The Ethnology of India. 121 
' Castes originating in a difference of races, it may be pretty safely 
assumed that Helot races represent conquered peoples; but it some- 
times happens that the form remains when all substantial difference 
has disappeared, just. as in fossils we have the form although in fact 
the substance is stone like that which surrounds it. In the hills of 
the extreme north, where we have the high-Arian race in its purest 
and most unalloyed state, even the form of a Helot caste is wanting ; 
which is just what we might expect in a country where the Arians 
themselves are the aborigines. There are no out-caste Pariahs. 
In Kashmere a tribe called Wattals are said to be low, but they appear 
to be rather immoral than ethnologically low, a gypsy kind of tribe 
which supplies dancing girls and prostitutes. The women are noto- 
riously among the handsomest in the valley, so they are not at all 
Helots such as I mean. In all these hills, the “‘ Chooras”’ of the plains 
are altogether wanting. 
In the plains of the Punjab there is a thorough Helot tribe. 
The arrangement of castes is there generally more simple than 
élsewhere, and a single low caste tribe are both the ordinary 
labourers who do all the inferior Coolee work, and at the same time 
the out-caste scavengers of the community. They are in fact all 
considered to be of the lowest sweeper caste, and are called ‘ Chooras.’ 
As in most democratic communities there has generally been under 
the freemen a Helot class (the Helots of Greece, the Slaves of Rome, 
the Negroes of South and the Irish of North America), so also every 
Jat village has its Helot quarter, where the low caste people, fewer, but 
still considerable in number, reside. They sometimes cultivate on 
their own account, but more generally act as labourers, and do all that 
is done by the Chamars in Hindustan. When a traveller of rank 
arrives at a village in Hindustan, the Chamars are called out to carry 
his baggage ; the Chooras in the Punjab. 
These Punjabee Helots are im fact fine powerful men and tolerably 
good looking. They were well-known under native governments as 
good soldiers, fit to be expended on desperate enterprises. The early 
Sikh reformers, preaching their doctrines of equality, tried to bring’ 
these men within the pale, but with very partial success, though a 
few were admitted to a respectable position as Sikhs. They were 
only occasionally used as soldiers by chiefs who were hard-pressed, 
