Aroentions and Customs.—Among the earliest functions of the Indian priestly tribe was that of Puroliita, or house-priest attached to a princely household. But their character and avocations have altered with changing circumstances. The descriptions in the Vedas show us a primitive race of shepherds and husbandmen praying to the gods for the safety of their flocks and crops, but as the Arians came into India they seem to have risen above manual labour ; and Menu (iii. 165, iv. 5) even denounces agriculture as absolutely de grading. There are, however, in Orissa numerous Brahmans who cultivate vegetables, but they are stigmatized as yam-growers, also lokik or worldly Brahmans ; also brickmakers and bricklayers. In the Himalaya, in Chamba and near Dalhousie, they are shepherds. In Kangra, the Doab, and Benares, Brahmans guide the plough. In Central India there are peasant Brahmans ; and in Southern India Brahmans are to be seen as betel - leaf growers and fishermen ; while throughout the Tamil and Telugu countries they aro to be found as blacksmiths and goldsmiths, who wear the sacred thread, and refuse precedence to the recog nised Brahmans; and in Ceylon the descendants of an imported race, the Goi Bamano, are culti vators.
Almost every Indian province contains two or more distinct classes of Brahmans, descendants of different immigrations. The Chamba Brahman shepherds are a fierce, stalwart race, very fair, and their women singularly handsome. In the Simla hills the Brahman population consists in discriminately of shepherds, husbandmen, day labourers, cooks, and menials. In the inner hills they marry the widows of their elder brothers, like the lower castes of Orissa, and sell their daughters into a slavery faintly disguised by the name of concubinage. The Patiala Brahmans engage as day-labourers and are palanquin-bearers. Bishnuvi cultivators and graziers are numerous in Dhat ; some in Chore and in Oomerkote, Mar nas, and Mitti.
In Benares and the districts along the Ganges to the southward, a large peasant population claim the title of Brahman ; and their claim was recog nised by the native governments exempting them from capital punishment. The Buinhar or Bab han of Behar, a peasant Brahman, number three fourths of the whole Brahman population of the Bhagulpur district. They resemble the ordinary husbandmen.
There have been at times large manufactures of Brahmans by rulers. Some princes have imported Brahmans from distant localities, and other princes have raised lower castes to the dignity of Brahmans. Jeyporo has a class of ploughing Brahmans, as regards whom a tradition relates that a warlike prince required a vast concourse of priests to give dignity to his sacrifice, and accord ingly created five tribes of Brahman' out of the surrounding populations. They migrated into
Oudh, where alio is one of the Bralonaniad families, who derive their origin from a prince whose self-importance would not allow him to offer sacrifice until he had 125,000 priusta In attendance, and who accordingly invested the common people of the country with the sacred thread. In Behar the mass of the peasant Brah mans attribute their origin to a manufacture of a hundred thousand priests in prehistoric tunes. In Malabar, Paraattranus made the whole fisherman population into Brahmans. They claim a very exalted rank. The Konkani Brahmans also are descendants of a fisher race ; and to the present day the casting of a net and the catching of a fish form part of their wedding ceremonial.
Adisur, the founder of the Sen dynasty, brought from Kanouj five Sagnic Brahmans of the tribes or gotra, Sanhila, Kashyapa, Vatsa, Saverna, and Bharudwaja. Several Sudra families. Chose. Bhose, Dutt, Guha, Mittra, etc., accompanied them, and these take the position of Kulin Kayasths. In the reign of Bullal Sen, about 284 years before the Mahomedan invasion, all these Kulin Brah mans and Kulin Sudras had greatly increased, and, though degenerated in learning, they arrogated to themselves a position above all the Sapta-sala or aboriginal Brahmans; and Bullal Sen ennobled those Brahmans by giving to them the title of Kulin. The Kulin Brahman subsequently con sented to marry the daughters of the aboriginal Brahman, who eagerly seek alliances with the Kulin ; and the Kulin have taken advantage of this, and have established a scale of fees for con descending to accept a daughter of an inferior. They marry gold. Of the Kayasths who came from Kanouj, Bhose, Chose, and Mittra were ennobled by Bullal Singh into Kulin Kayasths, and are still in Bengal. The Dass, Day, Dutt, Guha, Kar, Paulit, Sen, and Sing hold a second rank.
Kulin Brahman women are married with diffi culty, and generally to aged men. In 1868 there were 11 Kulin men in lloogly and 1 in Bardwan, each of whom had contracted 50 to 80 marriages; 24 in Iloogly and 12 in Bardwan, who had con tracted from 20 to 50 marriages ; and 48 in Hoogly and 20 in Bardwan, who had contracted between 10 and 20 marriages. Kulinism is thus a great polygamic institution, and a few Kulin women have become prostitutes. In 1867 the abolition of this polygamy was contemplated, and will doubt less soon be carried out (Cal. Rev. May 1868).