January r, 1889.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
459 
will find a sources of that mental exaltation and iutel- 
lectual stimolus which are bo often required most, 
when the overstrained faculties are beginning to re- 
venge themsnl»es for loner years of unrelaxing tension 
and of inflexible abuse. — Oil, Faint unit Dray Reporter. 
«, 
THE DKOCAN VILLAGER AND 
AGRICULTURE IN INDIA. 
Whoever amongst us here — if we except Sir Ed- 
ward Buck and his intimate disciples — who wants to 
learn more thau he kuows at present about Indian 
ploughs had bi tter read nu essav on the subject by 
Sir George Birdwood in the Asiatic Review for Oc- 
tober. One must, at all events, be a great deal in 
the fii Ids and a very close observer of native ways to 
have picked n)' all the details with which this article is 
enriched without being overiaden. for it is a long, 
imaginative and picturesque article — very charming 
withal in its delightful heterodoxy when it touchesany 
economic problem, and it tells the reader a good 
deal more about the real life of the Deccan peasant 
than he will bo able to glean from statistical ab- 
stracts or progress reports that calculate out his hap- 
piness or his misery, as the caso may be, to several 
places of decimals. The essav found an echo at once 
in the Times which published a leader on the 10th 
October, perfumed) so to speak, with memories of 
rural Bengal and eloquent concerning the great Pa.v 
Tndica, which careless newspaper readers wero so apt 
to forget while fretted with telegrams about the Black 
Mountain or Silikim — mere frothy disturbances on the 
fringe of the profound calm within- Sir George li'rd- 
wood has been inspired to sing the idyll of "The 
Mahratta plough" by some I'andit of progress who 
:•. Idressed the East India Association a few months 
ago on the subject of agricultural improvement in 
India. Sir George scornfully ridicules the idea that 
the Indian agriculturist can be brought into improved 
relations with tho fields he has cherished through iin- 
ni morial antiquity by the British manufacturers of 
steam-digging machinery. He tells the tale of such 
a piece of machinery brought into one of the Native 
States iu the Bombay Presidency — led out to its work 
in the black cotton soil wreathed with flowers ami 
scented with al(nr of roses. It snorted and shrieked 
and moved forward and sank iu the yielding earth 
and foundered there, so that it could neither move 
forward nor backward. Ultimately it had to be taken 
tO piecos, and the share was painted red and set up 
in tho village as a linyam to serve as a symbol of Ma- 
liadeo. The real plough of tho Mahratta peasant is 
a piece of apparatus he can buy to begin with for 
five shillings, and carry home with him when his day's 
work is done under his arm. Once some native ploughs 
were photographed for a firm of English agricultural 
instrument makers that they might see if thuy could 
not reproduce them cheaply an I undersell tho native 
maker. "It was an evil hope," says Sir George, "ami 
fortunately then 1 is no chance of its ever beiug ful- 
liled." Soothed by the thoroughly Indian atmosphere 
of this essay, what reader will fail t • > sympathise with 
the writer's feeling, and yet how few of the efforts 
to improve India by bringing over European manu- 
factures could oscupe the charge on similar principles 
of being animated by "evil hopes!" If it is evil to 
undersell the Indian maker of ploughs, how are w« 
t" Mini. hi I tho nnderseller of Bombay cottons or Oudh 
hardware ? To undersell your neighbour is the load- 
ing conim liniment of the ;r lit tfosp.d of e niipeti- 
Hod; an 1 only when everybody has beateu everybody 
else out of the field of industry does the improve- 
ment of the commercial cnthu-iast culminate iu the 
Universal prostration which is apparently identical — in 
POQUOI o philosophy — with universal prosperity . 
The Mahratta country is described by Sir George 
Bird wood with affectionate prolixity In all its geogra- 
phii il <li t u's, but the j . -tur.- lie .'iv. •> oi the peasant's 
life is tho mom truly interesting part of hie essay. 
The scone is so vividly described one cannot lie i ( > 
Jo.oiy the figures of the 1>occau village that the writer 
(uu Imagined m Intensely, "The first sound heard 
niter the deep Htllluefs ,,( the night, pint I , l ire the 
dawn, is of the house-father, who having on rising 
worshipped the family gods is moving about quietly 
with his head and shoulders still wrapped In his ckaddar, 
rousing up the bullocks and oxen. Then, having got 
the cattle out and lit his cigarette of tobacco rolled 
up in a leaf of tho apta and taken up his breakfast 
of jnu'iiri or hujri cakes cooked the night before and 
tied up with sn onion or borne pickle overnight by 
his wile, he strolls off at daybreak with his oxen 
before him to his fields. . ." And then the women's 
work at home is described, and how they go out to 
the men in the fields at midday with a dinner of 
pulse porridge. "The cultivators within hail of each 
other generally take this meal together. . . so from 
half an hour to an hour is spent," and then the men 
lie down and sleep for a while, and then work again 
and go home at sunset "in long winding lines to- 
wards their respective villages, walking along leisurely, 
chatting and laughing, and always keeping their oxen 
before them. Then, tying up the cattle after bathing 
and again worshipping the household gods, tho hus- 
band at eight; o'clock has his supper of pulse porridge. 
After this the social life within the village suddenly 
bursts into its brightest and happiest activity. The 
temples of the gods are visited, namely, of Mahadeo 
the great god, meaning Siva, and Bhairava, and incar- 
nation of Siva, and Hauuman. . . In AVestern, 
Southern and Central India Hanuman is everywhere 
the favourite local divinity of the lower agricultural 
classes, whose innocent gaiety of heart, so promptly 
responsive to all the pleasauter conditions of their life, 
he precisely personifies." 
So the description proceeds, and at greater length 
than will allow of quotation we are told of the various 
village festivals, and of the appearance and dresses 
of the women, and of the temple customs, and of 
the consultations with the astrologer about the right 
days for sowing the various crops. It all works up 
to a most timely and admirable peroration directed 
in scorn at the intermeddlers who prate about " Un- 
happy India" and get their meagre stock of false con- 
ceptions about the country from statistical abstracts 
and Blue Books. " Unhappv India indeed! I might 
rather bemoan the unhappiness of England, where 
faith has no fixed centre of authority; where political 
factions rage so furiously that men seem to have 
lost all sense of personal shame, confusing right with 
wrong and wrong with right, and excusing the vilest 
treasons against the State on the plea of party neces- 
sity." Bravo! It is rather an unexpected moral to 
deduce from the study of the Mahratta plough, but 
good straight hitting none less the less, and further 
recommended, no doubt, to general consumption by 
the facility with which everybody in England who 
reads tho passage will applausivcly apply it to the 
people on tho other side. But on India, exempt from 
the feverish torments of the steam-plough, competi- 
tion, and democracy, we need merely graze quietly 
iu artistic appreciation. "Happy India! where all 
men may still possess themselves in natural sufficiency 
and contentment and freely find their highest joys in 
the spiritual beliefs, or lot it be illusions, which have 
transformed their trades' union village organisation 
into a veritable civitas dei ''' Of course there is an 
element of aisthetio extravagance iu all this, ami no 
subject lends itself more readily to the cruel sneers 
of the cynic than the idyllic life of the Indian ryot. 
The dissolving view, an we turn from tho one line 
of treatmont to the other, might show us the dinner, 
so lately enjoyed by a merry group under the shade 
of it tree — a mockery of hunger with tho spectre of 
famine lurking iu some not distant lair. The pretty 
domestic picture might be stained by some barbarous 
customs, and the routine of tho house-father's devo- 
tions bo variegated by sacrifices of rathsr too sensa- 
tional «n order. Wc inol not override our conviction 
that everything which his the sanction of Dative 
usage is for tho best in tho h.st of all possible Mn- 
luirnshtra- J and min'e they didn't know everything 
even down iu .lull,," so it is unlikely that they 
hsve a complete grasp of all that ctn h« known about 
tho n sources of agriculture even in the Ueocan Stenui- 
plOUghl may founder iu tho black cotton Mill bu'i 
