Before concluding this chapter, it may be useful to make a few remarks as to the way in which caste laws act as regards the social condition of people who have by wealth raised themselves above the general average of their order; and I shall at the same time notice a few instances that have fallen within my observation as to the way in which caste laws of the most stringent nature are occasionally set aside by universal consent. The old idea we entertained of caste was that, to use the words of Tennent, "each class is stationed between certain walls of separation, which are impassable by the purest virtue or the most conspicuous merit;" or that, to come to more recent times, and to use the words of the late Mr. Wilson, in his speech before leaving for India, "in India you see people tied down by caste, and, whatever their talents or exertions may be, they cannot rise." Now the history of many families that have risen to eminence entirely belies this assertion, and the evidences are so numerous that I need not weary the reader by quoting them. But one instance I may perhaps mention, as the circumstances seem to me somewhat extraordinary, and a reference to them here may induce some one to make more particular inquiries in the locality alluded to. Buchanan notices that "in Bhagulpore there were certain families who, from having adopted a pure life, had within the memory of man risen from the lowest dregs of the people to the highest ranks of the nobility." In this instance, however, I cannot help suspecting that the families must have risen on something more substantial than their pure habits. But in matters of this sort we are very much in want (as indeed we are on almost every Indian subject) of more detailed and particularly substantiated evidence. As regards the subject of low castes raising themselves in the social scale, I know of no instances that have fallen within my own observation, but I have obtained information from other parts of Mysore, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt, although I would advise the reader to receive what I have to say on this point with the same caution that he should receive all information which is even in the smallest degree removed from the experience of personal observation. With this caution, I may then observe that, from information I have received, I have ample reason to believe that in the interior of Mysore there are many families of Pariahs who are as well off, in point of cattle, cash and land, as the average of the farmer caste, notwithstanding that the forefathers of these Pariahs were merely the servants of the farmer tribe. Nor is this all. Many instances, I believe, may be pointed out of members of the farmer tribe being the tenants of the once-despised Pariah. The Pariah, it is true, does not reap all the advantages from his altered circumstances that might be expected in other countries, but it is a mistake to suppose that wealth does not tell in India as it does