Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/27

 future with alarm and would do something toward removing the evil. They have the whole orthodoxy to face and might get unpopularity and even excommunication into the bargain. The greatest source of strength which we have to rely on is the knowledge of the correct history of caste, which is yet unknown and which is very likely to undermine the numerous prejudices current in the land. Yet this is an assumption. How far it will prove to be true is a matter for speculation, but it inspires hope in the investigator.

The project and the method of presentation.— I am presenting in this volume the evidence of the so-called Laws of Manu on the subject of caste with my own interpretations and comments on that evidence. In order that the reader may understand the place of this monograph in the entire history of caste in India, which I have undertaken, it is necessary for me to acquaint him with my project and the method of presentation.

Though at the beginning of my studies in the history of caste I was very diffident regarding the possibility of writing a systematic history of this institution for the entire period stretching over thirty or forty centuries, with regard to the success of that project I am much more hopeful to-day. With the progress of the work, I am coming more and more to realize that the material for the successful completion of such a task is not wanting.

For an historical work the most approved method of presentation is to narrate facts, as far as possible, in the order of time; but the present defective character of the knowledge on the subject and to a certain extent the peculiarities of the study, itself forbid rigorous