not sweep; the messenger boy would not pick up a
book from the floor. The liveried Brahmin who takes your card at the
American Consulate in Calcutta once lost his place rather than pick up
a slipper; rather than humiliate himself in such fashion he would walk
half a mile to get some other servant for the duty. It is no uncommon
thing to find that your servant will carry a package for you, but will
hire another servant if a small package of his own is to be moved. "I
had a boy for thirteen years, the best boy I ever had, till he died of
the plague," a Bombay Englishman said to me, "and he shaved me
regularly all the time. But when I gave him a razor with which to
shave himself, I found it did no good. He would have 'lost caste' if
he had done barber's work for anybody but a European!"

"I have a good sweeper servant," a Calcutta minister told me, "but if
I should attempt to promote him beyond his caste and make a
house-servant of him, every other servant I have would leave,
including my cook, who has been a Christian twenty years!"

The absurdities into which the caste system runs are well {230}
illustrated by some facts which came to my notice on a visit to a
school for the Dom caste conducted by some English people in Benares.
The Doms burn the bodies of the dead at the Ganges ghats, and do other
"dirty work." Incidentally they form the "thief caste" in Benares, and
whenever a robbery occurs, the instant presumption is that some Dom is
guilty. For this reason a great number of Doms (they belong to the
Gypsy class and have no houses anywhere) make it a practice to sleep
on the ground just outside the police station nearly all the year
round, reporting to the authorities so as to be able to prove an alibi
in case of a robbery. So low are the Doms that to touch anything
belonging to one works defilement; consequently they leave their most
valuable possessions unguarded about their tents or shacks, knowing
full well that not even a thief of a higher caste will touch them.

"We had a servant," a Benares lady said to me, "who lost his place
rather than take up one end of a forty-foot carpet while a Dom had
hold of the other end. The new bearer, his successor, did risk helping
move a box with a Dom handling the other side of it, but he was
outcasted for the action, and it cost him 25 rupees to be reinstated.
And until reinstated, of course, he could not visit kinsmen or friends
nor could friends or kinsmen have visited him