156 



When we compare the smart intelligent looking servant in an 

 Anglo- Indian household with the " Pannial " who, in point 

 of intelligence, does not, to all appearance, compare very 

 favorably with the cattle he tends, we should be hardly in- 

 clined to suspect that the two belong to the same class of the 

 population. Pariahs who serve as sepoys in the Indian army 

 have the reputation of being the best of the recruits from 

 the population of Southern India. 



62. Among the propertied classes, the military classes, 

 and more especially the Poligars who used 



es^^Jthrr^than^S- tO lead plundering expeditions, have be- 

 holders, mercantile and come peaceful landholders, and, as such, 



professional classes. imji i ^ nj. j v. j.1. 



while they have benented by the rise m 

 the profits of landed property, they have lost their old power 

 and influence. Referring to the Poligars and the robber 

 castes of the Tinnevelly District, Bishop Caldwell says : 

 " Of the many beneficial changes that have taken place, one 

 of the most remarkable is that which we see in the Poligars 

 themselves. The Poligar has become a Zemindar, and has 

 changed his nature as well as his name. One can scarcely 

 believe it possible that the peaceful Nayaka and Marava 

 Zemindars of the present day are the lineal descendants 

 of those turbulent and apparently untameable chiefs, of whose 

 deeds of violence and daring the history of the last century 

 is so full. One asks also, can it really be true that the 

 peaceful Nayaka ryots of the present day are the lineal 

 descendants of those fierce retainers of the Poligars who were 

 so ready, at the merest word of their chief, to shed either 

 their own blood or that of their chiefs' enemies ? The change 

 wrought amongst the poorer classes is not perhaps so complete, 

 but many of them have merged their traditional occupation 

 of watchmen in the safer and more reputable occupation 

 of husbandmen, and it may fairly be said of the majority of 

 the members of the caste that though once the terror of the 

 country, they are now as amenable to law and reason aa any 

 other classes." The only question is whether, under the 

 Roman peace established by the British Raj, the transforma- 

 tion above described is not too complete, and whether, while 

 the suppression of the power of lawless chiefs and their 

 retainers was, at the outset, undoubtedly the first condition 

 of civilized government and general progress, the time has 

 not now arrived for finding some means of utilizing the 

 waning martial spirit of these classes, before it is completely 

 crushed out, for purposes of the defence of the country in the 

 hour of trial, when every available resource may have to be 

 strained to the utmost. The problem is certainly a difficult 



