Another famous pagoda of Mandalay is the so-called "Four Hundred and Fifty Pagodas of the Law." This is a kind of Buddhist bible in stone. It has four hundred and fifty small shrines, every one of which has a large polished granite slab, upon which is engraved a precept of the faith; and the whole make up a complete body of the law, which every member of the faith may come and read at his leisure.

Here, as at all shrines, we notice the beautiful custom of these Burmese people in practising their public devotion with bouquets of flowers in their hands. It is touching to see this constant blending of beauty with piety. The abundant use of the candle, also, in their worship reminds us of the Romish ritual.

We are taken through the royal gardens and the deserted palaces of Mandalay, which are constructed largely, as many of the houses of Burma are, of exquisitely carved teak, rising here and there in pointed spires, which are indeed beautiful, but which give the impression of the so-called gingerbread style of architecture.

Upon one who has lived for many years in India there are two things in Burma which make a deep and a very pleasing impression.



In the first place, the charm of the Burmese woman is marked. She has none of the cringing, retiring, self-conscious mien of the Hindu women. She is possessed of liberty and of equality with man. Her appearance in society is both modest and self-respecting. She is conscious of her own beauty, and knows how to enhance it with exquisite taste. She is a great lover of colours, as is the Hindu woman. But the latter loves only the primitive and elementary colours; the former, on the other hand, cultivates the delicate shades, and adorns herself with silks of various tints, such as attract and fascinate. It is for this reason that Burma is called "The Silken East." Her dress is clumsy and uncouth in form, and, in this respect, is incomparably inferior to the graceful cloth of India. But the woman herself is lovely, and the taste which she displays in her personal adornment is very attractive. It does not surprise one to know that not a few Europeans marry these Burmese ladies of beauty. But above her beauty is that pose of freedom and self-respect which commends her everywhere. Nor is this assumed. The woman of Burma is "the man of the family." In business, and in all forms of trade, she is far superior to her lord, and much of the support and the honour of the family depends upon her industry, cleverness, and independence. Certainly Buddhism has produced, in many respects, a higher type of womanhood than has Hinduism.

Another aspect of life in Burma is one that instantly captivates one who goes there from India. It is a land free from the trammels of caste. The trail of this serpent is upon all things in India. It divides men at all points, and robs social life of much that is sweet and beautiful in other lands. The great Gautama vehemently attacked the Brahmanical caste system, and one is glad to see in Burma that that faith has adhered to this primitive enmity. One rejoices to see at the temples and on the public streets, everywhere, common eating and drinking houses, where the people meet for refreshment and for quiet social chat, without any thought of caste to disturb their relationship and mar their convivial pleasures.

That which impresses the observant Christian visitor to that land is the triumph and wonderful achievement of missionary effort there during the last half century.

All know the works, the sufferings, and the results attained by that great prophet of Burma, Adoniram Judson. He was a saint of the heroic mould, and his influence will affect the history of that people for centuries to come.

The American Baptist Mission overshadows, by its numbers and success, all other bodies of missionaries in the land. And at the present time their splendid force of workers is making a deep impress upon the community.

But their success has been mostly achieved among a very peculiar hill-tribe of that country,—the Karens. It was long after the Baptists had begun work there that this low hill-tribe, of less than two million people, was in the lowest depths of barbarism. Their language was not reduced to writing, and consequently, they had no literature whatever. But they had one interesting tradition. It had come down to them, generation after generation, that their bible had been lost, and that some day the Great Spirit would send a fair brother from the West to restore unto them the message of God which had disappeared. The "Fair Brother" came in the person of the American missionary; and his message was received in the assured faith that it was divinely sent and was the long-lost tradition of their tribe. From that day forward, thousands of the Karen tribe have everywhere accepted the Gospel of the Christ, until there are, at the present time, connected with that mission alone, more than one hundred and fifty thousand Karen converts.

And this is by no means all of the wonderful story of the regeneration of this barbarous tribe. Either by a very wise missionary statesmanship, or by a rare inspiration, such as we do not see elsewhere in the East, these people have almost entirely assumed the financial burdens of their own religious training and institutions, and are always quick, even beyond their means, to respond to every Gospel claim upon their purse. The story of their offerings, in view of their extreme poverty, is marvellous in its self-denial and outgoing generosity. The writer spent a few days at the missionary centre in the outskirts of Rangoon. Upon that compound there was a memorial church that had cost $30,000, of which the Karen Christians had given all, save a grant made by government for a few adjoining class-rooms. Three bungalows and other buildings of value are also found there, and the whole property is owned, not by the mission, but by the Karens themselves. Ten miles away from this is the largest theological seminary in the East, with more than one hundred and forty students under training. For the maintenance of this, again, those poor Karen Christians gladly impose upon themselves a family tax, and have the sweet consciousness that their youth are being trained for Christian service through their own self-denying endeavour.

These people were in social scale so low that they had practically no music of their own. They have therefore readily taken to western music. And it is astonishing to hear how well they sing our western tunes, and even render solos and quartettes at public European functions in a way that calls forth hearty encores. It is verily the birth of a nation in a day. So that in this land of many wonders the movement among the Karen people seems to be the most wonderful of all.

Among the Karens, Ko San Ye stands forth as a unique figure of intense interest. He has been called the "Moody" of Burma. He is absolutely illiterate. When about thirty years old, he lost his wife and his only child; and finding no comfort in his ancestral demonolatry, he turned to Buddhism for relief and retired to a mountain retreat and became known and esteemed among his people as a devout ascetic and a holy man. With the offerings of his people he built two pagodas and a monastery. But his soul found no rest there. In 1890, he was baptized as a Christian, with one hundred and forty of his followers. He then obtained a grant of twenty thousand acres of waste land from government, and established a village which now numbers several hundred houses. His influence over his own people is amazing, and is the result of superstitious reverence and awe.

He regretted that his ignorance prevented him from preaching the Gospel; but he thought that his influence over the people should be rightly used in the Lord's service. So he devoted himself to the collection of funds for religious purposes among his people. And in this work he has had almost fatal success, for his fellow-Christian Karens have responded to his appeals for money to the extent of at least $130,000. In view of the exceeding poverty of the people, this sum seems almost fabulous. Mr. Ko San Ye is known by all to be perfectly disinterested in the use of the money intrusted to him. Not a cent sticks to his hands; and he reverently and truthfully speaks of it as the "Lord's money." But his judgment is not commensurate with his piety. Even the most friendly cannot say that he has wisely administered this sacred trust of his poor brethren. He has erected churches, schools, and rest-houses which are altogether too sumptuous for the people. He spent thousands in the purchase of a fine steam-launch for the convenience of his people on the river side. He then purchased a rice-mill which brings a fair income to the mission. He has added to these two fine and expensive automobiles, in the smaller of which the writer had, for him, the unique pleasure of a delightful spin through the city of Rangoon and its suburbs, under the guidance of a Karen chauffeur! It was his first automobile ride; and to think of it as being enjoyed in a vehicle bought by poor Christians of Burma! Strange to say, the people continue to repose implicit confidence in him, even to the extent of mortgaging their property, in order to add to this public fund. It is to be hoped that this good man may soon submit more to missionary guidance.

Ko San Ye is but an interesting episode in the wonderful progress of a nation from the depth of barbarism to Christian privilege and civilized life. The missionaries often dare not have him present during the baptism of new converts, lest they should think that they were baptized in the name of Ko San Ye rather than in the name of Christ! And yet it is said that the two leading characteristics of this strange man are his humility and his unselfishness!

The Karens, with all their lowliness and barbarous antecedents, are excellent material to work upon, and are responding with wonderful eagerness to the missionary endeavour made in their behalf, and are already, in many noble qualities, revealing to the native Christians of the East the way of ascent to nobility of character and to the highest Christian possession.



CHAPTER IV

THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM

The word "caste" is derived from the Latin term castus, which signified purity of breed. It was the term used by Vasco da Gama and his fellow-Portuguese adventurers, four centuries ago, as they landed upon the southwestern coast of India and began to study the social and religious condition of the people. The word expressed to them the remarkable bond which held the people together; the subsequent generations of foreigners and English-speaking natives have adopted it as the most appropriate term to express the unique system which prevails all over India. No other people, in the history of the world, have erected a social structure comparable to this of India. For twenty-five centuries it has controlled the life of nearly one-sixth of the human race. Other countries have, or have had, tribal connections, class distinctions, trade unions, religious sects, philanthropic fraternities, social guilds, and various other organizations. But India is the only land where all these are practically welded together into one consistent and mighty whole, which dictates the every detail of human relationship and controls the whole destiny of man for time and eternity. For it should be remembered that India has consistently declined to recognize any distinction between the social and the religious. These are the reverse and the obverse of life; they are brought to the same rules and must yield obedience to the same authority. Religion, to the Hindu, permeates the whole social domain; and social order draws its sanctions from, and is enforced by the penalties of, religion. To marry outside one's caste, to eat food cooked by an outcast, to cross the ocean, to delay unduly the marriage of a daughter,—these, and a thousand other delinquencies which may seem absolutely harmless to a Westerner, are not only regarded as social irregularities, but also as sins whose penalties will harass the soul beyond the grave or burning-ground. Herein does caste reveal its uniqueness, and from this does it pass on to the exercise of its extraordinary tyranny over the people.

I

The origin of caste is a subject of much uncertainty and debate. In ancient Vedic times, caste was unknown. Society, in those days, was more elastic and free, and resembled that of other lands. And yet it showed a tendency toward a mechanical division which later grew into the caste system. It was not until the time of the great lawgiver, Manu, about twenty-five centuries ago, that the system crystallized into laws, and the organization became so compact as to force itself upon all the people and become an integral part of recognized Hindu law. Manu and other lawgivers found the basis of caste rules in the traditions of an ancient Brahman tribe. These they elaborated and enforced.

The ancient name for caste was varna, which means "colour." This name is suggestive, and has led many authorities to trace back the whole system to original race-purity, as indicated by the colour of the skin. The first incursion of the fair Aryans from the northwest settled down, it is claimed, in the northern portions of the country. They gradually mingled and intermarried with the dark-skinned Dravidian and aboriginal population, with the natural consequence of a loss of race-purity and of whiteness of complexion. A subsequent descent of a new Aryan host upon the plains of northern India found the descendants of their predecessors of darker hue than themselves, which bespoke their race degeneracy; so they kept aloof from them. Later, however, they began to mingle with the former inhabitants, so that their descendants partly lost the ancestral complexion. A still later Aryan incursion declined to have intercourse with the descendants of those who last preceded them. Thus we have four classes divided upon the basis of colour, or varna, which may correspond with the four great original castes of India.

The traditional theory of the Hindus themselves, in reference to caste origin, is admirably simple and quite adequate to satisfy ninety-nine per cent of the devotees of that faith to-day. Brahma, the first god of the Hindu triad, the Creator, was the immediate source and founder of the caste order; for he caused, it is said, the august Brahman to proceed out of his divine mouth, while the warlike and royal Kshatriya emanated from his shoulders, the trading, commercial Vaisya, from his thighs, and the menial Sudra, from his feet. And from these four primal classes have descended, through myriads of permutations and minglings, the present hydra-headed caste organization.

But modern and scientific students of the social order of India entirely discard and ignore all Hindu mythical explanations and Puranic legends concerning this subject, and endeavour to trace the present system to its sources and primal causes through patient historic research and through a most elaborate system of anthropometric and ethnographic examinations conducted all over the land. The subject, however, is so vast and complicated that authorities upon the subject are still considerably at variance in their theories of origin. We may conveniently classify the prevailing theories, according to their emphasis, as follows:—

(a) The Religious Theory.—This gives emphasis to the religious influence as the dominant one in the formation of the social order of the land. It is maintained that the clever and unscrupulous Brahman has, to a large extent, originated it and nursed it into its present wonderful proportions, in order to create and perpetuate his own supremacy among the people of India. As the spiritual head of Hinduism, and the recognized source of religious power among its devotees, he required and devised this organization, with himself as its undisputed head, and with a distinct recognition by all others of his supremacy in the Hindu faith as a conditio sine qua non of their admission as castes into the Hindu system. Up to the present day, the public acceptance of the supreme religious authority of the Brahman is one of the two conditions which qualify any people to admission into the sisterhood of Hindu castes. The other condition is separation from all other peoples in matters which will be hereafter mentioned.

There are potent reasons for accepting this theory; for the strongly entrenched position which religion still holds in the system, both as a basis and as a regulator, notwithstanding other antagonizing influences, is a testimony to its original place and power therein. Any social order whose direction is regulated by social injunctions and whose forms and ritual are enforced by religious penalties must be recognized as a mighty religious system.

(b) The Tribal Theory.—Moreover, there were many aboriginal tribes which entered the ranks of Hinduism through the formation of new castes. Mr. Risley, in the Census of 1901, refers to such. (See Vol. I, p. 521). They gradually abandoned their old tribal customs and entered upon new paths which brought them into conformity with Hindu usages. Or in some cases they preserved tribal habits and even their tribal totems, and baptized them into the new faith and thus became separate castes in the Hindu order.

As in the past, so "all over India at the present moment there is going on a process of the gradual and insensible transformation of tribes into castes. The stages of this operation are in themselves difficult to trace.... They usually set up as Rajputs, their first step being to start a Brahman priest, who invents for them a mythical ancestor, supplies them with a family miracle connected with the locality where their tribes are settled, and discovers that they belong to some hitherto unheard-of clan of the great Rajput community." (Census 1901, Vol. II, p. 519.) It is precisely the same process which brought the many Dravidian and even more primitive tribes of South India into the Hindu fold; and it is a curious fact that these same people are to-day the greatest sticklers in the land for caste and its myriad rules.

(c) The Social Theory.—Some hold with Sir Denzil Ibbetson, in the Census Report of 1881, "that caste is far more a social than a religious institution; that it has no necessary connection whatever with the Hindu religion, further than that under that religion certain ideas and customs common to all primitive nations have been developed and perpetuated in an unusual degree." This is acknowledged to be an exaggerated statement. It may possibly be true that "caste has no necessary connection with Hinduism," but it is emphatically true that caste, as understood by all, does not exist apart from that faith.

It is, however, a fact that divisions have occurred within castes, owing to the development of slight social differences between the members. For instance, several castes have been created by the degradation of members of the existing castes on account of their marriage of widows. The Pandarams of South India are held in distinction among the begging castes because of their abstention from meat, alcohol, and widow marriage. Indeed, it is interesting to note that a former caste status has been more frequently lost by, and degradation to a new caste has been consequent upon, the adoption of widow marriage, than through almost any other act. And, at present, this prohibition of the marriage of widows, including child widows, is the most tenaciously and unrighteously enforced caste custom in India.

(d) The Occupational Theory.—All regard fellowship in the same trade, or occupation, as the most prolific source of caste alignment, in modern times at least. Ibbetson contends that "the whole basis of diversity of caste is diversity of occupation. The old division into Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Sudra, and Mlechha, or outcast, who is below the Sudra, is but a division into the priest, the warrior, the husbandman, the artisan, and the menial.... William Priest, John King, Edward Farmer, and James Smith are but the survivals in England of the four varnas of Manu." (Census of 1881.) This statement needs serious qualification. Farming, which is followed to-day by a majority of the population of India, is an occupation which is subsidized by no caste and is followed practically by the members of all castes. The Brahmans are the only ones who are degraded by following the plough. And there is a growing number of trades, introduced by modern civilization, which have not yet been touched by the caste system, and which the enterprising youth of different grades of Hindu society are entering with eagerness. And yet, while this is a fact, it is equally true that the functional type of castes is developing and spreading much more rapidly than any other. In the town of Madura, a few of the families, from the weaver caste, opened a remunerative trade in the manufacture of fireworks. They at first began it as an extra, to add to their very meagre income. Gradually it encroached upon their time until it became their sole occupation. To-day they are prospering in their new trade. But to them and their castemen their change of trade involves the transfer of caste relations. No longer being weavers, they do not see how they can continue to be bound by ties to their former castemen or former fellow-tradesmen; hence the old connubial and convivial bonds of caste are relaxing, and the weavers decline to have fellowship with them as formerly on these lines. Thus, in all parts of the land, we have present-day illustrations of the creation of functional castes. And it is an interesting inquiry whether this mania for creating a new caste for every rising trade and occupation will finally overcome and absorb all occupations created by the demands of modern life and advancing civilization, or whether it will in time succumb to the spirit of modern progress until all occupations shall be emancipated from the tyranny of caste and shall be open to all men who desire to enter them.

(e) The Crossing Theory.—According to Manu's Dharma Sastra one might be led to believe, as Hindus do stoutly maintain, that nearly all modern castes have been created by interbreeding. Those caste laws of twenty-five centuries ago taught that the offspring of the union of a woman of higher with a man of lower caste could belong to the caste of neither parent, and therefore formed a new and a separate caste. The names of castes thus formed are given with much detail in Manu's works. But it does not require much wisdom for one to perceive the absurdity of the working out of such a system, and the impossibility connected with it as an adequate basis for the caste organization of the present day. Yet interbreeding has doubtless been an important element in the elaboration of the stupendous caste organization. We have abundant illustration of this very process and its results in modern times. Among the Dravidians, especially, there are many castes which trace their origin to miscegenation. Among the Munda tribe we find nine such divisions; also five among the Mahilis, who themselves claim their descent from the union of a Munda with a Santhal woman.

This will not be unexpected when it is remembered that endogamy is the prime law of most Hindu castes; and this, too, in a land where immorality and adultery are so prevalent. Other sources of Hindu castes are mentioned. Some, like the Mahrattas, have behind them national traditions, and a history to which they refer and of which they are proud. Others, still, have, by migrating from the home of the mother caste, severed their connection from the parent stock and have formed a separate and independent caste.

It is unnecessary to state that not one of the above theories is adequate to account for all the existing castes of the land. These forces have entered, with varying degrees of efficiency, into their structure,—one being dominant as a causal power in one, and another in another. And yet it may be stated that of all these caste-producing forces religion and occupation have had marked preeminence; and they are more influential to-day than ever before.

II

We shall next consider the various Characteristics or Manifestations of Caste. The system is a very flexible one; and yet its characteristics are practically the same in all parts of the country. Perhaps the best way to clearly describe these to a western reader is to quote at length what we may call Mr. Risley's capital western paraphrase of the system in Blackwood's Magazine, a decade ago. "Let us," he writes, "imagine the great tribe of Smith ... in which all the subtle nuances of social merit and demerit have been set and hardened into positive regulations affecting the intermarriage of families. The caste thus formed would trace its origin back to a mythical eponymous ancestor, the first Smith, who converted the rough stone hatchet into the bronze battle-axe and took his name from the 'smooth' weapons that he wrought for his tribe. Bound together by this tie of common descent they would recognize as the cardinal doctrine of their community the rule that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and could by no possibility marry a Brown or a Jones. But, over and above this general canon, two other modes or principles of grouping within the caste would be conspicuous. First of all, the entire caste of Smith would be split up into an indefinite number of in-marrying clans, based upon all sorts of trivial distinctions. Brewing Smiths and baking Smiths, hunting Smiths and shooting Smiths, temperance Smiths and licensed victualler Smiths, Smiths with double-barrelled names and hyphens, Smiths with double-barrelled names without hyphens, Conservative Smiths and Radical Smiths, tinker Smiths, tailor Smiths, Smiths of Mercia, Smiths of Wessex,—all these and all other imaginable varieties of the tribe Smith would be, as it were, crystallized by an inexorable law forbidding the members of any of these groups to marry beyond the circle marked out by the clan name.... Thus a Hyphen-Smith could only marry a Hyphen-Smith, and so on. Secondly, and this is the point which I more especially wish to bring out here, running through this endless series of clans we should find another principle at work breaking up each clan into three or four smaller groups which form a sort of ascending scale of social distinction. Thus the clan of Hyphen-Smiths, which we take to be the cream of the caste—the Smiths who have attained the crowning glory of double names securely welded together by hyphens—would be again divided into, let us say, Anglican, Dissenting, and Salvationist Hyphen-Smiths, taking ordinary rank in that order. Now the rule of these groups would be that a man of the Anglican could marry a woman of any group, that a man of the Dissenting group could marry into his own or the lowest group, while the Salvationist Smith could only marry into his own group. A woman could, under no circumstance, marry down into a group below her. Other things being equal, it is clear that two-thirds of the Anglican girls would get no husbands, and two-thirds of the Salvationist men no wives. These are some of the restrictions which would control the process of match-making among the Smiths if they were organized in a caste of the Indian type. There would also be restrictions as to food. The different in-marrying clans would be precluded from marrying together, and their possibilities of reciprocal entertainment would be limited to those products of the confectioners' shops into the composition of which water, the most fatal and effective vehicle of ceremonial impurity, had not entered. Fire purifies, water pollutes. It would follow in fact that they could eat chocolates and other sweetmeats together, but could not drink tea or coffee, and could only partake of ices if they were made without water and were served on metal, not porcelain, plates."

Mr. Risley might have added considerably to these restrictions and limitations without exhausting the catalogue.

Let us briefly enumerate those elements which enter into caste. The first and the most important is intermarriage within the caste. None except members of totemistic castes can, with impunity, look beyond the sacred borders of their own caste for conjugal bliss. So long as castes remain endogamous they will preserve their integrity, and their foundations will never be removed. This is the fons et origo of caste perpetuity. All other characteristics may pass away; if this remain, all is well with the organization. And it is this which remains with devilish pertinacity and mischief-working power in the infant Native Christian Church of India. It is this same extreme evil which the social reformers of India are trying to puncture. But all that they dare to struggle and hope for is the right of members of subdivisions of any caste to intermarry. A generation ago, there were 1886 divisions in the Brahman caste alone, no two of which could enjoy connubial or convivial privileges together. It is not up to the most sanguine reformer of India to seek that all Brahmans enjoy the right of intermarrying,—he only asks that the divisions among the Brahmans may be reduced, and intermarriage may be sanctioned among subdivisions. Yet even this meagre quest is not likely to be gratified. This is not surprising, for the defenders of the system well know that if this stronghold of caste is at all weakened, the whole will speedily yield to modern attack. This, doubtless, is the reason why orthodox Hindus are so vehement in their opposition to any and all endeavour to remove the many disabilities and cruelties which the marriage regulations of the land inflict upon Hindu women. There is no land under the sun whose weaker sex suffer more from marital legislation than India; and yet the people can do nothing practically to remedy the crying evils of the same, simply because the mighty engine of caste is arrayed against them. Its perpetuity is linked closely with the resistance of all efforts at reform.

Next in importance to the connubial is the convivial legislation of caste. It is the business of every member of a caste to conserve the purity of his gens by eating only with his fellow-castemen. Under no circumstance can he inter-dine with those of a caste below his own. The dictates of caste in this matter are sometimes beyond understanding. Not only must a man eat with those of his own connection; he must be very scrupulous as to the source of the articles which he is about to eat; he must know who handled them, and especially who cooked them. Some articles of food, such as fruit, are not subject to pollution; while others, preeminently water, are to be very carefully guarded against the polluting touch of the lower castes. The writer has entered a railway car and accidentally touched a Brahman's water-pot under the seat, whereupon the disgusted owner seized the vessel and immediately poured out of the car window all its contents. It has been truly said that that monster of cruelty, Nana Sahib of Cawnpore, was able, without any violation of caste rules, to massacre many innocent English women and children at the time of the great Mutiny; but to drink a cup of water out of the hand of one of those tender victims of his treachery and rage would have been a mortal sin against caste, such as could be atoned for only in future births and by the fiery tortures of hell! The rationale of this interdiction is doubtless the desire to preserve the purity of caste blood. As food becomes a part of the body, and, as the Hindu thinks, of the life, it is imperative that all the members of a caste shall eat only the same kind of food, and also that which has not been subjected to the ceremonially polluting touch of outsiders.

This urgency is increased by the fact that different castes proscribe different articles of diet. The Sivar, so-called, are strict vegetarians, and will have absolutely no communion in food with meat-eaters, even though the latter may belong to a higher caste than themselves. Meat of any kind is an abomination to them. Other respectable castes will touch only chicken meat, others mutton, a very few pork, while no caste will permit its members to eat beef. No sin is regarded by the orthodox with more horror than that of killing and eating the flesh of the cow,—the most sacred and most commonly worshipped animal of India.

These convivial rules of caste are the greatest obstacles to social union and fellowship among the people of India. Westerners hardly realize the extent to which their communion is based upon the convivial habit. Many times a friendship which lasts a lifetime is formed by strangers sitting together at the common dinner table. And, in the same way, are the old friendships of life generally renewed and cemented in the West. And it is a significant fact that the Christian faith antagonizes Hinduism at this very point by enacting that its great Sacrament of love and communion of life in Christ be embodied in a perpetual and universal "drinking of the same cup and eating of the same bread." In nothing is Hinduism becoming more manifestly a burden to the educated community than in this restriction about inter-dining; and in nothing are they more ready, as we shall see later, to violate caste customs than in this matter.

Then comes, as a natural consequence of the above, limitations to the contact of persons of differing castes. If a Brahman cannot eat with a Sudra, because it supposedly brings a taint to his pure blood, no more can he, with impunity, come into personal contact with him. The touch of such is pollution to his august and pure person; and the very air the low castes breathe brings to his soul and body taint and poison. This idea of ceremonial pollution by contact causes great inconvenience and trouble, and for that reason has been considerably mitigated or modified in recent times. The Rajah of Cochin, who lives temporarily near the writer, and who is evidently a stickler for caste observances, receives calls from European friends only before nine o'clock in the morning, for the obvious reason that that is the hour of his daily ablution. The Maharajah of Travancore bathes at 7 A.M. daily; hence, intending European guests find reception only before that early hour. In the State of Travancore, in which Brahmanical influence is great, even the high caste Nair cannot touch, though he may approach, a Namburi Brahman. A member of the artisan castes will pollute his holiness twenty-four feet off; cultivators at forty-eight feet; the beef-eating Pariah at sixty-four feet. Like the Palestinian leper of old, the low-caste man of that part of India was, until recently, expected to leave the road when he saw a Brahman come, and remove his polluting person to the required number of feet from his sacred presence. Low-caste witnesses were not allowed to approach a court of justice, but standing without, at the requisite distance, to yell their testimony to the Brahman judge who sat in uncontaminated purity within. The falling of the shadow of a low-caste person upon any Brahman in India necessitates an ablution on the part of the latter. It is this frequency of contaminating and polluting contingencies in the life of the Brahman which requires of him so many ablutions daily, and which renders him perhaps the cleanest in person among the sons of men. So many are the dangers of contamination which daily beset him in the ordinary pursuits of life that relief in the form of dispensations is granted him, so as to reduce the ceremonies and diminish the extreme burden of religious observance. This law of contact and pollution must weigh heavily upon any genuine Hindu of high caste. The relation of the Maharajah of Travancore to his Prime Minister, who is a Brahman, is an interesting illustration. The Rajah is not a born Brahman; he is by many of his people regarded as a manufactured Brahman. But His Highness himself does not regard himself as equal, in sacred manhood, to his Brahman Prime Minister; hence he will never be seated in his presence. Nor will the Brahman Dewan deign to sit in the presence of his royal master, the Maharajah. Hence all the business of State (sometimes requiring conferences of three hours a day) is transacted by them while standing in each other's presence.

Occupational limitations are observed, as we have already seen, by many modern castes. Trade castes not only prescribe the one ancestral occupation to their members; they also, with equal distinctness and severity, prohibit to all within their ranks any other work or trade. So in all those legion castes not only has a man his social sphere and status assigned to him, he is also tied to the trade of his ancestors; yea, more, he is expected to confine himself to ancestral tools and methods of work in that narrow rut of life. One day the writer was accosted by a weaver who was in a famishing condition. He made a pathetic plea for charity. Manchester cloths were flooding the market; they therefore could not sell the products of their labour at living rates. It was suggested that they take up some other trade that could furnish them a decent living. He lifted up his hands in horror at the impious suggestion, that they abandon their caste-prescribed occupation! He felt that he and his were ground between the upper and nether millstones. To suggest to him that they even change the kind or style of article which they prepared upon their looms for the market would have been equally impossible. Out in the villages, where these people live, it would seem almost as absurd for the weaver to become a carpenter as for the weaver who uses only cotton thread to become a silk-weaver, or for those who weave coarse white cloths to produce the finer coloured cloths worn by the women. No; for generations their people have given themselves to the production of only one article. "It is the custom of our people" is the final word. And what has become customary is by caste enactment made obligatory. And woe be to him who defies caste. And thus the caste-prescribed trade becomes the be-all and the end-all of life.

These four—the connubial, the convivial, the contactual, and the occupational—are the constant factors of the caste existence and activity in India. But in addition to these, caste takes other functions and assumes other forms in certain localities and under certain circumstances. Definite forms of religious observance are often enjoined, certain places of pilgrimage are sanctioned, marriage forms prescribed, marriage obligations defined, divorce made possible or impossible, and the limit of marriage expenses set. There is hardly a department of life or a duty which men owe to their dead which does not enter the domain of caste legislation somewhere or other.

A strange and very interesting peculiarity of certain castes is their totemistic aspect. This characteristic has only recently been discovered. "At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average Hindu, we find, in the Dravidian region of India, a large body of tribes and castes each of which is broken up into a number of totemistic septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a plant, or some material object, natural or artificial, which the members of that sept are prohibited from tilling, eating, cutting, burning, carrying, using, etc." (See Census of 1901, Vol. II, pp. 530-535.)

Mr. J. G. Frazer, in the Fortnightly Review, gives the following description of the totem: "A totem is a class of natural phenomena or material objects—most commonly a species of animals or plants—between which and himself the savage believes that a certain intimate relation exists.... This relation leads the savage to abstain from killing or eating his totem, if it happen to be a species of animal or plant. Further, the group of persons who are knit to any particular totem by this mysterious tie commonly bear the name of the totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, and strictly refuse to sanction the marriage or cohabitation of members of the group with each other. This prohibition to marry within the group is now generally called by the name Exogamy. Thus totemism has commonly been treated as a primitive system, both of religion and of society."

In absorbing the Dravidian tribes, Brahmanism appropriated the totemistic cult and incorporated it into the caste system. And many Dravidian castes which are identified with this cult have the striking peculiarity of being exogamous as contrasted with the endogamy of the Aryan section of Hindu castes.

III

The penalties which are inflicted by caste for violation of its rules are many and very severe. It is hardly too much to say that there is not on earth an organization more absolute in its power, more wide-reaching in its sweep of interests, and more crushing in its punishment, than is caste. In the first place, it so completely hems in the life of a man, imperatively prescribes for him the routine of life, even down to the most insignificant details, and thus shuts him up to his own clan, and with equal completeness cuts him off from the members of other castes, that it can reduce any recalcitrant member to certain and speedy obedience, simply because there is no one to whom he can flee for sympathy and refuge. Even if this whole system had not, as its first aim and achievement, the alienation of members of different castes, who is there among Hindus that would interfere with this function of a caste to discipline its members? For is not "Thou shalt obey implicitly thy caste," the first law of the Hindu decalogue, and the one most sincerely believed by all Hindus? The following are among the penalties inflicted upon one who is under the ban of his caste:—

All the members of his caste are prohibited from accepting his hospitality. Not even his own household are permitted to dine with him. He is boycotted, absolutely, by all his best friends, associates, and companions. Not one of them dares, under penalty of complete ostracism, to harbour or favour him. Nor will he be invited to their homes. They dare not receive him under the shelter of their roofs nor offer him food. More than once the writer has seen the bitter tyranny of caste brought to bear upon those who had abandoned caste by becoming Christians. Here is a youth known to the writer. He is a member of a respectable caste. He accepts the religion of Christ publicly as his own. His parents and brothers and sister will cling to him with the hope of bringing him back to the ancestral faith. But caste authority steps in. It forbids the family to receive the son and brother, or to offer him a morsel of food. In that household a sad war of sentiment is inaugurated. Parental love and family tenderness cling to the Christian youth; and is he not the hope of the family for the years to come? But to harbour him means to be outcast as a family; and how can they endure that? And are they not at heart loyal to the caste of their fathers? So the conflict runs on for months. One night only the tender heart of the sister compels her to defy caste to the extent, not of eating with the dear brother and companion of her youth, but so far as to bring him the remnant of their meal, not in one of the home vessels from which he had eaten so often as a Hindu in the past, but on a plantain leaf and behind the house!

Then, of course, comes the connubial ban whereby all the members of the caste are prohibited from giving any of their children in marriage to those of his household. To the Hindu who believes that marriage is not only the God-given right of every human being, but who also implicitly believes that it is a heavenly injunction whose fulfilment rests as a duty upon every father in behalf of his children, this interdict is the most oppressive of all. But it is enforced with heartless severity in every case; and any family which may defy the caste in this respect by entering into conjugal relationship with that of the one under ban, is at once outcast.

Another mighty resource of the organization, in this connection, is to interdict to the recreant member the use of all caste servants. For instance, the caste barber and washerman are commanded to serve him and his no longer. The severity of this interdiction cannot possibly be realized by westerners, who are not always dependent upon these functionaries. But in India every one depends upon the barber and washerman for their service even more than a westerner does upon the service of the butcher or the doctor. The Hindu never dreams of the possibility of doing for himself the duties performed by these caste servants for him. Moreover, the barbers and washermen of other castes would, under no circumstance, be allowed to render him the service thus prohibited to him by his own caste.

Add again to these inflictions the further one of complete isolation in times of domestic bereavement. Should a member of his family die, not one of the caste members is permitted to help in the last sacred rites for the dead. Even at that moment, when one would expect the icy barriers to melt away, the heart of caste is as hard and its severity as rigid as ever. The helplessness of a family under these circumstances is, to any one who is not a slave to the whole accursed system, most pitiful and heartrending.

Another caste penalty which has received undue public prominence of late is called prayaschitta, which means atonement. It is usually applied as punishment to those who have had the temerity to cross the ocean for foreign travel, business, or study. More correctly, it is rather a process of cleansing and ceremonial rehabilitation than an act of punishment. The exclusiveness of caste delighted in calling all foreigners Mlechhas, which, though perhaps not as vigorous a term as the Chinese sobriquet, "black devils," connoted, and still connotes, to the caste Hindu, "unclean wretches," contact with whom brings ceremonial pollution and sin. He who crossed the ocean would necessarily be debased by these defiling ones and would be, as a matter of course, engulfed in the pollutions of their life! To prohibit travel, which necessarily involved such sin and degradation, became therefore the concern of the ancient lawmakers of India. Hence the prayaschitta, under which the educated community of India chafe so much at the present time. For many of the best and most promising youth of India travel abroad or reside temporarily in England, with a view to perfecting their educational training so as to qualify themselves for highest positions of usefulness in the homeland. Others go abroad on business or to behold and study the wonders of western life and civilization. All men of culture and power in India, at the present time, are convinced of the evil and absurdity of this caste law, which is common to all castes, because it is a part of the general legislation of their religion. They decline to believe that it is either sin or pollution to go in search of the best that the West and the East have discovered and can bestow upon one, and that which is to-day doing most in the elevation and redemption of India herself. And many of them are defying this obsolete and debasing law of their faith. Many others are crying for a modern interpretation of the law—an interpretation which will explain away its bitterness and render it innocuous. For it is not simply or chiefly the reactionary and absurd character of this legislation which exasperates the intelligence of the land; it is the very offensive and revolting nature of the expiation which preeminently stirs up the rebellion. In former centuries of darkness, Hindus may have been willing to submit to the humiliation of eating the five products of the cow as an atonement for the supposed sin of sea-travel. The culture and intelligence of the present time is neither so abject nor so superstitious as to submit to this, without, at least, a vigorous protest. And yet, what the culture of India seeks to-day is not the abolishing of this law, which is equally repulsive to their taste and to their intelligence; it asks only that some way of avoiding the penalty may be found! And all that Hinduism and caste require of these foreign-travelled men is not an intelligent submission to its behests, but an outward observance of them. So the faith and its conservative defenders are satisfied to see these men of culture, as they return with the acquired treasures of the West, submit outwardly to this offensive rite, while their sensitive nature rises in rebellion against it. And these young scions of the East willingly practise this hypocrisy and submit to this indignity in order to live at peace with, and indeed to live at all in, their ancestral caste! It is only an illustration of the hollowness of the major part of the life of the educated community in this great land. Well may one exclaim, what can be expected from a people whose leading men of culture are living this double and mean life! This is verily "peace with dishonour"!



CHAPTER V

THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM (continued)

IV

The agency through which, and the occasion upon which, caste penalizes its members are manifold.

Formerly, Hindu kings, under instruction from their pandit ministers, would enforce caste observances. But under the present non-Hindu State no such action could be expected. In many instances pandits have to be consulted both as to whether a member has really violated shastraic injunctions and as to the penalty which should be inflicted in that special case. In doubtful cases, pandits of various trainings and leanings are called who present conflicting opinions which end in confusion.

In Southern India important cases of caste violation among non-Vishnuvite Hindus are under the jurisdiction of the Superiors of Sankarite monasteries. Some of these assume and exercise Papal authority in such matters among their people. Usually, however, each local caste organization deals directly with infractions of its own rules, and is competent to deal drastically, and as a court of final resort, with all cases of caste infringement within its own membership. It may be done in public assembly, when all male members are present and have a voice; or the caste panchayat, or council of five, may sit in judgment upon the case and have right of final action. This latter tribunal is the more common in South India, and is more in harmony with the spirit and methods of the land.

There are a number of courses of action which are adequate as causes of removal from caste.

One of these is a change of faith. The abandonment of the ancestral religion, which is the mother of caste spirit and organization, especially when the newly accepted faith repudiates openly caste and all that belongs to it, inevitably leads to expulsion from caste. In most cases this has resulted upon conversion to either Christianity or Mohammedanism. But this is not as universal as we could wish or as many suppose, as we shall see later on. It may be seen how, in a mass movement of a large body of men toward Christianity, for instance, the people may easily, and would naturally, carry with them into the new faith many of their old customs and habits, including much that pertains to, and is of the essence of, caste.

Roman Catholicism has interpreted caste chiefly from a social standpoint, and has therefore regarded it as a social institution which can be adapted to, and adopted into, the Christian religion. Protestantism, or, at least, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, has regarded caste as primarily and dominantly a religious institution, whose spirit antagonizes fundamentally our faith, and which must be opposed at all points. Hence it is a part of the pledge of every one who enters into the Protestant fellowship in India that he will eschew and oppose caste at all times. And it may be said that, though Hinduism loves dearly compromise and evasion, it has in the main held that a man who has accepted the Christian faith and has been publicly baptized into its conviction of the "fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men," has no place in its own caste system, and it consistently deals with him as with an outcast. As we have already seen, every man who has travelled abroad has lost thereby caste and has to undergo expiation before reinstatement. It matters not how thoroughly he has tried to preserve caste customs during his travels and in the foreign land, he is regarded by all as a de facto outcast.

Marrying a widow is also an act which severs caste ties and places a man under the ban. Of course, this applies not to the few castes which allow widow-remarriage. But as the bulk of Hindus deny the right of a widow to remarry (though there is no caste obstacle to a widower taking unto himself a new virgin wife every year of his life), a man cannot enter into an alliance with a widow without losing caste thereby.

Beef-eating is regarded as so heinous a sin that no member of a respectable caste would expect consideration for a moment. And yet Dr. J. H. Barrows has said that the famous Swamy, Vivekanantha, when with him at Chicago, ate a whole plateful of beef in his presence and with a great deal of relish. But he, of course, had graduated out of the ordinary level of Hindu-hood into the sacred heights of Swamyhood, in which a man is exempt from the mean limitation of caste, and when the vulgar sins of common Hindu life are transmuted into the ordinary blessings and privileges of saintdom.

In like manner, vegetarian castes punish their members for the eating of any meat. The Hindu aversion to meat is very common; it is also sanitary and wholesome; for meat-eating in the tropics is neither necessary nor conducive to health. And yet the Pariah outcast has no scruples in this matter. It is indeed true that he would deem it a sin to butcher a cow or an ox; but he will not hesitate to poison his neighbour's cattle, that he may thereby have enough carrion to eat. For the carcases of the dead cattle of the village are the perquisite of the Pariah; and it is upon finding such that he enjoys his only feasts of plenty. But to the ordinary Hindu all bovine kind are divine, and the flesh of the same is strictly and vehemently tabooed.

Punishment is also dealt out, as we have seen, to those who eat any food cooked by an outcast, whether he be Christian, Mohammedan, or Pariah. And the same is true of eating with an outcast, or with one who is of a lower caste than himself. Indeed, so far is this spirit carried by certain high castes that to be seen eating by a member of a lower caste, or to allow the shadow of a stranger to fall upon one's prepared food, is pollution. Hence the care with which all Hindus seek privacy and avoid the gaze of men during mealtime.

Officiating as a priest in the house of a low-class Sudra is strictly prohibited to a Brahman, and he loses caste thereby. He and other "twice born" are also driven out of caste if they throw away the sacred thread which is the outer badge of their second birth and dignity.

A woman, when found in open sin with a man of another caste, and a widow, when she can no longer hide the consequence of her immorality, are no longer in caste.

It is hardly necessary to mention that marrying outside of one's own caste is a sin which finds no countenance, but severest punishment, in nearly all castes.

Generally speaking, we may say that caste authority is exercised only in cases where ceremonial observance and social usages are violated. In matters that are purely ethical, and which bear upon the character and moral elevation of the individual and the clan, caste rarely acts; for it does not consider that its honour is compromised or its organic life impaired by such conduct.

It should also be mentioned that caste is not even in the distribution of its dispensations and punishments. A man of wealth and social influence succeeds in staving off many acts of caste displeasure which would fall heavily upon the poor and friendless man. Such a man may, and often does, trample under foot every command of the decalogue, and at the same time defy and violate a good moiety of the injunctions of his caste. And yet, because of his wealth and general importance in caste councils, he stands unimpeached and unrebuked.

In matters of caste observance and discipline, villages are much more conservative and strict than cities. In the latter, as we shall see, caste observance is much relaxed, and life is more on modern lines.

V

The results of the caste system in India are many and manifest. It has sown its seed for many centuries and to-day reaps a rich harvest in life and conduct. It should not be assumed, and it cannot be asserted, that this great system has always been an unmixed evil to the people of this land.

No organization which has bound by its fetters for eighty generations nearly a sixth of the population of the globe, and which continues to grip them to-day with tyrannical power, can be devoid of any redeeming feature. The very perpetuity and prosperity of the scheme argues for its possession of some rational features, originally connected with it, which gave it sanction to the myriads who have submitted to its reign over them. But it is exceedingly difficult to discover that excellence which originally commended it to the people of this land. Nor do the writings of those who have striven to defend the system assist us in making this discovery. A modern Brahman defence by Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya (see "Hindu Castes and Sects," pp. 1-10) gives only one ray of light upon the subject when he observes that "the legislation of the Rishis was calculated not only to bring about union between the isolated clans that lived in primitive India, but to render it possible to assimilate within each group the foreign hordes that were expected to pour into the country from time to time." In those remote days when weakness through isolation threatened their very existence, and when there was no possibility of a general union of all the people for defence, thorough organization of clans into castes brought strength and confidence and was a conspicuous blessing. It was in those days a convenient and effective way of enforcing religious obligations upon the heterogeneous clans. It also was then probably useful in preserving purity of blood among the higher races, and in conserving the nobility of the Aryan who was destined to rule the mixed races of India for many centuries.

Nor is the system without possibilities of good in modern times, as was illustrated recently by the action of a prominent North India caste in prohibiting large expenses in marriage and in raising, by legislation, the limit of the marriageable age of its girls.

But, alas, any good that may possibly inhere in the system has largely remained in posse rather than in esse. The history of caste has been one of evil, and it is no wonder that such a fair-minded writer as Mr. Sherring, who has probably made a more thorough study of the subject than any other man, should call the organization "a monstrous engine of pride, dissension, and shame" (see Preface to his "Hindu Tribes and Castes"). Considering the subject, therefore, in its bearing upon the life of India to-day, and studying its results as we now find them among all classes of the people and in their definite bearing upon the future of the land, we are compelled to pronounce against it at all points.

It is, in the first place, the source of interminable discord and dissension all over the land. It not only arrays caste against caste; but bitter animosity is the order of the day among the subdivisions of castes. In every one of the numberless castes in the land there are divisions and subdivisions galore. And while the Sudras acknowledge the supremacy of the "twice born," among the myriad clans of the Sudras themselves there is endless assumption and contention, every one, fomented by pride, claiming primacy and distinction above the others. Recently, in South India, this feeling led to a serious riot, in which not a few lives were lost and villages devastated.

It also narrows the sympathies of the people in a most lamentable way. Among the common people of India it is held that a man's duties to his caste embrace his whole obligation. When a fellow-being is in difficulty and his condition strongly appeals for sympathy, the first, and often the last, question asked is, "Is he a member of my caste?" If not, like the priest and the Levite of old, his conscience allows him to "pass by on the other side." Recently a woman perished in the streets of a town near Madura. She was a resident of a village some twenty-five miles away, and was, therefore, a stranger in this town, where she sickened and was carried to a public rest-house. But when her condition became serious and no relatives or caste friends came to her support, she was put out into the street, where she lay helpless for three days in the rain and sunshine. Hundreds of people saw her dying agonies as they passed by during those days; but no heart of sympathy went out to her; for was she not a stranger? And it was left to an American, who happened to pass that way on the third day, to demand of the town officer that she be put back in the rest-house, where she shortly afterward died. Let it not be thought that this is an isolated case. He who is familiar with Indian life knows it is not, for daily he has to witness the woful limitations which caste imposes upon human sympathy.

Caste has also degraded manual labour. The loss of caste by any Brahman who follows the plough is only an application of this rule in the highest quarters. Caste has taught the people of this land that humble toil, however honest it may be, is more than mean; it is sinful. There are millions of the higher castes of India who deem it honourable to beg, and dignified to spend their years in abject laziness, but who would regard it as unspeakable degradation to take a hoe or a hammer and earn an honest living by the sweat of their brow. Nor will their caste rules permit of their undertaking such work. And this spirit has passed down the ranks until it pervades the whole of society in India, with the consequence that manual labour is universally regarded as degrading, and with the further natural result that a horde of five and a half millions of lazy, wretched, immoral, able-bodied, religious beggars are burdening this land. And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil. It should be further remarked that there are a number of begging castes, in which all work is proscribed and mendicity exalted into a divinely ordained profession!

Moreover, caste makes it impossible for India to become a commercial country. So long as foreign travel is banned and contact with other lands is regarded as a sin against heaven and caste, there is little hope that the people of this land will distinguish themselves in that kind of trade and commerce which has made India's mistress, Great Britain, so illustrious in wealth and dominion.

And it is this caste spirit which so easily made the great peninsula of India a prey to the "tight little island" many thousands of miles away. For not only has caste made the Hindus an insular people, it has also so divided them that they do not realize any common sentiment, save that of opposition to the State, or seek any common good. Hence they have for many centuries been the easy prey of any adventurers who sought to overcome and despoil them. A genuine national feeling and a patriotic sentiment are all but impossible in the land. And all intelligent Hindus acknowledge this sad condition at present, and many of the best of them publicly maintain that national consciousness, self-rule, and a glowing, triumphant patriotism can be built only upon the ruins of the caste system.

And even as it is a foe to nationality, so is it the mortal enemy of individualism. The caste system is really a glorification of the multitude as against the individual. Individual initiative and assertion, liberty of conscience, the right of man to life and the pursuit of happiness,—all these are foibles of the West which it has been the chief business of caste to crush; and upon their ruin it has erected this mighty tower of Babel. In India, it has been the business of men, from time immemorial, not to do what they think to be right, nor to find out, every one for himself, what they consider to be the best and to act according to the dictates of conscience; it has rather been submission to caste dominance. And it is the unblushing teaching of the Shastras that obedience to caste is the fulfilment of duty and the summum bonum of life. So omnipotent and omniscient is the arm and head of caste that men dare not defy it. Hence we are compelled to look in India to-day upon the saddest spectacle of abject manhood the world has known. To those who, like the writer, have spent a lifetime in trying to raise the outcasts and the lower strata of Indian society, the most difficult and discouraging obstacle is the inertia and the abjectness of the people themselves. Through a bitter experience of many centuries they have learned that it does not pay for the individual to assert himself against the dictates of the caste, or for the lower castes to rise in rebellion against their lot. They discovered that they were merely butting their heads against an adamantine rock. So they have lost every ambition and hope; and he who would lift them up must first remove that leaden despair which rests upon them like a mighty incubus.

Nor is it much better with the educated classes of India. There are hundreds of thousands of these men of western university training who annually assemble in Congress and in Convention, and who in spotless English of Addisonian accent and in the sonorous phraseology of a Macaulay, discourse upon human rights and who denounce the bondage of caste tyranny. And yet they submit, in their own homes, to that same accursed tyranny and are in life as abject as the meanest Pariah in the face of caste edicts which they know to be unrighteous and demeaning to the core.

It should also be remembered that caste is the foster-mother of all the manifold social evils of the land. In pre-caste days in India such evils as child marriage, prohibition of widow remarriage, temple women, excessive marriage expenses, etc., did not exist. They are a part of the caste regime supported and perpetuated by its authority. Remove this mighty compulsion, and these institutions would soon become things of the past.

Another evil of this organization is that of ignoring the ethical and spiritual standard and of measuring everything from a purely formal and ceremonial standpoint. All life is reduced into an unceasing ritual under the perpetual priestly surveillance of caste. All that it asks of man is outward conformity. He may disbelieve and hate every commandment of his faith; but if he conforms, he is a faithful son. On the other hand, he may be a man of unblemished character, and he may even intend to be obedient to caste; but if, some night, a few enemies were to thrust into his mouth and compel him to swallow a piece of beef, no power could save him from the dreadful punishment that would follow. A man may write a tract in condemnation and ridicule of all the gods of the Hindu pantheon and still remain an acceptable Hindu; but if, in the agony of a burning fever, he should drink a spoonful of water from the hands of a Christian or of a Pariah, his caste would doom him to perdition for it.

In other words, the whole system directly cultivates, in all the people, a hollowness of life which does more than anything else to rob India of her manhood and which makes nobility of character and ethical integrity most difficult things among the Hindu community. A Brahman gentleman described the whole system as a "vast hollow sham." And such it is.

VI

Paradoxical though it may seem, caste spirit is more prevalent and its influence more dominant in India at the present than in the past; yet there is more defiance and violation of caste rules and more frequent and sure evidences of the speedy termination of its reign than at any previous time.

It has ruled so long and so supremely in this country that the Hindu accepts it without questioning; and it has become more than a second nature to him, even a necessity of his being. What would be intolerably irksome to a Westerner is to the Hindu a matter of course. To the rank and file of the Hindus, caste has ceased to be a matter of question. It is the only order of life with which he is conversant; and while he may be convinced by arguments which prove its cruelty and its many evils, he still clings to it as the only system under which he knows how to live and which he cares to obey.

As we have already seen, the ramifications of caste are more numerous and its authority more general to-day than at any former time. Many Hindu reformers, especially of the Vishnu sects, have followed in the steps of the great Buddha, by denouncing caste, root and branch, and have established their own sects during the last ten centuries on a non-caste basis. But they have all succumbed to the demon which they antagonized and now generally observe caste rules with the same devotion as other Hindus.

The lower the caste spirit has descended to the "submerged tenth" of the land, the more vehemently have they become inoculated with its virus. The outcast Pariah is not to be outdone in this matter; and so we have Pariahs and Pariahs. Many divisions are found among this wretched class, and they are more exclusive in their divisions and more rigid in their narrowness than are many of the high castes.

Even those who have abandoned the Hindu faith and professed another, do not leave behind them this divisive spirit. Perhaps the converts from Mohammedanism have eschewed Hindu caste more than converts to other faiths.

Among Christian converts, though caste is professedly abandoned, it clings with vital tenacity and almost unconquerable persistence to their sense of the fitness of things. Their deepest prejudices and unconscious tendencies, even against their intellectual convictions and sincere professions, unceasingly sway the vast majority of them and lead them into affiliations and narrow sympathies which are Hindu and not Christian. It is true that the oldest Christian community in India, the Syrian Church of Malabar, has long abandoned the Hindu caste organization, with even its mean remnant of caste titles. And yet that community settled down for many centuries into the conviction that it was merely one caste among the many of that region and must keep itself aloof from and untainted by the surrounding castes. Roman Catholicism, which has still the most numerous Native Christian community in India, has largely adopted the Hindu system and tries to utilize it in the furtherance of Christianity in the land! No greater mistake was ever made than this of trying to uphold and promulgate the meekness, the humility, the love, and the fellowship of Christ by means of the haughty pride, the cruel hate, and the bitter divisiveness of caste.



Protestant Christianity is to-day the pronounced foe of caste. It is war to the death between them, and the missionaries have not yet found a foe to their cause so subtle, deceptive, deep-rooted, persistent, and pervasive as this. It is fortified by a thousand ramparts and presents more discouragement to the Christian worker than all other obstacles combined. Even Buddhism and Jainism, the former of which was the ancient protest against Hindu caste, have fallen oft-times a prey to the subtle and damning wiles of this system. In Bengal, a number of Hindu castes are known to have been formerly members of the Jain and Buddhist communities (see Census 1901, Vol. II, p. 523).

However, notwithstanding this growing prevalence and the marvellous tenacity of caste throughout the land, there are encouraging signs of its decadence. Its grip is certainly relaxing in many ways, and its asperities are softening.

It may not untruthfully be said that the growing multiplicity of castes is one of the sure harbingers of the downfall of the system. For the divisions of caste are already beyond computation. The population is cut up into so many minute sections that the caste edifice overtowers everything else, so that it is in imminent danger of toppling over. It is claimed that war among civilized nations will soon become an impossibility because of the growing devastating power of modern weapons of warfare. In like manner, caste is speedily passing through its very excesses to a reductio ad absurdum; its spirit is so rampant, and its gross evils are becoming so intolerable, that even the patient inhabitants of India will soon cease to endure the ruin which this monster of their own creation carries on among them.

Educated Hindus are already denouncing it with great vehemence and with considerable unanimity. They are convinced that India can never win independence and power under the regime of caste; and they proclaim their convictions upon the house-top. It is true, as we have seen, that caste has so powerfully thrown its spell over them, its own children, that they are too abject to withstand it openly and unitedly. But I believe that they will erelong be driven to action. Further, obedience and submission will mean ruin to them, their families, and their country.

Even now, among the educated, especially in Bengal, caste restrictions upon dining are being increasingly ignored. A Bengalee gentleman enjoys ordinary hotel fare with apparently none to interfere with his liberties. In Madras, the writer has more than once rubbed shoulders with Brahman lawyers and others eating together the common fare of a well-known restaurant of the city. And he has known Brahman patients, high in society, who did not object even to buy and use nourishment in the form of "Liebig's Beef-extract," so long as they could cover its offensiveness to the women of their household by the euphemistic name "meat-extract."

And to this they are being rapidly carried by a conjunction of many forces which are increasingly dominating the land.

In the first place, they have the potent example of a host of western lives among them. This body of white people, from the far-off lands, is distributed all over India. They are the rulers of the land. A Brahman may deem their touch pollution. But that same Brahman is often glad to undergo that ceremonial taint if thereby he can only enjoy the white man's cultured society. He beholds in these people from the West a freedom from irksome caste restraints. He notices conjugal relations among them, such as furnish richest home blessings. Their social relations are untrammelled and abound in convivial privileges such as are denied to Hindu society. All this creates in him an uneasiness. If he is a man of culture and resides in some city of importance, he will wish to meet English friends upon lines of social equality; but this he will find to be impossible apart from his defiance of caste rules; for, to the man of the West, the common cup and the festal board are the essential conditions of true friendship and intimacy. Thus the life of the ruling race in India is a constant rebuke to the narrowness of caste and a source of discontent to the caste-ridden people, because it reveals to them a different and a better way of living.

Nor is it merely this new type of non-caste western life that appeals to them. The modern civilization of the West, with its humanizing laws, its exaltation of the individual, its religious freedom, its new and broadening education and culture, its equal rights to every man, its many institutions through every one of which there breathes the Anglo-Saxon's blessed love of liberty, the home with its sanctified affection and its glorified womanhood, philanthropy which carries with an even hand its sweet services to the high and the low—to Pariah as to the Brahman,—all these institutions and influences are at work like a mighty leaven in the mind and heart of India. And the people cannot be blind to this influence; and it is gradually transforming their ideals and ambition.

Connected with these more subtle western civilizing agencies are found the material agencies which are the dread foes of caste exclusion. The chief among these is the railroad, the thirty thousand miles of which are so many tongues to proclaim the doom of past narrowness. The Brahman, with all his mean pride, cannot forego the wonderful conveniences of the "iron road and the fire-carriage"; but in order to avail himself of them, he must sit an hour at a time cheek by jowl with a low-caste—it may be a Pariah—fellow-passenger. The railroad gnaws at the vitals of caste life and convictions.

Next to it come the schools. Millions of youth are trained in them daily to regard caste as an unworthy classification. All sections are taught in the same classes; they play in the same playground. In both places the lower often excels the higher caste boy. The seeds of equality and a common regard are thus constantly sown among the youth of all sections of the land. If it astonished the recent educational (Moseley) Commission which went from England to the United States to study the educational conditions there, when it saw the children of the President of the country studying side by side with the children of day-labourers, so must it seem wonderful, and wonderfully good, to a student of social conditions in India, to behold the child of a Pariah and that of a Brahman preparing, side by side, in the schoolroom, for the responsibilities and the blessings of life.

Many other agencies similar to the above are doing their benign levelling work.

The government, however, is the great leveller. In all its gifts of offices, in all posts of honour and influence, it distributes its blessings with strict impartiality, so far as caste is concerned. It wisely ignores all social distinctions and depends upon qualifications of culture and character when it seeks men to conduct its affairs. This is something unprecedented in the land of Manu. That the outcast should stand an equal chance with the high castes for positions of honour and emolument was unknown in this land of sharp distinctions.

And even more fundamental than this is the blessing of equal personal and political rights. In ancient India, such an idea was never entertained. Before British rule entered the land it was never dreamed that priest, prince, and beggar—and that Brahman and Pariah—had equal rights before the law. To-day they all recognize the justice of this and expect it.

Finally, the advent of Christianity, with power, into the land has brought a new death-knell to caste supremacy. We have seen that Indian Christian converts abandon all other customs and superstitions with greater facility than they do those of caste. Its roots have sunk deepest into the soil of their nature. But let it not be thought that they do not grow stronger against caste than they used to be. In the Indian Christian community there is developing a most encouraging movement toward the complete eradication of caste sentiment and observance within the Church itself. They are more sensible than ever before of the gross inconsistency of a man's taking upon himself the sacred name of Christ and at the same time submitting to the dominance of caste. Indian Christian anti-caste organizations are now at work seeking to drive out of the Church of God in India this Antichrist, and to cultivate the true spirit and amenities of Christian fellowship and fraternal communion.

The spirit of Christ is abroad in the land in regenerating and transforming power. His great message to the world was the common fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. And the Christian Church is growing increasingly true to the message of its Leader and Lord in this country. Men may not accept the Christian call to believe and to be baptized; but they cannot be blind and deaf to the work and call of the Spirit of Christ in these modern times of thrilling changes and opportunities.

It is this Christian ideal which is running athwart the most ancient and cherished institutions and customs of India, and has precipitated a conflict such as the land has never before known.

But the end is not yet, and caste will not be hurled down from its high pedestal in a day. It is a mighty institution which has its root in deepest sentiments and is sustained by cherished antiquity and by the strongest passions and prejudices. These will not succumb in a brief generation. And even when Christianity shall have triumphed and shall have driven out its rival faith from the land, as we have every reason to believe that it will, let it not be supposed that the Christianity of the East will have the social complexion of that of the West. In the earliest days of Christianity, we are told by the great Apostle to the Gentiles that there were "heresies" in the Church. These were social heresies or class divisions. It was later in the West that "heresy" became an error of belief. The Indian Church will also have heresies of life rather than of thought. The caste spirit will not vanish entirely from India, even when it becomes Christ's land; because while India is always indulgent and tolerant concerning beliefs, she is particular about class distinctions. And this, doubtless, will be the weakness of the Indian Church of the future. But she will have her strong points, also, and in these she will glory and through them glorify her exalted Lord.



CHAPTER VI

THE BHAGAVAD GITA—THE HINDU BIBLE

The Bhagavad Gita (translated "The Song of the Adorable One" and "The Divine Lay") is rightly regarded as the gem of all Hindu sacred literature. Hindus maintain (and few will question them) that in beauty of language and in elevation of thought it stands supreme among their Shastras, or sacred writings.

Educated Hindus proudly claim for it superiority to all sacred books of other faiths.

Of all ancient Brahmanical writings it is to-day the most cherished by the members of that faith. The ancient Rig Veda is at present only a book of antiquarian interest. The Upanishads, which are the fountainhead of Hindu thought and philosophy, are only the text-books and treasure-houses of philosophers and metaphysicians. But the Divine Lay is extolled and used alike by men of western culture, by conservative pandits, and by the masses as their highest book of doctrine and their richest treasury of devotion.

Even many Hindus who have come under the fascination of the Christ, carry with them upon their journeyings the New Testament in one pocket and the Bhagavad Gita in the other, as the common guide and inspiration of their quiet hours of meditation.