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VI. Essay on the Bhills.* By Major-General Sir John Malcolm, 

 G.C.B.andV.P.R.A.S. 



Read January I7, 1824. 



The four divisions of Hindus, viz. the Priests, Soldiers, Merchants, and 

 Labourers, t appear to have existed in every human society, at a certain 

 stage of civilization ; but in India alone have they been maintained, for 

 several thousand years, with prescriptive rigour. The mixture of races, 

 caused by the operation of human passions (beyond the power of rules to 

 controul), which in most countries has tended to destroy such distinctions 

 among the four primitive classes, has in India only extended to an indefi- 

 nite number of tribes, or castes, exclusive customs and privileges, of which 

 the lowest are as tenacious as the highest. 



The institutions, the arts, and even the language of the Hindus, appear, 

 at the earliest times, of which we have any general history, to have been 

 more perfect than at present ; but it is evident, that so artificial a state of 

 society must have been, for many years, progressive towards that point, at 

 which, in a very remote period, we find it had arrived ; and it must have 

 been grounded upon some prior structure of society, of which we have now 

 no distinct knowledge. It therefore becomes an object to discover, if any 

 fragments of that structure yet remain ; and if they do, they are only to be 

 traced by a minute investigation into the history, usages, and rites, of such 

 tribes and families, as are now accounted among the lowest and most de- 

 spised inhabitants of India. We may conclude, that, when the Brdhmans had 

 established their superior rights and privileges, numbers of the inhabitants 

 of India, who adhered to their own superstitious practices, would be 

 deemed outcasts ; and, as such, would be condemned to the most degrading 

 occupations in society, or be compelled to fly to woods and mountains, in 

 order to find refuge from persecution and oppression, in a life of poverty 

 and pi-ivation. Similarity of condition, and tlie care of providing for their 

 security, would produce union among men thus situated, and they would 

 divide, according to circumstances, into separate families and tribes, who. 



« nhilla (vulgarly Mcel) is noticed in inmachandra's Sanscrit Vocabulary, as the name of a 

 tribe of barbarians. Wilson's Sans. Diet, ad vocem. 

 t Drdhmant, Chetriyas, Vaisyat, and Sudras. 



Vol. I. K 



