The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 143

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

143

some sort of a courtyard in the center; a veranda
runs round the court, and the rooms open out
from it, tiny, dark rooms, with little or no furni-
ture and very stuffy. No part of the house is
purdah; for in most parts of South India the
zenana system is practically unknown, and the
women are free to go about and even to work in
the fields with the men. The courtyard is the
center of family life: there the domestic work is
done, the babies are washed, the grain is crushed
in the stone pounder, the food is prepared, and the
brass vessels are vigorously polished with red earth
till they shine in the sunlight.

At meal-times the men sit cross-legged on the
floor. on the shady side of the veranda, while the
women pile their big leaves with rice and curry
and fill the little brass drinking-vessels with water.
Afterwards the women sit down and
eat what is left. Then the leaves
are away. Tin or white
enamel plates are now coming into
use instead of the primitive leaves.

If the family is an agricultural
one, the dwelling will be strewn with
simple agricultural implements. If
they are of the potter caste, there
will be heaps of prepared clay in the
courtyard, with dozens of newly
made vessels baking in the sunshine.
In a shady corner, before the time-
honored wheel, sits the potter; his
bare feet keep the wheel revolving
while his skilled hand shapes four
or five vessels from one piece of clay.
Or perchance the people are of the oil-presser caste ;
then in the courtyard — or maybe on a bit of land
just outside the dwelling — there will be the oil-
press, a hollowed log cut from the trunk of a large
tree, with an arrangement for crushing the oil from
the seeds, the whole being turned by two cream-col-
ored bullocks who steadily pace round and round.

Sometimes all the people in one street will be
of the weaver caste. Their primitive looms are set
up in the tree-shaded street before the dwellings,
and they may all be seen, men and women, busily
working at a piece of cloth the length of the street!
The small children play around and dodge one an-
other by ducking underneath the half-made fabric.

As we walk along, we see the carpenters working
at their saw-pit with a two-handled saw, the black-
smith with his forge, and the idol-maker painting
images for the villagers to buy. In the little bazaar
is the goldsmith, blowing his small charcoal fire

thrown

to melt up some jewelry a customer desires to have
altered or to turn some silver rupees into anklets
for the landowner’s wife. The Singer sewing-
machine is humming merrily — probably there is
not a village in India without at least one “Singer.”
If the village is a large one, there is sure to be
a temple, large or small, unimportant or famous
through all the countryside. The principal street
right up to the main gateway and the high walls
surrounding the temple are covered with broad
perpendicular stripes of red and white.

The Story of Maung Ba Lin.

Maung Ba Lin was a Buddhist monk. He had
gone into a cave, in company with other priests,
to spend his days waiting for the “light.” To

Lutheran Mission-School in a South India Village.

priests who withdraw from the usual monastery and
take up this cave life is promised that some day
a great light shall dawn for them — not only a spir-
itual light, when they shall come to a great under-
standing after all their meditation, but at the same
time also a physical light. Their darkened cave
will be flooded with-a strange light, so that they
will see as clearly as though they were outside dur-
ing the noonday sun.

These monks leave their cave only once daily,
and that is for their morning round of begging food.
One morning, as he went his rounds, Maung Ba Lin
found by the roadside, in a pile of trash, a tattered
booklet, which he took back to his cave with him.
He read and reread the story therein told, and he
began to think that at last he was finding the true
light. His tattered book was a copy of John’s
Gospel in Burmese. This so grew upon him that
he began to ask himself what he had gained by all