Note 29 — Kurmi

In Chhattīsgarh rice is the common food: it is eaten with pulses at midday and with vegetables cooked in ghī in the evening. In the morning they drink a rice-gruel, called bāsi> which consists of the previous night’s repast mixed with water and taken cold. On festivals rice is boiled in milk. Milk is often drunk at night, and there is a saying, “He who drinks water in the morning and milk at night and takes harra before he sleeps will never need a doctor.” A little powdered harra or myrobalan acts as an aperient. The food of landowners and tenants is much the same, except that the former have more butter and vegetables, according to the saying, ‘Rāja praja ka ekhi khāna’ or ‘The king and peasant eat the same food.’ Those who eat flesh have an occasional change of food, but most Kurmis abstain from it. Farmservants eat the gruel of rice or kodon boiled in water when they can afford it, and if not they eat mahua flowers. These are sometimes boiled in water, and the juice is then strained off and mixed with half-ground flour, and they are also pounded and made into chapātis with flour and water. The leaves of the young gram-plants make a very favourite vegetable and are eaten raw, either moist or dried. In times of scarcity the poorer classes eat tamarind leaves, the pith of the banyan tree, the seeds of the bamboo, the bark of the semar tree,29 the fruit of the babūl,30 and other articles. A cultivator will eat 2 lbs. of grain a day if he can get it, or more in the case of rice. Their stomachs get distended owing to the large quantities of boiled rice eaten at one time. The leaves of the chirota or chakora a little plant31 which grows thickly at the commencement of the rains near inhabited sites, are also a favourite vegetable, and a resource in famine time. The people call it ‘Gaon ka thākur,’ or ‘lord of the village,’ and have a saying: