THE LADIES OF THE ARISTOCRACY
What exactly it is which constitutes an aristocracy, at any
given time or place, is not always easy to define. In Europe, in
general, aristocracies are based upon the survivals of feudal fiefs
or sometimes upon Court distinctions--but how greatly altered,
broadened, twisted, and transmuted! In India special considerations
have arisen to complicate the question. For all through Indian
society there run, on different curves, double classifications,
each traced by divergent forces. On the one hand, as in all human
societies--unhappily imperfect--lies the great universal distinction
which one calls rank, distinction of power, that is, and official
authority, with distinction of wealth as accompaniment or even as sole
qualification. On the other side lie the less natural--shall they
be called unnatural?--distinctions of a hierarchic classification,
peculiar to this continent and the Hindu faith. In this hierarchy,
the classification is not by power as tested and exercised in the
world, open and plain to all men, but by a claim to power over
supernatural forces, acquired by religious merit, not necessarily in
the individual life but perhaps in lives assumed to have occurred in
past transmigrations. But, as the saint spends in study and prayer
the hours during which conquerors are active with sword or sceptre, so
religious merit does not necessarily bring wealth or authority--with
which indeed it should be incompatible. Moreover, religious austerities
and abnegations spring from or produce a character, to which the vices
and virtues of a feudal aristocracy are alike opposed. So though
the Brahman is in the hierarchy of caste by universal recognition
infinitely the highest, so much indeed above all others as to be by
mystic ordinance “twice-born,” though he is ceremonially pure as purity
itself, though his life is sacred and his blessing a reward, his curse
a menace and a doom, yet in no actual sense can his caste be said to
form an aristocracy. A few there are among the caste who have risen to
royal state and rule lands as princes; but even in them the qualities
of human leadership are overwhelmed by the traditions of a scholar race
and a consecrated people.
Actually, therefore, it may be said--if words are used in the usual
sense--that the aristocracy of India is composed of the Mussulman
nobility and of the second or Kshatriya class of Hindus, the ruling and
fighting houses of the land. And of these at once the most interesting
and the most important are the tribes known collectively under the name
of Rajputs, “sons of kings,” as the word would read in English. They
are, of all the people of India, the most gallant and picturesque.
Almost they are Indian chivalry itself. In India, the homes properly
speaking of the Rajput tribes are in Márwár, Mewár, and Káthiawád, in
the tracts, that is, which stretch from the centre of the Continent to
the sands of Sind and down to the base of the Peninsula, as well as in
the province that projects into the Ocean to the West. From the desert
of Bikanir and Jodhpur, where water has to be sought by shafts hundreds
of feet below the level of the scorching sand, to the forests and glens
and rocks of Mewár and to the fertile plains that roll across Gujarát
to the Arabian Sea, they rule or hold their lands on service tenures,
and hunt and shoot and make love and yearn for battle. Bikanir,
Jodhpur, Rutlam, Jamnagar, Baria, and how many other names there are
that in the Great War have made dear the Rajput clans! They have borne
the flag as fighting gentlemen to France and Flanders, to East Africa,
and the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. The recital of their deeds
and glory is a task, alas! for other pens. Be it for these lines to
make something plain of the manner of their daily life at home.
But first a few words must be written of their history. For without
some such knowledge, there can be no understanding either of India or
of the qualities for which the Rajput stands. Modern India, as it is
now known, came to shape in the nine hundred or thousand years that
passed from the day of Alexander to the Mussulman conquests. Before
that period there was an India, still reflected in the Scriptures and
in the living beliefs of the people, when Aryan immigrants furnished
rulers and priests to dark Dravidian masses, cousins of those who still
people the South Sea Archipelagoes, peoples who even now form the
staple of the Southern Indian population, those who speak Tamil and
Telugu and migrate as labourers not only to Ceylon but even to Fiji and
Jamaica and Trinidad. But after the division of Alexander’s Eastern
Empire, that vast half-obscure series of invasions began which changed
the face of the greater part of the Indian continent and altered all
the constituents of its population. From the Bactrian Empire and its
Hellenized inhabitants, came Menander with the Ionians--Yávans as they
are known in Indian history. From the Oxus valley and Central Asia
came the Scythian Sákas and the Kusháns. And all of these accepted
the Buddhist faith and ruled kingdoms and helped learning and founded
new families. Then, in the end of the fourth and throughout the fifth
centuries, this India already so transformed, was flooded by the
vaster, all transmuting hordes of Gujjars and White Huns. Each horde in
turn swept into its embrace something of its predecessors, each being
widely mixed and composite. So to the last in all those conquering
peoples--and the Huns were a people on the move and not an army--there
were elements of Greek and Turk, Avar and Mongol, and Persian and
Caucasian--all the elements in short that go also to make up Eastern
Europe and its nations. Those were the peoples from whom descend the
Kshatriya caste of modern India, these fine well-mannered fiery
sportsmanlike Rajputs, who are the pride of their country. They look
like any Hungarian nobleman or Georgian chief; and all the centuries
spent in enervating climates and an austere faith have not taken from
them their dash and passionate fervour.
They are Kshatriyas now, it has been said, these Rajputs from
Central Asia. For from of old the classic, if academic, division of
the Indian peoples has been supposed to be in four great caste or
class abstractions, of which the second or warrior class is known as
Kshatriya. And in fact it was into this caste that the invaders were by
artful priests assumed to be adopted. The first hordes, from Bactria
and the Oxus, had become followers of Buddha, a casteless faith in
which the Brahman priesthood lost its privileges. But the later comers,
the Gujjars and Huns, with their adoration of fire and sun and moon,
were quickly persuaded to the Hindu system and the acceptance of the
Brahman priesthood. So they slew as they conquered and extirpated the
adherents of the reformed creed. And for reward they obtained the
rank of Kshatriya and genealogies of the true Aryan breed. Those who
were soldiers and founded states or formed the fighting men-at-arms
of the clan maintained the rank, and are the Rajputs of to-day. The
rest, as they settled down to trade or craftsmanship or as each by
the succeeding horde was engulfed, and, where it was not absorbed,
oppressed, brought to the multitudinous castes of upper India that
Rajput element which is still strongly marked by Scythian tribal names
and even by customs or appearance. It was a clan system, something
like the Highland clans. Just as Macdonalds or Camerons absorbed into
themselves earlier Picts or later broken septs, so did even the proud
Sesodias of Udepur, one must suppose, take into their tribe in the
first rush of conquest many converted Sákas or Kusháns, broken tribes,
it may be, who were useful recruits, or perhaps at times some powerful
leaders. As the Highlander going to Glasgow or the Lowlands, lost his
nobility and became artisan or weaver or tradesman, marrying with
the common people and shedding his pride and distinctions, so of the
Central Asian fighting tribes there were many who descended to the
common level of the working population.
[Illustration: LADY FROM MEWÁR]
Now the Rajput tribes for over a thousand years have been the kernel
of Indian aristocracy. They have lofty genealogies which trace their
trees to roots in mythology, to birth from fire or the personified
sun and moon. The god Krishna, a Kshatriya chief, indeed, of real
but hidden fact, mixed inextricably with the ancient concept of a
cloud-god, powerful in some forgotten Aryan home, has his place
as divine progenitor in many a family tradition. They have their
professional bards who sing the epics of their race and preserve the
records of their families and descent. For a thousand years they have
spent the lustres fighting, tumultuous, each chief with his following
against his neighbour, always divided, yet throughout in no mere lust
of acquisition but in the spirit of a sport, sought for its own sake,
governed by the rules of chivalry. Throughout Rajputana and Káthiawád,
their castles stand on every eminence. Thence they could sally forth
upon a foray, or in them, if the worst befell, sustain a brief siege.
Younger sons either went out to carve themselves a career and perhaps
a kingdom with the sword or received an appanage, half-independent, in
which they governed as vassal princes. The chief ruled with a power
absolute and arbitrary; but he had to rule as a father among his
children. The clan obeyed, as a child obeys his father; yet withal
there was always a curious feeling of equality. They were all of the
same blood, they felt, high or low, born to carry arms, all gentlemen;
and the chief was no better than his poorest brother, except that
God had given him as eldest of the older line the right of decision
in affairs. For their estates the clansmen paid by service, each
according to his fief serving in person or with subordinate horsemen
and men-at-arms. To this class belong the women who have been India’s
heroines, the women whose names survive in story, brave with the brave,
tender and true. Best known of all, perhaps too well-known again to
bear mention, are Padmini, the princess of Mewár, and her no less
courageous companions and maid-servants. For she was beautiful, of a
beauty so surpassing as to bring ruin to her own people. ’Alá-ud-din,
the great conqueror, heard of her fame and contrived to see her
features in a mirror. Then, having looked, he swore that she must be
yielded to his passion or, if not, that Chitor, the capital of Mewár,
should fall. Finally, when it was no longer possible to resist and
the impregnable fort was only too clearly pregnable by the enemy,
Padmini called the wives and daughters of the fighting men and told
them what was in her mind. In the vaults deep within the core of this
strange hill fortress, they piled wood and straw and built themselves
a vast pyre. Then with a farewell to the soldiers who were to charge
in one last sortie upon the enemy, the women went down the steps to
the supreme offering and laid themselves upon the logs of burning wood
and died. In this way the women of Chitor--without one to shrink or to
draw back--preserved for all time the memory of Rajput honour and the
exaltation of Rajput womanhood.
Even to-day, without a doubt, there are within the _zanánas_ of Mewár
many women of a spirit no less sublime. The honour of the family, that
is a sacred flame which they feed in their hearts with ever renewed
fuel of self-sacrifice and devotion. That is a repute, which, even
when they sin, they seek to preserve intact; and they know only too
well that infraction of this law brings with it death. The women live,
with few exceptions, in the strictest seclusion, seeing no male person
except their husband and occasionally an uncle or a brother. But, in
despite of privacy, the fame of their conduct is whispered abroad and
their influence in affairs is only too often felt, even by Political
Agents and Residents. In a chief’s household, there may be two or three
wives, each with her separate establishment and her appanages. The
management of her estates alone demands a good deal of intelligence and
force of will. Handicapped as she is by being forced to converse with
her stewards through a curtain, behind which she remains invisible, it
is remarkable with what ability many a Rajput wife or widow controls
the administration of her funds, though sometimes unhappily she may
become the victim of fraud or specious appearances. The popular
estimation of the Rajput ladies’ talents is shown in the Gujaráti
proverb, “The clever woman’s children are fools, and the foolish
woman’s children are clever,” in which the former is the Rajput woman
with her impetuous and often imprudent sons, and the latter the cunning
Bania trader with his usually awkward and futile mother.
Only experience can show how deep, and sometimes how perverted, is the
respect for family honour; how hard the duty imposed upon women to
preserve it above all things else at any cost. Some years ago, a young
Rajput gentleman in an access of insane rage murdered his stepmother
in her room. He had a sister, a girl of eighteen, still unmarried, who
was sitting beside the pair and saw the murder done before her eyes.
As it happened, a Government officer was near the place, got early
information, and by a forced ride through darkness over forest tracks
was able to reach the scene of the murder by midnight. He went at once
to the girl’s quarters and, while respecting the custom of purdah,
insisted upon speaking to her in person. The girl was still shaken
by the murder that she had witnessed, her nerves upset, her night
sleepless, her mind a vortex of cruel impressions. Under the skilful
questioning, she soon broke down, and--told the truth! She recounted
the facts as they had happened; and the facts were that her brother,
the head of the family, was a murderer. But thereafter the girl
remained unmarried, no Rajput of lineage, however poor, being found to
accept in marriage a Rajput maiden who by the mere truth had fixed in
the public eye a stain on the family name.
Of Rajput wooings there is still many a romantic story to be told. In
one of the smaller states there had been some talk of marrying the
daughter of the house to a greater chief. The young lady, a girl of
about fifteen, exceptionally beautiful and graceful, well-educated,
a writer of excellent letters both in her own and in the English
language, managed to get hold of a photograph of the proposed
consort and incontinently fell in love with the pictured image. The
negotiations met with unexpected difficulties and the project all but
fell through. The young chief, who had not seen her, was indifferent
and accepted an offer from a more powerful state, where he married
the young princess, almost a child. This was so far from damping the
other lady, that it served only to inflame her further. The greater
the difficulty, the more determined she was to win the man whom she
now loved with a bitter passion. She wrote, she intrigued, she guided
the negotiations herself, she entreated and schemed and insisted. At
last she was successful, and the young chief came to wed her as his
second wife. Throughout the ceremony, he was indifferent, almost bored.
From his manner it was plain that he married only as a duty, because
he was a gentleman, bound to a promise which he may have thought
himself cheated into giving. But, the ceremony over, he went according
to custom to eat the first meal with his new wife and for the first
time to see her face and listen to her speech. In less than an hour
everything was changed. Fired by her immediate charms, he burst all
the bonds of etiquette and carried his bride off to his own tents. He
made her his queen and put her like a seal upon his heart. For the
child whom he had formerly married there was little thought, and the
new bride, who for so many years had loved him from his portrait with a
passionate eagerness, became the ruler as well as the loving servant of
her prince.
The daily lives of these Rajput ladies of Mewár and Márwár may not
have many deep interests but they are by no means empty. Among the
greater chiefs, the woman’s life is the usual life of palaces, with
luxuries at command and with corresponding duties. There are servants
to order and affairs to manage. Most ladies read and hear recitations;
maid-servants sometimes sing; and children have to be cared for and
tended. Sewing is a common amusement in which most Rajput women are
expert. Occasionally a Rajput girl is heard of who, in the remoter
districts, goes out riding or even shooting, dressed sometimes as a
man, though seldom indeed can such amusements, in a caste which follows
the seclusion of women, be entertained after childhood. There are,
however, among advanced chiefs with modern ideas not a few instances
in which there is a tennis-court in the palace grounds for the ladies,
where the wives play together or with their husband and his nearest
relations. And there are some rare States where even the semblance of
seclusion is being discarded and the ladies drive abroad or shoot big
game in the jungle.
These, however, are the liberties of the great. Among the lesser
nobility, where riches are usually wanting and position has to be
maintained by a stricter observance of traditional rule, the manner
of life is busier, with less need of pleasure-seeking. In such a
minor country-house, the wife will usually rise with the sun. If her
mother-in-law is alive, she goes first to her room and wishes her a
good morning. Then comes, what is in all such households a duty of
first importance, the care of the dairy-farm with its noble white cows.
The milk and whey is always distributed to servants and dependents by
the lady herself. That done, she has a bath and says a short prayer for
her husband, sees the children have their breakfast, and visits the
kitchen. The proudest nobleman’s wife would think shame of herself,
if she did not superintend the cooking and at need take a hand in the
baking of cakes and special delicacies. She sees to it that her husband
and all male guests--usually numerous--have their breakfast before she
herself eats her meal with her women. In that hot land, all sleep who
can in the middle of the day, and the Rajput woman is no exception.
When a couple of hours later she rises, she seeks for some amusement
for the afternoon. All Rajput ladies are brought up from childhood
to the strictest care of their persons and are taught even physical
exercises. Before they are married they have learnt every device by
which they can preserve or heighten their beauty and every art by
which to sharpen their husbands’ zest and devotion. For this purpose
there are many things they learn which in Europe would be disapproved.
But it is largely due to this care that they are faultlessly neat,
fair, and attractive, and that so often their beauty lasts to advanced
years. Thus in the quiet afternoon hours one of the frequent amusements
is to inspect and brush clothes. Ladies keep large wooden chests,
hasped and bolted with iron and often beautifully carved, very like
the bridal chests of the Italian Renaissance. In them are stored the
clothes in whose neatness and beauty they place their vanity. One by
one they are taken out by the maid-servants and dusted and shown to
the mistress and refolded and put back. It is a poor woman indeed who
does not have at least fifteen to twenty skirts, from the cheaper
cotton or red Turkey cloth to the richest silks and gold embroidery.
Mantles _(Saris)_ are at least as many and of bodices there may be
forty or fifty. The maid-servants who fold the clothes are a notable
institution. Rather household slaves than servants, born and bred in
the house, and almost of pure Rajput blood themselves, they are the
intimates of their mistress. One or two of them there will always be
who have been her affectionate companions since childhood and have,
on marriage, accompanied her to her new home. Such a girl is the
lady’s confidant and constant comrade, who looks to all her comforts,
rubs her down after her bath and does skilful massage, knows all her
secrets, brings her all rumours of the world, sleeps at her side in her
husband’s absence, and is her much cherished friend. Often, especially
in youth, the two spend their afternoons sewing together. Amongst the
Rajputs of Káthiawád, besides the pretty bodices that they often sew
themselves, it is the custom for girls to embroider fringed strips of
cloth for hanging across doors or squares to fasten upon walls for use
as ornament at marriages and festivals. Little pieces of glass or mica
are let into the embroidery and the patterns very much resemble those
still sewn by peasant women in Hungary, whither they were also brought
from the same tribal centres of Asia. Reading, visiting, chatting take
up the rest of the day till evening approaches. Then the Rajput woman
puts on her richer dresses and her jewelry and gets ready for dinner
and the night.
[Illustration: RAJPUT LADY FROM CUTCH]
The Rajput women of Káthiawád and Cutch deserve some special mention,
both for their beauty and their exceptional cleverness. Beautiful they
are above all other women of India except only in Kashmir, fair with
a rich fresh golden tint of skin, with full soft eyes, and with long
black hair. In their apparel they are particularly tasteful, and the
green hues that they specially affect set off their complexion at its
best under the Indian sky. Of their intelligence there is no doubt, and
throughout the Rajput country they are respected for their talents and
perhaps, shall we add, feared for their intrigue. Jealous and ambitious
to a fault, they are not ignorant even of the use of poison; and at
least it is a proverb that “She marries the land, not the man.” Gallant
and courageous they are, even in evil, and it is not so long ago that
the tale was told of a not-virtuous princess that night after night in
the dark hours saddled a riding camel with her own hands in the stable
and rode six miles out to join a lover, and before dawn, another six
miles back, unseen, unknown, with the threat of a dagger-thrust, if
discovered, always in her mind. But when well-beloved and cherished,
these Rajput women are charming companions and faithful, assiduous
helpmates.
Besides the tribes who can claim to be Rajputs of authentic origin,
descended as was said from the Central Asian invaders who transformed
ancient India to its present type, it follows reasonably enough from
the constitution of the tribal entities and from the eternal facts
of power and sovereignty, that there are many others who put forward
a claim more or less substantiated to a similar recognition. Such are
the slightly later invaders of similar strains who came to India from
Scythia by a different road, the Jhadejas of Cutch and Káthiawád, for
instance, with their frequent marriages with Mussulmans. These have
at least a perfectly legitimate title to the name by a sort of cadet
copyhold. The hill Rajputs of the Himalayas, among whom for generations
survived the last indigenous school of Indian painting, can also fairly
put forward a claim based on historical descent. But in addition,
throughout Northern India, whenever by the fortune of circumstance a
new tribe, not yet included as a caste in the orthodox Hindu system,
has attained to princely power, the claim to true Rajput ancestry,
for a time overlaid and obscured by the dust-layers of adversity, is
propounded and defended. Minstrels in India are no less complacent
than genealogists and heralds in Europe; and a ruling chief can have
a mythical founder of his line disinterred from unknown records as
readily as can a British peer. Instances are many and notorious; but it
would be invidious to retail cases, where very often the tribe or its
ruling family are in every way worthy of inclusion.
[Illustration: MAHRATTI LADY]
Among the Hindu aristocracy not yet fully recognized as Rajput, perhaps
the most notable are the Mahrattas. Cultivators of the arid Deccan
highlands, their swift-raiding horsemen carved out many a principality
in the last three centuries. Several regiments of the Indian army
are recruited from these stern and hardy tribes, and the Mahratta has
fought steadily and well on the Euphrates and the Yser. Among the
ruling chiefs, the generosity, loyalty, and gallantry of H.H. the
Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior, in particular, have now become famous
throughout the world.
Besides the ruling chiefs, the Mahratta tribes have a number of
families of lesser nobility, above the mass of poorer farmers and
peasants. Five of the tribes boast a purer birth and loftier ancestry;
while in all ninety-nine tribes or branches of the race are counted.
But in all tribes, far greater is the distinction between gentle and
simple than among the Rajput clans. The Rajput clans form a real
brotherhood in which, in many senses, each man is as good as another,
wealth and power being accidentals only upon the leading strain. Over
the whole social life is the tradition of the feudal fief and tenure,
where all hold as gentlemen by their soldiers’ service. Among the
Mahrattas there has never been this history of feudal aristocracy.
And even more perhaps, a certain democratic tendency and a certain
proneness to claim “rights” in the true democratic spirit, make it
natural for those who have attained nobility to distinguish themselves
by a haughtier aloofness. In many ways this tendency has affected
the Mahratta woman. It has introduced the _purdah_ or seclusion for
one thing among a people to whom it is not natural, first among the
nobility, and now to a modified degree among the richer or prouder
of the farmer class. Among the mass it hardly exists even in name.
More obvious still is the difference in appearance between the _lady_
and the _woman_. The latter is like the generality of the Deccan
population--one sect of Brahmans alone excepted--dark, stunted,
hardly attractive. The former is fair, graceful, sometimes singularly
charming. Seen at her best (and there are now not a few who in the
disuse of seclusion in the more modern houses may be so seen) she
is intelligent if quiet, winning though a trifle austere, grave and
refined. The Mahratta lady lacks the open, ready smile and frank
feminine fascination of the Rajput, but she has her own severer appeal.
There is something in her always that is virginal. She goes through
life as if unconscious of evil or at least as one deliberately and
finely passing by with eyes unnoticing. Almost she reminds one of the
girl-student resolute upon her way to lectures. Or--shall we say?--in
her is something of the Florentine school, in the Rajput princess the
full rich bloom of Venice.
But in the Peninsula where it narrows to a cape against Ceylon there
still survives an earlier segregated India, untouched, or almost so,
by Scythian immigration. It never knew those tribal communities, now
broken up and regrouped and again assimilated, which left behind as
their living memorial the strenuous organism of the Rajput clans.
In the south, where the green of the rice-fields gleams bright
like emerald, and traffic moves slowly upon great waterways, a
world survives, two thousand years old, fallen perhaps a little to
decrepitude, of indigenous Dravidians--caste-ridden, they, from the
first known times--and rarer immigrant Aryans. And in that world out
of the teeming millions of the Dravidian population, akin perhaps in
remote ages to the inhabitants of the South Seas, the nobility are the
Nairs. Aristocracy they can hardly perhaps be called with propriety,
since they themselves do not claim to rule as being best. Rather they
derive their nobility, by their own showing, from the fact that they
were deemed worthy by the Aryan priests, whom they acknowledge to be
the highest of mankind. The Nairs are a community, rather than a caste
or tribe, with powers of assimilation. A large infusion of Aryan blood,
obtained from the favours of the priesthood whom they venerate, has
given them a peculiar distinction from the Dravidian masses.
In the “Relations of the Most Famous Kingdom in the World,” which was
published in the year of Grace 1611 by Master Johnson, this southern
nobility was abundantly described: “It is strange to see how ready
the souldiour of this country is at his weapons: they are all gentile
men and tearmed Naires. At seven years of age they are put to school
to learn the use of their weapons, where, to make them nimble and
active, their sinews and joints are stretched by skilful fellows and
anointed with the oyle sesamus. By this anointing they become so light
and nimble that they will wind and turn their bodies as if they had
no bones, casting them forward, backward, high and low, even to the
astonishment of the beholders. Their continual delight is in their
weapon, persuading themselves that no nation goeth beyond them in skill
and dexterity.” They are no longer warriors and the only soldiers of
Nair caste are the household brigade maintained by H.H. the Maharaja of
Travancore. But they are still brave, and in their play the sword and
buckler and the bow and arrow keep their place.
Nowadays it is the women who have won the higher fame. Seldom in
any country can there have been a womanhood that has received such
universal eulogy. From the earliest histories of Malabar to the latest
writings of French tourists, the chorus, of praise has been a monody.
Old Duarte Barbosa, writing centuries ago his “Description of the
Coasts of East Africa and Malabar,” already clothed his impression
in admiring words. Most of all he notes that “they are very clean
and well-dressed women and they hold it a great honour to know how
to please men.” This careful cleanliness and a certain grave sort of
neatness are indeed recurrent in every description. The bath is to them
a very article of faith and they bathe not daily but, almost it might
be said, hourly. Beside each house is a large private tank or pond of
masonry with broad stone steps leading to the water, and there are few
moments in the hot daylight hours when it does not resound to a woman’s
laugh. They use the nuts of various saponaceous plants to free hair and
skin from the slightest impurity; and no robe, however slightly soiled,
is ever worn again till it is thoroughly cleaned by the washerwoman.
A scrupulous cleanliness and a fastidious neatness--a total impression
of almost hieratic purity--this exhales from the Nair woman like an
emanation. By their grave simplicity an English official was inspired
to a pretty compliment, as he toiled through some red-tape Census
Report with much talk of “excess of females” in the Nair population.
“They could never be accused,” he reported with mock indignation, “of
an ‘excess of females.’ The most beautiful women in India, if numerous,
could never be excessive.”
[Illustration: NAIR LADY]
The general picture of grave and simple purity is heightened by the
appearance of their houses, each aloof and separate with a certain
quiet dignity in its own grounds. A bathing tank and a garden,
these are the first conditions of every household; and the garden
is luxuriant with the great rough stems of the jack-fruit tree, the
graceful areca and cocoa-nut palms, and bright green, broad-leaved
banana plants. To the east is the gate, through the garden, to the
house, with a stile to cross and a gate-house or lodge at its side.
The house itself, with its large household all related through the
female line, has on the ground floor its kitchen and store-rooms, an
open courtyard, and a large dining-hall. And above, with two separate
staircases, lie on one side the women’s, on the other the apartments
of the men, segregated entirely one from another. In such houses with
all their numerous family-members, brothers and sisters and cousins
and aunts and children always growing up, a certain quiet discipline
and an instinctive order, from being a duty, becomes a constant habit.
Comfort and tranquillity, if they are to be had, exact self-effacing
restraint and gentle deference to others’ wishes and requirements.
Whatever is boisterous and impulsive, the self-assertive and the crude,
has had to be effaced and smoothed away, as pebbles shaken together
in a bag lose their sharp edges. The manners that result are quiet
and self-contained, a little solemn perhaps, as of people traversing
a cathedral, but sweetened by human charity and a pleasant touch of
worldly irony.
The dress is simple in the extreme, a single white cloth that reaches
from the waist to the knee. This for long ages has been the sole
honoured dress of the Nair lady, above all fear as she is and above
reproach. That in all public places she should go boldly and unashamed,
with no self-conscious daring, but simply and modestly, with the
upper part of her body uncovered before all men, has been the law of
her community. Only jewelry she wears, a gold or silver chain, even
a gold belt about her waist, gold bosses in her ears, and a necklace
whose pendants are as the cobra’s hood upon her neck. Sometimes,
however, especially in these later days, and when she travels to other
provinces, she throws a cloth over her shoulders and bosom, with a
certain shyness, as of something coquettish and immodest.
Amusements too are simple, but to their thinking plentiful and quietly
enjoyable. All girls are taught to read and write, and not a few are
highly educated. They are in general on the happiest terms with their
husbands, whom they do not see too much and whose affections are not
blunted by the daily usage of a common household and the dulling
minutiae of daily life. When, however, there is incompatibility, they
separate simply and naturally without unkindness to seek a better loved
mate. In leisure hours, swinging, two or three merry girls on the same
swing, is a favourite amusement, and singing and dancing are often
enjoyed, especially at the great autumn festival when the house is
filled with presents and each one gives every one else a yellow cloth
or a toy or an ornament. Prettiest of all their amusements, however,
and most symbolic of all that quiet, so sweetly singular life on the
backwaters of the south, is that of flower-decoration. In the early
morning the children of the large household go into the fields to
gather flowers and bring them back in armfuls. Then all sit down in
the courtyard, and with their gathered blossoms make bright decorative
patterns on the walls and floor. Best loved of all is a flower-carpet
over which they raise a booth, gaily festooned with other flowers. When
all is complete, the neighbours are asked to come in and admire; and
they compare it with their own in turn. But the finest flowers of all
are the sweet gravely tender women of Malabar.
When he turns to the Mussulman aristocracy of India, the European
finds himself on ground more familiar, as it is more similar to the
landscape of his own social existence. These chiefs and nobles are the
descendants--in most part--of soldier adventurers who, as generals or
as governors under the Emperors of Delhi, or as rebels and fighters
for their own hand, achieved estates and even principalities. They
have no caste or tribe to distinguish them from their fellows, but owe
their position to their authority and landed interest. As sons of Adam,
they hold, all men are in essence equal, but Destiny has apportioned
sovereignty to one and to another beggary. They rise and fall, as in
Europe, too, heritages are wasted and fortunes won; and they rely upon
no mystic ordinance and no hieratic ceremonial for their prestige. The
frank acceptance of the world as it is, _facts_ alone one would say
having importance, makes the Mussulman gentleman and his family appear
figures fully human and comprehensible. Polygamy and the seclusion of
women alone cause disparities, superficial even these in many respects.
[Illustration: MUSSULMAN LADY OF NORTHERN INDIA]
The permission to marry up to four wives is in practice seldom
utilized. The commandment to treat all wives alike, with equal favour
and cherishing, in itself makes righteous polygamy by no means easy.
But a more actual obstacle is the natural jealousy of the woman and
her great influence. There are few Mussulman ladies whose husbands are
not just the least thing “henpecked.” And few of them will allow a
rival to enter the zanána without a struggle. Only in a few of the most
powerful courts is it prevalent to any conspicuous degree; and in such
royal households where it exists, it flies often in the face of Holy
Scripture no less than human sense and comfort. It is then a vice and
not an observance. Seclusion--the “purdah”--exists with a severity far
exceeding modern Turkey or even Egypt, and still more in excess of the
Prophet’s teaching; but it falls short of the unreasoning stringency
of the Rajput code. It is relaxed for one thing by the recognition in
each case of certain persons who stand “within the enclosure,” as it
is called, or in other words are free to meet the women of the house
unveiled. In this circle are included a large number of male relatives
and even, in a few cases, the husband’s most intimate friends, as well
as servants brought up from childhood within the family. Moreover, the
restriction becomes less oppressive when it is relieved by the wide
freedom to visit women-friends which is generally sanctioned. Veiled
though they drive through the streets and unseen, there are few things
which are not noted by the keen eyes behind the peep-holes in the
shrouding cloak.
The Mussulman girl of the better class is in early childhood taught
to recite prayers and to read the Qor’an in Arabic, though without
understanding of the words she reads. As she grows older she is
usually taught more, and attains a fair knowledge of Urdu, while, if
she shows signs of greater capacity, she will often learn Persian as
well. To read simple books in Urdu and Persian is at least a common
accomplishment, and there are not a few who can themselves read or, at
least, understand the elegant odes of Hafiz. In household management
and the care of her children the Mussulman lady is able to find
incessant occupation, while there is no one who more appreciates the
pleasures of a garden with runnels of flowing water under a tropic
sky. She rises very early, and shortly after dawn she is to be found
among the roses in the walled garden. Chess and backgammon are frequent
amusements. In talismans, omens, charms and the evil eye she has
an unshakable belief, which survives every trial. And in her later
years she looks forward to the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca, with all
its difficulties and hardships, as the last and best employment of
a well-spent life. Something there is truly noble in that figure of
an old lady, veiled in white, facing, after a long life behind the
curtain, the crowded port, the steamer, and the desert Bedouins. But
sweetest picture of all in the womanhood of the Mussulman nobility is
the growing girl, not yet a woman, in coloured silk trousers, long
robe, or shirt of fine Dacca muslin, and velvet cap gold-embroidered,
as she sits cross-legged beneath a shady tree and recites aloud
from the silk-covered Qor’an that is open before her on its carved
sandalwood rest.
The Middle Classes
“Things never changed since the time of the Gods,
The flowing of water, the way of love.”
_Japanese Song._ LAFCADIO HEARN.
[Illustration: FROM BURMAH]