CASTE IN INDIA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2382, 14 July 1892, Page 3

CASTE IN INDIA.

■ i The Indian papers report that some time since, in the neighbourhood of Fyzabad, a man of the Ahir or cowherd caste was carrying a young calf home on his shoulders, when by some accident it slipped down and broke its neck. The Brahmins declared him to be outcast, and sentenced him to the severest form of Hindoo excommunication for six months. They farther told him that he could not have committed a greater sin than causing the death of a cow, but, taking into consideration that he was an uneducated man, they had dealt very leniently with him. During the period of excommunication he was ordered to lead a life of mendicancy, and, with a rope round his neck and a portion of the calf’s tail on his shoulders he was to perform pilgrimages to different Hindoo shrines. The members of hisfamily were forbidden to supply him with either shelter or food under a penalty of undergoing similar excom* munication, The Ahir recently re* turned to his village, but until the purification ceremonies are over he must live in a temporary grass-thatched house which has been erected for his residence. It remains for a man of one of the lowest castes to purify him. A barber, after shaving the delinquent and paring the nails of his hands and toes, will make over the hair and the nails to the low-caste attendant, who will burn them and also set fire to tjm hut. After this, the Ahir, being covered with cow-dung, will take a plunge into the river Saru and come out purified. But his troubles are even then by no means at an end. After he has feasted fifty Brahmins and 100 of his brethren he will be admitted into caste fellowship.