72 The Ethnology of India. 



said to be immigrants (as their very name indicates), and there are 

 many Jews and Christians, though the latter I believe have not much 

 trace of Western blood. All along the Bombay Coast also, from Goa 

 to Kurrachee, are the descendants of Persian, Arab, Portuguese, and 

 other Western immigrants. Hence I did not think it by any means 

 absurd when an educated Bramin of Poonah suggested to me as a 

 theory, that the Bramins owed the light eyes and light complexion 

 noticed among them to an intermixture of Western blood. The Bramins 

 would be less liable, however, to casual and recent intermixture than 

 other races, and I incline rather to the theory that these Bramins of 

 this part of the Coast may have more directly come from the original 

 seats of the race by the route of the Saraswatee and the Indus, and 

 thence perhaps by sea, without passing through Hindustan and Cen- 

 tral India and there suffering any infiltration of Aboriginal blood. 

 I have already traced the Bramins down the Saraswatee. Is it not 

 probable enough that in very early days, when they were pressed by 

 Rajpoots and Jats, they may have colonised the Konkan, reduced to 

 subjection the rude Aborigines, and transmitted to descendants 

 features preserved from great deterioration by caste rules, and forms 

 only somewhat deteriorated in size and robustness by a southern 

 climate and the absence of manual labour ? If such an immigration 

 took place so early as I suppose, it might well happen that, in long 

 contact with southern elements and southern creeds, the colonists in 

 the Maratta country would separate themselves from the old Saras- 

 watee Bramins and become a separate division. 



I have seen some allusions to Konkan Bramins as distinguished 

 from Maratta Bramins, but have not been able to make out the 

 exact distinction. Certainly Maratta Bramins are altogether the 

 dominant race in great part of the Konkan. But it appears that 

 there is a strip to the south, extending beyond the district usually 

 known as the Konkan to some way beyond Goa, in which a mixed 

 language called Konkanee is spoken. In this Konkan there are some 

 Bramins still called ' Kashastala or Saraswatee' and from the Konkan 

 some of them have penetrated into the north-western part of the 

 Mysore country, where they are traders and in public employment, and 

 described as very clever but greatly looked down upon by southern 

 Bramins who profess to be much more rigid in their rules. In the 



