01 शिष्टाचारकी खास खुबी पायी जती है । चीनमें जो अद्भुत विनय देखा जाता है, वह कन्फ्यूशियसके सम्प्रदायका परिणाम है।" .चीनके किसान-जीवनका चित्र बड़ा सजीव है: Every inch of soil is in cultivation, carefully tilled, right up to the highest tops of the hills. Wherever I cast my eyes, I see the peasants at work, methodically, thought- fully, contentedly. It is they who everywhere give life to the wide plain. The blue of their jerkins is as much part of the picture as the green of the tilled fields and the bright yellow of the dried up river beds. There is hardly a plot of ground which does not carry numerous grave mounds; again and again the plough must piously mend its way between the tombstones. There is no other peasantry in the world which gives an impression of absolute genuineness and of belonging so much to the soil. Here the whole of life and the whole of death takes place on the inherited ground. Man belongs to the soil, not the soil to the man; it will never let its children go. However much they may increase in number, they remain upon it, wringing from Nature her scanty gifts by even more assiduous labour; and when they are dead they return in childlike confidence to what is to them the real womb of their mother. And there they continue to live for evermore. The Chinese peasant, like the prehistoric Greek, believes in the life of what seems dead to us. The soil exhales the spirit of his ancestors, it is they who repay his labour and who punish him for his omissions. Thus, the inherited fields are at the same time his history, his memory, his reminiscences; he can deny it as little as he can deny himself, for he is only a part of it. ..." चप्पा चप्पा जमीन सावधानीसे जोती जाती है। पहाड़ोंकी चोटी पर की सारी जमीन भी खेतीके काममें ली जाती है । जहाँ जहाँ मेरी नजर जाती है, वहाँ वहाँ मैं किसानोंको ढंगसे, विचारपूर्वक और सन्तोषके साथ काम करते देखता हूँ । वहाँके विशाल मैदानोंको ये लोग सजीव बनाते हैं । जोते हुओ खेतोंकी हरियाली और नदियोंके सूखे हुझे पाट के चमकते हुओ पीलेपनके साथ 'किसानोंके नीले कपड़े भी चित्रका अक भाग ही बन जाते हैं। शायद ही जमीनका कोमी ३०५ म-२०
पृष्ठ:महादेवभाई की डायरी.djvu/३२८
दिखावट