The scene now changes to the right bank, the opposite side of the river,
at sunset. On the landing-place are natives bathing, and every where the
margin of the water is studded with human beings. One man is filling his
_gharas_ (earthen water vessels), which he carries suspended by ropes
from a bamboo poised on his shoulder. Bengalī women are bringing empty
water jars to fill at the river side, and in the shade a woman is
returning from the holy stream on her way to some idol, bearing on her
hand a brass tray containing a small vessel filled with water, and oil,
and rice, and flowers for _pūjā_—that is, worship. A _Dhobī_ is washing
clothes by dipping them in the river, and beating them on a rough piece
of slanting board, the custom of the washermen in the East.
The shop of a _Modī_, a grain merchant and seller of fruit, is now
before you. Oranges, melons, limes, jackfruit, pummelos, pine-apples,
all that is offered for sale in such abundance and at so small a price
in this country are displayed at various seasons most invitingly. The
fruit-seller is a very pious man, if we may judge from the pictures of
the Hindū deities stuck on the wall of his shop, but which are too much
in the shade to be very distinct. On the bamboo support of his thatch is
a painting of Hūnūmān, the monkey god, in which he is represented
bearing off on his shoulders the god Rām, and Sīta the beloved, from
Ceylon: a fac-simile of this painting is in the Pilgrim’s Museum, being
one of 32 paintings of the gods purchased at the Great Fair at Allahabad
for one rupee!
The natives are particularly fond of pigeons: they roost during the day
on a frame-work, supported on a bamboo, as here pourtrayed; and the
great delight of the pigeon-fancier is to fly his flock against that of
another, making his birds wheel and turn, ascend and descend, and obey
his every wish, by directing their course with a long thin bamboo. You
continually see men and boys of an evening standing on the house-tops,
amusing themselves with flying their pigeons.
[Illustration]