Note 72 — P (Continued) (continued 2)

“Lastly, as to the Paraiyas of North Travancore. Their condition seems lowest of all, as they enter further into the Malayālam country, and enjoy fewer opportunities of escape from caste degradation and from bitter servitude. ‘Their own tradition,’ the Rev. G. Matthan writes,72 ‘has it that they were a division of the Brāhmans, who were entrapped into a breach of caste by their enemies, through making them eat beef. They eat carrion and other loathsome things. The carcases of all domestic animals are claimed by them as belonging to them by right. They frequently poison cows, and otherwise kill them for the sake of their flesh. They are also charged with kidnapping women of the higher castes, whom they are said to treat in the most brutal manner. It is their custom to turn robbers in the month of February, in which month they pretend the wrong was done them, to break into the houses of the Brāhmans and Nairs, and to carry away their women, children, and property, to which they are actuated more by motives of revenge than of interest, and to justify which they plead the injury their caste had received from these parties. In former times, they appear to have been able to perpetrate these cruelties almost with impunity, from the fear of which the people still betray great uneasiness, though the custom has now grown into disuse.’”