The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1917, Page 12

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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There is little that is orderly or clean to be seen
anywhere.

Near the center of the village you will find the
communhity-well, if there be one at all. Here the
women come, carrying water-jars and their babies,
both to get water and to gossip. Here, too, the
men gather in the evening for a smoke. After
dark a village in India is generally quiet; snakes,
the fear of ghosts, and the lack of light send the
people to bed at an early hour. A medicine bottle

Village Women at Work in India.

with a thimble top and a rolled rag for a wick eon-
stitutes the lamp of most of the villagers.

In villages where there is no well, the tank,
that is, a pond, which gathers all the surface water
from roads and fields, serves every purpose.
fank is used for bathing, washing clothes, cattle,

and wagons, and it also furnishes drinking-water |

for everybody. If the rain fails and the tank goes
dry, a famine follows. On the other hand, if the
tank*is full and the people drink from it, there is
cholera. Wherever shallow wells will tap under-
ground streams of water, or crnde watersheds make

_ ponds or tanks possible, there villages will spring up.

_ There is but little play in an Indian village.

The Lutheran Pioneer.

‘pally worshiped, a demon, whose spirit is believed |

This >

The older people are too tired, and the younger
ones get but little time. Weddings and funerals
are the chief occasions for recreation. At five years
of age little girls begin to help in the household. |
At twelve they are mostly married. The boys have 7%
but little time to play marbles, kites, and tops, for J
they must help in the field. he combined family

income, as a rule, does not exceed 20 dollars a year! *

The worst part of the village is occupied by the |
outeastes; a narrow alley and a few mud _ huts 4
form the quarters where they live.

A village home generally has only one door,
which opens into a courtyard or the street. One
small window, high up and heavily barred, gives
but very little light. One or two corded beds and
a little bedding, besides a mud fireplace, a few pots
and jars, an iron plate for baking, a millstone, and
an oil-can to protect things from the ants, com-
plete the furniture. In India it‘is possible to begin
housekeeping with less than five dollars! A house
can be rented for cight cents a month, and a wife
also may be had very cheap.

The farming implements of the Indian peasant
are as primitive as is his house furniture, and are
the same as they were a thousand years ago. A hoe.
which also serves as a shovel, a trowel, for a har-
row, and a crooked stick with an iron shoe, for
a plow, constitute the entire outfit.

Slender threads bind one village to another, the
visits of the itinerant priest, if the village has no
temple of its own; the traveling barber and tailor
on their regular, periodical visits, as well as the
postman; the astrologer, who goes from village to
village; and the mela festival, a kind of fair and
religious gathering in one.

Every village has some local god, who is princi-

{o dwell in a stone, tree, or some other object.
Every serious illness or misfortune is blamed on
some demon. Every home has its idol, which may
be a handful of mud, squeezed up, with two holes.
punched in for eyes and baked in the sun, or a )
little bronze or iron idol made in England. ‘There
is no such a thing as a collective worship, such as
we are used to in this country. People go to church
all day long, just when it suits them. All told,
Indian mythology counts no less than thirty mil-
lion gods. — Compiled by F-. J. L.

Tne heathen eannot be eternally saved except —
through the Word of Christ. — Luther. ‘