The one great hope is that some time in the dim future, by keeping all the rules of the game in one life after another, the spirit may be set free from birth and death, and may drop out of the endless game. It may not seem at first such a very terrible thing to go on living one life after another, but the thought of it has become an awful thing to those who believe in it.
Life to them is very hard. Terrible famines come, and bring hunger and plague and death. And men and women lay all that is left to them of food and of money before the gods, and pray them to send rain. Even when there is no famine in the land the daily observances of custom and the weary round of toil depress the spirits of men, so that the more they think of anything beyond the work of the day, the more they long to give up living altogether. A South Indian folksong says:—
“How many births are past, I cannot tell,
How many yet to come no man can say,
But this alone I know, and know full well.
That pain and grief embitter all the way.”
Quoted by C. A. Mason in “Lux Christi.”
CHAPTER IV
THE STORY OF CASTE
Far back in the early days four kinds of people sprang from Brahma the creator, to form the castes of India. The first, the Brahman caste, sprang from his mouth, to rule all the others. The second sprang from his arms to be the warriors of the land. The third sprang from his loins to be the business men and the land-owners, and from his feet came the fourth to serve the others.
The Brahmans are still the powerful caste. From amongst them priests are taken, and they rule all others. But the other three castes have been broken up into many smaller divisions, till one can scarcely trace the lines that mark the difference between the four that were spoken of long ago. And besides all the castes there are thousands of those who are outside. They are called pariahs, and all the caste men look down on them and scorn them.