Before men travelled much, when the race were serfs and all their needs were supplied by those immediately about them, it was almost inevitable that the son should be put to his father's handicraft. He could be of service there at a much earlier age than if he had to go to a stranger. Besides, he had a chance from his infancy to become familiar with the work, and again, his father's reputation would serve a purpose. Therefore, successive generations remained bakers, smiths, carpenters, agriculturists, laborers, and eventually this developed special aptitudes under the law of inherited tendencies and each occupation became a caste.
Those who were in the highest employments being the best educated, they soon took measures to secure their privileges, and in the past ages nothing could rivet the chains so effectually as the sanction of the gods. Therefore, we need not be surprised that in good time a revelation came to this effect: "When man was divided how many did they make him? What was his mouth? What his arms? What his legs and feet? Brahma was his mouth, Kshatriya his arms, Vaisya his thighs, and Sudra his feet."
This gives four grand divisions for the race, and their duties toward the State and to each other are clearly defined by the part of the "Grand Man" or "God" from which they sprang. The following are a few of the principal items of the code which regulates these classes: To the first, or Brahman, belongs the religious department—he studies and expounds the sacred books, officiates at sacrifices, and is the recipient of the "presents" offered to the gods. These are modern clergymen. To the second, or Kshatriyas, are given the war department, force, and criminal justice. These are our human butchers, the military class, who are yet not ashamed of the "profession of arms." To the third, or Vaisyas, belong commerce and agriculture, and to the poor fourth estate, or Sudras, are left the mechanical arts and service to the other castes. The first three alone wear the sacred thread.
The Brahman is entitled by primogeniture to the whole universe. He may seize the goods of a Sudra, and whatever, beyond a certain amount, the latter acquires by labor or succession. If he slanders any of the other castes he pays only nominal fines graduated according to classes. Whatever crime he may commit his personal property cannot be injured, but whoever strikes a Brahman even with a blade of grass becomes an inferior quadruped for twenty-one generations. He is the physician for men's bodies as well as for their souls.
The one duty of the Sudra is to serve all the three superior castes "without depreciating their worth." In administering oaths, a Brahman swears only by his veracity—"his honor as a gentleman." A Kshatriya swears by his weapons, a Vaisya by his cattle, while the poor Sudra has to swear by all the most frightful penalties of perjury.
A curious survival of this same idea lingers in England, where the theory is that all men are equal before the law. Nevertheless members of the Royal Family are still released from the suspicion that they would not tell the truth unless they took an oath to do so. They are not required to take an oath before testifying in court. But imagine Herbert Spencer and the average Prince giving evidence; whose word would go the farther the wide world over? Yet the former would be insulted by being compelled to swear, while the latter would be allowed to testify upon the "honor of a prince," a very scanty foundation as princes have ever been and must ever be. History seems to teach us that it has been difficult to get this class to keep the oaths they did take. If I were an M. P., I would move that this be changed. The Brahman, notwithstanding his superior station, is nevertheless held to be much more liable to pollution than the lower orders, and is therefore required to bathe more frequently, and to be much more watchful against the tempter. Our Brahmans at home might take a lesson from this. A high authority has told us that
"Life can be lived well,
Even in a palace."
But Burns has the truth:
"And certes in fair Virtue's heavenly road
The cottage leaves the palace far behind."
I have given you the ideal of caste and its laws. Their administration is a far different matter. It is no longer possible for Brahmans to enforce strictly their claims. Caste crumbles away before the progress of the age. Your railway is a "sure destroyer" of all branches of inequality among men. The Press a still greater; but ages will pass ere we have among the two hundred and fifty millions of Hindostan anything approaching that degree of equality and intermarriage of classes which even England possesses, to say nothing of America. The marvel is that caste took such root throughout India apparently in opposition to the teachings of Gautama Buddha. But it is scarcely less strange than that the fighting Christian nations found their system upon the teachings of the Prince of Peace.