Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/48

AHEERS. which, reboiled, were perfectly good; yet these must have been two hundred years old, if not much more. Ghee is the chief manufacture of all Aheers, and is their chief object. In a hot country milk is a very perishable article; but converted into ghee, is at once secured. The next product is dhye, or sour milk. It is the yaoort " of the Tukks, the "sauer milch" of the Germans, and, except in England and France, is used as generally throughout Europe, as it is universally in the East. The Aheers make it of several degrees of sourness, to suit the taste of their customers, and the process of making it differs from the German method. A porous earthen vessel is nibbed inside with a little of the previous day's card, and boiling milk is poured into it. This sets almost directly, and the watery parts are absorbed by the vessel. Such pots of dhye are reserved for special customers; for the rest, the day's dhye is all mixed together, and is sold, like buttermilk, which it much resembles as it is shaken up, to all who need it, either in the maker's house, or hawked about the town, village, or camp, by the Aheer women. The morning and evening ciy of "Dhye-a-a-a " will be familiar to every one who has visited or travelled in the country. Every native eats dhye. It is cooling and wholesome. It is used plain, with rice or bread, and in all sorts of cookery, both vegetarian and otherwise, and equally by Hindoos and Mahomedans.

Aheers are agriculturists as well as milk dealers; and are very steady, good farmers, where they take up the profession. But all Aheers are not farmers; and, indeed, tilling the ground is generally a secondary consideration. In Bengal and the North-West Provinces they act as cart drivers, but not particularly in this respect in other parts of India. They often take large ranges of pasturage on the lower Himalayas, and especially in the Vindyas, Satpooras, and other mountains of Central India, to which they resort with their families and herds of cattle at the end of the monsoon, when the grass ripens, and the hills become healthy. They form small villages of grass huts for mutual protection; and here cattle are fed, and ghee made, which is sold to merchants as fast as it can be stored.

There are eight clans of Alieers, the chief of which is the Nund-bunsee, which has a religious pre-eminence on account of having protected and brought up Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, whose worship is now so universal among Hmdoos, and Avho is the hero of so many popular tales and legends. Krishna was born near Meerut, of the Yadava tribe of Cshuttrees; though it is often doubted whether he came of so exalted a race. Kaiisa, the Kajali of Muttra, desired to put him to death, when Nund, and his wife, Jesodlia, who were Aheers, took charge of him from his mother, concealed him, and brought him up. Krishna grew up a frolicksome youth; and his amours with the milkmaids, his dances with them, and the like, form subjects of popular recitations and ballads of a prurient character, while the great acts of his life, and his religious precepts, are detailed in the Mahabharat.