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That steep slope in the distance is part of the rugged height of Mount Abu, four hundred miles north of Bombay. There are some exceedingly beautiful and famous Jainist temples away up on the top of the mountain. 

This spot where you are now is on the grounds of a native inn. The people here have learned a good many new ideas from the British (see that table and the tin tubs), but most of their methods and apparatus are primitive in the extreme. 

Notice those curious, three-legged pans of coarse earthen-ware, holding the horizontal millstones. The pin projecting through the central hole in the upper stone gives a chance to hold the lower one still, and the second, outer pin serves to push the upper stone round and round the central pivot, grating heavily against its fellow as it goes (have we not all heard of being "between the upper and nether millstones"?) and breaking up the whole grain into coarse flour. It is a little heap of the finished flour that lies on the cloth at our feet. These women generally grind bran and all together. Later, a handful of it will be wet to make it stick together; a pair of those brown hands will knead and slap it into the form of a flat, circular cake and it will be baked in an earthen dish over the fire. Hereabouts wood is not an impossible luxury; but down on the plains housekeepers of this social grade have to use dried cow-dung for fuel, much to the impoverishment of fields that need fertilizing.

Do notice those demure babies, solemnly amusing themselves with the Hindu equivalent of mud-pies. Phil Robinson, in "My Indian Garden," has a charming study of child-life in India. Mowgli, of Kipling's "Jungle Stories," was an urchin of this very sort. 

From Notes of Travel, No. 7, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


Primitive Native Life of India - Hindu Women Grinding Grain. 

La Vie Primitive des Indigènes des Indes - Femmes Hindoues qui Moulent du Grain. 

Primitives Leben von Gingeborenen in Indien - Sindumeiber beim Getreidemahlen. 

La Vida Primitiva de los Indígenas en las Indias - Mujeres Indostanas Moliendo Grano. 

De infödda indiernas ursprungliga lif - hinduisk kvinna tröskande korn. 

Первобытная жизнь въ Индiи - Индуйскiя жeншнны молотятъ зернa.