The shoe, as everybody in India knows, is a symbol of the greatest
degradation and impurity. This is partly on account of its manufacture
from the impure leather or hide, and also perhaps because it is worn
and trodden under foot. All the hides of tame animals are polluted and
impure, but those of certain wild animals, such as the deer and tiger,
are not so, being on the contrary to some extent sacred. This last
feeling may be due to the fact that the old anchorites of the forests
were accustomed to cover themselves with the skins of wild animals, and
to use them for sitting and kneeling to pray. A Bairagi or Vaishnava
religious mendicant much likes to carry a tiger-skin on his body if
he can afford one; and a Brahman will have the skin of a black-buck
spread in the room where he performs his devotions. Possibly the sin
involved in killing tame animals has been partly responsible for the
impurity attaching to their hides, to the obtaining of which the death
of the animal must be a preliminary. Every Hindu removes his shoes
before entering a house, though with the adoption of English boots a
breach is being made in this custom. So far as the houses of Europeans
are concerned, the retention of shoes is not, as might be imagined,
of recent origin, but was noticed by Buchanan a hundred years ago:
"Men of rank and their attendants continue to wear their shoes loose
for the purpose of throwing them off whenever they enter a room,
which they still continue to do everywhere except in the houses of
Europeans, in which all natives of rank now imitate our example." In
this connection it must be remembered that a Hindu house is always
sacred as the shrine of the household god, and shoes are removed
before stepping across the threshold on to the hallowed ground. This
consideration does not apply to European houses, and affords ground
for dispensing with the removal of laced shoes and boots.
To be beaten or sometimes even touched with a shoe by a man of
low caste entails temporary social excommunication to most Hindus,
and must be expiated by a formal purification and caste feast. The
outcaste Mahars punish a member of their community in the same manner
even if somebody should throw a shoe on to the roof of his house,
and the Pharasaical absurdities of the caste system surely find their
culminating point in this rule. Similarly if a man touches his shoe
with his hand and says 'I have beaten you,' to a member of any of
the lower castes in Seoni, the person so addressed is considered as
temporarily out of caste. If he then immediately goes and informs his
caste-fellows he is reinstated with a nominal fine of grain worth
one or two pice. But if he goes back to his house and takes food,
and the incident is subsequently discovered, a penalty of a goat is
levied. A curious exception recognised is that of the _Sirkari juta_,
or shoe belonging to a Government servant, and to be beaten with this
shoe does not entail social punishment.