“The usual food of the Hindoo is very simple, and their meals are of but short duration. Rice boiled in water, and curry (a compound of vegetables, ghee—a sort of clarified butter, spices, and saffron), sometimes eggs or milk, a little fish, and occasionally coarse meal cakes, bananas, and the fruit of the bread tree, form the morning and evening meal of rich and poor. The leaves of the banana tree are used instead of plates and dishes. In eating vegetables and rice, fingers are used instead of spoons and forks; and the meat is torn by the teeth in default of the absent knife. An European is rather likely to be disgusted with the sauce trickling down the chins and the fingers of the guests at a Hindoo meal. Water is the prevailing drink, and but little use is made of arrack (a spirit extracted from the palm tree).
161.—NAUTCH GIRL OF BARODA.
“Faithful observers of their religious injunctions, which forbid them to touch animal food under pain of being excluded from society and from the bosom of their families, the high caste natives never eat meat; as for the Pariahs, they eat all kinds of animals, and are very fond of arrack.
“Betel is incessantly used all over India. In hot countries, where the inhabitants lead a sedentary life, their digestion becomes sluggish, and can neither receive nor absorb the same quantity of nourishment as it does in Northern countries. The vegetable diet of the Hindoos is not very rich in azotic matter, and its continual use would cause an internal formation of gas, without the alkaline stimulant used by all the inhabitants of India to prevent its development. This stimulant is the astringent areca nut, which they chew with a little lime placed on a betel leaf.
“This mixture dyes the lips and the tongue red; it is pernicious in its effect on the teeth, but it is certainly useful to the digestive functions.
“Tobacco, rolled in a green leaf and lighted like a cigarette, is the universal method of smoking.
“Many different languages are spoken in India. Philologists have enumerated as many as fifty-eight, but not more than ten have an alphabet and literature of their own. Sanskrit, a dead language, is more or less mixed with all the dialects of India. In the north it forms their incontestable basis, but in the south it is merely grafted on to pre-existing tongues, and frequently but faint traces are found of it. All the alphabets seem to have been invented separately, but they have been improved by the regular and philosophical arrangement of the Devanagri. This is the name of the Sanskrit alphabet, the most perfect of all. The living languages have a very simple grammatical construction.
“Hindostani, which is spoken in the province of Agra, is the most cultivated and the most generally employed of all Indian languages. It has received a large Persian element since the Mussulman conquest. Besides the local dialect of each district, Hindostani is everywhere spoken by the educated classes, and by all professing the Mussulman faith.