The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caste, by W. A. Fraser

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Title: Caste

Author: W. A. Fraser

Release Date: September 26, 2005 [EBook #16752]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTE ***

Produced by Al Haines

CASTE

BY

W. A. FRASER

AUTHOR OF "RED MEEKINS," "BULLDOG CARNEY," "THE THREE SAPPHIRES," "THE
LONE FURROW," "THOROUGHBREDS," ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

CASTE. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CASTE

CHAPTER I

The three Mahrattas, Sindhia, Holkar, and Bhonsla, were plotting the
overthrow of the British, and the Peshwa was looking out of brooding
eyes upon Hodson, the Resident at Poona.

Up on the hill, in the temple of Parvati, the priests repeated prayers
to the black goddess calling for the destruction of the hated whites.

Each one of the twenty-four priests as he came with a handful of
marigolds laid them one by one at the feet of the four-armed hideous
idol, repeating: "_Om, Parvati_! _Om, Parvati_!" the comprehensive,
all-embracing "_Om_" that meant adoration and a clamour for favour.
Even to Nandi, the brass bull that carried Shiva, he appealed, "_Om
Shiva_!"

But down on the rock-plateau, where gleamed in the hot sun marble
palaces, a more malign influence was at work. Dandhu Panth, the
adopted son of the Peshwa, had come back from Oxford, and the English
believed he had been changed into an Englishman, Nana Sahib.

Outwardly he was a sporting, well-dressed gentleman, such as Oxford
turns out; but in his heart was lust of power, and hatred of the white
race that he felt would make his inheritance, the Peshwaship, but a
vassalage. His dreams of ruling India would fade, and he would sit a
pensioner of the British. The Mahrattas had been stigmatised by a
captious Mogul ruler, "mountain rats." As Hindus there was a sharp
cleavage of character; the Brahmins, fanatical, high up in the caste
scale, and all the rest of the breed inferior, vicious, blood-thirsty,
a horde of pirates. Even the man who first made them a power, Sivaji,
had been of questiona