above described. The second and third orders do not now exist as separate classes; the very names are unknown as conveying the original meaning, and the people are all comprised in two classes,—the Brahmin and the Shoodur; at the same time that thousands are hardly acquainted with the latter name. The castes now existing are very numerous, and, with the subdivisions, would probably amount to some hundreds in the Bengal Presidency alone, almost every district containing some which are not known in the adjoining province. Many of these owe their separation from the original sect and specific denomination to mere accident; the latter is not unfrequently derived from the province or parish in which a man who has left his original name has settled. Some have arisen from ancestors who had forfeited their original caste and established a new one; others from the illegitimate offspring of parents of different castes. The origin of that immense class, the Rajpoots of Rajwara or Rajpootana, who claim a descent from the sun, is nowhere provided for in the theoretical classification by the Brahmins; they would be extremely indignant to be denominated Shoodras, yet they certainly do not belong to any of the three first orders. Col. Tod endeavours to trace their origin from Scythia.
Formerly, exclusion from caste was a much more serious affair than it is now. Still it is probable, that the evils which a person suffered from loss of caste have been greatly exaggerated; and that he who forms his ideas of the misery of an excommunicated outcast from the description given in Southey’s Curse of Kehama will have a very erroneous notion of the real state of the case. Caste is partly a religious and partly a civil distinction, and, in the present day, among the people in general, has degenerated to little more than this, that if a man do certain things he is excluded from society until he give a feast to those of his own tribe, which procures his restoration. According to the shasters (see Ward, Vol. I., page 149):—“The offences by which caste is lost, are, the eating with persons of inferior caste; cohabiting with women of low caste; eating flesh[1], or drinking spirits; partaking of that
- ↑ Yet these same shasters prescribe various kinds of fleeh to be sacrificed as offerings to the manes of ancestors. It is also considered allowable for Hindus to eat what has been offered to an idol, flesh included.
