Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/200

 A GOOJUR ZEMINDAR. ( 157 )

HIS person is a landholder in the northern portion of the Saharunpoor district, and belongs to the Goojur tribe, whose peculiarities and descent will be found described in No. 148. Of all the tribes in the Saharunpoor district Goojurs are the most numerous, and they are the clans folk of the Goojurs who made themselves so notorious at Meerut in 1857. Their nature does not appear to differ in separate localities; for those in Saharunpoor are described as indifferent characters, and for the most part bad cultivators, given to petty thieving and cattle lifting, and resorting to indiscriminate plunder in times of disturbance. Since the mutiny and rebellion they have been disarmed, and are comparatively harmless; but it is to such tribes, as yet little removed in reality from their original savagery, and unaffected by Mahomedan civilization, that the efforts of our own Government should be particularly directed in time of peace. Although the person represented is termed a zemindar or landowner, he appears from his costume to be an ordinary peasant. He is enveloped in a thick ruzzai or padded quilt, which covers the whole of his person. In his right hand is a lâthi or bamboo club, shod at the end with rough iron rings, a most formidable weapon in the hands of a powerful man, as it can be used as a quarter-staff, and has a peculiar exercise attached to it, as well of attack as defence, which is taught in village Gymnasia. In his left is a small hooka, the bottom of which is a cocoa-nut; into this a short stem of turned wood is inserted, and the upper portion or chilum, is of pottery, fine or coarse, as it may be. The instrument is used either by a reed or tube of wood placed in the hole of the cocoa-nut, or by applying the mouth to the orifice, which is by far the most usual method. Goojurs are much addicted to smoking, particularyparticularly [sic] ganja, the prepared leaves of hemp or Cannabis Sativa. This has peculiarly exciting and intoxicating qualities, not exceeded even by Bhang which is drunk in water, and is resorted to fr-eely, together with spirits, on all occasions.