1844.] Natives in Central India. 11 



When the lives of children in India are despaired of, the fond 

 mother, whether Mahomedan or Hindu, wills that it should live, 

 though sickness and destitution be its lot through life ; and when 

 agonized by the prospect of its death, she vows to devote her offspring 

 to the service of the deity, should its life be spared. With the Maho- 

 medans, the male children thus devoted become durveshes, and their 

 females termed ' Mustanis/ attach themselves to one or other of the 

 four large communities of Fakirs, who beg in India, the Mustanis 

 being supposed to live a life of virtue. Among the Hindus, again, 

 there are two classes of devoted women, the one attending the temples 

 and living a life of chastity, the other class fulfilling the vows of their 

 relatives, by promiscuously sacrificing to sensual love. The Brahmins, 

 who, worshipping a deity generally as pure theists, whether followers of 

 Brahmna, Vishnu, or Siva, are seldom guilty of thus throwing their 

 females on society ; and this practice seldom obtains among the better 

 classes of Hindus even. But as this pursuit of the women thus devoted, 

 however public it maybe, entails no disgrace upon the women themsel- 

 ves, or their families, many of the low castes and migratory tribes of the 

 Hindus have readily taken to a practice which allows them to follow a 

 profitable calling, without suffering in the opinion of their neighbours ; 

 and as the poorest and most wretched community in India attach the 

 utmost importance to the purity and conjugal fidelity of their unmar- 

 ried and married females, the low castes and outcasts to whom money 

 offers a great temptation, devote their female children in their earliest 

 infancy, and thus are able to practise their profession without restraint. 

 The goddess, in whose service the lives of the Teling Korawas' de- 

 voted women are thus to be spent, has her chief shrine near Bellary. 

 They never devote more than one of their daughters; the rest are 

 married and made honest women of. The devoted women, notwith- 

 standing their loose lives, occasionally bear children, so many as four 

 having been the children of one mother. These children are treated 

 as if legitimate, being admitted without purchase to all the rights and 

 privileges of the caste. It is probably owing to this intermixture that 

 the varied colours we find among them arise, changing in individuals 

 from the fairness of the Brahmin to that of the darkest coloured Sudra. 

 They have no rules or laws among their community for self-govern- 

 ment. They eat the deer, the hare, and the goat ; but the cow is con- 



