THE AlJTIQUiTIES OP MUKHALINGAM. 91 
sacred it has become, and the later Brahman colonists have 
always regarded their predecessors with contempt. "Al- 
most every province of India," says Hunter, "contains two 
widely diverse sorts of Brahmans, separated not merely by 
family or social difference, but apparently by the more 
rigid distinctions of race. The characteristics of these two 
classes vary in different provinces. But two facts can be 
almost universally predicated of them, viz., that the higher 
order traces its origin to a comparatively recent migration 
from the North, and deemed it necessary to explain the 
existence of the lower sort by some local legend. They 
nowhere intermarry, eat together, or have anything in 
common." 
28. Even so, the Kalingas are, according to a legend, 
said to have lost their sanctity. Sir W. W. Hunter did not 
notice the Kalingas in his elaborate sketch, but his conjec- 
tures regarding the origin of some of the oldest castes of 
the present degraded Brahmans may be quite as well 
applied to the Kalingas. He seems to say that the Kalin- 
gas who colonised Java, were those Buddhist Yavanas or 
Ionian Greeks, converted to Buddhism, who were in the 
6th century driven out of Orissa by the newly invited Brah- 
mans. " The new comers professed the royal religion^ 
and were Saivites to a man. They found however a priest- 
ly class already existing, whom it was impossible to extir- 
pate and unwise to ignore. The Buddhists recruited their 
clergy from every class of the people ; but doubtless the 
preceding waves of Aryan settlers who had from time to 
time made their wa.y into Orissa, formed the upper ranks 
of the Buddhist community. The Brahman colonists of 
500 A.D. were not at first strong enough to degrade the 
Buddhist element into the mass of the rural populace, and 
they seem to have conciliated their predecessors by admit- 
ting them to a sort of nominal equality. The old Aryan 
