ORDER Il. BIMANA. 83 
eo 
of the Soodras, or Shuder, and comprehend the artisans and laborers. 
Besides these four castes, with their sub-divisions, there are numerous mixed 
castes, or spurious classes, called Burrum Shunker, which have sprung from 
the unauthorized unions of individuals of different castes. These mixed 
races form a transition to the degraded outcasts, — the Parias, Chaclys, and 
Pelaya,—that is, contemptible, vile, unclean men. These consist of 
those unhappy wretches who are obliged to do whatever no one else can do 
without pollution. They are not only considered unclean themselves, but 
they unclean whatever they touch. They are deprived of all civil privileges, 
and stigmatized by particular laws, regulating their mode of life, their 
houses, and their furniture; they are not allowed to visit the pagodas, or 
temples, of other castes, but have their own pagodas and religious exercises ; 
they are not suffered to enter the houses of the other castes (if it is done 
incautiously, or from necessity, such a place is purified by religious cere- 
monies); they must not appear in public markets, are confined to the use 
of particular wells, which they are obliged to surround with bones of ani- 
mals, to warn others against using them; they dwell in miserable hovels, 
distant from cities and villages, and are under no restrictions in regard to 
food. To the Hindoos belong the Seiks, Jats, Rajapoots, Mahrattas, the 
Singalese, &c., of whom some have gone over to the Mohammedan religion ; 
others, like the Seiks, have a religion of their own. 
Tue PHaNICcIANS. 
Among the most ancient peoples of antiquity the Phoenicians occupy a 
high place, by their commercial enterprise, their inventive genius, and the 
perfection to which they brought many arts, especially that of architecture. 
Located on a narrow strip of land lying between the ocean and the ranges 
of the Lebanon, and forming part of the Syrian coast, in width nowhere 
exceeding five geographical miles, and in length not above thirty-five, this 
people, through the sole agency of commerce and navigation, spread their 
dominion not only over Cyprus and Crete, and the smaller islands of the 
Archipelago in their more immediate vicinity, but along the shores of the 
Mediterranean —in Northern Africa, in the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, 
and in the southern and western parts of Spain. But beyond even these 
points the trading-vessels of the Phcenicians reached shores and established 
commercial depots in countries the names and localities of which were un- 
known to, and by them carefully concealed from, their contemporaries; as, 
for instance, the Island of Madeira, the coasts of England and Ireland, and 
the Baltic coasts of Russia. Around Sidon and Tyre, and many other 
Pheenician cities and colonies, the Old Testament has shed the glowing tints 
of Oriental phraseology, familiarizing us with their splendor and their great- 
