chiprassi

Updated: May 10, 2025

And until reinstated, of course, he could not visit kinsmen or friends nor could friends or kinsmen have visited him even to help at a funeral; his priest, his barber, and his washerman would have shunned him. Again, our bearer, who is himself an outcast in the eyes of the Brahmins, will not take a letter from the hands of our Dom chiprassi or messenger boy.

Clarence Hamilton Poe - Where Half The World Is Waking Up : The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions

Instead, the messenger boy drops the letter on the floor, and the bearer picks it up and thus escapes the pollution that would come from actual contact with the chiprassi." Moreover, there are social gradations even among the Doms.

Clarence Hamilton Poe - Where Half The World Is Waking Up : The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions