Description of a native village.--Village functionaries.--The barber.
--Bathing habits.--The village well.--The school.--The children.--The
village bazaar.--The landowner and his dwelling.--The 'Putwarrie' or
village accountant.--The blacksmith.--The 'Punchayiet' or village jury
system.--Our legal system in India.--Remarks on the administration of
justice.
A typical village in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched
huts, apparently set down at random--as indeed it is, for every one
erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can
get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved
plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several
small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and
from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks,--in the rains a perfect
quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling
hedges of aloe or prickly pear. These hedges are festooned with masses
of clinging luxuriant creepers, among which sometimes struggles up a
custard apple, an avocado pear, or a wild plum-tree. The latter is a
prickly straggling tree, called the _bhyre_; the wood is very hard, and
is often used for making ploughs. The fruit is a little hard yellow
crisp fruit, with a big stone inside, and very sweet; when it is ripe,
the village urchins throw sticks up among the branches, and feast on
the golden shower.
On many of the banks bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather
strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is
planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are
then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge
of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the
traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' wanting only
its beauty and freshness. On a hot day the atmosphere in one of these
village roads is stifling and loaded with dust.
These houses with their grass walls and thatched roof are called
_kutcha_, as opposed to more pretentious structures of burnt brick,
with maybe a tiled sloping or flat plastered roof, which are called
_pucca. Pucca_ literally means 'ripe,' as opposed to _cutcha_, 'unripe';
but the rich Oriental tongue has adapted it to almost every kind of
secondary meaning. Thus a man who is true, upright, respected, a man
to be depended on, is called a _pucca_ man. It is a word in constant
use among Anglo-Indians. A _pucca_ road is one which is bridged and
metalled. If you make an engagement with a friend, and he wants to
impress you with its importance, he will ask you, Now is that _pucca_?'
and so on.
Other houses in the village are composed of unburnt bricks cemented
with mud, or maybe composed of mud walls and thatched roof; these,
being a compound sort of erection, are called _cutcha pucca_. In the
_cutcha_ houses live the poorer castes, the _Chumars_ or workers in
leathers, the _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, or _Gwallahs_.
The _Dornes_, or scavengers, feeders on offal, have to live apart in a
_tolah_, which might be called a small suburb, by themselves. The
_Dornes_ drag from the village any animal that happens to die. They
generally pursue the handicraft of basket making, or mat making, and
the _Dorne tolah_ can always be known by the pigs and fowls prowling
about in search of food, and the _Dorne_ and his family splitting up
bamboo, and weaving mats and baskets at the doors of their miserable
habitation. To the higher castes both pigs arid fowls are unclean and
an abomination. _Moosahms, Doosadhs_, and other poor castes, such as
_Dangurs_, keep however an army of gaunt, lean, hungry-looking pigs.
These may be seen rooting and wallowing in the marshes when the rice
has been cut, or foraging among the mango groves, to pick up any stray
unripe fruit that may have escaped the keen eyes of the hungry and
swarming children.
There is yet another small _tolah_ or suburb, called the _Kusbee
tolah_. Here live the miserable outcasts who minister to the worst
passions of our nature. These degraded beings are banished from the
more respectable portions of the community; but here, as in our own
highly civilised and favoured land, vice hovers by the side of virtue,
and the Hindoo village contains the same elements of happiness and
misery, profligacy and probity, purity and degradation, as the fine
home cities that are a name in the mouths of men.
Every village forms a perfect little commonwealth; it contains all the
elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as
social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman,
potter, barber, and writer. The _dhobee_, or washerman, can always be
known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he
uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or
tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often
see strings of donkeys laden with bags of grain, which they transport
from far-away villages to the big bazaars; but if you see a laden
donkey near a village, be sure the _dhobee_ is not far off.
Here as elsewhere the _hajam_, or barber, is a great gossip, and
generally a favourite. He uses no soap, and has a most uncouth-looking
razor, yet he shaves the heads, beards, moustaches, and armpits of his
customers with great deftness. The lower classes of natives shave the
hair of the head and of the armpits for the sake of cleanliness and for
other obvious reasons. The higher classes are very regular in their
ablutions; every morning, be the water cold or warm, the Rajpoot and
Brahmin, the respectable middle classes, and all in the village who lay
any claim to social position, have their _goosal_ or bath. Some hie to
the nearest tank or stream; at all hours of the day, at any ferry or
landing stage, you will see swarthy fine-looking fellows up to mid
waist in the water, scrubbing vigorously their bronzed arms, and neck
and chest. They clean their teeth with the end of a stick, which they
chew at one extremity, till they loosen the fibres, and with this
improvised toothbrush and some wood ashes for paste, they make them
look as white and clean as ivory.
There is generally a large masonry well in the middle of the village,
with a broad smooth _pucca_ platform all round it. It has been built by
some former father of the hamlet, to perpetuate his memory, to fulfil a
vow to the gods, perhaps simply from goodwill to his fellow townsmen.
At all events there is generally one such in every village. It is
generally shadowed by a huge _bhur, peepul_, or tamarind tree. Here may
always be seen the busiest sight in the village. Pretty young women
chatter, laugh, and talk, and assume all sorts of picturesque attitudes
as they fill their waterpots; the village matrons gossip, and sometimes
quarrel, as they pull away at the windlass over the deep cool well. On
the platform are a group of fat Brahmins nearly nude, their lighter
skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
hut, for the wants of her lord and master.
Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little
Hindoo scholar probably wishes to impress you with a sense of his
assiduity. He raises his voice, sways the body more briskly, keeps his
one eye firmly fixed on his task, while with the other he throws a keen
swift glance over you, which embraces every detail of your costume, and
not improbably includes a shrewd estimate of your disposition and
character.
Hindoo children never seem to me to be boys or girls; they are
preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing
together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most
portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and
guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty
scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English
children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The
poorer classes can hardly be said to have any childhood; as soon as
they can toddle they are sent to weed, cut grass, gather fuel, tend
herds, or do anything that will bring them in a small pittance, and
ease the burden of the struggling parents. I think the children of the
higher and middle classes very pretty; they have beautiful, dark,
thoughtful eyes, and a most intelligent expression. Very young babies
however are miserably nursed; their hair is allowed to get all tangled
and matted into unsightly knots; their faces are seldom washed, and
their eyes are painted with antimony about the lids, and are often
rheumy and running with water. The use of the pocket handkerchief is
sadly neglected.
There is generally one open space or long street in our village, and in
a hamlet of any importance there is weekly or bi-weekly a bazaar or
market. From early morning in all directions, from solitary huts in
the forest, from struggling little crofts in the rice lands, from
fishermen's dwellings perched on the bank of the river, from lonely
camps in the grass jungle where the herd and his family live with their
cattle, from all the petty Thorpes about, come the women with their
baskets of vegetables, their bundles of spun yarn, their piece of woven
cloth, whatever they have to sell or barter. There is a lad with a pair
of wooden shoes, which he has fashioned as he was tending the village
cows; another with a grass mat, or bamboo staff, or some other strange
outlandish-looking article, which he hopes to barter in the bazaar for
something on which his heart is set. The _bunniahs_ hurry up their
tottering, overladen ponies; the rice merchant twists his patient
bullock's tail to make it move faster; the cloth merchant with his bale
under his arm and measuring stick in hand, walks briskly along. Here
comes a gang of charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on
poles dangling from their shoulders. A _box wallah_ with his attendant
coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods,
hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a
confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief
contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or
moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are
heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets of meal, pulse, or
barley; sweetmeats occupy the attention of nearly all the buyers. All
Hindoos indulge in sweets, which take the place of beer with us;
instead of a 'nobbler,' they offer you a 'lollipop.' Trinkets, beads,
bracelets, armlets, and anklets of pewter, there are in great bunches;
fruits, vegetables, sticks of cane, skins full of oil, and sugar, and
treacle. Stands with fresh 'paun' leaves, and piles of coarse looking
masses of tobacco are largely patronised. It is like a hive of bees.
The dust hovers over the moving mass; the smells are various, none of
them 'blest odours of sweet Araby.' Drugs, condiments, spices, shoes,
in fact, everything that a rustic population can require, is here. The
_pice_ jingle as they change hands; the haggling and chaffering are
without parallel in any market at home. Here is a man apparently in the
last madness of intense passion, in fierce altercation with another,
who tries his utmost to outbluster his furious declamation. In a moment
they are smiling and to all appearance the best friends in the world.
The bargain has been concluded; it was all about whether the one could
give three _brinjals_ or four for one pice. It is a scene of
indescribable bustle, noise, and confusion. By evening however, all
will have been packed up again, and only the faint outlines of yet
floating clouds of dust, and the hopping, cheeky crows, picking up the
scattered litter and remnants of the market, will remain to tell that
it has been bazaar day in our village.
Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
fashionable elegance.
The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
Iinnum me, billar:
Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
Humesha mara gwar!!'
This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
things to rights.
[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.