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Their dress of a few yards of gauze wound about their waists, and red sandals, would not lead one to think that they handle more money than any other class of people in the East. They borrow from the great English banks without security save that of their caste name, and lend to the Eurasian clerks just behind them at twelve per cent a month.
The only clothing of the horse-soldiers was the apron, and their weapon a light club in the form of a mace or battle-axe. Those warriors, on the contrary, who fought in chariots belonged to the highest rank of the military caste, spent large sums on the decoration of their two- wheeled chariots and the harness of their magnificent horses, and went to battle in their most costly ornaments.
This is directly opposed to one of our strongest instincts as social animals: the instinct of election and selection in this present world. The Brotherhood does what it can, of course, to segregate the different classes and caste of men into creeds and missions and saints and sinners.
As confirmation, it is noteworthy how many of the religious leaders of modern times, like Buddha of old, are other than brahman by caste. In a previous chapter the names of a number of these non-brahman leaders were given. Even the Hindu ascetics of these latter days are more numerously non-brahman than of old, for in theory only brahmans have reached the ascetical stage of religious development.
The wise men will govern: accordingly the nations will never be happy save when philosophers are kings, or when kings are philosophers. The warriors will fight to defend the city, never as aggressors. They will form a caste poor, stern to itself, and redoubtable. They will have no individual possessions; everything will be in common, houses, furniture, weapons, wives even, and children.
The members of that caste and they alone are qualified to superintend religious observances, and without them the intercourse between man and the gods cannot be kept up. From his birth the brahman is a being of superior holiness; he is destined for higher ends than other men, and the distinction between him and them must be manifested in all his acts and habits throughout his life.
"Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must, in this country, remain for ages, probably forever, a separate and inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable; which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?"
Against its impulse to speak I clenched my jaws; for one word against Brahm or the Triad or the Shastras would doom me; one act of kindness to the outcast Brahmans who now and then dragged themselves to die on the burning sands a blessing said, a cup of water given and I became one of them, lost to family, country, privileges, caste. The love conquered!
The provinces and towns retained the administrative complexity of an archaic age, even to local tariffs. Thus under the monarchy privilege and inequality pervaded every phase of life, and, as the judiciary must be, more or less, the mouthpiece of society, the judiciary came to be the incarnation of caste. Speaking broadly, the judicial office, under the monarchy, was vendible.
For the German this answer was enough. It placed him in the merchant class. I asked him what sort of a Kaufmann he was. He then told me he was president of a large electrical company. Of course, with us he would have answered first that he was president of the electrical company, but being a German he simply disclosed his caste without going into details.
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