Volume 1

The Hindoos / [Anon.].

  • St. John, James Augustus, 1795-1875.
Date:
1834-35
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hindoos / [Anon.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mud which is laid on in the dry season, and turns the rain very well.” The buildings erected with this clay have a very tolerable appearance, the sur- face of the walls being neatly smoothed, and, like the houses of the ancient cities ot Italy and France, painted with alternate vertical stripes ot red and white. These huts are in the form ot a parallelogram, without chimneys or windows. rIhe rich, instead ot enlarging the house, merely erect several huts in the same'Wle63. In many cases the rooms are white- washed within, and the houses roofed with tiles. They are “ in general clean, and, had they any win- dows, would be comfortable.” In Malabar the huts “ called dura, are like bee-hives, and consist of a circular mud-wall, about three feet high, which is covered with along conical roof of thatch. Contrary to what might have been expected in a hot climate, but agreeable to the custom of almost all Hindoos, one Somali door is the only outlet for smoke, and the only inlet for air and light. Each family has a hut for sleepinir, another for cooking, and a third tor a storehouse. Wealthy men add more huts to then premises ; but seldom attempt at any innovation in the architecture of the country64.” The agrarums, or gramas, villages occupied bv the Puttar Brahmins in Malabar, are remarkable for their taste. “The houses are built contiguous, in straight streets; and they are the neatest and clean- est villages that I have seen in India. The beauty, cleanliness, and elegant dress ot the girls of the Brahmins add much to the look of these places. Their greatest defect is, that the houses are thatched with palm-ieaves, which never can be made' to lie close, and which render them very liable to fires, that, when they happen, generally consume the whole *3 Journey through the Mysore, &c. vol. i. p. 33, 38. 64 Ibid. vol. ii.p. 102.