alleged to arise from it regarding the extension of hospitality and
kindness to people of various castes; and, as a confirmatory illustration,
may mention that I have found members of every caste assembled at the
house of a toddy man to inquire how he was, and to see whether they could
do anything for him. These toddy-drawers rank at least third amongst the
castes in Manjarabad, and though none of the members of the farmer castes
above them would eat of food prepared in a toddy-drawer's house, yet there
were numbers of both these castes present. This feeling would not, that I
am aware of, go as far as one of the carrion-eating Pariahs, but I am
quite certain that it would extend to any other caste but theirs in the
country. But on this point I do not offer any decided opinion, as, for
what I know to the contrary, acts of kindness and hospitality may, no
doubt, often have been extended even to the lowest. And I may also
mention here that I have slept in the veranda of a farmer's house, in
which members of the family slept close to some of my people, who were of
the toddy-drawer caste above alluded to, and who, I am sure, were quite as
welcome as members of their own caste would have been. But as regards all
these matters concerning the inner life of the people, we know nothing,
unless we actually live amongst them, and sleep in their houses, and, in
fact, see the people at home; and as it is extremely difficult to find
anyone who has done anything of the kind, it naturally follows that it is
almost impossible to find anything like reliable sources of information
regarding native habits throughout India. You may, it is true, stuff your
very soul with information of some sort or other, if you go about asking
questions, but if you do you will find yourself much in the same
predicament that Johnson found himself in his tour to the Hebrides; and
the reader may recollect that the worthy doctor very soon found that
nothing could be more vague, unsatisfactory, and uncertain than the
answers of an unsophisticated simple people, who were not much in the
habit of being asked questions of any sort. However, the reader may, in
the meantime, reasonably infer that the conduct of the people in the rural
districts of India, and situated under similar circumstances, would not
materially differ, as regards matters of caste, from the practice as
existing in Manjarabad. And should that turn out to be the case, it is
plain that those notions, as