Oxen are used by the peasantry of the E. Indies both in ploughing and in tempering the mud in the wet paddy fields before sowing the rice ; and when the harvest is reaped they tread out the corn,' after the immemorial custom of the east. In many parts of British India and in Burma, the cattle are greatly exposed to the weather. In other parts, as in the Cuddapah district, the utmost care is taken of them as to housing and food. The wealth of the native chiefs and landed pro prietors in Ceylon frequently consists in their herds of bullocks, which they hire out to their dependents during the seasons for agricultural labour ; and as they already supply them with land to be tilled, and lend the seed which is to crop it, the further contribution of this portion of the labour serves to render the dependence of the peasantry on the chiefs and headmen complete. From their constant exposure at all seasons, the cattle in the E. Indies, both those employed in agriculture and those on the roads, are subject to devastating murrains, that sweep them away by thousands. So frequent in Ceylon is the recur rence of these calamities, and so extended their ravages, that they exercise a serious influence upon the commercial interests of the colony, by re ducing the facilities of agriculture, and augment ing the cost of carriage during the most critical periods of the coffee harvest. A, similar disease, probably peripneumonia, frequently carries off the cattle in Assam, Burma, and other provinces and districts of India; and there, as in Ceylon, the inflammatory symptoms in the lungs and throat, and the internal derangement and external seem to indicate that the disease is a feverish influenza, attributable to neglect and exposure in a moist and variable climate, and that its prevention might be hoped for, and the cattle preserved, by the simple expedient of more humane and considerate treatment, especially by affording them cover at night. The labour for
which they are best adapted, and in which, before the opening of roads in India, these cattle were formerly employed, is in traversing the jungle paths of the interior, carrying light loads as pack oxen in what in Ceylon is called a tavalam,' a term which, substituting bullocks for camels, is equivalent to a caravan.' The persons engaged in Ceylon in this wandering trade are chiefly Muhammadans, locally called Moors ; and the business carried on by them consists in bringing up salt from the Government depots on the coast to be bartered with the Kandyans in the hills for native coffee,' which is grown in small quantities round every house, but without systematic culti vation. An ox will work well seven years, if taken care of.
In Ceylon, to every herd of cattle there is a sacred bull, who is supposed to exert an influence over the prosperity of the flocks ; his horns are ornamented with tufts of feathers, and frequently with small bells, and he invariably leads the great herd to pasture. On starting in the early morning from the cattle kraal, the natives address the bull, telling him 'to watch over the herd, to keep the cows from straying, and to lead them to the sweetest pastures, so that they shall give abund ance of milk,' etc.—Tennant's Ceylon ; Terdon, Mammals.