132 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
thrive. They have imbibed with their maternal ali- 
ment the frightful principles which direct their lives. 
Religious fanaticism and the dark policy of a bar- 
barous superstition have cast around them the fet- 
ters of a spiritual slavery, from which they are not 
likely to emancipate themselves until those causes are 
greatly abated or entirely removed. It has been said 
by a wise man of their own country, that religion is 
the ladder by which men ascend into heaven but 
their religion is a ladder by which they descend into 
the lowest depths of guilt and infamy. 
Like all classes of persons addicted to habits 
which the laws do not recognise, the Phansigars 
are licentious in an extreme degree. The booty 
they acquire during their marauding excursions they 
spend in the vilest debauchery, and when it is all 
got rid of they go in pursuit of more. They are ge- 
nerally in a state of intoxication, except while in 
quest of plunder, when, with their usual habits of 
caution, they rigidly refrain from any indulgence 
likely to lead them into danger. They commonly 
inhabit places on the border of some jungle, near a 
river or a tank, where they can perform their ablu- 
tions, and on the banks of which there is usually a 
small temple devoted to the worship of their favour- 
ite deity. Here their wives and daughters, who sel- 
dom take part in their robberies and murders, may 
be seen enjoying the luxury of the morning bath, 
or performing the abstersions exacted by their creed. 
In these romantic seclusions they live apart from, and 
despised by, the more respectable classes ; but as 
they scrupulously forbear exercising their horrid avo- 
