du
minds may, perhaps, be most clearly seen in the history of the Christian
missions and in comparatively recent times. The Jesuits Xavier and Fra
dei Nobili did everything but become Brahmans in order to convert the
south of India--they put on a dress of cavy or yellow colour, they made
frequent ablutions, they lived on vegetables and milk, they put on their
foreheads the sandalwood paste used by the Brahmans--and Gregory XV.
published a bull sanctioning caste regulations in the Christian churches
of India. The Danish mission of Tranquebar, the German mission of the
heroic Schwarz, whose headquarters were Tanjore, also permitted caste to
be retained by their followers. Even the priests of Buddha, whose life
was a protest against caste, re-erected the system in the island of
Ceylon, where the _radis_ or _radias_ were reduced to much the same
state as the Pariahs.[24] Protestant missions have made but little
progress, even in recent years. The number of native converts to
Christianity rose from 1,246,000 in 1872 to 2,664,000 in 1901; these
figures, however, are by themselves rather misleading, for Christianity
appears to have touched the higher classes in India not at all, only the
out-castes.

It is still the general law that to constitute a good marriage the
parties must belong to the same caste, but to unconnected families.
Undoubtedly, however, the three higher castes were always permitted to
intermarry with the caste next below their own, the issue taking the
lower caste or sometimes forming a new class. A Sudra need not marry a
wife of the same caste or sect as himself. In 1871 it was decided by the
judicial committee of the privy council that a marriage between a
zemindar (land-owner) of the Malavar class, a subdivision of the Sudra
caste, with a woman of the Vellala class of Sudras is lawful. Generally
also a woman may not marry beneath her own caste. The feeling is not so
strong against a man marrying even in the lowest caste, for Manu permits
the son of a Brahman and a Sudra mother to raise his family to the
highest caste in the seventh generation. The illegitimacy resulting from
an invalid marriage does not render incapable of caste; at least it does
not so disqualify the lawful children of the bastard. On a forfeiture of
caste by either spouse intercourse ceases between the spouses: if the
out-caste be a sonless woman, she is accounted dead, and funeral rites
are performed for her; if she have a son, he is bo