performance of the sacred rites and offices; and ritual in Hinduism, as
in most of the ancient religions, is the essential element; it is
closely connected with the rules of caste, which unite and divide
innumerable groups within the pale of Hinduism. And in India the
peculiar institution of caste, the strict regulation of social
intercourse, particularly in regard to inter-marriage and the sharing of
food, prevails to an extent quite unknown elsewhere in the world. The
divisions of caste have always operated to weaken the body politic in
India, and thus to facilitate foreign conquest; but, on the other hand,
they have opposed a stiff barrier to the invasion of foreign religions,
to the fusion of alien races with the Hindu people, and to any success
in what may be called national unification.

One can easily understand the formidable power invested by this system
in the Brahmins, and the enormous obstacles that it might raise against
the introduction of Western ideas, manners, and education. Nevertheless
we all know, and we have seen it with real satisfaction, that the
Brahmins, very much to the credit of their intelligence and sagacity,
have been forward in accepting the new learning, the expansion of
general knowledge, offered to them by English schools and Universities;
they have acquired our language, they have studied our sciences; they
are prominent in the professions of law and medicine, which the English
have created; they enter our civil services, they even serve in the
Indian Army. Yet their readiness to adopt secular culture does not seem
to have abated their religious authority, or to have sensibly weakened
their influence over the people at large. And indeed the fact that the
Brahmins, with others of the educated classes, should have been able,
for their own purposes, to appeal simultaneously to the darkest
superstitions of Hinduism and to extreme ideas of Western democracy--to
disregard caste rules personally and to stir up caste prejudices among