isen from the lowest dregs of the people to the
highest ranks of the nobility." In this instance, however, I cannot help
suspecting that the families must have risen on something more substantial
than their pure habits. But in matters of this sort we are very much in
want (as indeed we are on almost every Indian subject) of more detailed
and particularly substantiated evidence. As regards the subject of low
castes raising themselves in the social scale, I know of no instances that
have fallen within my own observation, but I have obtained information
from other parts of Mysore, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt,
although I would advise the reader to receive what I have to say on this
point with the same caution that he should receive all information which
is even in the smallest degree removed from the experience of personal
observation. With this caution, I may then observe that, from information
I have received, I have ample reason to believe that in the interior of
Mysore there are many families of Pariahs who are as well off, in point of
cattle, cash and land, as the average of the farmer caste, notwithstanding
that the forefathers of these Pariahs were merely the servants of the
farmer tribe. Nor is this all. Many instances, I believe, may be pointed
out of members of the farmer tribe being the tenants of the once-despised
Pariah. The Pariah, it is true, does not reap all the advantages from his
altered circumstances that might be expected in other countries, but it is
a mistake to suppose that wealth does not tell in India as it does
elsewhere.[43] The well-to-do Pariah (and in the Nuggur division of Mysore
I am told there are many such) receives that respect which is invariably
paid to those who have much substance. He no longer stands respectfully
without the veranda of a farmer of ordinary position, but takes his seat
in the veranda itself, and on terms of perfect equality. But the farmer
will not eat with his visitor, nor give him his daughter in marriage. This
to us would be a disagreeable reflection, no doubt; but, in their present
political state, I cannot see that the happiness or prosperity of the
people is in any way affected by these facts, nor am I aware that any one
has attempted to prove that the natural comforts of the people have been
in any way lessened by these social separations.

Turning now to glance at the way in which caste laws are sometimes set
aside, it is impossible to avoid sus