Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier Part 9

A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling hedges of aloe or p.r.i.c.kly pear. These hedges are festooned with ma.s.ses of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a p.r.i.c.kly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe, the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on the golden shower.

On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching gra.s.s, or rather strong upright waving gra.s.s, with a beautiful feathery plume, is planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge of dense gra.s.s keeps what little breeze there may be away from the traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.

These houses with their gra.s.s walls and thatched roof are called _kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick, with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called _pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe'; but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'

and so on.

Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these, being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the _cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.

The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a _tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The _Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as _Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.

These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and swarming children.

There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst pa.s.sions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue, and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.

Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman, potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.

Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his customers with great deftness. The lower cla.s.ses of natives shave the hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for other obvious reasons. The higher cla.s.ses are very regular in their ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and Brahmin, the respectable middle cla.s.ses, and all in the village who lay any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them look as white and clean as ivory.

There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village, with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a vow to the G.o.ds, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.

At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women chatter, laugh, and talk, and a.s.sume all sorts of picturesque att.i.tudes as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes quarrel, as they pull away at the windla.s.s over the deep cool well. On the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower cla.s.ses. There are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening skins, they pour bra.s.s pots of cold water over their dripping bodies; they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures, and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil, which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings, and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill, or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her hut, for the wants of her lord and master.

Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government, and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the princ.i.p.al street then, in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger pa.s.ses: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his a.s.siduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and character.

Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The poorer cla.s.ses can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut gra.s.s, gather fuel, tend herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the higher and middle cla.s.ses very pretty; they have beautiful, dark, thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is sadly neglected.

There is generally one open s.p.a.ce or long street in our village, and in a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely camps in the gra.s.s jungle where the herd and his family live with their cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair of wooden shoes, which he has fas.h.i.+oned as he was tending the village cows; another with a gra.s.s mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods, hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us; instead of a 'n.o.bbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads, bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches; fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coa.r.s.e looking ma.s.ses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.

The dust hovers over the moving ma.s.s; the smells are various, none of them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes, in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The _pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the last madness of intense pa.s.sion, in fierce altercation with another, who tries his utmost to outbl.u.s.ter his furious declamation. In a moment they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.

The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that it has been bazaar day in our village.

Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.

Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to fas.h.i.+onable elegance.

The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.

Probably he is descended from some n.o.ble house of ancient lineage. His forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.

Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days, when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has ama.s.sed money in the buying and selling of grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence, but many are of this broken down and helpless type.

Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant, conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any cla.s.s in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money, questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and ignorant b.u.mpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy, and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--

'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!

Iinnum me, billar: Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!

Humesha mara gwar!!'

This is translated thus: 'When the sh.e.l.l is breaking kill the crow, and the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.

The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his _cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts) squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his calling in the shape of a small bra.s.s ink-pot, and an oblong box containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a bundle of papers and doc.u.ments before him, this is called his _busta_, and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.

Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.

The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing charcoal which forms the fire. His princ.i.p.al work is making and sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the _hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could not be surpa.s.sed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India; but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to thirty s.h.i.+llings a month, and supplying themselves with food and clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower, English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put things to rights.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]

As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.

When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of theft, should his cattle trespa.s.s on his neighbour's growing crop, should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and a.s.sault him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.

In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence, or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to nominate two men, to act as a.s.sessors or jurymen on his behalf, his nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.

In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'

is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural cla.s.ses of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present c.u.mbrous costly machinery of law and justice.

If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is, that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'

Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial inst.i.tutions?

The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.

Men's minds are keenly alive to what is pa.s.sing; communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no difficulty in establis.h.i.+ng in such village or district courts as I have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering t.i.tles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench, and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'

while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour, and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'

is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half, quarter, nay, one t.i.the as well as Englishmen. Make more of your Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please, but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them have as many t.i.tles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.

CHAPTER XIV.

A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer cla.s.ses.

--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.

One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or _chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_ of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pa.s.s you on to the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they a.s.sess according to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a bra.s.s badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]

In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or s.h.i.+va. It is often perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.

Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the _dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the ma.s.ses, the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to G.o.d, and the idol is a means to a.s.sist their thoughts heavenward. As works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the G.o.ds by erecting a temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers, pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have observed, however, the vast ma.s.s of the poor toilers in India have little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues, about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.

'G.o.d knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault, asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be 'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude, uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor, humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer cla.s.ses are easily flurried; they will always give what information they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fl.u.s.ter them. You must rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive, inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired, and you ask your distance from the place you may be wis.h.i.+ng to reach, they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him, and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid, grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.

What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer, to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such, for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness, no wish even for sympathy or a.s.sistance. He accepts the fact of his illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_ must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of it.

Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'

feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.

In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and b.u.t.ter.

The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.

The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons, writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a s.h.i.+n of beef.

If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head man, and will ask a present with unblus.h.i.+ng effrontery as a perquisite of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.

On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The policeman a.s.sumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from a conquered foe. He a.s.sures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house, after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.

Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him, hara.s.s him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the vindication of law and authority.

Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.

He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way (and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.

This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.