I HAVE been asked by Mr. T. Ramakrishna, the writer of these sketches, which appeared originally in a magazine published at Madras, to put a preface to them in their collected form. I am very willing to do so, because the little book appears to me an honest and intelligent attempt to convey to the English public some ideas about the life led by ninety per cent. of the people in the most Indian part of India.
In the north of that country or continent, one invasion after another, from the far-off coming of the Aryans all through history, has profoundly modified the conditions of life. The vast Dravidian population of the South itself probably came to India from outside, but so long ago that no one can say either whence it started or when it established itself in its present seat.
Europeans, despairing perhaps of finding out much about its ancient history, have very generally neglected it. All the more desirable is it that Dravidians who have been educated in our schools and colleges should devote themselves to inquiries relating either to the present or the past of their own people.
The author of the sketches takes a village of some fifty or sixty houses which he considers to be a typical representative of some fifty-five thousand such villages scattered over the Madras Presidency, a province considerably larger than the British Isles. He describes it as situated on the Palar between Conjeeveram and Mahabalipuram, which is not far from the spot best known to Europeans as “the Seven Pagodas” made famous by Southey’s “Curse of Kehama.” To his village he gives the real or imaginary name of Kélambakam. I never saw it, but many is the place just like it which I have seen. He describes it as: “ A cluster of trees, consisting of the tamarind, mango, cocoanut, plantain, and other useful Indian trees; a group of dwel- lings, some thatched and some tiled; a small temple in the centre—these surrounded on all sides by about five hundred acres of green fields, and a large tank capable of watering these five hundred acres of land for about six months.”
He then proceeds to pass in review with full particulars—but, I presume, under ficti- tious names—all the leading personages of the little community.
First, of course, comes the village head- man, or village Munsiff as he is commonly called.
Secondly, the public accountant or Kur- nam.
Thirdly, the policeman, and
Fourthly, the Brahmin sage.
These are followed by the schoolmaster, the Vythian or physician, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shepherd, the washerman, the potter, the barber and his wife.
The centre of the religion of Kélambakam is the temple of the local goddess Anga- lammal, which stands a furlong or two from the rest of the houses; and she has, of course, her priest or Pujari, under whom are various servants of the shrine, with which are also connected a couple of dancing girls.
Then we have the Panisiva, a sort of general servant of the village; next the money-lender, the local banker, the descrip- tion of whom recalls the observation which I once heard made by a botanical guide in the south of France, who was not aware that he was addressing one of the most dignified of the potentates of Lombard Street : “ Mais vous savez, Monsieur, ces banquiers sont toujours Juifs ! ”
Lastly are enumerated the humblest per- sonages in the local hierarchy—the tanner, to whose occupation, in a land where the cow is sacred, great discredit naturally attaches; the tattooer, the Villee, who gathers, and exchanges for grain, honey, roots, medicinal herbs, and other forest produce. Add to these a small community of pariahs (who live in a little quarter of their own and were formerly in the position of serfs, but to whom the author of this work gives an excellent character), and the little microcosm is complete.
" It will be seen," says Mr. T. Rama- krishna, " that this village is a little world in itself, having a government of its own and preserving intact the traditions of the past in spite of the influences of a foreign govern- ment and a foreign civilization. Every member of the little state of Kélambakam regularly performs the duties allotted to him, and everything works like a machine. Those that render service for the upkeep of the village constitution are either paid in grain or have some lands allotted to them to be culti- vated and enjoyed free of rent. Those that are paid in grain present themselves during the harvest time at the threshing floor ; and when the villager gathers his corn and is ready to remove it to his house, he distributes a portion to each of the village servants, according to the nature and importance of the service rendered to him throughout the whole year. And these simple, honest villagers earn their livelihood, year after year, by toiling hard from early morning till close of day, leading a peaceful and contented life, living happily with their wives and children in their humble cottage homes, and caring for nothing that goes on beyond their own little village."
Nor are they without amusements which bring them often together, and we have detailed to us the gossip of the women when they congregate to draw water; we are allowed to witness the delight with which the village bards are listened to, as well as to watch the performances of the jugglers, of the acrobats, of the snake-charmers, and of the animal-tamers. Some of the feats of these people have been frequently described by Europeans in India, but I never happened to hear of anything like the doings of the bull Rama and the cow Seeta which will be found in the text, and are, I dare say, very correctly recounted.
Chapter XI. contains a long sermon, on a portion of the Maharbaratha, which purports to have been delivered by the village school- master ; while Chapter XII. is given up to an account of a village drama. The Thirteenth is devoted to feasts and festivities, while the Fourteenth, a particularly interesting one, treats of the doings of a religious confraternity.
In a very brief but excellent concluding chapter, Mr. T. Ramakrishna makes a few reflections upon the most noticeable features of Indian village life.
“The first is,” he says, “the extreme importance attached to religion. Every other thing gives way to this important aspect of Hindu life. In religion the Hindu lives, moves, and has his being. His whole action, his whole thought, all that he does day by day, and on occasions of marriages and funeral ceremonies, is tinged with religion. The one pervading idea with the Hindu is how to get rid of future births and obtain eternal beatitude. We have seen how in dramatic performances gods are introduced tobless a truthful and honest man, how educated animals are trained to act the parts of Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita, and how in popular tales recited in Hindu homes the religious element is largely introduced. We thus find religion to be the foundation of everything Hindu. The very construction of an Indian village bears ample evidence to this fact. A temple is built and dedicated to the deity worshipped, and round the temple a village springs up. It is a rare phenomenon in India, at least in Southern India, to find a village without a temple. The religious Hindu will not settle down in a village where there is no temple, and where, accordingly, he has no chances of acquiring religious merit!”
The second feature is the immense impor- tance attached to water. The third is the mutual service system, which still exists in full force in the midst of a world in which money has become so important that people often forget that it is nothing more than the measure of services.
The two chief objects of Mr. T. Rama- krishna’s aversion—I might say the only ones, for he is a most amiable critic—are the village money-lender and the pettifogging lawyer. For the one he would substitute agricultural banks, while the other he would drive out by recalling into constant action the old village Panchayet, or council of five. By all means let this last be done in so far as it is possible; but as long as in all suits there is a successful and an unsuccessful party, it is to be feared that the unsuccessful party will not be satisfied without appealing to a higher tribunal, often no doubt to the wasting of his own substance as well as that of the other litigant.
As for agricultural banks, it would no doubt be an excellent thing if they could be established; and often and often has the suggestion been made, but the practical difficulties are very great. If this were not so, we should have seen them tried on a large scale long ere this.
It is not sufficiently remembered that the village money-lender is only able to demand and to obtain an immense interest because he has often to lend on very miserable security. How far could govern- mental institutions or powerful corporations of capitalists fulfil the same function as he without incurring the same unpopularity, and doing a thousand things which could be plausibly represented as extremely harsh, not to say atrocious ?
The abuses of the present system are cer- tainly great; but as the people become more acquainted with the elementary arts of read- ing, writing, and arithmetic, some of these will disappear, and the day may dawn when, without any state-intervention, banks may be as common in India and as useful in the development of the country as they have long been in Scotland.
I think the reader of this work will carry away a pleasant, as I am sure he will carry away a correct, general impression of the character of the people of Southern India. He will see that no good can be effected for them, but only much harm, by introducing European methods of government, foreign alike to their characters and conditions. What we can do, and what, thank God, we have been doing now for several generations, is to enable these myriad little worlds to live in peace instead of being, as they were before our time, perpetually liable to be harried and destroyed by every robber or petty tyrant who could pay a handful of scoundrels to follow him.
In Tinnevelly, the southern district of the Madras Presidency—far from being one of the wildest, when the civilians who have just retired after the end of their service were entering upon it, there was a gang-robbery—that is, burglary diversified with murder and torture, every night of the year. I had occasion shortly before leaving Madras to ask the head of the police, how many gang-robberies there had been in that district in the previous year. His answer was, " Not one."
" Hae tibi erunt artes."
These are the things which it is worth her sons leaving these far Atlantic islands to do at the ends of the earth!
We can benefit and are benefiting the Indian villager by improving his water supply, by preventing his wells being pol-luted, by encouraging the growth of forest around the head-waters of his rivers, and by so connecting the tank or artificial lake which irrigates his field with the general irrigation system of the country as to make it as little likely to dry up as may be.
Then if there comes, as come there assuredly will, several seasons together when the rainfall is inadequate, we can bring food to his door by road and railway instead of allowing him to starve in his isolation as did, from time to time, all his fathers for some thousand years.
We can see that the village headman dispenses justice fairly. We can see that the village accountant does not rob; we can see that the village policeman is not oppressive; we can give the schoolmaster something sensible to teach; we can make the Vythians—who although their name comes from the same root as Video, “I see,” know much less than nothing, because their minds are filled with every kind of nonsense—possess at least the rudiments of medicine, and we can dot the country over with good surgeons and with midwives who are acquainted with a thousand secrets of nature unknown to the barber and his spouse.
We can introduce new products and create new industries while we improve old ones ; we can teach the villager how to combat his deadliest enemy, fever, as Mr. Marmaduke Lawson is so well doing at this very moment ; we can enable him to circumvent small-pox, as Mr. Forster Webster did in Tanjore, and as the great goddess Mariamma, in spite of many prayers, never has done. We can teach him how to keep his streets and his back- yards in a sanitary condition ; we can greatly improve his agriculture, we can give him better breeds of cattle; and when a youth of real ability shows himself amongst his sons, we can educate him till he, in his turn, becomes a useful member of the ad- ministration or finds his place as an active merchant, an intelligent farmer, or a worker in some one of the many careers which stand open to native merit.
It is a too prevalent idea in England that our system does not afford many openings to native merit in the service of Government. There could not be a greater mistake. Of course the work of supervision in the higher places of the administration must, for the most part, remain in European hands. That stands to reason; but it would probably not be an exaggerated estimate to say that for every European employed in the southern province of India there are well on to fifty natives, while every one who has ad- ministered the patronage of that country knows that he has often hungered and thirsted for properly qualified natives to promote in certain departments of the official hierarchy, without being able to find what he desired.
Our service, sooth to say, attracts an undue proportion of the intelligence of the country. The sweets of official life and the prizes of the Bar are such that they tend to starve other professions, and above all those which Southern India probably most wants at this moment, the medical and the agricultural professions.
These are the two which in the interest of the Indian villager I should most like to see grow and prosper.
While we merely raise candidates for Government employment and for the con- tentions of the law court, we run great danger of creating an educated proletariat, one of the worst curses that can afflict any country.
To discuss that subject would, however, take me too far from the Indian village, and I willingly hand over the reader to the excellent guidance of the native gentle- man who is ready to direct his steps on the banks of the Palar.
M. E. GRANT DUFF.