India, Its Life and Thought Part 4

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 n.o.ble qualities, revealing to the native Christians of the East the way of ascent to n.o.bility 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, cla.s.s 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 hara.s.s the soul beyond the grave or burning-ground. Herein does caste reveal its uniqueness, and from this does it pa.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sify 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 inst.i.tution; 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 fellows.h.i.+p with them as formerly on these lines. Thus, in all parts of the land, we have present-day ill.u.s.trations 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 succ.u.mb to the spirit of modern progress until all occupations shall be emanc.i.p.ated 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 Wess.e.x,--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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.s 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 s.e.x 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 circ.u.mstance 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 ma.s.sacre 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 h.e.l.l! 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 wors.h.i.+pped animal of India.

These convivial rules of caste are the greatest obstacles to social union and fellows.h.i.+p among the people of India. Westerners hardly realize the extent to which their communion is based upon the convivial habit. Many times a friends.h.i.+p which lasts a lifetime is formed by strangers sitting together at the common dinner table. And, in the same way, are the old friends.h.i.+ps 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 ill.u.s.tration. 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 a.s.signed 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 famis.h.i.+ng 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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sumes other forms in certain localities and under certain circ.u.mstances. 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 cla.s.s 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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, a.s.sociates, 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 G.o.d-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 relations.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 superst.i.tious as to submit to this, without, at least, a vigorous protest. And yet, what the culture of India seeks to-day is not the abolis.h.i.+ng 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 ill.u.s.tration 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"!