Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/314

 Doorba, doova, or dūb grass, (Linear bent grass, agrostis linearis, or panicum dactylon,) is thus described:—The flowers of dūb grass in their perfect state appear, through a lens, like minute rubies and emeralds in constant motion, from the least breath of air; it is the sweetest and most nutritious pasture for cattle, and its usefulness, added to its beauty, induced the Hindoos, in their earliest ages, to believe that it was the mansion of a benevolent nymph. Even the Veda celebrates it, as in the following text.

"May Durva, which rose from the water of life, which has a hundred roots, and a hundred stems, efface a hundred of my sins, and prolong my existence on earth for an hundred years."

"Landed property is like the root of the dūb grass ," i. e. it is not easily destroyed.

Grass is to be procured in the bazār, but it is generally very bad, and the supply uncertain. In Calcutta, grass-cutters are not kept, as excellent hay is always to be purchased, which is much better for the horses.

"The pendant part of the turban should be in proportion to the learning ."

This will not exactly apply to grass-cutters and sā'īses, who generally wear a long end pendant from the turban. If the carriage comes to the door ere the sā'īs has arranged his clean turban, the fellow will come bounding along, absolutely flinging his turban around his head as he runs; and thus will often put it on with a negligent grace, that is quite inimitable, the long end usually hanging far below the shoulder. Chungua, the original of the sketch, was raised from being a grass-cutter on three rupees a month, to the dignity of a sā'īs on five, for his good conduct.

The woman sitting on the ground is the wife of one of our grass-cutters; she grinds the gram for the horses at two rupees a month. The charkhī is formed of two flat circular stones, the lower of which is generally fixed in the earth, and from its, cicer arietinum, chick pea, called by mistake chick weed, in page 101.]