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30 her safety in the next. The Bráhman and the soothsayer promise her children, that no strange new wife shall take away her husband's love, and that the proper observance of Hindu ritual will secure her good fortune hereafter. The men are not exempt from the influence of the same sentiments. The old tradition of Bráhmanism is too strong for the new reforming creed to resist. The result is that the old order returns; the Sikh, although he will not smoke or cut his hair or beard, pays reverence to Bráhmans, and visits the temples and shrines of the old faith, and observes the superstitious practices of other Hindus. In the matter of caste the Sikh retains a large part of his freedom, and will drink or eat food from the vessels of a Christian or a Muhammadan should necessity require it. At no time has he been accustomed to associate with what the Hindus account as unclean castes; and the sweepers or Mazbi Sikhs, who are very numerous (for Sikhism was naturally very attractive to the lowest castes), have been always excluded from the Sikh shrines, and the British Government has been compelled to form them into separate regiments, when they have fought quite as gallantly as their better-born co-religionists.

Even in the palmiest days of the Khálsa it is astonishing how small a proportion of the Punjab population was of the Sikh profession. The fierce fanaticism of the earlier years of the century was succeeded by the unequalled military organisation of the Mahárájá, and these together enabled a people