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 

 elsewhere, 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 in 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. 



