Whisky is found to take very kindly to hot water and sugar and limes, and the old folks at home and the neighbours and the minister himself pronounce a most favourable verdict on “toddy.”  In short, it has come to stay.  But we must return to the liquor in the Bhundaree’s gourd.  It is the rich sap which should have gone to the forming of coconuts, which is intercepted by cutting off the point of the fruit stalk and tying on an earthen pot.  If the pot is clean, the juice, when it is taken down in the morning, not fermented yet but just beginning to sparkle with minute bubbles, not too sweet and not so oily as the milk of the coconut, is nectar to a hot and thirsty soul.  No summer drink have I drunk so innocently restorative after a hot and toilsome march on a broiling May morning.  But the Bhundaree will not squander it so:  he takes care not to clean his pots, and when he takes them down in the morning the liquor is already foaming like London stout.  Not that he means to drink it himself, for you must know that, by the rules of his caste, he is a total abstainer, being a Bhundaree, whose function is to draw toddy, not to drink it.  This is one of those profound institutes by which the wisdom of the ancients fenced the whole social system of this strange land.

But, while the Bhundaree must refuse all intoxicating drinks himself, it is his duty to exercise a large tolerance towards those who are not so hindered.  He is, in fact, a partner in the business of Babajee, Licensed Vendor of Fresh Toddy, towards whose spacious, open-fronted shop, thatched with “jaolees,” he now carries his gourds.  There the contents will stand, in dirty vessels and a warm place, maturing their exhilarating qualities until the evening, when the Tam o’ Shanters and Souter Johnnies of the village begin to assemble and squat in a ring in the open space in front.  They may be Kolees, or fishermen, and Agrees, who make salt, and aboriginal Katkurrees from the jungle, with their bows and arrows, most bibulous of all, but among them all there will be no Bhundaree.  Babajee sits apart, presiding and serving, beside a dirty table, on which are many bottles and dirty tumblers of patterns which were on our tables thirty years ago.  The assembly begins solemnly, discussing social problems and bartering village gossip, for the Hindu is by nature staid.  After a while, at the second bottle perhaps, cheerfulness will supervene, then mirth and garrulity, ending, as the night closes round, with wordy contention and a general brawl.  But nothing serious will happen, for toddy, though decidedly heady, is at the worst a thin potation.  A strong and very pure spirit is distilled from it, which has its devotees, but the rustic, as a rule, prefers quantity to quality.  We are often told that the British Government taught the people of India to drink, but the scene that I have tried to describe is indigenous conviviality, much older than any European connection with the country.