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to terminate connection with their old caste and break the bands which they felt were tying them down to the lower life. It was a curious, and, viewed in the result, a happy coincidence that during these very days not only was I absent in the district but the Catechist also for special reasons was unable to be with them as much as usual. For, while it might naturally have been anticipated that this absence, at such a critical juncture, of the guidance and support upon which they are most accustomed to rely, would have had a prejudicial influence on the decision, on the other hand when it proved otherwise this very fact lent a spontaneity and reality to their conduct which would have been in part at least lacking had it seemed to be merely the result of our instigation and exhortation, while it also materially contributed to strengthen their own firmness of attitude and determination to go through with the course they had of their own free will resolved upon. I need not tell you how happy I was, how deeply thankful to Him from whom all holy desires and all just counsels as well as all good works proceed, when I found the turn which things had taken. It was determined to call the important meeting as soon as possible within a week of my return. Messengers were sent round the whole city and suburbs to convoke those whose attendance was required. The method of summoning such meetings or 'Panchayats' is well recognised, forming as they do the continual court of appeal in all classes and castes of the Hindoos throughout this country in all those matters which are decided by internal arbitration, and not by resort to the of course superior, but so to speak foreign, and far less heartily obeyed authority of the English courts. They are attended, not I need scarcely say by the whole male population, who, numbering for instance in the special caste of which I am speaking some ten or twelve thousand, would form a quite unmanageable body, but by the heads of the numerous little clans or boroughs into which by a wholly natural and spontaneous principle of organization each of the larger castes has got broken up. In the case of the Chamars even these heads are too numerous to be often brought together to one spot, and so they have formed themselves into three main divisions, called in Urdu Bawáni, i.e. fifty-two villages or clans, indicating the original number of representatives in each, though in course of time these too have been largely modified. Each division constitutes an amply sufficient tribunal for any ordinary disputes which its members may bring before it, though in cases of very exceptional magnitude the three occasionally coalesce
