The code of Manu, with all its "unparalleled arrogance" toward the Sudra, was founded rather upon what a high-bred Brahman ought to be than with any deliberate intent to degrade the Sudra. But with its practice came that inevitable deterioration to the moral character of the Brahmans themselves, who forgot that the humblest man has a right to the same sanctity of life and character as the highest. The lower the Brahman sank in his spiritual and moral nature, the more he tried to hedge himself about with artificial claims to the reverence of the peoples around him, until finally the code of Manu swelled into minute details. Reaching the unborn child of Aryan parents, it directed its nursing in the cradle, it shaped the training of the youth, and regulated the actions of his perfect manhood as son, husband, and father. Food, raiment, exercise, religious and social duties, must be brought into subjection to its sovereign voice, and in the course of time it was inseparably interwoven with every domestic usage, every personal and social habit. From the cradle to the grave it undertakes to regulate and control every desire, every inclination, every movement, of the inner and outer man. Such is the code of Manu.
In spite of these laws, however, there flourished Sudra kings and Sudra communities, influenced though not absorbed by the Aryan population. Sudra kings were invited to the court of the great Yudishthira[42] and treated with marked respect and courtesy; indeed, this word "Kiriya" or "Kritya" (courtesy) was held to be the distinguishing mark of a high-bred Brahman. The Sudras in their turn soon caught the infection of caste feeling, and were not slow in adopting the same distinctions among themselves.
From being at first a sign of superiority of race, it gradually took form and extended to every branch and profession. Priest, teacher, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, robber, murderer, and beggar, was each one fixed immovably and for ever in his place and grade, and no earthly power could draw him into any other. Every one piqued himself on his particular caste; each man confined himself sternly to his own perfect circle. There was hope for every man who belonged to a caste, so that even those fallen from caste bound themselves together in a brotherhood and called themselves Pariahs, "outcasts," which in time became a large and distinct caste. "Even in the lowest depths they found a lower still."
So monstrous and deteriorating was this system that in the course of time, losing sight of its original purpose, it separated the Aryans themselves, for whose especial preservation and union it was designed, by distinctions and restrictions almost as galling as those it had formerly imposed only on the Sudras.
Nevertheless, it had its noble features, and did good work for a time. The high advancement to which the Indo-European art, literature, painting, music, and architecture attained was due to the leadership of the Brahman civilization. It was an aristocracy to rule and educate the masses, which everywhere exhibited a uniform inferiority. But even with all the help of caste and the inflexible code of Manu to preserve them on every side, the proud white-faced Aryans did not long escape the deteriorating influences both of the climate in which they had settled and the debasing usages of the non-Aryan populations around them.
The most degrading practice that sprang up in time on Indian soil was asceticism. The amount and the terrible nature of this self-imposed penance practised by the Hindoos exceed anything known in the world, and are almost inconceivable to any ordinary European, whose first instinct is self-preservation. Ablutions and commands of personal cleanliness, which formed a part of the code of Manu, have increased in number, and also the penalties attached to their violation to such a degree that now-a-days a Brahman or Hindoo is defiled by the most trifling accident of place or touch. To eat with the left hand, to sneeze when he is praying, to gape in the presence of the sacrificial fire, to touch one of a low caste, are all pollutions. In fact, the very shadow of an Englishman or a Sudra falling on his cooking-pot renders it obligatory on him to bury his meal in the earth and to throw away his pot if earthen; if not, it must undergo seven purifications before it is in a sufficiently holy condition to boil the rice sacred to the Brahman. The simple contact with pig's fat in the cartridges made the sepoys, who believed they were thus lost to caste and to heaven, willing and terrible tools in the hands of the arch-enemy of British power in the East. Nana Sahib, or, more properly speaking, Dundoo Punt, who, in order to revenge a private wrong—the lapse to the East Indian Company, on the death of his uncle and royal father by adoption, of a large territory bequeathed to him—worked upon the caste-prejudices of the sepoys until he maddened them into committing the most fiendish acts ever recorded in Indian history. But the original code does not so regard the eating of pork. If a Brahman purposely eat pork he shall be degraded, but if he has partaken of it involuntarily or through another's connivance, a penance and purification are sufficient for full atonement.
Thus, injunctions originally designed as rules of pure living and high-breeding, cleanliness, abstinence, kindliness, charity, and courtesy, have been so multiplied and distorted that it is now difficult even for the most precise and devout Brahman to carry them all faithfully into practice. And if Christian teachers and reformers were seriously minded to overthrow this vast system of caste in India, they could successfully do so by quoting the Vèdas and the code of Manu, which prescribe no such arbitrary rules of life as now exist in India. It is our want of knowledge, and that of most of the modern Brahmans, which still holds them in their old fetters, rendering the efforts to free them of little avail, for we know not how nor where to begin the attack on such a strong fortress as caste and custom are to these blind followers of law and order.
Centuries after the consolidation of the Brahman power and system of caste there arose a strong-souled Aryan, a prince By birth, a republican at heart, and a reformer by nature, called Sakya Suddarthà, who no sooner became of age than he suddenly began to deny the inspiration of the Vèdas, the divine right of Brahmans to the priesthood, and the obligations of caste. He offered equality of birthright and of spiritual office alike to all men and women. Sudra, Pariah, Khandala, bond or free, were of one and the same great family. He went about declaring all men brothers. This was the strong point of Buddhism. The new religion spread at once. It ravished the hearts and kindled the imaginations of many Aryans, but chiefly the non-Aryan nations. Everywhere it was received with enthusiasm. Brahmanism and caste received their first great shock, from which they have never wholly recovered.
