eing equal, it is clear that
two-thirds of the Anglican girls would get no husbands, and two-thirds
of the Salvationist men no wives. These are some of the restrictions
which would control the process of match-making among the Smiths if
they were organized in a caste of the Indian type. There would also
be restrictions as to food. The different in-marrying clans would be
precluded from marrying together, and their possibilities of
reciprocal entertainment would be limited to those products of the
confectioners' shops into the composition of which water, the most
fatal and effective vehicle of ceremonial impurity, had not entered.
Fire purifies, water pollutes. It would follow in fact that they could
eat chocolates and other sweetmeats together, but could not drink tea
or coffee, and could only partake of ices if they were made without
water and were served on metal, not porcelain, plates."

Mr. Risley might have added considerably to these restrictions and
limitations without exhausting the catalogue.

Let us briefly enumerate those elements which enter into caste. The
first and the most important is intermarriage within the caste. None
except members of totemistic castes can, with impunity, look beyond
the sacred borders of their own caste for conjugal bliss. So long as
castes remain endogamous they will preserve their integrity, and their
foundations will never be removed. This is the _fons et origo_ of
caste perpetuity. All other characteristics may pass away; if this
remain, all is well with the organization. And it is this which
remains with devilish pertinacity and mischief-working power in the
infant Native Christian Church of India. It is this same extreme evil
which the social reformers of India are trying to puncture. But all
that they dare to struggle and hope for is the right of members of
subdivisions of any caste to intermarry. A generation ago, there were
1886 divisions in the Brahman caste alone, no two of which could enjoy
connubial or convivial privileges together. It is not up to the most
sanguine reformer of India to seek that all Brahmans enjoy the right
of intermarrying,--he only asks that the divisions among the Brahmans
may be reduced, and intermarriage may be sanctioned among
subdivisions. Yet even this meagre quest is not likely to be
gratified. This is not surprising, for the defenders of the system
well know that if this stronghold of caste is at all weakened, the
whole will speedily yield