Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/295

 THE PARIAHS, OR OUTCASTS 247 make the people believe that what they experience is not harmful for them, they receive no small gain from the folk/ Roger then proceeds to devote a chapter to the sub- ject of the outcast Pariahs, or " Perreaes," as he calls them, a class despised to such a degree that even the heathen did not deem them worthy to be reckoned among their castes. 1 In the foregoing division we have spoken of the four chief castes of the heathen nation on the coast of Coromandel and the land thereabout. In this division we shall treat of the Perreaes, the which is a much despised folk among the heathen, and not deemed worthy to be reckoned as a caste among their castes. They will not even suffer them to dwell among them, but these Perreaes and Perresijs (with the first name are named the men, and with the second the women, of this despised people) dwell in places by themselves, living in a quarter of the city and in the open country. Nor do they build their houses in villages, but a great way off from villages, so that they themselves seem to be a little village. They may draw no water from the wells which the villagers use, but have their own wells nigh their houses ; and lest the other castes should unwittingly draw water from the wells of the Perreaes, the latter are obliged to put about their wells bones of dead beasts for a sign and a warning that these be Perrea wells; the which is obeyed and fulfilled, whereby the wells are known. These people may not go in the city streets where the Bramines dwell, nor may they