orders of officiating priests--the Purohita, or family
priest, who performed all the domestic rites, and probably gave
advice in secular matters, and the Guru, who is the head of a
religious sect, making tours of superintendence and exaction, and
having the power to degrade from caste and to restore. In some cases
the Guru is recognized as the Mehitra or officer of the caste
assembly, from whom he receives Huks, or salary, and an exemption
from house and stamp taxes, and service as begarree (Steele's _Law
and Customs of Hindoo Castes within the Dekhan Provinces_, 1826;
later edition, 1868). Expulsion from caste follows on a number of
moral offences (e.g. assault, murder, &c.), as well as ceremonial
offences (e.g. eating prohibited food, eating with persons of lower
caste, abstaining from funeral rites, having connexion with a
low-caste woman). Exclusion means that it is not allowed to eat with
or enter the houses of the members of the caste, the offender being
in theory not degraded but dead. For some heinous offences, i.e.
against the express letter of the Shasters, no readmission is
possible. But generally this depends on the ability of the out-caste
to pay a fine, and to supply the caste with an expiatory feast of
sweetmeats. He has also to go through the Sashtanyam, or prostration
of eight members, and to drink the Panchakaryam, i.e. drink of the
five products of the cow (_Description of People of India_, Abbe J.A.
Dubois, Missionary in Mysore, Eng. Trans., London, 1817; edition by
Pope, Madras, 1862).

[19] _Manu_. x. 88-90.

[20] Wheeler ii. 533.

[21] _Travels of Fah Hian_, c. 27.

[22] Strabo, _Ind._ sec. 59.

[23] Arrian, _Indic._ c. 11, 12; Diod. Sic. ii. c. 40, 41; and Strabo
xv. 1.

[24] Irving, _Theory and Practice of Caste_ (London, 1859).

[25] _Manual of Archaeology_.

[26] _Revue des deux mondes_, 15th September 1848.

CASTEL, LOUIS BERTRAND (1688-1757), French mathematician, was born at
Montpellier on the 11th of November 1688, and entered the order of the
Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted
himself entirely to mathematics and natural philosophy. He wrote several
scientific works, that which attracted most attention at the time being
his _Optique des couleurs_ (1740), or treatise on the melody of colours.
He endeavoured to illustrate the subject