Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s1.8.2

c48.s1.8.2

The movements which are reported to have taken place have been to comparatively short distances, such as those from the uplands of the Telugu country to the rich and thickly-peopled tracts of the south-east. There is this further difference between these castes and the traders of the north, that in most cases the former are intimately connected with, and probably sprang from, one or other of the great agricultural communities amongst whom they live, and from whom they are still distinguished by little else than function. One result of this relationship, and not an unhealthy one, has been observed viz, that where the business of lending money is carried on by people of the same class as the borrower, the dealings are on a less formal and more elastic footing than where, as in other parts of the country, the usurer has simply come to the village from a strange country to make his fortune out of the necessities of the natives. Considering that what with weddings and other ceremonies, every peasant is at some time or other a borrower, the above feature is not unimportant from a political as well as from an economical point of view. There is the usual tendency among those who prosper to adopt the ceremonial and customs of the local Brāhmans or to grow more scrupulous in their observance, and, amongst the Telugu traders, to assert in due course a Vais'ya origin, a pretension which their form of caste-subdivision and their more intimate domestic practices flagrantly contradict.