PART IV.
Caste.
Caste has been fitly called the cement that binds the great structure of Hindu institutions. Not only does it separate each class from all others, but compacts the whole, so as to form of dissimilar and uncongenial units an almost impregnable body. Its influence cannot be overlooked by any who long for the regeneration of India.
You are met by caste when you first put your foot upon the shores of Hindustan, and you meet it at every step of your progress and in every effort to Christianize the people. In the city and in the village, in the highway and in the byway, in the school and in the church, with the high and the low, the child and the gray-headed man, the influence of caste must be met and overcome. It constitutes one of the chief obstacles to the spread of Christianity among the Hindus. To know the work to be done among the one hundred millions of men who are held in its bonds, we must know something of the nature and effects of this institution.
Caste is a Portuguese term adopted by the English as the representative of the native word Jathi—the term applied to the distinction of classes or tribes among the Hindus. They apply the same term to foreign nations, calling the English a Jathi, and the French another Jathi, or caste. Properly, however, you can only speak of four castes. These four were ordained of God, and all outside of these are casteless or no-caste. According to the received holy books of the Hindus, the four divinely instituted castes are, the Brahmin, the Kschatrya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra.
The Brahmins are said to have sprung from the head of the creator Brahma. Being thus born from his noblest part, they are, by birth, pre-eminent in dignity and holiness. They are the priests and lawgivers of the nation.
The Kschatryas sprang from the shoulders of Brahma, and fill the kingly and military offices.
The Vaisyas sprang from the body of the god. It is their duty as merchants and traders to care for the wants of the state.
The Sudras sprang from his feet. They are therefore subordinate to all, and must, by mechanical and servile labours, contribute to the happiness of the high-born, especially to that of the Brahmins.
Such is the divine arrangement of castes, according to the holy books of the Hindus; but time has greatly changed both the number of castes and the rules by which they are governed. The Kschatrya or military caste, and the Vaisya or mercantile caste, have become almost extinct, leaving the Brahmins and Sudras as the two great divisions. These two have again been subdivided into many tribes and castes, so that it is commonly said that there are eighteen chief, and one hundred and eight minor castes. There is a large body of outcasts belonging to neither of the four original castes, and called Pariahs; though despised by the others, they have among themselves distinctions of dignity which they hold as tenaciously as do the higher orders theirs.
The number of castes will not excite wonder, when it is remembered that almost every employment or profession forms a separate caste. The members of these subdivisions, though belonging to the same great caste, will not intermarry, nor will they eat, drink, or associate with each other. Thus, physicians form a separate caste, the druggists another, the shepherds another, and so on with herdsmen, barbers, writers, farmers, carpenters, goldsmiths, masons, blacksmiths, and many other trades. The blacksmith will not marry into the family of the weaver, nor will he eat or drink with him; nor will the carpenter with the shepherd, nor the accountant with the mason. Each profession is handed down from father to son. Before his birth, the calling of the man is decided and his associations fixed. Society is thus made up, not of men, but of castes; and man sympathizes not with his fellow-man, but with his caste. Each caste, wrapped up within the narrow limits of its own little circle, knows no hospitality or duty beyond this well-defined boundary. No success, no genius, no virtue can lift him out of the caste in which he was born; and no crime, except a breach of caste, can degrade him from it. This the Hindu believes to be the ordinance and will of God. His place in society was fixed at the creation.
What, it will be asked, are the practical workings of this system. To this two answers have been given. The Abbé Dubois,[1] a French Roman Catholic missionary, says—“I consider the institution of castes among the Hindu nations as the happiest effort of their legislation; and I am well convinced that if the people of India never sank into a state of barbarism, and if when almost all Europe was plunged in that dreary gulf, India kept up her head, preserved and extended the sciences, the arts, and civilization, it is wholly to the distinction of castes that she is indebted for that high celebrity.” He argues that by the continuation of the same profession in certain castes from father to son, a knowledge of the useful arts is maintained; that by caste-rules, habits of decency are preserved; and by caste-discipline, immorality is restrained. While we may admit that caste is not utterly useless in these respects, we wonder that the Abbé should forget that all improvement in the arts is repressed, the cravings of genius for higher and nobler callings are crushed, and natural tastes disregarded. If some castes keep up certain rules of decency, at the same time indecent and degrading practices are perpetuated in others. Thus, for instance, while some castes dress with entire decency, in others women are forbidden to wear any clothing above the waist. The want of refinement in the gross, ignorant Pariahs, which excites the horror and disgust of this ecclesiastic, should rather move him to pity, for the inflexible rules of caste condemn him for life to the circle and lot in which he was born. If the caste-discipline is sometimes beneficial, it is more often unjust and cruel; and hospitality within the caste becomes mere clanship, while the heart is hardened into a stone-like indifference to the miseries of the members of other castes.
It might be supposed that high-caste men would be more tenacious of the distinction than those of low caste; but this is not the case. Even the outcast Pariahs of the villages, who feed on carrion, find some upon whom they may look down, and the lowest Sudra would refuse to take a cup of tea from the hands of any king in Europe; it would defile him! Our gardener's sick wife would not eat any delicacy prepared by our cook, because he was a Pariah, though a most respectable man, with higher wages than her husband. Once, when examining a school on our verandah, one of the boys, a poor little fellow with only a dirty strip of cloth to wrap about his middle, fainted. I got some water and sprinkled it on him. At this the scholars and teachers were quite horrified, and ran to stop me, lest his caste should be spoiled by water from the hand of a casteless person like myself.
Caste is quite independent of station. A high-caste pauper is the superior of a low-caste king. As Europeans have no caste, to eat with them would degrade a Hindu of any caste. For a man to receive a cup of tea from the hand of a missionary, is an evidence of his willingness to renounce caste, and is sometimes made a test of sincerity with religious inquirers. During a famine in Madura, even starving women refused food from the table of the missionary. When in Calcutta, a little boy in our family went into the room in which a servant was eating, and happened to lay his hand upon him. The man immediately rose and threw his dinner into the street.
A volume might be filled with illustrations of the folly and cruelty of this system; but its workings will be seen in the causes and method of expulsion from caste. When the rules of caste have been broken, the crime is not always followed by discipline. If the offender is wealthy, powerful, or highly connected, the trespass is often winked at. But if the offender is poor, or has enemies who desire his downfall, the case is published abroad, and he is cited to appear before the guru (the religious teacher and head of the caste) and the chief men. If the case is made out against him, he is punished, according to the magnitude of the offence, by fines, blows, or branding with a hot iron, or, if it be a trifling fault, by a feast to the caste. He is then made to humble himself with prostrations to the earth before the guru, and purified by drinking a mixture called pancha-karyam, (the five products of the cow,) which has the power of cleansing from sin and stain.
Sometimes, however, owing to the bitterness of enemies or the nature of the offence, it cannot be thus expiated. In such cases, the offender is driven from his family and society—his parents, his wife, and his children refuse to eat with him or to give him a drop of water, his friendship is denied, and his society shunned by all. He does not fall to a lower caste, but sinks at once to the level of the Pariah. As the elephant cannot become a dog, or a lion a mouse, so the Brahmin or Kschatrya does not become a Sudra; he ceases to be a Brahmin or a Kschatrya, and becomes a casteless man, a vagabond upon the face of the earth.
It does not matter whether the offence was voluntary or involuntary; it is not the sin, but the defilement, that constitutes the crime. In Bengal, a European, out of spite, seized a Brahmin and forced spirits and meat into his mouth. He became an outcast. At the end of three years, efforts were made by his friends at the expense of forty thousand dollars to have his caste restored, but in vain. Another effort was made, however, and by expending some one hundred thousand dollars, his fellows were induced to consent to his restoration to his former rights and privileges. During the reign of Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, an attempt was made by that cruel prince to force the Hindus to adopt the Mohammedan religion. A number of them were forced to eat beef as an evidence of their having forsaken Hinduism. After his overthrow by the English, these persons petitioned for a restoration to caste, but in vain. No penances could atone for the worse than cannibal sacrilege of eating the flesh of the sacred cow—an animal so holy in their eyes, that to kill one is a crime as heinous as the murder of a man. Had they committed theft, adultery, fraud, or perjury, it would have been a small matter, but the stain of beef-eating could neither be forgiven nor washed away.
A case mentioned by the Abbé Dubois will illustrate the injustice of many of the decisions of a caste among people so low in morality as the Hindus. Eleven Brahmins, passing through a country desolated by war, arrived exhausted by hunger and fatigue at a village. To their surprise and disappointment, they found it deserted. Rice, they had with them, but no vessel in which to boil it. Looking around, they could find nothing but the pots in the house of the village washerman; for Brahmins even to touch these would be a defilement almost ineffaceable. But being pressed by hunger, they bound one another to secresy by an oath, and having washed one of the pots a hundred times, they boiled their rice in it. One of them alone refused to partake of the repast, and on reaching home he accused the other ten before the chief Brahmin of the town. The rumour quickly spread; the delinquents were summoned and compelled to appear. Having learned the difficulty in which they were likely to be involved, they were prepared for the charge; and, according to previous agreement, each protested that the accuser only was guilty of the crime which he laid at their door. Which side was to be believed? Was the testimony of one man to be taken against that of ten? The result was, that the ten Brahmins were declared innocent, and the accuser, being found guilty, was expelled with ignominy from the caste. Though his innocence could scarcely be doubted, the judges were offended by his disclosure, and could more conveniently sacrifice him than the ten truly guilty and foresworn men.
At the present day the rules of caste as laid down in the sacred books cannot be enforced. Having lived for centuries under a foreign yoke, formerly that of the Mohammedans, now that of the English, they find it impossible to follow the laws of the Shasters. Sometimes from necessity, sometimes from the love of office and of gain, they must or will transgress the rules of caste. While offences are profitable, and offenders both many and strong, these breaches of the law will be winked at. In trade, public offices, schools, and the army, you will find men of all castes daily violating the rules of the Shasters.
But when a Hindu becomes a Christian, and, as a mark of Christian fellowship and brotherhood, eats or drinks with his spiritual guide, caste becomes an instrument to snatch from him his wife and children, to cut him off from every tender tie, and to make him (as far as civil law permits) an outcast and a homeless wanderer in the land of his fathers. It is a cause of devout thankfulness that even this strong chain with which Satan has bound the idolaters of Hindustan has been broken by the power of the Spirit of God, and that converted Hindus have had grace to brave the scorn and persecuting rage of their countrymen—that they have forsaken all to follow Christ. In the American mission at Madras, all the members of the churches, male and female, assemble yearly around one table, and partake, together with their teachers, of a cheerful repast. This is their “love-feast.” Soon may these unchristian barriers between man and man be broken down, and love unite in the bonds of Christian affection the millions of redeemed Hindustan!
- ↑ Author of a valuable work on the manners and customs of the Hindus.