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.