Peeps at Many Lands—India

by John Finnemore

The money-lender is one of the oldest features of Indian village life. From the earliest times his trade has been in great vogue, and the Indian peasant is to-day as dependent upon him as ever. Broadly speaking, the ryot is always in debt. He is so careless, and thinks so little of the future that he always lives from hand to mouth, and a failure of his crop brings him within touch of famine at once. Then he resorts to the money-lender to borrow money to buy food or pay his rent, and to raise the money he often agrees to sell his next crop to the money-lender at a price which the money-lender himself will fix.

The price is very low, and the money is at once swallowed up to pay rent or the interest on the last loan, and so the peasant is driven to apply to the money-lender once more to obtain funds to carry him on to the next harvest. In this way the ryot falls completely into the hands of the money-lender, and, in order that the unlucky husbandman may not escape his clutches, the creditor employs men to watch the farmer's crops day and night, and the latter has to pay all these expenses.

Just beyond the money-lender's house is the dwelling of the baid, the doctor. He is sitting on his veranda, busily reading a very ancient book on medicine. It is from the instructions in this book that he treats all his patients. He has a store of herbs and roots, which he uses to make pills and potions. He looks with the greatest contempt on the European doctors and their medicines, and declares that they do not know how to treat Hindoo patients.

As a rule, the baid is a very poor hand at curing his patients. If they get well he takes all the credit; if they die he says that the hour of their death had come, and who can resist fate? But here and there are to be found men who have so great a knowledge of herbs and simples that they can effect wonderful cures. "A curious cure of asthma is recorded of a European who derived little benefit from the treatment of his own countrymen. A baid offered to cure him when his case had become almost hopeless. The European laughed. However, getting quite desperate, he submitted to the treatment of the Hindoo doctor, and the few sweet black pills which the latter administered wrought a complete cure. The grateful patient begged the doctor to name his own reward; but he would listen to nothing of the kind, nor would he tell of what ingredients the pills were composed. Indeed, this the baids will never do."

CHAPTER XX

IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE (continued)

Now there comes up to the veranda a quiet-looking man with a little bundle under his arm, and the baid lays aside his book. The village barber has come to shave him. The Hindoo barber is a very important man. Not only has he under his care the shaven crowns, the smooth chins, and the close-cropped hair of his neighbours, but he is the village surgeon also, for the baid knows nothing of surgery. It is the barber who bores the ears and noses of the little girls to put in rings and ornaments.

He squats down beside the doctor and unrolls his little bundle and spreads out its contents. He has a razor, a pair of scissors, a small steel instrument for cutting nails, a leather strop, a little brass cup, a scrap of looking-glass, and a towel. He uses neither brush nor soap for shaving, but puts cold water in the cup and dips his fingers into it. With these fingers he wets and rubs the chin, and then sweeps his razor over it with light and skilful hand, doing his work like a master. When he has finished he rolls up his little bundle and goes on to the next house, for he has a fixed round of customers, and no Hindoo, whether rich or poor, ever shaves himself.

Going thus from house to house the barber knows every one, and is often employed as a match-maker. In India parents always arrange the marriages of their children, and the wishes of the latter are not consulted in the affair. Indeed, marriages are often settled at so early an age that the children do not understand what it means. A girl is fetched from her play and married to a boy not much older than herself. She goes back to her dolls, and he goes back to school, and perhaps neither sees the other again for years.

In arranging these affairs there is often much coming and going of the family barber. He has to find out how much dowry the parents of the girl will give with their daughter, or, on the other hand, he is sent to see what examinations the young man has passed. This is an important point. The Hindoos think a great deal of such distinctions, and a young man who has passed a University examination can get a much richer wife than he who has not.