For the first instance, I cannot select, perhaps, a better example than that afforded by the Rev. G. U. Pope, in the notes he has made when editing a second edition of the valuable work of the Abbé Dubois. And, in alluding to these footnotes, it is impossible to repress some feeling of annoyance that the valuable work of the Abbé should, in an evil hour, have fallen into the hands of a writer who has thought fit often, in a few brief and contemptuous words, summarily to dismiss and overrule those conclusions which were the result of a life spent on more intimate terms with natives than any I have ever been able to hear of. And Mr. Pope's statements are the more calculated to impose on the general reader, as he speaks of having had "more than twenty years of a somewhat intimate intercourse with the Hindoos;" the fact being that he spent the greater part (in fact, all but a few years, as far as I have been able to ascertain) as head of the Grammar School on the Nilgiri Hills, where he had no more opportunity of having any intercourse with natives than a Hindoo would have of gaining experience of the natives of England, were he to take up his residence on the Grampians, and interchange a few words occasionally with the shepherds of those mountains. But as to what caste has done. "Caste," says Mr. Pope, "has prevented the Hindoos from availing themselves of the opportunities afforded them of acquiring the sciences, arts, and civilization of nations with whom they have come in contact." Caste, "the great petrifier," we are again told, is the real cause of the stagnation that everywhere abounds. Caste, again, "upholds immutable distinctions by arbitrary and absurd laws, which are enforced by irresponsible authority, and maintains a standard of right and wrong entirely independent of the essential principles of moral science;" and, in order that everything may be included at one blow, we are finally told, in a note appended to the remarks of the Abbé on the moral and social advantages of caste, that "caste, and its offspring custom, are among the hindrances to all good in India."
But it is still more curious to observe how men of intelligence and observation can be led, by the force of inherited opinion, into statements as to the effects of caste which are actually contradicted by their own experience. And in Mr. Raikes's interesting work, "Notes of the North-Western Provinces," we find an instance of how people will always attribute everything to this universal bugbear. Observing on the pride of high caste, "which withers whatever it touches," Mr. Raikes informs us that the Brahmins and Rajpoots of the rich province of Benares will not touch the plough owing to pride of caste. He next tells us that caste is little regarded to the north of Allahabad, where, from various causes, the demand for labour is greater. All of which, being traced to its true cause, simply amounts to this, namely, that where landed proprietors of good family are well off they naturally do not care to work, whereas in another part of the country where they are not well off, or cannot procure labourers, they do work. In the same way, the author, after telling us that infanticide has at one time or other been common all over the world, tells us that in India it is entirely caused by caste. Now, if we take caste to mean family pride solely, it certainly has influenced the matter, or at least tended to maintain the evil complained of; but I know of one instance, at least, in India where infanticide can be traced to satisfactory causes, and amongst a people who have always been observed to be remarkably free from what are called caste prejudices. The Toda tribe, on the Nilgiri Hills, are polyandrists, and, in order to keep down the number of the tribe, they naturally had recourse to female infanticide. This they have now abandoned, and my Toda guide very soon told me the reason. He said, "Formerly we used to kill the females, because we had little more than the produce of our buffaloes to depend on; but now that more people have flocked to the hills we can let our lands and get plenty to eat." He added, also, that the Government had ordered them not to kill their children; but, unless their means had improved, it is plain that a Government order would have had little effect. But, as regards this subject of infanticide, it seems to be a thing difficult to avoid, whenever conditions arise which are favourable to its extension; nor will repressive measures alone ever place any very complete check upon it. Like every other demand, it rises and falls with the necessities of the situation, and can never be originally caused by anything in the shape of caste feelings or regulations; and amongst these necessities I, of course, include the desire to avoid shame, or the prospect of shame in the family, or starvation, as well as the fact that women are an encumbrance to some tribes. Some people, I may add, are under the impression that polyandric habits, when once established, become necessarily a cause of infanticide. But we have no means of knowing that this was ever the case, while the Coorgs may be pointed to as a race who once were polyandrous, but who were never, that I am aware of, accused of infanticide. The explanation of this, I apprehend, is to be found in the fact that their circumstances were comfortable enough to preclude any necessity for keeping down the population.
It is time now that I should bring this chapter to a close, but, as it may be a convenience to the reader, I think it well, before doing so, to sum up those conclusions which I assume to have been established; in doing so I shall, however, merely take notice of those points which seem to me to be of paramount importance.
In the first place, then, we compared the morality of our British counties, as regards the connection of the sexes and the use of alcohol, with the morality of the Indian county of Manjarabad; and having seen that, owing to caste laws, the morality of Manjarabad is superior, I think we are justified in concluding that these laws have acted more effectually than all the religious instruction that has for centuries been lavished on the people of this country; or, to put the case in shorter terms, we may assert that, as regards the branches of morality alluded to, caste has beaten Christian influences.
In the next place we took into consideration the action of our missionaries as regards caste, and having seen that they have always insisted on their converts entirely renouncing customs which can be proved to produce the most valuable results, we came to the conclusion that it has been a fortunate thing for India that its peoples have rejected our hide-bound interpretation of Christianity. We then inquired as to whether the missionaries had any right to debar from the advantages of Christianity those who, wishing to become Christians, yet desired to retain their social customs; and, having come to the conclusion that there is nothing idolatrous in these customs, we have distinctly asked those interpreters of Christianity whom we have in India to tell us by whose authority they have ventured to act in a way which, as has been shown, the Apostles never did as regards the prejudices of their Jewish converts. And generally, as regards the action of our missionaries in this matter, we have felt ourselves justified in asserting that our English missions have inflicted an incalculable injury on the cause of Christianity by presenting it to the people of India as something that must necessarily tear the whole framework of their society to pieces.
We then inquired more particularly into the origin of caste, and, having seen that it never could have originated in the way our missionaries suppose it to have done, we hazarded a conjecture as to the way in which it probably did originate, and saw grounds for supposing that the distinctions of caste came naturally about, and that they were in principle calculated to effect exactly the same ends that the Jewish lawgivers had in view when they framed that Levitical law which effectually prevented the Jews from mingling socially with the races they lived amongst. We then looked at caste from a sanitary point of view, and came to the conclusion that in consequence of the carrion-eating habits of the lowest castes, and of their liability to transmit the germs of disease, the rules which prevented them from coming into contact with the higher castes, either in the way of taking the Sacrament, or in any other way, are of the greatest value. We next inquired into the effects of caste as regards social intercourse, and especially as regards the exercise of hospitality amongst people of different castes, and saw reason to think that the restrictions of caste, with, perhaps, the exception of the very lowest, formed no bar whatever to the exercise of hospitality. Glancing subsequently at the action of caste feeling in confining the sympathies of individuals more especially to the members of their own caste, we came to the conclusion that, though caste had undoubtedly the effect of contracting the feelings within a narrow circle, there was to be found a compensating advantage in the fact that the claims of caste produced, in the aggregate, a greater amount of charity, and, in short, were calculated to produce a better general result than would be arrived at in the absence of caste feelings. And as illustrations of the advantages of this caste feeling, we pointed to the fact of there being no poor-houses in India, and especially to the Jews in England, as affording an example of the favourable effects of caste feeling. After this, we pointed to the fact that, though caste had the effect of keeping one caste or order of men above another, it had also a levelling tendency within each caste, and produced an important point of equality which no poverty can destroy. We then took into consideration some facts which seemed to show that families could raise themselves to a higher rank in society by adopting the purer habits of the classes above them; and we also saw that the influence of wealth does, to a very great degree, elevate a man of low caste in the social scale. We next saw reason to suppose that we have hitherto been labouring under very exaggerated notions as to the stringency of caste regulations, and two instances were given to illustrate the way in which caste laws are sometimes set summarily aside. And, finally, we pointed out, and gave some illustrations to prove, that with most of our countrymen who have either tried to introduce new customs or in any way to alter native habits of action, caste has ever been made, and very unjustly made, the common scapegoat.
One word more. The absolute good that caste has done may be briefly summed up. It has acted as a strong moral police, and as a preserver of order and decorum in the community,[[46]] and it has prevented the spread of bad habits and customs, more especially that of drinking, as far as large numbers of the people are concerned.[[47]] On the other hand, caste is said to have hindered the progress of the people taken as a whole. But in every instance where we have really tried the introduction of any art, the removal of any public crime (as suttee and human sacrifice, for instance), the improvement of any cultivation, the introduction of education, or of new means of moving from place to place, we have either found caste to be no impediment at all, or an impediment so slight as not to be worth mentioning.
NOTE.—With the view of obtaining information I briefly allude here to two points with reference to caste and its effects—the (1) curious custom of the Marasa Wokul tribe in Mysore, and (2) the influence of caste in developing improved aptitudes which afterwards descend by hereditary transmission.
As to the first, the mother of a girl is compelled to submit to the amputation of the terminal joints of the third and fourth fingers of the right hand on the occasion of the betrothal of her daughter, and in the event of a girl being motherless the mother of the bridegroom-elect must submit to the operation.