The custom is alluded to in the well-known work of the Abbé Dubois, and in the appendix the editor of the second edition confirms the account given, and quotes confirmatory evidence from Colonel Wilks' "Mysore," in which is published the legend which is reported to have given rise to the custom. Colonel Wilks, early in this century, saw some of the women who had been operated on. The tribe in question lives in the north-east of Mysore, but after inquiry through the medium of natives in the interior of the country, I cannot now learn that the custom is continued. Perhaps, being a disagreeable one, it may have been given up. I should feel much obliged for any information as to the point in question.
As to the second point, I was informed in 1891 by Mr. Chatterton of the Engineering College at Madras, that he had many Brahmins under him in the workshops, and that, though more intelligent than other castes, they are less efficient, owing to their ancestors never having been practised in any mechanical work. The influence of caste was here most perceptible, and he could always pick out the work done by boys whose caste had been employed in that particular work, and he further informed me that boys showed poor proficiency in work out of the line of their particular caste.
[31] Manjarabad is a talook or county on the south-west frontier of Mysore.
[32] And that, I may observe, was a case in which a toddy-drawer, the third caste in Manjarabad, was concerned.
[33] I observe in the Administration Report for Mysore, 1867-68, that nearly all the cases in the lunatic asylum were traced either to drinking or bhang-smoking.
[34] Vide Sproat's "Studies of Savage Life."
[35] It may be observed here that there are few who know so little as to the sexual morality of the people around them as clergymen. It does not become them, of course, to enter into the gossip of the village, nor does anyone care to broach such subjects in the first instance; and I may mention here that a relative of my own, a clergyman in a country parish, told me that if anything went wrong in these respects he was the very last person in the world to hear one word about it.
[36] The Abbé Dubois makes the following remarks: "During the long period I lived in India, in the capacity of a missionary, I have made, with the assistance of a native missionary, in all between two and three hundred converts of both sexes. Of this number two-thirds were Pariahs or beggars, and the rest were composed of Sûdras, vagrants, and outcasts of several tribes, who, being without resources, turned Christians in order to form new connections, chiefly for the purpose of marriage, or with some other interested motive. Among them are also to be found some who believed themselves to be possessed with the devil, and who turned Christians after having been assured that on receiving baptism the unclean spirits would leave them and never return; and I will declare it with shame and confusion that I do not remember any one who may be said to have embraced Christianity from conviction and from quite disinterested motives. Among these newcomers many apostatized and relapsed into paganism, finding that the Christian religion did not afford them the temporal advantages they had looked for in embracing it; and I am very much ashamed that the resolution I have taken to tell the whole truth on this subject forces me to make the humiliating avowal that those who continued Christians are the very worst among my flock."—DR. ALLEN'S India, p. 522.
[37] I may mention here that Sir Bartle Frere, in his paper on "Indian Public Works," said, with reference to opening up districts hitherto unpierced by roads, "And here let me observe, in passing, without any disparagement of my own countrymen, that I have generally found the agricultural and commercial classes of India quite as intelligent on points of this kind as the agricultural and commercial classes of our own old-fashioned country." But I have always found that the people who have had the best opportunities of judging have formed very favourable opinions as to the intelligence of the agricultural classes, who are generally painted as being entirely indifferent, and even hostile, to the best schemes undertaken for their benefit.