The account of the style in which affairs are conducted amused us exceedingly.
“I wish I were married to a grass-cutter!” To enable you to comprehend the sort of person to whom a begam, an eastern princess, wishes herself united, in order to avoid the pangs of jealousy, I introduce a portrait of Chungua, the grass-cutter of my horse Mootee, the Pearl of the Desert.
A cloth wrapped round the head in the form of a turban, and another cloth bound round the loins, is the usual dress of the lower orders, if dress it may be called. But it gives no idea of impropriety; the natural hue of the skin being of itself a sort of mahogany coloured covering.
Every horse has a sā’īs to groom him, and a grass-cutter to bring in his daily allowance of dūb-grass: this grass is a most luxuriant creeper; it is jointed, and shoots out to a surprising length, covering a great space of ground in the rains: the men grub it up close to the roots; nevertheless the portion that remains in the earth soon springs up, you cannot eradicate it: in the hot winds, the men grub up the roots, wash them, and give them to the horses: sometimes the people have to go four or five miles to bring it in, and are therefore exposed very much during the hot weather. Their pay is three rupees or three and a half per month, on which they feed and clothe themselves.
Doorba, doova, or dūb grass, (Linear bent grass, agrostis linearis, or panicum dactylon,) is thus described:—The flowers of dūb grass in their perfect state appear, through a lens, like minute rubies and emeralds in constant motion, from the least breath of air; it is the sweetest and most nutritious pasture for cattle, and its usefulness, added to its beauty, induced the Hindoos, in their earliest ages, to believe that it was the mansion of a benevolent nymph. Even the Veda celebrates it, as in the following text.
“May Durva, which rose from the water of life, which has a hundred roots, and a hundred stems, efface a hundred of my sins, and prolong my existence on earth for an hundred years.”
“Landed property is like the root of the dūb grass[91],” i.e. it is not easily destroyed.
Grass is to be procured in the bazār, but it is generally very bad, and the supply uncertain. In Calcutta, grass-cutters are not kept, as excellent hay is always to be purchased, which is much better for the horses.
“The pendant part of the turban should be in proportion to the learning[92].”