Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 122

THE POOREST CLASS OF HINDUS 82 I should class the inhabitants of the Indian Peninsula in the following manner. The first and lowest class may be said to be composed of all those whose property is below the value of £5 sterling. This class appears to me to com- prise nine- twentieths, or perhaps even a half, of the entire population. It includes most of the Pariah class and nearly and these together all the Chucklers (leather- workers) form at least a quarter of the population. To them must be added a considerable portion of the Sudras, all the poorest members of the other castes, and the multitude of vagrants, beggars, and impostors who are to be met with everywhere. Most of the natives of this class hire themselves out as agricultural labourers, and are required to do the hardest manual labour for the smallest possible wage. In the places where they are paid in coin, they receive only just enough to buy the coarsest of food. Their wage varies from twelve to twenty rupees a year, according to locality. They are better paid along the coast. With this amount they are obliged to feed and clothe themselves. In some places they are paid half in coin and half in grain, or else they get their keep, and over and above that receive from four to eight rupees a year \ Some of the younger members of this class hire them- selves out without wages, on condition that, after working faithfully for seven or eight years, their master will provide them with a wife of their own caste and defray all nuptial Married servants who are fed by their masters expenses. carry home their daily rations. This food is supposed to be sufficient for the wants of one person, or, to quote the but they native saying, to be enough to fill the belly have to share it with their wives and children, who also have to work and thus add to the provision. When they are in actual want, as often happens, they go and seek for food in the woods, or on the banks of the rivers and tanks, where they find leaves, shrubs, roots, and herbs. These they boil, as often as not without even salt or any kind of condiment and this primitive food forms, for the ; ' ' ; ; 1 The scale is higher everywhere nowadays, but so also is the cost of food-stuffs. Nowhere in India does the common labourer earn much more than a ' livi^wage.' Ed.