Govinda Sámanta, or the history of a Bengal Ráiyat

Chapter I. Premises What The Reader Is To Expect, And What He

IS NOT TO EXPECT, IN THIS AUTHENTIC HISTORY. The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains ; What labour yields, and what, that labour past. Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last ; What form the real picture of the poor, Demand a song — the Muse can give no more. Crabbe. Gentle Reader, in case you have come with great expectations to the perusal of this humble per formance, I deem it proper to undeceive you at the very outset ; lest after going through it, or through a good bit of it, you are disappointed, and then turn round and abuse me as a fellow who, with a view to attract customers, has put a misleading sign-board over the door of his shop. I therefore VOL. I. B [chap. 2 purpose, like a tradesman who, though anxious to turn a penny, wishes to obtain it in an honest way, to tell you at once, in all sincerity and good faith, what you are to expect, and what you are not to expect, in this hall of refreshment ; so that after being acquainted with the bill of fare, you may either begin to partake of the repast or not, just as you please, and thus save yourself the trouble of sitting down to a dinner not congenial to your taste, and me the abuse justly merited by a man who holds out expectations which he cannot fulfil : and, after the approved manner of the popular preachers of tlie day, I shall treat first of the second point.

The first head, then, of this preliminary discourse, or — to use a still more learned word — of this prolegome non, is what the schoolmen would call the negative point, namely, what you are not to expect in this book. And firstly, of the first point. You are not to expect anything marvellous or wonderful in this little book. My great Indian predecessors — the latchet of whose shoes I do not pretend to be worthy to unloose — Valmiki, Vyas, and the compilers I-] PREFATORY. 3 of the Puranas, have treated of kings with ten heads and twenty arms ; of a monkey carrying the sun in his arm-pit ; of demons churning the universal ocean with a mountain for a churn-staff; of beings, man above and fish below, or with the body of a man and the head of an elephant; of sages, with truly profound stomachs, who drank up the waters of the ocean in one sip ; of heroes as tall as the lofty towers of the golden Lanka ; of whole regions inha bited by rational snakes, having their snake-kings, snake-ministers, snake-soldiers hissing and rushing forth to battle.

And some of my European pre decessors, like Swift and Rabelais, have spoken of men whose pockets were capacious enough to hold a whole nation of diminutive human beings ; and of giants, under whose tongue a whole army, with its park of artillery, its pontoon bridges, its commissariat stores, its ambulance, its field post, its field telegraph, might take shelter from the pouring rain and the pitiless storm, and bivouac with security under its fleshy canopy. Such marvels, my reader, you are not to expect in this unpretending volume. The age of marvels has gone by; giants do not pay [chap . now-a-days; scepticism is the order of the day; and the veriest stripling, whose throat is still full of his mother's milk, says to his father, when a story is told him : " Papa, is that true ? " Secondly, you are not to expect in this authentic history any thrilling incidents.

Romantic adventures, intricate evolutions of the plot, striking occurrences,, remarkable surprises, hair-breadth escapes, scenes of horror, at the recital of which the hair stands on end -the stuff of which the sensational novels of the day are made — have no place here. Thrilling incidents occur but seldom in the life-history of ninety nine persons out of a hundred, and in that of most Bengal raiyats never. If you, gentle reader, choose to come in here, you must make up your mind to go without romantic adventures and the like ; and, as for horrors, this country inn has not the means to make you sup off them. Thirdly, you are not to expect any love-scenes. The English reader will be surprised to hear this. In his opinion there can be no novel without love-scenes. A novel without love is to him the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet's part left out.

But I I.] PREFATORY. 5 cannot help it. I would fain introduce love-scenes ; but in Bengal — and for the matter of that in all India — they do not make love in the English and honour able sense of that word. Unlike the butterfly, whose courtship, Darwin assures us, is a very long affair, the Bengali does not court at all. Marriage is an affair managed entirely by the parents and guardians of bachelors and spinsters, coupled with the good offices of a professional person, whom the reader may meet with in the course of this narrative. Of dishonour able, criminal love, there is no lack ; but I do not intend to pollute these pages with its description. Fourtlily, You are not to expect here "grandilo quent phraseology and gorgeous metaphors." Some of my educated countrymen are in love with sonorous language.

The use of English words two or three feet long is now the reigning fashion in Calcutta. Young Bengal is a literary Bombastes Furioso; and Young Bengalese is Johnsonese run mad. " Big thinkers may require," as old Sam Johnson said, " big words ; " but we, plain country-folk, talking of fields, of paddy, of the plough and the harrow, have no sublime thoughts, and do not, therefore, [chap. I. require sublime words. If, gentle reader, you have a taste for highlywrought, highly-seasoned language,. for gorgeous similes, for sesquipedalian phraseology, for sonorous expression, making a maximum of noise with a minimum of sense, and for such other comfits, I advise you to go elsewhere and not to come to this country confectionery. I now come to the second point of this preliminary discourse, which is, what the reader is to expect in this book.

Remembering that brevity is the soul of wit, I despatch this part of the subject in one short sentence. The reader is to expect here a plain and unvarnished tale of a plain peasant, living in this plain country of Bengal — I beg the pardon of that sublime poet who sung in former days of the " hills of Hooghly and the mountains of the Twenty four Parganas" — told in a plain manner. Such, gentle reader, is my bill of fare. If you think it will suit you, I bid you welcome; if not, please pass on to some other quarter.

Chapter II. Introduces An Old Woman To The Reader

Sche cowde moche of wandryng by the weye, Gat-tothed was sche, sothly for to seye. Prologue to Canterbury Tales. It was considerably past midnight one morning in the sultry month of April, when a human figure was seen moving in a street of Kanchanpur, a village about six miles to the north-east of the town of Vardhamana, or Burdwan. There was no moon in the heavens, as she had already disappeared behind the trees on the western skirts of the village ; but the sky was lit up with myriads of stars, which were regarded with superstitious awe by our nocturnal pedestrian, as if they were the bright eyes of men who once lived on the earth, and had since passed into the realms of Indra. Perfect stillness reigned everywhere, [chap. except when it was interrupted by the barking of dogs, or the yells of the village watchmen, two or three of whom often join in a chorus, and send forth those unearthly shouts which so often disturb the sleep of the peaceful inhabitants.

The human figure, which was moving with rapid strides, had no other clothing than a dhuti, wrapped round the waist, and descending to the knee-joints ; and he had a thick bamboo-stick in his hand. As he was rounding a corner of the street, he saw dimly a man sitting at the door of a hut, who shouted out; — " Who goes there ? " " I am a raiyat," exclaimed the moving figure. " What raiyat ? " rejoined the village watchman, for it was none other. " I am Manik Samanta," was the reply. " Manik Samanta, at this late hour ! " said the watchman. "I am going to fetch Rupa's mother." " Oh ! I understand : come, sit down and smoke — tobacco is ready." " You smoke — I am in haste ! " So saying, Manik Samanta walked on faster than II.] AN OLD WOMAN. 9 before, passed that part of the street which was lined on both sides with houses, and came to the outskirts of the village, where there were a great many mango orchards, sprinkled here and there with a few huts.

Before one of those huts Manik stood and called out : " Rupa's mother ! Rupa's mother ! " At the first call Manik perceived, from whispers inside the hut, that Rupa's mother was awake ; but he received no answer to his call. He called a second time, but no answer was returned; he called a third .time, no answer yet. It was only after he had bawled out the fourth time that the call was responded to. The reader may suppose that Rupa's mother was deaf; but it was not so. She had a meaning in not answering the call till it was repeated the fourth time. It is the invariable custom of the rural popu lation of Bengal never to respond to a call at night, especially after midnight, till it is repeated three times. It is believed that Nisi, that is Night per sonified, has often stood at night at the doors of simple folk, called them out of their beds, and decoyed them to pools and tanks, where they were drowned.

GOVINDA S AM ANT A. [chap. The sable goddess never calls, it is believed, more than three times ; and in order to be sure that it is the voice of a human being, and not of Nisi, no answer is given till after the fourth time. The superstition has doubtless its origin in the perils incurred by those who are afflicted with somnambulism. But to proceed with the narrative. The door was opened. Manik told Rupa's mother that she was wanted immediately. Rupa's mother told Rupa, her daugh ter, to strike a light. Rupa brought from a corner a small gunny bag, and poured out its contents, which were two or three pieces of flint, an iron striker, and some pieces of sold, the Indian cork plant. In a moment the flint gave out a spark of fire, which fell into the sold ; the sulphur match was applied ; aud an earthen lamp, containing a small quantity of mustard oil and a cotton wick, was lit.

Let us take a hasty glance, by the dim light of the lamp, at Rupa's mother and her hut. On the floor of the hut, surrounded on all sides by mud walls and over-topped by a straw thatch, lay a coarse mat of palmyra-leaves, which served as a bed for the mother and the daughter. In the four corners were n.] AN OLD WOMAN. 11 some lidndis (earthen pots) which contained all their stores, consisting chiefly of rice, a few vegetables, and some culinary condiments like turmeric, salt,. mustard oil and the like. There was no furniture. Rupa's mother, who was of the bdgdi caste, appeared to be a woman of between forty and fifty years of age, of rather below the average height of Bengali women, and had a slender figure ; — indeed, her limbs seemed to be as thin and shrivelled as the dry stalks of the lotos.

For some reason or other she had very few teeth in her head, and those few at a great distance from one another ; in consequence of which she spoke like a woman eighty years old.. We have used the circumlocutory phrase, Rupa's mother, instead of mentioning her own name; but the fact is, we never heard her name mentioned by anybody in the village ; and though we have made laborious inquiries into the matter, our exertions have proved fruitless, — every one insisting on calling her Rupa's mother. Rupa herself appeared to be a young woman about twenty years old, and the fact that she had not on her wrist the usual iron circlet, nor the vermilion paint on the top of her forehead. GOVINDA SAMANTA. [chap. where the hair was parted, showed that she was a widow. Rupa's mother had no great preparations to make for accompanying Manik.

She had no bundles to make up of her clothes, for she usually carried about with her on her person the whole of her wardrobe, which consisted of one long sari and one short one; •the latter of which she put on every day after bathing, while the former one was being sunned, and both of which she used to whiten once a month by steeping them in a solution of ashes and cows' urine — the cheap soap of the peasantry of Bengal. She uncovered one of the lidndis, took out some drugs, put out the light, and ordered Rupa to lock the door and follow her. But as Rupa was putting the padlock on the door, a lizard, which was resting on the eaves of the thatch, chirped. The til:, tile, lilt, of the lizard is always regarded as a bad omen by all classes of the people of Bengal, so the journey was delayed. The door was re-opened, the lamp was again lit, and they sat for half an hour in pen sive meditation, though Manik vented no little wrath -against the audacious reptile.

At last, however, II.] AN OLD WOMAN. 13 they set out. They went the same way through which Manik had come, went nearly to the middle of the village, and entered a house. By this time the stars had disappeared from the heavens, excepting the kingly SuJcra (or regent of the planet Venus), which was shining above the eastern horizon, and proclaiming to an awakening world the cheerful approach of day. As I already perceive people passing in the street, smoking as they are walking on, and cough ing over their hookahs, I do not intend going into the house into which Manik and the two women: have just entered, but purpose taking a stroll through the village, and trust my reader will give me the' pleasure of his company.

Chapter III. Sketches

A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheer' d the labouring swain. The Deserted Village. Kanchanpur, or the Golden City, is a considerable village in Pargana Sahabad, in the district of Vard hamana, and lies about six miles to the north-east of the town of that name. It has a population of about fifteen hundred souls, belonging to most of the thirty-six castes into which the Hindus of Bengal are generally divided, though the predominating caste in the village was the sadgopa, or the agricultural •class. Why the village has obtained the name of the "golden city," I have not been able exactly to ascertain ; some of the oldest inhabitants maintain that it has been so called on account of the wealth ■CHAP. III.] A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. 15 accumulated, and comforts enjoyed by the peasantry in general ; while others are of the opinion that the village has been called "golden," on account of the residence in it of some rich families of the suvarnavanikas (literally, traders in gold), usually called the banker caste.

However this may be, Kanchanpur is a large and prosperous village. There is a con siderable Brahmana population, the great majority of whom are of the srotriya order, often called rddhi, from the fact of their living in Radii, the name by which the country lying on the western side of the Bhagurathi river is usually designated. The Jcdyas thas, or the writer caste, are comparatively few in number. Ugva-kshatriyas, or Aguris, as they are called in common parlance, who are all engaged in agricultural pursuits, though less numerous than the sadgopas, are an influential class in the village; while there is the usual complement of the medical caste, of blacksmiths, barbers, weavers, spice-sellers, •oilmen, bdgdis, doms, hddis, and the rest. Strange to say, there is hardly a single Muhammadan family in the village — the votaries of that faith being less numerous in western than in eastern Bengal. [chap. Kanchanpur, like most villages in Bengal, has four divisions agreeably to the four cardinal points of the compass — the northern, the southern, the eastern, and the western.

The village lies north and south, aud the northern and southern divisions are much larger than the eastern and western. A large street runs north and south, straight as the crow flies, on which abut smaller streets and lanes from the eastern and western divisions. The bulk of the houses are mud cottages thatched with the straw of paddy, though there is a considerable number of brick houses, owned, for the most part, by the kdyas thas and the banker caste. The principal street, of which I have spoken, is lined on both sides by ranges of houses, either of brick or of mud, each having a compound, with at least a tree or two, such as the plum, mango, guava, lime, or papaya, and the invariable plantain. Outside the village, the main street is extended nearly a quarter of a mile at each end, with rows on either side of the magnificent asvatha, the Ficus religiose/, of botanists.

In the centre of the village are two temples of Siva, facing each other; one of them ni.] A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. 17 has a large colonnade, or rather polystyle, as there are no less than four rows of columns ; and the intervening space between the two temples is planted with the asvatlia. There are other temples of Siva in other parts of the village, but there is nothing about them worthy of remark. In the central part •of each of the four divisions of the village there is a vakula tree (Mimusops Elengi), the foot of which is built round with solid masonry, raised three or four feet above the ground, in the form of a circle, in the centre of which stands the graceful trunk. As the diameter of this circle is seldom less than twelve feet, a good number of people can easily sit on it, and you meet there, of an afternoon, the gentry of the village, squatting on mats or carpets, engaged in discussing village politics, or in playing at cards, dice, or the royal game of chess.

There are not more than half-a-dozen shops in the village ; in these are sold rice, salt, mustard, oil, tobacco, and other necessaries of Bengali life. The villagers, however, are supplied with vegetables, clothes, cutlery, spices, and a thousand knick-knacks, vol. i. c [chap. twice a-week, from a hdt, or fair, which is held on Tuesdays aud Saturdays, on a plain on the south western side. To a person coming towards the village, from whatever point of the compass, Kanchanpur presents a most striking view. In addition to the usual topes of mangoes and clumps of bamboo which skirt most villages in the country, our village is nearly en circled with some of the finest and most picturesque tanks in a district which is noted for its fine and picturesque tanks. These tanks, often covering forty or fifty acres of land, are surrounded by lofty em bankments.

On these embankments wave hundreds of the stately tola (Borassus flalielliformisj, which look from a distance like so many gigantic warders posted as sentinels on the high battlements of some fortified castle. Two of these tanks are worthy of description. On the south-east skirt of the village lies the him sagara, or sea of ice, so called from the excessive coldness of its water. It has, like most tanks, two bathing ghats, one for men and the other for women, at a good distance from each other. The steps of the landing-place are made of III.] A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. 19 marble. At the head of the ghat, on either side, is a sacred ttilasi plant sOcymum sanctum), placed on a high pedestal of masonry; a little higher up stand on two sides two sriphal trees (Ægle Mar melos), and in front of the ghat is a temple con taining a statue of Chaitanya, of the size of life.

The other tank is called Krishnasagara, or the black sea, from the fact of its water appearing black from a distance ; indeed, the people say that its water is as black as the eye of a crow. The ghats of this great reservoir are not so grand as those of the himsdgara, but it is said to be the deepest tank in the village ; indeed, some people believe that it has subterranean communication with pdtdla, or the infernal regions. It is also believed that in the bottom of the tank there are jars of untold treasures, in the shape of gold mohurs, in custody of a demon of the Yaksha species. The krishnasagara is therefore looked upon with mysterious awe. The oldest inhabitant does not remember its having been drained of its fish, the drag-net having been invariably cut on such occasions in the middle of the tank.

Scarcely any one bathes in it, though GOVINDA S AM ANT A. 20 [chap. scores of women may be seen every morning and evening drawing water from it for drinking. As the tank has never been cleansed since it was ex cavated, it is filled with aquatic plants of a hundred species; yet its water is beautifully transparent, and unquestionably wholesome. The other tanks of the village, though not so large, contain equally good water, and their embankments are all covered, more or less thickly, with the heaven-pointing tola, with its long trunk and its leafy crown ; while below the embankments, on all sides, are groves of the mango, the tamarind, and she Katlibel (Feronia elephaiitumj. The reader must not suppose that this display of the glories of the vegetable creation is confined to the outskirts of the village.

Inside the village, around the homesteads of the people, are to be found innumerable clumps of the bamboo, and trees of every description; while there are not a few gardens in which fruit-trees are carefully tended. In these orchards a cocoa-nut tree may be occasionally seen, but that tree does not take kindly to the soil of Pargana Sahabad. At Kanchanpur in.] A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. 21 there are three curiosities of the vegetable kingdom. One is a row of two dozen paldsa trees (Butca frondosaj in the southern division of the village. When these are in flower, they present a most imposing spectacle. The whole of every tree, branches, trunk and all, becomes covered with gorgeous flowers ; and to a spectator looking at them from a distance, it is a truly enchanting vision. The second curiosity is a gigantic Vakula tree, which has a leafy circumference of several hundred feet, and which affords shelter every night to thousands of birds.

The Vakula tree is a great favourite of the people of Bengal ; it is one of the most graceful of all trees ; it has a small flower of delicate sweetness ; and its head, naturally large, is so smooth and rounded in shape that a foreigner would suppose that the pruning-knife had been used. But the remarkable feature of this particular Vakula tree is its size. I have not seen its equal in the whole district of Vardhamana. The third curiosity • of the vegetable kingdom at Kanchanpur is a magnificent vata tree (Ficus IndicaJ which grows near the hdt to the south-west of the /village ; it covers many acres of ■'2 GOVINDA SAMANTA. CHAP. ground ; it has sent forth hundreds of branches downwards, which have taken root in the soil, and become separate trees. It affords not only shelter to thousands of the feathery race at night, but grateful shade at noon to scores of peasant boys tending their cows in the adjacent meadows.

Milton must have had one of these trees in his mind's eye when he sang of the big tree which In Malabar or Deccan spreads her arms Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother -tree, a pillar'd shade High over-arch'd, and echoing walks between : There oft the Indian herdsman shunning heat Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds At loop-holes cut through thickest shade. Sir Henry Maine, in his ingenious and thoughtful work entitled "Village Communities in the East and West," adopting the language of the Teutonic town ship, speaks of three parts of an Indian village : — first the village itself or the cluster of homesteads inhabited by the members of the community ; secondly, the " arable mark " or lands under cultivation surrounding the village; and thirdly, the in.]

A VILLAGE IN BENGAL. 23 " common mark," or waste lands for pasturage. Of the first we have already spoken. The second, or the arable mark, of Kanchanpur consists of some thousands of bigltds of land, encompassing the village, and forming a circle of cultivation the radius of which is about half a mile. Paddy of various kinds is the staple produce of the bulk of the land, though there are not wanting different species of pulse, rye, barley, cotton, tobacco, hemp, flax, and sugar cane. As almost every inch of the land around the village was under cultivation, there was no " common mark " or waste connected with it. Nor were waste lands needed for pasturage, as there was not a .single flock of sheep in the village ; and the cows and bullocks, of which there was a large number, grazed on the verdant spots on the roadside, on the sloping sides of tanks with high embankments, on the green balks separating one field from another, on the grass-covered areas of mango topes and tamarind groves, and on those patches of unfilled land situated near pools of water which ever and anon relieve the eye amid the infinite expanse of never-ending paddy.

Chapter IV. Describes

A RURAL SCENE, AND USHERS OUR HERO INTO THE WORLD. Young elms, with early force, in copses bow, Fit for the figure of the crooked plough : Of eight feet long, a fastened beam prepare — On either side the head, produce an ear ; And sink a socket for the shining share. Georgics. It was midday. The cruel sun, like a huge furnace, was sending forth hot flames all around. There was hardly any breeze, the broad leaves of the tall palmyra hung quite motionless ; the cows were resting in the shade of trees, and were chewing the cud ; and the birds were enjoying their mid-day siesta. At such a time, when all Nature seemed to be in a state of collapse, a solitary husbandman was seen ploughing a field on the eastern side of the village CHAP. IV.] OUR HERO. 25 of Kanchanpur. In the previous evening there had been a shower, accompanied with a thunderstorm, and Manik Samanta was taking advantage of that circumstance, to prepare the soil for the early crop of Aus dhdn, so-called from the fact of that sort of paddy ripening in less time than is taken by the Aman, or the winter paddy.

As some of our readers may not have seen a Bengal plough, it is as well to describe it here ; and we do not think the object is too low to be described, especially when we remember that it exercised in antiquity the genius of two such poets as Hesiod and Virgil. The Calcutta cockney, who glories in the Mahratta Ditch, despises the scenery of the country, and plumes himself upon the fact of his having never seen in his life the rice-plant, may well be addressed in the language of the poet of the " Seasons " : — ■ Nor ye who live In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride, Think these last themes unworthy of your ear : Such themes as these the rural Maro sung To wide imperial Eome, in the full height Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined. In ancient times the sacred plough employed The kings and awful fathers of mankind.

And some, with whom compared your insect tribes Are but the beings of a summer's day, Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm Of mighty war; then with victorious hand, Disdaining little delicacies, seized The plough, and, greatly independent, scorned All the vile stores corruption can bestow. What, then, is a Bengal plough? The Bengal plough is very much the same as the Greek and the Roman one, though it has not the mechanical adjustments of its English namesake. For the ilex oak of the Theban bard, and the elm of the Mantuan, the Bengali husbandman substitutes the babul, or rather bdbla, as the Vardhamana peasant calls it — the Acacia Arabica, of botanists. The wooden coulter is shod with hon, which serves the purpose of the "shining share." The plough-tail, which is inclined to the plough-share at an acute angle, is furnished with a short handle, by means of which the peasant guides the share and presses it into the earth.