ORDEK II. BIMANA. 383 



of the Soodras, or Shuder, and comprehend the artisans and laborers. 

 Besides tliese 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 arc 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 (if 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 

 find. To the Hindoos belong the Seiks, .Tats, Rajapoots, Mahrattas, the 

 Cingalese, &c, of whom some have gone over to the Mohammedan religion ; 

 others, like the Seiks, have a religion of their own. 



The Phoenicians. 



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 Xorthern 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 Phoenicians 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 

 Phoenician cities and colonies, the Old Testament has shed the glowing tints 

 of Oriental phraseology, familiarizing us with their splendor and their great- 



