WHILE in India recently, I bought a translation of Moeurs, institutions et cérémonies des peuples de l’Inde (Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies: The Classic First-Hand Account of India in the Early Nineteenth Century) by Abbé Dubois. What interested me was the proximity of the year the book was first published — 1905 — to the period that is narrated by National Laureate Datuk Abdullah Hussain in his book Interlok. The index pages showed an entry of the word “pariah”, which in Malaysia has been reduced to a mere letter for some reason. The book throws new light on the subject. Some highlights are reproduced below based on several reference sources (not limited to Dubois), including those by Indian scholars intended as exploratory reading. The word “pariah” refers to members of the Paraiyar or Pariah caste. “Paraiyar” in Tamil means “a drummer (parai = drum)”, although the origin of the word is still debatable.