A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of IndiaAcland, Charles
History
A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of India
Acland, Charles
India -- Description and travel; India -- Social life and customs
At a dinner-party every one brings his or her own table servant. This
assemblage has a very pretty appearance: the ladies are all in white
dresses and short sleeves, and the gentlemen in white jackets and
trowsers, except the Major and myself; he wears a red jacket, and I
a black cassock. Behind each chair stands a dark-brown man with long
black beard and mustachios, dressed in a sort of white tunic and a
white turban, with a coloured sash wound several times round the
waist. As it would be the greatest mark of disrespect for a servant
to appear in the presence of his master with covered feet, they all
leave their shoes outside the door. After the meat is cleared away,
before the puddings are brought in, the servants go out and smoke for
five minutes. There is not a man, either Mussulman or Hindoo, except
of the very lowest caste, who would eat anything that came from the
table of a European. They would consider it a degradation, and would
not even drink out of anything we had ever used, or touch what we
had cooked. The Hindoos eat only once a-day, unless on their grand
feasts. Their food then is boiled rice, with perhaps an onion and a
little spice in it, which they eat with their hands.
[Sidenote: LANGUAGE.]
The language of this country, though confessedly a compound of two
or three Eastern tongues, appears to me to have many remains of
what must have been the original language of man, that is to say,
those which must have existed from the very earliest time bear a
close propinquity to the words of other and later languages. Several
instances which came under my notice bear out this opinion.
It is curious to observe how the different castes or ranks here keep
distinct, and it is this which renders so many servants necessary.
The man who lays the cloth would feel degraded by dusting a chair,
and he who dusts the chair would rather leave his place than dust the
room. Again, two men of different castes will neither eat, drink, nor
sleep together. Their bed is a mere mat, which explains well that
saying of our Saviour, "Take up thy bed and walk."
The other day my basin had not been emptied. I told the carah of it,
whose business it is to attend to my apartment, and he went a hundred
or more yards to call the matee, because it would have been beneath
his dignity to throw the water out into the adjoining bath-room.
The men here are a sadly idle set; they make almost slaves of their
wives. Early in the morning we may see troops of women going out into
the jungle, from which they return in the evening with great fagots
of wood; these fagots are about twelve feet in length, and in the
middle quite two in thickness, and are carried on the head. The poor
creatures are obliged continually to stop and rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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