The
Professor's book seems to be exactly what Sir W. H. Sleeman desired
to see.
12. In the author's time, when municipal conservancy and sanitation
were almost unknown in India, the tyranny of the sweepers' guild was
chiefly felt as a private inconvenience. It is now one of the
principal of the many difficulties, little understood in Europe,
which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. The sweepers cannot
be readily coerced because no Hindoo or Musalman would do their work
to save his life, nor will he pollute himself even by beating the
refractory scavenger. A strike of sweepers on the occasion of a great
fair, or of a cholera epidemic, is a most dangerous calamity. The
vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in
practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage.
13. The low-caste Hindoos are generally fond of drink, when they can
get it, but seldom commit crime under its influence.
14. An elephant driver, by reason of his position on the animal, has
opportunities for private conversation with his master.
15. Elephant drivers (_mahouts_) are Muhammadans, who should have no
caste, but Indian Musalmans have become Hinduized, and fallen under
the dominion of caste.
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