T 1 6 The House in India from the Point of View
of the submontane tracts, tiled houses arc taboo, and in some Muhammadan villages it is the rule that a house is not to be built of brick until the village mosque has been finished. Here, as is not uncommon, practical convenience reinforces the taboo, because, as Mr. Rose points out, mud buildings are much healthier, cooler, and better suited to the wants of the people than those of a more expensive kind.^ Sometimes, again, as the result of a curse, Rajputs in the Panjab refuse to build brick houses, and a violation of the taboo is supposed to cause death or ruin to the builder.2 Hindus who revere the Musalman saint Mian Mitthu will not use bricks in their houses because the saint's shrine is built of this material, and the Chahil tribe have a tale of the Swan Maiden type, in which the fairy wife escaped through an opening of a house ; so, quite naturally, they do not make openings in their roofs to this day.^ In Kanara most peasant houses are thatched, not on account of poverty, but because established custom, the law of the Medes and Persians, confines the use of tiles to Brahmans and the higher classes.^
In early days side by side with the use of the simple hut, for which alone materials are generally available in the great alluvial plains, caves were occupied in the moun- tainous and hilly tracts. The small cells cut in the rocks of Orissa are said to be among the earliest dwellings hitherto discovered in India. ^ These developed into the great series of Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical cave temples which are the glory of Indian architecture. Even at the present day the use of caves as dwelling-places has not quite disappeared. The Pathans of the North-West frontier often live in caves, and use them for hiding their families
^ Cetisus Report, Panjab, 1901, i. 27.
- Punjab Notes atid Queries, i. 97.
3 Rose, op. cit. i. 628, ii. 146. iii. 67, ii. 164.
- B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Connintnity, 63.
^W. W. Hunter, Orissa, i. 182.
