The Ethnology of India. 61 
Goordaspore d&ec., in the valleys of the broken country between 
Hosheearpore and Kangra, and in parts of Umballa district and the 
adjoining Simla hills; and thus we, as it were, mark the trail of the 
Bramin race in its progress southwards from the hills of Kashmir to 
the banks of the sacred Saroostee or Saraswatee and the famous 
field of the Gulcheter at Tanessur close to the Grand Trunk Road, 
some thirty miles south of Umballa. 
Here also the Bramin population in the country is not specially 
numerous. Other races have swept over the scene. But lower down 
the course of the Saraswatee, where it may be traced through the 
now somewhat desolate countries of Marwar and Jessulmere, the 
Bramins are still numerous. Where the low and comparatively 
moist tracts, in which the river once ran, still admit of cultivation, 
the Saraswatee Bramins are found very industrious and good culti- 
vators, who claim to have occupied the country before Jats and 
Rajpoots became dominant. There is found (at Pokhar) the only 
temple in India still dedicated to the worship of Brama the Father. 
The town of ‘ Palli’ seems to be a Bramin centre, and thence come a 
race of mercantile Bramins called ‘ Palliwals.’ 
Sir John Malcolm also mentions the Marwarree or Saraswatee Bramins 
as forming a considerable proportion of the most industrious cultivators 
in Malwa. And following the Saraswatee down to the Indus, we find 
that (some southern immigrants excepted) they are also the Bramins 
of Scinde, but said to be much looked down on by more orthodox 
southerners as eaters of meat and altogether little advanced Bramins. 
The settlement on the banks of the Saraswatee is a well-known 
stage of Hindu history. Here the Bramins came in contact with 
other races, castes were recognised, and early Hinduism became 
literary and historical. But the extreme caste and religious system, 
the full-blown High-Hinduism of the Gangetic Bramins, was not 
yet. The descendants of those who continued to dwell on the 
Saraswatee seem to have much kept to the tenets of their forefathers. 
They are separate from the Kashmeerees and have a place among 
the recognised divisions of Indian Bramins, but their more advanced 
brethren give them the lowest place in the orthodox scale, and in 
their native country they chiefly shine by those simple and agricul- 
tural virtues in which their remote ancestors also probably excelled. 
