We before alluded to the deep-rooted antipathy between the black and the white population: the feeling of the former towards an Englishman is one of dislike not unmingled with fear. Should Portugal ever doom her now worse than useless colony to form part payment of her debts, their fate would be rather a hard one. Considering the wide spread of perhaps too liberal opinions concerning the race quaintly designated as “God’s images carved in ebony,” they might fare respectably as regards public estimation, but scarcely well enough to satisfy their inordinate ambition. It is sufficiently amusing to hear a young gentleman, whose appearance, manners, and colour fit him admirably to become a band-boy to some Sepoy corps, talk of visiting Bombay, with letters of introduction to the Governor and Commander-in-chief. Still more diverting it is when you know that the same character would invariably deduct a perquisite from the rent of any house he may have procured, or boat hired for a stranger. Yet at the same time it is hard for a man who speaks a little English, French, Latin, and Portuguese to become the lower clerk of some office on the paltry pay of 70l. per annum; nor is it agreeable for an individual who has just finished his course of mathematics, medicine, and philosophy to sink into the lowly position of an assistant apothecary in the hospital of a native regiment. No wonder that the black Indo-Portuguese is an utter radical; he has gained much by Constitution, the “dwarfish demon” which sets everybody by the ears at Goa. Hence it is that he will take the first opportunity in conversation with a foreigner to extol Lusitanian liberty to the skies, abuse English tyranny over, and insolence to, their unhappy Indian subjects, and descant delightedly upon the probability of an immediate crash in our Eastern empire. And, as might be expected, although poverty sends forth thousands of black Portuguese to earn money in foreign lands, they prefer the smallest competence at home, where equality allows them to indulge in a favourite independence of manner utterly at variance with our Anglo-Indian notions concerning the proper demeanour of a native towards a European.
The native Christian is originally a converted Hindoo, usually of the lowest castes;[38] and though he has changed for centuries his manners, dress, and religion, he retains to a wonderful extent the ideas, prejudices, and superstitions of his ancient state. The learned griff, Bishop Heber, in theorizing upon the probable complexion of our First Father, makes a remark about these people, so curiously erroneous, that it deserves to be mentioned. “The Portuguese have, during a three hundred years’ residence in India, become as black as Caffres; surely this goes far to disprove the assertion which is sometimes made, that climate alone is insufficient to account for the difference between the Negro and the European.” Climate in this case had nothing whatever to do with the change of colour. And if it had, we might instance as an argument against the universality of such atmospheric action, the Parsee, who, though he has been settled in the tropical lands of India for more than double three hundred years, is still, in appearance, complexion, voice, and manners, as complete an Iranian as when he first fled from his native mountains. But this is par parenthèse.
The native Christians of Goa always shave the head; they cultivate an apology for a whisker, but never allow the beard or mustachios to grow. Their dress is scanty in the extreme, often consisting only of a dirty rag, worn about the waist, and their ornaments, a string of beads round the neck. The women are equally badly clothed: the single long piece of cotton, called in India a saree, is their whole attire,[39] consequently the bosom is unsupported and uncovered. This race is decidedly the lowest in the scale of civilized humanity we have yet seen. In appearance they are short, heavy, meagre, and very dark; their features are uncomely in the extreme; they are dirtier than Pariahs, and abound in cutaneous diseases. They live principally on fish and rice, with pork and fruit when they can afford such luxuries. Meat as well as bread[40] is holiday diet; clarified butter, rice, water, curry, and cocoa-nut milk are every-day food.
These people are said to be short lived, the result of hard labour, early marriages, and innutritious food. We scarcely ever saw a man that looked fifty. In disposition they resemble the half-castes, but they are even more deficient in spirit, and quarrelsome withal, than their “whitey-brown” brethren. All their knowledge is religious, and consists only of a few prayers in corrupt Maharatta, taught them by their parents or the priest; these they carefully repeat three times per diem—at dawn, in the afternoon, and before retiring to rest. Loudness of voice and a very Puritanical snuffle being sine quâ nons in their devotional exercises, the neighbourhood of a pious family is anything but pleasant. Their superiority to the heathen around them consists in eating pork, drinking toddy to excess, shaving the face, never washing, and a conviction that they are going to paradise, whereas all other religionists are emphatically not. They are employed as sepoys, porters, fishermen, seamen, labourers, mancheel bearers, workmen and servants, and their improvident indolence renders the necessity of hard labour at times imperative. The carpenters, farriers, and other trades, not only ask an exorbitant sum for working, but also, instead of waiting on the employer, scarcely ever fail to keep him waiting for them. For instance, on Monday you wanted a farrier, and sent for him. He politely replied that he was occupied at that moment, but would call at his earliest convenience. This, if you keep up a running fire of messages, will probably be about the next Saturday.
The visitor will not find at Goa that number and variety of heathen castes which bewilder his mind at Bombay. The capital of Portuguese India now stands so low amongst the cities of Asia that few or no inducements are offered to the merchant and the trader, who formerly crowded her ports. The Turk, the Arab, and the Persian have left them for a wealthier mart, and the only strangers are a few Englishmen, who pass through the place to visit its monuments of antiquity.
The Moslem population at Panjim scarcely amounts to a thousand. They have no place of worship, although their religion is now, like all others, tolerated.[41] The distinctive mark of the Faithful is the long beard. They appear superior beings by the side of the degenerate native Christians.
Next to the Christians, the Hindoos are the most numerous portion of the community. They are held in the highest possible esteem and consideration, and no office unconnected with religion is closed to them. This fact may account for the admirable ease and freedom of manner prevalent amongst them. The Gentoo will enter your room with his slippers on, sit down after shaking hands as if the action were a matter of course, chew his betel, and squirt the scarlet juice all over the floor, in a word, make himself as offensive as you can conceive. But at Goa all men are equal. Moreover, the heathens may be seen in Christian churches,[42] with covered feet, pointing at, putting questions concerning, and criticising the images with the same quite-at-home nonchalance with which they would wander through the porticoes of Dwarka or the pagodas of Aboo. And these men’s fathers, in the good old times of Goa, were not allowed even to burn their dead[43] in the land!
In appearance the Hindoos are of a fair, or rather a light yellow complexion. Some of the women are by no means deficient in personal charms, and the men generally surpass in size and strength the present descendants of the Portuguese heroes. They wear the mustachio, but not the beard, and dress in the long cotton coat, with the cloth wound round the waist, very much the same as in Bombay. The head, however, is usually covered with a small red velvet skullcap, instead of a turban. The female attire is the saree, with the long-armed bodice beneath it; their ornaments are numerous; and their caste is denoted by a round spot of kunkun, or vermilion, upon the forehead between the eyebrows.
As usual among Hindoos, the pagans at Goa are divided into a number of sub-castes. In the Brahman we find two great subdivisions, the Sashteekar, or inhabitants of Salsette, and the Bardeskar, or people of Bardes. The former is confessedly superior to the latter. Both families will eat together, but they do not intermarry. Besides these two, there are a few of the Chitpawan, Sinart, Kararee and Waishnau castes of the pontifical order.
The Brahmans always wear the tika, or sectarian mark, perpendicularly, to distinguish them from the Sonars, or Goldsmiths, who place it horizontally on the forehead. They are but superficially educated, as few of them know Sanscrit, and these few not well. All read and write Maharatta fluently, but they speak the inharmonious Concanee dialect.