India the Land of Religions 7

Bengal, there is no intercourse between putters who turn their Wheels ausitting and make small pots, and them that stand up for the manufacture of large pots. A certain class of dairymen who make butter from. unboilecl milk have been excluded from the caste, and cannot marry the daughters of milkmen who churn upon more orthodox principles. Even

as late a census as that of 1:90]: reports, and in a way gives its sanction to the Cimmerian notion that the touch of the lower caste man defiles the higher:

While a Nayar can pollute a man of ahigher cast only by touching 11im,pe0p1e of the Kamrnalan group, includ- ing masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and workers in leather, pollute at a distance of twenty-four feet, toddy drawers at thirty-six feet, Palayan or Cheruman cultiw voters at forty~eight feet ; while in the case of the Paraiyan (Pariahs) who eat beef, the range of pollution is stated to be no less than sixtwaour feet. 1

Thus Hindu society is split into infinitely small divisions, each holding itself aloof from the other, each engaged in making its exclusiveness as com- plete as possible. Members of a lower caste cannot rise into a higher caste; the individual is restricted to such progress only as is possible Within the con- fines of his caste. To the Pariah the door of hope

1Quoted from New Ideas in India, by the Rev. Dr. John Morrison (Edinburgh, 1906), p. 33.