A TYPICAL INDIAN VILLAGE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 546, 28 January 1882, Page 2

A TYPICAL INDIAN VILLAGE.

Outside the entrance of the single village street, on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter sits by his wheel, moulding the swift revolving clay by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which form the low, irregular street, there are two or three looms at work in blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being woven. In the street ' the brass and copper smiths are hammering away at their pots and pans ; and further down in the verandah of the rich man’s house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair jewellery, gold and silver ear-rings, and round tires like the moon, bracelets, and tablets, and nose-rings, and tinkling ornaments for the feet, taking the designs from the fruits and flowers around him, or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the ! great temple, which rises over the grove of mangoes and palms at the end of J the street, above the lotus-covered viyi lage tank. At 3.30 or 4in the noon the whole street is by the moving robes of the

going down to draw water fr| tank, each with two or three J

pn [her head; and so while they are going and returning in single file, the ncerie glows like Titian’s canvas, and •noves like the stately procession of the Panathenaic frieze. Later, the men i Irive in the mild, gray kine from the inoshing plain, the looms are folded ip, the coppersmiths are silent, the olders gather in the gate, the lights begin to glimmer in the fast-falling darkness, the feasting and the music i ;te heard on every side, and late into (he night the songs are sung from the -jlamayana or Mahabharata. The next ijnor ; iing, with sunrise, after the simple :|,blu-tions and adorations performed in fjhe !>pen air before the houses, the same day begins again. This is the daily life j ;oing on all over Western India in the village communities of the Dakhan, .','mong a people happy in their simple ifnanners and frugal wzy oflife, and in tlhe culture derived from the grand epics of a religion in which they live and move and have their daily being, and in which the highest expression of their IjiterJiture, art, and civilisation has been Stereotyped for 3,000 years.—The Industrial Arts of India—Birwood.