Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore Part 7

My next subject of inquiry relating to labour was as to the probable total amount paid for it, and, from an estimate made for me by a very competent authority residing on the mines, I believe that the following account is substantially correct. The amount of wages paid monthly to native labourers and the small number of Eurasians working on the mines is about 2 lakhs of rupees. To natives who fell and bring in timber for fuel about 80,000 rupees monthly are paid. On quarrying and carting granite, and in building, about 30,000 rupees a month are spent; on the carriage of materials from the railway about 15,000 rupees, and probably from 5,000 to 10,000 rupees on local products such as straw, grain, oil, mats, bamboos, tiles, etc. Now, if we take no account of the last two items, and deduct 10,000 rupees from the second and third, we shall have a fair estimate of three lakhs of rupees a month as the amount spent on the Kolar gold field in wages, which, taking the rupee at par (and I think I am justified in doing so, as for expenditure in India by labourers it goes about as far as it ever did), amounts to 360,000 a year. And this great sum is earned by people who either have land and work for occasional periods of the year on the mines, or by labourers, who, when they have saved enough money from their wages (which they could do with ease in a year), will acquire and cultivate a small holding. A large proportion of this sum of 360,000 a year--probably two-thirds of it--goes to improving the status and condition of the agricultural and labouring cla.s.ses, and I need hardly add that this not only leads to an improvement of the resources of the State, but enables the people the better to contend with famine and times of scarcity, and thus still further improves the financial condition of the Government. And it is largely in consequence of the great sums brought into Mysore by the planters and the gold companies that the revenues of Mysore are in such a nourishing condition, and that year after year the annual budget presents an appearance more and more favourable.

And here this question naturally arises. What can the Government of Mysore do to stimulate the employment of labour in mining, and thus still further strengthen the financial position of the State? I am prepared to show that it can do much to stimulate the opening of new mines, and also to encourage many of those now in existence which have not as yet been able to pay dividends.

The reader will see by a glance at the map that the auriferous tracts of Mysore (to which I shall presently more particularly allude) are of great extent, and, judging from the report of the geological surveyor employed by the Government, and especially from the existence of numerous old native workings, there is no reason why prizes even greater than the best of those already obtained should not exist. Now one of the greatest obstacles in the way of rapid progress lies in the fact that before mining can be got fairly under weigh much preliminary work has to be done, and the shareholders have therefore a long time to wait before any paying return can be obtained. But if the preliminary work, such as the providing of water, the collection of building materials, and the making of roads, etc., were carried out before a company was formed, mining could be begun at once, and results rapidly arrived at, and the frittering away of money, both in England and India, that at present necessarily occurs, would be averted. Now the country has already been largely explored, and the Government is therefore in a position to know the places where favourable results will probably be obtained, and as the State, besides the other advantages I have previously pointed out, gets a royalty on the gold, it has a natural interest in doing its utmost to select the most favourable sites for new mining operations. Such sites then should, with the aid of experienced mining advisers, be selected by the Government, which itself should execute the preliminary works previously specified, and then advertise the blocks, so selected and prepared, for sale in the London market. For such prepared blocks purchasers could readily be found, and if the price they paid merely covered the bare cost of the preliminary works, the expenditure of capital that would thus be stimulated, with all its consequent direct and indirect advantages to the province, would amply repay the Government for its trouble and outlay.

But the State may give yet another stimulus to mining, which, I feel sure, would prove of great advantage to the State. The present royalty is five per cent. on the value of the gold produced, and from this source the Government last year received 5 lakhs and 18,000 rupees. Now the prosperous companies which are paying good dividends do not feel this to be a very serious burden, but it is a serious burden--every shilling of expenditure indeed is--to a company which has not begun to pay dividends, and I would suggest that, till a company is able to pay dividends, one-half of the royalty, or, better still, the whole of it, might be remitted. This sum would by no means be lost to the State, for does not the milk that is left in the cow go to the calf?

The measures I have proposed would be of such obvious advantage to the State that, were I a shareholder, or intending investor, in mines in Mysore, I should have no hesitation in suggesting their adoption, but it may be as well to mention that I am neither.

I drove one afternoon with my host to the court on the field, and had some conversation with the magistrate regarding thefts at the mines, and it certainly appears that a special Act is required to check the stealing of gold. Sponge-gold (i.e., gold from which the quicksilver has been evaporated), quartz, or gold amalgam, if found in the possession of any person, renders the individual liable to prosecution, if the possession of gold in any of these forms cannot be satisfactorily accounted for. But the individual cannot be called to account for having ordinary pure gold in possession. Now in a man's possession at the mines there has been found all the means of separating the gold by quicksilver, and it is therefore quite clear that gold stolen in either of the first three mentioned forms may, after having been deprived of its concomitant impurities, be held by an individual to any amount, and even by a workman earning 6d. a day, without his being liable to be called upon to account for its possession.

Some Act to meet this kind of case is then clearly required--an Act similar to our Mysore Coffee-stealing Prevention Act, which provides that any person not a planter is liable to be called upon to account for coffee in his possession.

A difficult point occurs where quartz is found in a hut occupied by several people, as it is impossible to charge any one person with being in illegal possession of the article. There are numerous evidences of gold stealing, and certainly some summary process ought to be established with the view of checking these thefts. I may add that the Government is much interested in this matter, as five per cent. of the gold belongs to it, and is handed over in the shape of royalty. Those who are most concerned should bring the matter annually before the members of the Representative a.s.sembly. Even in England remedies for, or mitigations of, evils are not provided without much continuous parliamentary hammering.

After discussing the subject of gold stealing with the magistrate, I called on the manager of the Mysore mine, and afterwards went with my host to a lawn tennis party at the house of the doctor of the mines, who is employed by the various companies. He has a comfortable bungalow, which is at a considerable elevation above the level of the valley, and commands an extensive view of the surrounding country and of the distant hills.

Above the house, and at some little distance on one side of it, stands the hospital, and on a knoll just below, the building of the new Roman Catholic church was in progress, and the walls were nearly finished. From the doctor's bungalow a good general view of the whole field can be obtained, and I was particularly struck with the number of buildings to be seen in all directions. I was told that from this point as many as thirty tall chimneys can be counted.

There is a great want of water in the field, for purposes connected with the separation of the gold from the quartz, and tanks are being provided to store it. I venture to suggest that a considerable distance of the catchment area on the sides, and especially at the back, of the tanks should be honeycombed with pits, as the water, which is often largely lost from falling in heavy deluges, would thus percolate into the ground, and so find its way into the bed of the tank by degrees. I may mention that a great effect has been produced in the case of a tank on one of my coffee estates by thus digging pits to catch water that would otherwise run directly down into the tank, to be largely lost by the overflow during heavy rains, and a similar effect has been produced on the property of a neighbour. In fact, the effect produced by such pits on the supply of water in tanks is far greater than one could have imagined to be possible, and I may therefore, in pa.s.sing, call particular attention to the advisability of such pits being made near tanks used for agricultural purposes. On the margins of the tanks, and in parts of the bed where sufficient soil exists, trees should be planted, with the view of diminishing evaporation from the surface of the water.

When the railway is completed, soil might easily be brought into the field oil trucks, and the pits dug for trees should be filled with it. The planting of trees in and around the field would certainly be beneficial in many obvious ways, and would improve the climate and probably affect, not perhaps the amount, but the distribution of the rainfall. I would suggest that if earth closets were used by the people, and the used earth spread around the trees, there would be a great improvement in their growth. This would at once improve the sanitation of the field and beautify it at the same time.

The reader has now probably learned enough of this rising settlement,[29]

and I have only to add that on the day following I returned to Bangalore, after having had a most pleasant and interesting time of it with my friends on the Kolar field.

I next pa.s.s to a brief mention of the other auriferous tracts in Mysore, which were surveyed in 1887 by Mr. R. Bruce Foote, Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, who, in connection with his investigations between February 2nd and May 7th of that year, travelled no less than 1,300 miles in Mysore in marching and field work. A full report of his work appears in the "Selections,"[30] and this is accompanied by a map in which Mr. Foote has sketched out the distribution of the auriferous rocks.

In the "Selections" alluded to there, is also a "Report on the Auriferous Tracts in Mysore," by Mr. M. F. Lavelle, and "Notes on the Occurrence of Gold and other Minerals in Mysore," by Mr. Walter Marsh, Mining Engineer.

But in the brief remarks I have to make I shall confine my attention to Mr. Foote's Report.

Mr. Foote informs us that the chief gold-yielding rocks of Southern India belong to one great geological system, to which, from the rocks forming it occurring very largely in the Dharwar country, he two years previously gave the name of the Dharwar System, as he saw the necessity of separating them from the great Gneissic System, with which they had formerly been grouped. In his long tour in Mysore he found that every important auriferous tract visited lies within one or other of the areas of the Dharwar rocks, or forms an outlying patch of the same. These Dharwar rocks, it appears, are the auriferous series in Mysore, the ceded districts, and the Southern Maharatta country.

Mr. Foote groups the auriferous rock series of Mysore into four groups--the central, west-central, western, and the eastern--the last group being formed by the Kolar gold field, which was not included in the tracts Mr. Foote was called upon to visit. He then gives a systematic account of his examination of the country, beginning with the central, and ending with the western group.

He examined ten auriferous tracts or localities in the central group, beginning with the Holgen workings near the southern border of the province, and ending with the Hale Kalgudda locality near the northern border, and reports more or less favourably on five out of the ten localities in question. For brevity I use the numbers into which he has divided the localities he regards as more or less promising. Of part of number three, he says that his examination, though but a cursory one, led him to regard it "very favourably," and of another part, he says that the whole outline indicated, which is seven miles long by about a mile wide, is deserving of very close examination, and the reefs of being prospected to some depth. As regards number five, he reports the existence of old native workings occupying a considerable area, and which showed evidence of much work being done. Fine reefs are to be seen pretty numerously, and he desires to draw attention to this promising tract. With reference to number eight, he says that "taking all things into consideration this tract is one of the most promising I have seen." Of number nine he says, "with regard to this gold-yielding locality, it is one of very great promise and worthy of all attention from mining capitalists," and as regards number ten, he reports that, though not so favourable as the two numbers previously mentioned, it is yet deserving of the closest investigation.

The west-central group was examined by Mr. Foote in the same order, i.e., from south to north, and he tells us that the auriferous localities in this group occur all in small detached strips or patches of schistose rock scattered over the older gneissic series. They are really, he says, remnants of the once apparently continuous spread of schistose (Dharwar) rocks which covered great part of the southern half of the Peninsula. Mr. Foote examined in all fifteen localities, and they do not, from his account, seem to present appearances as favourable as those of the central group, and he only recommends that attention should be paid to six of them. As regards the first locality mentioned, he says that, though the results from washings and other indications were not very favourable, the field was deserving of further close prospecting, as the nature of the country is favourable. Of locality number five, he says that it contains a considerable number of large and well defined reefs, to which a great amount of attention has been paid by the old native miners, and thinks that they are deserving of the closest attention at the present time by deep prospecting on an ample scale. Of number seven he finds it impossible to form any positive opinion, though he adds that the size of the old workings show that the old miners found the place worth their attention for a long period. He advises that number eleven should be prospected and tested. Locality thirteen he considers to deserve close prospecting, and he makes much the same remark as to number fourteen.

The western group, Mr. Foote tells us, is far poorer in auriferous localities than either of the others, and they are scattered widely apart.

He examined in all seven localities. Of the first locality examined, he says that the geological features are all favourable to the occurrence of gold, and that the locality is worthy of very careful prospecting. In locality number two, such a good show of coa.r.s.e grained gold was got from the sands of a stream that he thought a portion of the land from which its water came ought to be closely tested in order to trace the source of the gold found in the stream. When writing on locality number three, Mr. Foote observes that the elevated tract of the auriferous rocks of which the Bababudan mountains form the centre is one well deserving great attention both from the geologist and the mining prospector, it being an area of great disturbance, the rocks being greatly contorted on a large scale and, the north and south sides at least of the area, much cut up by great faults. The whole of the auriferous areas here, he says, are deserving of close survey, for even the best of them are very imperfectly known, and much of what was known to the old miners in former generations has been forgotten. "From the fact," writes Mr. Foote, "that in my hurried tour I came upon no less than five sets of old workings that had not been brought under the notice of Messrs. Lavelle and Marsh (reports of whose investigations are given in the "Selections"), I quite expect to hear that many other old abandoned workings exist in wild and jungly tracts which bound in the hilly and mountainous parts of the country." In locality number five such fine shows of gold were obtained, and there was such a good looking old mine, and quartz reefs of great size, that Mr. Foote considered the place deserving of "very marked attention from earnest prospectors."

It is evident, from what Mr. Foote has said, that there is much to be done in the way of exploring and testing the Mysore province for gold, and I hope that what I have written may be the means of attracting further attention to the subject.

At the close of his report Mr. Foote mentions the fact that "a great d.y.k.e of beautiful porphyry traverses the hills east of the Karigatta temple overlooking Seringapatam. The porphyry, which is of warm brown or chocolate colour, includes many crystals of lighter coloured felspar, and dark crystals of hornblende. The stone would take a very high polish, and for decorative purposes of high cla.s.s, such as vases, panels and bases for busts and tazzas, etc., it is unequalled in South India, and deserving of all attention. If well polished it fully equals many of the highly prized antique porphyries. The d.y.k.e is of great thickness and runs for fully a mile, so is practically inexhaustible. Blocks of very large size could be raised, and from the situation of the d.y.k.e on the side of two steep hills, it would be very easy to open up large quarries if needful." As this d.y.k.e is close to a railway it may be worthy of the attention of capitalists.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Printed for the use of the Government, and kindly lent to me by the Dewan of Mysore.

[26] Mr. Bosworth-Smith, _vide_ p. 36 of his Report, says that, up to 1889, only three finds of iron tools had been met with in the old native workings.

[27] In Mr. Hyde Clarke's paper ent.i.tled "Gold in India," London, Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1881, it is stated that "Dr. Burnell brings direct proof as to the abundance of gold, by his successful decipherment of a remarkable inscription in the Tanjore temple. Dr.

Burnell is thus enabled to state that in the eleventh century gold was still the most common precious metal in India, and stupendous quant.i.ties of it are mentioned. He considers, too, that this gold was obtained from mines, and that the Moslem invasion interrupted their workings." It does not, however, appear, at least in Mr. Hyde Clarke's paper, that the inscription deciphered by Dr. Burnell makes any reference to gold mining.

[28] "The Kolar Gold Field in the State of Mysore." Reprinted from the "Madras Mail," December, 1885; Madras, the Madras Mail Press. London, Messrs. H. S. King and Co., 1885.

[29] Those who desire detailed information are referred to Mr. P.

Bosworth-Smith's "Report on the Kolar Gold Field and its Southern Extension." Madras, Government Press, 1889. Mr. Bosworth-Smith writes as Government Mineralogist to the Madras Presidency.

[30] "Selections from the Records of the Mysore Government. Reports on Auriferous Tracts in Mysore." Bangalore. Printed at the Mysore Government Press, 1887.

CHAPTER VIII.

CASTE.

In Krilof's fable of "The Peasant and the Horse," the latter murmurs at the way his master throws oats broad-cast on the soil. "How much better,"

argues the horse, "it would have been to have kept them in his granary, or even to have given them to me to eat!" But the oats grow, and in due time are garnered, and from them the same horse is fed the year following. The horse, as we have seen, was unable to comprehend the working and the meaning of his master's acts; and, in the same way, we often see that man equally fails to comprehend the nature and effect of things around him.

And thus it is, and for long has been, as regards the inst.i.tution I am now about to consider. People in general have ignorantly murmured at the inst.i.tution of caste; and, having ever looked at it with highly-civilized spectacles, and having seen especially a number of the inconveniences it has caused to the educated population of the towns, it has been argued that caste is the curse of all India. But it seems to me that an attentive, unprejudiced examination tends to prove that in former times it was exactly the reverse, and that at the present moment, as far as all the ignorant rural population is concerned, it may be considered, with reference to the state of the people, as a valuable and useful inst.i.tution.

And here, at the outset, I wish it to be clearly understood that an immense divergence has taken place between the town and country populations of India. The former have advanced with rapid strides on the paths of enlightenment and progress, while the latter, it is hardly too much to say, have remained almost universally stationary. To argue, therefore, from one to the other is not only impossible, but absurd; and it is merely a waste of time to point out, at any length, that what may be admirably suited to one set of people may be a positive nuisance to another. With reference, then, to this question of caste, instead of treating India as a whole, I shall divide it into town and country populations. In the first place, I shall treat of the effects of caste on the country populations, amongst whom I have lived; and, in the second place, I shall offer some considerations regarding the effects of the inst.i.tution amongst the people of the towns.

And, first of all, as to its effects on the rural population.

In these observations on caste I shall not commence with any attempt to trace its origin, nor shall I endeavour to enumerate the countless forms it has a.s.sumed amongst the peoples of the great peninsula. My aim is to direct the attention of the reader not to the dry bones of its history so much as to the living effects of the inst.i.tution. It is certainly a matter of interest to know something of the peculiar customs of the various tribes and races; but it is to be regretted that people generally have rested content with information of that sort, and have seldom attempted to investigate those points which are, I conceive, mainly of use and interest. What Indians may or may not do--what they may eat, what they may drink, and what clothing they may put on--are not matters on which inquirers should bestow much time. The information most needed, and which has not yet, or only in the most imperfect sense, been acquired, is as to what caste has done for good or evil. It shall be my endeavour to solve that question; and I imagine the solution would be in a great measure effected if I could, in the first instance, answer the following questions:

1. How far has caste acted as a moral restraint amongst the Indians themselves?

2. How far advantageously or the reverse in segregating them socially from the conquerors who have overrun their country?

On the first of these points I may observe, without the slightest exaggeration, that very few of our countrymen indeed have had such opportunities as myself of forming a correct opinion; for very few Englishmen have been so entirely dependent on a native population for society. For the first four or five years of my residence in Manjarabad[31] there were only three Europeans besides myself, and we were all about twelve miles apart. The natural consequence was that the farmers of the country were my sole companions; and, as I joined in their sports and had some of them always about me, terms of intimacy sprang up which never could have existed under any other circ.u.mstances. And further, when it is taken into consideration that I have employed the poorer of the better castes in various capacities on my estates, and a large number of the Pariahs, or labourer caste, it seems pretty clear that I ought to be a tolerably competent judge as to whether caste did or did not exercise a favourable influence on the morals of the people. Now, as regards one department of morals, at least, I unhesitatingly affirm that it did, and that, as regards the connection of the s.e.xes, it would be difficult to find in any part of the world a more moral people than the two higher castes of Manjarabad, who form about one-half of the population, and who may be termed the farming proprietors of the country. Amongst themselves, indeed, it was not to be wondered at that their morality was extremely good, as, from the fact of nearly everyone being married at the age of p.u.b.erty, and partly, perhaps, from the fact of their houses being more or less isolated, instead of being grouped in villages, the temptations to immorality were necessarily slight. Their temptations, though, as regards the Pariahs, who were, when I entered Manjarabad, merely hereditary serfs, were considerable; and there it was that the value of caste law came in.

Caste said, "You shall not touch these women;" and so strong was this law, that I never knew of but one instance of one of the better cla.s.ses offending with a Pariah woman.[32] Some aversion of race there might, no doubt, have been, but the police of caste and its penalties were so strong that he would be a bold man indeed who would venture to run any risk of detection. To give an idea of how the punishment for an offence of this kind would operate, it may be added that, if one of the farming cla.s.ses in this country, on a case of seducing one of the lower, was fined by his neighbours 500, and cut by society till he paid the money, he would be in exactly the same position as a Manjarabad farmer would be who had violated the important caste law under consideration. Here, therefore, we have a moral police of tremendous power, and the very best proof we have of the regularity with which it has been enforced lies in the fact that the Pariahs and the farmers are distinguished by a form and physiognomy almost as distinct as those existing between an Englishman and a negro. Caste, then, as we have seen, protects the poor from the pa.s.sions of the rich, and it equally protects the upper cla.s.ses themselves, and enforcedly makes them more moral than, judging from our experience in other quarters of the globe, they would otherwise be.

Having thus briefly glanced at caste law, as controlling the connection of the s.e.xes, let us now look at it from another point of view, which I venture to think is, as regards its ultimate consequences, of even still more importance. If there is one vice more than another which is productive of serious crime, it is the abuse of alcohol; and there is no doubt that, to use the words of an eminent statesman, "if we could subtract from the ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sickness, and the crime now witnessed among us, the ignorance, the poverty, the sickness, and the crime caused by the single vice of drinking, this country would be so changed for the better that we should hardly know it again." Regarding it, then, in all its consequences, whether physical or mental (and how many madmen and idiots are there not bred by drinking?[33]), it is difficult to estimate too highly the value of caste laws that utterly prohibit the use of those strong drinks that are injurious in any country, but are a thousand times more so under the rays of a tropical sun. And when we come to consider that a large proportion of the population of India are absolutely compelled to abstain from the use of alcohol, and that these being the very best, or at least equal to the very best, of the community, must always have exercised a large influence in discouraging the excessive use of intoxicating drinks, it is impossible to refrain from coming to the conclusion that this single fact is more than sufficient to counterbalance all the evils that have ever been said to arise from caste.

On two very important points, then--the connection of the s.e.xes and the use of alcohol--it is evident that caste laws have produced some very favourable and valuable results; but I do not think we can accurately gauge their value unless we compare the state of morality existing in Manjarabad with the state of morality existing in one of our home counties; and the comparison I have to make, if not very soothing, is, I am sure, very interesting. Take any one of our counties in Great Britain, for instance, and compare it with Manjarabad as regards the points I have particularly referred to, and it will be found that Manjarabad has an immense superiority. The crimes and misery arising from drinking are hardly to be found at all in Manjarabad, while the morality of the s.e.xes, I should think, could hardly be surpa.s.sed. Now, there is nothing very surprising, considering that the people in this country are so heavily weighted, that this should be the case; on the contrary, it is the natural result of the circ.u.mstances of their worldly situation. But, supposing that the worldly situation as to the means of support and the opportunities of marrying were equal, it seems to me perfectly plain that the people who have a large proportion of the better cla.s.ses total abstainers, and who have their society so controlled that the rich cannot gratify their pa.s.sions at the expense of the poor, must be in the possession of a superior morality.

Before closing this branch of the subject, I may allude briefly to what has been so often attacked by the opponents of caste: I mean the prohibition of the marriage of widows. This rule exists in Manjarabad, but I am not aware that any great moral evil arises from it, as a widow can always contract to live with a man, the difference being that the ceremonies performed are of an inferior kind. This is not allowed to be a marriage, but, in fact, it is a marriage, though of a kind held in rather low estimation. On customs like these, which in a great measure neutralize the evils arising from the restrictions on re-marriage, it seems to me that our information is very scanty, and I am not aware how far the practice alluded to prevails in other parts of India.

Having taken into consideration the advantages of caste in acting as a moral restraint amongst the Indians themselves, I now purpose to inquire how far caste has acted advantageously, or the reverse, in segregating the people socially from the conquerors who have overrun their country.

If the advantages of caste are striking and plainly apparent as regards the moral points I have alluded to, they seem to me to be infinitely more so when we come to consider the happy influence this inst.i.tution has had in segregating the Indians from the white races. And here I cannot help indulging in a vain regret that the blessings of caste have not been universally diffused amongst all inferior races. How many of these has our boasted civilization improved off the face of the earth? How much has that tide of civilization which the first conquerors invariably bring with them effected? How much, in other words, have their vice, rum, and gunpowder helped to exterminate those unhappy races which, unprotected by caste, have come in contact with the white man? Nor in India itself are we altogether without a well-marked instance of the value, for a time at least, of an entire social separation between the dark and white races; and the Todas, the lords of the soil on the Nilgiri Hills, furnish us with a lamentable example of what the absence of caste feeling is capable of producing. We found them a simple pastoral race, and the early visitors to the hills were struck with their inoffensive manners, and what was falsely considered to be their greatest advantage--freedom from caste a.s.sociations. But what is their condition now? One of drunkenness, debauchery, and disease of the most fatal description. Had the much-reviled caste law been theirs, what a different result would have ensued from their contact with Europeans! Caste would have saved them from alcohol, and their women from contamination: they would thus have maintained their self-respect; and if, at first, separation brought no progress nor shadow of change, it would have at least induced no evil, and education and enlightenment would in time have modified these caste inst.i.tutions, which, to a superficial observer, seem to be productive of nothing but evil.

We have now seen that social contact with whites, without any barrier between them and the inferior races, is not, in a moral point of view, a very desirable thing in any part of the world. But if there is a moral consequence, we may also point to a mental one, which exercises an immense influence: I mean the overwhelming sense of inferiority which is so apt to depress casteless races. I believe, then, for savages, or for people in a low state of civilization, it is of the greatest importance that they should have points of difference which may not only keep them socially apart, but which may enable them to maintain some feeling of superiority when coming in contact with highly-civilized races. Nor is it necessary that the feeling of superiority should be well founded. An imaginary superiority will, I believe, answer the purpose equally well. "We don't touch beef, nor would we touch food cooked by Englishmen or Pariahs," seem but poor matters for self-congratulation. But if these considerations prevent a man from forming a poor opinion of himself, they should be carefully cherished. On these points, at least, a feeling of superiority is sustained, and therefore the tendency to degradation is diminished. But if on all points the white man makes his superiority felt, the weaker people speedily acquire a thorough contempt for themselves, and soon become careless of what they do, or of what becomes of them. Their mental spring becomes fatally depressed, and this circ.u.mstance has probably more to do with the deterioration and extinction of inferior races than most people would be inclined to admit.[34] Nothing, then, I believe, chills the soul and checks the progress of man so much as a hopeless sense of inferiority; and, had I time, I might turn the attention of the reader to the universality of this law, and to the numerous instances that have been collected to prove the depressing and injurious effects that even nature, on a grand and overwhelming scale, seems to exercise on the mind and spirit of man--how it makes him timid, credulous, and superst.i.tious, and produces effects which r.e.t.a.r.d his progress. But to advance further on this point, however interesting it may be, would only tend to distract the attention of the reader from the subject with which we are mainly concerned.

If the remarks. .h.i.therto made are of any value, they undoubtedly tend to prove that all inferior races have a tendency, in the first instance, to adopt the vices rather than the virtues of the more civilized races they may come in contact with. a.s.suming, then, as I think we have every right to do, that this statement is universally true, it is evident that the social separation maintained by caste has been of incalculable advantage.

On the other hand, however, a number of disadvantages have been indicated by various writers; but only one of them seems to me at all worthy of serious attention. It has been a.s.serted that this segregation has impeded advancement, that it has prevented the Indians learning as much from us as they otherwise might, and that it has impeded the mainspring of all advancement--education. Here, I apprehend, the argument against caste, as far as rural populations are concerned, utterly fails, and, in a province contiguous to my own, a most signal instance to the contrary can be pointed to. Few people have more proudly segregated themselves than the Coorgs; nowhere is the chast.i.ty of women more jealously guarded; and yet they were the first people in India who desired and pet.i.tioned for female education. And how, then, can it be for one moment a.s.serted that the tendency of caste is to check the progress of the people?