Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/287

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CASTE AND THE LEGEND OF THE ARTISANS
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may be found cultivating the land in villages where none but the twice-born live. They are clerks in offices, shopkeepers, postmasters, telegraph clerks, soldiers, stationmasters, and beggars. Rich or poor, educated or ignorant, the caste is always respected, and nobody presumes to outrage it because the Brahmin is poor and ignorant.

The Kshattriya is not represented in the south of India. The Vaisyas also have no representatives in the south.

The greater part of the Hindus of the Madras Presidency are of Sudra and Pariab origin. They are divided and subdivided, and divided again. It is doubtful if they have ever been completely tabulated and numbered. The higher divisions of the Sudra, in the absence of the two intervening castes, rank next to the Brahmins, and they consider themselves of high caste; but the Aryan of the north looks down with contempt upon the Dravidian of the south, upon whom Hinduism was forced by Aryan conquerors. There is a proverb, Beware of the dark Brahmin and the fair Pariah; both are shams.' In the opinion of the Brahmin of the north the characteristics should be reversed, the outcaste black and the twice-born fair.

Although the term Pariah indicates an outcaste, the class in the present day is split up into many divisions, each jealously maintaining certain caste rules to which they really have no right. The Pariah servants of the European's house will not eat with the horsekeepers and grass-cutters, and the horsekeepers will not eat with the sweepers. As to which is superior or inferior, it is impossible to say. All are outcastes, and the least honourable calling is that of the sweeper.

Caste had its origin in trade. Men learned their trade from their fathers, and taught it to their sons, and then made a trades' union of it. In these days the educational advantages offered by England has tempted men to forsake

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