Bengal Villages.
HOW I wish, dear friends at home, you could come out and have a look at the crowded villages of Bengal! If you stayed only for a few weeks, you would not be able to settle down quietly in your home again. In your ears would ring these words, or something like them: ―
“Dying? Yes, dying in thousands!
A hopeless, despairing death;
Can we not hear them calling,
Pleading with bated breath?”―
‘Will no one come over and give us light?
Must we perish in darkness darker than night?’
“Can I give you any idea of the appearance of these villages is” They consist of groups of little mud huts, with winding, narrow paths leading from one to another. Here and there we see a clump of plantain and other trees, or sheds for the cows and goats.
“The people sleep under shelter of a roof at night, but the day is spent almost entirely in the open-air. The men and boys are busy tilling the land and tending the cattle, while the women have their hands full with looking after numerous babies, cooking food, bringing water from the rivers or ponds, in large earthen vessels which they poise on the hip, grinding corn or rice, or winnowing the rice by a curious instrument called a dhenki. The dhenki is a long, heavy piece of wood with a short pole attached to one end. The long, heavy piece is fastened firmly to a post fixed in the ground, but in such a way that it can be moved up and down, like a see-saw; under the pole end a rather wide hole is dug in the ground. One woman, generally a younger one, stands at the end and patiently works up and down the piece of wood with one foot, while another sits on the ground, continually letting small handfuls of rice fall under the pole as it comes down into the hole; she is also continually moving away what has been beaten and thus winnowed, and keeping the hole supplied with more, the wind taking away the chaff.
“In the few Christian villages which have been founded, many of the women are so ignorant that they know very little more than their heathen neighbors. There are two great crying needs―one, to teach in the so-called Christian villages; the other, to make known the name of Jesus to those who have never heard it.
“The Christian women are most ready to be taught; they are not satisfied with their ignorance; nay, many of them are longing for something to help them to lead better and happier lives. How can they know, poor things, if no one teaches them? As a rule they cannot read, and they are surrounded with influences which tend to draw them downwards. They will generally leave their work at very short notice, and sit quietly and listen, if a Miss Sahib comes to their village to teach them the simple Christian doctrines that our children at home learn in the infants’ school.
“And what about the others who have never heard that they have a Saviour, or are, perhaps, in one of the few favored villages visited once a year, in the cold weather?
“They come in crowds and listen eagerly; they beg us to come again soon, but how can we when there are so few missionaries, and many of them stationed in towns, or teaching in schools? Schools are a very important part of missionary work; we want the schools, but we want many more to teach in the villages.
“Can it be possible that those at home realize that Bengal contains one-third of the whole population of India? That the province of Bengal is one-sixth of the whole of the great land, and yet we have only eleven mission stations, and only forty missionaries? And this forty includes those homes on furlough or on sick-leave, and those learning the language. What can such a small band of workers do among sixty-seven millions of people, dispersed over two hundred and fifty thousand square miles? In proportion to the need, they can do almost nothing. Although India is our own country, although it is governed by a Christian Empress, although much of our power and influence and wealth come from the possession of this beautiful and interesting country, in Bengal—by far the largest province—thousands know nothing of the Christian religion, and thousands of women have not yet heard the name of Jesus.
“India’s Women.”