A seated barber shaving the back of a man's neck; another customer examines himself in a mirror and an attendant looks on. Coloured aquatint, 1800, after C. Gold.

"This drawing represents a group of figures very common in the streets, and on the highways of India. Cleanliness is one of the greatest luxuries that can be enjoyed in so burning a climate, and excepting among the very outcasts, or Pariahs, is most particularly attended to by the generality of the natives. To this the custom of shaving the head and body very much con-tributes, rendering the Amaters or barbers a useful and necessary class of people, though they are most truly barbarous operators in the country style, with what is called the hatchet razor, an instrument resembling our common gardening knife and aided only by plain water, may literally be termed suuyt schraapers. … The figure with the looking glass, is a sepoy in dishabille, who after shaving is forming his eye-brows with tweezers; the one in a white jacket, a brother barber, in the habit of attending Europeans, and is detailing all the news he has collected; his implements, folded up in a cloth, are tied round the waist, forming a protuberance in front, which, with a leather razor-strap, always denotes an Indian barber. On the ground is a brass pot and bason for water, a razor, case, and perfume box, on which are his nail chisels. The Amaters are of the right hand cast of the tribe of Sooders"--Gold, op. cit.