Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.t1.1

c48.s2.t1.1

This group, as was stated above, cannot be well distinguished from that which precedes it. It is the function of all the impure castes to deal with dead cattle, even if it be only to skin and to drag the carcasses away for burial. But there are grades and privileges involved. Some touch no bodies but those of the cloven-footed animal; others draw the line at cattle, and leave sheep and goats to their inferiors. Usually the hide is the perquisite of the menial, who, moreover, is not forbidden to indulge in the flesh after flaying. Indeed, when the market for leather is brisk, or when dissension is rife between the peasantry and the village menials, mortality amongst the cattle is apt to increase materially, and sometimes with a suddenness which attracts the judicial attention of the local authorities, and leads to the discovery in the thatch of the servile hamlet of the materials for an extensive study of rural toxicology. But though the castes in question remove the hides, it is only special sections of them which tan or curry them, and these, except in the north, are generally split off into a separate caste. Furthermore, the families which take exclusively to leather-work as their profession beyond the simple requirements of the cart, plough or water-lift, usually rise to a position superior to that of the tanner or currier, and ultimately, especially in towns, hold themselves aloof from the rest. On the other hand, where the caste furnishes virtually the whole labour supply of the village, the tanning branch sinks below those which only labour in the fields. In the latter capacity, the caste has to do whatever they are bid by the peasantry — within, of course, the strict bounds of tradition. They may never, however, take up their residence in the village or pass anything directly from their own hand to that of one of higher caste. It is a noteworthy fact that with centuries of such degradation piled upon them, the women of this class should be renowned for their good looks; so much so, that special arrangements seem to have been thought necessary by the Brāhmanic organisers of society to meet the results of intrigues and illicit connections between them and men of the upper classes. To this day men turned out of their caste on this account find refuge in some recognised mixed body, whilst the offspring of such mésalliances go to form the "fair-skinned Camār", the subject of more than one proverbial admonition on the country side. There is the possibility, of course, that in the very north of India some of the helot classes may be descended from early foreign races who were overwhelmed by subsequent invaders and reduced to servitude, but throughout the rest of the country these classes are now generally held to represent the Dasyu or darker tribes, displaced by the Ārya and Scythian invader north of the Vindhya, and by similar movements amongst Dravidian races and others, in the south and the great delta of the east.