The Ethnology of India. 133 



Ramooses of the southern parts of the Bombay territory, the better 

 Beders of the centre of the Peninsula, and the Kallars and Marawars 

 of the south. All are of a sturdy, semi-military, predatory character. 

 They have generally, in times of trouble, acquired considerable posi- 

 tion, and their chiefs have risen to be Polygars. Evidently they are 

 superior to the simpler aborigines. The Ramooses are described as 

 ill-favoured, but not altogether different in appearance from the ordinary 

 population. They have many customs which seem to indicate some 

 connection with the northern democratic tribes (see full particulars 

 in the Madras Literary Journal), and have the Rajpoot-like traditions 

 of the Sacred Horse, &c. It is in such tribes that I think an infusion 

 of Yavana blood may well be suspected. 



The Pallers are probably related to the Puliars of the Pulney hills, 

 but as settled inhabitants they seem to be decent cultivators of low 

 degree. They are very numerous, and seem chiefly to cultivate kitchen 

 gardens and small farms. They bury their dead, and have Poojarees 

 of their own caste, eat animal food when they can get it ? and drink 

 freely. Like most non-Arian tribes, they appear to practice polygamy 

 when they can afford it. 



The Pariahs are well known, their name having become proverbial. 

 They also seem to be numerous, and somewhat lower in degree than 

 the Pallers, being under native rule a sort of serfs, and living in serf 

 quarters attached to the Vellaller villages. I think that traces of the 

 thick lip and something of the prognathous jaws of their ancestors 

 may sometimes be traced in those whom we see in service. Yet they 

 are certainly very intelligent good servants. It appears that they are 

 sometimes educated, and that there have even been Pariah authors. 

 Perhaps their masters sometimes found them intelligent., and had them 

 educated. 



A strong mark that even yet Hindu ideas and manners have not 

 fully taken hold of the extreme south, is this that there, as it appears, 

 even some pretty decent and respectable castes bury, instead of burning 

 their dead. 



The division into right hand and left hand castes, which prevails all 

 over Southern India is very extraordinary and unexplained. They 

 are sometimes violent factions, and yet, for anything that we are told, 

 there is as little occasion for the feeling as for the feud between the 



