At various times of the day groups of priests and novices move up and down the market collecting offerings from the people, while some "original" or buffoon gives the scene its touch of humour.
At sunset, when the bazaar is closed, long lines of people, some on foot, some in hooded carts, wend their ways towards their distant homes; and long after darkness has fallen on the land may still be heard the faint creaking of some laden cart as it slowly disappears along its lonely forest path.
CHAPTER VIII
FIELD WORK
If you are up very early in the morning you may see large herds of buffaloes and bullocks being driven to the paddy-fields. These surround the village, sometimes extending for miles in different directions; but often they are simply small clearings scattered through the jungle. The cattle are always driven by the children of the village, and it is curious to see how docile these huge buffaloes are under the control of some diminutive native, while with Europeans they are obstinate, ungovernable, and often dangerous.
The children always ride the cattle to the fields, sitting well back on the haunches, for they frequently have to travel a long, and often broken, path to their destination, and during the rains they are thus enabled to cross the streams and flooded areas, which it would have been impossible for them to do on foot.
It will interest you to know something about the manner in which the Burmans produce their rice-crop. Rice, as you know, requires a great deal of moisture, especially in the early days of its growth; consequently the ground upon which the rice-crop is to be sown must be level, so that the water with which the fields are covered may flow equally over the whole surface. The water is kept in by little dikes, or "bunds," as they are called, which surround each field, or the part of it to be irrigated; and as during a considerable portion of each year these cultivated areas are under water, and are always more or less in a boggy condition, these "bunds" form the most convenient, if not the only, means of traversing the district. Tortuous and winding as they are, it is not easy to decide upon your route, and you need not be surprised if the little causeway upon which you have set out eventually brings you back to your first starting-point, and you must make another attempt in a different direction. I remember once being hopelessly lost among the "bunds" in my endeavour to cross a patch of paddy-land, and although it was not more than a mile in width, two hours of valuable time were spent before I solved the problem of this labyrinth, and struck the road on its farther side.
Rice cultivation begins towards the end of the monsoon, when the rains have thoroughly saturated the soil and filled the fields with water, often to the top of the dikes. Then ploughing begins, and the grass with which the fields were recently covered is turned over in clods, as we do at home, by means of a curious wooden plough shod with bronze or iron.