[17] De la religion, ii. 8.
[18] The great mass of the Brahmans were in reality mendicants, who lived on the festivals of birth, marriage, and death, and on the fines exacted for infractions of caste rule. Others had establishments called Muths, endowed with Jagir villages. There were two distinct orders of officiating priests—the Purohita, or family priest, who performed all the domestic rites, and probably gave advice in secular matters, and the Guru, who is the head of a religious sect, making tours of superintendence and exaction, and having the power to degrade from caste and to restore. In some cases the Guru is recognized as the Mehitra or officer of the caste assembly, from whom he receives Huks, or salary, and an exemption from house and stamp taxes, and service as begarree (Steele’s Law and Customs of Hindoo Castes within the Dekhan Provinces, 1826; later edition, 1868). Expulsion from caste follows on a number of moral offences (e.g. assault, murder, &c.), as well as ceremonial offences (e.g. eating prohibited food, eating with persons of lower caste, abstaining from funeral rites, having connexion with a low-caste woman). Exclusion means that it is not allowed to eat with or enter the houses of the members of the caste, the offender being in theory not degraded but dead. For some heinous offences, i.e. against the express letter of the Shasters, no readmission is possible. But generally this depends on the ability of the out-caste to pay a fine, and to supply the caste with an expiatory feast of sweetmeats. He has also to go through the Sashtanyam, or prostration of eight members, and to drink the Panchakaryam, i.e. drink of the five products of the cow (Description of People of India, Abbé J.A. Dubois, Missionary in Mysore, Eng. Trans., London, 1817; edition by Pope, Madras, 1862).
[19] Manu. x. 88-90.
[20] Wheeler ii. 533.
[21] Travels of Fah Hian, c. 27.
[22] Strabo, Ind. sec. 59.
[23] Arrian, Indic. c. 11, 12; Diod. Sic. ii. c. 40, 41; and Strabo xv. 1.
[24] Irving, Theory and Practice of Caste (London, 1859).
[25] Manual of Archaeology.
[26] Revue des deux mondes, 15th September 1848.