Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/264

 HILL PORTER. (172)

HE subject of the photograph is a hill porter, who is represented carrying salt, which he has exchanged for the produce of his land. He is by caste a Brahmin, and resides at Gungootri, the source of the Ganges. The particular object of his worship is Buddrinath, or Siva, but he venerates all the Hindoo deities. These men eat anything except the flesh of the ox and its kind, and are filthy in their habits, often not washing or changing their clothes for weeks together. In one hand he carries a hookah, and in the other a staff to help him up steep ascents. He is about twenty-five years of age; dark complexion and eyes; in height, five feet four inches.

As Brahmins, the class holds a very low rank, and are proportionately ignorant and superstitious. As custodians of, and residents at, Gungootri, the source of the sacred river, they possess some local consequence, and the better classes among them officiate as priests of the shrine, and assist pilgrims who resort thither. Their habits of eating meat and smoking tobacco render them impure and degraded in the estimation of every other class of Brahmins. Occasionally, however, those who have any pretension to education, or who can recite legends of the sacred fount, go on pilgrimages throughout India, subsisting upon the gifts of the charitable, and not unfrequently retiring with considerable sums of money. As a class, however, they are as poor as they are ignorant, and subsist by carrying loads as porters, and upon the produce of their farms, which is extremely uncertain in the inclement and rugged tract which they inhabit.