The markings and badges of caste observed in Bombay streets lead you to a constant interrogation of your sources of information. At the outset you determine to obtain an understanding of the institution of Indian caste, but a fortnight after your arrival in Bombay you conclude that the task is too great for anybody having other things to do, and give it up in despair. A few facts connected with this supreme and dominating characteristic take root in your memory, however, and you have learned that the customs and rites of caste could not be strengthened even by legal enactments, or by the massed strength of all the armies on earth. The word is derived from the Latin word _castus_, implying purity of blood, and whose essential principle is marriage. India's population groups forty-seven nationalities, divided into 2,378 recognized castes and tribes. Accident of birth determines irrevocably a native's social and domestic relationship, prescribing even what he may eat and drink throughout life, how he must dress, and whom he may marry. There are four fundamental divisions of caste--the priestly or Brahmin (which has close upon fifteen million devotees), the warrior, the trading, and the laboring; and these have interminable subdivisions. Below the laboring caste there is a substratum which is termed pariah or outcast, and these degraded specimens of humanity are not better than animated machines performing the functions of public scavengers. Throughout India caste is hereditary. The son of a priest becomes a priest, a warrior's son becomes a soldier, and a carpenter's boy a carpenter, and so on. For a father to start a son in any calling but his own, or a vocation that is similar, would be "against his caste." Caste is social as well as religious, and includes the occupation as well as the creed. For a Hindu to rise from his inherited caste is next to impossible, and this tends to make the Hindus an ambitionless race. The infusion of new blood is likewise not tolerated, and in India "caste" and "custom" are perfect synonyms--and each a national curse. A major part of the people of India are agriculturists, men and women who are dependent upon what they can wrest from the soil for their existence. Their plough, an heirloom from remote antiquity, merely scratches the earth. The use of superior implements would result in superior tillage and augmented crops; but it would be as simple to induce the peasant to change his religion as to get him to forsake the plough used by his ancestors. The implements of daily life mostly belong to the barbarous ages. Attempt to introduce any other and you are rebuked by the reply: "It is not the custom; my father used this article, and therefore it is my duty to use it. Would you have me set myself up for a wiser person than my revered parent?" The toiling masses, consequently, are poor--and seem destined to remain poor until the close of the chapter.