size. The hut of a Toda is about 
 twelve feet long and ten feet high. He builds it of bam- 
 boos set closely side by side, and their tops tied together 
 with rattan. He plasters the bamboo walls with mud, 
 and covers the whole with thatch, so that it looks in 
 shape like a great waggon- tilt set on the ground. The 
 ends are filled up with logs and plastered over, so that the 
 building is substantial and water-tight. There is only 
 one opening in the whole structure — a tiny hole at one 
 end, barely two feet square. This hole serves as door, 
 window, and chimney. A stranger wonders how the 
 people get in or out until he sees a man or woman go flat 
 on the ground, and wriggle his or her way in, like an eel 
 slipping under a stone. Bold explorers who have crawled 
 into the dark interior report that along one side there is 
 a fixed low platform covered with skins. This is the 
 family sleeping-place, and is the sole furnishing of the 
 hut. But no one cares to stay long in a Toda dwelling ; 
 it is too close and dirty to be pleasant. 
 
 The Todas themselves are, in contrast to most primitive 
 tribes, a fine-looking people — tall, well-formed, and 
 many of the women are handsome. Their sole garment 
 is a blanket, and as the Todas never wash either them- 
 selves or their blankets, the latter are very dirty. The 
 ornaments of the women are big, heavy bangles made of 
 
 82 
 
Homes of the Wild Folk 
 
 brass or lead, and cowrie-shells strung into tassels, which 
 
 are hung on necklaces of thread, the latter woven of 
 
 hair or silver, according to the wealth of the wearer. 
 
 A Toda never does any work save watch his buffaloes, 
 
 and these he worships as the source of his food and 
 
 livelihood. The operation of milking is regarded as 
 
 sacred, and only the village priest is allowed to perform 
 
 it. The milk is set in a dairy, and this is looked upon 
 
 as a sacred spot, and no woman is allowed to enter it. 
 
 When the herd of buffaloes is driven home at night, the 
 
 priest and the people bend low before it, and this is their 
 
 chief act of worship. They have one prayer : " May all ^. 
 
 be well ; may the buffaloes be well." /^ y 9^ ted^^J.&P 
 
 The Kuravans build for themselves round huts of 
 basket-work. They make these huts so light that a man 
 can lift one, and when a Kuravan takes a fancy to move 
 house, he does so in literal fact. He marches off to the 
 new spot with his hut on his head, while his wife follows, 
 laden with their few belongings. 
 
 The gipsy tribes use very slight shelters, though they 
 may stay at one spot for some time. When a tribe pitches 
 on a place where they intend to encamp, the men cut 
 some bamboo-poles and drive them into the earth. Some 
 slighter poles form the roof. Palm leaves are used to 
 cover the walls and thatch the roof, and in a very short 
 time a little village of huts has been run up — huts which 
 will give complete shelter from the severest rains. 
 
 The bamboo is the stand-by of all the wild tribes who 
 build simple houses, and the hill-men, above all, make full 
 use of it. As one writer remarks of the hill-man : " He 
 builds his house of the bamboo ; he fertilizes the fields 
 
 83 
 
India 
 
 with its ashes ; of its stem he makes vessels in which to 
 carry water ; with two bits of bamboo he can produce 
 fire ; its young and delicate shoots provide a dainty 
 dinner-dish ; and he weaves his sleeping-mat of fine slips 
 thereof ; the instruments with which his women weave 
 their cotton are of bamboo. He makes drinking-cups of 
 it, and his head at night rests on a bamboo pillow ; his 
 forts are built of it ; he catches fish, makes baskets and 
 tools, and thatches his house with the help of the bamboo. 
 He smokes from a pipe of bamboo ; and from the bamboo 
 ashes he obtains potash. Finally, his funeral-pile is 
 lighted with bamboo. The hill-man would die without 
 bamboo, and the thing he finds hardest to believe is that 
 in other countries the bamboo does not grow, and that 
 men live in ignorance of it. Throughout the whole of 
 India, indeed, the bamboo occupies the foremost place 
 in the domestic economy of the inhabitants." 
 
 The gipsies catch birds very cleverly with bamboo-rods. 
 They take a set of bamboos of differing sizes, so that 
 each length fits into the one below, like the joints of a 
 fishing-rod. The end of the top joint is smeared with 
 bird-lime. When the gipsy has marked a bird sitting on 
 a bough, he steals along very carefully till he is below it. 
 Then he raises the rod and passes it up through the 
 branches of the tree. He adds joint after joint until the 
 end is near to the bird. With a swift motion he thrusts 
 the smeared point against the feathers of the bird and 
 secures it. The skill with which he slips the rod through 
 the tree without making the slightest rustle or movement 
 of a leaf is wonderful. 
 
 Some of the wildest tribes of India live among the 
 
 84 
 
Homes of the Wild Folk 
 
 thick jungles which fringe the foot of the Himalayas. 
 The Kajis are people who never leave the forest wilds. 
 Their homes are the simplest form of shelter — small huts 
 built of sticks and leaves — and they never stay in one 
 spot for a long time. They ramble through the dense 
 jungle, searching for the herbs and fruits upon which 
 they live. Their only industry is the making of wooden 
 bowls, and these they exchange with the villagers who 
 dwell on the border of the jungle for grain or a little 
 cooked food. If they have any grain or food to spare, 
 they hide it in a hole in the rocks, or bind it up in leaves 
 and hang it to a branch of a tree. 
 
 In the Terai — that tract at the foot of the Himalayas 
 where the down-rushing rivers form a great and deadly 
 swamp — live the Tharus. They are first-rate hunters, 
 and they suffer so little from the terrible swamp-fever 
 which haunts the Terai that some people believe the 
 fever cannot touch them. This is not so. The Tharus 
 largely escape because they understand very well that 
 the fever lurks in the thick mist which lies on the sodden 
 earth ; so, in order to escape it they raise their houses 
 high above the ground . The first piece of work in building 
 a Tharus village is the raising of a platform on lofty posts. 
 On this platform they build their huts, and another pre- 
 caution they take is to clear away the jungle for some 
 distance around their dwellings. 
 
 There are some tribes among these jungle folk of whom 
 very little is known. They are so shy and hide them- 
 selves so carefully in their wild retreats that British 
 officers have been unable to come in close touch with 
 them. All that can be said of them is that their homes 
 
 85 
 
India 
 
 are as simple as the nests of birds or the dens of beasts ; 
 they clothe themselves with leaves, when they wear 
 clothing, and they live on jungle fruits and wild honey. 
 Among many of these tribes the custom prevails of 
 wearing ear ornaments so heavy that the lobe of the ear 
 is greatly distended, and so large a hole is drawn out that 
 a man could put his arm through it. 
 
 Finally, there are few tribes so wild as the people who 
 inhabit the Andaman and Mcobar Islands in the Bay of 
 Bengal. In 1857 a great convict settlement was formed 
 in the South Andaman, and for some years the authorities 
 had much trouble with the natives, but in time peace was 
 made. But until lately it was a very dangerous business 
 to land on the islands except at the point under British 
 influence, for the natives were savage and bloodthirsty. 
 The native houses look just like huge bee-hives set up 
 on tall poles, for they are built near the shores on trunks 
 driven into the sand. A platform is built on the posts, 
 and this platform is sheltered by a cone-shaped structure 
 of sticks and thatch, and entrance to the house is gained 
 by a ladder. In this way they make themselves safe from 
 enemies and wild beasts. 
 
 In front of the houses they set up very tall thin poles, 
 much higher than the roof, and these poles are decked 
 at intervals of several feet with large bunches of grass. 
 The poles sway in the sea-breeze, and the tufts of grass 
 flutter steadily. The natives declare that these move- 
 ments will frighten away the evil spirits, of whom they 
 stand in great fear. Another mode of scaring the 
 demons from their huts consists in placing before the 
 door a grotesque figure, carved and painted till it 
 
 86 
 
Homes of the Wild Folk 
 
 looks a most fantastic and horrible sight. Food is 
 placed before this figure, and soon disappears. As a 
 rule, a rambling dog or pig has made short work of it, 
 but the native is quite satisfied if the food goes. He 
 considers that the " scare-demon " has accepted the 
 offering, and will continue to protect his hut. 
 
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