d. The Soli.
5. The Bhattu, Dummur, or Kollati, are exorcists and exhibitors of feats of strength.
6. The Muddikpur, so called by themselves, though known under several other names, follow a variety of employments; some being ferrymen.
All these tribes wander about the country without any permanent home, speak a peculiar dialect with a considerable proportion of Non-Sanskritic words, and preserve certain peculiarities of creed; though in different degrees—the Muddikpur being wholly or nearly pagan, the Tarremúki Brahminic.
The wandering life of these, and other similar tribes is not, by itself, sufficient to justify us in separating them from the other Hindús. But it does not stand alone. The fragments of an earlier paganism, and the fragments of an earlier language are phenomena which must be taken in conjunction with it. These suggest the likelihood of the Gohuri, the Bhatti, and their like, being in the same category with the Khonds and Bhils, &c., i.e., representatives of the earlier and more exclusively Tamulian populations. If the gipsy language of England had, instead of its Indian[199] elements, an equal number of words from the original British, it would present the same phenomena, and lead to the same inference as that which is drawn from the Bhatti, Bhowri, Tarremúki, and Gohuri vocabularies,[61] viz.: the doctrine that fragments of the original population are to be sought for amongst the wanderers over the face of the country, as well as among the occupants of its mountain strongholds.
In a country like India, where differences of habit, business, extraction, and creed, are accompanied by an inordinate amount of separation between different sections and subsections of its population, and where slight barriers of diverse kinds prevent intermixture, the different sects of its numerous religions requires notice. This, however, may be short. As sectarianism is generally in the direct ratio to the complexity of the creed submitted to section, we may expect to find the forms of Brahminism and Buddhism, not less numerous than those of either Christianity or Mahometanism. And such is really the case. The sects are too numerous to enlarge upon. The Sikh creed has been noticed from its political importance. That of the Jains is also remarkable, since it most closely resembles Buddhism, without being absolutely[200] Buddhist in the current sense of the word. It is, possibly, the actual and original Buddhism of the continent of India—supposed to have been driven out bodily by Brahminism, but really with the true vitality of persecuted creeds, still surviving in disguise. Again, in India, though in a less degree than in China, Philosophy replaces belief—so much so, that the different forms of one negation—Natural Religion—must be classed amongst the creeds of Hindostan; by the side of which there stand many kinds of simple philosophy; just as was the case in ancient Greece, where, in one and the same city, there were the philosophers of the Academy and the believers in Zeus.
There is, then, creed within creed in the two great religions of India—to say nothing about the numerous fragments of modified and unmodified paganism.
And besides these there are the following introduced religions—each coinciding, more or less, with some ethnological division.
1. Christianity from, at least, four different sources—