How to get our crop.--The 'Dangurs.'--Farm servants and their duties.
--Kassee Rai.--Hoeing.--Ploughing.--'Oustennie.'--Coolies at work.
--Sowing.--Difficulties the plant has to contend with.--Weeding.
Having now got our land, water, and buildings--which latter I will
describe further on--the next thing is to set to work to get our crop.
Manufacture being finished, and the crop all cut by the beginning or
middle of October, when the annual rains are over, it is of importance
to have the lands dug up as early as possible, that the rich moisture,
on which the successful cultivation of the crop mainly depends, may be
secured before the hot west winds and strong sun of early spring lick
it up.
Attached to every factory is a small settlement of labourers, belonging
to a tribe of aborigines called _Dangurs_. These originally, I believe,
came from Chota Nagpoor, which seems to have been their primal home.
They are a cheerful industrious race, have a distinct language of their
own, and only intermarry with each other. Long ago, when there were no
post carriages to the hills, and but few roads, the Dangurs were
largely employed as dale runners, or postmen. Some few of them settled
with their families on lands near the foot of the hills in Purneah, and
gradually others made their way northwards, until now there is scarcely
a factory in Behar that has not its Dangur tola, or village.
The men are tractable, merry-hearted, and faithful. The women betray
none of the exaggerated modesty which is characteristic of Hindoo women
generally. They never turn aside and hide their faces as you pass, but
look up to you with a merry smile on their countenances, and exchange
greetings with the utmost frankness. In a future chapter I may speak at
greater length of the Dangurs; at present it suffices to say, that they
form a sort of appanage to the factory, and are in fact treated as part
of the permanent staff.
Each Dangur when he marries, gets some grass and bamboos from the
factory to build a house, and a small plot of ground to serve as a
garden, for which he pays a very small rent, or in many instances
nothing at all. In return, he is always on the spot ready for any
factory work that may be going on, for which he has his daily wage.
Some factories pay by the month, but the general custom is to charge
for hoeing by piece-work, and during manufacture, when the work is
constant, there is paid a monthly wage.
In the close foggy mornings of October and November, long before the
sun is up, the Dangurs are hard at work in the Zeraats, turning up the
soil with their _kodalies_, (a kind of cutting hoe,) and you can often
hear their merry voices rising through the mist, as they crack jokes
with each other to enliven their work, or troll one of their quaint
native ditties.
They are presided over by a 'mate,' generally one of the oldest men and
first settlers in the village. If he has had a large family, his sons
look up to him, and his sons-in-law obey his orders with the utmost
fealty. The 'mate' settles all disputes, presents all grievances to the
_sahib_, and all orders are given through him.
The indigo stubble which has been left in the ground is perhaps about a
foot high, and as they cut it out, their wives and children come to
gather up the sticks for fuel, and this of course also helps to clean
the land. By eleven o'clock, when the sluggish mist has been dissipated
by the rays of the scorching sun, the day's labour is nearly concluded.
You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
dug up during the early hours of morning.
In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
keeping the moisture in the soil.
Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village
_chowkeydar_, or watchman, sees that stray cattle do not get into the
fields, that the roads, bridges and fences are not damaged, and so on.
Over the Tokedars, again, are Zillahdars. A 'zillah' is a small
district. There may be eight or ten villages and three or four Tokedars
under a Zillahdar. The Zillahdar looks out for good lands to change for
bad ones, where this is necessary, and where no objection is made by
the farmer; sees that the Tokedars do their work properly; reports
rain, blight, locusts, and other visitations that might injure the
crop; watches all that goes on in his zillah, and makes his report to
the planter whenever anything of importance happens in his particular
part of the cultivation. Over all again comes the JEMADAR--the head man
over the whole cultivation--the planter's right-hand man.
He is generally an old, experienced, and trusted servant. He knows all
the lands for miles round, and the peculiar soils and products of all
the villages far and near. He can tell what lands grow the best
tobacco, what lands are free from inundation, what free from drought;
the temper of the inhabitants of each village, and the history of each
farm; where are the best ploughs, the best bullocks, and the best
farming; in what villages you get most coolies for weeding; where you
can get the best carts, the best straw, and the best of everything at
the most favourable rates. He comes up each night when the day's work
is done, and gets his orders for the morrow. You are often glad to take
his advice on sowing, reaping, and other operations of the farm. He
knows where the plant will ripen earliest, and where the leaf will be
thickest, and to him you look for satisfaction if any screw gets loose
in the outside farm-work.
He generally accompanies you in your morning ride, shows you your new
lands, consults with you about throwing up exhausted fields, and is
generally a sort of farm-bailiff or confidential land-steward. Where he
is an honest, intelligent, and loyal man, he takes half the care and
work off your shoulders. Such men are however rare, and if not very
closely looked after, they are apt to abuse their position, and often
harass the ryots needlessly, looking more to the feathering of their
own nests than the advancement of your interests.
The only Jemadar I felt I could thoroughly trust, was my first one at
Parewah, an old Rajpoot, called Kassee Rai. He was a fine, ruddy-faced,
white-haired old man, as independent and straightforward an old farmer
as you could meet anywhere, and I never had reason to regret taking his
advice on any matter. I never found him out in a lie, or in a dishonest
or underhand action. Though over seventy years of age he was upright as
a dart. He could not keep up with me when we went out riding over the
fields, but he would be out the whole day over the lands, and was
always the first at his work in the morning and the last to leave off
at night. The ryots all loved him, and would do anything for him; and
when poor old Kassee died, the third year he had been under me, I felt
as if an old friend had gone. I never spoke an angry word to him, and I
never had a fault to find with him.
When the hoeing has been finished in zeraat and zillah, and all the
upturned soil battened down by the _hengha_, the next thing is to
commence the ploughing. Your ploughmen are mostly low caste
men--Doosadhs, Churnars, Moosahurs, Gwallahs, _et hoc genus omne_.
The Indian plough, so like a big misshapen wooden pickaxe, has often
been described. It however turns up the light soft soil very well
considering its pretensions, and those made in the factory workshops
are generally heavier and sharper than the ordinary village plough.
Our bullocks too, being strong and well fed, the ploughing in the
zeraats is generally good.
The ploughing is immediately followed up by the _hengha_, which again
triturates and breaks up the clods, rolls the sticks, leaves, and grass
roots together, brings the refuse and dirt to the surface, and again
levels the soil, and prevents the wind from taking away the moisture.
The land now looks fine and fresh and level, but very dirty. A host of
coolies are put on the fields with small sticks in their hands. All the
Dangur women and children are there, with men, women, and children of
all the poorest classes from the villages round, whom the attractions
of wages or the exertions of headmen Tokedars and Zillahdars have
brought together to earn their daily bread. With the sticks they beat
and break up every clod, leaving not one behind the size of a walnut.
They collect all the refuse, weeds, and dirt, which are heaped up and
burnt on the field, and so they go on till the zeraats look as clean as
a nobleman's garden, and you would think that surely this must satisfy
the fastidious eye of the planter. But no, our work is not half begun
yet.
It is rather a strange sight to see some four or five hundred coolies
squatted in a long irregular line, chattering, laughing, shouting, or
squabbling. A dense cloud of dust rises over them, and through the dim
obscurity one hears the ceaseless sound of the thwack! thwack! as their
sticks rattle on the ground. White dust lies thick on each swarthy
skin; their faces are like faces in a pantomime. There are the flashing
eyes and the grinning rows of white teeth; all else is clouded in thick
layers of dust, with black spots and stencillings showing here and
there like a picture in sepia and chalk. As they near the end of the
field they redouble their thwacking, shuffle along like land-crabs, and
while the Mates, Peons, and Tokedars shout at them to encourage them,
they raise a roar loud enough to wake the dead. The dust rises in
denser clouds, the noise is deafening, a regular mad hurry-scurry, a
wild boisterous scramble ensues, and amid much chaffing, noise, and
laughter, they scramble off again to begin another length of land; and
so the day's work goes on.
The planter has to count his coolies several times a-day, or they would
cheat him. Some come in the morning, get counted, and their names put
on the roll, and then go off till paytime comes round. Some come for an
hour or two, and send a relative in the evening when the pice are being
paid out, to get the wage of work they have not done. All are paid in
pice--little copper bits of coin, averaging about sixty-four to the
rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after
some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get
'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the
artless and unsophisticated coolie.
The type of feature along a line of coolies is as a rule a very
forbidding and degraded one. They are mostly of the very poorest class.
Many of them are plainly half silly, or wholly idiotic; not a few are
deaf and dumb; others are crippled or deformed, and numbers are leprous
and scrofulous. Numbers of them are afflicted in some districts with
goitre, caused probably by bad drinking water; all have a pinched,
withered, wan look, that tells of hard work and insufficient fare. It
is a pleasure to turn to the end of the line, where the Dangur women
and boys and girls generally take their place. Here are the loudest
laughter, and the sauciest faces. The children are merry, chubby, fat
things, with well-distended stomachs and pleasant looks; a merry smile
rippling over their broad fat cheeks as they slyly glance up at you.
The women--with huge earrings in their ears, and a perfect load of
heavy brass rings on their arms--chatter away, make believe to be shy,
and show off a thousand coquettish airs. Their very toes are bedizened
with brass rings; and long festoons of red, white, and blue beads hang
pendent round their necks.
In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow. A huge bag of
copper coin is produced. The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on
nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each
name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the
coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at
the village Bunneah's shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas,
or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor
coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare
on the morrow. Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!
During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along
pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in
his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all
objects most pitiable. It is, however, a fact little creditable to his
more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his
labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for
tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection
with their own fields.
[Illustration: COOLIE'S HUT.]
This first cleaning of the fields--or, as it is called, _Oustennie_--being
finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then
once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt
remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist,
and clean. We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most
enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood
fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and
generally enjoy ourselves. Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does
about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets
beaten down and caked over. In such a case amusements must for a time
be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed. Of
course we are never wholly idle. There are always rents to collect,
matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry,
law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect
manorial or other rights,--but generally speaking, when the lands have
been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or
so.
Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally
comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near
we make preparations for beginning our sowings. February is the usual
month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on
up till May and June. In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation
is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast. And in
Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the
banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods. In Tirhoot,
however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is
practised, the sowing is done by means of drills. Drills are got out,
overhauled, and put in thorough repair. Bags of seed are sent out to
the villages, advances for bullocks are given to the ryots, and on a
certain day when all seems favourable--no sign of rain or high
winds--the drills are set at work, and day and night the work goes on,
till all the cultivation has been sown. As the drills go along, the
hengha follows close behind, covering the seed in the furrows; and once
again it is put over, till the fields are all level, shining, and
clean, waiting for the first appearance of the young soft shoots.
These, after some seven, nine, or perhaps fifteen days, according to
the weather, begin to appear in long lines of delicate pale yellowish
green. This is a most anxious time. Should rain fall, the whole surface
of the earth gets caked and hard, and the delicate plant burns out, or
being chafed against the hard surface crust, it withers and dies. If
the wind gets into the east, it brings a peculiar blight which settles
round the leaf and collar of the stem of the young plant, chokes it,
and sweeps off miles and miles of it. If hot west winds blow, the plant
gets black, discoloured, burnt up, and dead. A south wind often brings
caterpillars--at least this pest often makes its appearance when the
wind is southerly; but as often as not caterpillars find their way to
the young plant in the most mysterious manner,--no one knowing whence
they come. Daily, nay almost hourly, reports come in from all parts of
the zillah: now you hear of 'Lahee,' blight on some field; now it is
'Ihirka,' scorching, or 'Pilooa,' caterpillars. In some places the seed
may have been bad or covered with too much earth, and the plant comes
up straggling and thin. If there is abundant moisture, this must be
re-sown. In fact, there is never-ending anxiety and work at this
season, but when the plant has got into ten or fifteen leaf, and is an
inch or two high, the most critical time is over, and one begins to
think about the next operation, namely WEEDING.
The coolies are again in requisition. Each comes armed with a
_coorpee_,--this is a small metal spatula, broad-pointed, with which
they dig out the weeds with amazing deftness. Sometimes they may
inadvertently take out a single stem of indigo with the weeds: the eye
of the mate or Tokedar espies this at once, and the careless coolie is
treated to a volley of Hindoo Billingsgate, in which all his relations
are abused to the seventh generation. By the time the first weeding is
finished, the plant will be over a foot high, and if necessary a second
weeding is then given. After the second weeding, and if any rain has
fallen in the interim, the plant will be fully two feet high.
It is now a noble-looking expanse of beautiful green waving foliage. As
the wind ruffles its myriads of leaves, the sparkle of the sunbeams on
the undulating mass produces the most wonderful combinations of light
and shade; feathery sprays of a delicate pale green curl gracefully all
over the field. It is like an ocean of vegetation, with billows of rich
colour chasing each other, and blending in harmonious hues; the whole
field looking a perfect oasis of beauty amid the surrounding dull brown
tints of the season.
It is now time to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This
eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean
the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation
is called _Bedaheunee_. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is
peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish
and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most
important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye from the
plant.
To this you have been looking forward during the cold raw foggy days of
November, when the ploughs were hard at work,--during the hot fierce
winds of March, and the still, sultry, breathless early days of June,
when the air was so still and oppressive that you could scarcely
breathe. These sultry days are the lull before the storm--the pause
before the moisture-laden clouds of the monsoon roll over the land
'rugged and brown,' and the wild rattle of thunder and the lurid glare
of quivering never-ceasing lightning herald in the annual rains. The
manufacture however deserves a chapter to itself.
[Illustration: INDIGO BEATING VATS.]