The agricultural implements used in the Deccan are the same as were in use upwards of 3000 years ago. They consist of a plough, which makes a mere scratch, made of babool-wood; a rude cart on two solid wheels; a harrow with wooden teeth; and a drill-plough.[495] The oxen do most of the work; and the sheep are black and white, with long hanging ears. There are two crops, called the Khereef and Rubbee. In the Khereef crop the sowing takes place in June and July, and the harvest in October. Bajree is sown with a drill-plough in rows, mixed with toor and other pulses. It is the chief food of the people. Next comes the other common grain jowaree. Italian millet, raggee, badlee, and the amaranthus are sown in smaller quantities. All land, whether ploughed or not, is subjected to the drag-hoe, first lengthways and then across, loosening the surface and destroying weeds: and crops of millets are alternated with those of pulses. When the harvest begins, a level spot is chosen for a threshing-floor, and made dry and hard. A pole, five feet high, is fixed in the centre, the grains are heaped round the floor, and the women break off the ears and throw them in. Oxen are then tied to each other and to the post, and driven round, to beat out the corn. Winnowing is done by a man standing on a high stool, and pouring out the grain and chaff to the winds. Ceremonies are then performed in honour of the five Pandus, and the grain is stored in large baskets. The pulses which are sown in the Khereef crop are toor raised in jowaree and bajree fields, the pods of which are detached by beating the plant with a log of wood; moong, sown by itself, and when ripe pulled up by the roots; ooreed; mutkee; and lablab.
Plants from which cordage is made, namely the sun (Crotalaria juncea) and ambadee (Hibiscus cannabinus) are also raised. They grow to a height of five or six feet, and are then pulled up, steeped for some days in water, and the bark stripped off.
In the Rubbee, or cold season crop, the sowing takes place in October and November, and the harvests in February. At this time wheat is sown in rich black or loamy soil, well manured; gram (Cicer arietinum) in the best black soil; and flax, generally raised on the edge of wheat-fields, in strips of four rows. The land is only ploughed once in two years, to the depth of a span.
As the Indians of Peru live chiefly on roots, so the natives of the parts of India which I visited find their chief sustenance in numerous kinds of millets and pulses. Rice is certainly their favourite food; but, from the expenses attending the necessary irrigation, it is dearer and not so easily attainable as the other cereals, and the great mass of the people live on dry grains and pulses. All these cereals contain less nourishing matter than wheat, being comparatively poor in nitrogen, but this deficiency is made up by the pulses which are generally eaten with them. It is a most remarkable fact that the natives habitually combine these two different kinds of food, in their dishes, in about the same proportions as science has found to be necessary in order that the mixture may contain the same proportion of carbonous to nitrogenous matter as is found in wheat.[496]
Every one who has travelled much, in different parts of the world, or who has reflected at all on the subject, well knows that there is far more happiness than misery on this earth, that the good outweighs the evil, and that the wars and revolutions of history are but specks on the long periods of tranquillity which remain for ever unrecorded. The village system of the Deccan is a venerable monument, reminding us how little the turmoils and civil wars, invasions, and revolutions, of which history is composed, affect the mass of the people. The endless conspiracies, treasons, massacres, and battles which fill the narrative of Briggs's Ferishta might not have happened in the Deccan at all, for all the change they have effected in the institutions and customs of the bulk of the population. The Ballootadar still holds the same office which was filled by his ancestor centuries ago, performs the same service, and receives the same perquisites. The cultivator uses the same implements, raises the same crops in the same way, and practises the same customs. As it was centuries ago, so it is now; nothing is changed, and these time-honoured institutions continue to be admirably adapted to the simple wants and habits of the people who live under them. These Deccanees now enjoy their land for a very trifling assessment unalterable for thirty years, their means are sufficient to supply themselves and their families with all they require in the way of clothing and furniture, they have a considerable variety in their food, days of relaxation and festivity are not of rare occurrence, their immediate superiors are of their own race and religion, and there is little to remind them of the presence of foreign rulers. On the whole, in their own simple way, they probably enjoy as much happiness as the peasantry of most other countries in the world, while their wants are fewer and their desires more easily attainable.
In the country between Shirwul and Poona the harvest had already been reaped when we crossed it. In one or two places there were avenues of mango-trees by the road-side, but generally the country was bare and treeless. The great city of Poona, once the seat of Mahratta power, still retains the signs of its former splendour. In the narrow crowded streets there are many large houses of two stories, with much richly carved wood about the balconies and doorways, and frescos painted on the walls of Gods and Goddesses, and scenes in the lives of the Pandus or of Krishna. The bazar is generally thronged with Brahmins, Moslems, Lingayets, Bohrahs, Parsees, men, women, and children, while the shops are occupied by silversmiths, workers in copper, brass, and wood; sellers of grains, drugs, oils, and ingredients for curries; of sweetmeats, of cloths, of blue and green bangles for women, and of endless other wares. The temples are numerous, but none of them are remarkable either for size or beauty. The old palace of the Peishwas forms one side of an open space, and is surrounded by a high wall with semicircular bastions. The entrance is by an archway, flanked on either side by solid Norman-looking towers, with a balcony over it, extending from one tower to the other, from which the young Peishwa Mahadeo Rao threw himself in 1795.
In 1773 the Peishwa Narrain Rao was murdered in this gloomy-looking castle by his uncle Ragonath Rao, and many another deed of darkness has been done within its walls.
Leaving the town, we drove past the Hira Bagh or "diamond garden," where there is a large tank with a wooded island in the centre, to the foot of the rocky hill of Parbutty, on the summit of which there is a temple to Siva. The ascent is by a well-cut flight of steps, and the temple,[497] which crowns the hill, is surrounded by a wall of very solid masonry, with a covered gallery having quaintly carved wooden balconies, and an open rampart above. From one of these balconies Bajee Rao, the last of the Peishwas, watched the defeat of his army at Kirkee in 1817; when Poona, and all its territory, became an integral part of British India.
The view from the Parbutty hill is very extensive. At our feet was the Hira Bagh, with its broad sheet of water, and numerous groves of trees; beyond was the great city almost hidden by trees, the roofs of houses showing here and there, but no conspicuous towers or lofty building. Further still we could see the windings of the rivers Mula and Muta, tributaries of the Krishna. To the left was the village of Kirkee, and to the right the churches, numerous bungalows, and other buildings of the English cantonment. At this time of year the whole mass of buildings and gardens forming and mingling with the city and cantonment, is surrounded by brown dried-up plains, and rocky arid-looking mountains, which furnish a sombre frame to the picture.