Casing

“ The young of all species do it. I have heard of young girls—but their doings are no concern of mine. They may break all the walls of all the conventions without interference from me.
Nor do I think that John Cassidy cared much whether his heifer had broken her wall or not. The potatoes had long since been dug. The ground in which they grew would suffer no harm by the incursions of a young heifer. He was making an excuse to escape, so that I should be left alone to speak to Mrs. Cassidy the word which might do her good and help to remove the weakness that was on her. ”

“ How many castes are there?
Ans. Four; the Brahmins or priests, who sprung from the head of Brahma; the Warrior caste, which issued from his arms; the Agriculturists and Traders, who came from his thighs, and lastly, the Sudras, or laborers, who sprung from his feet.
Ques. Is there much distinction between the castes?
Ans. Yes; they cannot under any circumstances intermarry; nor can a member of a lower caste ever pass to a higher. Only, if he lead a good life, he may console himself with the hope of being born in a higher caste the next time. ”

“ The first trace of modern caste is found in the “Institutes” of Manu: but here the rules of food, connubium and intercourse between the various castes are very different from what we find at present. (c) Caste so far from being eternal and changeless is constantly subject to modification, and this has been the case through the whole range of Hindu myth and history. (d) Caste is not an institution peculiar to Indian soil; but in its occupational form at least is widely prevalent elsewhere. (e) Caste is in its nature rather a matter of sociology than of religion. ”

“ He worked quickly, boring cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight. When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams running to waste. ”

“ CASTE AND THE LEGEND OF THE ARTISANS
However learned one may be, there is always something more to be learnt ; however much in favour one may be with kings, there is always something to fear ; however affectionate women may be, it is always necessary to be wary of them.–Sloka.
Caste is a puzzling subject to the new arrival in India who has not made a study of it. Everyone has heard of caste, and knows the use of the word in England, where it can only be applied to class. ”

“ The Caste System.—There are four great castes in India:—
1. The Brahmans, or highest caste, who are the priests, scholars, lawyers, physicians, teachers, etc. This order is highly reverenced by the lower castes, and its members are dignified, abstemious, and sedate. Their highest ideal is to bring their desires and appetites under complete control. They exercise great influence in the land. ”

“ THE MAGIC CASK
ONCE upon a time there was a man who dug up a big, earthenware cask in his field. So he took it home with him and told his wife to clean it out. But when his wife started brushing the inside of the cask, the cask suddenly began to fill itself with brushes. No matter how many were taken out, others kept on taking their place. So the man sold the brashes, and the family managed to live quite comfortably.
Once a coin fell into the cask by mistake. At once the brushes disappeared and the cask began to fill itself with money. So now the family became rich ”

“ Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of castes, the law of heredity has furthermore continued to play a fundamental part. Aptness is inevitably hereditary among the Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son follows the profession of the father. The principle of heredity of the professions being universally admitted, there has resulted the formation of castes as numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India castes are numbered by the thousand. Each new profession has for an immediate consequence the formation of a new caste. ”

“ A male member of the caste, biting one of the cakes and keeping it between his teeth, goes round the net, and then drags it to the water, in which the conical masses become disintegrated. Like the Besthas, they smear a new net with the blood of the first fish caught in it, but they do not burn a mesh of the net. ”

“ These persons constitute a distinct caste, trained from their infancy in daily exercises for the express purpose of exhibitions; and perhaps the whole world does not produce more perfect forms than those which are exhibited at these interesting but cruel sports. The combatants, clad in a single garment of light orange-coloured drawers extending half-way down the thigh, have their right arm furnished with a weapon, which, for want of a more appropriate term, we shall name a caestus, although different from the Roman instruments of that name. ”

“ Again, several castes have the same traditional occupation; about forty of the castes of the Central Provinces are classified as agriculturists, eleven as weavers, seven as fishermen, and so on. Distinctions of occupation therefore are not a sufficient basis for a classification of castes. Nor can a caste be simply defined as a body of persons who marry only among themselves, or, as it is termed, an endogamous group; for almost every important caste is divided into a number of subcastes which do not marry and frequently do not eat with each other. ”

“ A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The photo shows the baby's ears being prepared for the jewels her mother hopes will fill them by and by. Holes are made first and filled with cotton wool, graduated leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.
The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted by the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest stratum, but their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others. ”

“ Afterwards they drank the cassine, which is the potion of the white word, i. e., the potion of oblivion and peace.
Bernard Romans, “Natural History of Florida” (1775) , page 94, writes as follows:
The cassine is used by them (the Creeks) as a drink; they barbecue or toast the leaves and make a strong decoction of them; then men only are permitted to drink this liquor, to which they attribute many virtues. It is made so strong as to be black and raise a froth. When they drink it at their assemblies in the square they call it black drink. ”

“ Caste based on occupation. We have thus mainly on the evidence from anthropometry endeavoured to establish the fact that, as we find the existing population, the theory of the ethnological basis of caste must be to a great extent abandoned. We have then to search for some other solution of the question of the origin of our present castes. This can only be found in community of function or occupation. ”

“ The spread and growth of the Caste system is too [pg 90] gigantic a task to be achieved by the power or cunning of an individual or of a class. Similar in argument is the theory that the Brahmans created the caste. After what I have said regarding Manu, I need hardly say anything more, except to point out that it is incorrect in thought and malicious in intent. The Brahmans may have been guilty of many things, and I dare say they are, but the imposing of the caste system on the non-Brahman population was beyond their mettle. ”

“ But as an ascetic celibate he is as good as burned, so far as the material wellbeing of his Caste is concerned. A Caste, in order that it may be large enough to afford a vigorous communal life, must be maintained at a certain numerical strength. But to hope for this and to proclaim celibacy is the same as trying to cure atrophy by bleeding. ”

“ Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India, until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line. The colour of the skin had long ceased to be a matter of importance.”7 Again, they have mistaken mere descriptions for explanation and fought over them as though they were theories of origin. There are occupational, religious, etc. castes, it is true, but it is by no means an explanation of the origin of Caste. We have yet to find out why occupational groups are castes ”

“ These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a dark-skinned, non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom, or drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half- desert plains of the peninsula.
THE ORIGIN OF CASTES.—The conflict of races in Northern India gave rise to what is known as the system of castes; that is, society became divided into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose gradually four chief castes: (1) Brahmans, or priests; (2) warriors; (3) agriculturists and traders; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. ”

“ General Casement declared. He was a great little man, this General “Jack” Casement: a wiry, nervy, snappy little man, not much more than five feet tall, peaceful weight about 135 pounds and fighting weight about a ton—“an’ sure there’s sand enough in him to ballast the tracks clear to Californy,” Pat asserted. He had a brown beard and a bold blue eye and a voice like a whip-crack. His brother “Dan” Casement was smaller still, outside, but just as big inside. They two were commanders of the grading and track-laying outfits. ”

“ A more strange or beautiful sight can scarcely be imagined, says the Prince von Wied, than that of a tree laden with dozens of the curious nests, and animated by the presence of a party of Cassicans, whose glorious plumage seems to gain new beauty as they spread their tails, raise their wings, after the manner of the swan, inflate their breasts, and utter their flute-like cry, as though to attract the observation of a stranger, whose near approach they will permit without exhibiting any sign of fear. ”

“ They would naturally be put to the performance of the menial household duties, for which the servile castes were rendered unsuitable through their impure status. This would correspond with the tradition of the large number of castes originating in mixed descent, which is given in the Hindu sacred books. It has been seen that where menial castes are employed in the household, classes of mixed descent do as a matter of fact arise. And there are traces of a relationship between the cultivators and the menial castes, which would be best explained by such an origin. ”

“ It will be noticed that taken individually the definitions of three of the writers include too much or too little: none is complete or correct by itself and all have missed the central point in the mechanism of the Caste system. Their mistake lies in trying to define caste as an isolated unit by itself, and not as a group within, and with definite relations to, the system of caste as a whole. ”

“ But that did not deter me; nothing deterred me, till safe in the cellar I crouched down behind the casks to get my breath again before entering the hole beyond.
"I had made some noise in feeling my way around these casks, and I trembled lest these sounds had been heard upstairs! But this fear soon gave place to one far greater. Other sounds were making themselves heard. A din of small skurrying feet above, below, on every side of me! Rats! rats in the wall! rats on the cellar bottom! ”

“ They decide upon nothing until they have held a number of councils over it, and they deliberate very sagely before deciding. Meanwhile the chief orders the women to boil some cassine; which is a drink prepared from the leaves from a certain root and which they afterwards pass through a strainer. ”

“ Cassy is about eighteen, five feet three inches, or thereabouts, and a handsome face and figure. She has long dark hair, and a bright black eye. When she smiles there is a dimple in her left cheek. She has a good voice, and can sing several songs. ”

“ I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense. What could this cask have been built for? The more one studies over that, the more uncertain and unhappy he becomes. Some historians say that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, can dance on the head of this cask at the same time. ”

“ Various other cultivating castes also exist, whose origin can be traced to different sources; on obtaining possession of the land they have acquired the cultivating status, but retained their separate caste organisation and name. Other agricultural castes have been formed for the growing of special products. ”

“ Whether this for one moment diverted my attention I cannot say, but I heard the faint click of the case opening, I saw the little hand take up the larger clasp, and, resting it on the velvet of the case, slowly withdraw the miniature and the lock of golden hair. The case was closed again, and I knew that the fringed lids were rising, and the eyes, strange and dilated, hunted, met mine. I felt that the thing was advancing towards me, the light around it becoming dimmer; but the eyes were on me. ”

“ Permanent or temporary excommunication from caste [484] is imposed for the usual offences, and among those visited with the minor penalty are selling shoes, touching the carcase of a dog or cat, and killing a cow or buffalo, or allowing one to die with a rope round its neck. No food is cooked for five weeks in a house in which a cat has died. The social standing of the caste is low. ”