to succeed in the twentieth. But here retrospect is pleasanter than prophecy. Mercer's successors, if any, may safely be left to the tender mercies of the future. Mercer herself will remain untouched by any of their failures. She is not a striking figure in the Diary, but the mere fact that she entered so closely into the life of the famous author gives her an interest which cannot be overlooked; and as a sidelight upon the social life of the times her story is of real value. Slight as the sketch of her is, it gives us the impression of a pleasant and attractive girl, of considerable culture, with the high spirits of youth and some of its indiscretions. But she moves, be it remembered, in an environment altogether strange to us, and she is the creature of her own age, not ours.

VOL. LVI-No. 330

NORMAN PEARSON.

U

SOME INDIAN PORTRAITS

NOTHING must strike the quiet observer in India so much as the marked differences in the typical characters of the people who inhabit the continent of India. To most people in England these differences merely suggest the broad classification of the native population into Hindus and Muhammadans. But to those who have had any personal knowledge of the country, difference of creed will very insufficiently account for the physical and social differences they have observed among the dark or copper-coloured people they have known. The Arain (or cultivator), the Say'ad (who claims direct descent from the Arabian prophet), the domestic Khansama (or head-butler), and the Bhisti (or water-carrier), are all Muhammadans. But in respect

of every element which goes to constitute the microcosmic man as a whole, the Arain differs as much from each of the other three types as each of the latter differs from the others, although all four may be Panjabis by birth and Muslims by religion. Again, the Banya (or village banker and general grocer), the Mahajan (or city banker), the Parohit (or family priest), the Rajput farmer, the domestic Bearer (or valet), and the office clerk may all be Hindus, and all born in the one province, possibly within a radius of twenty miles, and yet who familiar with these types could mistake one for the other, or fail to be struck by their essential differences? The phenomenon is a curious one which baffles the ethnologist, the sociologist, and all the other scientists or ologists to explain in a satisfactory manner. I do not propose in this paper to offer any solution of my own. My object is the less ambitious one of trying to present a faithful picture of some of the more prominent types I have met, from the point of view of one who has spent a lifetime in India, and who has the deepest sympathy with the people of that magnificent country.

Take, for instance, that much abused but very indispensable person, the village Banya. Squat, flat-nosed, sharp-eyed, rotundshaped, and generally close-shaven, it is impossible to mistake him for anyone else, or anyone else for him. And if his physical personality is so well and sharply defined, his intellectual and moral qualities are no less so. His capacity for trade may be said to be hereditary; it descended to him from his father, and he will transmit it to his son.

He deals in everything. He is a vendor of every description of dry goods suitable to supply the wants of the community amongst whom he lives. He also supplies oil and sowing seeds, drugs and condiments. He keeps a small stock of drapery for rustic use. But above all he is the village banker and financier, and it is in this role that his presence is most felt. He advances money to needy agriculturists-and nearly all Indian agriculturists are needy-on the mere asking, without security as a rule, and on easy terms as to repayment, on Shylock's principle of making the rate of interest cover the risk of an unsecured loan. He requires no investigation as to the purposes for which the loan is demanded, nor as to the solvency of the borrower, while the only record of the transaction that is usually made is an entry in his day-book, setting forth the particulars of the loan, which the borrower is asked to verify by affixing his mark or seal. The agriculturist finds much in this system of trade which suits his tastes; it is informal, it involves no trouble, and it procures him what he wants at his very door. And as to repayment, the Banya is indulgent, and what need not be faced at once never presents much anxiety to the agriculturist. Thus the Banya is left to make up his account at the end of the year, to add the interest to the principal, and with perhaps a small further advance to the debtor to enable him to purchase sowing seeds, or agricultural cattle and implements, the total is carried forward, bearing the same rate of interest, and the debtor having merely affixed his seal or mark to the entry in token of his admission of its correctness, thinks no more about the transaction till the harvest season again comes round. Then the Banya has to look alive after his own interests. If he is not sharp enough, the debtor steals a march upon him and conceals as much of the produce as he can, for be it known that the agriculturist of the present day in most parts of India is by no means the Peter Simple he is usually represented to be, and is quite capable of playing a trick on his creditor if the chance presents itself. It is not often, however, that the Banya is found napping, and it is at harvest time that he shows his capacity for exacting his full pound of flesh. A certain portion of the produce, appertaining to the agriculturist's share, is first set aside to cover the current interest due: if the harvest has been a good one, perhaps a further portion is taken by him to reduce the principal of the debt, which, as already stated, includes the unpaid portion of the original loan, plus previous interest up to the date of the last balance; of the remainder of the produce the agriculturist is allowed to retain what is absolutely necessary for the wants of his household, and if there is any excess over, the Banya appropriates it by a credit in his account at an agreed rate, which, as might be expected, is generally favourable to him. At sunset, and before the evening meal, the Banya may be seen in his little shop, balancing his accounts for the day; his system is simple-a daily entry in a single book, or if his transactions are extensive and his trade

prosperous, he adds a ledger and a journal to his series. He is seldom found to have recorded a fictitious item, or to have omitted a true one, and no beggar ever passes his shop without receiving a farthing's worth of doll, or rice, or maize, or other useful staple of food. He is usually the husband of a single wife, and, as a rule, he lives in connubial happiness. The Banya seldom plays the part of a gay Lothario, and when he does he generally plays it badly and comes to grief. He often becomes rich and fattens in the process; he is rarely poor, and never troubles the bankruptcy court. Such is the man who may be said to regulate the internal economy of the village system, without whom the agriculturist could scarcely exist, for he is dependent upon his resources for all his wants, who is a Shylock in one sense and a benefactor in another. Contrast him with the well-fed, oil-besmeared, opulent and consequential Shoukar or Mahajan (the city banker), and you will be disposed to say that he stands in much the same relation to the latter as a rabbit to a fox, a terrier to a bull-dog, or a weasel to a stoat. Yet both are Hindus, both belong to the third of the three great regenerate classes, whose vocation is trade and who have a soul to save from the torments of that Hindu hell called pût. There is a family likeness between them, and the difference upon a closer acquaintance may seem only to be one of degree. But that may mean a great deal or it may mean next to nothing, according to the standard you apply for computing the degree. Speaking generally, it may be safely asserted that the difference is at all events a substantial one, and in no case could it be said to be microscopic. Look, for instance, at the Mahajan clothed in spotless white, with a flat turban of the finest muslin artistically arranged to cover his baldness or to conceal his one solitary lock of hair, seated in his carriage drawn by a pair of fast-trotting greys, as he drives forth to eat the air' at the close of a busy day; and then picture to yourself the squat village Banya riding home on his jaded pony, with a bundle of account books slung on his back after a troublesome day spent in court suing one of his many constituents, and your comment if you know both men will be, alike and yet how different! The difference in truth lies, as Teufelsdröckh would say, in the outer garment and not in the inner soul. The soul in each case is that of Mr. Isaacs.

Then let us take another and a widely different type-the ordinary native clerk in a Government office. He may be a Hindu or he may be a Muhammadan, but the former is the more general type. He also is a very distinct species, the like of which is not met with out of India. He is a skilled penman, his caligraphy is unique, distinguished for its regularity, clearness, and superb flourishes. His intellectual attainments as a rule are represented by a Middle School Pass Certificate, but occasionally he boasts of being a failed First Arts or even a failed B.A. In the latter case his ambition is proportionately higher, just as his value in the matrimonial market is enhanced. He is an

indefatigable worker, and his desk has an attraction for him which it possesses for no Englishman. He soon makes himself acquainted with the rules of his department, and becomes a veritable walking compendium of regulations, the terror of officers who have to submit returns to his official superior, and the unfailing Mentor of the latter in all that concerns the red-tapism of his department. His knowledge of the English language is not generally profound, but his vocabulary is astonishingly wide, and he has a particular fancy for long words, for uncommon words, and for words having two or more meanings, which he usually contrives to use in an unconventional sense scarcely sanctioned by Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary. His style of epistolary correspondence, when clothed in an English garb, presents a wonderful combination of pathos rising to sublimity, and bathos descending to the most absurd comicality. It is a style which has made the clerk or babu a wide-world celebrity, and which perhaps finds its highest literary expression in a Biography of Mr. Justice Onocool Mukerji, which was published at Calcutta a few years ago. But the babu's knowledge of English and his magniloquent style are merely some of his outside accomplishments.' The real man is an official product; he is made up of red tape, and when he has run his earthly career, and his ashes have been collected, we feel sure that his soul would rest in peace if they could be put away in an official envelope, neatly tied with red tape, and sealed with the Government of India seal in red sealing-wax, bearing an outside inscription, written in a large official handwriting, 'To the memory of Bindrabun Babu.'

The Grasscutter may be taken to be a third type. His vocation is to supply grass for his master's horse, which he cuts with a small hand-scythe, and carries home on his head. He is the worst paid servant in an Anglo-Indian's establishment, and he is usually in possession of the most ready money. This may read paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true. To say he is frugal is only to express a half truth, for his frugality reaches a point which Hobson is reputed to have attempted in regard to his horse, and failed to achieve. His bodily sustenance is supplied by a single meal, which consists of a piceworth of your horse's grain, followed by a copious drink of cold water. That his liver and his spleen do not thrive under such a dietary has been proved by many a post-mortem examination, but his purse is largely increased by his self-denial. His savings are lent out to other servants of the household at a rate averaging 20 per cent.; and thus, while his body becomes more and more emaciated, his ribs so prominent that they seem to have no flesh covering, and his liver assumes an alarming size, he rejoices to see his hoard of the shining metal rapidly increasing. Is the poor creature then nothing but an uninteresting, selfish miser, who loves his money more than himself? By no means. In reality it would be difficult to find a human being