Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/245

Rh their strength, and I saw one young woman equipped in the same manner." Of the Lambādis in time of war, the Abbé Dubois inform us * that "they attach themselves to the army where discipline is least strict. They come swarming in from all parts, hoping, in the general disorder and confusion, to be able to thieve with impunity. They make themselves very useful by keeping the market well supplied with the provisions that they have stolen on the march. They hire themselves and their large herds of cattle to whichever contending party will pay them best, acting as carriers of the supplies and baggage of the army. They were thus employed, to the number of several thousands, by the English in their last war with the Sultan of Mysore. The English, however, had occasion to regret having taken these untrustworthy and ill-disciplined people into their service, when they saw them ravaging the country through which they passed, and causing more annoyance than the whole of the enemy's army."

It is noted by Wilks † that the travelling grain merchants, who furnished the English army under Cornwallis with grain during the Mysore war, were Brinjāris, and, he adds, "they strenuously objected, first, that no capital execution should take place without the sanction of the regular judicial authority; second, that they should be punishable for murder. The executions to which they demanded assent, or the murders for which they were called to account, had their invariable origin in witchcraft, or the power of communication with evil spirits. If a child sickened, or a wife was inconstant, the sorcerer was to be discovered and punished."