e country of their adoption moved upwards to the Deccan
and stood within the shadow of the Peshwa's throne? Much has been written
of their origin, much that is but empty theory: but, as 'Historicus' has
remarked in the columns of a local journal, the lesson to be learned from
their home dialect and from their strange surnames,--Gogte, Lele, Karve,
Gadre, Hingne and so on,--is that the Chitpavan Brahmans of Western India
came in legendary ages from Gedrosia, Kirman and the Makran coast, and that
prior to their domicile in those latitudes they probably formed part of the
population of ancient Egypt or Africa. That they were once a seafaring and
fishing people is proved by the large number of words of oceanic origin
which still characterize their home-speech, while according to the
authority above mentioned the "Chandrakant" which they recognize is not the
sweating crystal of Northern India and ancient Sanskrit lore, but a fossil
coral found upon the Makran coast. Forty years ago Rao Saheb V. N. Mandlik
remarked that "the ancestors of the tribe probably came by ships either
from some other port in India or from the opposite coast of Africa;" and in
these later days his theory is corroborated by General Haig, who traces
them back to the great marts on the Indus and thence still further back to
the Persian Gulf and Egypt. Why or at what date they left the famous
country of the Pharaohs, none can say: but that these white-skinned
Brahmans are descendants of such people as the Berbers, who belonged of
right to the European races, seems the most plausible theory of their
origin yet put forward, and serves as an additional proof of the enormous
influence exercised upon posterity by the famous country of the Nile.

Thus perhaps the legend of storm and shipwreck is not false, but records in
poetic diction the arrival on these shores of men who presumably had in
some degree inherited the genius of the most famous and most civilized
country of prehistoric ages, and who had by long trafficking in dangerous
waters and by the hardships of long migration acquired that self-reliance
and love of mastery which has been bequeathed almost unchanged to their
Brahmanised descendants. The Chitpavans were indeed the children of the
storm, and something of the spirit of the storm lives in them still. Some
trace is theirs of the old obstinacy which taught those pale ancestors to
fight against insuperable forces until they were cast naked and broken u