der Mozumdar, was brahman by
caste. The great Bombay reformer, the Parsee, Malabari, is not even a
Hindu. The founder of the Arya sect, the late Dyanand Saraswati, was out
of caste altogether, being the son of a brahman father and a low-caste
mother. The late Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath _Dutt_, B.A.), who
represented Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893,
was not a brahman, as his real surname plainly declares. While, most
wonderful of all, the accepted leaders of the pro-Hindu Theosophists,
champions of Hinduism more Hindu than the Hindus, after whom the
educated Hindus flock, are not even Indians; alas, they belong, the most
prominent of them, to the inferior female sex! I mean the Russian lady,
the late Madame Blavatsky, the English ladies Mrs. Annie Besant and Miss
Noble [Sister Nivedita], and the American, Colonel Olcott. Which side of
that glaring incongruity is to give way--brahman and caste ideas, or the
buttressing of caste ideas by outcastes, Feringees, like Mrs. Besant?
It would be interesting to hear an orthodox brahman upon Mrs. Besant's
claim to have had a previous Hindu existence as a Sanscrit pandit. What
sin did the pandit commit, would be his natural reflection, that he was
born again a Feringee, and a woman?

[Sidenote: Unpardonable offences.]

But the offence of the fifth sin, marrying below one's caste, or the
marriage of widows, seems as rank as ever. Upon these points, rather,
the force of caste seems concentrating. The marriage of widows will be
considered when we come to discuss the social inferiority of woman in
India. To marry within one's caste promises to be the most persistent of
all the caste ideas. The official observation is that "whatever may have
been the origin and the earlier developments of caste, this prohibition
of mixed marriages stands forth now as its essential and most prominent
characteristic. The feeling against such unions is deeply engrained."
And again, a second pronouncement on caste: "The regulations regarding
food and drink are comparatively fluid and transitory, while those
relating to marriage are remarkably stable and absolute."[16] The
pro-Hindu lady, already referred to, also agrees. "Of hereditary caste,"
she says, "the essential characteristic is the refusal of
intermarriage."[17] Even Indian Christians are reluctant to marry below
their old caste, and value a matrimonial alliance with a higher. To that
residuum of caste, when it become