Part 9 (1/2)
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.