23
OF THE DIFFERENT CASTE OF HINDOOS.
The laws for preserving the different orders for ever distinct, enjoins, that higher orders shall not have the least communion with the tribe or tribes below them, in marriage, in eating, or in any degree of familiar friendship, on pain of degradation, and loss of all earthly connections.
The penalty connected with the loss of caste is the loss of the whole world. The offender is not only rejected by father, mother, brother, or sister, and all that are dear to him, but by all his countrymen. He in vain looks through this inhospitable world; not a hut will open its door to him, and henceforth he can no more see the face of father, mother, brother, or, sister, or even of his wife or children. He must tear from his heart every tender tie and recollection, and must hide his head amongst the most degraded outcasts, without the least hope of ever again seeing the faces of those who gave him birth. His own father and mother will run away at his presence, as from one infected by some deadly distemper. Many an individual involved in these circumstances, by his own trespasses, or those of his wife, or some near relative, has abandoned the world, and become a religious mendicant, or has fled to Benares as a place of refuge—or has put an end to his existence. Others have offered a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, a lack of rupees, to be restored to caste, without success. Here then is a prison, far stronger than any which the civil tyrannies of the world have ever erected ; a prison which immures many millions of innocent beings.
