Of furniture there is very little. Carefully arranged in their
places are the brass cooking-pots, water-pots and plates, well
polished with mud and water applied with plenty of elbow-grease
by the careful housewife. Poor tenants frequently only have one or
two brass plates and cups and an iron girdle, while all the rest of
their vessels are of earthenware. Each house has several _chulhas_
or small horseshoe erections of earth for cooking. Each person in
the house has a sleeping-cot if the family is comfortably off, and a
spare one is also kept. These must be put out and exposed to the sun at
least once a week to clear them of fleas and bugs. It is said that the
Jains cannot adopt this method of disinfecting their beds owing to the
sacrifice of insect life thereby involved; and that there are persons
in Calcutta who make it their profession to go round and offer to lie
on these cots for a time; they lie on them for some hours, and the
little denizens being surfeited with their blood subsequently allow
the owner of the cot to have a quiet night. A cot should always be
shorter than a man's length, so that his legs project over the end;
if it is so long as to contain his whole length it is like a bier,
and it is feared that lying on a cot of this kind will cause him
shortly to lie on a bier. Poor tenants do not usually have cots, but
sleep on the ground, spreading kodon-straw on it for warmth. They
have no bedding except a _gudri_ or mattress made of old rags and
clothes sewn together. In winter they put it over them, and sleep on
it in summer. They will have a wooden log to rest their heads on when
sleeping, and this will also serve as a seat for a guest. Malguzars
have a _razai_ or quilt, and a _doria_ or thick cloth like those used
for covering carts. Clothes and other things are kept in _jhampis_ or
round bamboo baskets. For sitting on there are _machnis_ or four-legged
stools about a foot high with seats of grass rope or _pirhis_, little
wooden stools only an inch or two from the ground. For lighting,
wicks are set afloat in little earthen saucers filled with oil.