ART. IV.-Sabda Kalpadrum. BY RAJAH RADHAKANT BAVol. V. Article, Caste. Calcutta. 1766. . HADUR. • his. “ HAVING incidentally mentioned the barber, in a comparison of "professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take offence, or lock upon it as an incivility done to them, if I say, that in courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social grac"es which " gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to Indeed so great is the good-will which I bear to this useful and agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court (where the best specimens of them are to be found, except perhaps at the Universities) there are seven of them to whom I am personally known, and who never pass me without 'the compliment of the hat on either side." So said the witty Charles Lamb of the English barber, and so say we of his brother of the craft in Bengal. And indeed " so great is the goodwill which we bear to this useful and agreeable body of men," that we have deemed it but just and proper to devote one whole Article to the delineation of their manifold virtues. Our readers will have no difficulty in recognizing a Bengali barber. In the Mofussil any person that is the owner of a merry face, and has, at the same time, a small bag under his arm, may be taken for one. In the "City of Palaces," his accompani ments are more marked. Besides the bag containing the implements of his humble but useful trade, the metropolitan barber has a turban covering his head, which circumstance at once places him on a level with the members of native Keranidom. He has, moreover, a few of his sharp-pointed utensils located in the regions bordering his auditory canal. It is proper, however, to observe that every barber of Calcutta is not dignified with a turban. That graceful appendage is worn only by the thriving members of the fraternity. But whether turbanned or not, he has a merry heart. From the time that he squats down on the floor on all-fours, opens his bag and sharpens his tools, to the moment when Joseph Rodgers and Sons give their finishing touch, how delightfully do the minutes glide away! What stores of curious information! What spicy anecdotes rarely told! What peals of care-destroying laughter! What delicious gossip! All Bengali barbers are said to be descended from Hárodás. The birth of this primitive barber, the father of all such as handle the razor and the strop, is enveloped in the mists of mythology. Mahadevá, the third person of the Hindu Triad, and the originator of all the arts and sciences, produced the first barber of the world from the garland of bones which encircles his divine neck. Hence the name Hárodás, or the servant that is created from bones. The Bengali barber is an influential member of the Hindu community. In the pyramid of caste he occupies a higher position than the millionaire Mulliks of Calcutta. He belongs to the social section usually termed NabaSákhás―a section inferior only to Brahmans and Kayastas, while the Mulliks occupy a position considerably below, indeed very near the base of the social edifice. A Brahman of the right orthodox stamp drinks a cup of water offered him by a barber, while he turns away with disgust from water polluted by the touch of a Mullik. Brahmans and Kayastas smoke freely in the company of a barber, while they empty their hookahs of water if a Mullik happens to touch the mat on which they are seated. A Mullik is not dignified enough to have the privilege of serving a Brahman, while a barber's services are thankfully accepted. Not unlike Brahmans, barbers in Bengal are arranged under two great classes, Bárendra and Rárhi. The Barendra barbers inhabit chiefly the district of Rájshaye and other places lying on the North and East of the Ganges; while the Rárhi barbers dwell in the regions to the West of the same sacred river. It is superfluous to remark that there exists no social intercourse between these two classes of barbers. Though both the classes are descended from Hárodás, they trace their immediate ancestry to two of his sons who, leaving their paternal thatch, took up their abode and scattered the blessings of the Kouriakotic art in benighted Barendra and rude Rárh. A Bárendra barber may not partake of the "pipe of peace" of his Rarhi brother; a Rárhi barber never takes the hand of a Barendra bride. Nor is the element of Kulinism wanting in the ranks of the barbers. Though forbidden to be polygamous, a privilege confined to the sacerdotal class only, a Kulin barber, dignified with the appellation of a Prámánik properly so called, has his peculiar privileges. When he graciously condescends to get married to a girl of an inferior rank, a bribe is offered him. At a feast he occupies the highest seat, and has the largest quantity of its delectables. He exalts, he degrades, whomsoever he chooses. He excommunicates a refractory barber from the rights and privileges of the trade; he hugs to his bosom the offending brother when penitent. His presence gives validity to a marriage contract, and imparts solemnity to a funeral service. He is the patriarch of the fraternity to which he belongs. Hindu confectioners or madaks are often represented to be a sort of barbers, as they pass under the name of madhu-nâpitas or honey-barbers. They are called honey-barbers because, though as confectioners they have to deal with all sorts of sweet things of which honey may be taken as the type, their great ancestor in times of yore once discharged the office of a barber. The story is as follows;-Bhagabati, the wife of Mahâdevâ, agreeably to the custom of purification observed by Hindu women, at the period of her first menstruation, stood under the necessity of the kindly offices of the barber to scratch the nails of her fingers and toes. She requested her divine lover to procure a barber for the purpose. The harum-scarum deity, reeking with the fumes of bhang, forgot his wife's request in the company of his bacchanalian crew. In the meantime Bhagabati became impatient. The sun had climbed his highest, and yet Bhagabati had not bathed; she could not do so unless the nails of her fingers and toes were scratched. In a melancholy mood she hastened to a neighbouring stream, and as she stood in the water not knowing where to get a barber, she ordered a bubble which went floating by to be transformed into a barber. Bimbadas, or the bubble-born, not having barber's implements within reach, caught hold of a cockle-shell, and with it pared off the nails of the goddess. Hence Hindu confec tioners, the descendants of Bimbadas, have obtained the mellifluous name of madhu-napitas. Who that has had the misfortune of groaning under an unshaven chin, but must have blessed in his heart of hearts that great benefactor who first taught the human race the art of shaving? And yet we venture to assert, without fear of contradiction, that the Bengali barber goes through a larger amount of work than his fellow-craftsman in any other part of the world. Your English barber of the nineteenth century only shaves the chin, and crops the hair of the head. But mark the ponderous labour of his Bengali brother. The Bengali barber, before commencing operations, takes out his brass-cup and fills it with water. He then sits down on the floor and opens his razor-case wrapped up in a bit of rag which, ever since it was torn from its parent web, has not been submitted to the fuller's soap. The razor of his choice is next picked out, and along with it the whetstone and the primitive strop, which last is nothing more than a piece of common leather. A drop of water is poured on the whetstone, and the razor is moved backwards and forwards upon it. When the razor is ascertained to have attained good temper, it is rubbed on the strop and allowed to rest on it. Meanwhile the great business commences. The barber puts his left hand on the crown of the head of his unfortunate victim; dips his right hand, often smelling of the "fragrant reed," in the brass-cup; and plies the water largely upon the cranium, the forehead, the cheeks, and the chin, rubbing them over and over till the parts are well soaked. This done, the razor is taken up, and a whole jungle of bushy hair is cleared off. The nails of the fingers and toes are next moistened with water, and their bony appendices are neatly pared off, and the nails themselves nicely rubbed. All this is followed in some parts of the Mofussil by a regular shampooing of the legs, the hands, and the back. Nor is this all. The barber thrusts sharppointed utensils into the ears, and brings out of their depths any matter which may have accumulated there. And yet for all this labour, and for all the anecdotes, the gossip, the information, the laughter, and "the agreeable discussions," of which Lamb talks, that are going on every now and then, for all these the worthy craftsman receives the scanty remuneration of only one pice. ૬. The ancient Greek barber had his Koureion, the Roman his Tonstrina, and the English barber has his " Shop," but the Bengali barber has no "local habitation" for the prosecution of his ponderous labours. He goes about from street to street, with no cry on his lips, and distinguishable in the crowd of his fellow men only by the bag under his arm, and often by the turban on his head. Unlike other men he paces the streets leisurely, looks at every door, glances at every window, and is always on the alert for a call. Immutable though the Hindu is often represented to be, he is yet not entirely unaffected by the march of intellect and the advance of civilization. Hence some Calcutta barbers, in imitation of their more polished European brethren, have begun to have, if not shops, at least, apologies for them. Half a dozen brethren of the strop may not unfrequently be seen sitting at the end of long street or the purlieus of a Bazar, and ridding pate after pate of their hairy overgrowth with lightning rapidity. During the Rains and in Midsummer an umbrella of the Borassus Fabelliformis or of the Areca Catechu, is often stuck into the ground to protect customers from the inclemencies. of the weather. No Bengali shaves himself, and yet he must shave, or else he ceases to be a ceremonially clean Hindu; hence a barber is a social necessity in Bengal. His presence, besides, is indispensably necessary to the performance of certain religious ceremonies. Hence every family in Bengal has its own barber, just as it has its own priest and its own spiritual director. And as the son of a spiritual director becomes the director of the son of his father's disciple, and the son of a priest becomes the priest of the son of him to whom his father ministered sacerdotally, so the son of a barber becomes the barber of the son of him whose beard his father shaved. Hence it may be easily imagined that one family of barbers may be immemorially attached to one Bengali house. In such a case the barber has a fixed annual salary. Poor families seldom give more than four annas a year to their family barber ; the middle classes seldom more than a Rupee; while rich men, Zemindars and Rajahs, present to their barber rent-free lands in perpetual settlement. Wretched as is the pay of a barber in Bengal, it is eked out by the perquisites he receives during the thousand and one celebrations of religious rites which occur in the annals of every Hindu family. From time out of mind, in Bengal the barber has discharged the office of a surgeon. While the disciple of Dhanyantari— the Indian Esculapius, contented himself with the preparing of pills and the practice of physic, the bold barber was alone initiated into the mysteries of surgical operations. The English doctor prescribes for fever as well as lances a boil. It is different in Bengal. The kabiraj cures the fever but does nothing for the boil. Surgery is not his forte. That is the barber's department. Hence even at this time of day when, in a village, a wound is to be probed, a boil to be lanced, a tumour to be reduced, a stone to be cut, or a blister to be applied, our brother of the razor is alone found competent for the task. Births, marriages, and deaths are the three grand epochs in the histories of individual men, and in each of these seasons the barber acts no mean part. When a Hindu woman is about to be delivered of a child, the barber, in order to catch the intelligence first, hangs round about the lying-in room. No sooner is the child ushered into the world than the barber presents himself before the father of the new-born babe, and gives him the intelligence On such an occasion, especially in the case of a firstborn male child, the father handsomely rewards the barber. Besides pecuniary donations, the rejoicing father not unfrequently presents the messenger with the suit of clothes which he happens at the moment to have on. But this is not the only gain of the barber. He runs with the intelligence to the relatives, friends and acquaintances of the father, all of whom make presents to the messenger according to their condition in life, and to the proximity of relationship in which they stand to the new-born babe. The perquisites which a barber, attached to a rich family, gets, are often considerable. Besides money, in the cold season he is rewarded with blankets, broad-cloth, and shawls. The poorest peasant that ever handled the plough over the paddy fields of Bengal, on the birth of his first-born child, gives some reward to the messenger fraught with the gladsome news. On the fifth and twenty-first days after delivery, agreeably to the laws of Hindu purification, the nails of the finger of the mother must be scratched; hence the services of the barber's wife are had in requisition. In the celebration of Bengali marriages the barber plays a conspicuous part. The active interference of the Ghatak or the JUNE, 1859. 2 Q |