village purohits are an extremely ignorant set of men. In some districts they are mostly foreign to the village, coming there from a distance; they reside in it only for a few years, then return home for an interval, providing a substitute or vicar during the period of their absence. These ministers of religion get their remuneration in the shape of offerings and small fees, and manage on the whole to earn a tolerably good livelihood by serving several families at a time. With other Brahmans they also come in for a share of the gifts which are distributed by wealthy men on the occasions of family ceremonies and festivals. In great measure the office of purohit is hereditary, and indeed strictly so in the case of families of social distinction and importance, who, as a rule, have more than one spiritual guide exclusively to themselves. For there is the guru or spiritual instructor of the individual who gives him the mantra, and the higher class purohit who is the Acharjee and conducts the periodic puja festivals

of the family, in addition to the ordinary

purohit who performs the daily service of the thakur. Over and above the regular service of the thakur performed by the priest, there is also among Brahmans a manifestation of personal devotion on the part of the individual members of the family. It is right in Brahman families that each individual should once or oftener in the day come before the image and say a Sanscrit prayer or recite a mantra.

The mass of the ryots who form the population of the village are too poor to have a family deity. They are forced to be content with the opportunities they have of forming part of the audience on the occasions of religious festivals celebrated by their richer neighbours, and the annual pujas performed at the village mandap on behalf of the community.

II.

ZAMINDAR AND MAHAJAN.

MANY other members of the village society than those already mentioned deserve description, such as the carpenter, the potter, the weaver, the fisherman, and the like. It might be told, too, how a woman, or an old man incapable of laborious exertion, will venture a rupee in the purchase from the jalkarwala of a basket of fish, from the ryot of a bundle of chillies, &c., with the hope of earning a few pice by carrying this to the hat and there selling in retail; how the pith-worker plies his occupation, or how the widow makes her mats. And the mandal, the chaukidar, the barber, the washerman will probably hereafter have their respective places

in the village economy pointed out. The general texture of the village material has, however, even thus far, been sufficiently represented, and to complete the outline of the little community it only remains to sketch in the two most influential of its constituents, namely, the zamindar and the mahājan.

Preliminary to describing the status of these persons a few words more as to externals are necessary. It has already been said that the site of the loose aggregate of homesteads which forms the Bengali village is somewhat elevated above the general level of the cultivated plain, and presents, when viewed from the outside, a more or less wooded appearance by reason of the pipal, mango, tamarind, and other forest trees which usually shut in the several dwellings. This wooded dwelling area, so to call it, is skirted by waste or common land of very irregular breadth, and beyond this again comes the cultivated land of the open plain (math). Up to a certain boundary

line (of immemorial origin but ordinarily well ascertained) all the land both waste and cultivated, reckoned outwards from the village, belongs to the village in a sense which will be hereinafter explained. On the other side of the line the land in like manner belongs to some other village. In parts of Bengal where portions of the country are in a state of nature the limits of the village territory will include jungle and otherwise

unappropriated land.

The village and its land (the entirety is termed a mauzah). in some respects affords considerable resemblance to an English parish, and possibly the two may have had a certain community of origin, but there are differences enough in their present respective conditions to render it impossible to pass by analogy from the one to the other. Of course, both in the English parish and in the Indian mauzah the principal business of the people is agriculture. But in England, now-adays, the cultivation of the soil is not carried on

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