st famous tree, the banyan, grows by dropping down roots
from a score or a hundred limbs; these roots fasten themselves in the
earth and later become parent trees for other multiplying limbs and
roots, until the whole earth is covered. In much the same fashion the
Indian caste system has {232} developed. Instead of the four original
castes there are now more than five hundred times that number, and the
system now decrees irrevocably before birth not only what social
station the newborn infant shall occupy from the cradle to the grave
(or from the time the conch shell announces the birth of a man-child
till the funeral pyre consumes his body, to use Indian terminology),
but also decrees almost as irrevocably what business he may or may not
follow. A little American girl of my acquaintance once announced that
she hadn't decided whether she would be a trained nurse, a
chorus-girl, or a missionary; but Hinduism leaves no one in any such
embarrassing quandary. Whether a man is to be a priest or a thief is
largely decided for him before he knows his own name.

"But isn't the system weakening now?" the reader asks, as I have also
asked in almost every quarter of India. The general testimony seems to
be that it is weakening, and yet in no very rapid manner. Eventually,
no doubt, it will die, but it will die hard. A few weeks ago, a
Parliament of Religions was held in connection with the Allabahad
Exposition, with his Highness the Maharaja of Darbhanga as the
presiding officer. In the course of his "Presidential Address" the
Maharaja delivered a lengthy eulogy of the caste system, resorting in
part to so specious an argument as the following:

"If education means the drawing forth of the potentialities of a boy
and fitting him for taking his ordained place as a member of society,
then the caste system has hitherto done this work in a way which no
other plan yet contrived has ever done. The mere teaching of a youth
a smattering of the three R's and nothing else in a primary school
is little else than a mere mockery. Under the caste system the boys
are initiated and educated almost from infancy into the family
industry, trade, profession, or handicraft, and become adepts in
their various lines of life almost before they know it. This unique
system of education is one of the blessings of our caste
arrangement. We know that a horse commands a high price in the
market if it has a long pedigree behind it. It i