is little room for co-operation.

Guilds of both pro

ducer and distributer are found in the towns; but the caste is in the country the substitute for the trade. union, and a very efficient one it is. It is obvious that such a state of things is only compatible with a very simple standard of life. Nature, in the first place, prescribes this simplicity. A tropical climate makes few demands in the way of clothing, and three long strips of cotton, with a blanket of coarse wool where the rain is heavy or the cold severe, suffice for either sex. For the same reason the diet is of the plainest, and is mostly" off the estate." The kitchen arrangements correspond, as caste demands that each family should feed separately, and often in a corner of the field where the work happens to be going on. The housing of the family is not of much more importance, and as a general rule the architecture is regulated by considerations of convenience, not beauty. In a region of heavy rainfall the roof is thatched thickly with grass or leaves, which are there abundant. In the dry plains, where heat and cold have to be taken into account, thick mud walls are necessary, not only for comfort, but by reason of the absence of other materials. The life of the family is spent in the open air night and day, except when rain or cold drives every one indoors. Furniture is restricted to a few rough bedsteads, and even these are considered superfluous in the middle and lower classes of the rural population. On a fine night in the hot weather, that is, for some three-fourths of the year, the lieges lie alongside of their houses, in the roadway or on their verandahs. House-rent is unknown except in towns, though a newcomer has occasionally to buy a site. But newcomers are comparatively rare, and only admitted with some searchings of heart on the part of the residents of long standing.

If we take away the manufacture at home of goods

for sale abroad, and add the religious prohibition of the worker to marry or stray beyond his caste or hereditary calling, the economy of the village is not unlike that which prevailed in rural England before the middle of last century and the application of steam power to manufacture. A strict and even primitive simplicity characterises the operation conducted by the Indian peasant and by the artisans he considers necessary to his life. The implements he uses in tilling his fields have probably been used in the same form since his family settled on the soil of India. At the first glance, agricultural experts who have travelled in the country to give hints for improvement, are inclined to scoff at the plough without share and the primitive sort of harrow. A little more experience, however, leads them to the conclusion that Indian soil is not the same as English, and that in the circumstances, a scratched furrow is as efficient as a turned one. So with many other processes of barbarous aspect. Generations of devotion to one pursuit under the same conditions are not likely to have left no trace in the methods adopted, although, of course, there is abundant room for improvement, even in the daily practice of the husbandman. Is it not so even in our own country? As to the cattle used by the Indian peasant, it will be noticed that, in place of horses, bullocks are employed, and in some places buffaloes. The former are also universally used as draught animals for transport; and the introduction of railways, instead of diminishing their value in this respect, has raised it throughout the radius of the principal stations, because the owners, when their field work is at a standstill, instead of letting their stock stand idle, yoke it to goods waggons and ply between the centres of collection of produce and the railway.

As with the husbandman, so with the artisan. The manufacturing plant is of the simplest. The

weavers may be seen at work on the clothing of the village, at home, on the verandah, or in the open street, the traffic not being so brisk as to be impeded by this traditional obstruction. The occupation of weaving is one of the largest in India, but has been from the beginning in the hands of one of the lowest castes. It has necessarily suffered from foreign competition, but in coarse goods, which form the bulk of the trade, it holds its own. Another of the lower village trades is that of the potter, who makes the earthen vessels used all over the country for household purposes. In and near the large towns the potter develops into a brick and tile maker, and greatly improves his position by the change. The oil-presser, again, is one of the semi-agriculturists who suffers from the competition of foreign goods. Mineral oil has only been in general use for some twenty years, but is now found in every market town. The maker of the vegetable oils, therefore, if he deals with only that used for lighting, betakes himself to the occupation of providing for the export trade the raw material he formerly worked up himself, and acts as collector or broker of the seed. We have next the important group of more honourable trades, which in some parts of India are considered as of equal rank, namely, the carpenter, blacksmith, coppersmith, mason, and, above all, the silver and gold worker. It may seem strange to find the last amongst the established members of a village community, but in India he plays an important part in domestic economy. In the first place, the peasant invests all his savings in the form of ornaments, which are not only easily concealed, but make a brave show at family or village festivals; in the next place, until the last two generations there was such a scarcity of cash in currency that on the few occasions when the peasant was called on to transact business otherwise than by barter, a supply of ornaments, in

variably of the pure metal, obviated the difficulty both of the want of money and of the frequent fluctuations in the current value of coin. Partly on these grounds, partly, again, owing to the pardonable vanity of a people whose social system gives no other outlet for display of their private resources, ornaments of the precious metals form a part of every dowry, and a good deal of the indebtedness of the peasantry in India is attributable to heavy purchases which are considered necessary in anticipation of a betrothal, to sustain the reputation of the family. So widespread a sentiment is not, of course, confined to the village, and we find, accordingly, that the goldsmith is one of the few primitive handicraftsmen who has advanced in position equally with the growth of the towns. Here again one remarks the simplicity of the tools employed and the delicacy of the work turned out. One must notice, too, the evolution of trade from trade; as, for instance, the development of the carpenter into the woodcarver, though the latter has received his main stimulus from European patronage. The goldsmith, on the other hand, is always busy, even in the village, because, within certain prescribed limits handed down by ancestral tradition, the women are continually bringing their ornaments to be made up into different patterns. Where gold or silver are not within reach, the arms and legs of the wives and daughters of the peasantry are loaded with circlets of bell-metal, glass, bone, shell, or even lacquered wood. Some sort of armlet must be worn by the married woman, as a ring must be worn on the finger in our own country, and the armlet put on at betrothal is broken at the death of the husband.. The same ornament occasionally disappears, however, in a less legitimate way, after a conjugal row, there being a universal belief in the female mind in India that powdered glass judiciously administered in the husband's food causes death. The wife, it must be

remembered, does not in that country presume to sit down to food until her lord and master has satisfied his hunger.

In addition to the artisans on the village establishment, we find a number of occupations connected with personal services which have been admitted long after the original constitution was fixed, but which are now almost as widely spread as the rest. Most of the household work is necessarily done by members of the family, and in the middle and upper classes the restrictions of caste entail the employment of poor relations or connections in such offices. There are some professions, however, which must be entrusted to outsiders. The barber, for instance, is a more important functionary than in an English village. He is, of course, the recognised gossip and tale-bearer, and, in addition, he officiates in some places as the gobetween for arranging marriages. In others he bears the torch before strangers of distinction visiting his village, and is the surgeon in cases where the disease is not one which will yield to the charms of some spell-monger of local repute. The washerman, again, appears in some villages, but much more rarely than the barber. He shares with the potter the low rank which in India is associated with the use of the donkey as a beast of burden. Then we find the water-bearer, also a servant whose ministrations are more required in the artificial life of the town than in the village, except where caste is at a discount, as amongst Musalmans. Just as the barbers are divided into the superior grade which deals with men and women respectively (for the sexes do not employ the same person), and the man who shaves the superfluous hair off the young buffaloes, so the water-bearer may be the man of caste, who fills only metal and earthen vessels, or the man who makes use of the leather bag, polluting to all Hindus but the impure by birth. By a curious

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