Near this end of the embankment, a party of village women who have brought their large, narrow-mouthed, brown earthen pots or “chatties” for water, holding them on their hips by passing an arm round the neck, will probably take to flight on seeing the white strangers, or otherwise stand as far off the path as the space permits, until they pass. A cry of rapidly shouted words is repeated through the village, announcing the arrival of “gentlemen,” and soon some of the men emerge, and after saluting us with hands raised to the chest and palms touching each other, guide us into it.
On our way we pass by single houses or groups of two or three, built in the midst of each little paddock, fifty or one hundred feet wide or more, often with a very slight fence around it, of the scattered area under the coconut palms which forms the gardens of the Kandian village. Decently clad men and women come out of their mud-walled and often whitewashed dwellings to stare at the strangers, as well as children of all sizes, in varying stages of scanty clothing, from a short piece of white calico which reaches from the waist to the ankles, down to its vanishing point. The men wear a plain white cloth from the waist to the ankles. The women have a white or coloured one about twelve feet long, one end passing from the waist over the front of the figure, with the corner thrown over the right shoulder, and hanging down behind as far as the waist; the rest of the cloth is wrapped twice round the lower part of the figure, from the waist downwards. When they visit other villages many of the people of both sexes wear white jackets; in the women’s jackets the sleeves are gathered and puffed out at the shoulder, and reach only to the elbow, and there is a wide, sometimes frilled, double collar.
Our guides lead us on until we reach a dwelling possibly a little more carefully constructed than the others, close to which is a thatched, open, rectangular shed, about twelve feet long by nine feet wide, with its roof resting on plain round wooden posts. Its raised earthen floor is hastily swept, a heavy wooden mortar cut out of a piece of tree trunk, and used for pounding rice in order to remove the skin, is rolled away, and the shed is then ready for our temporary occupation.
This is a maḍuwa, or shed erected for travellers and strangers, as well as for the general use of the owner, in which the women may plait mats, or clean paddy or rice in the wooden mortar, with a long wooden pestle having an iron ring round the lower end. Here also the man’s friends may sit and chat, and chew the leaf of the Betel vine with broken-up bits of the nut of the Areka Palm, and a little lime, and a fragment of tobacco leaf, while they discuss the state of the crops, or the local news.
When such a shed is erected on the side of a path for public use, it may have, but rarely, half walls four feet high; or the posts may be tenoned into a rectangle of substantial squared logs that are halved into each other at the angles, where they rest upon large stones, so as to be clear of the ground, and thus partly protected from attacks by white ants. The squared beams act as seats for the tired passer-by.
At the end of the maḍuwa in the village there is sometimes a very small room of the same width, in which is stored millet or pulse in bags, or ash-pumpkins, together with a few articles required about the house, such as surplus grass mats, and flat winnowing baskets. Under the roof of the maḍuwa, above the cross-beams and some sticks laid on them, will be the owner’s little plough, and board for levelling the mud of the rice field before sowing, and some short coils of rope made from the twisted inner bark of tough creepers, and one or two fish creels.
When there is no suitable shed of this kind for the visitor, a hut, usually one belonging to the village headman, is swept out and temporarily given up to our use. If information of the coming visit had been sent beforehand, the hut or shed would have been provided with a ceiling made of lengths of white calico borrowed from the family washerman, and perhaps the walls also would have been hung with others, sometimes including such coloured ones as he had washed for some of the villagers.
While food is being prepared by our servants in a small shed or kitchen close to the house, we stroll through the village, and observe as we go that all the houses lie east and west, or north and south, and are thatched with straw or plaited Coconut leaves. They are all rectangular, usually eight or nine feet wide and some twelve feet long, and are raised a couple of feet from the ground, on a solid earthen foundation. Each one has a low veranda, two feet six inches or three feet wide, along the front side, and one heavy door of adzed or sawn timber near the middle; but there is very rarely a window, and even then only one of the smallest size.
Near the end of the house, and within sight of the veranda, there are one or two round corn stores, considerably wider at the top than at the base, with conical thatched roofs. They rest upon cross sticks placed upon four horizontal adzed logs, which are supported by four small rough blocks of stone at the corners. Their walls are made of a wicker frame hung from four or five durable posts set in the ground, which are usually the heart wood of trees that are not eaten by white ants. The upper part of the wicker frame is firmly tied to the tops of these, and the whole wicker work is then thickly overlaid and stiffened by successive coatings of mixed clay and sand, on which, as on all the walls and floor of the dwelling house, there is placed a thin surface wash of cow-dung.
These corn stores contain the household supply of paddy or millet. They are entered only by raising the loose conical roof on one side by a long prop, and getting inside by means of a rough ladder, at the opening thus made, over the top of the wall, which rises eight or nine feet above the ground. Sometimes, but rarely in the northern Kandian districts, a small rectangular hut is used as a corn store, the entrance in that case being made through a doorway in the middle of one side.