As in Greece, where every man has to watch his vineyard at night, so here, the kureehan or threshing-floor each has its watchman at night. For the protection of the growing crops, the villagers club together, and appoint a watchman or chowkeydar, whom they pay by giving him a small percentage on the yield; or a small fractional proportion of the area he has to guard, with its standing crop, may be made over to him as a recompense.
They thresh out the rice when it has matured a little on the threshing-floor. Four to six bullocks are tied in a line to a post in the centre, and round this they slowly pace in a circle. They are not muzzled, and the poor brutes seem rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury of feeding while they work. When there is a good wind, the grain is winnowed; it is lifted either in bamboo scoops or in the two hands. The wind blows the chaff or bhoosa on to a heap, and the fine fresh rice remains behind. The grain merchants now do a good business. Rice must be sold to pay the rent, the money-lender, and other clamouring creditors. The bunniahs will take repayment in kind. They put on the interest, and cheat in the weighments and measurements. So much has to be given to the weigh-man as a perquisite. If seed had been borrowed, it has now to be returned at a ruinous rate of interest. Some seed must be saved for next year, and an average poor ryot, the cultivator of but a little holding, very soon sees the result of his harvesting melt away, leaving little for wife and little ones to live on. He never gets free of the money-lender. He will have to go out and work hard for others, as well as get up his own little lands. No chance of a new bullock this year, and the old ones are getting worn out and thin. The wife must dispense with her promised ornament or dress. For the poor ryot it is a miserable hand-to-mouth existence when crops are poor. As a rule he is never out of debt. He lives on the scantiest fare; hunger often pinches him; he knows none of the luxuries of life. Notwithstanding all, the majority are patient, frugal, industrious, and to the full extent of their scanty means even charitable and benevolent. With the average ryot a little business goes a great way. There are some irreconcileable, discontented, worthless fellows in every village. All more or less count a lie as rather a good thing to be expert in; they lie naturally, simply, and instinctively: but with all his faults, and they are doubtless many, I confess to a great liking for the average Hindoo ryot.
At times, however, their apathy and laziness is amazing. They are very childish, petted, and easily roused. In a quarrel, however, they generally confine themselves to vituperation and abuse, and seldom come to blows.
As an instance of their fatalism or apathetic indolence, I can remember a village on the estate I was managing taking fire. It was quite close to the factory. I had my pony saddled at once, and galloped off for the burning village. It was a long, straggling one, with a good masonry well in the centre, shadowed by a mighty peepul tree. The wind was blowing the fire right along, and if no obstruction was offered, would sweep off every hut in the place. The only soul who was trying to do a thing was a young Brahmin watchman belonging to the factory. He had succeeded in removing some brass jars of his own, and was saving some grain. One woman was rocking to and fro, beating her breast and crying. There sat the rest of the apathetic villagers in groups, not lifting a finger, not stirring a step, but calmly looking on, while the devouring element was licking up hut after hut, and destroying their little all. In a few minutes some of my servants, syces, and factory men had arrived. I tied up the pony, ordered my men to pull down a couple of huts in the centre, and tried to infuse some energy into the villagers. Not a bit of it; they would not stir. They would not even draw a bucket of water. However, my men got earthen pots; I dug up fresh earth and threw it on the two dismantled huts, dragging away as much of the thatch and debris as we could.
The fire licked our faces, and actually got a footing on the first house beyond the frail opening we had tried to make, but we persevered, and ultimately stayed the fire, and saved about two thirds of the village. I never saw such an instance of complete apathy. Some of the inhabitants even had not untied the cattle in the sheds. They seemed quite prostrated. However, as we worked on, and they began to see that all was not yet lost, they began to buckle to; yet even then their principal object was to save their brass pots and cooking utensils, things that could not possibly burn, and which they might have left alone with perfect safety.
A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo. The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire. Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these fires are of very frequent occurrence. In Bhaugulpore, I have seen, from my verandah, three villages on fire at one and the same time. In some parts of Oudh, among the sal forests, village after village is burnt down annually, and I have seen the same catastrophe visit the same village several times in the course of one year. These fires arise from pure carelessness, sheer apathy, and laziness.
Sanitary precautions too are very insufficient; practically there are none. Huge unsightly water-holes, filled during the rains with the drainage of all the dung-heaps and mounds of offal and filth that abound in the village, swelter under the hot summer sun. They get covered with a rank green scum, and if their inky depths be stirred, the foulest and most fearful odours issue forth. In these filthy pools the villagers often perform their ablutions; they do not scruple to drink the putrid water, which is no doubt a hotbed and regular nursery for fevers, and choleraic and other disorders.
Many home readers are but little acquainted with the Indian village system, and I shall devote a chapter to the description of a Hindoo village, with its functionaries, its institutions, its inhabitants, and the more marked of their customs and avocations.