The code of Manu, with all its "unparalleled arrogance" toward the Sudra, was founded rather upon what a high-bred Brahman ought to be than with any deliberate intent to degrade the Sudra. But with its practice came that inevitable deterioration to the moral character of the Brahmans themselves, who forgot that the humblest man has a right to the same sanctity of life and character as the highest. The lower the Brahman sank in his spiritual and moral nature, the more he tried to hedge himself about with artificial claims to the reverence of the peoples around him, until finally the code of Manu swelled into minute details. Reaching the unborn child of Aryan parents, it directed its nursing in the cradle, it shaped the training of the youth, and regulated the actions of his perfect manhood as son, husband, and father. Food, raiment, exercise, religious and social duties, must be brought into subjection to its sovereign voice, and in the course of time it was inseparably interwoven with every domestic usage, every personal and social habit. From the cradle to the grave it undertakes to regulate and control every desire, every inclination, every movement, of the inner and outer man. Such is the code of Manu. In spite of these laws, however, there flourished Sudra kings and Sudra communities, influenced though not absorbed by the Aryan population. Sudra kings were invited to the court of the great _Yudishthira_[42] and treated with marked respect and courtesy; indeed, this word "Kiriya" or "Kritya" (courtesy) was held to be the distinguishing mark of a high-bred Brahman. The Sudras in their turn soon caught the infection of caste feeling, and were not slow in adopting the same distinctions among themselves. From being at first a sign of superiority of race, it gradually took form and extended to every branch and profession. Priest, teacher, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, robber, murderer, and beggar, was each one fixed immovably and for ever in his place and grade, and no earthly power could draw him into any other. Every one piqued himself on his particular caste; each man confined himself sternly to his own perfect circle. There was hope for every man who belonged to a caste, so that even those fallen from caste bound themselves together in a brotherhood and called themselves Pariahs, "outcasts," which in time became a large and distinct caste. "Even in the lowest depths they found a lower still." So monstrous and deteriorating was this system that in the course of time, losing sight of its original purpose, it separated the Aryans themselves, for whose especial preservation and union it was designed, by distinctions and restrictions almost as galling as those it had formerly imposed only on the Sudras.