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it against all death-dangers by reason of the sins which I have committed in my life.' Once more he raises his glove to God with his right hand; the holy Gabriel receives it; then his head falls upon his arm, and he is gone, with hands clasped, to his end! God sends one of his cherubim and St. Michael to him, St. Gabriel accompanies them, and together they carry the soul of the count to Paradise."

the lions, save, O save my soul, and defend | India, by a strange process, the original four castes have been multiplied to no end and have been fixed most hard and fast. Now you find perhaps as many castes as there are occupations. There is a regular scale and a grade. You have the tailor caste and the tinker cast, the blacksmith caste and the goldsmith caste, the milkman caste and the carpenter caste, the groom caste and the sweeper caste. The operation of caste may be said to be confined principally to matters first of food and drink, second of matrimony and adoption, and third of the performance of certain religious rites and ceremonies.

TRANSLATION BY THE EDITOR.

CASTE IN INDIA.

FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED BY B. B. NAGARKAR OF
BOMBAY, INDIA, ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1893.

Each caste has its own code of laws and

WHAT is this Hindu institution of its own system of observances. They will

caste? In the social dictionary of India, "caste" is a most difficult word for you to understand. Caste may be defined as the classification of a society on the basis of birth and parentage. For example, the son or daughter of a priest must always belong to the caste of priests or Brahmans, even though he or she may never choose to follow their ancestral occupation. Those who are born in the family of soldiers belong to the soldier caste, though they may never prefer to go on butchering men. Thus the son of a grocer is born to be called a grocer, and the son of a shoemaker is fated to be called a shoemaker. Originally there were only four castes the Brahman, or the priest; Kihateiya, or the soldier; Vaishya, or the merchant; and Shudra, or the serf. And these four ancient castes were not based on birth, but on occupation or profession. In ancient India the children of Brahman parents often took to a martial occupation, while the sons of a soldier were quite free to choose a peaceful occupation if they liked. But in modern

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eat with some, but not with others. The
higher ones will not so much as touch the
lower ones. Intermarriages are strictly pro-
hibited. Why, the proud and haughty
Brahman will not deign to bear the shadow
of a Shudra or low caste. In the West you
have social classes; we in India have "castes."
But remember that "classes" with you are
a purely social institution, having no relig-
ious sanction. "Castes" with us are essen-
tially a religious institution, based on the
accident of birth and parentage. With a
view to illustrate the difference between
"classes" and "castes," I
"classes" and "castes," I may say that in
Western countries the lines of social division
are parallel but horizontal, and, therefore,
ranging in the social strata one above another.
In India these lines are perpendicular, and,
therefore, running from the top to the bot-
tom of the body social, dividing and sep-
arating one social strata from another.
The former arrangement is a source of
strength and support, and the latter a source
of alienation and weakness. Perhaps at one

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time in the history of India, when the condition of things was entirely different, and when the number of these castes was not so large nor their nature so rigid as now, the institution of caste did serve a high purpose; but now it is long, too long, since that social condition underwent a change. Under those ancient social and political environments of India the institution of caste was greatly helpful in centralizing and transmitting professional knowledge of arts and occupations, as also in grouping, binding together, and preserving intact the various guilds and artisan communities. But centuries ago that social and political environment ceased to exist, while the mischievous machinery of caste continues in full swing up to this day. Caste in India has divided the mass of Hindu society into innumerable classes and cliques.

of his moral worth and goodness of heart. Marriage between the members of two dif ferent castes is not allowed in India. The code of caste rules does not sanction any such unions under any circumstances. Necessarily, therefore, each class have been marrying for hundreds of years within the pale of their own caste. Now many castes and their sub-sections are so small that they are no larger than mere handfuls of families. These marriages within such narrow circles not only prevent the natural and healthy flow of fellow-feeling between the members of different classes, but, according to the law of evolution as now fully demonstrated, bring on the degeneration of the race.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.*

It has created a spirit of extreme exclusive- BESIDE the ocean, wandering on the

ness.

exclusive-B

It has crowded and killed legitimate ambition, healthy enterprise, and combined adventure. It has fostered envy and jealousy between class and class, and set one community against another.

It is an unmitigated evil and the veriest social and national curse. Young India has been fully convinced that if the Hindu nation is once more to rise to its former glory and greatness this dogma of caste must be put down. The artificial restrictions and the unjust-nay, in many cases inhuman and unhuman-distinctions of caste must be

abolished. Therefore the first item on the programme of social reform in India is the abolition of caste and the furtherance of free and brotherly intercourse between class and class, as also between individual and individual, irrespective of the accident of his birth and parentage, but mainly on the recognition

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sorts.

MONEY.

[From Principles of Political Economy.] N order to understand the manifold functions of a circulating medium, there is no better way than to consider what are the principal inconveniences which we should experience if we had not such a medium. The first and most obvious would be the want of a common measure for values of different If a tailor had only coats and wanted to buy bread, or a horse, it would be very troublesome to ascertain how much bread he ought to obtain for a coat, or how many coats he should give for a horse. The calculations must be recommenced on different data every time he bartered his coats for a different kind of article; and there could be no current price or regular quotations of value. Whereas, now, each thing has a current price in money. As it is much easier to compare different lengths by expressing them in a common language called feet and inches, so it is much easier to compare values by means of a common language called pounds, shillings, and pence. In no other way can values be arranged one above another in a scale; in no other can a person conveniently calculate the sum of his possessions; and it is easier to ascertain and remember the relations of many things to one thing, than their innumerable cross relations with one another. This advantage of having a common language in which values may be expressed is, even by itself, so important that some such mode of expressing and computing them would probably be used even if a pound or a shilling did not express any real thing but a mere unit of calculation. It is said that there are African tribes in which this somewhat artificial contrivance actually prevails.

They calculate the value of things in a sort of money account, called "macute." They say, one thing is worth ten macutes, another fifteen, another twenty. There is no real thing called a macute; it is a conventional unit for the more convenient comparison of things with one another.

This advantage, however, forms but an. inconsiderable part of the economical benefits derived from the use of money. The inconveniences of barter are so great that without some more commodious means of effecting exchanges the division of employments could hardly have been carried to any considerable extent. A tailor who had nothing but coats might starve before he could find any person having bread to sell who wanted a coat; beside, he would not want as much bread at a time as would be worth a coat, and the coat could not be divided. Every person, therefore, would at all times hasten to dispose of his commodity in exchange for anything which, though it might not be fitted to his own immediate wants, was in great and general demand, and easily divisible, so that he might be sure of being able to purchase with it whatever was offered for sale. The primary necessaries of life possess these properties in a high degree. Bread is extremely divisible, and an object of universal desire. Still, this is not the sort of thing required; for of food, unless in expectation of a scarcity, no one wishes to possess more at once than is wanted for immediate consumption, so that a person is never sure of finding an immediate purchaser for articles of food, and unless soon disposed of, most of them perish. The thing which people would select to keep by them for making them for making purchases must be one

which, besides being divisible, and generally

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