In India one caste is devoted to spiritual direction—the Brahmin, which reads and interprets the Vedas and gives counsel to the rulers of the state. Next is the Kshatrya, or warrior caste, that manage the secular or political government, with the counsel and advice of the Brahmins. Then the food, clothing, and shelter providers, who devote themselves to agriculture and the arts and trades of commerce, form a third caste, the Vaisyas; and lastly is the Sudra caste, which consists of day-laborers, or servants. The caste is determined by birth, not by the free choice of the individual, but by an accident of nature. For the East Indian the division of labor is the great divine fact of life. Brahma, the highest god, created the caste of Brahmins from his head, the warriors from his arms, the trades peoples from his loins, and the servants from his feet. Manu says that the first part of the name of a Brahmin ought to express sanctity; of a warrior power; of a merchant wealth; of a laborer contempt. The second part of the Brahmin’s name should express blessing; of a warrior protection; of a merchant means of subsistence; of a Sudra menial servitude.
Caste being of divine origin and imposed upon man, how shall it be preserved and transmitted? The answer is a perpetual education in the duties of one’s caste and in the abnegation of all that looks toward the recognition of identity of human nature and the equality of all in the substance of manhood. The greatest possible care is taken not to educate children beyond the position into which they are born and which has been occupied by their ancestors (if they belong to one of the regular castes). By marriage other castes are produced. The Hindoo must have for his first wife one of his own caste, and then he may take one more from each caste below him. Thus the Brahmin may have four wives, three being from the lower castes; the warrior may have three wives and the merchant two, while the Sudra can have only one. The children of the wives from the lower castes are classified according to a scheme invented by one of the kings, and there are more than thirty castes in all. The chandalas have for their vocation the removal of corpses, the execution of criminals, and such impure offices. General duties, common to all castes, are very few.
What is a virtue in one caste may be a sin in another. The duties are prescribed with such minuteness that a very complex system arises for each person, which must be obeyed in its smallest particular, under penalty of excommunication from one’s caste. The observances and formalities are more numerous with the higher castes. Hence even for the Brahmin, who is as a god to the other castes there is such a weight of formalities and observances that life is not worth living for him. He must perform tedious ceremonies of purification to remove the effect of the most casual accidents. Should he walk abroad and meet one of a lower caste, he must turn back and purify himself. If he should step over a rope to which a calf is tied, he must purify himself. If he should happen to look up and see the sun when setting, or at any time see it reflected in the water, he must purify himself. If he should chance to go out and get caught in a shower, he must purify himself; and so, too, if he happens to step on the wrong foot when he rises from bed. He must not look at his wife when she sneezes or gapes or eats. He must not step on a cotton seed, on a piece of broken crockery, or on ashes. When out in the sun he must look northward; when under the stars, southward; only when under a tree or a roof he may look in any direction. If he should fail to purify himself he will be excommunicated from his caste, and can be restored only by a painful ceremony.
The first, second, and third castes are of the twice-born, and they may hear the Vedas, but the Sudras must not read, nor hear read, those holy books. Burning hot oil poured into his ears was the penalty for breaking this law. If the Sudra were to speak evil of a Brahmin or warrior or merchant, the code of Manu decrees that a red-hot iron bar shall be thrust into his mouth.
There is more respect shown toward cows than toward the lowest caste of human beings. In fact, the Hindoo will not tread upon ants nor kill brute animals, but founds hospitals for sick or aged cows and monkeys, while he is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of a man from a lower caste.
The women, even of the highest caste, are treated like lower castes in spiritual things,—no woman is allowed to read the Vedas or to become learned. The children of whatever caste, too, may be sacrificed to the deities by their parents. A mother may throw her child, especially if it be a girl, into the Ganges, or any sacred river. The women are excluded from education, and are given in marriage in their seventh or eighth year. A woman who is discovered to possess a knowledge of reading and writing draws down upon her head the most severe condemnation. There is one exception to this in the dancing girls, and the bayaderes, who are purchased from poor parents for service at the temples. These are taught by the priests reading and writing, music, dancing, and singing, as well as the female arts of coquetry. They are dedicated to the gods, and do not learn housework.
Although the warrior caste and merchant caste may read the Vedas, they must do it under the supervision of the Brahmins.
Elementary instruction to the regenerated, or twice born, includes reading, writing, and arithmetic. The children learn to form letters on the sand first, and afterward on palm leaves with an iron pencil; at last with ink on plantain leaves. The monitorial system is practiced—one child hearing the other recite his lesson and assisting him to learn it. The Brahmin’s children are in all cases treated with partiality.
The chief branch of study in school is, of course, the Vedas, or holy books. This exercise must be approached with due ceremony—of girding with bands, purification, consecrated fires, and solemn ceremonies performed morning, noon, and night. The pupil must seize his teacher’s feet before he begins, and then read with clasped hands, and at the close of his reading again seize his master’s feet. This ceremony of greeting his teacher he performs by crossing his hands and taking his master’s right foot in his right hand and the left foot in his left hand.
Pupils generally reside with their teachers—in a sort of boarding-school—each teacher having the care of ten or twelve pupils. A very strict surveillance is kept up.