116 The Ethnology of India. 
goldsmith class are also Bankers in Bengal. Then there isa class 
of Sahoos, whose proper profession is spirit-distillmg and vending, 
but who have a large share of the general trading business. The 
common ‘ Modees’ or grain-sellers, instead of being almost universally 
Banees as in Hindustan; are, I understand, of various castes, and 
there are separate spice-sellers, oil-sellers, &c. If there are not so 
many enterprising Banees to make the most of the land, there is at 
any rate this advantage that, I believe, the ryots are now not nearly 
so much rack-rented in Bengal as they are in Behar and other parts 
of Hindustan, where the lands of great landholders are almost in- 
variably farmed to speculators. 
In Goozerat, Forbes describes the Wanees as very universal and: 
very grasping. But at any rate the traders of the Coast of Goozerat 
and Cutch are very enterprising. The Banian of those parts is an 
important institution all over the coasts of Arabia and Africa on 
the opposite side of the Ocean. And in Bombay, Premchand and 
other Banees have made their names famous. In the Maratta country, 
the higher trade and banking seems to be done by Marwarees, the 
village business by local Wanees. Farther south, in the Canarese 
country, the classes of trading proclivities called, ‘ Banijagas’ seem to 
be very numerous, but as the name is derived from the Sanserit 
‘Banij’ a trader, I cannot be quite sure that the northern and 
southern traders are related by blood. Inquiry is necessary on this 
point. 
Almost all the Banees are strict Hindus, that is, strict in their own 
form of the faith ; for in some sense Jains and such like may be said 
not to be proper Hindus. In Hindustan, though there are a good 
many Jains, the great majority are proper Hindus. They may be 
considered to be in religion very high Hindus, and carry to a great 
extreme respect for animal life. This tenet, I think, connects them 
with the western Jains and others, the foundation of whose faith is 
really the doctrine of metempsychosis and the transmission of 
souls from one creature to another. The Banees are, I think, really 
the most sincerely religious among the Hindus, and much attached 
to their tenets. Among many other Hindu classes, religion is little 
better than form. In the west country, Jain tenets very much prevail 
at the present day among all the Banee classes, and seem to have 
