ians, and will have absolutely no communion in food with
meat-eaters, even though the latter may belong to a higher caste than
themselves. Meat of any kind is an abomination to them. Other
respectable castes will touch only chicken meat, others mutton, a very
few pork, while no caste will permit its members to eat beef. No sin
is regarded by the orthodox with more horror than that of killing and
eating the flesh of the cow,--the most sacred and most commonly
worshipped animal of India.

These convivial rules of caste are the greatest obstacles to social
union and fellowship among the people of India. Westerners hardly
realize the extent to which their communion is based upon the
convivial habit. Many times a friendship which lasts a lifetime is
formed by strangers sitting together at the common dinner table. And,
in the same way, are the old friendships of life generally renewed and
cemented in the West. And it is a significant fact that the Christian
faith antagonizes Hinduism at this very point by enacting that its
great Sacrament of love and communion of life in Christ be embodied in
a perpetual and universal "drinking of the same cup and eating of the
same bread." In nothing is Hinduism becoming more manifestly a burden
to the educated community than in this restriction about inter-dining;
and in nothing are they more ready, as we shall see later, to violate
caste customs than in this matter.

Then comes, as a natural consequence of the above, limitations to the
contact of persons of differing castes. If a Brahman cannot eat with a
Sudra, because it supposedly brings a taint to his pure blood, no more
can he, with impunity, come into personal contact with him. The touch
of such is pollution to his august and pure person; and the very air
the low castes breathe brings to his soul and body taint and poison.
This idea of ceremonial pollution by contact causes great
inconvenience and trouble, and for that reason has been considerably
mitigated or modified in recent times. The Rajah of Cochin, who lives
temporarily near the writer, and who is evidently a stickler for caste
observances, receives calls from European friends only before nine
o'clock in the morning, for the obvious reason that that is the hour
of his daily ablution. The Maharajah of Travancore bathes at 7 A.M.
daily; hence, intending European guests find reception only before
that early hour. In the State of Travancore, in which Brahmanical
influence is gr