Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/203

Rh "without wild pigs a Boksa would die. Notmthstanding, they are so fond of flesh, they keep no goats or sheep, and in only one instance did it occur that a few fowls were kept. They mostly live on grain, and on wild herbs cooked with oil. The scanty cultivation—in one case only fifty acres to a village of one hundred souls—tends, however, to limit the supply of gram; while the Disaraming Act, adopted after the mutiny of 1857, has deprived the Boksas of the means of killing game. Hence they are greatly dependent on a sort of yam or tuber called githi, which is found in abundance in the forests where they chiefly reside. These are cut into slices and soaked, then cooked over a slow fire.

They are undoubtedly restless and nomadic in then habits, and migrate from village to village, but evince unconquerable adhesiveness to then native swamps and jungles. Boksas rarely, if ever, emigrate from the forest belt (Terai), and a tradition exists among them that no Boksa had ever gone abroad for service.

Agriculture, which is almost their only regular employment, is of the rudest and most primitive kind. They do not even cultivate the tobacco plant, to which, as above noted, they are so partial; but leave this occupation to persons called Sanis, who enter the jungle for a few months only, specially for the tobacco-crop.

Few of the Boksas cut bamboo or timber for export, and still fewer collect drags and gums, which are largely produced and gathered in the forest. Their most interesting avocation is gold-washing, the average sum gained by which is stated at about threepence a day for a gang of three or four people; and one village of a hundred persons was said to earn from one to two hundred rupees (£10 to £20) annually from gold-washing. Of the process adopted, an interesting account will be found in a paper relative to the Boksas, by Dr. J. L. Stewart, of the Indian Army Medical Department, which was contributed to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for the year 1865, and from which the above details have mostly been drawn.

The age of the man photographed is eighteen years, and he is of average stature. He is represented carrying a bundle of grass on his head, and a Koorpa, or sickle for cutting grass, in front of his chest. He is dressed in a red and white pattern chintz.