are not here to
commend or blame the institutions and prejudices of a whole race of
people, radicated in them by a long succession of ages, on which no
reason or argument, on which no vicissitudes of things, no mixtures of
men, or foreign conquest, have been able to make the smallest
impression. The aboriginal Gentoo inhabitants are all dispersed into
tribes or castes,--each caste born to an invariable rank, rights, and
descriptions of employment, so that one caste cannot by any means pass
into another. With the Gentoos, certain impurities or disgraces, though
without any guilt of the party, infer loss of caste; and when the
highest caste, that of Brahmin, which is not only noble, but sacred, is
lost, the person who loses it does not slide down into one lower, but
reputable,--he is wholly driven from all honest society. All the
relations of life are at once dissolved. His parents are no longer his
parents; his wife is no longer his wife; his children, no longer his,
are no longer to regard him as their father. It is something far worse
than complete outlawry, complete attainder, and universal
excommunication. It is a pollution even to touch him; and if he touches
any of his old caste, they are justified in putting him to death.
Contagion, leprosy, plague, are not so much shunned. No honest
occupation can be followed. He becomes an _halicore_, if (which is rare)
he survives that miserable degradation.

Upon those whom all the shocking catalogue of tortures I have mentioned
could not make to flinch one of the modes of losing caste for Brahmins
and other principal tribes was practised. It was to harness a bullock at
the court-door, and to put the Brahmin on his back, and to lead him
through the towns, with drums beating before him. To intimidate others,
this bullock, with drums, (the instrument, according to their ideas, of
outrage, disgrace, and utter loss of caste,) was led through the
country; and as it advanced, the country fled before it. When any
Brahmin was seized, he was threatened with this pillory, and for the
most part he submitted in a moment to whatever was ordered. What it was
may be thence judged. But when no possibility existed of complying with
the demand, the people by their cries sometimes prevailed on the tyrants
to have it commuted for cruel scourging, which was accepted as mercy. To
some Brahmins this mercy was denied, and the act of indelible infamy
executed. Of these men one came to the Company's co