114 The Ethnology of India, 
Merchants, and they are also most Me speculators, as is well known 
in the markets of Bombay and Calcutta. Indeed they often carry the 
rage for speculation to the point of gambling. In respect of physical 
courage, however, the case is quite different. Both their habits and 
their religious ideas make the use of a sword a thing unknown to 
them, and they have no affectation of personal manliness. 
If the Banees are not generally very tall or strong, they are not much 
the contrary, and they are generally very fair. or this latter feature 
their indoor avocations may in part account, but that alone is not, 
I think, sufficient. When one gets peeps of the faces of their women 
on the occasion of great religious gatherings and the like, they 
seem to be fair beyond almost any other Hindustanee caste. The 
men, though flabby and un-muscular looking, are, I think, to an 
unprejudiced eye often by no means bad leoking. They have, how- 
ever, none of the high-Arian sharpness of feature, but rather a sleek 
comely pudding-faced kind of countenance, something like those old 
Egyptian faces which are said to come nearest to the Hindu type. 
They are, I think, generally reputed more grasping than I have de- 
scribed the Khatrees to be; are more often accused of being hard 
on those in their power, and exercising a severe tyranny of the purse. 
But even in their case I believe that this is a good deal exaggerated, and 
that many of those who abuse them most, can least get on without 
them. Possessed as they are of so much capital and energy, there 
can be no doubt that, from an industrial point of view, the acquisition 
by them, from indolent and unprovident proprietors, of a good deal 
of the land is beneficial, when it becomes their absolute property. 
They, almost alone among superior landholders, perform something of 
the industrial functions of landlords, and they know too well the 
value of ryots, altogether to expend and sell up those in whom they 
have a permanent interest. There is to be set, on the other side, the 
political weakness resulting from the existence of large numbers of 
strong-armed pre-owners still, as they think, natural proprietors, side by 
side with new owners who in a difficulty will not fight, Still, if the 
Bunneahs will not fight, they may perhaps pay others to fight for 
them. It is only when they are set to ‘exploiter’ the ryots in a 
speculative way, as mere temporary lessees and middlemen under 
the great superior Zemindars, that they are often a great curse. 
