Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c7.s2.10

c7.s2.10

As to their furniture, the enumeration for poorer peasants need not detain us long. Like the handy thatch and the easily available wooden beams and logs, their utensils for every day were made of baked earth which could be procured in the village itself.¹ The better class peasants, as we have noted before, may have also bought a few brass and mixed-metal utensils. Refinements of dress and toilet or delicacies of cooking and dining equipment did not enter their scheme of life. They usually slept on the bare floor and went about covered in a loin-cloth and an over-all sheet of coarse cloth which was used almost for every convenience of clothing and even bedding. A cake of millet, rice and pulses and if possible a little clarified butter and a relish of onions and chillies has been their familiar diet.² The usual rule is two meals a day, unless some stale food is left over from the previous evening. In some cases they are, as probably they were, content with one square meal.³ Their usual drink is cool and fresh water; and they do not forget to ask every wayfarer or passing traveller to share this beverage, particularly in the hot season. Tobacco had not come into use during our period and the use of opium was confined to a few regions. Betel-leaves and areca nuts were consumed by urban people of all classes. On special festivals, toddy or some cheap country spirit was drunk by the peasants.⁴ We may similarly conclude that it was usual for all the members of a family, especially the females, to sleep in a single chamber during cold weather, or in the open courtyard during summer. There were no separate kitchens or bath-rooms in the house. People went to wells or rivers for bathing. There was little privacy in the life of the people and very few refinements, though there was plenty of fellow-feeling and humanity and strict and intricate rules of behaviour governed by a well-known and well-understood custom. So, we may imagine, lived the vast mass of the Indian population in rural village communities.