If aJain come into contact with an outcaste, he like the Hindu, touches fire or water to purify himself ; if he have occasion to receive anything from a Pariah, he causes the Pariah to set it down on the ground, and purifies it with fire or water before he takes it up. Even shepherds and Koli incur pollution by touching the Dher race, which they remove in a similar manner. In the course of evidence before a criminal court in Gnjerat, in August 1853, a Koli said, ' The shep herds Bhugwen and Rodo came to me, and said they had both touched Dhers, and become impure, and asked me to give them fire. I took a lighted coal out of my hookah, and each of them touched his forehead with it. I threw it down, and they then took my hookah and smoked.' In other words, they were then purified, otherwise he could not have given them his hookah. This is a very ancient Asiatic purificatory rite. Isaiah (vii. 5, 6, and 7) says Woe is me, . . . I am a man of unclean lips. . . . Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, . . . and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo ! this bath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.' If a Sudra Hindu ask a drink of a Brahman, it will be given in a brass vessel, but from a distance, the Brahman stretching forwards and placing the pot between. It is returned similarly,. but before
receiving it back, water is poured over to purify it. No one of the helot races can enter the house of a Hindu, but he will stand at a distance and shout out his message. These are all illustrations of the usual operation of caste in India, which has held its own in the religious, social, and political changes of 3000 years. Since railways and steamboats have been running, and the educational system of the British has equalized all classes, much of the dread of caste defilement has disappeared, but it is still the prominent feature in everyday Hindu life.
All the great Hindu reformers have proclaimed the brotherhood of man, and have denounced castes, but their followers are only free amongst themselves.
A line in the Mahabharat is Visesho'ati carnanam ; Brahman idam jagat, Brahmans parva srishtam hi ; Karmabhir varnatam gatam : There is no distinction of castes ; the whole of this world is Brahmanical, as originally created by Brahma. It is only in consequence of men's actions that it has come into a state of caste divi sions.'—Growse, p. 502 ; Forbes Rasamala, or Hindu Annals; Wilson's Glossary ; Sir H. Elliot's Supplementary Glossary; Sir Walter Elliot in Ethnological Society's Journal.