You will then see the swarthy Dangur, with his favourite child on his
shoulder, wending his way back to his hut, followed by his comely wife
carrying his hoe, and a tribe of little ones bringing up the rear, each
carrying bundles of the indigo stubble which the industrious father has
dug up during the early hours of morning.

In the afternoon out comes the _hengha_, which is simply a heavy flat
log of wood, with a V shaped cut or groove all along under its flat
surface. To each end of the hengha a pair of bullocks are yoked, and
two men standing on the log, and holding on by the bullocks' tails, it
is slowly dragged over the field wherever the hoeing has been going on.
The lumps and clods are caught in the groove on the under surface, and
dragged along and broken up and pulverized, and the whole surface of
the field thus gets harrowed down, and forms a homogeneous mass of
light friable soil, covering the weeds and dirt to let them rot,
exposing the least surface for the wind and heat to act on, and thus
keeping the moisture in the soil.

Now is a busy time for the planter. Up early in the cold raw fog, he is
over his Zeraats long before dawn, and round by his outlying villages
to see the ryots at work in their fields. To each eighty or a hundred
acres a man is attached called a _Tokedar_. His duty is to rouse out
the ryots, see the hoes and ploughs at work, get the weeding done, and
be responsible for the state of the cultivation generally. He will
probably have two villages under him. If the village with its lands be
very extensive, of course there will be a Tokedar for it alone, but
frequently a Tokedar may have two or more villages under his charge. In
the village, the head man--generally the most influential man in the
community--also acts with the Tokedar, helping him to get ploughs,
bullocks, and coolies when these are wanted; and under him, the village