Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/12

4 ablutions, as dictated by their scriptures, are scrupulously observed by them, and take up no small portion of their time. A BRAMIN cannot eat any tiling which has been prepared or even touched by any other hand than that of a Bramin, and from the same principle, cannot be married to a person of any other cast in the kingdom, because his own cast is the highest, even above that of the kings. They say that they were formerly the kings of the whole country, and preserve to this day the privilege of commuting capital punishment, when merited, by the loss of their eyes. To kill a Bramin is one of the five sins for which there is scarce any expiation.

THE pre-eminence of the Bramins admitted, it seems as if the Indians had determined to compensate the odium of such a superiority, by forming themselves into a number of distinct tribes or gradations of people, who respectively submit to the different degrees of estimation in which they have at last agreed to abide, as implicitly as the whole agree to acknowledge the superiority of the Bramins. THE many temporal advantages which the Bramins derive from their spiritual authority, and the impossibility of being admitted into their tribe, have perhaps given rise to that number of Joguees and Facquires, who torture themselves with such various and astonishing penances, only to gain the same veneration which a Bramin derives from his birth.

THE casts or tribes into which the Indians are divided, are reckoned by travellers to be eighty-four: perhaps when India shall be better known, we shall find them to be many more; for there is a singular disposition in the Indian, from very trifling circumstances to form a sect apart from the rest of his neighbours. But the order of pre-eminence of all the casts in a particular city or province, is generally indisputably decided. The Indian of an inferior would think himself honoured by adopting the customs of a'superior cast; but this would give battle sooner than not vindicate its prerogatives: the inferior