Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/40

30 bondsman, and that forever. No system of human slavery ever equaled this; for it was intense, unalterable, and unending, by the act of God himself.

The distinctions of society, by the ordinances of the Hindoo Lawgiver, were thus indicated: Brahmins, or Priests; Kshatriyas, or Soldiers and Rajahs; Vaisyas, or Merchants and Farmers; Sudras, the servile class.

The arrangements indicate a pastoral condition of society, far removed from the stirring scenes of the life of the nineteenth century. The ordinances made no preparation for the wider wants of men or intercommunication of other nations, or the development of our race. They had no provision for manufacturing, mining, or commercial life, but expected the world to move on forever in their limited conservative methods. These four castes were subdivided, according to the theory, into sixty-four, and in the grooves thus opened the divisions of labor were expected to run, so that even trade should become hereditary; and thus, whatever the genius or ability developed in any man, he was expected to be content to remain in the profession of his father. He might have the germ and the buddings of a mind like Newton's, but, according to “their cast-iron rules of social life, if his father made shoes he too must stick to the last.”

No man of one caste can eat, smoke, marry with, or touch the cooking-vessels of a person of another caste. The prohibition is fearfully strict, and guarded with terrible sanctions. And it is as destitute of humanity as it is singular; so that, were a stranger of their own nation, coming into one of their towns, to be taken suddenly ill, and unable to speak and explain of what caste he was, he would certainly be liable to perish, for the high-caste people would be afraid to touch him, lest they should break their caste, and those of the low-caste would be unwilling, lest their contact (on the supposition of his superior order) might irrecoverably contaminate him. In their hands the man would perish unaided.

This unique masterpiece of Brahminism was intended by its framers to be a wall of brass around their system, to secure its