Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/7

2 service of the others, filled the fourth and last grade. The first three orders were distinguished by the appellation of the twice-born, and were invested with the sacred cord as the badge of their regeneration; the last were doomed to occupy the same position in India that was allotted to the slaves in the Grecian republics.

Disparities of rank and station are inseparable from human society, and the Hindu legislators, in causing this quadruple division, acted upon the principle that was observed by statesmen all over the world. The satraps of the Magian and Sabian countries, the free-born citizens of the Grecian states, the priests and warriors of Egypt, the patricians and plebeians of Rome, and the peers, grandees, segniors, ameers, &c., in other quarters, are evidences of conventional distinctions maintained by all nations. Some have everywhere endeavoured to rise above others. Even the most democratical states have not been free from aristocratic distinctions and influences. The vast majority of the human species has always submitted to the authority of the few that have exalted themselves above the common level; and these have invariably improved every opportunity of self-aggrandisement. It was not alone, though he was the first on record, that began to be mighty on the earth. Many have since followed the “mighty hunter’s” example by struggling for superiority over their brethren.

These distinctions have, however, proved in India sad engines of corruption and human degradation. They have been considered, not as mere civil enactments intended for the well-being of society, and so capable of alteration and improvement, according to the mutations of times and circumstances, but as an integral portion of the Brahminical theology itself, alleged to have been ordained by God from the very beginning of the world, and therefore superior to modification and change. The different tribes are religiously enjoined to keep separate from one another, and to abstain on peril of their souls from intruding into each other’s professions. In their anxiety to place their own dignity upon the firmest footing, the Hindu legislators did not stop to consider or deplore the magnitude of the evils they were preparing for their country, or the hardness of the yoke they were imposing on millions of their species. The noblest families might deteriorate, and the meanest tribe might ameliorate itself, in process of time. Hereditary priests, warriors, mechanics and menial labourers might, by the vicissitudes of life, be all incapacitated in the course of a few centuries for their respective occupations, and yet be adapted for other duties; and if the country could not reap