Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 124

84 SMALLEST CLASS OF AGRICULTURISTS an awful stench. Into this hovel they, witli their wives and children, crowd higgledy-piggledy. Their belongings consist of a few earthen vessels, one or two sickles, and the rags in which they stand. Those who are a little less poverty-stricken have a brass lotah for drinking purposes, and another out of which they eat, a hoe, two or three sickles, a few silver bracelets, worth three or four rupees, belonging to the women, and two or three cows \ These people are agriculturists and farm Government lands, on which they pay a tax varying from two to twenty-five shillings. Such, in truth, is the state of misery in which half the population of India passes its life 2 I place in the second class all those whose property ranges from £5 to £25 sterling. This class, I should say, includes about six-twentieths of the entire population and is composed chiefly of Sudras. Those included in it are mostly agriculturists on their own account. Their poverty does not allow of their hiring others to work under them. They cultivate Government land, and pay a yearly tax of from one to twenty pagodas, according to the value of the land. They sometimes require as many as three ploughs. Their entire property consists of a few cattle, a few small gold and silver trinkets, one or two copper vessels for . 1 Many Hindus own a few oxen and cattle, which are supposed to be the most valuable part of their property in fact their degree of comfort is judged, more or less, by the number of these valuable animals which they possess. As soon as a Hindu has acquired a sufficient sum of money, he spends it as a rule on a pair of draught oxen and a cow. But the intrinsic value of these animals is small. The country oxen are, as a rule, stunted, weak, and incapable of enduring much fatigue. Four or five rupees is their outside value. Dubois. 2 In this connexion the reader will do well to refer to an excellent Blue Book entitled, Progress of the Madras Presidency during the Forty Years from 1853 to 1892, by the late Dewan Bahadur S. Srinivasa Raghavaiengar, C.I.E., a distinguished Government official, who clearly proves therein that a very great advance has been made by the country during the last four decades. Emigration also offers large fields of profitable employment to the Indian coolie nowadays Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Africa, the West Indies, Mauritius, &c, all com- peting for his services. The difficulty is to induce him to leave his miserable home. Those who do emigrate sometimes return with com- paratively large savings, and become either petty shopkeepers or petty ; — cultivators. Ed.