Chapter PARELL to PARIAH of P by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

School Geography of India: “Outcasts are called pariahs.” The name first became generally known in Europe through Sonnerat’s Travels (pub. in 1782, and soon after translated into English). In this work the Parias figure as the lowest of castes. The common use of the term is however probably due, in both France and England, to the appearance in the Abbé Raynal’s famous Hist. Philosophique des Établissements dans les Indes, formerly read very widely in both countries, and yet more perhaps to its use in Bernardin de St. Pierre’s preposterous though once popular tale, La Chaumière Indienne, whence too the misplaced halo of sentiment which reached its acme in the drama of Casimir Delavigne, and which still in some degree adheres to the name. It should be added that Mr. C. P. Brown says expressly: “The word Paria is unknown” (in our sense?) “to all natives, unless as learned from us.”

b. See PARIAH- DOG.

1516.—“There is another low sort of Gentiles, who live in desert places, called Pareas. These likewise have no dealings with anybody, and are reckoned worse than the devil, and avoided by everybody; a man becomes contaminated by only looking at them, and is excommunicated. … They live on the imane (iname, i.e. yams), which are like the root of iucca or batate found in the West Indies, and on other roots and wild fruits.”—Barbosa, in Ramusio, i. f. 310. The word in the Spanish version transl. by Lord Stanley of Alderley is Pareni, in the Portuguese of the Lisbon Academy, Parcens. So we are not quite sure that Pareas is the proper reading, though this is probable.

1626.—“… The Pareas are of worse esteeme.”—(W. Methold, in) Purchas, Pilgrimage, 553.

„ “… the worst whereof are the abhorred Piriawes … they are in publike Justice the hateful executioners, and are the basest, most stinking, ill-favored people that I have seene.”—Ibid. 998–9.

1648.—“… the servants of the factory even will not touch it (beef) when they put it on the table, nevertheless there is a caste called Pareyaes (they are the most contemned of all, so that if another Gentoo touches them, he is compelled to be dipt in the water) who eat it freely.”—Van de Broecke, 82.

1672.—“The Parreas are the basest and vilest race (accustomed to remove dung and all uncleanness, and to eat mice and rats), in a word a contemned and stinking vile people.”—Baldaeus (Germ. edition), 410.

1711.—“The Company allow two or three Peons to attend the Gate, and a Parrear Fellow to keep all clean.”—Lockyer, 20.

„ “And there … is such a resort of basket-makers, Scavengers, people that look after the buffaloes, and other Parriars,

to drink Today, that all the Punch-houses in Madras have not half the noise in them.”—Wheeler, ii. 125.

1716.—“A young lad of the Left-hand Caste having done hurt to a Pariah woman of the Right-Hand Caste (big with child), the whole caste got together, and came in a tumultuous manner to demand justice.”—Ibid. 230.

1717.—“… Barrier, or a sort of poor people that eat all sort of Flesh and other things, which others deem unclean.”—Phillips, Account, &c., 127.

1726.—“As for the separate generations and sorts of people who embrace this religion, there are, according to what some folks say, only 4; but in our opinion they are 5 in number, viz.:

a. The Bramins. b. The Settreas. g. The Weynyas or Veynsyas. d. The Sudras. e. The Perrias, whom the High-Dutch and Danes call Barriars.”—Valentijn, Chorom. 73.

1745.—“Les Parreas … sont regardés comme gens de la plus vile condition, exclus de tous les honneurs et prérogatives. Jusques-là qu’on ne sçauroit les souffrir, ni dans les Pagodes des Gentils, ni dans les Eglises des Jesuites.”—Norbert, i. 71.

1750.—“K. Es ist der Mist von einer Kuh, denselben nehmen die Parreyer-Weiber, machen runde Kuchen daraus, und wenn sie in der Sonne genug getrocken sind, so verkauffen sie dieselbigen (see OOPLAH). Fr. O Wunder! Ist das das Feuerwerk, das ihr hier halt?”—Madras, &c., Halle, page 14.

1770.—“The fate of these unhappy wretches who are known on the coast of Coromandel by the name of Parias, is the same even in those countries where a foreign dominion has contributed to produce some little change in the ideas of the people.”—Raynal, Hist. &c., see edition 1783, i. 63.

” “The idol is placed in the centre of the building, so that the Parias who are not admitted into the temple may have a sight of it through the gates.”—Raynal (tr. 1777), i. page 57.

1780.—“If you should ask a common cooly, or porter, what cast he is of, he will answer, ‘the same as master, pariar-cast.’ ”—Munro’s Narrative, 28–9.

1787.—“… I cannot persuade myself that it is judicious to admit Parias into battalions with men of respectable casts. …”—Col. Fullarton’s View of English Interests in India, 222.

1791.—“Le masalchi y courut pour allumer un flambeau; mais il revient un peu après, pris d’haleine, criant: ‘N’approchez pas d’ici; il y a un Paria!’ Aussitôt la troupe effrayée cria: ‘Un Paria! Un Paria! Le docteur, croyant que c’était quelque animal féroce, mit la main sur ses pistolets. ‘Qu’est ce que