The Commission further stated that slaves were both heritable and transferable property ; they could be mortgaged and let to hire, and they could obtain emancipation only by their owner's consent, except in some special cases.
In Ramghur, in S. Behar, when petty disputes occurred, the slaves were habitually employed to commit crimes, such as theft and murder ; and in Assam they were habitually employed in plunder ing and gang robbery.
Throughout Malabar the whole labouring agri cultural population was servile, and the slaves were under fixed rules ; could not approach a free man or his house within a certain number of paces, to avoid defiling the master or free fellow labourers. The distance was .72 paces aloof frotu a Brahman, and 24 paces from a free man. To carry out this rule, the slaves were required to give notice of their approaclt by utter ing a. peculiar cry at every four or five paces. If the cry were answered by a pas.senger of superior caste, the slave was required to quit the road an I retire to a, distance. The lower class of slaves were generally interdicted the highway, lest they should pollute the houses of the free labourers in passing them.
The punishments inflicted on slaves were not ordinarily severe. The prices paid varied from a single meal in famine thnes for a child, up to given in Bengal for a handsome domestic slave girl ; and African female slaves and eunuchs brought even higher prices. The sale of free female children by their parents, and of slave girls by their owners,' for purposes of prostitution, was very prevalent, and kidnapping, with the same object, was frequent. In every province from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, stolen children formed part of the establishments of the Hindu temples. Such shrines were among the most sacred in India; such, for instance, as those of Jaganath at Puri, and of Ragonath in Cuttack, in both of whicli the salaried officials were the Deva-dasa, who, to the number of fifty or sixty families in Jaganath's shrine, were at the service of Hindu devotees, and formed a regular self-governini, corporation, all with strict rules of admission ana government.
In many districts in Bengal a very large pro portion of the labouring agricultural population seems to have been in one or other form of con ditional bondage. Slavery WM kept up by the sale or gift by parents of children in time of famine, sale by mothers or maternal rela.tions, sale of wives by husbands, sale of widows by heirs or relatives of deceased husbands, penal slaves, conquest of aboriginal tribes, self sale of adults in times of famines, marrying with a slave, kidnapping. of female children . and the Megptinna Thugs would murder parents wholesale, in order to obtain their children, who were sold for a few rupees each ; and importation through Arabia, of African slaves of all ages and both sexes, styled Habshi or Abyssinians; also the children of slaves were slaves.
After the great inundation of Saugor Island in 1833, children were commonly hawked about the streets of the town of Calcutta for sale.
The Sylhet and the Cachar tribes ;were long engaged in selling slaves ; and the Law Com missioners reported that a slave could be bought for twenty packets of salt, value about six shillings.
Such was the legal condition up to 1843. There are many slaves in the Feudatory States, and the non-Hindu raees in many of the villages of British India, the Pariah and tanner races, are little if any a,bove the condition of predial slaves.
The Adavi slave of Canara is a, serf, an unpaid labourer. - The Tamil and Malealam Adima or Udima means any slave ; a predial slave attached heredit arily to the land, and only transferable with it. In Malabar, amongst the Nair, it means a feudal dependent.
Adiyan, pl. Adiyar, is a slave, serf, or vassal in 31alabar ; a loweaste man under the protection of a raja or a religious establishment.
The Wakkalu Jamadaln, in Coorg, is a predial slave- attached to the revenue lends. They are the personal property of the proprietors, and may be sold or mortgaged at pleasure.
The Bimini Jamadaln slaves are attached to the land, and trnnsfetable with it.
In Malabar the Kanakan or Kanaka clutima are predial slaves, surposed to be a subdivision of the Palayar.