s the residuum, one could not object.
The Aryan purity of the stock may be a fiction, as authorities declare
it to be in the great majority of castes and in by far the greater part
of India; but given the belief in the purity of blood, the desire to
preserve it is a natural desire. If one may prophesy, then, regarding
the fate of the caste system under the prevailing modern influences,
castes will survive longest simply as a number of in-marrying social
groups. To that hard core the caste idea is being visibly worn down.

[Sidenote: Support of caste by British authorities.]

With strange obliviousness surely, the British officials are lending
support to caste ideas in various ways, while many of the best minds in
India are groaning under the tyranny. The compilers of the _Report of
the Census of India for_ 1901, gentlemen to whom every student of India
is deeply indebted, in their enumeration of castes, give the imprimatur
of government to such Cimmerian notions as that the touch of certain low
castes is defiling to the higher. The writer and condoner of the
following paragraph surely need a lengthy furlough to Britain or the
States. We read that "the table of social precedence attached to the
_Cochin Report_ shows that while a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher
caste only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, including
masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and workers in leather, pollute at a
distance of 24 feet, toddy drawers at 36 feet, Palayan or Cheruman
cultivators at 48 feet; while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who
eat beef, the range of pollution is stated to be no less than 64 feet."
Some consolation let us even here take from the fact that in an earlier
publication the extreme range of the polluting X-rays of the pariah is
stated to be 72 feet. So there has been 8 feet of progress for the
pariah. But our point is, that interesting as all that table of
precedence no doubt is, it is out of place in a Government report, which
may be quoted against a poor low-caste man as authoritative
pronouncement regarding his social position. Justice and humanity, good
grounds in the eyes of the Indian Government ere now for legislating
contrary to caste ideas, ought to have enjoined the ignoring of caste
ideas here. It is no mere fancy that after an accident one of these
low-caste masons in South India might be brought to the door of a
Government hospital and be refused admission by a native medical officer
beca