VAISYAS SUDRAS PARIAHS. 243 



sunker, are reported to have sprung from the irregular mixture 

 of the higher orders, and form, according to Mr. Colebrooke, 

 a species of outcasts ; but, in general estimation, they hold 

 nearly the same rank with the Sudras. Great estrange- 

 ment prevails among these classes, many of whom will not 

 visit, or hold the slightest intercourse with each other. 

 Their employments are invariably transmitted by hereditary 

 descent from father to son ; but though they thereby ac- 

 quire great mechanical skill, they never attempt to vary 

 their method, or make any improvement on the models 

 derived from their ancestors. 



Hard as is the lot of the Sudra, it is enviable in com- 

 parison with that of him who, born to the most exalted 

 rank, forfeits it through misconduct, accident, or the most 

 trivial inadvertence. Tasting food or holding communi- 

 cation with persons of inferior caste, dealing in certain 

 commodities, eating certain kinds of food, are the chief 

 among those deadly sins which subject their perpetrator to 

 as dreadful a doom as can befall a mortal. To swallow, 

 however involuntarily, a morsel of beef, converts at once 

 the most revered Bramin into a despised and miserable 

 outcast. He forfeits his patrimony, and is excluded from 

 all the courtesy and charities of life. " The loss of caste," 

 says an intelligent writer in the Friend of India, " is the 

 loss of the whole world. Henceforth the offender can see 

 no more the face of father, mother, brother, or sister, or even 

 of his wife or children. They will fly from his presence 

 as from one infected by some deadly distemper." So 

 insupportable is this fate accounted, that a great proportion 

 of those who incur it either seek refuge in suicide, or, 

 flying into remote exile and becoming wanderers over the 

 earth, hide themselves from the view of those who had 

 beheld them in the honours of purity. 



In the south, and particularly in Malabar, is found a 

 race named Pariahs, upon whom is entailed by birth this 

 state of utter degradation. They are supposed by M. Du- 

 bois to constitute a fifth of the population of these countries, 

 and are employed only in offices which the meanest labourer 

 belonging to any caste would disdain ; as scavengers, and 

 in the rudest descriptions of country labour. They usually 

 inhabit a suburb or district without the walls of the cities, 

 which, from accumulated filth and the carrion hung up to 



