The Ethnology of India. 19 
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I should like to class Hindus as High and Low Hindus. There 
is a full-blown style of Hindus (principally Hindustanees) who have 
adopted to the full all the modern Hindu superstitions and obser- 
vances, who are very particular about their cooking and such matters, 
and in consequence generally eat but one large meal once a day, whose 
widows may not re-marry, and who are in a continual state of anxiety 
about the rules of their caste. These are high Hindus. There is 
another class of Hindus, much less particular, whose religion and 
religious observances sit very easy upon them, whose widows re-marry, 
and whose prejudices do not prevent their taking good wholesome 
meals as often as they can. Such are the Punjabees, some of the 
Hindustanees, and I believe a good many of the Southerners. These 
I would call low Hindus. 
With respect to caste, whatever there may once have been, there is 
mow no proper Military caste. The fighting and dominant tribes are, 
it may be said invariably, in the main Agricultural and are classed as 
such. Why the old Vaisyas are sometimes said to have been the 
Merchant class I do not understand. It is clear that they were the 
body of free people, whose duty it was to till the land, keep flocks, 
carry on trade, and many other things besides. The Soodras were 
the Helots, ‘‘ whose duty is expressed in one word, viz., to serve the 
other three classes,’”’ evidently the conquered race. Now-a-days it 
seems to be considered that, except the Brahmins, almost all are 
Soodras, that is, all have more or less intermixed with the lower races 
and lost their purity of blood. Hindu Society then has lost its former 
great divisions, and has been split up into an infinite variety of decent 
castes of mixed parentage, who have absorbed the old Soodras, as 
well as the Vaisyas. Under them again new tribes of Helots are 
found, probably tribes more recently conquered. 
The Agricultural tribes may, for the most part, be divided into 
three classes :— 
1. Those whose proclivities were originally Pastoral, and gene- 
rally somewhat predatory. 
2. Agricultural tribes in the proper sense, that is, Farmers—men 
who both cultivate the soil on a large scale, and keep cattle and 
waggons when the country is favorable to that kind of Farming. 
These tribes are also most frequently those who have the greatest 
