The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 142

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142 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

Pariah Village in South India.

At the entrance to the village, beneath a banyan,
is an earthen or brick platform two or three feet
high, its sides striped white and red to show that
it is sacred. Upon it stand the village gods,
strange-looking deities of local fame, or the snake
gods cut in stone, or possibly some honorable mem-
ber of the recognized Hindu pantheon, such as the
monkey god, or the elephant-headed Ganesha.
Little offerings of marigolds, a coconut or a few

‘plantains or a clay saucer of milk or ghee (clarified

butter), lie before the idols, placed there by pious
hands. Stuck in the ground, their points toward
the sky, there may be several spears for the gods
to use in self-defense if need should arise. The
crude stone images are smeared with saffron or
vermilion or garlanded with flowers. This is the
village sanctuary. Not far away there may be
a few, or perhaps a dozen huge clay horses, ten or
fifteen feet high, covered with whitewash and gaily
painted over with patterns done in blue, red, and
yellow. These fearsome creatures are for the god
Iyenar, the guardian of villages, to ride upon when
he goes round the village by night.

As we pass the village well, the women and girls
are drawing water or chatting together and laugh-
ing merrily while waiting for their turn to fill their
beautifully polished brass water-vessels. At our
approach they draw their saris (long cloths) over
their faces and turn away. As they walk down the
shady street, we cannot fail to notice their graceful,
easy carriage, due doubtless to their lifelong habit
of carrying those heavy water-vessels upon their
heads.

The village looks rather uninteresting as we
enter — just a cluster of mud-and-thatch dwellings,
ugly in themselves, but often pleasing in their set-

ting of palmyras. There is often
an air of general untidiness about
the place —a fallen hut, lying just
as it collapsed during the rains, or
a heap of stones deposited several
years before and left there un-
touched; or there is a stagnant,
muddy pool where the oxen drink
and the water-buffaloes lie down in
the heat of midday. There is no
attempt at paving or road-cleaning
or drainage. Tow one would like
to “tidy up” the whole place!

The houses are made of unburned
bricks, plastered over with brown
mud, possibly whitewashed, and the
big thatch roof overhangs in front,
so as to form a veranda, under which the people sit
to obtain shelter from the fierce rays of the sun.
Here and there a better-built house has a roof of
red tiles, made perhaps at the Industrial Mission
tile-works at Mangalore. Village houses are seldom
more than one story high, and most of them have

Village Street in South India.