88 WONDERFUL CONSTITUTION OF THE HINDU
goats and sheep, and their young, added to the one or two calves they are able to sell from time to time, bring in a small income. Two or three milch-kine and one or two buffaloes supply them with a certain quantity of butter for four or five months in the year, of which they make good use. The sale of pigs, fowls, eggs, & c, also contributes to their support, and even enables them to save for future needs, or to meet matrimonial expenses. Nevertheless, after a bad harvest numbers of these cultivators are reduced to the same state of want as those below them, and are obliged to have recourse to the same shifts.
In these times of distress the Hindus have only their wonderful constitutions to fall back upon. Accustomed from their earliest infancy to privations of every kind, they are able to keep body and soul together on the smallest
pittance of food. A pound a day of millet flour, boiled in water and reduced to a thin gruel, is enough to prevent
a family of five or six persons from dying of hunger. With
no food besides this gruel and water the majority of the natives manage to keep hale and hearty for months together.
Furthermore, they possess the no less valuable faculty of sleeping at will. An idle Hindu invariably goes to sleep, and so does the man who has nothing to eat. If the homely proverb ' he who sleeps dines ' can be taken literally, the Hindus certainly find consolation in it in times of scarcity.
The fourth class comprises those whose property varies in value from £ 50 to £ 100 sterling, and I should say it forms three-fortieths of the population. These people live in comfort, being chiefly Brahmins or well-to-do Sudras.
They all keep servants belonging to the lowest class to aid them in cultivation. Besides this, some of them are rich enough to embark on commercial speculations in connexion with grain or other commodities, while others lend small sums of money at high interest. This class provides the villages with their Sudra headmen, and these men are at the same time the largest holders of Government lands.
They also exercise in their villages the functions of collectors of revenue, petty magistrates, and public arbitrators. As
they are usually held responsible by Government for the due payment of all taxes levied on their villages, they are