Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/124

 1 14 The House in India from the Point of View

the ingenuity of man is ever devising special modes of protection.

The house, again, in its form and adaptation to the use and convenience of its inmates, represents a continuous process of evolution, from the rudest form of shelter v/hich satisfies the wants of the nomad, to the abode which the well-to-do classes provide to secure the comforts and amenities of life, ending with the mansion of the nobleman and the palace of the prince. In civilisations such as ours this process of evolution is often obscure ; many of the links in the chain are absent or unrecognisable. It is only by a study of the domestic life of more primitive societies that the facts can be grouped in any semblance of order. Fortunately, in the teeming population of our Indian Empire, with its multitudinous tribes and castes, each more or less completely isolated from the other by differ- ences of race, belief, and culture, we are able to study the successive phases of the evolution. It is, then, mainly to questions connected with the Indian house that I now venture to direct your attention.

A survival of the stage at which houses of any kind were not generally known may be detected in the habit of cele- brating sacrifices and other ceremonial rites in the open air. The temple in India is intended merely as an abode for the god, not for congregational worship. As a natural consequence of this we find that most rites and social meetings take place in the open air, without the erection of a special building, and people engaged in the service of the gods or those who adopt a religious life, like many of the ascetic Orders, during their wanderings shelter under trees and never enter a house except perhaps during the torrential rain of the monsoon. This feeling is illustrated by a story told by Mr. Rose of the saint Bahau-1-haqq tearing away the tapestry from the roof of the tomb of the saint Shaikh Farld Badru-d-dln Shakkarganj, by which apparent sacrilege he enabled that saint to attain the highest