The Ethnology of India. 19 



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-many, 

 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 

 now 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, u 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 



