INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 25?. 



of jibs and foresails, whereof they carry five. The eyes in these boats are boss-like, 

 carved separately out of wood, and nailed in their place one on each bow. The iris 

 is painted black, the eyeball white, an outer black margining outline representing 

 the eyelid (PI. VI, fig. 2). Even among the Hindu-owned, the use of the eye is not 

 now universal ; the custom is gradually dying out and in a generation or two will 

 have disappeared. 



Besides those owned by Hindus, a number belong to Muhammadans. None of 

 the latter are furnished with eyes and they are further distinguished by the form 

 of the stem-head. In the Hindu boats this takes the shape of an inwardly coiled 

 rounded ornament, the siinil (PI. VI, fig. 2) ; the jibboom is placed eccentric upon 

 the starboard side. In the Muhammadan variety'', the jibboom is fixed in the median 

 line and the stem piece is prolonged forwards as a bowsprit to support the jibboom. 



In most of the Hindu padagus, particularly those adorned with eyes, the fore- 

 part of the bows is sacred ; it forms the ship's particular shrine and place of worship. 

 The crew are usually orthodox Saivites, so the aft edge of the suni-l is painted with 

 the three horizontal bars associated with the deity who receives their primary 

 devotion (PI. VI, fig. i). In the recess below is a little shelf a few inches above the 

 deck ; on this, when I visited one of these vessels, was a blowing conch and the lamp 

 used in the ceremonies. When worship is to be performed, usually before leaving 

 port, one of the crew who acts as piijari, puts ash on his forehead, lights the little 

 ghee lamp lying on the shelf, burns cam.phor and incense, breaks a coconut, and 

 rings a bell, while an assistant blows intermittently upon the conch. Offerings of 

 plantains, betel leaves and arecanuts are made to the god and then distributed 

 among the crew. 



When questioned the tindal would not admit that the eyes on the bows had 

 anything to do with the god under whose protection they sailed. He explained their 

 presence and use as the Greeks and Romans did and as the Chinese do now — that the 

 eyes were there to enable the ship to see her way, to avoid rocks and sandbanks — in 

 his words ''without the eyes she would be like a blind man alone in the street." 

 But that this was the original reason for placing the eyes, I feel sure is not the case ; 

 it is the general custom among the uneducated or partially educated classes to dis- 

 claim the connection of any custom they practise, with anything that savours of 

 unorthodox superstition. For instance, a man will place the impress of a hand upon 

 the door of his house or will tie some object around the neck of his milch cow and in 

 spite of the transparently obvious motive, he will often stoutly deny that it meant 

 for anything but fancy or ornament. Apart from this reason, we have to remember 

 that the general employment of such a custom dates back so far into the past, that 

 the original significance may well be lost, obscured, or transformed. We have also 

 to allow for the hazy and vague ideas that the uneducated have of the fundamental 

 reason or meaning of many of the customs they practise ; with almost all, the sole 

 valid inducement is the immemorial usage of their caste or calhng or country. From a 

 survey of the httle we know of the subject, and by inference from the association of 

 all the four Indian instances with special and specific religious observances, and above 



