174 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
most disgusting offices : they are the scavengers of the 
cities and villages ; they perform all kinds of servile 
and filthy duties, and from their wretched manner of 
living are subject to loathsome diseases. So impure 
are they in the eyes of a Brahmin, that they dare 
not appear in his presence without subjecting them- 
selves to the penalty of death or some punishment but 
little short of it. Should a person of any other caste 
condescend to speak to a pariah, the latter is obliged to 
place his hand before his mouth, lest the breath of a 
being so depraved should taint the atmosphere which 
the former breathes, and thus render him impure. 
These miserable outcasts are neither allowed to enter 
a temple nor admitted to the privileges of any religious 
communion. While the higher order of Hindoo thinks 
it meritorious to save the life of a noxious reptile, he 
would esteem it meritorious to destroy a pariah. 
Although the Brahmin, who, when spiritualized by 
mortification and penances, frequently holds himself 
to be only second to an avatar of his god, looks upon 
the pariah as a creature unworthy even of those sym- 
pathies which he deems to be due to the brute, still, 
so great is the reverence in which these abjected 
aliens hold the Brahmins, that they will worship the 
very ground which they consider to have been hal- 
lowed by their footsteps. Scorned as they are by every 
other class and excluded from all reputable commu- 
nion with their fellow-men, they are reduced to the 
necessity of wandering about as vagabonds whom it is 
held an abomination to relieve and meritorious to 
spurn. Should the bitterest privations overtake them, 
they are left unpitied to linger out the agonies of a 
