potter, barber, sweeper, shopkeeper, and several others. Among the latter are the schoolmaster, doctor, accountant, moneylender, and the religious teacher, who sometimes practises fortune-telling as well. The village has its own court or panchayet, composed of five members elected by the villagers, to settle disputes over boundaries, debts, and inheritance; and a savings bank that is conducted upon a system of its own. There are amusements of all kinds, feasts at the temple, and sports outside the village, wherein the young men have an opportunity of exhibiting their strength and prowess. The community, perfect in itself, continues the daily tasks of sowing, planting, and reaping, without paying any attention to the political situations that agitate cities. The villagers do not see a newspaper from one year's end to another. After work is over they take their intellectual recreation by listening to the recitations of the professional poet and story-teller. Day by day the men and boys go to work in the fields, ploughing with the bullocks or thrashing out the corn. The cows and goats are milked. The women fetch water from the well and gossip over their brass pots, finding ample to interest and excite them in a prospective wedding, in the death of a member of the community, or in a cause celebre in the panchayet. The sole link between the powers that be and the villager is the periodical visit of the English official, whose duty it is to collect the revenue and see that peace and order prevail.
The marked feature of the Hindu village is contentment and the desire to have no interference with their established internal government. The only source of trouble is one not connected with politics, but with religious and caste disputes. Their conservatism is such that they regard with suspicion any advance in civilisation or education that is made by one caste and not by another. A few years ago the Vellalans of South India,
