The Ethwlogy of India. Gl 



Goordaspore <fcc, in the valleys of the broken country between 

 Ilosheearpore 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 Marwarrec 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 forefatheis. 

 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. 



