40 Migratory Tribes of 



life bo spared. With tho Mahomcdans, the male children 

 thus devoted become durveshes, and their females termed 

 ' Mustanis,' attach themselves to one or other of the four largo 

 communities of Fakirs, who beg in India, the Mustanis being 

 supposed to live a life of virtue. Among the Hind us, again, there 

 are two classes of devoted women, the one attending the tem- 

 ples and living a life of chastity, the other class fulfilling tho 

 vows of their relatives, by promiscuously sacrificing to sensual 

 love. The Brahmins, who, worshipping a deity generally as 

 pure theists, whether followers of Brahnma, Vishnu, or Siva, 

 are seldom guilty of thus throwing their females on society ; 

 and this practice seldom obtains among the better classes of 

 Hindus even. But as this pursuit of the women thus devoted, 

 however public it may be, entails no disgrace upon the women 

 themselves, or their families, many of the low castes and mi- 

 gratory tribes of the Hindus have readily taken to a practice 

 which allows them to follow a profitable calling, without suf- 

 fering in the opinion of their neighbours ; and as the poorest 

 and most wretched community in India attach the utmost im- 

 portance to the purity and conjugal fidelity of their unmar- 

 ried and married females, the low castes and outcasts to whom 

 money offers a great temptation, devote their female children 

 in their earliest infancy, and thus are able to practise their 

 profession without restraint. 



The goddess, in whose service the lives of the Teling Kora- 

 was"* devoted women are thus to be spent, has her chief shrine 

 near Bellary. They never devote more than one of their 

 daughters ; the rest are married and made honest women of. 

 Tho devoted women, notwithstanding their loose lives, oc- 

 casionlybear children, so many as four having been the children 

 of one mother. These children are treated as if legitimate, 

 being admitted without purchase to all the rights and privi- 

 leges of the caste. It is probably owing to this intermixture the 

 varied colours we find among them arise, changing in individuals 

 from tho fairness of the Brahmin to that of the darkest co- 

 loured Sudra. 



They have no rules or laws among their community for self- 

 government. They eat the deer, the hare, and the goat ; but 



