Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/219

Rh the Sádhu, the Bhátu, the Chárana, the Gosáin, the Jogi, the Gora—and their females. Some of these are public beggars, the rest being professional. They are gentle or violent in their clamours as circumstances warrant. They go from house to house and shop to shop, and adopt various expedients to obtain their "due." They sing, dance, philosophise, they cry, curse, and raise a storm, in order to move the hard-hearted Banian. They are more powerful than the police, and certainly more numerous. The respectable ones are also professional. For instance, there is the poetic mendicant, with his harp, his veno, or other ricketty instrument. There is the historical mendicant, with his rag of a Sanskrit or Persian reference book; there are the astronomical, the medical, the moral mendicants, all with their peculiar hobbies and peculiar twangs, always amiable and often instructive. Then there is the friendly mendicant, generally a Mahomedan, who will button-hole you in the streets, discuss with you a variety of subjects, from polite literature to the rates of salt fish, and then, just before parting, startle you with