or Parias, a word derived from the name Pariar in the Deccan, is employed to designate one of the best known and the most degraded of the impure classes of the Hindus, amounting, it is said, to one-fifth of the whole population of Hindustan. They act as scavengers, porters, and hostlers, and generally sell themselves, with their wives and children, to the farmers, who treat them with the utmost severity. They belong properly to no caste, and are supposed to be descended from original occupiers of the soil of India, long since overcome by foreign invasion. They live apart from the other inhabitants, who hold them in great abhorrence, and subject them to the meanest and most degrading drudgery.