er their social rank may be, the
Pariahs--the undoubted ancestors of the gypsies--are the authors in
India of a great mass of philosophy and literature, embracing nearly all
that land has ever produced which is tinctured with independence or wit.
In confirmation of which I beg leave to cite the following passages from
that extremely entertaining, well-edited, and elegantly published little
work, the 'Strange Surprising Adventures of the Venerable Goroo Simple
and his Five Disciples':

'The literature of the Hindoos owes but little to the hereditary
claimants to the sole possession of divine light and knowledge. On
the contrary, with the many things which the Brahmins are forbidden
to touch, all science, if left to them alone, would soon stagnate,
and clever men, whose genius cannot be held in trammels, therefore
soon become outcasts and swell the number of _Pariars_ in
consequence of their very pursuit of knowledge. * * * To the
writings of the _Poorrachchameiyans_, a sect of _Pariars_ odious in
the eyes of a Brahman, the Tamuls owe the greater part of works on
science. * * * To the _Vallooran_ sect of Pariars, particularly
shunned by the Brahmans, Hindoo literature is indebted almost
exclusively for the many moral poems and books of aphorisms which
are its chief pride.

'This class of literature' (satiric humor and fables) 'emanated
chiefly from those despised outcasts, the Pariars, the very men who
(using keener spectacles than Dr. Robertson, our historian of
Ancient India, did, who singularly became the panegyrist of Gentoo
subdivisions) saw that to bind human intellect and human energy
within the wire fences of Hindoo castes is as impossible as to shut
up the winds of heaven in a temple built by man's hand, and boldly
thought for themselves.'

Of the literary _Vallooran_ Pariah outcasts and scientific
Poorrachchameiyans, we know from the best authority--Father Beschi--that
they form society of six degrees or sects, the fifth of which, when five
Fridays occur in a month, celebrate it _avec de grandes abominations_,
while the sixth 'admits the real existence of nothing--except,
_perhaps_, GOD.' This last is a mere guess on the part of the good
father. It is beyond conjecture that we have here another of those
strange Oriental sects, 'atheistic' in its highest school and identical
in its nature with that of the H