gnal is the sentence of irrevocable
exclusion or out-casting. The Census of 1901 was the first to attempt a
thorough classification of Indian castes, and the number of the main
castes enumerated in it is well over two thousand, each one divided up
again into almost endless sub-castes. The keystone of the whole caste
system is the supremacy of the _quasi_-sacerdotal caste of Brahmans--a
caste which constitutes in some respects the proudest and closest
aristocracy that the world has ever seen, since it is not merely an
aristocracy of birth in the strictest sense of the term, but one of
divine origin. An Indian is either born a Brahman or he is not. No power
on earth can make him a Brahman. Not all Brahmans were learned even in
the old days of Hinduism, though it was to their monopoly of such
learning as there then was that they owed their ascendancy over the
warrior kings. Nor do all Brahmans minister in the temples. Strangely
enough the minority who do are looked down upon by their own castemen.
The majority pursue such worldly avocations, often quite humble, as are
permissible for them under their caste laws. The Brahmans were wise
enough, too, to temper the fundamental rigidity of the system with
sufficient elasticity to absorb the new elements with which it came into
contact, and in most cases gradually to reabsorb such elements as from
time to time rebelled against it. The process by which new castes may be
admitted into the pale of Hinduism, or the status of existing castes be
from time to time readjusted to new conditions, has been admirably
explained by Sir Alfred Lyall. But the process can be worked only under
Brahmanical authority, and the supreme sanction for all caste laws rests
solely with the Brahmans, whilst of all caste laws the most inexorable
is the supremacy of the Brahman. Therein lies the secret of the great
influence which, for good as well as for evil, he has always wielded
over the masses. For though in theory there could be no escape from the
bondage of caste, individuals, and even a whole group, would sometimes
find ways and means of propitiating the Brahmans who ministered to their
spiritual needs, and the miraculous intervention of a favouring god or
the discovery of a long-lost but entirely mythical ancestor would secure
their social uplift on to a higher rung of the caste-ladder.

Such a system, by creating and perpetuating arbitrary and yet almost
impassable lines of social cleavage, must be