thods of work in that narrow rut of life. One day the writer was
accosted by a weaver who was in a famishing condition. He made a
pathetic plea for charity. Manchester cloths were flooding the market;
they therefore could not sell the products of their labour at living
rates. It was suggested that they take up some other trade that could
furnish them a decent living. He lifted up his hands in horror at the
impious suggestion, that they abandon their caste-prescribed
occupation! He felt that he and his were ground between the upper and
nether millstones. To suggest to him that they even change the kind or
style of article which they prepared upon their looms for the market
would have been equally impossible. Out in the villages, where these
people live, it would seem almost as absurd for the weaver to become a
carpenter as for the weaver who uses only cotton thread to become a
silk-weaver, or for those who weave coarse white cloths to produce the
finer coloured cloths worn by the women. No; for generations their
people have given themselves to the production of only one article.
"It is the custom of our people" is the final word. And what has
become customary is by caste enactment made obligatory. And woe be to
him who defies caste. And thus the caste-prescribed trade becomes the
be-all and the end-all of life.

These four--the connubial, the convivial, the contactual, and the
occupational--are the constant factors of the caste existence and
activity in India. But in addition to these, caste takes other
functions and assumes other forms in certain localities and under
certain circumstances. Definite forms of religious observance are
often enjoined, certain places of pilgrimage are sanctioned, marriage
forms prescribed, marriage obligations defined, divorce made possible
or impossible, and the limit of marriage expenses set. There is hardly
a department of life or a duty which men owe to their dead which does
not enter the domain of caste legislation somewhere or other.

A strange and very interesting peculiarity of certain castes is their
totemistic aspect. This characteristic has only recently been
discovered. "At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the
average Hindu, we find, in the Dravidian region of India, a large body
of tribes and castes each of which is broken up into a number of
totemistic septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a
plant, or some material object, natural or artificial