And, first of all, as to the origin of caste—a point which seems to have been thought of no little importance by our caste-condemning missionaries. I confess that I, for my part, do not attach much importance to this question of the origin of caste, and think it of far more importance to ascertain its present bearing and effect. But, as many have raised the question, and asserted that caste had an idolatrous origin, and was the invention of an idolatrous priesthood, it may be worth while to gather together such facts as we can lay our hands on regarding this somewhat obscure subject. And it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to clear away the rubbish which has been piled upon it in common with most Indian institutions—to ask what is evidence, and what is not. Our missionaries have asserted that caste can be clearly traced to an idolatrous origin, and that the institution is entirely unaccountable on any other supposition, and they pointed to the Code of Manu in proof of that assertion. But, on referring to Mrs. Manning's valuable work on "Ancient and Mediæval India," we can find no evidence that caste originated in any special way whatever. And we are told, on the authority of Mr. Muir, that the sacred books of the Hindoos contain no uniform or consistent account of the origin of caste, and that the freest scope is given by the individual writers to fanciful and arbitrary conjecture. The story that the castes issued from the mouth, arms, thighs, and feet of Brahma was simply an allegory, which, in the course of time, hardened into a literal statement of fact. The Brahmins, of course, came out of the mouth of Brahma; and, considering that they were the authors and compilers of all the principal books relating to castes and customs, it would have been extremely odd if they had not exalted their own order, and indulged in a tone of Oriental exaggeration which was eminently calculated to deceive, not perhaps, their successors, but the Englishmen who went to India. But the most curious thing is, that it never seems to have occurred to our missionaries to suspect that what they took as evidence of facts, and of a state of things really existing, was, in reality, only evidence of what an order or set of people could write, with the view of exalting themselves, and depressing the rest of the society amongst which they lived. The Brahmins chose to assert that the castes were of divine origin. They wrote that down and handed it on. We came to India, and finding these statements ready to hand, have simply swallowed them down, and added them to the number of illusions existing as regards India. But the facts really are, that castes and orders of men sprang up, we don't exactly know how. Brahmin writers described the castes, or at least part of them, and, in the course of time, the writings were said to have caused the castes, instead of the castes having caused the writings.
But whatever may be the facts as regards caste, we know that caste can exist without idolatry, and idolatry without caste; and that though the Brahmins, with their usual desire to incorporate everything in life with religion, gathered caste into their garners, and endeavoured to increase and extend it, still there is fair evidence for asserting that these two institutions have no necessary connection, and that, as it was perfectly possible to wind them up together, so it is perfectly possible to unwind them and produce again an entire separation. In a word, it is perfectly possible for a man to retain caste, not as believing it to be part of his native idolatrous religion, but as believing it to be (what it really was till the Brahmins seized hold of it and attached it to their faith) a civil institution which had sprung up in remote times, and had been inherited by him, just as rank and station are inherited in this country.[[40]] And that caste can exist without religion, and alongside of a religion as opposite to Brahminism as Christianity is, we have the most indisputable evidence supplied by the late Sir Emerson Tennent, in his "History of Christianity in Ceylon."
"Caste," he wrote, "as it exists at the present day amongst the Buddhists of Ceylon, is purely a social distinction, and entirely disconnected with any sanction or pretensions derivable from their system of religion. Nor is evidence wanting that, even at a comparatively modern period, such was equally its aspect amongst the natives throughout the continent of India, by whom caste was held not as a sacred, but as a secular discrimination of ranks. The earliest notice of India by the Greek historians and geographers enumerates the division of the people into Brahmins, Kistrayas, Vaisyas, and Sûdras; but this was a classification which applied equally to the followers of Buddha" (who preached that, in the sight of God, all men were equal) "and of Brahma, nor were the members of either section held ineligible for the offices of the priesthood." And, in the note below, the reader will find additional evidence which will show him that caste in Ceylon, just as it originally was in India, can and does exist merely as a division of ranks, and that it need not at all be necessarily connected with any idolatrous rites or worship.[[41]]
Having thus shown how caste did not originate, it may, perhaps, not be altogether superfluous if I hazard a few remarks as to the way in which it did probably originate.
The common idea of caste is that it is simply a combination of troublesome and fanciful restrictions, imposed upon the various peoples of India by those of the upper classes who desired to keep themselves above the jostling of the crowd. But this institution (if that be a correct term for it) arose naturally and regularly out of the circumstances of the times, and where these circumstances no longer exist, it will as naturally disappear; and that the last must happen we have seen from, the fact that altered circumstances have already caused the commencement of its removal amongst the people of the towns. But the general circumstances which gave birth to caste require a few words of explanation, and the following solution seems not an unnatural one.
We know, as a certain fact, that peoples to whom we have given the names of Dravidians and Aryans entered India from the north and north-west; that they increased and multiplied, overspread the whole of India, and reduced the aborigines to serfdom. We also know that these tribes from the north, who were, comparatively speaking, fair, very naturally regarded the black, ugly, carrion-eating aborigines with disgust. Hence, naturally, must have arisen the opinions as regards Pariahs which all the superior castes hold to this day. Even to have food touched by people of such abominable habits must have been repulsive, and therefore the separation into men of caste and men of no caste, or, in other words, into browns and blacks (for the word for caste means colour), followed as a matter of course. Caste, then, seems naturally to have arisen from the idea that to associate in any way with people of bad habits and grovelling ideas is an intolerable degradation. The superior races, therefore must have considered it a matter of importance to retreat as far as possible from the habits of the aborigines; and when we take into consideration the influence of religion, the natural ambition of the priestly classes, the splitting up into sects, and the fondness of the Hindoo mind for subtle distinctions, the rest easily follows. But, though numerous castes arose amongst the invaders, the main line of demarcation, is still the original one of race—between the races of the north and the aborigines whom they found in possession of India. The base, then, of caste, we may rest assured, was simply the result of a people, or rather of peoples, wishing to keep themselves uncontaminated when coming in contact with a debased population.
This was exactly the case with the Jews. They were simply a very strongly guarded caste, with a number of regulations as to what they were and were not to eat, and with rules which prohibited them intermarrying or associating with peoples with whom they came in contact. Many of those rules may seem to us ridiculous and fanciful, but they were calculated to prevent the Jews from any chance of adopting the manners and customs of the peoples around them; and the Indians, having had similar views, naturally adopted similar means. Such then is a brief generalization of the causes which led to caste laws, which were, no doubt, carried in some instances to a ridiculous length, but which were founded in common sense, and were admirably adapted to carry into effect the opinions of the superior races.
We have now, in the second place, to consider caste with reference to the approach of native converts to the Lord's table, the sitting apart of the various castes in church, and the effects of caste as regards what is called social intercourse.
The whole difficulty of the caste question, as regards the Sacrament, lies in this, namely, that a high-caste vegetarian objects to drink wine at the same time and after a low-caste meat-eater. And here I find a great difficulty in finding words or illustrations that will at all convey the feelings of a high-caste vegetarian at the very idea of drinking after a low-caste carrion-eater. If from the lowest, filthiest, and most poisonous dens in London, you were to take a man, reeking with beer and tobacco, and with his clothes crawling with vermin, and presenting, in short, every appearance of foulness, dirt, and disease; if you were to take that man and place him between two ladies at the administration of the Holy Communion, I do not say that they would there and then refuse the Sacrament on these terms, but I think we may be pretty sure that, from sanitary motives, if from no others, they would in future take the Sacrament in a place where they would not be liable to such contact. Their feelings and senses would be shocked by such contact as I have imagined, but their sensations would merely bear the same proportion to the sensations of a high-caste vegetarian Hindoo who had to drink after a Pariah that a trifling cause of disgust would bear to the most intolerable and lasting degradation. Now, to people in this country, this may seem an extraordinary thing; but they will think it less extraordinary when I tell them that, if I could not take the Sacrament unless amongst Pariahs, I would never take it again, unless perhaps, I were to put myself bodily into one of Professor Tyndall's cotton-gauze air-cleansers, and drink the sacramental wine after it had been boiled at a temperature of 212 degrees, and passed through a filter. And when I talk of the lowest castes as carrion-eaters, I must tell the reader that I am not in the slightest degree guilty of exaggeration, and that they are carrion-eaters in exactly the same sense that vultures are carrion-eaters. In fact, these men never get any meat unless that of animals that have died of disease; and as in these climates decomposition is extremely rapid, the reader can imagine the result of coming in contact with a man who has, perhaps, a few hours before been eating a mass of diseased and half decomposed meat. And in case the reader should not be able to imagine what the result is, I may mention the following circumstance. A few days after I had killed a bison I had occasion to point out some pieces of sawn wood which I wished to be removed from the jungle to my house, and I accordingly took with me a native overseer, and two coolies to carry the timber. When I was pointing out the pieces to them, I smelt a strong smell of putrid meat, which seemed to fill the air so entirely that I at once concluded that a tiger must have killed some animal and left the carcase near the spot. My overseer and myself looked about everywhere, but at last happening to pass the coolies, I at once perceived that the smell arose from their breath, and on questioning them, I found that before coming to work they had been feasting on decayed bison flesh. In fact, after killing a bison, we could never go near our coolies for some days afterwards. But to see a party of these men sitting like vultures around the carcase of some animal that has just died of some abominable disease is quite enough to inspire even an unprejudiced European meat-eater-with the most wholesome horror; and the reader need not, I think, be surprised at the feelings of disgust which these men's habits inspire amongst the respectable classes of the community. But independently of all feelings of disgust, there are sanitary considerations which are of infinitely more importance, for it so happens that, at a time when the weather is hottest and the season most unhealthy, a larger number of animals die; and I have very little doubt that this eating of rotten meat causes amongst the Pariahs a large quantity of disease, and especially of cholera, which they would not fail to disseminate with fatal certainty amongst all classes, were the native Christians compelled to take the Sacrament indiscriminately. And, in my own experience, I have observed that cholera has passed through districts, that the upper classes have been free from it, but that amongst the lower the victims were many. And the same sanitary reasons that apply to the Sacrament apply equally well to the mixing of castes indiscriminately in the churches; for it might so happen, as it frequently does, that fever and cholera may be prevalent amongst the lower castes, while the higher may be at that time comparatively free from such diseases. So that, when we take all these points into consideration, we shall find that the German missionaries were perfectly right in placing the men of the higher caste on one side of the church, and those of the lower on the other, and that they were equally right in allowing the higher castes to approach the Sacrament at a different time from the lower. I may here remark that I once mentioned this taking of the Sacrament in a sort of order of precedence to a clergyman in a country parish, when he told me that exactly the same sort of thing occurred in his parish, and that the lord of the manor invariably took the Sacrament first, and, if I recollect rightly, the parish clerk last; and a special instance of this in a Scotch parish was mentioned to me not long ago.
The same sanitary considerations will also naturally be of value when we come to consider that indiscriminate social intercourse which the missionaries so much insist upon as one of the necessary signs of grace. I do not, of course, say that it is not advisable, and that it would not be desirable to see a little more intercourse between class and class than exists at the present. But between all the better classes there is a much greater degree of intercourse than our missionaries would have us believe; and it is not true that one caste will eat only the food prepared by a person of his own caste. I cannot, of course, say what may be the case as regards other parts of India; but, as regards my own district, each caste will eat of the food prepared by any of the castes higher, or at least purer, than its own. For instance, a Gouda, who will not allow that the Lingayet caste is better than his own, will eat of food prepared by a Lingayet, while a Lingayet will not eat of food prepared by a Gouda. And the explanation of this is, that the Lingayet is a vegetarian, and meat might have been boiled in the Gouda's pots, while there would be nothing to offend the Gouda customs in the pots of a vegetarian host. But in these matters I entirely agree with the good Bishop Heber, who said that we had no right to interfere in their private life, or to meddle in any way with their social customs, as long as there was no idolatry in them.