1554.—Parell is mentioned as one of 4 aldeas, "Parell, Varella, Varell, and Siva, attached to the Kasbah (Caçabe—see [CUSBAH]) of Maim."—Botelho, Tombo, 157, in Subsidios.
c. 1750-60.—"A place called Parell, where the Governor has a very agreeable country-house, which was originally a Romish chapel belonging to the Jesuits, but confiscated about the year 1719, for some foul practices against the English interest."—Grose, i. 46; [1st ed. 1757, p. 72].
a. The name of a low caste of Hindus in Southern India, constituting one of the most numerous castes, if not the most numerous, in the Tamil country. The word in its present shape means properly 'a drummer.' Tamil parai is the large drum, beaten at certain festivals, and the hereditary beaters of it are called (sing.) paraiyan, (pl.) paraiyar. [Dr. Oppert's theory (Orig. Inhabitants, 32 seq.) that the word is a form of Pahaṛiyā, 'a mountaineer' is not probable.] In the city of Madras this caste forms one fifth of the whole population, and from it come (unfortunately) most of the domestics in European service in that part of India. As with other castes low in caste-rank they are also low in habits, frequently eating carrion and other objectionable food, and addicted to drink. From their coming into contact with and under observation of Europeans, more habitually than any similar caste, the name Pariah has come to be regarded as applicable to the whole body of the lowest castes, or even to denote out-castes or people without any caste. But this is hardly a correct use. There are several castes in the Tamil country considered to be lower than the Pariahs, e.g. the caste of shoemakers, and the lowest caste of washermen. And the Pariah deals out the same disparaging treatment to these that he himself receives from higher castes. The Pariahs "constitute a well-defined, distinct, ancient caste, which has 'subdivisions' of its own, its own peculiar usages, its own traditions, and its own jealousy of the encroachments of the castes which are above it and below it. They constitute, perhaps, the most numerous caste in the Tamil country. In the city of Madras they number 21 per cent. of the Hindu people."—Bp. Caldwell, u. i., p. 545. Sir Walter Elliot, however, in the paper referred to further on includes under the term Paraiya all the servile class not recognised by Hindus of caste as belonging to their community.
A very interesting, though not conclusive, discussion of the ethnological position of this class will be found in Bp. Caldwell's Dravidian Grammar (pp. 540-554). That scholar's deduction is, on the whole, that they are probably Dravidians, but he states, and recognises force in, arguments for believing that they may have descended from a race older in the country than the proper Dravidian, and reduced to slavery by the first Dravidians. This last is the view of Sir Walter Elliot, who adduces a variety of interesting facts in its favour, in his paper on the Characteristics of the Population of South India.[[221]]
Thus, in the celebration of the Festival of the Village Goddess, prevalent all over Southern India, and of which a remarkable account is given in that paper, there occurs a sort of Saturnalia in which the Pariahs are the officiating priests, and there are several other customs which are most easily intelligible on the supposition that the Pariahs are the representatives of the earliest inhabitants and original masters of the soil. In a recent communication from this venerable man he writes: 'My brother (Col. C. Elliot, C.B.) found them at Raipur, to be an important and respectable class of cultivators. The Pariahs have a sacerdotal order amongst themselves.' [The view taken in the Madras Gloss. is that "they are distinctly Dravidian without fusion, as the Hinduized castes are Dravidian with fusion.">[
The mistaken use of pariah, as synonymous with out-caste, has spread in English parlance over all India. Thus the lamented Prof. Blochmann, in his School Geography of India: "Outcasts are called pariahs." The name first became generally known in Europe through Sonnerat's Travels (pub. in 1782, and soon after translated into English). In this work the Parias figure as the lowest of castes. The common use of the term is however probably due, in both France and England, to the appearance in the Abbé Raynal's famous Hist. Philosophique des Établissements dans les Indes, formerly read very widely in both countries, and yet more perhaps to its use in Bernardin de St. Pierre's preposterous though once popular tale, La Chaumière Indienne, whence too the misplaced halo of sentiment which reached its acme in the drama of Casimir Delavigne, and which still in some degree adheres to the name. It should be added that Mr. C. P. Brown says expressly: "The word Paria is unknown" (in our sense?) "to all natives, unless as learned from us."
b. See [PARIAH-DOG].
1516.—"There is another low sort of Gentiles, who live in desert places, called Pareas. These likewise have no dealings with anybody, and are reckoned worse than the devil, and avoided by everybody; a man becomes contaminated by only looking at them, and is excommunicated.... They live on the imane (iname, i.e. [yams]), which are like the root of iucca or batate found in the West Indies, and on other roots and wild fruits."—Barbosa, in Ramusio, i. f. 310. The word in the Spanish version transl. by Lord Stanley of Alderley is Pareni, in the Portuguese of the Lisbon Academy, Parcens. So we are not quite sure that Pareas is the proper reading, though this is probable.
1626.—"... The Pareas are of worse esteeme."—(W. Methold, in) Purchas, Pilgrimage 553.