Note 188 — K (continued 5)

“Numerous slave-castes,” Mr. Walhouse continues, “exist throughout India, not of course recognised by law—indeed formally emancipated by an Act of Government in 1843—but still, though improved in condition, virtually slaves. Their origin and status are thus described. After the four principal classes, who sprang from Brahma, came six Anuloma castes, which arose from the intercourse of Brahmans and Kshatriyas with women of the classes below them respectively. The term Anuloma denotes straight and regular hair, which in India characterises the Aryan stock. After these came six Pratiloma castes, originating in reverse order from Brahman and Kshatriya women by fathers of the inferior classes. The third among these was the Chandāla, the offspring of Shudra fathers by Brahman women. The Chandālas, or slaves, were sub-divided into fifteen classes, none of which might intermarry, a rule still strictly observed. The two last, and lowest of the fifteen classes, are the Kapata or rag-wearing, and the Soppu or leaf-wearing Koragas. Such is the account given by Brahman chroniclers; but the probability is that these lowest slave-castes are the descendants of that primitive population which the Aryan invaders from the north found occupying the soil, and, after a struggle of ages, gradually dispossessed, driving some to the hills and jungles, and reducing others to the condition of slaves. All these races are regarded by their Hindu masters with boundless contempt, and held unspeakably unclean. This feeling seems the result and witness of times when the despised races were powerful, and to be approached as lords by their now haughty masters, and was probably intensified by struggles and uprisings, and the memory of humiliations inflicted on the ultimately successful conquerors. Evidences for this may be inferred from many curious rights and privileges, which the despised castes possess and tenaciously retain. Moreover, the contempt and loathing in which they are ordinarily held are curiously tinctured with superstitious fear, for they are believed to possess secret powers of magic and witchcraft, and influence with the old malignant deities of the soil, who can direct good or evil fortune. As an instance, if a Brahman mother’s children die off when young, she calls a Koragar woman, gives her some oil, rice, and copper money, and places the surviving child in her arms. The out-caste woman, who may not at other times be touched, gives the child suck, puts on it her iron bracelets, and, if a boy, names it Koragar, if a girl, Korāpulu. She then returns it to the mother. This is believed to give a new lease of life. Again, when a man is dangerously ill, or perhaps unfortunate, he pours oil into an earthen vessel, worships it in the same way as the family god, looks at his face reflected in the oil, and puts into it a hair from his head and a nail paring from his toe. The oil is then presented to the Koragars, and the hostile gods or stars are believed to be propitiated.” According to Mr. Ullal Raghvendra Rao,188 old superstitious Hindus never venture to utter the word Koraga during the night.