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 high castes jostled the low castes as they pushed their way in or out of the compartments. Everybody talked at the top of his voice and no one listened; and all wore, whether high or low caste, their best clothes. Blue and white, red and gold, green and yellow, they rivalled gorgeous nature and outshone the gay plumaged bird and painted butterfly. A number of Brahmin women and children, unveiled except for the cloth being drawn over the head, were travelling to Trichinopoly to attend a feast at the temple of Srirungam. Their silken draperies were of a rich tawny red, highly becoming to their glowing brown skins. Some of them were loaded with ornaments of gold, their necklaces, strung with many sovereigns, seeming to weigh them down. Green emeralds and blood-red rubies gleamed in ear and nostril, and their sarees were girdled with belts of the precious metal cunningly wrought into the suppleness of a linen band. The vision of colour and wealth was striking.

A hundred years ago the display of rich garments and jewels would have brought a calamity upon the wearers by attracting attention to their wealth. If they dared to venture out at all they clothed themselves in rags and exhibited every sign of poverty. At the smallest hint that they possessed any riches, the agents of the native princes who ruled the country descended upon them, armed with official authority, and spoiled them of their goods. It mattered not who the ruler might be, whether the Hindu Rajah or his enemy, the Mohammedan Viceroy of the Mogul, oppression was the lot of the villager, the weaver and dyer, the metalworker and the agriculturist. Heyne describes how the taxes were gathered in native territory. Peons were quartered in the villages and maintained at the expense of the villagers until the demands made in the name of the ruler, Hindu or Mohammedan, were paid. If there was a delay the