Caste Sentence Examples

The object of this ceremony is to abolish caste distinctions.

Sivaji and his fighting officers were Mahrattas of humble caste, but his ministers were Brahmans.

They had their own kings, lived as a close caste, and even imitated the Hindus in caste regulations of food and avoidance of pollution.

The chief, whose title is Pant Pratinidhi, is a Brahman by caste.

For a long time caste was subsumed under the category of labor.

They were a social caste, which strove to keep, and which largely succeeded in keeping, all high offices and political power in its own hands.

Amar Das preached the doctrine abrogation of caste distinctions, and his precepts were implicitly followed by his successors.

Caste, in its later sense, is unknown.

We had fought with our parents to be together forever , who were opposed to inter caste marriage.

The tyrants general policy was to favor the multitude at the expense of his own caste.

In origin, Krishna, like Rama, was undoubtedly a deified hero of the Kshatriya caste.

The clergy, fortified by royal privileges, had also risen to influence; but celibacy and independence of the civil courts tended to make them more and more of a separate caste.

The ruling caste of the Fula differs widely in character from the herdsmen of the western Sudan.

Thus a man wishing to marry his son or daughter had to look for a suitable match outside his sept, but within his caste.

Whatever national unity the Hindu peoples possessed came from the persistent and penetrating influence of the Brahman caste.

But after a time Delbriick, suspected of inspiring his charge with a dislike of the Prussian military caste and even of belonging to a political secret society, was dismissed, his place being taken by the pastor and historian Friedrich Ancillon, while a military governor was also appointed.

Starting from the unity of God, Nanak and his successors rejected the idols and incarnations of the Hindus, and on the ground of the equality of all men rejected also the system of caste.

The latter were indubitably the Ugrian nomads of the steppe, akin to the Tatar invaders of Europe, who filled the armies and convoyed the caravans of the ruling caste.

So a Hindu paints his caste emblem on his forehead, and a fugitive slave in ancient Egypt, once marked with sacred stigmata in a temple, could not be reclaimed by the master.

But it is not unreasonable to think that they were no mere conquering caste, and that they were of the same race as the Celtic-speaking peoples of the western continent.

Although Becket was a man of narrow sympathies and by no means of liberal views, he had died for the liberties of his caste, and the aureole that surrounded him enhanced the prestige and ascendancy of the papacy.

And in their indifference to the distinctions of race and nationality they merely accommodated themselves to the spirit which had become characteristic of chivalry itself, already recognized, like the church, as a universal institution which knit together the whole warrior caste of Christendom into one great fraternity irrespective alike of feudal subordination and territorial boundaries.

Orthodox Hindus, especially those whose social status and very livelihood are imperilled by the revolution, have shown their alarm either by open opposition, subjecting converts to every sort of caste coercion, or by methods of defence, e.g.

The mining has always been carried on by natives of low caste, and by primitive methods which do not differ much from those described by the French merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689), who paid a prolonged visit to most of the mines between 1638 and 1665 as a dealer in precious stones.

At the beginning of the 19th century the Hausa territories were conquered by another dominant Mahommedan race, the Fula (q.v.), who form a separate caste of cattle-rearers.

At no .period did the priests form a caste that was quite distinctly separated from the laity.

Yet violations of these rules are jealously watched by the other members of the sept, and are liable - in accordance with the general custom in which communal matters are regulated in India - to be brought before a special council (panchayat), originally consisting of five (pancha), but now no longer limited to that number, since it is chiefly the greater or less strictness in the observance of caste rules and the orthodox ceremonial generally that determine the status of the sept in the social scale of the caste.

In India this is still largely upper caste in its composition.

In later times, the strict adherence to caste duties would naturally receive considerable support from the belief in the transmigration of souls, already prevalent before Buddha's time, and from the very general acceptance of the doctrine of karma (" deed "), or retribution, according to which a man's present station and manner of life are the result of the sum-total of his actions and thoughts in his former existence; as his actions here will again, by the same automatic process of retribution, determine his status and condition in his next existence.

Indeed, the paucity of women of the Aryan stock would probably render these mixed unions almost a necessity from the very outset; and the vaunted purity of blood which the caste rules were calculated to perpetuate can scarcely have remained of more than a relative degree even in the case of the Brahman caste.

If the daughter of one of the baker caste married a man not belonging to it, her husband was bound to her father's calling.

But, by this as it may, the institution of caste, when once established, certainly appears to have gone on steadily developing; and not even the long period of Buddhist ascendancy, with its uncompromising resistance to the Brahman's claim to being the sole arbiter in matters of faith, seems to have had any very appreciable retardant effect upon the progress of the movement.

Whilst community of occupation was an important factor in the original formation of non-tribal castes, the practical exigencies of life have led to considerable laxity in this respect - not least so in the case of Brahmans who have often had to take to callings which would seem altogether incompatible with the proper spiritual functions of their caste.

Thus," the prejudice against eating cooked food that has been touched by a man of an inferior caste is so strong that, although the Shastras do not prohibit the eating of food cooked by a Kshatriya or Vaisya, yet the Brahmans, in most parts of the country, would not eat such food.

In this caste, however, as in all others, there are certain kinds of occupation to which a member could not turn for a livelihood without incurring serious defilement.

Further down, where the test of water no longer applies, the status of the caste depends on the nature of its occupation and its habits in respect of diet.

In western and southern India the idea that the social state of a caste depends on whether Brahmans will take water and sweetmeats from its members is unknown, for the higher castes will as a rule take water only from persons of their own caste and sub-caste.

In Madras especially the idea of ceremonial pollution by the proximity of an unclean caste has been developed with much elaboration.

At the same time, in judging the apparently inhuman way in which the Sudras were treated in the caste rules, one has always to bear in mind the fact that the belief in metempsychosis was already universal at the time, and seemed to afford the only rational explanation of the apparent injustice involved in the unequal distribution of the good things in this world; and that, if the Sudra was strictly excluded from the religious rites and beliefs of the superior classes, this exclusion in no way involved the question of his ultimate emancipation and his union with the Infinite Spirit, which were as certain in his case as in that of any other sentient being.

The caste system, always calculated to favour unity of religious practice within its social groups, must naturally have contributed to the advance of sectarianism.

According to the Basava-purana he early in life renounced his caste and went to reside at Kalyana, then the capital of the Chalukya kingdom, and later on at Sangamesvara near Ratnagiri, where he was initiated into the Vira Saiva faith which he subsequently made it his life's work to propagate.

Just as this festival was, and continues to be, attended by people from all parts of India, without distinction of caste or sex, so also were all classes, even Mahommedans, admitted by Chaitanya as members of his sect.

The Sakta cult is, however, known to be especially prevalent - though apparently not in a very extreme form - amongst members of the very respectable Kayastha or writer caste of Bengal, and as these are largely employed as clerks and accountants in Upper India, there is reason to fear that their vicious practices are gradually being disseminated through them.

Terminating as it usually does with the feeding and feeing of a greater or less number of Brahmans and the feasting of members of the performers' own caste, the Sraddha, especially its first performance, is often a matter of very considerable expense; and more than ordinary benefit to the deceased is supposed to accrue from it when it takes place at a spot of recognized sanctity, such as one of the great places of pilgrimage like Prayaga (Allahabad, where the three sacred rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and Sarasvati, meet), Mathura, and especially Gaya and Kasi (Benares).

He denied that the Vedas warranted the caste system, but wished to retain the four grades as orders of learning to which admission should be won by examination.

You can only be granted special status by someone in a caste far above you.

He expressed the interests of this bureaucratic caste ever more clearly.

The other gave birth to a new privileged caste.

Hinduism has a rigid caste system which often results in pressure on the young to ensure they don't marry into the wrong caste system which often results in pressure on the young to ensure they don't marry into the wrong caste.

On the other, the younger sons of the warrior caste sought pay, booty and estates to maintain themselves.

The Church of England demands to have its say; threats of mutiny come from the officer caste.

What caste can a true devotee or the perfect soul have?

Nepal is a very hierarchical society with a similar caste system to India.

Magian Adjective from Magi (sing. Magus) referring to a member of the Zoroastrian priestly caste in Ancient Persia.

The old bureaucracy, particularly the increasingly restive military caste, is pressing for an increasingly aggressive foreign policy.

The cultural assertiveness of many former untouchables or dalits provide an example of caste based cultural movements.

They were not so much the occupiers of the soil as a dominant caste of warriors and freebooters.

Luther gave little attention to New Testament polity, though he believed in and clung passionately to the universal priesthood of all true Christians, and rejected the idea of a sacerdotal caste.

A Levite probably had a hand in the work, and this, with the evidence for the Levitical Psalms (see Psalms), gives the caste an interesting place in the study of the transmission of the biblical records.

Descendants of Rurik, impregnated with the pride of a dominant military caste, did not much like serving those truculent, wilful burghers, and some of them, after a time, voluntarily laid down their office and retired to more congenial surroundings.

The closing of the great council and the creation of the patrician caste brought about a revolution among those who suffered disfranchisement.

Berthelot that the workers in these processes, which were a monopoly of the priestly caste and were kept strictly secret, though fully aware that their products were not truly gold, were in time led by their success in deceiving the public to deceive themselves also, and to come to believe that they actually had the power of making gold from substances which were not gold.

They include a few high caste Indians, Arabs and Chinese, but the great majority are Indian coolies.

It was assumed that the Protestant nobles' jealousy of the burgesses would prevent them from interfering; but religious sympathy proved stronger than caste prejudice, and the diets protested against the persecution of their fellow citizens so vehemently that religious matters were withdrawn from their jurisdiction.

Teg Bahadur was succeeded by the tenth and most powerful guru, his son Govind Singh; and it was under him that what had sprung into existence as a quietist sect of a purely parshad is then distributed equally to all the faithful present, no matter to what caste they belong.

From the evidence of the stele of the second (the Coronation Stele) and that of the fifth it has been inferred that the sovereignty early in this period became elective, a deputation of the various orders in the realm being (as Diodorus states), when a vacancy occurred, sent to Napata, where the chief god Amen selected out of the members of the royal family the person who was to succeed, and who became officially the god's son; and it seems certain that the priestly caste was more influential in Ethiopia than in Egypt both before and after this period.

One class of the Asturians deserving special mention is that of the nomad cattle-drovers known as Baqueros or Vaqueros, who tend their herds on the mountains of Leitariegos in summer, and along the coast in winter; forming a separate caste, with distinctive customs, and rarely or never intermarrying with their neighbours.

The ruling caste in Nigeria, on the other hand, despise their pastoral brethren, and through generations of polygamy with the conquered tribes have become more Negroid in type, black, burly and coarse featured.

The most obvious characteristics of the ordinary Hindu are that he worships a plurality of gods, looks upon the cow as a sacred animal, and accepts the Brahmanical supremacy (see Brahmanism) and the caste system; and when it is a question whether one of the animistic tribes has or has not entered the fold of Hinduism, these two latter points seem to be the proper test to apply.

Fantasy literature has only recently broken free of the rigid caste system of the feudal period in which much fantasy is set, to allow butchers boys and pickpockets to ascend to heroic roles.

After 1600 B.C. the palaces in Crete had more than one story, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, &c. In this later period, the distinction of blocks of apartments in some palaces has been held to indicate the seclusion of women in harems, at least among the ruling caste.

For long the Brahmas did not attempt any social reforms. But about 1865 the younger section, headed by Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, who joined the Samaj in 1857, tried to carry their religious theories into practice by demanding the abandonment of the external signs of caste distinction.

It is expressly directed by the act of 1898 above referred to, that in regard to succession, inheritance, marriage, caste or any religious usage or institution, the law to be administered in Burma is (a) the Buddhist law in cases where the parties are Buddhists, (b) the Mahommedan law in cases where the parties are Mahommedans, (c) the Hindu law in cases where the parties are Hindus, except so far as the same may have been modified by the legislature.

Govind Singh1675-1708the 15th centuries, and during a visit to Benares he renounced some of the social and caste observances of the Hindus, called his disciples the liberated, and freed them from all restrictions in eating and social intercourse.

He abrogated caste distinctions, and taught in opposition to ancient writings that every man had the eternal right of searching for divine knowledge and worshipping his Creator.

He, like his predecessors, openly attacked all distinctions of caste, and taught the equality of all men who would join him, and he instituted a ceremony of initiation with baptismal holy water by which all might enter the Sikh fraternity.

He had the support of Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Lawrence, and the encouragement of seeing a new band of converts, including several young men of high caste.

In Karagwe, a region adjoining the southwest shores of Victoria Nyanza, the Bahima are the ruling caste.

But in this aristocratic caste the women are scrupulously clothed.

The schedule is much the same as in India with the substitution of race for caste.

But there are indications that at an earlier date the Kshatriya or warrior caste often became priests.

At this period the priestly caste gained its unbounded power over the minds of men " (Professor Rapson).

For further details as to the development of the priestly caste and wisdom in India the reader must refer to Brahminism; here it is enough to observe that among a religious people a priesthood which forms a close and still more an hereditary corporation, and the assistance of which is indispensable in all religious acts, must rise to practical supremacy in society except under the strongest form of despotism, where the sovereign is head of the Church as well as of the state.

Zoroastrianism is not a nature religion, but the result of a reform which never, under the old empire, thoroughly penetrated the masses; and the priesthood, as it was not based on family tradition, did not form a strict hereditary caste.

But the best established hierarchy is not so powerful as a caste, and the monarchs had one strong hold on the clergy by retaining the patronage of great ecclesiastical places, and another in the fact that the Semitic provinces on the Tigris, where the capital lay, were mainly inhabited by men of other faith.'

The purport, then, of ablutions is to remove, not dust and dirt, but the - to us imaginary - stains contracted by contact with the dead, with childbirth, with menstruous women, with murder whether wilful or involuntary, with almost any form of bloodshed, with persons of inferior caste, with dead animal refuse, e.g.

External pressure, here as elsewhere, created a patriotic military caste, and the subsequent partitional period, when every little prince had his own separate court, still further established the growing influence of the szlachta, or gentry, who were not backward in claiming and obtaining special privileges in return for their services.

After a visit to England on business in connexion with the cotton trade, which was not successful and brought on him excommunication from his caste, he was appointed in 1874 to administer a native state in Kathiawar during the minority of the chief; and there he died in August 1875.

He wrote Caste in Ancient India (1881); Manu's Lawbook (1884); Religions of India (1895); The Great Epic of India (1901); and India Old and New (1901).

But the dominant priestly caste of the Magians, on whose support the king was dependent, were naturally hostile to him, and after some successes Mani was made a prisoner, and had then to flee.

There was no caste - no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term.

Both the spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we have the key to the origin of caste.

The numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but often misleading, single name of caste, are solely dependent for their sanction on public opinion.

What we find in the Buddha's time is caste in the making.

The two dominant sections of the population are the Namburi Brahmins and the Nairs or military caste.

The land is held by a few proprietors, and caste sentiment is strong among those who claim unmixed European descent; consequently the mestizos have limited opportunities to improve their condition.

The whites form an exclusive governing caste, as in Chile.

The hereditary caste known as Marabouts are frequently in open.

The flesh is dry and unsavoury, but is permitted meat for Hindus, even of the Brahman caste.

Add to these the pride of social rank and the pride of blood, which are natural to man, and which alone could reconcile a nation to restrictions at once irksome from a domestic and burdensome from a material point of view, and it is hardly to be wondered at that caste should have assumed the rigidity which distinguishes it in India."

Caste has, in fact, come to be the chief dominating factor in the life of the ordinary native of India.

So widespread is its influence that, though originally a purely Hindu institution, it has come to exercise considerable influence over their Mahommedan neighbours (see Caste).

On the other hand there are various offshoots from orthodox Hinduism, the distinguishing feature of which, in their earlier history at least, is the obliteration of caste distinctions and the rejection of the Brahmanical hierarchy.

Amongst the Hindu higher castes there are serious obstacles in the way of conversion, of which family influence and the caste system are the greatest.

From the earliest times the caste of Brahmans has preserved, by oral tradition as well as in MSS., a literature unrivalled alike in its antiquity and in the intellectual subtlety of its contents.

Pan or betel-leaf is grown by a special caste in most parts of the country.

The Vaisya, or trading caste of Manu, has no longer any separate existence; but its place is occupied by several well-marked classes.

The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste; in the gentleness and charity to all men, which takes the place of a poor-law in India, and gives a high significance to the half satirical epithet of the " mild " Hindu.

They were hated by the Hindus as barbarians who disregarded the caste system and despised the holy law, and for centuries an intermittent struggle continued between the satraps and the Andhras, with varying fortune.

Commerce was conducted by means of a caste of bullock-drivers, whose occupation in India is hardly yet extinct.

Nearly all men of high caste, and many of them recruited from Oudh, they dreaded tendencies which they deemed to be denationalizing, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant.

Such a gross violation of their caste prejudices would alone be sufficient to account for the outbreak that followed.

Caste and sect marks also distinguish Hindus from each other.

This alone would be sufficient to controvert the baseless assumption that there existed in southern Rhodesia a ruling caste of different racial origin from the general Bantu population.

In Bali near Java, where the Naga-cult flourishes, a serpent is carried at the funeral ceremonies of the Kshatriya caste and burned with the corpse.

Christianity is classed by the students of the science of religion as a universal religion; it proclaims itself as intended for all men without distinction of race or caste, and as in possession of absolute truth.

Belonging neither to the aristocracy nor to the learned class, he was one of the common people yet separate from them - a separation not of race or caste or education, but of unique personality.

According to Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus (who calls him Sesoosis) and Strabo, he conquered the whole world, even Scythia and Ethiopia, divided Egypt into administrative districts or nomes, was a great law-giver, and introduced a system of caste and the worship of Serapis.

Though it was not till later times that the network of class divisions and subdivisions attained anything like the degree of intricacy which it shows in these latter days, still in its origin the caste-system is undoubtedly coincident with the rise of Brahmanism, and may even be said to be of the very essence of it.3 The cardinal principle which underlies the system of caste is the preservation of purity of descent, and purity of religious belief and ceremonial usage.

Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in the whole development of the caste-system than the jealous pride which every caste, from the highest to the lowest, takes in its own peculiar occupation and sphere of life.

The distinctive badge of a member of the three upper castes was the sacred triple cord or thread (sutra) - made of cotton, hemp or wool, according to the respective caste - with which he was invested at the upanayana ceremony, or initiation into the use of the sacred savitri, or prayer to the sun (also called gayatri), constituting his second birth.

One can already discern a movement in various quarters towards a recognition of impersonal theism, and towards fixing the teaching of the philosophical schools upon some definitely authorized system of faith and morals, which may satisfy a rising ethical standard, and may thus permanently embody that tendency to substitute spiritual devotion for external forms and caste rules which is the characteristic of the sects that have from time to time dissented from orthodox Brahminism."

Such a distinction of caste is regarded by Ballanche as the original state of historical society; and history, as a whole, he considers to have followed the same course as that taken by the Roman plebs in its attempts to attain equality with the patriciate.

A theory which seems plausible is that which assumes them to have been a heterogenous collection of Mongol, Tungus, Turki and perhaps even Finnish hordes under a Mongol military caste, though the Mongolo-Tungus element probably predominated.

They are hospitable to people of their own caste, but to no others.

Society in Persia, being based almost exclusively on religious law, is much as it was in Biblical times among the Jews, with this difference, however, that there exists no sacerdotal caste.

At all events, they play here not merely the role of the Fire-kindlers (aihravan) in the Avesta, but are become an hereditary sacerdotal caste, acting an important part in the stateadvisers and spiritual guides to the king, and so forth.

In religion they were Calvinistic, fanatic, and their old traditions of Dutch East India government, together with their relation to the natives, developed a spirit of caste and even tyranny.

Under his rule the experiment was fairly successful, but the married colonists afterwards became a privileged caste, subsisting upon the labour of their slaves, and often disloyal to their rulers.

The chief, whose title is pant sachiv, is a Brahman by caste.

But to the last they had the unpardonable crime of being a ruling barbarian race or caste in Italy.

Then, as the Chaldaeans soon became the dominant people, the priestly caste of that region developed into a Chaldaean institution.

It is derived from the vernacular word for the cow, but it is a mistake to suppose that the family are of the cowherd caste; they belong to the upper class of Mahrattas proper, sometimes claiming a Rajput origin.

The Ronas, who form the chief caste and fighting race of the Chitral districts, originally came from the north, but they have adopted the language and fashions of the conquered Chitrali.

Owing to the silladar system, under which the Indian sowar provided his own horse and provender in return for a monthly wage, the Indian cavalry were almost to a man in debt, and therefore favoured any attempt to upset the existing regime, and with it to wipe out the moneylender and his books; and the general enlistment order passed in July 1856, for the purposes of the war in Persia, made the Hindu sepoys afraid of losing caste by crossing the sea.

The lowcaste natives employed in the arsenals knew what grease was actually being employed, and taunted the Brahman sepoys with the loss of caste that would follow their use of the new cartridges.

Nevertheless, 85 men of the native cavalry regiment, driven to despair by the persistent rumours of the danger to their caste, refused on the 24th of April to accept their cartridges.

During their centuries of slavery, they were organized into castes, as musicians, metal workers, masons, &c.; but after about 1850 the bonds of caste were gradually relaxed and gipsies began to intermarry with Rumans.

The tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, which was held in no high estimation.

Beckets death, then, gave a qualified triumph to the church party, and he was rightly regarded as the successful champion of his caste.

The Sepoys thought that their caste would be destroyed if they touched the fat of the sacred cow or unclean pig; they were even persuaded that the British government wished to destroy their caste in order to facilitate their conversion to Christianity.

They are skilful cultivators and good boat-builders, the carpenters, being an hereditary caste; there are also tribes of fishermen and sailors; their mats, baskets, nets, cordage and other fabrics are substantial and tasteful; their pottery, made, like many of the above articles, by women, is far superior to any other in the South Seas; but many native manufactures have been supplanted by European goods.

The Sheridans were men of Irish race, but with the religion they adopted the literary tone of the dominant caste, which was small and exclusive, with the virtues and the vices of an aristocracy.

He was certainly so far connected with sheep that he and sheep and the Kshatriya caste sprang from the breast and arms of Prajapati, a kind of creative being.

All the ties of caste, class, corporation and family were severed; the jealous despotism of Louis XIV.

But between 1820 and 1830 a religious movement, having for its object their freedom from the trammels of caste, was inaugurated by a member of the caste, named Ghasi Das, who preached the unity of God and the equality of men.

They both abstain from meat and liquor, marry at the age of puberty, ordinarily celebrate their ceremonies through the agency of the elders of their own caste and bury their dead.

Although an aboriginal tribe, the census returns them as a Hindu caste.

But the practical end of all his writings is to inculcate bhakti addressed to Rama as the great means of salvation - emancipation from the chain of births and deaths - a salvation which is as free and open to men of the lowest caste as to Brahmans.

But in practice a local caste hierarchy may correspond only very loosely with the ideal.

Worker caste polymorphism has a genetic basis in a leaf-cutting ant.

Within a caste society there is an irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the various castes.

Davenport looks to be running into form and lost no caste in defeat behind Trafalgar Square in the soft at Goodwood last time.

Their priestly caste were the best placed to use these archives to write a sacred history with a political purpose in mind.

The Turk, being of the ruling caste, must have the last word.

One of the most interesting features of ant-societies is the dimorphism or polymorphism that may often be seen among the workers, the same species being represented by two or more forms. Thus the British " wood ant " (Formica rufa) has a smaller and a larger race of workers (" minor " and " major " forms), while in Ponera we find a blind race of workers and another race provided with eyes, and in Atta, Eciton and other genera, four or five forms of workers are produced, the largest of which, with huge heads and elongate trenchant mandibles, are known as the " soldier " caste.

A close caste was created which very seldom and very reluctantly admitted new members to its body.

Thus the table of social precedence attached to the Cochin report shows that while a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher caste only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, including masons, blacksmiths, carpenters and workers in leather, pollute at a distance of 24 ft., toddy-drawers at 36 ft., Pulayan or Cheruman cultivators at 48 ft., while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who eat beef the range of pollution is no less than 64 ft."In this bewildering maze of social grades and class distinctions, the Brahman, as will have been seen, continues to hold the dominant position, being respected and even worshipped by all the others."

In these degenerate days their supernatural powers consist chiefly in conjuring, sooth-saying, and feats of jugglery, by which they seldom fail in imposing upon a credulous public. (3) Sannyasis, devotees who" renounce "earthly concerns, an order not confined either to the Brahmanical caste or to the Saiva persuasion.

The sixth clause comprehends a wide programme of reform, including abstinence from spirituous liquors and animal food, physical cleanliness and exercise, marriage reform, the promotion of female education, the abolition of caste and of idolatry.

The former, who form the shoemaker and leather-dealing caste of the Hindu community, had always been held in utter contempt by the other Hindu castes.

By rigid precedence the Brahmans occupy the first rank; they are numerous and influential, and with them may be classed the peculiar and important caste of Bhats, the keepers of secular tradition and of the genealogies.

All who die within this boundary, be they Brahman or low caste, Moslem or Christian, are sure of admittance into Siva's heaven.

The name does not indicate a social caste, or a religious sect; it is not even tribal.

Many of the janissaries had married and settled on the land, forming a strongly conservative and fanatical caste, friendly to the Moslem nobles, who now dreaded the curtailment of their own privileges.

The caste privileges of the estates (Stdnde) were increased by Augustus, a fact which tended to alienate them more from the people, and so to decrease their power.

The Heralds' College, the avvogadori di comun, in order to ensure purity of blood, were ordered to open a register of all marriages and births among members of the newly created caste, and these registers formed the basis of the famous Libro d'oro.

The conquered peoples fell into an inferior caste, made to work for, and to pay for the subsistence of, their conquerors, as under the Arab domination; the principal taxes exacted from them were the kharaj, a tax of indeterminate amount upon realty, based on the value of lands owned by unbelievers - (in contradistinction to the tithe [ashar] which was a tax of fixed amount upon lands owned by believers) - and levied in payment of the privilege of gaining means of existence in a Mussulman country, and the jiziye, a compulsory payment, or poll-tax, to which believers were not subjected, in lieu of military service.

Sikhism was founded by Nanak, a Khatri by caste, who was born at Talwandi near Lahore in A.D.

They are distinguished from the Hindus by no outward sign except a slight laxity in the matter of caste observances.

The schedule adopted contains in addition to the standard subjects of sex, age, civil condition, birthplace, occupation and infirmities, columns for mother-tongue, religion and sect, and caste and sub-caste.

It is also extensively practised in India, especially by one caste of Brahmins, the Joshi.

No such thing as caste exists, and low birth is no insuperable bar to the attainment of the highest dignities.

Below him ranked the newly converted Moslem aristocracy, who adopted the dress, titles and etiquette of the Turkish court, without relinquishing their language or many of their old customs. They dwelt in fortified towns or castles, where the vali was only admitted on sufferance for a few days; and, at the outset, they formed a separate military caste, headed by 48 kapetans - landholders exercising unfettered authority over their retainers and Christian serfs, but bound, in return, to provide a company of mounted troops for the service of their sovereign.

In Prussia, with its traditional loyalty and its old-world caste divisions, he believed that such a conception could be realized, and he took up an attitude half-way between those who would have rejected the proposal for a central diet altogether as a dangerous "thin end of the wedge," and those who would have approximated it more to the modern conception of a parliament.

They have no caste distinctions but speak of themselves as belonging to one of nine septs or clans, who all eat together and intermarry with each other.

The chief direct result in the life of the Egyptian people was the virtual destruction of the governing caste of the Mamelukes, the Turks finding it easy to rid themselves of their surviving chiefs and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan.

In 1075 he caused the investiture of ecclesiastica dignitaries by secular potentates of any degree to be condemned These two reforms, striking at the most cherished privileges ant most deeply-rooted self-indulgences of the aristocratic caste ii Europe, inflamed the bitterest hostility.

Hinduism, which was once the religion of Java, but has been extinct there for four centuries, is still in vogue in the islands of Bali and Lombok, where the cruel custom of widow-burning (suttee) is still practised, and the Hindu system of the four castes, with a fifth or Pariah caste (called Chandala), adhered to.

The position of this class, which has remained till the present day, is connected with the institution of caste, a division of the population into groups founded partly on racial distinctions.

As they were not a hereditary caste and enjoyed exemption from service in the field as well as from payment of taxes, admission to the order was eagerly sought after by the youth of Gaul.