Hot water is not used for bathing in Saugor, except by invalids, but is customary in Betūl and other Districts. The bathing-place in the courtyard is usually a large square stone on which the bather sits; he has a big circular brass vessel by him called gangāl,[25] and from this he takes water either in a cup or with his hands and throws it over himself, rubbing his body. Where there is a tank or stream people go to bathe in it, and if there is none the poorer classes sometimes bathe at the village well. Each man or woman has two body-or loin-cloths, and they change the cloth whenever they bathe—going into the water in the one which they have worn from the previous day, and changing into the other when they come out; long practice enables them to do this in public without any undue exposure of the body. A good tank or a river is a great amenity to a village, especially if it has a ghāt or flight of stone steps. Many people will spend an hour or so here daily, disporting themselves in the water or on the bank, and wedding and funeral parties are held by it, owing to the facilities for ceremonial bathing.
40. Food
People who do not cultivate with their own hands have only two daily meals, one at midday and the other at eight or nine in the evening. Agriculturists require a third meal in the early morning before going out to the fields. Wheat and the millets juāri and kodon are the staple foods of the cultivating classes in the northern Districts, and rice is kept for festivals. The millets are made into thick chapātis or cakes, their flour not being sufficiently adhesive for thin ones, and are eaten with the pulses, lentils, arhar,[26] mung[27] and urad.[28] The pulses are split into half and boiled in water, and when they get soft, chillies, salt and turmeric are mixed with them. Pieces of chapāti are broken off and dipped into this mixture. Various vegetables are also eaten. When pulse is not available the chapātis are simply dipped into buttermilk. If chapātis cannot be afforded at both meals, ghorna or the flour of kodon or juār boiled into a paste with water is substituted for them, a smaller quantity of this being sufficient to allay hunger. Wheat-cakes are fried in ghī (clarified butter) as a luxury, and at other times in sesamum oil. Rice or ground gram boiled in buttermilk are other favourite foods.
In Chhattīsgarh rice is the common food: it is eaten with pulses at midday and with vegetables cooked in ghī in the evening. In the morning they drink a rice-gruel, called bāsi> which consists of the previous night’s repast mixed with water and taken cold. On festivals rice is boiled in milk. Milk is often drunk at night, and there is a saying, “He who drinks water in the morning and milk at night and takes harra before he sleeps will never need a doctor.” A little powdered harra or myrobalan acts as an aperient. The food of landowners and tenants is much the same, except that the former have more butter and vegetables, according to the saying, ‘Rāja praja ka ekhi khāna’ or ‘The king and peasant eat the same food.’ Those who eat flesh have an occasional change of food, but most Kurmis abstain from it. Farmservants eat the gruel of rice or kodon boiled in water when they can afford it, and if not they eat mahua flowers. These are sometimes boiled in water, and the juice is then strained off and mixed with half-ground flour, and they are also pounded and made into chapātis with flour and water. The leaves of the young gram-plants make a very favourite vegetable and are eaten raw, either moist or dried. In times of scarcity the poorer classes eat tamarind leaves, the pith of the banyan tree, the seeds of the bamboo, the bark of the semar tree,[29] the fruit of the babūl,[30] and other articles. A cultivator will eat 2 lbs. of grain a day if he can get it, or more in the case of rice. Their stomachs get distended owing to the large quantities of boiled rice eaten at one time. The leaves of the chirota or chakora a little plant[31] which grows thickly at the commencement of the rains near inhabited sites, are also a favourite vegetable, and a resource in famine time. The people call it ‘Gaon ka thākur,’ or ‘lord of the village,’ and have a saying:
Amarbel aur kamalgata,
Gaon ka thākur, gai ka matha,
Nagar sowāsan, unmen milai,
Khāj, dād, sehua mīt jāwe.
Amarbel is an endless creeper, with long yellow strings like stalks, which infests and destroys trees; it is called amarbel or the immortal, because it has no visible root. Kamalgata is the seed of the lotus; gai ka matha is buttermilk; nagar sowāsan, ‘the happiness of the town,’ is turmeric, because married women whose husbands are alive put turmeric on their foreheads every day; khāj, dād and sehua are itch, ringworm and some kind of rash, perhaps measles; and the verse therefore means:
“Eat amarbel, lotus seeds, chirota, buttermilk and turmeric mixed together, and you will keep off itch, ringworm and measles.” Chirota is good for the itch.