ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 193 



CHAPTER XVII 



Slaves in India — Native methods of hunting — Music and dancing — The 

 musical scale — Native music at Hyderabad and Madras — The Todas 

 — Their hospitality — Buffalo cream — Marriage system — Sacrificial 

 festival. 



Slavery, abolished in some countries, is not so in India ; 

 there it is common enough ; moreover, what we saw of 

 it seemed unobjectionable. The system may give rise to 

 abuses (in the native states, for instance), but I only speak 

 to what I knew of it in The Wynad, where it flourishes, and 

 has always existed. 



Certainly, judging by all we witnessed ourselves and 

 learned by questioning the slaves, they could easily have 

 been worse off ; and that was also their own mind about it, 

 as we knew, for we saw them at work and at play. They 

 called it play being loaned to us as beaters in a shooting 

 expedition, when we hired them from their owners, who 

 were ryots. 1 Doubtless there are bad owners, as there are 

 bad masters ; judged as a system, however, this one seemed 

 to answer very well ; for there is slavery and slavery. 

 These slaves were paid for their labour, not in money, for 

 which they would have no use, but in kind — so many 

 measures of grain and other food stuffs ; so many cloths ; 

 and a blanket every year. They were provided, too, with 

 huts, or the material to build them. Though themselves 

 slaves, as were their forefathers, yet they lived in a land 

 where slavery was not the rule ; every one was free but 

 they — nominally, that is, perhaps no more free in reality — 

 and they knew quite enough about the conditions of those 



1 i.e. farmers, or cultivators of their own land. 



N 



