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amassed, the present purity of the Company's servants is best attested by the unfeigned respect in which most of them are held by the natives, and by the very moderate fortunes which, after long and arduous service, they can now attain to.

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER XIII.

AFTER So long a digression to the Mussulmans, I intend to go back to the Hindûs; and though I know no more of their history than I have already sent you, their customs and manners, and the division of castes, which so peculiarly distinguish them from every other nation, may perhaps be interesting.

The division of the different classes of society into separate tribes, forbidden to intermarry or hold communion with each other, seems anciently to have been by no means confined to the Hindûs. The perpetuity of trades and professions in ancient Egypt, the setting aside the tribe of Levi and house of Aaron for the priesthood among the Israelites, attest this; and though, in the latter instance, it was by the culiar disposition of heaven, we may well suppose it to have been in conformity with the

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wants of that people, and with the customs of the surrounding nations, whose ignorance and grossness required a visible pomp as the external sign of religion and devotion. So, in compassion to their weakness, the ark of the covenant was permitted to be built, which, like the moving temples of even the modern Hindûs, accompanied the nation in its wanderings, whether in warlike expeditions or peaceful ceremonies, the brazen serpent was erected in the wilderness, and the tent of the tabernacle was watched and guarded by a consecrated tribe, as the family of Koreish served the sacred Caaba.

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With the exception, however, of the customs of the small remnant of the Jewish nation, and perhaps of the Chinese hereditary trades, the Hindûs are the only people which now presents a complete model of the system of castes. number of distinct classes at present acknowledged among the Hindûs, is infinitely greater than it was at first, if we may believe the ancient books in which they are enumerated. But as this very artificial system must have been formed long after the wants of society had produced difference of professions to supply those wants, it is most probable that, in order to introduce with more authority a division so extremely oppressive to certain orders, the lawgivers referred it to more ancient times, and thus

added the sanction which respect for ancestry never fails to give, to their own institutions. If one wished to illustrate the doctrine that knowledge is power, it would be scarcely possible to find a history more apposite than that of the subordination of castes in India. Nothing but superior knowledge could have procured for the Brahmins a sufficient ascendancy over the minds of their countrymen, to allow them to take to themselves the first rank in society, to enjoy without labour the conveniences and even luxuries which others must toil to gain, and without taking on themselves the burdens of either government or war, to reap the advantages of both, and to enjoy the privileges without incurring the dangers of dominion. Such, however, is the highly endowed Brahmin, who, in the solitude of his caverned mountains, or consecrated groves, studied the various powers and passions of the human mind, in order to bend and wind it the more surely to his purpose, while he investigated those laws of nature, the application of which, among a simple people, might make him alternately the prophet of blessings or the denouncer of woes. Nor were these the only means by which they virtually governed their fellow-citizens. Those religious feelings which are inherent in every human breast, and which sanctify every association with which they are

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combined, are of all others the most easily wrought upon.

The Brahmins feigned to hold immediate intercourse with the deity: they personified his attributes, and held them up as objects of wor ship to the people; they multiplied ceremonies and expiations, in which themselves were the officiating ministers, and thus placed themselves in the awful situation of mediators between the gods and men. Thus powerfully armed and arrayed, the first bold step towards the securing for ever such transcendant advantages, was the positive prohibition against the study of any of the sciences which had founded and maintained their empire of opinion, by any one who should either bear arms or exercise any profession separate from the priesthood; and this would probably not be difficult, for the natural disposition of man inclines him to lean on others for that knowledge and that protection which singly he feels so necessary, and at the same time so incapable of affording to himself. Even the monarchs of the earth were below the Brahmins in dignity. Caressed and flattered, or reviled and anathematized by the subtle Brahmins, the greatest sovereigns moved but as they willed; and if, provoked by their insolence, he called upon his warriors for revenge, he had no sooner extirpated the race within his own do

minions, than all the horrors of conscience seized upon him; and expiations, the recital of which make the blood run cold, or sometimes suicide, were resorted to, in order to propitiate the gods, or rather the priests, who styled themselves gods upon earth. Nor did these always suffice: the Brahmin was at liberty to adopt any of the professions of the other castes; and they not unfrequently seized the sword of extermination and revenge, and more than one record remains among the actions of their deified heroes, of whole nations of warriors utterly exterminated even to the babe at its mother's breast.

The four great tribes into which the Brahmins feign mankind to have been originally divided, are, first, the Brahmanas, who proceeded with the Vedas from the mouth of Brahma the Creator, and they were made superior to the other classes. The protector from ill, who sprung from the arms of Brahma, was named Cshatriya. He whose profession was commerce and husbandry, and attendance on cattle, was named Vaissya, and was produced from the body of Brahma, while his feet gave being to the fourth or Sudra class, whose business was voluntarily to serve for hire *.

* For this, and whatever concerns the castes, see Mr. Colebrooke's Paper on the Enumeration of Indian Classes, Art. III. As. Res. vol. V. p. 53, Calcutta edition.

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