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social position. Its analogy with totemism rests in the limitation which it places on marriage, as we shall shortly see. In fact, a caste is as clearly defined a clan or community of people as is a totem. There is a system of caste in Madagascar, and also in Ceylon; but we will confine our attention to India, where it exists in the most highly developed and complicated form.

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Totemism, as we have seen, is based partly on social, partly on political, and partly on religious foundations. Its marriage system is exogamous,-that is to say, inembers of a totem may not intermarry, but must seek partners in some other authorized totem. Caste as at present existing in India is partly a religious and partly a social system; but its marriage laws are endogamous-that is to say, a member of a caste must marry within the caste, or be ostracized. Sir Roper Lethbridge says that the Hindu caste can be most accurately described as a social system maintained and enforced by a strong religious sanction. "A Hindu caste," he says, 66 consists of a number of families-sometimes of an immense number of familiesscattered about in various parts of the country, some very poor, and others very rich, but all presumably more or less nearly related to each other, and all governed by the same rules as regards marriage and all other religious and social observances. Caste-fellows alone-with very few insignificant exceptions-can eat together, or enjoy the close social intimacy that in other communities sometimes exists between friendly families. On the other hand, the caste rules are absolutely binding on all members of the caste, and the wretched man who breaks these rules and is expelled from his caste becomes a person without a friend or an associate in the world, a social felon, for no other caste not even the lowest-will receive him."

The Hindu caste system is based on the Laws of Manu, the son of Brahma. Those Institutes are said to embrace all that relates to human life, the history of the world and of man, the nature of God and of evil spirits, and a complete system of morals, government, and religion. This comprises, as Sir William Jones has said, a system of despotism and priestcraft, yet distinguished withal by the remarkable rigor and purity of its morals. The close resemblance of many of the maxims to the

precepts of Christianity has been noted not merely in the style of thought but also in the actual form of expression.

But what we are concerned with just now is the feature in the Laws of Manu which bears on the caste system. In these Laws, four distinct castes are defined: (1) The Brahmans, or priest caste, for whom and whose good it came to be thought that all other persons and things were made. (2) The Kshatriya, or military caste. (3) The Vaisya, or industrial caste; and (4), the Sudra, or servile caste. first three were called also the "Twiceborn," and all three were distinguished for the contempt and hatred with which they regarded the lowest or Sudra caste. Both the military and the industrial castes are now practically extinct.

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What is to be seen in India to day is a vast confusion of castes, due to the lowering of some, the raising of others, the intermixture of the higher castes, and the creation of innumerable new divisions. The present Hindu custom, however, forbids absolutely marriage between persons of the same gotra, or kindred, and technically between persons of different castes.

The Brahmans are now divided into ten great septs; but there are many more distinctions among thein. The Rajputs now number five hundred and ninety separate tribes in different parts of India. The descendants of the old industrial caste are no longer confined to husbandry, but are the merchants and bankers of the country. The Sudras alone retain their original position of degradation.

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"There is," Sir William Hunter observes, a plasticity as well as a rigidity in caste. Its plasticity has enabled caste to adapt itself to widely separated stages of social progress, and to incorporate the various ethnical elements which make up the Indian people. Its rigidity has given strength and permanence to the corporate body thus formed. Hinduism is internally loosely coherent, but it has great powers of resistance to external pressure. Each caste is to some extent a trade guild, a mutual assurance society, and a religious sect. As a trade union it insists on the proper training of the youth of its craft, regulates the wages of its members, deals with trade delinquents, and promotes good-fellowship by social gatherings. The famous fabrics of medieval India, and the chief local industries in our own day, were

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Still, the trade guilds of the cities and the village communities throughout the country act, with caste, as mutual assurance societies, and virtually take the place of a poor-law system in India, for they allow none of their number to starve if help be within their power.

There are both rewards and punishments in caste. If a man behaves well, he may rise to an honored post in his order. If he offends its rules, he may be punished in various ways, and for grievous offences may be excommunicated. This last pun

ishment is threefold. It debars the man from eating with the members of his caste; it interdicts him from marriage within the caste, and as he cannot marry in any other, it shuts him up from respectable marriage of any kind and it cuts him off from the services of the barber, the washerman, and other tradespeople of the community, as well as from those of the priest. He may be taken back again on payment of a fine and after proper purification; or he may be compelled to remain an outcast all his life..

There is only one thing which all the castes possess alike in common-this is the tuft of hair on the crown of the head, which is the "index of Hinduism," and by which the wearer is to be raised to heaven. But the three great castes have also "the sacred cord " to distinguish them, which is bestowed in the eighth year upon a Brahman, in the eleventh year upon a Kshatriya, and in the twelfth year upon a Vaisya.

All Brahmans are not priests, but all priests are Brahmans. This caste claims the most exalted attributes, and according to the Manu scripture, is superior to law, even to moral law, when it interferes with his interests. A Brahman may not live as a hired servant, but he may take the property of a Sudra. A proper gift to a Brahman on a death-bed, will, it is said, secure heaven to a malefactor; and the Brahman who receives a present from a member of another caste confers a favor on the donor. The exaggerated honors originally allowed to the Brahmans are no longer allowed except among the lowest orders; yet the Brahman still retains a

sort of sacred character, and is regarded with admiration, if not with veneration, by the other castes. In theory, at any rate, he retains his supremacy; and there are parts of India still where low-caste people account it an honor to take the dust off the feet of a Brahman and to place it on their heads, and even to drink the water in which the feet of the Twiceborn have been washed.

But there are degrees of sanctity and grades of rank even among the select Brahmans, for there are some twenty-five septs of this privileged caste. The Brahmans of Mysore, for instance, look down with contempt upon the Brahmans of Benares. Some of their subdivisions will not eat or intermarry with the members of other subdivisions; and others again, notably in Calcutta, quite openly violate the laws of their order. For instance, they are forbidden in the sacred writings to eat beef, drink wine, wear shoes made of cowhide, or sit down to table with men of inferior caste, or of no caste at all like Europeans. Yet many eminent Brahman gentlemen in the cities now do all these things without losing, as they would once have done, their place in Hindu society. Then, again, in the old days, young men who went to visit foreign countries and ventured to England had to subject themselves to severe penance before they could be reinstated in their caste; but now, in most of the Brahman septs, a Hindu may do pretty much as he pleases short of receiving Christian baptism. Of course that ostracizes him at once.

We have said that all Brahmans are not priests, and also that, according to the Laws of Manu, no Brahman can be a hired servant. Yet, as a matter of fact, they are to be found occupying positions as clerks, schoolmasters, physicians, engineers, and shopkeepers, etc. But while the caste-wall has thus far been broken down, there is less intermarriage between the castes than there was in the days of Manu. The reason is that then the punishment fell upon the children, but now it falls upon the offenders themselves.

According to the census of 1881, there were about one hundred different castes in Bengal alone. In all India there were 10,546,735 Brahmans, 5,788,735 Rajputs (or Kshatriyas), and 128,540,380 of the miscellaneous and mixed castes. To come back to Bengal-we learn from the Cen

sus Report that there are thirty castes which are represented in every province and in every village. To run over these will give a sufficient idea of the ramifications of the system.

The Brahman, of course, must be found wherever there is a temple; and the Rajput will be found in secular alliance with the service. Then, wherever there are a few houses clustered together will be found the Banirja, or money-lender. The Teli caste supplies the oilman, and the Barbi the carpenter, without which no village can get along. The cobbler, who also skins the carcasses of the cattle, is a Chamar; the washerman is a Dhobi; the barber is a Napit; and the scavenger is a Dom. Besides these castes are represented, Karmakar, the blacksmith; Kumbar, the potter; Madak and Kandu, the confectioners, who make up the farinaceous food of the people; Sunri, the wine seller; Barni and Tamoli, who prepare and sell the pan-leaf and betel nut; Tanti and Jugi, weavers; and Mali, the flower and vegetable dealer. These are the artisans of the community; and the agriculturists are Kaibarthas; the cow-keepers are Gwalla; the boatmen are Mallah; and the fishermen are Tevi. Intercommunication rests with the Kahar, cr palkie-bearers. Learning is the province of the Kayastha, who furnish the schoolmaster, the village accountant, and the landlord's secretary or clerk. The day-laborers and field-hands are Bhuinyas and Khawars.

The most respectable families of Calcutta belong to the Pir Ali subdivision of the Brahmans; and the origin of this subcaste is thus related by Mr. Wilkins: "Years ago, one of their ancestors went to the house of a Mussulman law officer, where a trick was played upon him. The Mussulman had heard it said that to smell food was half eating it;' and in the wish to convert some of the Brahmans in

his neighborhood, he invited them to his house, and while they were seated there, he ordered his dinner to be served. They smelled the food, and their caste was gone so it was decided. Some of them became Mussulinans; but one, who preferred to remain a Hindu, though his caste was injured, became the founder of another class, called the Pir Ali, after the man who had played the trick upon him."

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That caste is still regarded as a divine institution by the lower orders is, of course, well known; and the strictly orthodox will prefer death to eating forbidden food or doing anything contrary to the tenets of their particular caste. The result is one involving great expense and inconvenience to Europeans, who obliged to have a great number of servants for the different departments of domestic arrangements. Thus, if a low-caste servant brings a letter or anything, the superior-caste servant will not take it from his hands or touch it simultaneously with him it must be laid on the ground and taken up thence by the superior one. In fact, the orthodox Hindu will not join in any work whatever in which Sweepers or low-caste men are employed. No doubt, however, caste difficulties are often conveniently interposed when a man doesn't want to do something which is asked of him.

The Caste system is the great obstacle to the material progress of the country. Until it is broken down, India can never take her rightful place among the nations, for she cannot be a natiou in the true sense of the term. Like totemism, in short, Caste is a relic of barbarism, but also an evolution of barbarism struggling toward light. Both systems have had their uses, and both systems have left their marks, even in the most civilized and en. lightened communities.-- Chambers's Journal.

TROPICAL EDUCATION.

BY GRANT ALLEN.

Ir any one were to ask me (which is highly unlikely) "In what university would an intelligent young man do best to study?" I think I should be very much inclined indeed to answer offhand, "In the Tropics."

No doubt this advice sounds on first hearing just a trifle paradoxical; and no doubt, too, the proposed university has certain serious drawbacks (like many others) on the various grounds of health, expense, faith, and morals. Senior Proc

tors are unknown at Honolulu; Select Preachers don't range as far as the West Coast. But it has always seemed to me, nevertheless, that certain elements of a lib. eral education are to be acquired tropically which can never be acquired in a temperate, still less in an arctic or antarctic academy. This is more especially true, I allow, in the particular cases of the biologist and the sociologist; but it is also true in a somewhat less degree of the mere common arts course, and the mere average seeker after liberal culture. Vast aspects of nature and human life exist which can never adequately be understood aright except in tropical countries; vivid side-lights are cast upon our own history and the history of our globe which can never adequately be appreciated except beneath the searching and all too garish rays of a tropical sun.

Whenever I meet a cultivated man who knows his Tropics-and more particularly one who has known his Tropics during the formative period of mental development, say from eighteen to thirty-I feel instinctively that he possesses certain keys of man and nature, certain clews to the problems of the world we live in, not possessed in anything like the same degree by the mere average annual output of Oxford or of Heidelberg. I feel that we talk like Freemasons together-we of the Higher Brotherhood who have worshipped the sun, præsentiorem deum, in his own nearer temples.

Let me begin by positing an extreme parallel. How obviously inadequate is the conception of life enjoyed by the ordinary Laplander or the most intelligent Fuegian! Suppose even he has attended the mission school of his native village, and become learned there in all the learning of the Egyptians, up to the extreme level of the sixth standard, yet how feeble must be his idea of the planet on which he moves! how much must his horizon be cabined, cribbed, confined by the frost and snow, the gloom and poverty, of the bare land around him! He lives in a dark cold world of scrubby vegetation and scant animal life; a world where human existence is necessarily preserved only by ceaseless labor and at severe odds; a world out of which all the noblest and most beautiful living creatures have been ruthlessly pressed; a world where nothing great has been or can be; a world doomed

by its mere physical conditions to eternal poverty, discomfort, and squalor. For green fields he has snow and reindeer moss for singing birds and flowers, the tundra and the ptarmigan. How can he ever form any fitting conception of the glory of life-of the means by which animal and vegetable organisms first grew and flourished? How can he frame to himself any reasonable picture of civilized society, or of the origin and development of human faculty and human organization?

Somewhat the same, though of course in a highly mitigated degree, are the disadvantages under which the pure temperate education labors, when compared with the education unconsciously drunk in at every pore by an intelligent mind in tropical climates. And fully to understand this pregnant educational importance of the Tropics we must consider with ourselves how large a part tropical conditions have borne in the development of life in general, and of human life and society in particular.

The Tropics, we must carefully remember, are the norma of nature the way things mostly are and always have been. They represent to us the common condition of the whole world during by far the greater part of its entire existence. Not only are they still in the strictest sense the biological head-quarters: they are also the standard or central type by which we must explain all the rest of nature, both in man and beast, in plant and animal.

The temperate and arctic worlds, on the other hand, are a mere passing accident in the history of our planet: a hole andcorner development; a special result of the great Glacial Epoch, and of that vast slow secular cooling which preceded and led up to it, from the beginning of the Miocene or Mid-Tertiary period. Our European ideas, poor, harsh, and narrow, are mainly formed among a chilled and stunted fauna and flora, under inclement skies, and in gloomy days, all of which can give us but a very cramped and faint conception of the joyous exuberance, the teeming vitality, the fierce hand-to-hand conflict, and the victorious exultation of tropical life in its full free development.

All through the Primary and Secondary epochs of geology, it is now pretty certain, hothouse conditions practically prevailed almost without a break over the whole world from pole to pole. It may

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be true, indeed, as Dr. Croll believes (and It was with the Tertiary period-perhis reasoning on the point I confess is haps, indeed, only with the middle subdifairly convincing), that from time to time vision of that period-that the gradual glacial periods in one or other hemisphere cooling of the polar and intermediate rebroke in for a while upon the genial gions began. We know from the deposits warmth that characterized the greater part of the chalk epoch in Greenland that late of those vast and immeasurable primeval in Secondary times ferns, magnolias, æons. But even if that were so if at myrtles, and sago-palms-an Indian or long intervals the world for some hours in Mexican flora-flourished exceedingly in its cosmical year was chilled and frozen in what is now the dreariest and most ice-clad an insignificant cap at either extremity region of the northern hemisphere. these casual episodes in a long story do still, in the Eocene days, though the plants not interfere with the general truth of the of Greenland had grown slightly more principle that life as a whole during the temperate in type, we still find among the greater portion of its antique existence has fossils, not only oaks, planes, vines, and been carried on under essentially tropical walnuts, but also wellingtonias like the big conditions. No matter what geological trees of California, Spanish chestnuts, formation we examine, we find every where quaint southern salisburias, broad-leaved the same tale unfolded in plain inscriptions liquidambars, and American sassafras. before our eyes. Take, for example, the Nay, even in glacier-clad Spitzbergen itgiant club mosses and luxuriant tree-ferns self, where the character of the flora alnature-printed on shales of the coal age in ready begins to show signs of incipient Britain and we see in the wild under- chilling, we nevertheless see among the growth of those palæozoic forests ample Eocene types such plants as the swampevidence of a warm and almost West Ind- cyprus of the Carolinas and the wellingian climate among the low basking islets tonias of the Far West, together with a of our northern carboniferous seas. Or rich forest vegetation of poplars, birches, take once more the oolitic epoch in Eng- oaks, planes, hazels, walnuts, water-lilies, land, lithographed on its own mud, with and irises. As a whole, this vegetation its puzzle monkeys and its sago-palms, its still bespeaks a climate considerably more crocodiles and its deinosaurs, its winged genial, mild, and equable than that of pterodactyls and its whalelike lizards. All modern England. these huge creatures and these broad-leaved trees plainly indicate the existence of a temperature over the whole of Northern Europe almost as warm as that of the Malay Archipelago in our own day. The weather report for all the earlier ages stands almost uninterruptedly at Set Fair.

Roughly speaking, indeed, one may say that through the long series of Primary and Secondary formations hardly a trace can be found of ice or snow, autumn or winter, leafless boughs or pinched and starved deciduous vegetation. Everything is powerful, luxuriant, vivid. Life, as Comus feared, was strangled with its waste fertility. Once, indeed, in the Permian age, all over the temperate regions, north and south, we get passing indications of what seems very like a glacial epoch, partially comparable to that great glaciation on whose last fringe we still abide to-day. But the ice age of the Permian, if such there were, passed away entirely, leaving the world once more warm and fruitful up to the very poles, under conditions which we would now describe as essentially tropical.

It was in this basking world of the chalk and the eocene that the great mammalian fauna first took its rise; it was in this easy world of fruits and sunshine that the primitive ancestors of man first began to work upward toward the distinctively human level of the palæolithic period.

But then, in the mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost -a nipping frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age. I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of that colossal cataclysm; I shall take all those for granted at present: what we are concerned with now are the results it left behind-the changes which it wrought on fauna and flora and on human society. Especially is it of importance in this connection to point out that the glacial epoch is not yet entirely finished-if, indeed, it is ever destined to be finished. We are living still on the fringe of the Ice Age, in a cold and cheerless era, the legacy of

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