lowest rank, and from all human intercourse, except with those who have become outcasts like himself. No sorrow, no penance, no virtue, can restore the individual to the caste from which he has been expelled. The law which condemns is inexorable and eternal; and this law becomes a new instrument of oppression in the hand of the priest, because it consigns to him the power of excommunication, from which there is no appeal, and by which the victim whom he designs to oppress is reduced to the last state of vileness, of misery, and of contempt. The functions of the Castes are determined in as arbitrary a manner as the Castes themselves. Though persons of a higher order may engage in the occupations of a lower, those of a lower must never intermeddle with the occupations of a higher. It would be impiety in a Bice or a Sooder, of the most flagrant and enormous character, to interfere with the offices of a Chatteree or a Bramin; but the Bramin and the Chatteree may engage without crime in the meaner profession of an inferior class*. The privilege, however, is rarely exercised, because the exercise is supposed to involve a certain, though not punishable, degree of degradation; and the law of the Castes may be, therefore, said to render society stationary in all its ranks, and to restrict and oppress the genius of improvement, by a wanton, absurd, and despotic interdiction. The Castes are not only limited in their functions, but restricted in the ordinary intercourse of life. They scarcely associate, and never intimately, with each other. The priest, or the noble, would be considered as defiled if he descended to eat at the * Appendix, Note Q. Q. same table with the despised individual of an inferior rank. There are no charities or attachments of kindred to connect, because there is no marriage permitted between, the different orders*. Even the natural relation of man to man is to give way to the cold and artificial forms of the Castes; and the rights of humanity are to be abridged or abrogated by the perverse rules of a priestly policy t. The distinction of the castes, as I have observed, is guarded and maintained by religious terror. The priest is to judge and to decide, to spare or to punish; but even the sooder, even the lowest individual of the lowest caste, is a monarch, compared with the wretch on whose head has descended the full malignity of priestly malediction. He is driven, unpitied and scorned, from the confines of human society. If he approach, however accidentally, a person of a high rank, he may be instantly put to death. Whatever he touches is defiled. very shadow as it sweeps along, his very breath as it issues from his lips, communicate impurity. Even religion withholds from him, for ever, her pity and her forgiveness. An irrevocable decree closes against him the temple of his gods; or if, impelled by a religious feeling, he have stolen, in trembling silence, into the recesses of the pagoda, the detection of the crime excites the execration of priest and His One of the most flagitious crimes, in the opinion of the priestly Bramin, is the intermarriage of persons of different castes. For this offence they and their offspring are degraded into the lowest order of society. Preface to Code of Hindu Laws, pp. 46, 49. The guilt of heresy only is punished with greater rigour. + Bernier, tom. ii. p. 102. Tavernier, tom. i. liv. ii. c. 9. people, the temple is to be purified by various observances, and the miserable outlaw is driven back, with horror and disgust, to the seclusion of the woods*. Of such a despotism the consequences are as mischievous as they are extensive. Terror and slavery are every where. Faith is subdued into the most implicit and servile submission. The fear of an irresistible excommunication prostrates the mind and spirit of the votary; and the authority of the priest becomes the degradation, abasement, and oppression, of the people. If we here pause to take a general view of the rites and ceremonies of the Hindu religion, we shall have occasion only to lament and condemn. The festival that is wanton, the ceremony that is obscene, the sacrifice that is terrific, the observance that is barbarous, will testify the absurdity, the craft, or the crime of the inventor. We shall behold the girl of the temple, contrasted with the exhausted or expiring pilgrim; the scene of sanctified licentiousness, with altars dripping with human blood; the flaming pile, with temples of debauch; the gay procession, with the horrors of Juggernaut; and a prostrate nation, with a pampered, a mischievous, and a despotic priesthood. The distinctions of the castes will be seen, restraining invention, repressing co-operation, confining effort, and suspending improvement; and the power of excommunication will appear before us, rising up like a mighty and • Sonnarat. tom. i. pp. 55, 56. Ayeen Akberry, v. iii. p. 243. The excommunication survives the life of the offender. His posterity are to be visited by the same interdict, and are rendered incapable of ever recovering the caste of which he has been deprived. Dow's Hist. Hindost. Dissert. p. 22. portentous spectre, to appal, to subdue, and to mould, the minds of men. Every where some new evidence will occur of the detestable nature of a ritual, which, for so many centuries, has commanded the veneration and regulated the faith of nations, and in which its advocates among ourselves have pretended to find so much excellence and beauty; and, instead of discovering any thing to satisfy us of the competence of human reason to frame a pure and adequate creed, we shall retire from the contemplation still more diffident of such a guide in such concerns, and still more convinced of the necessity of an inspired religion. SECT. III. Fasts and pilgrimages ordained by the Koran-Essential to salvation -Compromise for fasts-Minute and insignificant forms of observance-Toils, manners, and duties of the pilgrims-The black stone-The stoning of the devils-Moral and political consequences of the institution-The Mahometan priesthood-The people uninstructed-The whole calculated rather to kindle the zeal of a mischievous fanaticism, than to promote piety to God or love to man. THE two most useful, and, perhaps, sublime of the intellectual faculties, invention and foresight, have been lavishly ascribed to Mahomet, by the partiality of his eulogists. Yet in no eminent degree was he possessed of either. Invention creates, foresight anticipates. The last, with a prophetic vision, penetrates into the future, and detects the emergencies and difficulties which are hereafter to arise; the first, with a productive energy, supplies the means by which those difficulties may be met or subdued. But the prophet of Arabia invented little. He borrowed the materials of his edifice equally from the wisdom and folly of preceding times, or the rites and ceremonies of existing superstition; and the records of the Pentateuch, the fables of the Ta.mud, the truths of the Gospel, the customs, manners, prejudices, and barbarities of the cotemporaneous Arab, supplied him with the incongruous doctrines which alternately disgrace and adorn the pages of the Koran. Nor was he gifted with any extraordinary foresight. He adapted his religion to circumstances as they arose, but made little provision for circumstances that were to come. Hence his celestial visitant was to contradict at one time what he had revealed at another; and the injunctions of the eternal book became innumerable, which, however authoritatively proclaimed, were, subsequently, to be limited, extended, or annulled, according as new occurrences required new expedients, and unforeseen conjunctures arose to derange the schemes of the Prophet. Of the two great institutions of the Koran, fasting and pilgrimage, almost every circumstance, even to the minutest forms, was borrowed from the rituals of other creeds. Mahomet could boast only the merit of impressing upon them a greater degree of solemnity, and of supporting them by higher and more effectual sanctions. I. Fasting, said the Prophet, "is as the gate of religion; and the odour of the mouth of him who fasteth is more grateful to God than that of musk*. In conformity with this doctrine, the necessity of solemn and reiterated fasts has been announced by the Koran; and days, and weeks, and months, are every year to be set apart by the Mussulman * Sale. Prelim. Disc. sect. iv. p. 48. |