Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c7.s2.5

c7.s2.5

ferably under the protective arms of a mighty man, a Sultan or a noble in the neighbourhood.¹ There was a supply of water near by and land for cultivation all round. This village was composed of cottages adjoining one another, for the various classes, those of the untouchables and low classes lying on the outskirts. An average cottage in the Doab area was somewhat like the following, though no definite account has come down to us from contemporary sources. It represented the minimum that a human being wants for protection from cold, rain or tropical sun. Four low mud walls probably enclosed a small space with a roof of thatch supported by a few wooden logs and resting on wooden stands or rough pillars. A small opening in the front wall was left out for entrance which might or might not be fitted with door. There were perhaps no smaller openings in the side walls to admit light. The floor was of trodden earth, sometimes plastered with cow-dung.² The houses of better-class peasants or of the head-men of the village were more spacious and commodious. They had a platform (*chabutra*) outside the houses together with an entrance chamber and an inner room, a spacious courtyard, a verandah and even a second storey. The apartments for the members of the joint family were built around the central courtyard within. The walls were of mud, and the roof, as usual, of thatch with perhaps a few wooden beams.³ The houses in the lower Gangetic valley, if we may infer from the houses of the rich people, were not built close to one another but stood in their own orchards of fruit or palm trees. They were erected on mud plinths around a courtyard with wooden or bamboo posts, and were interlaced with walls of split bamboos, the thatched roof resting on a bamboo framework. All this was encircled by a moat, a fence, some sort of hedge or a well-manured patch of castor or some other crop, for protection.⁴