abs are one of the finest fighting
races of the world. Their ancestors were the Saracens who gained
a great empire in Europe and Asia. Their hardihood and powers of
endurance are brought to the highest pitch by the rigours of desert
life, while owing to their lack of nervous sensibility the shock
and pain of wounds affect them less than civilised troops. And in
addition their religion teaches that all who die in battle against the
infidel are transported straight to a paradise teeming with material
and sensual delights. Arab troops are still employed in Hyderabad
State. Mr. Stevens notices them as follows in his book _In India_:
"A gang of half-a-dozen, brilliantly dishevelled, a faggot of daggers
with an antique pistol or two in each belt, and a six-foot matchlock
on each shoulder. They serve as irregular troops there, and it must
be owned that if irregularity is what you want, no man on earth can
supply it better. The Arab irregulars are brought over to serve their
time and then sent back to Arabia; there is one at this moment, who
is a subaltern in Hyderabad, but as soon as he crosses the British
border gets a salute of nine guns; he is a Sheikh in his own country
near Aden."

The Arabs who have been long resident here have adopted the ways
and manners of other Musalmans. Their marriages are in the Nikah
form and are marked by only one [411] dinner, following the example
of the Prophet, who gave a dinner at the marriage of his daughter
the Lady Fatimah and Ali. In obedience to the order of the Prophet
a death is followed by no signs of mourning. Arabs marry freely
with other Sunni Muhammadans and have no special social or religious
organisation. The battle-cry of the Arabs at Sitabaldi and Nagpur was
'_Din, Din, Muhammad_.'

_Arakh_.--A caste. A subcaste of Dahait, Gond and Pasi.

_Aranya_.--Name of one of the ten orders of Gosains.

_Are_.--A cultivating caste of the Chanda District, where they numbered
2000 persons in 1911. The caste are also found in Madras and Bombay,
where they commonly return themselves under the name of Marathi; this
name is apparently used in the south as a generic term for immigrants
from the north, just as in the Central Provinces people coming from
northern India are called Pardeshi. Mr. (Sir H.) Stuart says [412]
that Are is a synonym for Arya, and is used as an equivalent of a
Maratha and sometimes in a still wider sense, apparently to designate
an immigrant Aryan into the Dravidian