Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/338

294 some castes dress with entire decency, in others women are forbidden to wear any clothing above the waist. The want of refinement in the gross, ignorant Pariahs, which excites the horror and disgust of this ecclesiastic, should rather move him to pity, for the inflexible rules of caste condemn him for life to the circle and lot in which he was born. If the caste-discipline is sometimes beneficial, it is more often unjust and cruel; and hospitality within the caste becomes mere clanship, while the heart is hardened into a stone-like indifference to the miseries of the members of other castes.

It might be supposed that high-caste men would be more tenacious of the distinction than those of low caste; but this is not the case. Even the outcast Pariahs of the villages, who feed on carrion, find some upon whom they may look down, and the lowest Sudra would refuse to take a cup of tea from the hands of any king in Europe; it would defile him! Our gardener's sick wife would not eat any delicacy prepared by our cook, because he was a Pariah, though a most respectable man, with higher wages than her husband. Once, when examining a school on our verandah, one of the boys, a poor little fellow with only a dirty strip of