1st tribe, Brahmans or priests; however, many Brahmans are not priests.
2nd tribe, Chuttri,—Rajpūts, Rajahs, and warriors.
3rd tribe, Vaisya or merchants,—artizans, cultivators, &c.
4th tribe, called Soodra,—mechanics, artizans, and labourers: the natural duty of the Soodra is servitude.
Ram Din tells me he more especially worships Krishnŭ: he also makes pooja to Radha, also to Rām; the former the love, the second the warrior god and brother of Krishnŭ. On his forehead, as the mark of his worship, he paints three perpendicular lines, the centre of white, the two others of red clay. Ram Din is of the second tribe, a Rajpūt.
It is scarcely possible to write, the natives are making such a noise overhead, repairing the flat roof of the house, which is made of flag-stones, supported by large beams of wood; over that brick-dust and lime, mixed with water, is laid a foot in depth, which they are now beating down with little wooden mallets, holding one in each hand.
“The sight of a beggar is a request personified[115].” On the plain near the fort, just before you come to the Mahratta Bund, a fakīr had taken up his abode, where abode there was none. Ascetics of the orthodox sect, in the last stage of exaltation, put aside clothing altogether. This man’s only garment was a chatr (an umbrella made of basket-work), his long hair, matted with cow-dung and ashes, hung in stiff, straight locks nearly to his waist; his body was smeared all over with ashes; he was always on the same spot, sitting doubled up on the ground, and when suffering from illness, a bit of tattered blanket was thrown over his shoulders.
Night and day the fakīr was to be seen, a solitary wretched being, scarcely human in appearance. The passers-by threw cowries and grains of boiled rice to him; sometimes a woman would come and kindle a few bits of charcoal, and then quit him; the hot winds, the rains, the bitter frosty nights of the cold weather, were unheeded; nothing appeared to disturb the devotee. Was his frame insensible to the power of the elements? When I first saw him he had occupied that spot for twelve years, and I know he never quitted it for five years afterwards, until he was consigned to the Ganges on his decease. One night, some thieves demanded rupees of the holy man; he pleaded poverty. “I have killed such a poor man as you, and have got nine mŭns of fat out of him[116],” said one of the fellows. They beat and tortured the poor wretch until he revealed his secret hoards: he showed them a spot on the plain; they dug up some ghāras (coarse earthen vessels), which contained two thousand rupees! Content with their plunder, they quitted the holy man. The next morning he went to the General Commandant of the garrison, and told his tale, ending by producing seven hundred rupees, which the thieves had not discovered, and requesting the General to place it in security for him! His request having been granted, the fakīr returned to the plain, where he and his chatr remained until his spirit was summoned to the presence of Yamu, the judge of the dead. The police did not molest him in the out-of-the-way spot he had chosen for his retreat; they would not have allowed him to roam about the station.
Speaking of this fakīr reminds me I forgot to mention, that, when I visited the fair early in February last, I rode there before sunrise, and was greatly amused. Hundreds of Hindoos were undergoing penance, not for their sins, but for copper coins; some were lying on their backs upon thorns, each with a child upon his breast, asking charity; one man was standing upon one leg, in meditation; he began his penance at sunrise, and ended it at sunset.
We rode down to the water’s edge, and saw the Hindoos doing pooja to living cows. One man, the shawl over whose shoulders was tied to the end of the chādar, worn over the head by a woman, came to a cow, the woman following him; he took hold of the cow’s tail in his hand, holding in it at the same time the sacred cusa-grass; the woman did the same; the Brahman muttered a prayer, which the man repeated; he then, followed by the woman, walked round the cow many times turning to the left, which having done a certain number of times, he whispered into the cow’s right ear; the woman came to the same ear, and also whispered to the cow; which ceremony being accomplished, they were sent into the river to bathe at the junction. The rites I witnessed, are, I believe, a portion of the marriage ceremonies of the Hindūs. The cusa-grass is the poa cynosurides; almost every poem in Sanscrit contains allusions to the holiness of this grass. Some of the leaves taper to a most acute point; it is an Hindoo saying, speaking of a very sharp-minded man, “his intellects are as acute as the point of a cusa leaf.”