ns. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.

[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]

In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shr